Turning Your “Weakness” Into Your Genius with Jeff Eamer

Everyone has difficulties in life—and sometimes our unique genius arises from how we deal with them. Take Psychotherapist Jeff Eamer who turned a challenging mental health diagnosis into a life of purpose:

How he moved from being an award-winning ad agency wonderkind to nabbing a 3-picture Hollywood deal.

Why crashing—hard—led him to get help with his mental health.

When saying yes to a $100K investment and six years of study and practice was exactly the right move.

The importance of building and maintaining routines and boundaries.

The signals that might mean it’s time to ask for help with your mental health.

(If you listen carefully, you’ll hear at least one of Jeff’s 11 chickens adding their point of view 😉)

LINKS

Jeff Eamer Website | LinkedIn | Desert Sun

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

BIO

Jeff is an international award-winning advertising art director, copywriter and commercial film director. He had a brief stint in Hollywood as a screenwriter and producer on the film Coyote Ugly.

He has dedicated much of the last 25 years supporting the mental health community as a Suicide Prevention Counselor, Psychotherapist, and member of the Los Angeles Crisis Response Team.

He currently lives on his desert ranch with his two dogs: Koda, a 14-year-old black Lab and Ruby, a 10-month old Border Collie. Along with 11 chickens: Scarlett, Mrs. T., Cathy, GPT6, Beatrice, Gypsy Rose, Betty White, Griswald, Honey and Seva.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – 00:33
Jeff Eamer: I’ve been influenced profoundly by the symptoms of mental illness, and it created a phenomenon that created certain challenges that I could then relate to with my clients. So if I have a superpower in all of this, it’s a greater sense of relatedness. And so when clients come spend time with me, I’m much more perhaps congruent or authentic and transparent than probably most therapists are. And so when clients come spend time with me, I’m much more perhaps congruent or authentic and transparent than probably most therapists are. Than probably most therapists are.

00:33 – 01:13
Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast where we’re all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I’m Rochelle Moulton and today I’m here with my pal, Jeff Eamer, who’s an international award-winning advertising art director, copywriter and commercial film director. He had a brief stint in Hollywood as a screenwriter and producer on the film Coyote Ugly. He has dedicated much of the last 25 years supporting the mental health community as a suicide prevention counselor, psychotherapist, and member of the Los Angeles Crisis Response Team. He currently serves as a psychotherapist and lives on his desert ranch

01:13 – 01:27
Rochelle Moulton: with his 2 dogs, Koda, a 14-year-old black lab, and Ruby, a 10-month-old border collie, along with 11 cleverly named chickens who may be making a cameo appearance. Jeff, welcome.

01:28 – 01:31
Jeff Eamer: Thank you, Rachelle, and my chickens thank you, too.

01:32 – 02:06
Rochelle Moulton: All 11 of them. So, Jeff, we first met in LA maybe 15 years ago. And I only knew bits and pieces of your backstory, which was all about the ad world and the creative life of glitz and glamour that can be LA when you work in film. But in 2015, you had a major event in your life that completely changed how you work and how you live. And when you said you were willing to talk about this and your experience with mental health, I knew that we had to have this conversation because mental health, especially amongst

02:06 – 02:28
Rochelle Moulton: entrepreneurs, is so rarely discussed openly. So let’s dive in. Why don’t you set the scene for us? So it’s 2015, you’re in LA, you’ve been doing design work as a soloist, you know, for pay, along with your volunteer service with suicide prevention and crisis response. You’re enjoying life. What happened?

02:29 – 03:09
Jeff Eamer: Okay, here we go. Well, we’ll have to backtrack a little bit to 1995, which technically is when I dropped into the soloist mindset and self-employment. So, and we’re gonna sort of take a trip through bipolar disorder so your audience can kind of get a sense of how I experienced it and some of the challenges were around that as I was at that point in the advertising world. So I had joined McCann Erickson in the early 80s and I spent about 15 years as an agency guy, as you mentioned. I bounced from major agency to major agency,

