Interview With Cari Champion On Her "Naked Sports" podcast

[00:00:00.00] - Cari Champion

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Naked Sports. Kari Champion here. Today for the

month of May, many of you may already know, it is Mental Health Awareness Month. And you've seen

all the messages, and there are so many people with huge platforms who offer their own personal

story, and then they also share resources. And about a week and a half ago, maybe two weeks ago, a

really good friend of mine, and when I say really good, he's been my friend. He and his wife have been

my friend for the better part of two decades. And Jason is his name, who you will meet. Jason asked

if he could come on the podcast and talk about mental health awareness. One, yes, no questions

asked. Absolutely. Two, he wanted to share his story. And again, I told you, I have been friends with

them for almost 20 years since the beginning of my career. I've grown up with them in a lot of ways.

And today, my really good friend, Jason Prinzo, shares a story with me that I've never, ever heard

before. And it just goes to show that you can have someone in your life and consider them a really

good friend or perhaps even a family member and not know about their personal struggles, which to

me illustrates the very, very, very, very important issue of taking care of your mental health and why

this month is important for everyone.

[00:01:27.27] - Cari Champion

Everyone could look good on the outside, but be struggling on the inside. And to me, that is what I

saw when my friend shared this story. So for those of you who are going through tough times and you

think you just put your head down and figure it out, great. That's fine. I don't know what the stress is in

your life. I don't know what family, friends, circumstances you're living with, but sometimes life is

hard. It just is. I wish it wasn't. I wish I could say no. But I think that if we're all honest with ourselves,

there is some point in your life eventually where you get to the point and you say, God, this is hard. I

wish I had some help, or I wish I could talk to someone about this. And hopefully, after hearing

Jason's story, those of you who are in that space feel inspired to do so. Take care of your mental

health like you take care of everything else. You have to take care of your mental health. Welcome to

this edition of Naked Sports. Jason Prinzo, a dear, dear, dear friend of mine. I say that about

everybody, but this is true.

[00:02:35.19] - Cari Champion

I like to tell everybody I remove all of the mystery. Everything is not BTS. It's for everyone to see. We

were having a conversation this past weekend. I went to Chicago to hang out with you and my dear

friend, one of my best friends in the world, your wife. Yes. We all saw Beyoncé. But prior to me even

coming to Chicago to see Beyoncé, you reached out and you said, I know it's Mental Health

Awareness Month, which is May, and you wanted to come on the podcast. And I said to those who

were listening to the podcast, I really appreciated you for coming on here and sharing your story.

Some people look at mental health as something they can't talk about. You know there's a stigma

associated with it, but you've been nothing but solution-oriented, and you've always wanted to share

your story, and I think that is powerful. So if you don't mind, my friend, let me just say thank for doing

that.

[00:03:31.13] - Jason Prinzo

Thank you for having me. I mean, it's such an important conversation, and not one that everybody

wants to dive into. It cannot be fun sometimes. And I don't want it to be a heavy conversation. I just

want it to be a normal talk because we need to end this stigma and make it okay to talk about these

things.

[00:03:46.17] - Cari Champion

So you told me something that I just wasn't aware of. You are, in terms of your credentials and

qualified outside of dealing with this all of your life, tell people what you have been able to do in your

work towards being an advocate for mental health?

[00:04:05.01] - Jason Prinzo

Well, I started back in 2018 as an ambassador for NAMI. I went there as part of a pitch that a doctor

was doing on ketamine treatments. And once I started talking about my story, they had asked me to

become an ambassador. And I don't know that I was aware of how important this work was until they

had me talking to the Chicago Police Department. And as I was telling my story and my strugglesgrowing up with masculinity and how I've had to deal with that as an adult, I noticed that these guys

that are alphas, much like athletes that are warriors that we think about as being strong, were waiting

in line to talk to me afterwards. And they were emotional and saying that they had never heard

somebody say things that they could relate to. It made them feel better because there's a shared

experience. It just taught me that this needs to be dug into even more. It became a very important

mission for me because we I do need to end this stigma. I've dealt with this since I was five years old.

I was diagnosed with depression disorder at five. I had a very traumatic childhood because of my

father.

[00:05:11.07] - Jason Prinzo

There's a through line from my father to all of my mental illness. I needed to use it as a way to not be

a weapon against me anymore. I needed to use this as a powerful tool in order to help people

because it's the only way that I can use this for good. If I tell my story first, nobody can hold it against

me and I to own it.

[00:05:31.12] - Cari Champion

There's always that quote that I think of that we spend most of our adulthood trying to escape our

childhood. And escape probably shouldn't be the word. It should be trying to understand and process

and heal from our childhood. And healing is not a linear thing. But you say five years old, you were

diagnosed with depression. How does that happen to a five-year-old? How does a doctor know that,

yeah, these are the signs? What are the symptoms? If someone has a child right now, and it probably

is more easy to diagnose that when your children are able to use full sentences, subject and

predicate. But when you're five years old, I would think that would be difficult.

[00:06:11.25] - Jason Prinzo

Well, we had a school assignment in kindergarten that we had to draw a family portrait, and I drew my

little portrait and turned it in. The next day when I showed up at school, they had me go to a

counselor's office, and they asked me to describe my picture because, kindergarteners, we're not the

best draws or we don't color very well. But they had an idea of what was happening here. When I

explained that my family photo was my mother and I taking my father out of a bar drunk because that

was the perception that I had in my head that set off alarm bells and started some conversations

about what was happening at home and how I've been feeling, and I was immediately put into

therapy. I did therapy from five up until about sixth grade when I pulled myself out of it. It was

extremely helpful, but it was all that I knew. But because of some other things going on in my life, my

father was very violent. Violent in the way that he was firing shots at our house at night. He was trying

to run us off the road with his car at different times.

