Podcast: Is Cancel Culture Real? With Comedian Emma Arnold

Inside Mental Health Podcast Guest and Host Bio

Emma Arnold is an Idaho backcountry-raised comedian, artist, and beekeeper. Her comedy special, “Yes, Please,” has been viewed over a million times and she’s put out four critically acclaimed standup comedy albums with Blonde Medicine Records. In 2019, she was featured in Forbes Magazine, which called her, “one of the hardest-working comics in the industry.” When not touring, Emma lives in Boise, where she enjoys being the much-beloved host of the much-beloved City Cast Boise podcast and keeping bees and children with varying degrees of success.

Our host, Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, “Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations,” available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author.

Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can’t imagine life without.

To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com.

Episode Transcript

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

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault, Suicide

Announcer: You’re listening to Inside Mental Health: A Psych Central Podcast where experts share experiences and the latest thinking on mental health and psychology. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Welcome to the podcast, everyone. I’m your host Gabe Howard, and calling in today we have Emma Arnold. Emma is an Idaho backcountry raised comedian, artist and beekeeper. When not touring, she lives in Boise, where she hosts the City Cast Boise podcast. Her fifth special and comedy album, Myself, is available now. Emma, welcome to the podcast.

Emma Arnold: Thank you for having me. Gabe, It’s such a pleasure.

Gabe Howard: You know, when the topic of cancel culture and trying to define the acceptability of joking about mental illness and addiction is the topic, I think it is just appropriate to try and get us in trouble right out of the gate. Emma, I, I know you can’t do your standup special on our podcast, but would you mind sharing your most offensive? And I am making air quotes. I want the audience to know that your most offensive mental health and or addiction related joke.

Emma Arnold: Um, yeah, sure. Um, I think probably so. I don’t do a lot of, um, I don’t punch at other people, you know, as they say, punch down or anything, but I tend to not make fun of other people’s issues since I have enough of my own. So, I don’t do any, you know, some people have like, anti-trans jokes or like, terrible things like that. But my worst joke, which no one ever likes and it does not usually get a laugh except for other from other survivors in the crowd is actually about being molested. And I can tell it right now if you want, but I do want to give a trigger warning to your audience, because I know that can be a gut punch. You know, if you’re listening to this with your morning coffee, do you still want me to tell it, Gabe?

Gabe Howard: Yeah, yeah.

Emma Arnold: I can tell it.

Gabe Howard: Hit us.

Emma Arnold: Okay

Gabe Howard: Speak your truth.

Emma Arnold: Okay. It’s not going to be as funny. I’m you know, if I tell it on stage, it has like a different energy and stuff. But essentially the joke is I just found out about purity balls. Do you know what that is, Gabe? Have you heard of a purity ball?

Gabe Howard: It’s where virgins go and dance with their fathers. Like that’s what it conjures up for me. Right.

Emma Arnold: Yeah. Right, exactly.

Gabe Howard: And it’s where you agree to stay a virgin until you’re married. And

Emma Arnold: And, uhm.

Gabe Howard: It seems to be geared towards women, right? There’s no purity balls for men.

Emma Arnold: Yes. Oh, exclusively. Young, very young women and their fathers give them like a purity ring, which essentially is like their virginity. And when they’re ready to get married, the father will give that ring to the husband. It’s very transactional. Transactional. It’s very patriarchal, you know, all those things. And I make fun of that in the joke. And then I say, you know, my father was so concerned about my virginity, he just took it himself. So, no one likes it. Gabe, I’m not saying it’s a great joke, but I was I was I was a victim of incest as a child. And I found actually, I do. I do a whole set on being a survivor of child sex abuse. And when I first started doing it, I would just be like shaking during the joke because it was so triggering and like so difficult to talk through. But after I had done it about a hundred times, people would always come up to me afterward and say, Oh my God, I’m a survivor too. I’m a child sex abuse survivor, and I have never heard anyone joke about this. I’ve never heard anyone make fun of it.

Emma Arnold: And they would like hug me and be like, this has been a deep secret. I have never won. One time in Wisconsin, a guy said, I have never even told my wife. I’ve never even told my wife that I was molested as a kid, hearing you joke about it made it like, oh, we can talk about this. We can have a conversation about it. This isn’t my shame.