03:10 – 03:48
Jeff Eamer: McCann Erickson, as I mentioned, J. Walter Thompson, Young and Rueckham, all of the really big ones. And I ended up at Leo Burnett. Now through that 15 year period I had tremendous highs and tremendous lows and I referred to as states of bipolarity. The technical term is bipolar disorder and during that period in the what would be the manic states my creativity was truly remarkable. There was a problem with it, though, because at a certain point, it got out of control, in that my state of righteousness and state of arrogance and hubris kicked in. And I

03:48 – 04:26
Jeff Eamer: think I was terribly proud of in hindsight, but that’s what was happening. So during that 15-year period, I lost jobs. I was self-employed through that entire period. I lost jobs for 1 of 2 reasons, because I was clinically depressed so bad that I could no longer work. And I was hospitalized and I was hospitalized 5 times for suicidal ideation and for in fact, suicide attempts. Sadly, I’m really shitty at killing myself. And the last time, I can make jokes of it. It’s just crazy that world as a suicide prevention counselor, I talked to 3, 000 people

04:26 – 04:58
Jeff Eamer: and of course it’s tragic, but life is tragically crazy sometimes too. So I would lose a job in the clinically depressed state. I’d also lose jobs in a manic state and I would be fired. And the last time that happened, I was working at Leo Burnett and as fate would have it, I was doing incredible work. I was doing the job that they asked me to do to create a better profile for the agency. And I was doing that. The problem was I was doing it in ways that the agency wasn’t comfortable with. And they determined

04:58 – 05:10
Jeff Eamer: I was more of a liability than asset. And so they, you know, the creative director walked into my office 1 morning. I thought he had an envelope and I thought, you know, I’m either getting a raise or I’m getting fired.

05:10 – 05:11
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, no in between.

05:11 – 05:41
Jeff Eamer: Yeah. And I knew when he was kind of shaking handing it to me, so I thought, ah, this is not going to be good. But again, in that state, it was like, well, I’ll be fine. So as opposed to trying to get another job, this is when I kicked into being self-employed. And in fact, by definition, and your definition of soloist, so this is what took place. I thought, well, I got some money, so I’m going down to down to Florida. My brother lived down there and he had a big motorcycle and I think I paid

05:41 – 06:09
Jeff Eamer: him some money to buy it. I don’t know if I actually technically bought it. And I went to West Palm Beach and I got on this motorcycle and I was riding to Key West. I was gonna go all the way down there. And I stopped in Miami at the News Cafe. And I’m sitting there and as I want to do, There was a pretty girl across the way, and we sort of locked eyes, and they said, would you like to join me? She said yes. And I sat with her, and she said, what do you do?

06:10 – 06:40
Jeff Eamer: And I said, well, and I thought for a moment, I said, I’m a director. And I wasn’t a director. I hadn’t directed anything at that point, but it sounded like a good answer, again, in that very state of which I believed anything. And she said, well, what are you working on? I said, well, I don’t have any projects right now, but I think when I get back to Toronto there’s going to be 1 waiting for me. So I said goodbye and I spent some time with her and then I thundered down to Key West and then

06:40 – 07:11
Jeff Eamer: I returned to Toronto. And because I was a writer I could actually freelance as a writer. So I went into this agency and they had this campaign it was for a back then a big record retailer it’s called Sam’s and and they had this giveaway there for every album you bought they they gave away a box of macaroni so I write this campaign about macaroni aid, which is sort of like far made. It was like a farce on that. And I said to the creative director, I said, look, you guys don’t have enough money to do

07:11 – 07:44
Jeff Eamer: this, but I can get support from a production company and I can direct these. And he said, Well, you’re right, we don’t have the money to do it. So, you know, if a production company is willing to front this for you to get your real started, then sure, go ahead and direct them. And so began my career of being technically self-employed. That was directing this contract work. You work with the production agency, but technically I was self-employed. So that’s how I began the process of going off on my own. And it certainly went from there.

07:45 – 08:05
Rochelle Moulton: With a lot of confidence, which makes me smile, because not all soloists start with confidence. Sometimes they have to like work up to it. But so, all right, so that was the start of your soloist career. So you’re in LA, can we fast forward to 2015 or is there another event in there that we should we should talk about first?

