Episode #118: Melissa Bernstein
Please note: This podcast is intended to provide information and education and is not intended to provide you with a diagnosis or treatment advice. You should consult with a licensed or registered healthcare professional about your individual condition and circumstance.
LISTEN HERE: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Stitcher / Google Play / Overcast
Melissa Bernstein, co-founder of Melissa & Doug, discusses her struggles with existential depression and how she uses writing and creating to cope.
She also talks about the importance of embracing all emotions, utilizing daily practices for resilience, and creating her latest company, Lifelines, to help people be more present and get more in touch with their senses and emotions.
In this episode Melissa opens up about her struggles with depression and how she learned to embrace her true self. She discusses her journey towards understanding that her depression was a form of existential nihilism, and how her own darkness led her to create the playful and successful toy brand, Melissa & Doug. She also shares her inspiring book, "LifeLines," which incorporates her writings from childhood into a collection of verses that offer a powerful outlet for exploring the spectrum of human emotion.
Melissa's story is relatable, authentic, and ultimately hopeful, as she shares the tools she's developed for creating a daily practice that promotes self-awareness and living in the present moment. With a focus on bridging the gap between our analytical minds and our hearts, Melissa's newest company, Lifelines offers practical and engaging tools to help individuals enhance their own emotional and physical resilience.
“If we could rediscover our senses and use them as a bridge between our rigid, analytical minds and our hearts that just want to be free, they could really help us be living our lives in the present moment.”
Reasons To Listen:
Gain advice on coming out of the darkness and get tangible tips for having more authentic relationships, which is essential for moving towards the light.
Learn Melissa's process for accepting the full spectrum of emotions because, no matter how difficult it is, it's necessary for personal growth
Many models and actresses have their own struggles with confidence and self-worth, proving that all of us deal with it to one degree or another no matter how famous you are or how much money you have.
Find meaning in creative expression by exploring creative outlets that allow you to express yourself and connect to your inner emotions.
About Melissa
Melissa Bernstein is an entrepreneur, creative, and working mother of 6. As Co-Founder of the wildly successful toy company Melissa & Doug, Melissa has spent the last 30 years helping children discover themselves, their passions, and their purpose through open-ended play. In 2020, after her own personal journey of self-discovery and acceptance, Melissa founded Lifelines. Through Lifelines, she is using her unparalleled creativity and imagination to reinvent well-being products and experiences that help adults strengthen their resilience, stay grounded, and unlock their full potential.
Website: https://lifelines.com/
Learn more about Melissa here: https://www.melissajourney.com/
Connect on Instragram @seeklifelines or Facebook seeklifelines
Resources:
-
00:00:04:00 - 00:00:34:03
Harper Spero
Made visible helps people with invisible illnesses feel seen and heard. It provides a platform for people who seem fine but aren't to share their experiences. It also helps to create a new awareness of how we can be sensitive and supportive to those with invisible illnesses. Please note this podcast is intended to provide information and education and is not intended to provide you with the diagnosis or treatment advice.
00:00:34:14 - 00:01:00:12
Harper Spero
You should consult with a license or registered health care professional about your individual condition and circumstance. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Made Visible. I'm your host, Harper Sparrow, and I'm so glad you tuned in. This is our third episode for Mental Health Awareness Month. My conversations today is with someone whose story I found myself sobbing to when featured on the CBS Sunday Morning show a few years ago.
00:01:00:19 - 00:01:27:05
Harper Spero
After knowing absolutely nothing about her prior. I immediately sent her an email and was surprised how quickly I received a response that led to a lovely Zoom conversation. Melissa Bernstein is the co-founder of Melissa and Doug Toys and most recently the founder of Lifelines. And she is the perfect example of someone you think is fine. But then find out after years of her hiding, how much she had been struggling with her mental health.
00:01:27:10 - 00:01:30:05
Harper Spero
Welcome, Melissa. I'm so happy to have you here today.
00:01:30:07 - 00:01:33:14
Melissa Bernstein
Harper, you know how much I love speaking with you.
00:01:33:22 - 00:01:40:03
Harper Spero
Oh, you're the best. So let's start off. Tell us who you are, where you're from, and what you do.
00:01:40:12 - 00:02:08:10
Melissa Bernstein
Wow. That's a deep one. So I think I'm old enough now that I've sort of transcended the labels and the roles, but who I am now through a lot of work is I am a full spectrum of emotion from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. So on any given day, I'm not sure what you'll get, but I can give you all of those where I'm from.
00:02:08:18 - 00:02:43:11
Melissa Bernstein
Wow. So I'm from the most beautiful areas of the world that have the most glorious sights of nature. And I'm not saying that. I'm saying that sort of metaphorically, because I like to think I'm sort of from nature and I love nature. So much that I'm not really from any particular place at this point. I've moved around a whole bunch and I just I'm from anywhere where you can connect to nature and then what do I do?
00:02:44:10 - 00:03:01:10
Melissa Bernstein
That's a great question. I think at this point in my life, I transform form chaos into tangible form and try to use my creativity to impact and serve humanity in some way.
00:03:01:15 - 00:03:08:17
Harper Spero
You were young when you first experienced existential depression. How did you ultimately identify what you were experiencing?