Gabe Howard: Sometimes I feel like an asshole when I listen to my guests explain something, because at first, I was like, oh, maybe that is too far. It

Emma Arnold: Uh huh.

Gabe Howard: It conjured

Emma Arnold: Sure.

Gabe Howard: Something up in me. I’m like, you know, I’m trying to be bold and honest and have like, real conversations, but maybe that’s too far. And then you explained, right? And I was listening. I was like,

Emma Arnold: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: Wow, I live with bipolar disorder. And I get I get shit all the time. People are like, well, why are you joking about suicide? Why are you joking about mania? Why are you joking about homelessness? I’m like, well, these are my experiences and I embrace humor as healthy and I’m taking my power back. And like, I feel I feel good like you described. But yet when you were doing it, I was like, maybe that is too far.

Emma Arnold: Yeah, it’s uncomfortable.

Gabe Howard: Do you get that a lot where people just want to sit you down and explain why you shouldn’t do it?

Emma Arnold: Well, sure, I’m a woman, so that’s a huge part of my experience. Moving through the world is people wanting to tell me how I’m doing it wrong. Occasionally, yeah. But I think for the most part, you know, I think it’s okay for comedy to be uncomfortable in moments. I’m a big believer in the fact that, like, you’re taking the crowd on a journey, you’re taking them on a journey of your life, on your experience and your perspective. And if people are like, I didn’t care for her perspective, that’s totally fine. If people are like, I don’t want to hear those kind of jokes, absolutely, totally fine. But I also think that I you know, the people who are always pushing, you know, screw cancel culture and we’re going to say what we want. They’re never actually talking about really deep. Um, you know, they’re not trying to tackle societal systemic issues like, like ableism, like you not being able to have a conversation about your bipolar disorder without people assuming that you shouldn’t be able to talk about it in a way that makes you comfortable. You know, instead, usually cancel culture stuff comes down to like being able to say the N word. Even though you’re a white guy, you know, it comes down to not letting go of privilege usually is what cancel culture comes down to.

Gabe Howard: Emma, cancel culture is a buzzword and a paper tiger. Have you ever responded to the threat of being canceled by engaging in personal self-censorship?

Emma Arnold: I don’t I don’t think I can really answer that in the way maybe you intended for the question to be answered, because I don’t believe in cancel culture. I don’t think anybody actually gets canceled. Um, so no, I don’t think like, like Dave Chappelle is out there making millions of dollars while also crying about being canceled. I just think the whole thing is a manufactured marketing tool and that if you’re listening to comedians and you’re like, this guy got canceled, why is it why are his albums still up? Why are why does he have a brand-new Netflix special? Like the people who always cry about getting canceled the most are people who basically realize that that’s a way to market themselves to a certain subset of Republican, essentially. And I don’t I don’t really mess with any of that. I don’t really, I don’t think about getting canceled. In fact, when honestly, I’m a big fan of criticism because I’m not a crybaby. So, and fans have been like, hey, just to let you know, this joke comes across like this or you may want to rephrase this. I actually listen to that and engage with it. And like I read the comments, I’m not scared of what people think.

Emma Arnold: Sometimes people are just being jerks. Sometimes people are like, hey, just to let you know you’re actually like, If I did a joke about being bipolar, about bipolar disorder, and you were like, No, actually that’s super inaccurate. And you messaged me, I would change the joke because I don’t want to be inaccurate. I don’t want to be saying things about bipolar from a position of power definitively when I didn’t do my research. So now I mean, yeah, I self-censor constantly all the time. That’s part of the job. Right now, I’m self-censoring. This is a PG-13 podcast, so I’m not saying the F-word, you know, like, I don’t see why that’s any different than being like, oh, I’m not going to use the N-word because I’m a white lady, and that would be super gauche and tacky and awful. I don’t really see how that’s any different than like the same people who are crying about cancel culture are trying to get drag make drag illegal in Idaho. You know like those same people are trying to they’re chasing drag queens out of libraries. They’re pulling they’re banning books like I just think the whole thing is baloney. Gabe, I think it’s all baloney.

Gabe Howard: It’s fascinating to hear you say, because I’ve thought this a lot. I’m a huge fan of George Carlin. I believe

Emma Arnold: Uh-huh.