08:05 – 08:44
Jeff Eamer: I think there’s a few things along the way and so I was still in Toronto then and again sort of there’s there’s a line between confidence and and overconfidence perhaps And I would straddle that line when my moods would shift. And then of course there was like times when I had no confidence at all. And I don’t lay my career or my life at the feet of my mental health diagnosis. I don’t, I had other problems of not taking about accountability and not being responsible. And so it wasn’t just that, that just made it worse. But

08:44 – 09:22
Jeff Eamer: what I found was interesting is that I could believe in something to such a degree that I could make it happen. You know, I don’t want anyone to think I could win the lottery just because I think I bought the ticket, but especially in business and in business circumstances, I could actually envision something and move towards making it happen with no evidence that it should happen. But I had a vision, and as somebody who was self-employed, I could do a lot of different things. So I actually, this story started, I was in Los Angeles. I actually

09:22 – 09:54
Jeff Eamer: created a board game called Rumors, and that’s a whole other story, but I was standing on the Venice Boardwalk at the bottom of Westminster. It right, I could take you to this spot right now, There is this giant peace sign that was painted on the ground. And I stood in the middle of that peace sign. Now, this is 1995. I was in Toronto, as I mentioned. I had no ability to work in the United States. I had no green card. I had no job. I had no access to do what I’m about to say. I was

09:54 – 10:33
Jeff Eamer: standing there and I said, 1 day, I’m going to live and work in Los Angeles and make movies with no possibility of doing that in that moment. But I had the vision that this was gonna happen. And fast forward to 1999, I go back to that spot and I’m standing there and I did it. I was in Los Angeles working on a major motion picture, living there. And do you know where I was living? I was living in the building in front of where I stood. I was living in the Westminster Hotel, the very spot that

10:33 – 11:05
Jeff Eamer: I said 5 years before that I would work and live. And not only was I working and living, I was living exactly where I was standing 5 years earlier. And I think What’s interesting with that is vision. And a lot of times people think that they need, they need money to start something and they’ll, they’ll get stuck or they don’t know enough how to do it. And so, well, I don’t know how to do it and I don’t have money. So I’m just going to give up before I started. And what I realized is you neither

11:05 – 11:41
Jeff Eamer: need money or the skill in that moment to do it. You just need to believe that you can do it. I remember my son once said, Dad, you’ve done a lot of really interesting things. How have you done this? I said, well, I’m stubborn and I’m naive. And sometimes those qualities are really great because you’re stubborn, you’re not gonna quit, and you’re naive, you don’t think you can’t do it. And so you just start doing it. You take the first step and then you take the second step. But the vision of where you want to be

11:42 – 11:54
Jeff Eamer: is so important and to not so much worry about how you’re going to get there. Sometimes the universe gives you a tremendous amount of support if you’re clear about what it is that you want to do.

11:55 – 12:03
Rochelle Moulton: Clarity is such a critical part of this because it’s hard to know what the next step is if you don’t know where you want to wind up.

12:03 – 12:08
Jeff Eamer: Oh, and sometimes you step in a pile of shit, Rachelle. I mean, so you know, it’s not like…

12:09 – 12:11
Rochelle Moulton: Oh, no, that never happens.

12:12 – 12:45
Jeff Eamer: It’s not like all the steps are the right ones, But then you learn, you go, wow, better not step in that pile again. But that’s that that’s how you get there. And I think there’s a lot of notion to, wow, there’s so many stories about people who have failed multiple times. And every time they failed, I think it was Edison, I figured out 999 ways not to make a light bulb. You know, so that is the process of getting there. And when you’re by yourself, it’s really tough because you don’t have somebody there that can say,

12:45 – 13:13
Jeff Eamer: that can bolster you, you don’t have a partner, you don’t have employees, and they’re like, we’re gonna do it, boss. You’re on your own. And yes, you can surround yourself with people who are supportive. And eventually you have to bring a lot of people into your life, relative to that vision, in terms of making it happen. But I think, as I mentioned earlier, the mistake a lot of people make is they don’t think they have the time or skill to actually complete it and said they don’t even start.