[00:07:06.05] - Jason Prinzo

He was just an extremely violent person. We were always on the run. I went to eight schools in 12

years. I lived in 15 different apartments or houses as a kid. So I was constantly the new kid. And when

you're the new kid and then you're the one that somebody's coming in and opening the door in the

classroom and asking you to come out, all the other kids are like, What's going on? They think you're

in trouble. And it's hard at 9, 10, 11 years old to explain to people that you're going to therapy,

especially you're talking about the late '70s, early '80s when this was first happening to me. It just

wasn't something that kids did. And it made me an outlier. And I felt like that already because of the

constant moving around. And I just couldn't wait to get out of that space and out of that situation. I

just didn't want to deal with it anymore, and I ignored it for far too long.

[00:07:56.09] - Cari Champion

So you said from five years old to sixth grade, you pulled yourself out of it, you stopped doing

therapy?

[00:08:01.06] - Jason Prinzo

I stopped doing therapy. I had changed schools so often that it was easy to get out of when I changed

schools after sixth grade. But there was a point where I just didn't believe it was helping. And I made a

very bad mistake at 20, where I thought I could mentally beat it, where if I just had a positive attitude, I

could get past all these feelings of trauma and sadness. And I did a lot of damage to myself becauseI blew decade, a decade plus of healing by just trying to will myself to be better. And it's funny

because it falls right in line with, statistically, there is an 11-year gap from when people realize that

there is some disorder or something happening and finally going to get help, which is when you talk

about adulthood, it's a large part of our adult life. I did that exact same thing. I was that same exact

statistic, and it took me quite a while to admit that I needed help and to go find it.

[00:09:00.18] - Cari Champion

Why do you choose to say you did yourself a disservice? Do you think it's your fault?

[00:09:04.26] - Jason Prinzo

I don't think that it's my fault, but I was in therapy at 20, and I was put on Prozac, when Prozac first

came out. I wasn't aware of what this was going to do to me, what the side effects might be. And

when I had a cousin that was murdered, and when he was murdered, I remember thinking, boy, what

would Keith have done if he knew he was going to pass on this day? How would he have looked at the

last year? Would traffic put him in a bad mood? Would he have been upset that his girlfriend didn't call

back? Whatever it was. And I thought, if I could just live like I know the end is coming and make the

best out of everything, I can beat this. I can be in a better mental place. And it wasn't working. My

struggles with masculinity was coming out in very strange ways as an adult. And the way that I

always try to put it is, my father wasn't around. And as a young man, I was trying to learn masculinity,

and my mother, as amazing as she was, just couldn't teach it. So you do one of two things, at least I

did.

[00:10:08.03] - Jason Prinzo

You either look at your father as an example of what a man in masculinity is, or you make it up in your

head. And neither one of them are great. I didn't realize until I became an adult that my version of

conflict resolution was the exact thing that my father was doing, where he was fighting people all the

time. And as much as I didn't want to be him, there was this mix of, Well, this is what men do. This is

what masculinity is. It was also the example that I had of seeing my father deal with conflict

resolution.

[00:10:38.09] - Cari Champion

Okay, so when you say you struggle with your masculinity, what does that mean? I want to tell

everyone the reason why I am saying this. I know Jason as just a loving husband, always the life of

the party, always funny. I would not have said until you shared this with me that you struggled with

your mental I wouldn't have said that that was an issue for you. I know that's really commonplace. I

know people who are struggling and trying to make everybody else happy are often the people who

are dealing with the most. When you say you were struggling with your masculinity, what does that

mean to you?

[00:11:20.03] - Jason Prinzo

Well, first of all, what you're describing is what we call smiling depression. And that's somebody that

is holding down a job. They're very responsible. They seem like the life of the party, but they're

struggling inside. We call that smiling depression. It's not a medical diagnosis, but that's what it's

called. And it's a signal to all of us that everybody needs to be checked up on, not just the people that

we think are struggling. But to get to the masculinity part, I had no examples growing up. I was raised

by a woman, and I was around women all the time. I was always extremely comfortable with women,

having conversations with women. I think you can tell that from our time together. I know.

[00:11:56.04] - Cari Champion

I'm trying to have that because I'm serious. Jason He'll get into it. I'm like, But here's the thing, though.

Even though you do enjoy our company, and I consider you, for lack of a better term, one of the gals,

there's nothing about you that feels less masculine when you are with us. You feel comfortable. You

feel at ease. It doesn't feel like it takes away from your masculinity. I'm telling you how it's perceived.

Yes.

[00:12:25.17] - Jason Prinzo

Thank you. That's probably because I have a much higher comfortability with women. I know thatspace and I know how to talk to them. I've gotten better with men, and I have very close friends. I have

extremely close friends. You do. But growing up, because I was bouncing around all the time, I didn't

have long-term friends. My friends were lasting six and eight months, and then I was getting new

ones. And you're the new kid. And as young boys, we're not that welcoming sometimes when there's a

new kid. I'm fighting to try to be one of the guys without ever having an example of what what being

one of the guys is. So I never felt like I stacked up to everybody else. And when I became an adult, I

didn't know how to live in that space without being either hyper-masculine or being myself. I couldn't

find that medium ground, and I always felt a hyper-masculine. And because my relationships, and this

is going to hit you a little bit because I've done this with you before. One of the things that I do

because I'm so insecure in my relationships, because the abandonment issues I have as a child are

long term.