Gabe Howard: You are as well. Are you a fan of George Carlin?

Emma Arnold: Huge. Enormous.

Gabe Howard: Huge.

Emma Arnold: Top three.

Gabe Howard: Yeah. And one of the reasons that I am a fan of George Carlin is because he checks off two boxes on my I love him list. One funny comedian. Right. That’s a great box. That’s why I went to all of his shows before he passed away. That’s why I loved him. But to activist, the man testified in front of the government about how,

Emma Arnold: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: Look, you’ve got to stop censoring us. And when I think about cancel culture, it seems to be criticism. When I think about George Carlin, he got government interference.

Emma Arnold: Exactly. Yes.

Gabe Howard: Comedians were literally hassled by the police. They were

Emma Arnold: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: Brought before the Senate. Congress, presidents talked about them as if they weren’t Americans because they said, and are you ready, ladies and gentlemen, the F word they

Emma Arnold: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: Swore. That’s it. That that was the criticism. They said the F word, words that you can now hear. No problem on every cable news network, every Internet show and on many, many podcasts. Got you government interference. And George Carlin just he also was arrested. I mean that’s

Emma Arnold: Mhm.

Gabe Howard: Literally canceled when you get arrested and your freedom taken away, that were canceled. But we’ve watered this down to somebody didn’t like what you said and criticized it and now doesn’t want to give you money like

Emma Arnold: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: I think really at its core isn’t cancel culture just a boycott?

Emma Arnold: Yeah, basically. And I love what you said about Carlin because Carlin was a huge proponent of only punching up, of only making jokes about systemic issues. Like that you only attacked authority that you never punch down at marginalized groups. Like it’s weird to me to see people who are trying to do this quote unquote, offensive comedy, constantly quoting Carlin when it’s like, Carlin would hate your guts, Carlin would hate what you’re doing. He actually fought for like, freedom, true freedom of speech, which was the government not having the ability to because of like, you know, Christian ideals or whatever you want to call that, not saying the F word, not doing vulgar jokes. That’s more what I fight against. That’s more what I try to break down is, you know, these barriers in comedy where it’s like women can’t say that or you can’t use the F word. Like the people a lot of times who are like comparing themselves to Lenny Bruce or George Carlin because they’re doing so-called edgy comedy. I always think that’s funny because I’m like, literally the worst thing that you’ve ever faced is an open mic host being like, hey, man, please don’t say that at this mic. Like, that’s it, That’s the oppression these guys are facing. Or, you know, I think of like Dave Chappelle or Ricky Gervais, like these very well-known comedians who want to be able to use slurs.

Emma Arnold: They want to be able to say these things. And it’s like, yeah, no one no one arrested you. No one came to your house and stole, you know, put you in jail because you used a slur. People were just like you. I don’t like that. Also, I think it’s hugely generational. I think it’s mostly older people who are like, I want to be able to say whatever I want.

Gabe Howard: But, Emma, they’re fighting the woke mob. There’s a mob and they’re woke. And they

Emma Arnold: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: Must be stopped. They must be stopped.

Emma Arnold: Yeah, all these words, like you said, like the buzzword thing. Like woke has become such a buzzword when it used to mean literally keeping your eyes open for fascism, you know, for systemic racism for. And I think, like the idea that you would be anti-woke is one of the oldest man yells at cloud things I’ve ever heard. Like, it’s just absurd to me.

Gabe Howard: We really live in a in a in a in a black and white society and all or none. A 0 or 60. I think I’ve run out of analogies for we’re very we’re a bipolar society. See what I did there?

Emma Arnold: Mhm. Mhm.

Gabe Howard: See, see,

Emma Arnold: Mhm. Mhm. Nice.

Gabe Howard: I secretly want to be a comedian, too,

Emma Arnold: Everyone does, I think.

Gabe Howard: Yeah. Everyone, it’s the great. I really feel like I love being a public speaker. I don’t I don’t get

Emma Arnold: Mhm.

Gabe Howard: To make people laugh as much as you, but I get to make people cry. Right. I,

Emma Arnold: Mhm.

Gabe Howard: I feel that that’s a real benefit to my job over yours. If people are crying in your audience. Something went very.