13:14 – 13:35
Rochelle Moulton: Gotcha, gotcha. So I wanna bring you to 2015. So you did the movie thing, then you didn’t do the movie thing, right? When I met you, you were art directing, basically, and writing. And so you did that for a number of years. And then 2015, talk to us, what happened?

13:35 – 14:07
Jeff Eamer: Yes, I was in the film business and then I was out of the film business. It was in Hollywood East stories to how that ended. Not how I would have imagined and again I have to bring in the mental illness piece. At that point, when I got to LA, I was critically depressed. A few months later, based on taking a medication that I wasn’t aware was going to have the impact that it did, but it ricocheted me into a manic state. And so my film career took an incredible hit because of that time period, and I

14:07 – 14:37
Jeff Eamer: never went on to make what were the next 2 pictures. I had a three-picture deal. And so from that point, I was in Los Angeles with nothing to do. When you apply for a green card, you can’t leave the country because they won’t let you back in until there’s a determination as to whether or not you’re gonna get it or not. So I’m like, what am I gonna do? Well, the first thing I did was I volunteered. I was flipping through a newspaper back when there were newspapers, and there was an ad for a suicide prevention

14:37 – 15:10
Jeff Eamer: counselor, volunteers. And so I went there and I talked to the director, and I said, hey, I don’t know much about being a counselor, but I know a lot about being suicidal. And he asked me a bunch of questions. He said, yep, you qualify. So I spent 4 years there. 1 as a volunteer, the next 3 as a supervisor. But during that time, I wasn’t making much money doing that. So during that time, I technically was continued to be a soloist. So I was working on design projects, and that’s how I actually met you, Rochelle. And

15:10 – 15:50
Jeff Eamer: I think that wasn’t 2015. That was a few years before that. But during that time period, I just dropped back into being self-employed and just working on my own. I had a lot of freedom to do a lot of different kinds of projects. I did design projects, I did some writing projects. I was still writing in the entertainment world, but not all that much, just some projects that got optioned. And so that period from 2000 and basically 1 to 2015, I continued as being a very small soloist. I was just making enough money to live in

15:50 – 16:28
Jeff Eamer: Venice, to live in this tiny little bachelor apartment. I was gonna live in the dream, but at a certain point, my work wasn’t very satisfying. I really didn’t want to give it my all to working on design and branding projects. And I thought, well, I can’t sell my clients short if I’ve lost the passion for that. And I was talking to my psychiatrist then, whom I’ve had from 2006 till now. I’ve been in psychotherapy for the last 18 years. And as a psychotherapist, it’s pretty critical to have your own support. So I was talking to her

16:28 – 16:58
Jeff Eamer: and that was around 2015. And I said, you know, I’m kind of done, You know, I don’t really want to, you know, do what I’m doing. And I’m sort of burnt. And she said, Well, she said, Do you want to do more volunteer work? I said, I don’t think that’s gonna do it. I like doing volunteer work. But that’s not really, you know, that’s not a career. And she said, well, have you considered the mental health field? And it really hadn’t. Although I had that body of work as a suicide prevention counselor, but it really hadn’t

16:58 – 17:27
Jeff Eamer: thought about what it would be to enter the field. And so I said, well, it sounds interesting. And, and she said, well, you know, you should consider becoming a psychotherapist. I went, oh, okay. And, you know, and this is how naive I am, Rochelle. So I want to go to Antioch University. They have a great program there. And I just bugged the chair of the department, I just want to talk to you, I want to talk to you. And she goes, why? Just, you know, just just apply. I just really want to find out what it’s

17:27 – 18:00
Jeff Eamer: all about for me. So I just wore her down. She said, All right, gentlemen, and if I can shut you up, you know, I’ll talk to you. So I’m sitting there talking about my life and my background. She goes, yeah, you’re absolutely perfect for this program. And she said, what’s your undergraduate degree? And this is how naive I was. I said, do I need 1? And she just looked at me and said, you want to join the master’s program and you don’t have an undergraduate degree. I said, well, I taught at a college, You know, I