00:03:09:05 - 00:03:33:09
Melissa Bernstein
You know, it came through the most unlikely of ways because even though I experienced it, I had repressed it my entire life and had really disassociated from any of that darkness until I was in my forties. I read the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and that was the first time in the end of the book.
00:03:34:00 - 00:03:34:19
Harper Spero
He uses.
00:03:34:19 - 00:04:07:08
Melissa Bernstein
The word. He talks about how he founded a school called Logo Therapy after he got out of the camps, a form of existential analysis. And I had never heard the word existential in my entire life. And I love to write and I love words. And I looked at that word and that word changed my life because in reading that definition and learning about exist in general depression and existential angst, I realized that that is what I had been afflicted with my entire life.
00:04:08:00 - 00:04:18:06
Harper Spero
What did that feel like to like, see those words and go, Oh my God, this is me, I have this. And how did you identify so much with that terminology?
00:04:18:18 - 00:04:48:13
Melissa Bernstein
It honestly, it felt like the biggest revelation that I had ever had. I literally as I started to put the dots together and connect to all the pieces of what it meant to be someone who experienced these higher realities and what it meant that I was really sensitive and that a lot of folks who suffered with existential despair also were highly creative.
00:04:49:01 - 00:04:55:10
Melissa Bernstein
It was like I was unlocking the key to who I was for the very first time.
00:04:55:20 - 00:05:08:05
Harper Spero
Hmm. I love that visual so much. So what was the first step that you took after reading that on the page? What did you do and how did you move forward with your life and having that that knowledge?
00:05:08:20 - 00:05:37:12
Melissa Bernstein
So I'm a breadcrumb follower, meaning I find a little breadcrumb of something that's usually an insight, right? And here it was. Melissa, you have thought yourself to be such an outlier, someone who is completely different and will never fit in and suddenly you have gotten like this shard of who you are bestowed on you. And it's saying, Melissa, you're not alone.
00:05:37:18 - 00:06:15:11
Melissa Bernstein
Like you are afflicted with actually a condition that has a name that so many others have been afflicted with before you. And instead of being just sort of disdained by society, you actually belong to this really cool club of people who are creative and soulful and deep. And I would say I started following that breadcrumb through the forest, so to speak, and it led to so many other incredible epiphanies about myself and who I was.
00:06:15:11 - 00:06:21:16
Melissa Bernstein
And I had this sense for the very first time that, oh my goodness, I am no longer alone.
00:06:22:13 - 00:06:29:09
Harper Spero
So, so powerful. So for those who aren't familiar with this type of depression, how would you describe it?
00:06:30:00 - 00:07:02:08
Melissa Bernstein
So it managed manifested itself really early on as what I call existential nihilism. And because I had this crisis of meaning early on, which is when we ask ourselves the questions, why am I here? What is the meaning of life if we are mortal and ultimately die? And what am I supposed to do during my brief time here on Earth and many folks, COVID has led many folks to have a meaning crisis, right?
00:07:02:08 - 00:07:27:21
Melissa Bernstein
Because all the kind of superficial patterns they existed within disappeared in a second. And I think it led many people to question their life and really wonder what they're doing. So there will be many folks that go through a bout of meaninglessness in their lot, in their life. But for me, it started literally from nothing like the moment I was born.
00:07:27:21 - 00:07:55:22
Melissa Bernstein
So I think for for someone who's who's had this, they're going to constantly feel this dread over them. And for me, it was like a dread that blanketed me my whole life because no one could answer those questions for me. And I started to believe that everything around me was meaningless and that I was powerless to make meaning in a meaningless existence.
00:07:55:22 - 00:08:27:23
Melissa Bernstein
So that's the nihilism, which means nothingness. And if you really succumb to the nothingness, you know, it's a very dire state because if you believe that existence is meaningless, then you as an individual have no ability to make meaning in a meaningless existence. You will kind of succumb. I mean, it's a it's it's darkness. So I think at my low, I was very nihilistic and I really felt disempowered to take responsibility for making meaning and powerless to change.
00:08:27:23 - 00:08:44:09
Melissa Bernstein
And I would say I used the words like, I'm a victim. You know, life isn't fair. The despair is just taking me over. I'm I'm unable to to emerge from such darkness. And it was a real sense of of powerlessness.
00:08:44:16 - 00:08:57:01
Harper Spero
You say that all was past tense. So I'm curious if that was before this discovery of what you would then diagnosed yourself with, or is that as a child, what stage of your life was that?
00:08:57:20 - 00:09:28:01
Melissa Bernstein
It was basically my whole life. I mean, I repressed it and denied it and put on a very different facade. But that was what I truly felt. I felt that I had this darkness in me that had the capacity to submerge me so that I would never come up, and that the only way I could deal with it was to repress it to such an extent that nobody could see the the real me.
00:09:28:01 - 00:09:56:19
Melissa Bernstein
So I did somewhat effectively repress it. I mean, it came out in, you know, horrible behaviors throughout my life, an eating disorder that almost killed me and lots of controlling behaviors to try to control the things I could control, since I couldn't control, you know, the the meaning of existence and the meaning of my life. But it almost, you know, threatened to certainly take me down at many different times.