[00:13:39.06] - Jason Prinzo

My parents married and divorced each other twice while I was alive and then moving around. There's

just a whole lot there. But I'm so insecure in my relationships that a few things happen. One, I test

people all the time because I think that I need them to prove their love for me because it's It's what

I've always wanted. And I don't trust people because I think everybody's leaving. And I leave at the first

sign of any disruption. To this day, if I text a friend of mine and I don't hear back from them for a few

days, I'm like, It's over. We're not friends anymore. I'm going to pull myself out of it because me

making a decision to leave the relationship is a lot easier to handle than if somebody else does it. And

from a romantic standpoint, it would keep me in very toxic relationships because The idea of losing

somebody that you feel loves you hurts more than the pain of being in a toxic relationship. And the

way that I always explain it is you're always chasing the next I love you. You're not getting what you

need emotionally from somebody, so you're always doing more for them because you just want to

hear that I love you.

[00:14:49.24] - Jason Prinzo

And my biggest downfall is the constant need to feel loved and accepted and seen. And I realized that

I put this air that I don't need it. I need it. I struggle greatly with my insecurity and relationships. And

there have been times with you that without you knowing, and this is really unfair on my part, but it's

something I'm working on where I may out of the blue, mention something to you that I have going on

and I'm excited about it, and then I won't talk to you for a while because I want to wait and see if you

hit me back to check up on it.

[00:15:24.07] - Cari Champion

I'm sorry.

[00:15:25.12] - Jason Prinzo

If you don't, and if... No, no, no, no, no, nobody has done anything wrong here. This is my own thing.

And if I don't hear from somebody, it's almost a relief because it's confirmation of what I've already

believed.

[00:15:37.08] - Cari Champion

What do you mean you believe?

[00:15:39.00] - Jason Prinzo

You believe that- I believe that the relationship has been fragile and surfaced from the beginning and

that the friendship that I felt wasn't real because it was more that I wanted it than they were giving it.

[00:15:53.13] - Cari Champion

What attachment style is that? You hear about different... How would that be diagnosed when you

describe that, is that a-I'm a people pleaser.

[00:16:03.07] - Jason Prinzo

I'm a pleaser, which is a lot of pressure because I feel like my value in friendships is making other

people feel good. That that's the only thing that I bring to the table that I have to be everybody's type

person.[00:16:15.26] - Cari Champion

I see.

[00:16:16.11] - Jason Prinzo

And so what happens, and this happens in my friendships, I go overboard with my friendships of

being hyper supportive, hyper diligent, because I'm trying to hang on to it. And it took me a long time

to realize that The people in my life that I love aren't going to be overboard back with me because they

don't have those same issues of abandonment. They don't have those same fears that I have, so they

don't need to do more. They're doing what everybody else does. And I had to stop expecting that back

from people because their insecurities aren't mine. And they're not doing anything wrong by just being

a very normal supportive friend. They don't have to go overboard to prove themselves to me.

[00:16:58.09] - Cari Champion

Well, there are instances, I will say this, where you've been my friend for a very long time and life gets

busy. Anybody who is my friend knows, sometimes I forget important things, and it happens all the

time. In my mind, I think, first off, if you love me, you'll understand you could charge it to my head and

not my heart. You know what I mean? It doesn't have to be transactional for me. We could go months

without talking, and I still love you to claim, and I'll catch you up on all the things of life. But when you

What you have been describing doesn't necessarily mean that someone has a mental illness, or they

should check on their mental health. What you describe, I sometimes think, are just the ups and

downs, just in terms of friendships, of how friendships work. If someone's listening right now and they

have been struggling, maybe with that area or other areas, what are the feelings that's especially for

men? What are the feelings that arise that say, You know what? I might need to talk to somebody, or I

might be struggling, and I'm not being honest about it.

[00:18:06.16] - Jason Prinzo

I think us as men, we suffer from a lack of self-awareness. We are taught things as young boys of big

boys don't cry, toughen up. We're never taught how to deal with our emotions, how to work through

our emotions, how to have conflict resolution. We don't learn any of these things. Nobody teaches us

this. And so when we become adults, we feel like showing anybody any of these things makes us

weak. So we don't talk about it at all. We don't talk about it with our friends. We hold all of that stuff in.

And there's an unfortunate responsibility that we feel as men, whether it's real or not, that we have to

take care of everything, that it is our job to keep everybody safe in the house, to make sure the bills

are paid, to make sure that everybody else is good before we can take care of ourselves. And that's

actually backwards. We need to take care of ourselves before we take care of anybody else. I think,

man, we're just so used to this pressure that we don't realize what we're feeling, that we don't realize

that some of these things that are happening are having an effect on us.

[00:19:14.28] - Jason Prinzo

And the biggest one for me is being aware of my body. My body will tell me when there's stress

happening and when something's coming on quicker than when my mind will tell me. I get stress in

my shoulders. My shoulder's tightened I'll get sick to my stomach. One that's happened lately because

I've been under a lot of stress is tingling in my arms and fingers, which can feel like a sign of a heart

attack. Yeah, that's the first thing. So it was really scary at first. It wasn't until I went to the doctor and

we talked about it that it's a stress response. Some people will have twitching in their eyes. These are

all indications that there is something going on psychologically that we are stressing about or is

bothering us. And that's when we need to start taking some and just paying attention to how we're

feeling. If you're noticing that you or somebody is spending an anordym amount of time in the house

or in bed, that's a huge sign that there's something going on. Pulling away from friends, another huge

sign. When we're in this bad place, we isolate. There's a reason why we lay in bed all the time,

because the idea of getting up out of bed just feels monstrous.

