EP 5: The Road Less Comfortable
Have you ever felt like you’re meant to stray from the familiar path?
In this episode of No Borders, No Filter podcast, host Debra Josephson candidly shares about navigating her life journey with constant discomforts that she now embraces as a philosophy to navigate her found path into a nomadic lifestyle.
She shares openly about being diagnosed with an extreme anxiety-depressive disorder after the harsh transition from undergrad to adulthood in the mid 90s, when the American economy was booming but racial fissures were rising. Thoughts of being “weak” and a failure were part of Debra’s mindset at this time.
Debra goes deeper into when she felt almost forced to leave the US, being a soul sucking discomfort staying a decade too long -after being enlightened in Costa Rica. Moreover, the current political climate-regressive government encourages her plans to stay abroad indefinitely.
Debra continues to step outside the familiar and reflects on how her global lifestyle has offered her the freedom to live authentically. She offers insight on how she’s able to cope with her challenges while averting from societal expectations that are toxic and diminishes independent, freethinking ways.
This episode is deeply introspective and inspiring, touching on themes of self-discovery, mental health, and the courage to embrace an unconventional life.
Tune in for an honest conversation about embracing discomfort, overcoming obstacles, and the freedom that comes with living authentically.
Key Takeaways:
00:00 Introduction to Embracing Discomfort and Personal Growth
01:00 The Influence of Societal Norms on Personal Choices
06:12 Discussing Mental Health in the Context of Societal Expectations
08:34 Transition Challenges from Education to Adulthood
16:27 Living Abroad: Cultural Discomforts and Personal Discoveries
17:28 Understanding America's Racial and Social Challenges Through Personal Experience
22:28 Closing Thoughts and Reflections
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Visit Debra’s multimedia website at www.dmeryl.net
Transcript
No Borders, No Filter
Episode 5
The Road Less Comfortable
Debra 0:00
I needed help, but I didn't know how to ask for it. I didn't know what was exactly wrong with me. I didn't know how to articulate. I didn't realize how bad it was. Hey there and welcome to no borders, no filter. I'm Debra, your host and the experience explorer, experience is for my hands on lifestyle an explorer is for living outside of borders and boundaries. I'm here to shake things up, challenge your mindset, spark some critical thinking and inspire you to live more boldly. I'm not going to sugar coat my life or my thoughts as I dive into the intricacies of my global life journey as a solo Gen X woman growing up in New York fueled my wanderlust spirit driving me to explore the world on my own terms. Expect raw, unfiltered stories with life's toughest truths sprinkled with a touch of sarcasm and plenty of Straight Talk. If you're curious about maintaining mental health outside of your home country, starting life over in exotic lands and finding meaningful connections, you're in the right place. Tune in and let's get started. Hello. Welcome back to no borders, no filter. Podcast, I'm Debra the Experient explorer. We'll be talking about embracing discomfort. Why pushing past the disruptive feels so right? Pain and Discomfort are a big part of my life. I can't even remember a time when the discomforts of everyday life weren't so abundant. Pain and Discomfort are part of a well lived life, practicing opening yourself to the experience and you may discover greater freedom that's from a site called mindful.org I do believe the journey that I have chosen with living a global lifestyle has many discomforts, but I have had much more freedom in my life than if I just stayed in the US. Why do we happily stay in it, even if we know it is not the best place for us, and there are reasons why this is the norm. Most try to live in an anxiety neutral condition, meaning they limit the amount of risks that would contribute to an enhanced anxiety experience. Are you someone who has just followed the path that has been given to you where you can study these three choices, or you can be maybe single for a short period of time, but you definitely have to get married by 25 or latest 30. Basically, these guidelines have been presented to us in some way, shape or form, that create that anxiety, neutral way of life. I remember going back home over 10 years ago, I went to a social event in my mother's retirement community, and I was talking to someone's granddaughter from my culture, the question that I basically asked was, What are your plans? And she literally gave me the checklist of Keeping Up with the Joneses. I'm going to be doing this, and then I'm going to graduate, and then I'll plan to get married, like she had her whole life plans, and I was standing there that doesn't sound like a life well lit. I asked her, do you have any plans to maybe take a year off travel or what if this doesn't work out? Do you have other ideas? Is there any room for taking a risk? Is there any room for another way of living? Unfortunately, even the people that have the privilege like myself to take themselves out of a comfort zone and put themselves in a situation that may offer something greater, something more interesting, memorable. It's just not the norm of thinking. For me, I am