00:09:57:07 - 00:10:26:10
Harper Spero
What's so interesting about listening to you talk about this is I keep having visuals of your toys and really thinking about how you built this incredibly fun and playful brand. Melissa and Doug and you've personally designed thousands of creative toys, and I'm wondering how you made meaning out of your own suffering and was able to create this really playful, fun brand for children.
00:10:26:19 - 00:10:56:08
Melissa Bernstein
It's an amazing question, and it has to be the biggest irony of my life, right? I mean that someone so dark, so despairing could create these light, bright, playful toys. And that's why ultimately I did come out and had to share my story because I ultimately felt that I was living a lie and hiding behind these light, bright, playful toys when the person that created them created them out of a whole lot of darkness.
00:10:56:15 - 00:11:20:09
Melissa Bernstein
Now, again, always growing and having these epiphanies, I now realize that we're all a full spectrum of light and dark. And although I believed I was only dark and how could I create these toys right when I'm such darkness? I now see that because I was so terrified of the darkness, it it overtook me and it sort of became who I was.
00:11:20:09 - 00:11:44:17
Melissa Bernstein
But once I went through my journey and had the courage to visit that darkness and sort of try to allow and accept it, which was obviously terrifying and then came out of it to realize that actually it's just one part of me. And likewise I am the other four extreme. I am, which is the most beautiful, glorious light you could ever imagine.
00:11:45:01 - 00:11:57:21
Melissa Bernstein
I started to see that I don't just create out of darkness, which I believed. I do create out of the full spectrum of emotion and every little bit of of difference in that spectrum.
00:11:58:23 - 00:12:22:01
Harper Spero
It's funny because we've had several conversations and the minute we join a video conversation, I just see your big smiley, bubbly personality. So it makes me think like, wow, how much people are living with this light and darkness inside them and some people being so forthcoming about it and some hiding it so, so well, which you clearly did for so long.
00:12:22:10 - 00:12:47:04
Harper Spero
And I remember when I first heard your story on the CBS Sunday Morning Show and immediately just feeling for you so deeply and trying to comprehend, wow, how did this woman build this brand and live with such darkness inside? And we email back and forth and have had conversations since. And I'm just so blown away by what you have built since.
00:12:47:04 - 00:12:52:20
Harper Spero
So what was it like coming out and sharing your story when you did? What led you to do that?
00:12:53:10 - 00:13:18:19
Melissa Bernstein
It's an incredible question because it took me a really long time, and I think until we're truly ready to share our story, like we shouldn't share it. And if we feel shame and that sense of terror over doing it, I would just say we're not ready. And I wasn't ready for a really long time. I wasn't ready, you know, and I wore a facade and gave this impression.
00:13:18:19 - 00:13:44:15
Melissa Bernstein
And by the way, that facade was who I was. I wasn't I was so disassociated from it. And I created this facade to be okay. So that was my life. And it wasn't phony, really. It was. It was part of who I am. Right? Like, I, I do have that aspect of me. I now see and my, my aspiration was to always be joyful and be the face that I portrayed.
00:13:44:15 - 00:14:17:20
Melissa Bernstein
So it wasn't a total sham. It was just that I was disassociating from awful big piece of me that contributed to who I was. So I think when I was finally ready to come out, it was because I couldn't hide the darkness part of me any longer. And it was literally, you know, when you block energy and you try to repress it, like I think you can do it pretty effectively in your teens and twenties and even thirties because you're strong and your walls are impenetrable.
00:14:17:20 - 00:14:49:10
Melissa Bernstein
But as I started to enter my forties, it was like my dam started cracking and I felt like that, you know, that drumbeat of my soul saying, like, Melissa, you're you're being untrue. You're living authentically. Like, you're not actually sharing who you are and, you know, the fact that I didn't share that, that that aspect of who I was had really led me to not have a lot of authentic relationships in my life, which I which I was craving.
00:14:49:20 - 00:15:20:02
Melissa Bernstein
And it led me to not have probably the most empathetic relationships I could with my own kids. So I knew that it was hurting me, that it was making it so I wasn't able to live fully or freely, as, you know, as a full person. So I think by the time I came out, I got asked a lot like, are you are you terrified because you have this persona and you're now coming out with all this this dark stuff.
00:15:20:14 - 00:15:30:23
Melissa Bernstein
And by the time I did it, I was like, I'm I'm there's no there's no turning back and I have to do it. I have to be authentic in order to move forward.
00:15:31:08 - 00:15:51:08
Harper Spero
I really, really relate to this. And I think, you know, I wrote down the words facade and this associated, which I feel were very similar to my story and only because I had a medical condition where I had to have surgery and I was on medical leave. Did I feel forced to start talking about what I was going through?
00:15:51:18 - 00:16:19:12
Harper Spero
But it was never like there was a time where I felt, okay, I've got to get this out. I've got to start telling people about this. But similar to you, once it came out, it just flew. It flew a flew out of me so freely and it just felt so natural to start talking about it that when people have asked me, What's it like to share, it just feels like, Oh, it's just this new stage of my life that I'm going to be more forthcoming.