Emma Arnold: I don’t know. I don’t subscribe to that. You know, I know a lot of comedians are laughing. You know, this is how many laughs a minute I get. This is how hard I’m going. I am more of a storytelling comedian. I am more about, like connecting with the crowd. And I’ve definitely made people cry, talking about being a mom or talking about my own struggles. Like, I’ve definitely seen people get emotional in the crowd. I’ve cried on stage. I’ve gotten emotional when I’m talking about something kind of heavy or something with my kids that I’m proud of or, you know, my experience raising an autistic kid or things like that. Like, I love a lot of emotion on stage. You know, sometimes people are just there to laugh, but I’m always there to have an experience and to go on a journey with whoever’s on stage, whatever they’re doing.

Gabe Howard: I want to talk about two things that you just said. The first one is I love the idea of having an emotional journey on stage, whatever that looks like for you, because I think that is the role of art, right? That and, you know, being a comedian, a speaker, any sort of performance, it’s an art form that should drive something within us. Whether that something is good, bad, indifferent, whatever, if it’s driving something, I think you as the comedian have done your job and it gets people to think about and see things from a different way. But so, we can stay a little bit on topic. You said autistic kid, and the first thing that went in my mind are all of the people who say, no, you have a child living with autism. The person first language movement that I get hit on a lot because I say I’m bipolar and they’re like, No, you’re just more than that, Gabe. You’re a person living with bipolar disorder. And you can I’m really trying not to mock it even in my speech, because I can already read the emails, but I don’t have a problem being bipolar. And you clearly

Emma Arnold: Mhm.

Gabe Howard: Don’t have a problem having an autistic kid. But a lot of people find that very, very offensive. What do you think about all of that?

Emma Arnold: Well. So, I think early on I probably was one of the autism moms, like ableist moms who was making their kids diagnosis more about themselves than like their child’s experience. Like, I got called out when I was this is when I was a very young comedian and also a very young mom. And I got called out on things like, hey, you know, you’re you got to make sure you’re not doing this in an exploitative way, in a way that, like, if your kid listened back to this later, he would think it was funny and loving. I mean, I think I always I hope I always did a pretty good job of that because, of course, I adore him and I think he’s incredible and perfect. But as far as the language goes, I actually about five years ago started just regularly checking in with the autistic community and saying, what do you prefer? And by and large, the response I have gotten from at least, you know, maybe the people with bipolar community is different. But the autistic community, by and large says that they want to be instead of people with autism, they want to be autistic people. Occasionally there’s a few outliers who are like, oh, I do prefer that. But by and large, that’s the feedback I’ve gotten. And I’m a big believer in like, you know, if the autistic people say that’s how they want to be addressed, that’s how I will address them. Like, language is fluid. It’s supposed to be constantly changing. I have no problem, you know, changing my language and being more inclusive and making sure I’m not offending, you know, not offend. More people get upset when you say, I don’t want to offend people.

Emma Arnold: But the truth is for me is I don’t want to hurt people. I think offend has become this word, this cancel culture buzzword of like, oh, are you offended? Are you triggered? And it’s like, well, I don’t in my comedy, I’m trying to bring people joy and solace and I’m trying to connect with them. I’m trying to make new friends. You know, that’s what a lot of being a comedian is about, which is so cool, is like sometimes I’ll make fan, like meet fans and then I’ll be like, What? You’re the coolest person. You’re an E.R. doc and you went to Somalia. Like, that’s amazing. And I always kind of feel like this is all of this making art, like you said, is this opportunity to connect with people,

Gabe Howard: I think it’s a great answer. And what I want to touch upon is it seems like a lot of these language initiatives aren’t done by people living with bipolar disorder, people living with autism, people

Emma Arnold: Yes,

Gabe Howard: Living with schizophrenia.

Emma Arnold: Absolutely.

Sponsor Break

Gabe Howard: And we’re back discussing cancel culture with comedian Emma Arnold. A lot of these language movements are done by the family members, the friends, and I would argue the people who are most uncomfortable with the diagnosis. So, they’re trying to make it more palatable, the people

Emma Arnold: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: Who live with the diagnosis. We’re just we’re just living our lives, right? I’m just you can call me whatever the hell you want. I’m just I’m just I’m just trying to get to the next day. I don’t I don’t have time to figure out what people are calling me. I’m working on reaching recovery. Reaching wellness. You. You think I’m going to spend my time trying to get people to use specific words? That just seems like an incredible waste of my time.