[00:20:26.04] - Jason Prinzo

It feels like the biggest thing we're going to do all day is just get out of bed. But it works backwards

because we're in this place where we don't feel well and we don't want to do life. And so we hole up in

bed. But doing that just makes every day feel like it's 100 hours long. And you feel like you're justnever coming out of this space. And the ridiculousness that we feel is very, very real to us. So when a

friend tells you what they're feeling and why they're feeling this way, one of the worst things anybody

can say is, what do you have to be sad about? Or think about the bright side. One of the most irritating

ones is, well, if you think that's bad, I did this. And all that is going to do is make any of us stop talking

because it's hard enough to try to fight through these feelings without having to fight with you to

accept what we're feeling.

[00:21:20.29] - Cari Champion

Do you think... Because I could imagine someone, friends, saying that, I am in therapy. I've been

therapy enough to know not to say that. But for those who don't have therapy and they don't have the

words, they think they're consoling you. Yes. Is there a space for you to say, I know you're trying to

console me. That's not going to help, though, in this moment. Is there a space for you to understand

why they don't understand those aren't the words?

[00:21:50.28] - Jason Prinzo

Yes, but it's hard in that moment. Because you're already in this place where you're fighting. You're in

fight or flight mode, and you're fighting to get out of this. You're fighting to get into a better head

space. We want to be happy. When somebody is saying those things to you, even though we know it's

going to be helpful, there's a lot of anger that's built up because we feel alone in that moment, and the

people that we're leaning on don't understand. But in that moment, to your point, we do need to be

able to take a step back and say, Hey, look, I know you're trying to help, but you're making me feel

more isolated. All I need from you is to say, I'm sure that's really hard. What can I do to help? I can't

imagine what that feels like. Just make us feel as if you understand and can be compassionate in

some way.

[00:22:40.23] - Cari Champion

That's so good. I think having this conversation with you is so helpful because I tend to only share

with people I'm close with. But I'll share. I'm struggling with my relationship with my mother, and I'll

say this. I'll say, I'm going to tell you something. But I need you to understand, I don't want you to

solve this problem. I definitely don't want you to take her side. I want you to hear me as a person and

separate yourself from this. Just hear what I'm saying. And my friends, without fail, yourself included,

never let me down. People who don't really know me and I share too soon, that will happen. So I know

it's really important to create a safe space to share these feelings things. When we talk about how

sad we are, some people don't want to use the depression word, but studies show that everybody's...

What's the percentage of people who experience some depression throughout their lifetime? I would

assume everyone.

[00:23:44.10] - Jason Prinzo

I mean, pretty much every... It's like 70 or 80 % will experience some mental health issue at some

point in their life. I mean, for athletes, they say that 35 % of elite athletes struggle with their mental

health. And we've had more and more people come out and talk about that Obviously, Simone Biles,

Kevin Love, Jake Lazer has written a book about his struggles. So it does affect pretty much

everybody. At some point, those of us that have clinically, either have anxiety, depression, those

things are constant. And there's a little bit of a misconception when it comes to anxiety. And I realized

now I wasn't diagnosed with anxiety until I was married. And I realized that my anxiety- Are you saying

that my friend Angie brought on anxiety? No, I'm saying that your friend Angie was the one that

pushed me to go to the doctor.

[00:24:30.27] - Cari Champion

I love it. Okay, I love it because I was going to fight you. It would make five seconds.

[00:24:35.23] - Jason Prinzo

I ruined our honeymoon because of my anxiety. I'll tell you a good story. Work is a major stressor for

me, and I have a lot of anxiety and a huge amount of imposter syndrome. And that's something that I

work on all the time. So when we were on our honeymoon, we were in Vegas, and Saturday, Sunday,

great. We're gambling, we're going to dinners, we're having fun. When Monday came around and I was

normally working, my My brain went to work mode. And we were going to the pool. We had a cabanarented by the pool. And my brain was lying to me saying that if I don't work today and the company

has a bad day, it's going to be my fault and I'm going to get fired. If I don't work and they have a good

day, it's going to be proof that I'm not necessary and I'm going to be fired. I told Angie, I'm just going

to send a couple of emails, and that turned into 6 hours. And we were at the airport and I was having a

breakdown, and she grabbed me by and she said, You have anxiety, and I need you to go get help.

[00:25:34.19] - Jason Prinzo

I said, I don't. I have a stressful job. And if we're going to be married, I need you to understand the

stress that I'm under and the pressure of my job. And she grabbed tighter and she said, You have

anxiety. It's not just affecting you, but it's affecting me. And that crushed me because it's the person I

love the most, and I realized I had ruined our honeymoon.

[00:25:55.15] - Cari Champion

You did not ruin the honeymoon. Just ask her.

[00:25:59.19] - Jason Prinzo

No, No.

[00:26:00.07] - Cari Champion

He said, No.