00:16:19:19 - 00:16:51:04
Harper Spero
But what's interesting is I never felt I did live with a lot of joy and I was such a playful kid and teenager and twentysomething. And I was I was hiding, but not intentionally trying to lie. Like lying was never a word that I had in my mind of what I was living with. So I'm really curious to hear about these inauthentic relationships and how it's changed since you started coming out and sharing your story and what friendships have looked like in recent years.
00:16:51:13 - 00:17:21:17
Melissa Bernstein
Sure. And you know, it's funny. I use the words living a lie, but the truth was I didn't know was a lie either. And I think our bodies have a lot of really interesting coping mechanisms. Right. And I think when I experience that darkness early on and I shared a little bit of it with the world and I got this message really early on, like, you're a child, why are you talking about such deep, dark things like go out and play like other children?
00:17:22:04 - 00:17:45:07
Melissa Bernstein
And I got this very quick sense that like it's not normal to feel dark emotions like and I got this sense that we're supposed to be happy all the time and never show how we feel. That became I'm talking age too, you know, that became like, do not show the darkness. Like live in the light and and that became my battle cry.
00:17:45:07 - 00:18:04:16
Melissa Bernstein
And it almost became the chip on my shoulder. Like, no matter how I feel, I'm going to put on this shiny face that everything's okay. So it, I guess you could say it was a lie in the, you know, if you looked at the definition. But I wasn't it was unconscious, right? It was like a mode of survival.
00:18:04:16 - 00:18:38:23
Melissa Bernstein
And I wouldn't it didn't come up. I wasn't thinking like I wrote about it. My verses talked about it a lot like that duality between dark and light. So it was coming out sort of unconsciously in these verses, but I wasn't aware of it. I thought it was who I was and I wish I mean, I wish I was aware of it because basically I tried my whole life to be someone I wasn't and to fit in with people who weren't like me and to be this certain type of person that was gregarious and affable and popular.
00:18:39:06 - 00:19:03:19
Melissa Bernstein
When the truth is like. I love to talk about philosophy and deep issues, but I never I never connected to those people because they weren't like the the person I aspired to be who was free of all that darkness. I didn't want to be a heavy, deep, introverted, creative. I wanted to be this light, airy, bubbly, popular person.
00:19:03:19 - 00:19:08:05
Melissa Bernstein
And it was so hard for me because that wasn't who I was, right?
00:19:08:08 - 00:19:22:15
Harper Spero
So relatable. So, so, so relatable. So again, where do friendships live for you these days now that you are living your truth and being more honest about what's going on for you internally?
00:19:22:15 - 00:19:49:00
Melissa Bernstein
Yeah. So I now see that because I was a shell of a person, right? I was not able to talk about anything deep and had no connection with my soul. Right? I was living in the body and the psyche. I was living in my thoughts, my emotions in my body. I wasn't living in my soul. My relationships were very soulless and they were very superficial.
00:19:49:00 - 00:20:22:12
Melissa Bernstein
They mostly involved people coming to me with their problems and me effectively being a shoulder to lean on and and talk to them. And because of that, nothing ever touched anything deeper. They were really superficial. And I always lamented the fact that people would tell me about these childhood friends and even college friends. And I literally was a middle aged adult and could honestly say that I had friends with quotes right there, my friends or Friendly's, whatever you want to call it that.
00:20:23:09 - 00:20:56:11
Melissa Bernstein
But I had no one that I really spoke to and knew the real me. And I realize now that it was because I didn't know myself. I didn't even know who I was. I couldn't engage in real empathetic relationships. So I went on this deep journey. It was five years of traditional sort of psychotherapy and existential psychotherapy concurrently, and really a lot of philosophy and spirituality.
00:20:56:19 - 00:21:27:16
Melissa Bernstein
And finally got in touch with who I was and began. And for the first time, it's still an ongoing journey. I'm sure you'll you'll concur to offer myself empathy and compassion, because we can't have true, empathetic, compassionate relationships with others until we can have them with ourselves. So once I began to feel that self-love, I could basically begin to have relationships that allowed me to do that.
00:21:27:16 - 00:21:52:10
Melissa Bernstein
And now I see the difference so dramatically. You know, a friend without quotes is someone who you can speak to about anything you can cry to, you can laugh to. They are willing to share your successes. That's the other thing. I ended up with a lot of friends who were like envious and I would be envious of them.
00:21:52:10 - 00:22:36:02
Melissa Bernstein
It was like. It was like it evoked jealousy rather than love, you know, they were they were just inauthentic in every sense. So now, just in maybe the last maybe I'll say ten years, I've been able to develop real friendships. And I now see they are entirely different than the definition I had up until then. And now I have this this like this passionate group of rock star friends who touch my soul and hopefully I likewise theirs in such a profound way that we almost think we must have known each other enough, you know, in a prior life.
00:22:36:02 - 00:22:36:17
Melissa Bernstein
It's that deep.
00:22:37:09 - 00:23:04:19
Harper Spero
Oh, I'm so glad that you were able to create that for yourself and remove those quotations from the friend because you deserve them. And everyone needs friends and community in not in life in general, like no matter what you're going through. So I'm glad you found your people. You mentioned verses and I'd love you to share a bit more about the verses that you write and what role they've played in your mental health journey.