Emma Arnold: Well, for me, comedy like everything, I guess I’m always very concerned with ethics, and the ethics of comedy are a big part of how I go about it. And I’m not saying I always get it right, but I don’t really understand. And usually, the comedians you see doing this are young or they’re very, very rich and they’ve run out of things to do. And so, they just start doing like, boring, offensive stuff. Yeah, I for me, where it falls is yeah, I guess you can say whatever you want on stage, but this idea that you’re being I mean, I hate every single one of these buzzwords, cancel culture, offended all of this stuff because from what I’ve seen, you really can’t be canceled in comedy. There are rapists, known rapists in comedy, child predators in comedy. Men with 60 victims still out there working. There is no cancel culture in comedy, period. There’s none. I’ve never seen a single comedian get in trouble for what they said and then go away. In fact, what they usually do is build an entire tour around how they were canceled and sell a whole bunch of tickets to rednecks, which I can say because guess what? I’m from Idaho. So, like, yeah, I just don’t buy it. I think it’s whiny, honestly. The whole thing, the whole thing is funny to me that like, oh, I can’t I can’t say the N-word on stage anymore. I can’t make fun of Asian people.

Emma Arnold: I can’t make fun of disabled people. Like, why were you doing that crap before? Why were you doing any of that before? Why did you build an entire set around how much you despise trans people? That sounds like more, I don’t know, like less offensive and just particularly sad to me that you don’t have enough to say about your own life, that you’re mining other people’s experiences and not even giving them compassion or understanding. You know, I have cis friends who make straight, who make trans jokes, who are they’re so intelligent and they’re so well thought out and they’re so carefully worded. We are poets. Comedians are bar clown poets. That’s how I see us. And like when you’re when you’re writing up a set, you’re always thinking of it in these chunks of 300 to 500 words, right? Every word matters. Every gesture, every little thing you’re doing with the crowd. I don’t understand why you would take time out of that experience to be cruel to someone. But I will say there’s a brand of audience who that’s for them. And I’m not pointing a ton of fingers here, but it is typically younger cis white males who they like a kind of comedy that is very dominating, that is very cruel, that always has a group as a punchline, say trans people or women. And I just don’t mess with that. Gabe, I don’t mess with any of that. I don’t have any interest in the kind of comedy that is so cowardly. I think the whole whining about cancel culture thing is just lazy comedians with lousy material who are too afraid to go internal and have any self-awareness.

Gabe Howard: So, for all of our aspiring comedians out there who are like, look, I want to talk about this, but you’ve made a really good point. There is a difference between being dehumanizing and offense for offenses sake and shining a light on it and raising our awareness and talking about ourselves versus others. But, and I know now I’m asking you to teach a comedy class or a public speaking class, but how do you determine that line?

Emma Arnold: I think that for young comedians and you won’t if you’re a person listening and you are thinking about getting into comedy, I know you won’t listen to this. It’s a lot like raising teenagers. Teaching comedy is like you give good advice that nobody listens to. But I would say there are going to be jokes you think you want to do when you’re a young comedian, but you are not. You do not have the chops yet. Like there are definitely jokes from when I was a younger comedian that I thought I could, and none of these were offensive. A lot of them were just more about like depression and suicidal ideation and stuff like that. That really bummed crowds out because I wasn’t ready and I didn’t have the skills to dig into deep, dark stuff, which is, you know, I’m not saying you have to do only surface level stuff when you’re starting out, but you also have to realize, like you grow so much, so fast in comedy, hopefully fingers crossed and you’re always learning better ways to phrase things, better ways to connect with the crowd, better ways to say something so that you don’t lose people, better ways to be more inclusive in a joke, you know? So, I would say if you’re a young comedian and you have a joke that you’re or you’re or you’re thinking about being a comedian and you’re like, I really want to tell this joke, but I think it’s going to piss people off.

Emma Arnold: Maybe sit on that for a while. There are jokes you’re not going to be ready for. You can you can go a couple of ways with comedy when you’re first starting out and you can be like, I’m going to do whatever I want and I don’t care who it offends. I have teenage boys and I’m always like, Yeah, you get them, you know, because that is such a teenage boy way to approach the world is like, I don’t care what anybody thinks. And it’s like, of course you do. That’s why you’re doing comedy in the first place. You’re just trying to impress a certain subset of other dudes who think it’s really cool to be a dick to people.