18:00 – 18:37
Jeff Eamer: taught filmmaking and I taught creative writing and screenwriting. She said, well, okay, well, that doesn’t help. I said, well, I taught at another college. And she said, these things aren’t helping. She said, you need a bachelor’s degree. I went, oh. And so I cobbled together 3 years of credits. I never finished anything. I got my bachelor’s degree 35 years after I started. So I could cobble together this 3 years. So all I needed to complete 1 year to get my bachelor’s degree and then I could enter the master’s program. So now we’ve gotten to 2016. 2016

18:37 – 18:53
Jeff Eamer: at the tender age of 55, I guess, I went back to school and entered this master’s program in clinical psychology. And that was the beginning of the journey that has taken me from 2016 to 2024 now

18:54 – 19:16
Rochelle Moulton: So, I mean there’s a whole bunch of stuff there to unpack But 1 of the things I love is that you’re in your mid 50s and you went back to school You can’t be a psychotherapist without having a specific set of education and licenses. So, I mean, did you have any concerns about doing that or were you just all in? You said, you know, I’m gonna do it, Let’s go.

19:16 – 19:49
Jeff Eamer: Yeah, both of those things, concerns and all in. It was crazy, but somebody said, well, it’s courageous to go back to school at 55. It’s such a risk. I thought, no, it’s a much greater risk not to do this. And I had no idea what I was in for, really. I was in these first classes, and most of my peers were in their early 30s, a lot of people who go back to become psychotherapists, generally late 20s, early 30s. And so I didn’t even know what academic writing was. I mean, I’m an ad guy. I was

19:49 – 20:25
Jeff Eamer: used to writing conversationally. I was used to writing headlines. I don’t think I ever wrote more than 200 words ever. And now I have to do this academic writing with citing. I think, what is this? And I remember I got into the first class and I went, wow, I’ve got 2 more years of this. I think there was, I don’t know, I think maybe 6 classes a quarter. So that was 25, it was like 48 classes, I think I had to. And I thought, well, I’m here. This is class number 1, and here I go. And

20:25 – 21:02
Jeff Eamer: during that two-year period, there were multiple times that I thought, ah, You know, another paper, you know, but I was loving it, but it was not the world that I knew to go into a master’s program at all. I come to live in on the beach and have a good time working 15, 20 hours a week. And I did this and I took it on full time too. I invested a tremendous amount of money over that 3 year period. And part way through I thought, ah, I don’t wanna keep going. And I thought, oh my god,

21:02 – 21:41
Jeff Eamer: I am so financially invested here. I got to finish this. I don’t ever be a therapist. I can’t blow a hundred grand here. And so I finished the program. And of course, there’s 3, 000 hours of supervised work that you need to do in order to qualify to write the license exam. And so I’ve got 3 years of education under my belt, I have 3000 hours of work put in to be able to write the license exam. And that was, you know, so now we’re up to maybe, I don’t know, 2022. I think that’s when COVID

21:41 – 21:41
Jeff Eamer: started.

21:41 – 21:50
Rochelle Moulton: No, wait, wait, wait, no, I think we’re earlier because I’m thinking the pandemic hit after you finished. Is that right? Or did it hit while you were in training?

21:51 – 22:31
Jeff Eamer: It hit almost when I had finished training. So of that 3000 hour period, that was from like 2018 to 2022 where I was under supervision. I was getting my own clients, so I continued to be a soloist by definition. And in the fall, actually before COVID started, I wrote the first exam. And you have to understand, this is almost like 8 years getting to writing that exam. And so there’s a lot on the line at that point. So I write it and they give you the answer as whether or not you pass as soon as you

22:31 – 23:05
Jeff Eamer: walk out of the exam room. And I opened it up and it said failed. And I was absolutely heartbroken. You could determine how you failed. And I failed by 1 question. And I got to my car and I just wept. And that was like, you know, from 2016 to 2022. And it all culminated in that moment. But a few things became really significant. 1, I could take the test again, and as many times as I wanted. But the second thing that was more important was that I am granted accommodations. I didn’t get them the first time.