00:23:05:01 - 00:23:34:02
Melissa Bernstein
Oh well, they are my lifelines. And that was the name of my book because these lines of verse truly saved me. And they really came out very organically from the time I was the little girl. I saw things in my head, I saw notes first, which would become musical compositions. I saw words that would become these rhyming verses.
00:23:34:02 - 00:24:14:11
Melissa Bernstein
And ultimately, I still see products that become these fully finished products. So the verses I now realize, they basically answered some of my deepest unanswered double life questions. And whenever I had a question that was either a curiosity or something that I was really despairing about, I would get sort of the answer in these rhyming verses. And basically they were my brains way of turning chaos into order because they are perfectly metered and they rhyme.
00:24:14:19 - 00:24:40:03
Melissa Bernstein
And because I felt such disorder and chaos in my head that I was certain would take me down literally. I use these verses as a way to take that disarray, take that chaos, take that darkness, and transform it into something that felt like perfect and felt like it made sense of the nonsense.
00:24:40:16 - 00:24:59:03
Harper Spero
I love it so much. I got the book immediately and just remember diving in and what's so special about it and I know we talked about this, is that you can just open up any single page and start reading. You don't have to read it in a linear way, which I appreciate so much as someone who has a very short attention span.
00:24:59:18 - 00:25:03:02
Melissa Bernstein
Yeah, everybody does these days, seriously.
00:25:03:07 - 00:25:12:22
Harper Spero
So talk a little bit about the book and what made you put it out into the world as opposed to just holding on to it for yourself?
00:25:12:22 - 00:25:19:08
Melissa Bernstein
Yes, of course. And then I'll talk about even a new book that is coming out in May. Yes.
00:25:19:16 - 00:25:22:04
Harper Spero
Please. Yeah.
00:25:22:04 - 00:26:04:11
Melissa Bernstein
So I would say, you know, the book Lifelines was really just my own bid for self-acceptance. Exactly who as who I was. And it put itself together because it basically was all my writings from the time I was little and all the areas of my life that really comprised who I was. And it it when I when I decided I was going to come out with it, I basically let the verses be my guide because I had written over 5000 verses since I was a little child.
00:26:04:21 - 00:26:45:11
Melissa Bernstein
And when I looked at those verses and tried to divide them into sort of categories of the issues they discussed, it was incredible that it was ten different categories. Like. Exactly. There were basically 500 verses in each of ten categories, and those were the areas that I had struggled with so much. But but what I realized and maybe the most profound realization of my life was, again, probably my number one sort of flawed mindset was that I am darkness, I am only darkness because I had this darkness in me that I had never really touched on.
00:26:46:00 - 00:27:16:19
Melissa Bernstein
But when I looked at the verses and this was from my entire life and looked over the ten categories, actually crazily five were kind of dark and five were really like, you know, I had verses about the beauty of nature and I had verses about curiosity and I had verses about liberation. And I was like, I had to ponder that for a long time because this perception that they were all darkness was actually not even true, even in my darkest days.
00:27:18:03 - 00:27:42:22
Melissa Bernstein
So those ten categories formed the volumes of my book Lifelines. And basically there's prose where I talk about sort of what I was experiencing saying, and then I give a whole bunch of verses that really give form to those unconscious questions and feelings that I wasn't able to verbalize in my life.
00:27:43:01 - 00:28:12:06
Harper Spero
Oh, so powerful. It's so cool that you, like, went and extracted and found these different categories and the light and the dark among all of them. And it just shows like how clearly you didn't know that you were going to be publishing this, let alone sharing it with the world. But how powerful it would be to be able to put them into these different sections and see how they all come together so perfectly to to sort of identify you and mimic you as a person.
00:28:13:06 - 00:28:42:03
Melissa Bernstein
And, you know, one of the coolest things was I had been contacted by publishers for years to write a book like a light shiny book about being a mother and working simultaneously and stories about my toy essays and and I had always said, are you kidding? Because I knew that wasn't who I was. So when I decided to do this, I knew that I was not creating a bestseller like I was not creating a book that was going to touch a lot of people a little.
00:28:42:14 - 00:29:11:19
Melissa Bernstein
And that was not my intent at all. My only intent for doing this was to one show that I'm no longer ashamed of who I am and and hopefully touch a few people like me a lot who are also maybe deeply introverted creatives who see things in their heads and feel stigmatized for being that way. So it really was only my intention to touch a few people a lot.
00:29:12:07 - 00:29:21:19
Harper Spero
You don't hear that goal very often in publishing. So it's really I'm glad that you share that with with my listeners. So what's this new book that's coming out?
00:29:22:16 - 00:29:46:03
Melissa Bernstein
Yeah. So I think the great thing, if you continue to evolve in your life, you will not stay your story, you will continue to transcend your story. So the truth is I am beyond that story. Now, of the darkness into light. I am now, you know, I'm in the light now. I mean, don't get me wrong. And this is where the next book comes from, right?
00:29:46:03 - 00:30:04:13
Melissa Bernstein
I came out into the light accepting the full spectrum of who I was. And then I was like, oh, my gosh, what do I do now? Because when I was repressing all the darkness, it was kind of easy, right? You feel a dark thing, you just repress it. You're having a bad day. You repress it like you don't.