always in a discomfort because I choose to live a life where I believe. Discomfort leads me to joy. Happiness is very much about an outer experience, and joy is more about the inner experience, which brings more reward. I learned a lot about that on TED Talks being an HSP, INFJ, a left handed person who is a solo woman with no kids and not married, when you are put in that box, then everyday life has many discomforts, because the world is made for adults that are married or have kids, right handed equipment, driving a car, the dominant patriarchal views and way of leadership. I can go on about the things that make me feel uncomfortable, but my norm is different than the norm, and I'm a person that will be challenging others to question how they would live. Sometimes I really doubt my journey and I don't feel confidence, and which happens a lot. I'm going to talk about my norm with mental health and having anxiety I have been diagnosed and have experienced for over two and a half decades, the amount of discomfort I feel in my own skin can be beyond unbearable, and part of that discomfort is because my disease is in my head. You can't see it like a broken leg, or when people go through chemotherapy, if they have cancer, that mental health challenges can be very lonely and misunderstood by most people. Certainly, I do come across even people within my own culture that don't believe in mental illness, which I don't understand. Our brain is an organ just like any other, and it gets diseases just like any other. But when it comes to my mental health challenges, I am constantly in worry and fear. When I went to university, I started noticing my mental health, that I was angry, but also I started being much more reclusive. I would isolate more. I would be pushing people away, even people that were caring. I always thought that my social anxieties were just normal being a Gen X person, we didn't openly talk about mental health. I realized towards the end of my degree, that people were talking to me about, what are you going to be doing after university? And I had no clue, because I was so involved in my art and everything. And then I started to freak out because I didn't know what to do next. I've lived a life of education and structure. After I graduated, I did end up going back home like literally back into my parents home after four years of being independent, and that just felt so wrong. What a major discomfort to go back to your childhood life after being in a independent environment where you learn how to take care of yourself and start preparing for an adult life. That transition just triggered me. I just started to have these bad thoughts. I think I started thinking about dark things like suicide or things really black. I needed help, but I didn't know how to ask for it. I didn't know what was exactly wrong with me. I didn't know how to articulate so when I went back home, I didn't realize how bad it was. My mother was contacting close friends, and I was just sitting zoned out in front of a television I wasn't really just functioning at all. My journey with mental health was the beginning of becoming an adult. I have anxiety triggered depression. And what that means is that, first, it's the anxiety that I feel. It can be from the smallest things. Now, as someone that is very independent, I did not want help from my friends, my parents, no one. I insisted on trying to do it by myself and compete with my sister who. Is
Debra 10:00
three and a half years older, but when your child and you're four and your sister seven, seven and a half, it's a big age gap. I want to be the best person I can be. Above average has always been something that was important to me, but mental illness crushed my world, I had to really start over on how to approach life and accept the fact that I needed medication, which I did not want. I found it as a weakness, and I wasn't a big believer in therapy. Also like, what is therapy? I felt so weak, and also was a very lonely time as well, because the transition from university to real world is a major, major change in your life, especially when it comes to having friendship, because the infrastructure of friendship, when you are a child and at university, fosters relationships. You are in a routine. You are around people your age and similar interests, and once you leave that structure, there is absolutely nothing for you to find those close friends. So that whole transition from school to adult life just made my brain implode, and I wasn't able to navigate through it. Major transitions like moving and going to live in other countries is one of the most stressful things that I can possibly do, and I had to get hospitalized at one point so like I would take myself off the meds, there was a point where I felt a new normal. After a lot of work on myself and being on my meds and working on my spiritual growth, I was able to find my anxiety neutral, find work, develop friendships, and live a normal life of some sort. And then my brain was like, You're doing so well, why don't you go off your meds? And then I was in New York City, and I finished up my masters, and I'm off my meds in another transition I'm like walking around aimlessly around the city. Now, I didn't realize the time I was doing this and how long I was doing this, but there was a day where I was walking home and my father was standing in front of my apartment, and I asked him, What are you