[00:26:03.06] - Jason Prinzo

But the anxiety is what leads to a lot of these feelings, right? Because when we're struggling with

anxiety, especially for me, is I can only think of worst case scenario. And a lot of times I spent my

childhood thinking that that was preparation, that I was just preparing for the worst in case that

happened. But I realized now that what I was thinking was that only the worst was going to happen,

that there was no other option but the worst thing. And you spend months, if you got an event coming

up, if I have a big speech coming, I'm stressing for an entire month about what am I going to do when

this is awful? What am I going to do? What is Kerry going to say to me when I'm terrible on her

podcast today. I want to say you that. Those things are constantly going through my head. I don't

know. And it's... The simplest term is the form of brainwashing. We are self-brainwashing. There's a

thing called the Illusion of Truth Effect, and it's something that's used by manipulators, cult leaders,

politicians.

[00:27:28.16] - Cari Champion

It's repeatedly hearing false information as truth. When you hear things over and over and over, you

wind up believing them. When we're telling ourselves that these things are going to fail or we're not

worthy of love or we're not worthy of friendship, you can't help but believe it.

[00:27:44.19] - Jason Prinzo

It's the only thing that we're hearing. When you say you're hearing that, who's telling you that? You?

Yes. And that is a form of the mental health issue that you've been talking about because you

constantly have a track saying that you're not worthy enough. Yes. I'm not good enough. I'm not

attractive enough. I'm not smart enough. Because of moving around in school and I have some ADHD

issues, I was in learning disability classes. I knew I wasn't dumb, but this is the way that my life is

playing out because I was so far behind. And so there's this constant feeling as kids of just not being

good enough.

[00:28:20.15] - Cari Champion

And it's a shame that something that can happen to us for 10 or 15 of our initial years can still play

out 30, 40 years later, even though there's zero indication that any of that is true over the last 30 years

of my life. But I still feel it every day. Fascinating how the brain works. I think of how our brains aren't

even fully developed when we start to have these whizz and these thoughts in our minds because

they say your brain doesn't fully develop until your mid to late 20s. My thought process then is, why do

we hold on to all the negative? It's the same with social media. You remember the negative comments

before you remember the positive comments. There is something about the way we need to rewire

our brain, the science behind that. You have shared, and I know when I went to your Instagram page,your mental health Instagram page, it's Jason Prinzo, MH, M as in Mary, H as in health, right? Yeah,

mental health. M as in mental, H as in health. How about that? I heard you talk about some solutions.

We've talked about what are some of the things that can trigger mental health issues, whether it be

stress, how you feel about yourself, how does it show itself in the body for you?

[00:29:33.17] - Cari Champion

It's been tingling. It could be your shoulders stiffen. For me, I hold my breath.

[00:29:38.10] - Jason Prinzo

Yes, I do the same thing. I hold my breath when I'm just feeling tense. And then I'm like, Wait, why am I

holding my breath?

[00:29:46.18] - Cari Champion

And then I just get out of it. And you're like, Am I sick? Because I'm out of breath. Am I that far out of

shape? No, I'm just holding it. I'm getting heavy from walking up the steps. No, it's just stress. I'm just

holding it. Stress response. You said a couple of things that are mechanisms in which you can cope,

which are just some natural mechanisms.

[00:30:08.28] - Jason Prinzo

Being kind lowers your blood pressure. Can you tell us other ways where These are natural

mechanisms before we dive into the drugs of it all. Yes, and I have a lot to say about therapy as well.

But I think there are a lot of things we can do. Socializing might be the most important thing in order

to manage our mental health. When we're out with our friends and we're socialized and we feel part of

a group, we feel accepted, and there's bonding moments that we have in there that just make us feel a

lot better. And we don't necessarily do this as much in big groups, but when we're one-on-one, and

you talked about this about sharing with friends. Shared experience is so helpful because it makes

you feel like you're not alone. And when you're able to get some of those things out and somebody

else is telling you their experience as well, there's something soothing about it that It's helpful. So

socializing is huge. Just getting out in nature at all has amazing effects of being calming for our

brain. When I notice that I'm starting to get anxiety about something coming up, there are a few things

that I like to do.

[00:31:15.24] - Jason Prinzo

Breathing exercises are always great. I like to do box breathing. If you're not familiar with it, you hold

your breath for seven seconds, you breathe in for seven, hold for seven, and blow out for seven. I can't

do typical deep breathing because my brain will still wander in stress. So the box breathing with the

cadence is enough of a distraction to start to lower my blood pressure and bring me back to a better

place because it's all I can concentrate on. Lavender oil is great to have around. Lavender oil has very

calming and sedative effects. I keep lavender oil with me and I'll put it on my wrist or my hands and

just breathe it in for a while. Physical exertion is great. There are a lot of times I work in a shared

office space, so I'll go into one of the private rooms and do push-ups or jumping jacks. And there's a

dopamine release with that that gets you into a better place. That's always really great. Anything

creative. As you know, I started painting about seven years ago. That has been... There's a little crash

there. That has been so extremely helpful for me, especially with my anxiety.

[00:32:21.18] - Jason Prinzo

And that's why you're seeing a lot of more adult coloring books. You're seeing more of the paint and

wine things, because when you're working on something creative, when I'm painting, I can't think

about anything but what I'm working on in that moment. And when you're done, there's a sense of

accomplishment at the end of the day. You to see your progress. I could paint for eight hours and not

stop. I have to set alarms and remind me to go eat, to go spend time with my wife because I'm so

calm and relaxed in that moment that I don't want it to stop. Those are all incredible things that we

can do. And there's a couple of sneaky ones. One that I love is wearing clothes that I feel great in. I

think we all have those outfits that we're like, I look great in We have confidence we feel good.