00:30:04:13 - 00:30:32:04
Melissa Bernstein
You just put on that face and it sort of makes life easy. But once I kind of became familiar with all those emotions and I was able to label them and and understand that when I'm triggered, I have to actually feel the emotion. Life became kind of hard because if I was having a bad day, I had to actually say I'm having a bad day and allow myself to feel the emotions.
00:30:32:04 - 00:30:54:02
Melissa Bernstein
And that was really unfamiliar, right? Most of us learn to repress and deny and disassociate from emotion. So I had to develop practice. One day I went to my my therapist and I was like, wait a second, I did five years of work. Like, I'm in the light now. I accept myself. I'm having a really low day, like, what am I supposed to do now?
00:30:54:12 - 00:31:10:04
Melissa Bernstein
And she was like, she laughed and she said, Well, what do you mean you're you're going to be ebbing and flowing every single day, especially you being a overly sensitive, creative, like you're going to have really low days. And I was like, Well, didn't you tell me that.
00:31:11:06 - 00:31:11:16
Harper Spero
Now.
00:31:13:20 - 00:31:15:18
Melissa Bernstein
That this is thank God I.
00:31:15:18 - 00:31:17:04
Harper Spero
Didn't sign up for this.
00:31:18:06 - 00:31:47:07
Melissa Bernstein
Yeah. So now I have to feel this too hard. So I realized that I was at risk of two things. Once I accepted my full spectrum, I was at risk of either going too high and floating off into the boundless expanse of white creative space and never coming back. Because when I create, I actually go to a a heavenly place where it's so light and bright and beautiful that I don't ever want to come down.
00:31:48:15 - 00:32:25:00
Melissa Bernstein
And likewise, when I go low, I could literally be sucked into that abyss of despair and never come back. So I was like, What is going to be my tether on the here and now? And that tether became this flexible framework that I needed to create to live in Earth school here. And that became my practice, which I call practice makes purpose because I'm a recovering perfectionist and I never liked the phrase practice makes perfect because we are imperfect as humans.
00:32:25:09 - 00:32:44:10
Melissa Bernstein
So I love that little play on words. Practice makes purpose and it is this really fun workbook on how to basically create your own daily deliver practice to be your your best self to what we call potential eyes.
00:32:44:15 - 00:33:03:12
Harper Spero
Oh my God, I love this and I cannot wait to get my hands on this book. Melissa That is such a great reframe of removing the perfectionism because as you said, it doesn't exist and it's so not something to aspire to be. So I think that there is so much value in people getting their hands on that book.
00:33:03:17 - 00:33:05:03
Harper Spero
Are you self-publishing it?
00:33:05:11 - 00:33:39:12
Melissa Bernstein
I am. Just like last time. Yep. Love that. Publish it. And I wrote it with this amazing Ph.D. on our team who has a Ph.D. in learning the sciences. So she took my practice and together we really sort of dissected it into these really fun bite size exercises and ways that because I'm a pretty dense, heavy writer that uses a lot of flowery language, maybe too much, and we wanted to make this really digestible for for everyone so.
00:33:39:12 - 00:33:57:13
Harper Spero
Smart, can't wait to read it. So we have not touched upon but I definitely want to lifeline's your business which came after your book Lifelines. Can you talk a little bit about how you chose this to be your newest project in the last few years?
00:33:57:13 - 00:34:34:06
Melissa Bernstein
Yes, absolutely. So I just again followed that trail of breadcrumbs that are the sort of epiphanies of my life and I think once I came out and shared the fact that I suffer from this condition, existential despair, a lot of things changed. I sort of went public and I realized that I wasn't alone. I realized that I was still here because I had found a way to channel my darkness into light and make meaning through creativity, and that there's so many others who aren't able to do that.
00:34:34:06 - 00:35:05:11
Melissa Bernstein
And those are the people that I really want to help. I realized that we all need this practice from the time we're little, and if we don't have a daily, deliberate practice for emotional, mental, emotional, mental and spiritual resilience and physical resilience, we will falter at some point because we all have things hit us out of the blue and we really need to to bolster that resilience.
00:35:06:04 - 00:35:30:07
Melissa Bernstein
And I also realized that a lot of us are stuck in our heads, and we have a really hard time getting out of that rigid, critical, analytical mind and getting into our, you know, sort of our hearts that only want what I say. My heart only wants creative liberation, but I get knocked down a lot because my head me a lot of untrue things.
00:35:30:15 - 00:35:54:10
Melissa Bernstein
So one of the, the hardest things for me, which has become part of my practice was what I called grounding. It was figuring out how to actually live my life in the here and now. And that was because, you know, the dark side of my brain, not the create of side that that rigid side is always saying why?
00:35:54:10 - 00:36:15:04
Melissa Bernstein
Like, what's the meaning? Why are you doing this? Nothing's going to matter. And that that side is still part of me. It's been part of me my whole life. So for me to be able to be my best and and feel contented, I have to ground myself. I have to get out of that part of my brain and come home to right now.