23:05 – 23:45
Jeff Eamer: When you have a mental health diagnosis, we’re protected by the ADA, where the Disabilities Act supports us. So my psychiatrist wrote a letter to the board with my diagnosis, and I was able to get an extra 2 hours. Now I wouldn’t be sitting here as a therapist because I took the test again, and it took me 5 hours and 45 minutes to pass that exam. I never could have finished that exam in 4 hours. In fact, a lot of the people who didn’t have a mental health diagnosis, they barely scraped through. But that was a very

23:45 – 23:56
Jeff Eamer: significant piece of what it is to live inside this world, the business world, the soloist world, having to navigate it through the challenges of mental illness.

23:56 – 24:12
Rochelle Moulton: Well, and it’s 1 of those things that a lot of people wouldn’t think about. It makes sense to me the way that you’ve explained it if I need extra time to be able to do this So the accommodation really made the difference for you, but you did pass right you did pass

24:13 – 24:15
Jeff Eamer: Yeah, I passed the second time

24:16 – 24:20
Rochelle Moulton: that’s good. I mean it took a lot of lawyers 4 or 5 times to pass the bar So

24:21 – 24:21
Jeff Eamer: yeah, 1

24:21 – 24:43
Rochelle Moulton: of the things that you did was you I’m gonna use the word escaped LA and You moved to the high desert, which is beautiful And so I just I’m just curious what made you pull that trigger and go from this big city where you’d settled from coming from Toronto to the sticks basically, right?

24:43 – 25:16
Jeff Eamer: It’s the high desert. Nobody within about 15 miles of here. Well, that’s not true. All of my neighbors are about an acre away, but the biggest little town is Yucca Valley. So COVID changed everything in terms of soloists. Boy, you know, some of us really turned into soloists, you know. So the short story is I’m chasing love in Africa. So I go to Africa and I thought, well, I can’t stop working. So I was going to Africa for a month. And so I continued to work with Shell and I actually didn’t miss a single client session.

25:17 – 25:49
Jeff Eamer: And I was 10 hours different. So I’d start working at 10 at night. So because the whole world, my whole world went into telehealth. So I thought, well, I can operate from anywhere. So it didn’t work out. I’m a hopeless romantic. I came back to LA and I was living in Culver City for folks who may know the west side of LA. And I’m just heartbroken. So I’m gonna go camping by myself somewhere. So I go to the desert and I go to this little campground in Morongo, which is Morongo Valley, which is pretty close to

25:49 – 26:22
Jeff Eamer: where I live now. I’m Canadian. I’m camping in the winter. There’s nobody around, but there’s a Wi-Fi signal. Once again, I’m on my own, and I’m doing therapy sessions from a tent. I thought, well, I could do therapy sessions from Kampala in Uganda, from a tent in Orongo Valley. So I’m going to move. But I thought was what I’m going to do is I’m going to live half my time in LA and I’m going to rent a little place in Yucca Valley. And I rented this little cabin in Yucca Valley and the second time I drove

26:22 – 26:55
Jeff Eamer: back to LA, I thought, why am I doing this? Once you get used to this life, it is very difficult to engage in an urban culture. I haven’t seen a parking meter in 3 years. And so when I was up here I thought well I’m just gonna stay here now but all of my business was telehealth but somebody found me you know they who was local and they said well I’d like to see you I said well I don’t have an office yet So I was volunteering at this rescue ranch. Horses were a part of my

26:55 – 27:23
Jeff Eamer: life. And the owners had this little cabin down the dirt road in the middle of the desert. And I said, can I rent it? And they said, yeah, you can rent it. So I saw my clients at this tiny cabin in the middle of the desert, the ones who I was seeing here, of course, and I had a horse with me and I had Coda, my 1 dog with me. And the therapy sessions were in the desert with a horse and a dog and me. And it was some of the most rewarding therapy sessions I’ve ever

27:23 – 27:49
Jeff Eamer: been a party to. It’s a longer discussion of what nature does and what is being in a quiet space does. And there’s coyotes walking by and hawks circling overhead and bunnies, you know, hopping by. It was like therapy in a Disney movie. So again, I was able to do this on my own through telehealth, which is still the majority of my clients, through face-to-face clients here, here in the desert.