[00:33:11.07] - Cari Champion

If I've had a few bad days, I'll find the thing that makes me feel the best. I don't care if it's overdressedor not, and I'll throw that on and go to work.

[00:33:22.07] - Jason Prinzo

That's so smart. It makes me feel better. That's so smart. Yeah, that's so smart. I forgot about that. I'll

do that. I'll do that when I'm feeling away. Yeah, I love that. Okay. I'm a huge proponent of therapy.

Therapy has been great to me. I tell people all the time that I don't spend my time in therapy trying to

figure out why I think the way that I do. I have an understanding of that. I spend my time in therapy

figuring out how do I live with the results of this? How do I blaze new trails in my mind so that I go to

better places instead of the negative space? And the thing that I explain to people, and this is

especially for men, because we just have a tough time wrapping our head around going to therapy

and talking to somebody, is most of us have worked out with trainers. Most of us have played in

sports as a kid and had coaches. Maybe you've had a tutor. A therapist is nothing but a trainer for

your brain. It is just there to help you become stronger, no different than working out at the gym, no

different than Having a tutor, a mentor, whatever it is.

[00:34:29.25] - Jason Prinzo

We constantly eat diets to fight off heart disease, diabetes. We work out in order to have a long life,

but we don't do anything about our mental health until there's We don't work on that ahead of time to

stay ahead of it. We wait until the car breaks down to go and get an oil change. And that's something

that we all need to be aware of. And we have to maintain our mental health and make plans. Look, I

have something I call my happy list, and these are all things that give me a little bit of joy. And it could

be big things like traveling. It can be as small as going to get coffee. I love walking to a coffee shop

and hearing the sound of the grind. All of that is great for me. And I try to do one thing on my happy

list every day. It could be 10 minutes. I might listen to music for 20 minutes, but I have to work that in

every single day like it's a job because those are the things that keep me set mentally and reset me

mentally.

[00:35:32.13] - Cari Champion

And if I go three, four, five days without doing some of these things, then my mind starts going to a

bad place. Sure. It's interesting for me when I'm in a space where I'm not happy, if I start cleaning my

house, I feel so good. I'm best when people come over and they're like, Your house is so immagulate.

I'm like, No, it makes me feel better to unpack my clothes as soon as I travel, to do some laundry, to

tighten up, tighten here. It's all this anxious energy that wants to be released. That's what I hear you

saying. And then there's also this anxious mind that needs to be calmed. And that's why when people

say things like, Oh, I go outside and I walk. I'm living in New York now. I walk every week in my favorite

neighborhood because it's a neighborhood. It's not loud, it's not busy. But when I walk and I look

around, all of this feels soft to me. The lens is so much more softer and not as harsh, and there is

bright lighting, and there is better air, all things that I'm just seeing naturally. And these are all really

simple techniques.

[00:36:37.27] - Cari Champion

But we live in a world now where a lot of people want to throw drugs at it, and you have I'm just going

to be candid. When I heard you said you did ketamine, I was like, Wait, what? I know Matthew, the guy

from Friends, died off of that. I'm like, That's dangerous. How do you balance using drugs to help,

psychedelics for many people, to help and not become addicted when there's something intrinsically

connected with people who have mental health problems and addiction?

[00:37:05.14] - Jason Prinzo

There's some... Sure. Because you want to medicate the pain. I could see why it becomes so

addictive. Right. So a couple of things. I've done all different types of medications. Some of them

have been really effective, some of them have it. One of the problems with medications in pill form

when it comes to mental health is there's a ramp up phase, right? It doesn't really start taking effect

for 4-6 weeks that you'll start to feel the positive effects from it. But for those 4-6 weeks, it can ramp

up the negative feelings. So when you're trying to find the right medication, it can be this cycle of up

and down because you're starting something new and it ramps up all the anxiety and depression, and

you're waiting for it to fix and it doesn't, so then you got to try a new one. And then that ramps up,

where with a lot of the psychedelics, the effects of it are pretty immediate. What happened with mewith Ketamine was, and it is part of my story of becoming an advocate, in 2018, I was laying on the

couch and I was in a really bad space, and I was going through my Facebook page, and I thought, I

was like, Boy, this looks amazing.

[00:38:15.06] - Jason Prinzo

I got a great life. People are getting to see my sports center highlights every day, and it looks like I'm

just having a ball, but I'm struggling every day. So I made a post about it, and I was shocked at how

many people responded. A lot of DMs from people just wanting to talk about stuff. And a friend of

mine who is an anesthesiologist had just opened a clinic, and he was doing ketamine treatments. And

he said to me, he goes, I didn't know that you were struggling. Why don't you come and try ketamine?

And I I completely refused. I was like, This sounds silly. It sounds scary. It sounds scary. I'm not a

drug user. It's not something I'm interested in. But he kept asking, and I kept doing the research. What

I learned was that ketamine was originally used during the Vietnam War when they were doing

surgeries in the field. And what they realized was that people were coming out mentally feeling better

than they were prior. University of Michigan started doing studies on the effects of ketamine. So

essentially what happens in ketamine treatments, and I've done it where it's an IV, and you go in and it

takes about 45 minutes.

[00:39:22.22] - Jason Prinzo

You have a small trip. It's such a microdose that it's not something that you feel the need to become

addicted to. I'm sure there's some addictive results from people that are doing this, but it's very far

and few between. And the effects can be immediate.

[00:39:38.00] - Cari Champion

When you first do it, you got to do it like six sessions in the the first two weeks. And then the positive

effects, can last up to a month to six weeks. So you're not constantly doing these treatments. Okay,

but are you administering or are you going to-No, there's a doctor. I would only do it with a doctor

administering. You can only do it with the doctor. You can't run around and pop some ketamine pills.