00:36:15:08 - 00:36:46:18
Melissa Bernstein
And I had a hard time doing that. I tried everything I tried meditation, I tried breath work, I tried yoga. And I had an incredibly difficult time cognitively talking myself out of overthinking. And one day when I was walking in nature and most of us feel that nature is our muse, nature does something to us physiologically that nothing else can.
00:36:47:08 - 00:37:13:16
Melissa Bernstein
I was it was a spring day a couple of years ago, and I was sort of smelling the flowers and feeling this beautiful, warm breeze across my skin and hearing the the early signs of spring, the birds, I realized with kind of awe that I had completely unattached from my thinking, which I had been really having a lot of negative thoughts that day and how easy it was.
00:37:13:16 - 00:37:38:10
Melissa Bernstein
And I had this, this aha. Which again for me is the trail of breadcrumbs. I had this thought If we're all born with these extraordinary senses that are super powers, why have we become so desensitized from them? Why is humans are we stuck in our brains, which are not a sense and not connected to these, you know, superpowers?
00:37:38:19 - 00:38:03:09
Melissa Bernstein
And that became a huge part of of lifelines, basically, this this idea that if we could rediscover our senses and use them as a bridge between our rigid analytical mind and our our hearts that just want to be free, they could really help us to be living our lives in the present moment.
00:38:03:14 - 00:38:11:11
Harper Spero
So when someone lands on the Lifelines website or joins the community, what is the experience that they go through?
00:38:11:16 - 00:38:38:02
Melissa Bernstein
Change quite a bit. It's going to be a little bit about my journey, a little bit about our practice, which is practice makes purpose, a little bit about community and and workshops we offer toward that end of becoming more self aware and developing a practice and a lot about our products, which are these tools that are, you know, they're not an means to an end in and of themselves.
00:38:38:02 - 00:38:59:03
Melissa Bernstein
You can't use one of our products and suddenly become joyful. But if you use them as part of your daily grounding practice to be more in your life experiencing it right now, they will absolutely help you to be ultimately more calm and more joyful.
00:39:00:01 - 00:39:29:18
Harper Spero
Yeah, I appreciate you acknowledging that it's not necessarily going to solve all your problems. It's not a magic wand, but it is having more tools in your toolkit that you can be able to pull from when you need a certain level of, you know, experience, joy, happiness, whatever it may be. And it makes me think, is there any part of you that wishes that you shared your story sooner, knowing the business that you've built and the life that you're living now?
00:39:30:07 - 00:39:55:11
Melissa Bernstein
That's an amazing question. But I believe we're not able to share our story until we're ready. So I get people telling me all the time, I'm in my seventies, I'm finally ready to share my story like, Is it too late? Well, it only comes out when it's ready to come out. And if you share your story before you're ready, it will not be authentic, right?
00:39:55:11 - 00:40:18:03
Melissa Bernstein
It will be laden with shame and you'll feel too much egocentricity about what others are thinking about it. And all I know is I wasn't ready until I shared it. And when I was ready I felt nothing but complete liberation. I didn't care what anyone thought. I didn't care what people said because I don't. A lot of people say negative things, right?
00:40:18:03 - 00:40:43:02
Melissa Bernstein
Who are you to feel despair? You have everything. I got a lot of negative comments as well as positive comments. And the good news is I didn't care because I knew it was what I had to do. So I think I could regret that it didn't happen earlier. But the the dots of life experience were still being collected.
00:40:43:02 - 00:40:55:03
Melissa Bernstein
And, you know, you have to collect enough dots of life experience to really lead you to say, I have to do this. There is no alternative.
00:40:55:05 - 00:41:13:21
Harper Spero
I love how you define ready, because I think that people could say, like, well, just start, you know, like if it's like how I think about business when I work with clients who are starting new businesses and I'm like, just start, you got to start somewhere. And what does it mean to be ready and starting a new business?
00:41:13:21 - 00:41:34:07
Harper Spero
Sometimes that's challenging to determine, but I really, really love how you phrase that and the power of, you know, having confidence that however people react you're okay with because you feel good enough in your own body, in your own thoughts that this is the time to share. So that's super, super powerful.
00:41:35:08 - 00:41:57:08
Melissa Bernstein
I mean, I wasn't confident in that for so many decades. I was trying to be something I wasn't. So I think if we start to have the courage to listen to our intuition, which it actually is, that voice of reason that guides us really effectively if we allow it. It told me so clearly. It was like, you have to do this now.
00:41:57:18 - 00:42:17:02
Melissa Bernstein
And I've even for two years before I was listening to podcasts like yours or listening to people's stories of coming out, and I couldn't even understand why I was doing it. I was like, Why am I so obsessed with all these podcasts? And I now realize it was because I was trying to give myself the courage to do it myself.
00:42:17:17 - 00:42:31:08
Melissa Bernstein
And now that I now that I'm in the light, I don't have that that I don't listen to them as much anymore. I mean, they're fun, but I don't have that fervid need because I already did it. Like I don't need to bolster my confidence to do it.
00:42:31:11 - 00:42:49:06
Harper Spero
So what would you say to someone who is struggling with something or hiding or living in shame and doesn't feel ready to share what tools can you provide them with to sort of give them the confidence to feel better about where they are and know that their time will come if it comes?