27:50 – 28:23
Rochelle Moulton: I mean, if anybody wants to see pictures of some of this, we are going to, in the show notes, there’ll be a link to an article that has some pictures so you can kind of see that little building and by the way, Koda, who’s a very handsome boy in some of those pictures. But Jeff, 1 of the things that so fascinates me about your experience is that you’ve taken what you could have decided was a weakness in quotes, right, in your life. And I use that word very intentionally, and you turned it into your superpower. How

28:23 – 28:32
Rochelle Moulton: long did it take you, I know how long it took you to do the education and the experiential piece, but how long did it take you for you to see yourself that way?

28:34 – 29:11
Jeff Eamer: That’s a really good question, Rochelle. As a therapist, if I have what you refer to as a superpower, it’s my life. And what I mean by that is the robust nature of my life. And what I mean by that is I’ve been influenced profoundly by the symptoms of mental illness, and it created a phenomenon that created certain challenges that I could then relate to with my clients. So if I have a superpower in all of this, it’s a greater sense of relatedness. And when I share my story, I’ve been a party to 3 marriages that came

29:11 – 30:02
Jeff Eamer: to an end. I blew up 3 very successful careers. I was hospitalized 5 separate times. My highs and lows created tremendous financial challenges, relationship challenges, physical challenges. And so When clients come spend time with me, I’m much more perhaps congruent or authentic and transparent than probably most therapists are. So what I’ve experienced are the challenges that a lot of us face who are soloists and navigate through this world of having a diagnosed mental illness. And it’s a little bit different. And what I’ve come to understand for me, and perhaps to share, is the significance of self-care

30:03 – 30:44
Jeff Eamer: and what it is to have a community. What I mean by that is I can address my self-care. Inside of every given day, in order for me to stay well, to stay in this lifestyle, I take a medication, I eat a healthy diet, I meditate, I exercise, I am therapy compliant. I live a life of purpose too. I think my life of being a psychotherapist is a life of purpose. In any profession, it can truly be purposeful, so I understand that. And in my community, friends and family, and inside of all that, the thing that is

30:45 – 31:25
Jeff Eamer: very important to me is schedule and structure. And I’ve designed a life here with dogs and chickens and gardening and I’m getting a goat and horse that the structure in my life is pretty much built in. And so those are the pieces that those of us who are on our own, who live this soloist lifestyle, we need to pay a much greater attention to what I would refer to as, again, I’m being redundant, I apologize, but structure and routine. And some jobs allow structure and routine a little bit more. I have a schedule with clients, and

31:25 – 31:59
Jeff Eamer: that, you know, we’re a scheduled time for a scheduled amount of time. And that’s really significant for structure. It’s very meaningful to me. When I was doing design projects, I didn’t have that same schedule and I was much more vulnerable to periods where I didn’t have to be anywhere at any given time. I have 18 clients every week that depend on me to show up on time, to show up present, to show up well. If I’m providing any gift or support to my clients, it’s my own self-care so I can be present for them. And so

31:59 – 32:10
Jeff Eamer: living this world of being a soloist, I advocate in such a strong way of taking care of oneself in order to be there for their clients.

32:10 – 32:27
Rochelle Moulton: Yes. Yes. So let me ask you another question about that. Are there signs or signals that we should be aware of when we’re when we don’t have a diagnosed mental illness but are there signs that we need to pay attention to this and maybe seek some help?

32:28 – 33:11
Jeff Eamer: Yes. 1 of the things that starts to creep in especially with depression is our level of energy clearly will start to slide, our sleep patterns will start to change. We won’t be attentive to things that we ordinarily would be. We’ll put things off, we’ll procrastinate. And it’s all as a result of what might be the onset of depression and what might slide into major depressive disorder, which might slide into not being able to function or work at all. So if anything starts changing, weight, sleep, engaging with people you care about. If you start turning down opportunities

33:12 – 33:49
Jeff Eamer: for conferences or for meetings because your confidence starts to slide because a kind of depression might set in. So those are some of the things that 1 would want to try to observe. It’s very difficult when you’re going through it to see it though. And so if there are friends or family members, often they may point it out, you seem a little bit low today, you seem a little bit more tired, you didn’t show up for our coffee, what’s going on? And Sometimes we need to rely on those that we love to check in on us.