[00:40:03.03] - Jason Prinzo

You have to have a doctor administer. So that is the way to at least one or two safeguards to stop it

from happening. But I'm sure it's obviously out there illegally, but you're saying if someone wanted to

try under a doctor's care, it does work. Correct. The gentleman from Friends that passed away from it,

he had six times the amount in his body that you would get from a treatment. When you get a

treatment, it only lasts in your body for up to... It's got a 50% rate for the next two days.

[00:40:34.16] - Cari Champion

He hadn't had a treatment for a week and a half.

[00:40:37.28] - Jason Prinzo

That wasn't in his system anymore. I realized that the headlines make it look like ketamine treatments

are killing people, and that's just not was the case. He was overloaded with ketamine. He was doing it

as a recreational drug. What made you decide to use ketamine? I felt like I was running out of options.

I had changed medications so many times, and it had me in such a bad place that I was desperate.

When I did the research, I gave it a try, and honestly, it was really helpful. I will tell you this, and I'll get

a little emotional. 2020, I became suicidal for the first time. Even though I struggled with depression

and anxiety my whole life, I had never thought about suicide until I had a friend die by suicide when I

was 18. I'm not lying when I tell you that the idea of suicide crossed my mind every single day for the

next 30 years. It wasn't something that I was planning. I kept it as an option that if things got bad

enough, I always had this out. In 2020, I started to normalize it. We had all the turmoil politically.

[00:41:41.10] - Jason Prinzo

We I had protests happening everywhere. I'm looking around and seeing how my friends like you are

being affected by some of the things that are happening. It's tearing at me. I feel like I'm arguing with

family, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I realized that I normalized it so much that I knew how I was

going to do it, I knew where I was going to do it, and I knew I was going to do it in a way that nobody I

love would find me. Because I didn't want them to have that trauma. And one of the hardest thingsthat I ever did, and one of the best things I ever did was I was aware enough to go to my wife and say,

Life is too hard for me, and I'm having really bad thoughts. We immediately got me some help, and

that help was a ketamine treatment. And ketamine in one treatment can help relieve those thoughts

of suicide. And it saved my life. I mean, it saved my life. And what I did from there, I went and checked

into an outpatient facility. I did two weeks of intensive group and one-on-one therapy, and I needed it.

[00:42:47.18] - Jason Prinzo

And the things that I learned there have been life-saving and life-changing. A lot of the things that I

talk about as far as tools to help are all things that I learned over those two weeks. When I did it, I was

very upfront. I told all the people that I work with, anybody I do business with, Hey, this is what's

happening. This is what I'm because I wanted to start letting people know that this is okay. If I had

cancer, if I had diabetes, if I had anything else that required me to get treatment in a facility, I wouldn't

be embarrassed about it, and I shouldn't be embarrassed about this, and I refuse to be.

[00:43:25.29] - Cari Champion

I love you, friend. That's so kind if we share that story. Now we're all crying. It's okay. I think that it's

very important to to be as honest and as vulnerable as you are. This thing called life isn't easy. We

need more than just one month to highlight why mental health is so important. I don't want to say it's

popular and vogue, but I am always so encouraged when I see athletes, to your point, or celebrities, or

whomever, people with a platform. I watched you talk about this in bits and pieces. I watched one of

your very first corporate speeches that you gave, and I immediately thought, Oh, this is his

assignment. This is what he has been called to do. You are creative in general, but this will be your

legacy and how you will change people's lives by sharing your story. Thank you. And then also,

admittedly, still struggling, still trying to figure it out. Look, I'm never going to beat it. It's not going to

go away.

[00:44:21.24] - Jason Prinzo

I have to learn how to manage it and live with it and not have it affect the people around me. We talk

about athletes, and it's come out a lot lately. I was really shocked at how many of my athlete friends

would come to me one-on-one and pull me aside and go, I didn't know. Here This is what I'm feeling.

I've never told anybody. Their struggles are a lot different. I've seen friends of mine struggle during

retirement because that transition from retirement to every Everyday life is really difficult. I don't think

that a lot of us as fans or general public realize these guys are still in their 30s. Most of the times,

they haven't made the decision to retire. Somebody made that for them. Something that they've been

doing their entire life since they were seven or eight years old is suddenly being taken away at a time

when they're still young and healthy. There's a huge identity crisis there. And for those people that

make up the majority of professional athletes that don't make retirement money, you're looking at

being 34, 35 years old and trying to figure out what's next because you have to work and you've never

had a job, you've never made a resume before, and everybody else is far along in developing their

careers and you're figuring out what's next.

[00:45:35.28] - Jason Prinzo

That can be a huge blow to people mentally. It's also to anybody in a space where you have to find out

who you are. You think about that, what about when someone is transitioning into a new career such

as yourself or trying to redevelop the career that you have, such as myself?

[00:45:52.26] - Cari Champion

I was going to bring that up. You left a big company, a huge brand, and you did it on your own terms.

Look, I've told you when you first told me you were going to do it, I was so proud of you, and you've

done amazing since then.

[00:46:08.21] - Jason Prinzo

But I imagine there had to be a period where you were like- It's just to try to think your identity is

attached to what you do. That happened to me when I first... I was a local news reporter. Then I

wasn't a local news reporter.