Gabe Howard: I really feel like I need to address that. Some people feel that that is why people go into comedy just so that they can hurt people. And I, I think it spreads out to all comedians. So back to a point we made earlier in the show, when you tell a quote unquote, offensive joke or a joke that makes people uncomfortable, they think you’re doing it on purpose versus they just had a visceral reaction to something because, well, that’s what art is. How do you help people understand the difference that while your joke may be uncomfortable, it’s not coming from this place of malice.

Emma Arnold: Well, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a ton of feedback from people thinking I do things from malice. I think maybe because I’m a woman, I get corrected like, oh, honey, like when I was a young comedian, especially when I would do vulgar jokes, men would come up to me afterward and be like one time in Nebraska, this guy came up to me on his scooter at the end of the show and was like, nobody likes a broad with a filthy mouth. And I was like, okay, thanks for your feedback. So, I don’t know. I hope I’ve definitely never had the accusation ever, from anyone thinking I do things from malice. But I do think people think I do things thoughtlessly or think comedian like a lot of women comedians especially do things sort of thoughtlessly. Like they assume if you have a dirty joke that you just kind of threw it in there instead of like I have been for over a decade or longer now, chipping away at the patriarchy with my jokes, you know, like in tiny rooms in Idaho Falls, doing dirty material, doing material about being a feminist, doing material about the real experiences of being a woman, talking about my miscarriage, talking about, real, real stuff that women deal with. And then afterwards, sometimes men would come up to me and say, like, nobody wants to hear that. Like one time I had a joke about the tampon aisle, you know, like the, the feminine hygiene, tampon like aisle at a grocery store. And afterward a guy came up to me and was like, nobody even knows what you’re talking about.

Emma Arnold: Nobody even knows what’s down there. And I was like, literally half the population has a period. And yet here’s this man assuming that I’m wasting his time by talking about something that nobody wants to hear about, which is about when I was like, I’m only doing comedy for women now. Men are welcome to stay. I’m happy to have you listen. But I’m only trying to because when I was a young person and a young comedy fan and a young comedian, I didn’t hear women. I didn’t hear people talking about things that affected women. I didn’t hear, you know, a lot of material that I could relate to, even though I loved a lot of the comedy. So, from that point on, I sort of just was like, I’m I guess I’ll just talk to women because the men seem pretty mad at me for a lot of them for talking about my experience anyway, so I just won’t appeal to them. And I used to literally ignore when I was a younger comic, ignore the men in the room and only make eye contact with the women in the crowd, because a lot of times the men would be like sitting back, arms crossed, mad that I was doing a joke about sex. And so, yeah, I guess, I don’t know. I think for the most part people can see my intent that like I, I’m clearly not approaching comedy with malice, whereas I don’t think I think there are comedians like I could point to right now where I’d be like, that’s obviously not true of this person, you know?

Gabe Howard: Emma, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Your latest comedy special and album, Myself, is available now. Where can folks find you online?

Emma Arnold: You can find me. I’m on all the places where you would normally listen to a comedy album. You know, I iTunes, all that stuff, Pandora. But also, you can hear me on Sirius XM pretty often and you can also find me on YouTube. I have both of my comedy specials are up on YouTube. You can check those out. They’re both very funny. You can listen to the albums I’m on Instagram @emmaarnoldisakeeper and I’m on Twitter, but I can’t remember my handle right now. And I also never go to Twitter, so probably don’t bother with that. But yeah, that’s it.

Gabe Howard: Emma, once again, thank you so much. And I want to give a big thank you to all of our listeners as well. My name is Gabe Howard and I’m an award-winning public speaker and I 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 get a signed copy with free show swag or learn more about me heading over to my website at gabehoward.com. Wherever you downloaded this episode please follow or subscribe to the show. It is absolutely free and you don’t want to miss a thing. And listen, can you do me a favor? Recommend the show. Tell somebody in a support group, tell somebody on social media. Hell, send somebody a text message. Because sharing the show is how we grow. I will see everybody next Thursday on Inside Mental Health.

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