00:42:49:18 - 00:43:24:03
Melissa Bernstein
Yeah, I mean, I think there's no substitute for making that journey inward. I always say the only way out is through. So here my whole life I was I was trying to circumvent the whole shadow side of my personality, any negative feeling. I just denied. And the truth is, it wasn't until I had the courage, with the support of a trained professional, to go through all those emotions and identify them and label them and feel them and realize they're not who I am.
00:43:24:03 - 00:43:51:18
Melissa Bernstein
They were a function of experiences I went through as a child that made me feel uncomfortable with that. So I think I would I would tell them to do more work on themselves, because once you've truly gone through all the reasons, you're terrified, which are all the extrinsic motivators and the shame, and that's all stuff you can work through, through, you know.
00:43:51:19 - 00:44:17:19
Melissa Bernstein
And if you have the luxury and the ability to work with someone, there's nothing better. You know, people will say, at least in the generation before mine, like it's so indulgent to do therapy. And I believed that, by the way, until I was in my late forties. But the truth is, doing therapy is the greatest gift you can give to others because it will ultimately allow you to be an authentic person with others.
00:44:18:04 - 00:44:32:23
Melissa Bernstein
So I think if you're if you're terrified and you're feeling not ready, you're probably you probably haven't done enough work to be ready. And I know that when I was finally ready, it wasn't a question. It was just when.
00:44:33:12 - 00:45:00:02
Harper Spero
Yeah, I agree with you completely on the therapy front and I can't even imagine. I it's true that it's considered indulgent because it is such a lifeline for so many people, pun intended. And it's just it's just really such a powerful tool. So as you know, Melissa, this podcast is all around Invisible Illness. What do you wish people knew about Invisible Illness?
00:45:00:20 - 00:45:28:03
Melissa Bernstein
Well, I think you said it earlier so beautifully. You know, I think you have to know that when you see a person on the outside that it's probably not even remotely who they are on the inside. So I think what it has shown me is to dig deeper, to not believe what you see and to know that in every one of us is some sort of an invisible illness.
00:45:28:13 - 00:45:57:15
Melissa Bernstein
I mean, I'm friends with a lot of actresses and models and, you know, they are exactly the same as I am, you know, and I think you sort of believe that there's this perfect life and and this perfection to the way people are. But the truth is, people who have that probably even suffer more on the inside because they believe that they're only being lied to because of that, because of something truly superficial.
00:45:57:15 - 00:46:16:13
Melissa Bernstein
So I think no matter what we have in life and what we portray on the outside, we're all facing some sort of invisible illness on the inside. Even if that invisible illness is just a lack of confidence or a lack of self-worth, we all are suffering with something.
00:46:16:13 - 00:46:51:14
Harper Spero
It's so true. It's interesting you bring up the models, because I read a few months ago Emily Ratajkowski, whose book My Body and I sat there and it underlining the whole time, feeling so connected to her story. And here she is, a model, something I obviously can't relate to. But the feelings that she had and a lack of confidence that she was experiencing, I resonated with so much and kept saying, I want to write the like cousin book to this story of someone living with an invisible illness that gets it on such a deep level.
00:46:52:05 - 00:47:16:17
Melissa Bernstein
Exactly. I mean, I have spoken to so many actresses who said they got to the point where they couldn't even, like, leave their homes because people expected them to be the the image they saw on the screen and always smiling and laughing. And it's a it's a prison. You know, we all have our own prisons that we need to escape.
00:47:16:18 - 00:47:39:22
Melissa Bernstein
I mean, the door is always open, but we believe a lot of times we're in one. And I think everyone has has their own. And I think the more I've been able to realize that we are a shared humanity and we are all profoundly connected by exactly the same things, you know, we might look a little different on the outside, but the truth is we really are all the same.
00:47:39:22 - 00:47:53:19
Melissa Bernstein
And the more I've been able to see that, the more I've been able to connect with everyone, no matter what they look like or what they do or how they sound, they all have that depths of spirit beneath it.
00:47:54:08 - 00:48:12:19
Harper Spero
We turn video off because we were having technical issues, but I have had a smile on my face this entire conversation. I'm so grateful for you, and I absolutely love chatting with you. Where can people find more about you? Learn about lifelines. Get your new book, your old book.
00:48:13:08 - 00:48:36:00
Melissa Bernstein
This is so people contact me directly at Melissa at Lifeline's dot com. I love to talk to anyone who is experiencing any sort of meeting crisis because I get my deepest joy from connecting with individuals. And then anything about us, the company lifelines dot com.
00:48:36:20 - 00:48:38:14
Harper Spero
Amazing. Thank you, Melissa.
00:48:39:06 - 00:48:45:03
Melissa Bernstein
You are so welcome, Harper. This has been an incredible joy.
00:48:46:20 - 00:49:10:02
Harper Spero
Thanks for tuning into made visible. We hope you learned about something new today. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a few minutes to subscribe rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Your support means the world to us. Visit made invisible stories dot com to check out our writing workshops. Corporate offerings and more information that can help you in navigating life with an invisible illness.
00:49:10:09 - 00:49:21:18
Harper Spero
Follow made visible stories on Instagram. See you next week.