doing here? And he basically said something, you haven't contacted us in weeks, or we've been trying to reach you, and we haven't been able to speak to you, and we're worried. And I broke down at the time, and I just said, I need help again. And I went back home to Long Island, back to my parents house, gave up my New York City Life, dream of being an artist. Living in the city, I felt so isolated there. The cost of living and the dynamic of the city was too much for me. I could not handle it. But, of course, my stubbornness and my determination, I thought I can do it, but I really couldn't. I had to end up going back to Long Island and start over my mental health again, and this journey with mental health has been really a discomfort for me, but I've learned how to navigate my expat journey and travel, utilizing tools that I've learned through philosophies, therapies, experiences and offering me a way to navigate myself in this global world, my anxiety will never go away. Anxiety and depression, there's no cure for you can regulate it. Everyone has different types of anxiety, and everyone has different kinds of depression. If I lose a good friend, or if I've been in a relationship and I was in love and that ended, the amount of depression that I can go to is so low and so crippling, and I've thought about ending it so many times it's a disease that wants to kill you. People don't want to hear about it. We don't want to burden people with it. So we keep it to ourselves a lot. It took me 10 years from the time I traveled to Costa Rica to the time that I finally got out of America, the fear and the discomfort of it was still there. But courage is doing things despite the fear. At this point, I had to move forward and find the courage to. Have the faith in the journey. When I went to Costa Rica, it was truly like a spiritual awakening. And that was around 23 years old. I mentioned it was 1996
Debra 15:13
and to give you reference to some news around that time, 1996 in America, there was the OJ Simpson murder trials going on. It was really the first time I was aware of the racial tensions in America. I remember when I was at Ohio State. There was the Rodney King story, which was also related to, I believe, a police shooting to an African American. So there was rioting on campus and so on. So that was the first time I really realized about racial tensions in America. And the year after, was Princess Diana's death in when she was killed in a car accident chase with paparazzi. So we were talking way back when I went to Costa Rica to travel, taking 10 years to figure out how to get abroad in dealing with mental health challenges and be on medication. It was an interesting time for me to say goodbye to the status quo, the norm, the familiar, the anxiety neutral. I didn't have anxiety neutral. I knew I had to live in a nomadic way. I had such distress and discomfort from trying to live this normal life in America, which was not working for me at all. I was not happy. I was not my true self. Let me share a little bit about why I didn't feel that America was my home when it comes to discomfort and distress. I learned so much about what was going on in America during that 10 years from my 20s into my early 30s, and I realized not only did I no longer belong, but I understood why I didn't belong anymore. My higher education, my education from travels and seeing my country from an outside in, I realized the morals and values within my country simply don't align with what I believe in, as far as a quality life and the way of Living just didn't match at all. And knowing about certain things besides the inequalities and the American infrastructure crumbling, our taxes to this day really do not go into the infrastructure of the needs of the people, and it's part of the issues within the parties, because there's one party that wants all the money for themselves, which is the current administration, and then there's the Democratic Party, which do make an effort, though very flawed, want better things for the people, the working class, the middle class. And I realized that the money I was making and the amount of taxes that I was giving didn't go into the things that I believe in, doesn't go into the education. So the rich and the privilege become more privileged, and the poor and unprivileged become even more the disparity between the two is just grown. Travel time from an American, they're lucky to have one or two weeks off, and even luckier, if it's paid, most people in America, about 60% are part of the working poor. Those are some things that I started becoming more aware about my home country. I was educated and I was becoming more skilled, and there weren't opportunities in the beginning, there was but still the cost of living with the salary, I wasn't able to live in a comfortable way either, and I realized it's time to go because travel I want a big part of my Life and having a broader way of living and understanding things and learning things. When you live in a society that keeps a bubble to the outer world, only 20 to 30% of Americans have a passport, and yet probably most of them don't even use that. They think everything in America is so great. There's no need to travel and explore other places. Unfortunately, the mentality of the average American is America's great. Why go anywhere? I disagree. Meaning there is more to the world than America. America does have some great. Great