33:49 – 34:24
Jeff Eamer: It’s not their responsibility, but in some cases, nobody gets through this alone. I have a network of people that I reach out to when I can start to feel that. I can shut it down very quickly now. I’m more aware of when those feelings, the onset of more energy or less energy. That’s why I am compliant with psychotherapy because my psychotherapist knows me for 17 years. She can listen to my speech patterns, she can listen to what I’m talking about and what I’m saying in order to judge it because there are times that I might not

34:24 – 34:26
Jeff Eamer: feel the onset of it.

34:26 – 34:58
Rochelle Moulton: Thank you. And I don’t want to make light of what you just said, but the chicken putting in her 2 cents worth, It’s just priceless. It’s priceless. Thank you for that, Jeff. I think that’s really helpful for people because it’s hard when you’re inside the bottle, right, to see exactly what’s going on from the outside. So there is a question that I love to ask every guest on the show, and it’s this. If you could go back to who you were when you started your business, and I’m not sure if this should be in 1995 or

34:58 – 35:11
Rochelle Moulton: after you got your therapist certification, but what’s the 1 thing you would advise him to do? So if you could go back to who you were when you first started the business, what’s the 1 thing you’d advise him to do?

35:12 – 35:45
Jeff Eamer: Well, I guess I touched on it maybe before. The notion of believing in a vision and crafting that vision every single day towards the outcome. I’ll be really brief with this 1. I wanted a horse shelter and I had a piece of land and The first thing I could do was hammer some wooden stakes into the ground as to where the shelter would be. I didn’t have money to build the shelter, but I had some wooden stakes and a rubber hammer and I could imagine it there. Then I had some resources, and so it started to

35:45 – 36:21
Jeff Eamer: be built. It was built very slowly because the person building it was only on the weekends. So I very over time, I saw this vision take place. Now I have a horse shelter, but that wasn’t the thing that drove me to build this horse shelter. It was this. I have a post office about a mile away on a dirt road and my vision was getting on my horse to go down to the post office to get my mail. That was the vision, Rochelle. And 1 day, I will let you know that today was the day I

36:21 – 36:43
Jeff Eamer: walked down the street or I rode down the street on my horse and picked up my mail. But it started with a piece of dirt and 4 wooden stakes. But the vision of picking up my mail at the post office, having gotten there on a horse, is what strove those stakes into the ground.

36:43 – 36:53
Rochelle Moulton: Perfect. So we will be putting all sorts of links to you and your content in the show notes, but where’s the best place for people to learn more about you?

36:54 – 37:32
Jeff Eamer: To learn more about me as a therapist, my website will get you there, www, don’t know why we say that, jeffemur.com or .net. But if you wanna learn about me, just type in my name. There’s only 1 Jeff Emer, I think, in this country. And you’ll see all of the things I’ve done over the last 30 years, I’ve engaged in so many different kinds of projects. And so if you want to learn about all of me, just Google my name. If you want to learn about me as a therapist, you can go to jeffiemer.net.

37:33 – 37:35
Rochelle Moulton: Perfect. So Jeff, thank you.

37:36 – 37:37
Jeff Eamer: You’re welcome.

37:37 – 37:49
Rochelle Moulton: Not only for your time, but for being so transparent on some really challenging issues. I just believe you may have helped a few people today with this. So thank you.

37:50 – 38:23
Jeff Eamer: You’re welcome. I think part of the big challenge is when people are struggling, they feel so alone. And when any of us are able to share our story, perhaps they feel a little less alone and feel like, if he did it, maybe I can do it too, but I will tell you this, you cannot do it by yourself. And symptomatic of some of those situations is people unfortunately don’t reach out. So if there’s any message, I can leave your listeners, the soloists and anyone else who’s happening to listen is you can’t do it by yourself, but

38:23 – 38:25
Jeff Eamer: there are people there willing to help.

38:25 – 38:33
Rochelle Moulton: Well, let’s end it there. So that’s it for this episode. I hope you’ll join us next time for the soloist life. Bye-bye.