[00:46:24.01] - Cari ChampionI was just trying to figure out when can I get my next local job, and I didn't. But I was always, I would

lead with, I'm a reporter, and so much of our work is attached to what we do. I see it in everybody's

world. I see it when a mother's children leave and she's an empty nester, or when a woman decides to

leave her husband and she's happy that she did it, but she has to find a whole new life, or vice versa,

when a man leaves his family or his wife, whomever. When you leave a relationship and you've been

so intricately connected to this being, this person, this entity, it happens. None of us are excluded

from that. That's when, for me, I think therapy is important to express how you feel, not to let it be. It's

easy and it can happen. I even think of people when they are at the highlight of their career and they're

showing their sports center clips of what they're doing and how they are still very much struggling,

struggling with who likes me, who really wants to be my friend, who's using me, how do I adjust to this

new world where I don't know who to trust?

[00:47:32.07] - Cari Champion

And that's why it's so, to me, very important to, one, keep a community. When you start talking about

your friends and who you can share with, I think that's, to me, that's the only thing that saves us in any

of these circumstances. Totally. And look, there are a couple of things that I want to talk about that

you just pointed out. One, as parents, you talk about raising children.

[00:47:54.26] - Jason Prinzo

A mistake that I think a lot of parents make is they try to fix themselves to their children. And that's

what my mother did with me, where she was trying to prepare me to not make the same mistakes she

did because they were a problem for her, but they weren't a problem for me. So at seven, eight, nine

years old, my mother was trying to teach me how to be an adult where I knew when bills weren't

getting paid, I knew when we might get evicted, I when loans didn't go through. She was trying to

teach me responsibility and how to understand how to be an adult. But at that young age, all it did

was caused me to have more fear of what was happening. I had already had fear of what my father

was going to be doing physically to us. Now I have this fear that I have to deal with and I have to think

about these things with my mother. She was just trying to fix herself because she didn't have those

tools when she had first gotten married She wanted to make sure that I had them. She had the best

intentions.

[00:49:00.01] - Jason Prinzo

It just caused a lot of anxiety. That's difficult, right? For women, you guys have so much pressure, and

it's different than what men feel. You're told that you can't have it all, right? That if you work, you're

just a working woman, and that's all you are. You can't be all of these other things. If you're having a

bad day, and I even hate using the word emotional because when you attach emotional to women, it

has a different meaning than when you attach it to men. If you're upset, they're just being emotional or

you can't say anything. It's Guys, we do the exact opposite. We don't say anything. And it's really

unfair. And I've noticed a lot lately when I speak out about men's mental health, because that's the

one that I can relate to the most, I get a lot of women coming back saying, Well, what about this? And

what about this? And it goes into what I was saying about politics to you the other day. Mental health

isn't a team sport. Nope. Both things can be true. And nobody is saying that all men are making

women feel this way, and all women are making men feel this way.

[00:50:06.03] - Jason Prinzo

What we need to do is be able to have a conversation and say, Here are the things that I'm feeling.

And even though I may feel as a man that it's my responsibility to take care of everything, I'm not

saying that it is. I'm saying that's the pressure that I feel. My wife and I have taken turns being

breadwinters, and my wife has out earned me a lot of times by far. It has never been an issue to me.

But even in those times, I felt like it was my responsibility to make sure that all the bills were paid, that

I had everything handled. Even though my wife is very supportive, can handle a lot of those things, it's

just the pressure that I feel. I'm sure she feels pressure of what is a great wife. I know she felt a lot of

pressure of that she wasn't the right mother, that she wasn't the arts and crafts mother. She was a

working mother, so she felt like she was failing there, and that's really unfair. There's all these societal

pressures and gender pressures that we have, and it's not a team sport. We can come together and

talk about these things and what our differences are and help each other.[00:51:15.08] - Jason Prinzo

It's not me against you. It's not men against women. When you hear certain genders talking about

their struggles, it's not saying that they have it worse or we have it worse. We're all in this together.

We're all just trying to figure it out. I love it. You posted something on your mental health page that

said it was about normal.

[00:51:35.05] - Cari Champion

I'll end with this. Normal is subjective. There is no normal anything. What you normally do, there's no

something. I think the more that we have these conversations and we're more honest about where we

are in our normal space of life, then people will start to understand. I appreciate you so much. What

other resources would you like to provide? You have jasonprinzo. Mh. Can follow you on Instagram.

Where else can people find your- Can follow me on Instagram. My website is jasonprinzo. Com. And

on there, if you're searching for help, I have a page that has a list of different resources in order to find

therapists, in order to find an affordable therapist, in order to find help for substance abuse, for any

physical abuse.

[00:52:16.13] - Jason Prinzo

That's all on there if you go to my page because there are a lot of resources, but a lot of us don't know

where to go to get them. And so I've got them all listed on my page, and I would encourage anybody, if

you're struggling and you need help, there are ways to find it. You can go directly to my page and find

any resources you need. Thank you for having the capacity to share this story and to make sure that

other people are in a position to find solutions, healthy, safe solutions, or at least feel safe to share.

[00:52:49.26] - Cari Champion

Thank you for giving me the platform and taking the time. And I love you.

[00:52:54.19] - Jason Prinzo

I love you, too. Big little sister. I love you, too. Big little sister because I'm taller than you.

[00:53:00.27] - Cari Champion

You're taller than me. Okay. I thought you were trying to talk about my weight. I thought you were

talking about my weight. No, I'm talking about height. I'm talking about height. You got them big long

legs. There go my therapy. I love you dearly and take care of yourself. I'll talk to you soon, okay? All