things, of course, but it's certainly not the end all be all. The unfortunate thing about America is that the government really doesn't take care of the people. Like many other developed free countries, for example, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, there are many other countries before America on the list of land of the free and countries that really take care of their people. So when it comes to that, I really felt it. When I was there, I did not feel a sense of community. Before we have the largest homeless population in a developed world, and in comparison to other countries of the same freedom and the same power, we have enormous and enormous homeless population that is not being addressed. Most kids go hungry in America, believe it or not, one out of four, one out of five. During the pandemic, it got worse. The kids go to school hungry. We have a high percentage of babies dying at child birth. We have a epidemic of overdose deaths due to opioids and heroin. The world has become quite aware of our gun related deaths and the lack of government wanting to do anything about it. They go by prayers to the people that got their kids killed, but I'm keeping my gun. We have a lot of major issues going on in our country, and we are not willing to address them. We're not making changes. We're not progressing. We are stuck in a very dangerous system right now. The pandemic really did show that America had the highest amount of debts, and our communities did not protect the most vulnerable, including the elders, simply the government, the system, doesn't give a crap about the people. They want the money for themselves and for military power and so on. It's just has become very corrupt, but I had to leave. I wanted to live a different life. This part one regarding my discomforts in life, with my mental health, with my home country, in the US and how it pushed me out of my comfort zone and got me into living a much more authentic lifestyle that I could never have done in any one country. Now, when it comes to my mental health, on this conclusion, one thing that I can tell you is that I can afford my medication and I can afford to take care of myself in the places that I've been living, such as China here in the Philippines, and I know that I wouldn't have been able to afford that in the United States with the privatization of healthcare. So my mental health, I believe has improved in ways that I wouldn't have been able to do without this travel lifestyle, because it encourages me to remember that my disease is in my head and that my fears aren't facts. I do know now, especially through my recent travels to Indonesia, that if I have the right gear and
Debra 23:48
I have the right support with people, that I can go straight down into a collapsed cave and witness some of the most magnificent nature that I've ever experienced, and then at the same time, standing in a I met the globe of people right there that this one place brought together, which is worth my anxieties and discomfort, because I'm able To know that there is such beauty and joy through the discomforts of living outside of the familiarity that you have been taught and it's really important for you to think about as you continue to get older, Have you truly lived? Have you done the things that make you feel discomfort and glad that you tried? Or are you still in a place where you're like, I don't want to get uncomfortable and I don't want to start over? You need to think about that a little more, because is that our journey? Me gets faster and faster as we get older, the time to do things gets shorter and shorter. I encourage you to think about what discomforts would be worth to feel the joy and the satisfaction that you can get by taking steps towards something of the unknown, rather than staying in a little bubble, doing things that is familiar and safe, there is a balance that can be made with that. But I I truly hope that I've given you a little bit of a wake up call to guide you. It's important to trust the process and the journey is the beauty of life, not the destination itself. So when we talk about travel in the next episode, I want you to first start thinking about, are you a traveler that allow others to control, to organize, to plan, and then when you get there, you just enjoy the beach, or maybe you can consider doing the planning and the investigation and the less comfortable route while you travel to really get to know a culture a little deeper, to build a better understanding of another way of life, and I'll leave on that note. So thank you very much for tuning in. See you in the next episode. Bye, and that's a wrap for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in and hanging out with me. If you enjoyed this podcast with no borders, no filter, and you feel a connection or a little inspired, please like, subscribe and share it with a friend. I truly can't wait to hear from you. Let's keep challenging the status quo with an unfiltered perspective. I'll be podcasting with real stories, interviews and reflections on my day to day and journey. In the meantime, explore your spirit experience the world. Get to know me more by connecting to my social media at experience explorer found in the description. Also, you can check out my photo website. D merrill.net, that's D, M, E, R, Y, l.net, until next time, the best way to learn is by doing. So go out and get your hands dirty. You.