This week, I sit down with Jaclyn Brown of Mental Health and Us, a podcast offering practical self-care and wellness tips to help other mental health sufferers and their loved ones cope.

Her podcast takes inspiration from her 20+ year battle with depression and anxiety, and her survival of an abusive childhood, to shine a positive light on a dark subject matter.

Topics up for discussion this week include:

• how her podcast came from her journey with anxiety and depression
• why she wanted to encourage more people to talk about their mental health
• why she finds writing easier than podcasting if doing it herself
• why being a solo podcaster made it really hard for her to get started
• why she chooses anxiety as her niche, and how depression plays into that 
• how mental illness changes as your life changes
• how her social anxiety has benefited from the pandemic lockdown
• what are some of the challenges she's found as a mother to a child with anxiety issues during a pandemic 
• how she came to write Young Adult books
• how her abusive childhood helped shape the characters in her early books 
• what she's doing different for her kids versus what she experienced as a kid
• why she feels it's so important to acknowledge displays of emotion
• why she wants her podcast to be a casual and lighter approach to mental health
• why her mother is her hero 

Join me for a chat about finding light in the darker tunnels that life can take you down.

Connect with Jaclyn:

• Mental Health and Us podcast
• A Girl and a Book

Contact me: [email protected]

My equipment:

• RODE PodMic
• Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen Audio Interface
• TRITON AUDIO Fethead In-Line Microphone Preamp
• Denon DJ HP-1100 Over Ear Headphones
• RockJam MS050 Adjustable Mic Suspension Boom
• Dragonpad Pop Filter

Recommended resources:

• Captivate.fm
• Aweber email marketing
• SquadCast remote interviewing

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp