250 - Mental Health with Ruby Bouie Johnson

Full transcript available

Mental health in polyamory

Finding a good therapist or counselor who has experience with polyamory or non-monogamy can be difficult. Often, those of us who seek therapy for mental illness end up doing the teaching about non-monogamy, and that defeats the purpose of going to a professional.

Ruby Bouie Johnson has been a guest on Multiamory before, but this week she’s here to talk specifically about mental health. As a therapist who is openly experienced with both polyamory and kink, Ruby is able to relate to members of the polyamorous community and offer guidance that takes ethical non-monogamy into consideration.

We asked our members of Patreon to come up with some questions relating to mental health and polyamory that they’ve struggled with, and in this episode, Ruby gives her insight as a professional therapist not only well-versed in polyamory, but as a member of the polyamory community as well.

Give this week’s episode a listen to learn more about Ruby’s take on mental illness within the poly community and her expertise concerning our patrons’ questions.

Transcript

This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're speaking with counselor and sexuality educator, Ruby Bouie Johnson. We're going to tackle a big topic that has been requested many, many times, which is managing mental health in relationships and also the question of how one's mental health interacts with non-monogamy. Ruby, thank you so much for joining us today.

Ruby: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me again.

Jase: To start out, can we first just ask a little bit about, what inspired you to start working in the mental health field and sexuality education too?

Ruby: I've been a therapist since 2002. This is year 17. I actually did not plan to get into the mental health field. It happened when I got my master's in social work. The main jobs were in the mental health field. I was actually wanted to do community organizing.

Jase: Oh, wow.

Ruby: Which I'm doing now actually. Yes. I fell into it, and I was told I'm good at it, so that's been what I've been doing the entire time. Since I used to work in psychiatric hospitals and residential treatment facility and I encountered people in open relationships often. At that time, I did not know what was going on but that set the stage for me to start getting into the sexuality field and just about sexual health and how people can be safe in their sexual practices and how comprehensive sexual health is something that's beyond that. It's about pleasure, consent. That happened about six years ago.

Jase: Wow. That's really interesting because I feel like if you went into that and started working with people with mental health issues and then from there just seeing, "There's a need for this," and that's what grew into it rather than like, "I had this hobby of being kinky and over here I have this job, and so, I'm just going to mix the two." That's really cool that you really sought out to to educate yourself and then educate others in that.

Ruby: Yes. That's always something that is very important is to be a consistent and constant life learner. I believe that if I stop learning, I stop being creative, and I stop being able to do what I love to do. I've discovered that kink was a word six years ago. I was just doing it since I was 17.

Ruby: I discovered kink. "This is what this is. This is what I've been doing." That's actually more than six or like 10 years ago.

Dedeker: I love that.

Jase: That's great.

Dedeker: How long has it been for you that in your practice you've been open about specializing in working with clients who are non-monogamous or kinky or in that field in some way?

Ruby: it's been about five to six years. I've been working exclusively what mostly exclusive women individuals who are non-monogamous and kinky. I discovered that people actually want to know if you're doing this theoretically or in practice. I started to be more open with the podcast like your podcast that I was on a couple of years ago. Those particular ways of communicating with people, and so, they discovered that I also work with people in my private practice. Non-Monogamy.

Jase: Yes. That's awesome.

Dedeker: Yes. That's interesting because, in my own work with clients, that has been a recurring theme that I've had that either people go out and find a therapist or a counselor who doesn't know anything about kink or non-monogamy and they have a really negative experience or, they find someone who list themselves as poly friendly or kink friendly and the person is like, "Yes.

It was fine," but this person had never actually been in any of these kink situations or in any of these non-monogamous situations and so, as far as actually being able to really relate or reflect, any, actually practical knowledge, that was nonexistent and so it does seem. At least that's what I'm saying that people do really appreciate knowing that at least their therapist or their counselor or someone who's guiding them, I guess, has had some-

Jase: They get it.

Dedeker: - on the ground. They get it and on a certain level. Even if they're no longer non-monogamous or kinky or whatever, that there's some deep knowing that's there that's not, "So, I took a weekend workshop as a therapist about polyamory or whatever."

Ruby: Exactly. It's a whole new language, it's a whole new culture. The culture itself is something that unless you are entrenched within it, unless you are really in it and understand it, it's difficult to give that to another client because they'll spend their time educating you. A client can come to me and say, "I was in this triad and then it turned it into a V and now the V is no longer working, and we want to be polyfidelitive and having those two sentences, they can spend an entire session educating their therapists on what that means.

Dedeker: Then there's your copay out the window.

Ruby: Or if you don't take insurance, that's a whole a lot amount of money out the window.

Dedeker: Exactly.

Jase: Right.

Ruby: I make sure that my clients actually are getting what they're needing by communicating to them, "You can come in to see me and you don't have to give me two hours of prep before I'm able to help."

Dedeker: Yes. 100%. I want to dive into the topic at hand. It's a very broad topic. It's definitely impossible to cover in one episode. This will probably be in the future of our podcast. We'll probably end up doing multiple episodes on the topic of mental health. Because it's so broad, that's why I specifically reached out to our patron community, our private patron group and I just posed the question, what are your most important questions?

What are the things you wonder about? What are the things you worry about? When it comes to mental health and relationships and we got so many responses on that thread and in reading through all of these responses there were certainly some recurring themes that emerged. I'm going to dive into these themes one by one and I can read you some of the specific questions or comments that we got from our listeners. It's okay if it's a little organic, and we go all over the place.

I thought that that's where we can begin. One of the themes that came out, and I want to just knock this out right away, is that something that a lot of people have heard or something that I've even seen get tossed around even in fairly non-monogamous positive circles is this sentiment that people who have mental health issues or people who are neurodivergent in some way are inherently going to find non-monogamous relationships more difficult.

I'm going to read your specific comment from one of our listeners. They say, "I feel like I've heard before that attempting non-monogamy is not a great idea if you're suffering from one or more mental illnesses and that's something that has stuck in my brain while trying to navigate this lifestyle for myself. Could you please speak to that and maybe affirm those of us suffering that are making a go of this.

Ruby: Absolutely. That is a huge myth. That is actually a very sad myth. With any relationship-- I mean, most of us at some level experience anxiety, sadness et cetera and that does not say that we are inappropriate or ill-equipped to be within a relationship. I think with anyone who has any mental difference, and that's the word I like to use, differences versus the pathological disease or illness. I like to use differences for anyone of us who have emotional or mental differences. I think it's important to recognize that we can have healthy loving relationships.

The same way that we take care of our hygiene, it's the same way that we would take care of our mental well-being. It's as long as we're communicating and we have people around us who actually see our worth regardless of, we can have successful relationships. The reason I'm saying we is because, I have the question, and I take medication and I have many relationships. I'm not only speaking from my years of practice, I'm also speaking personally that is absolutely possible to have many loving relationships and your mental wellbeing does not have to deter that at all.

Dedeker: Yes, it definitely does beg the question of-- at least the image that comes to mind for me is-- well, if we start hacking away like, well, if you have this particular mental difference or mental illness or whatever, then you're not cut out for non-monogamy. That then it starts to become like, well, how "perfectly mentally healthy do you have to be able to be in a relationship," because I feel like none of us fit that bill, honestly, at the end of the day.

Ruby: Right. Exactly. I agree wholeheartedly with that. The reason that that's important to understand is that it doesn't create that big you or that false dichotomy of well, unwell or that us-them type of mentality, that separateness and when we want connection within polyamorous relationships because that's what we're about is connection and intimacy. If we have that barrier in between us based upon something that is not true, how sad is that?

Jase: This is totally anecdotal and not scientific at all, but I feel like just from my experience talking with people, for example, autism seems to be quite highly represented amongst poly communities that I know just as an example of how to counter this idea that someone who's mentally different or neurodivergent or whatever term we want to use, that they wouldn't be cut out for it. I don't know if you've experienced that at all, but I just feel like anecdotally, I've noticed that.

Ruby: Yes. Cognitive differences as well, persons who are on the autism spectrum, I do find in practice that there are individuals, I don't want to say over-representative but I do encounter many people whom are autistic who want to have relationships. Looking at the various-- what I work with those clients typically is around identifying those particular tools socially, verbally that something is going on or something is happening within a relationship because there's a lot of concrete thinking but that does not say, "Hey, you cannot have a relationship." That is a misnomer also.

Jase: Now I want to pivot a little bit to another topic that came up quite a bit. This is a big one, particularly because often people have multiple partners and it's how to care for a partner's mental health. A couple examples of this is, one is the question, how do I make sure my partner with depression/mental health issue is okay, while at the same time maintaining my own mental wellbeing? Another one, how do I avoid burnout after caring for a partner or multiple partners who are in crisis because of that?

Ruby: That is a fantastic question. I love that. That's what I spend a lot of time doing is teaching people how to be supportive and one of the things that I tend to emphasize is that, there's no fixing here. Recognizing between you and your partner, what your role is as a support person and having a shared meaning of what supportive means and asking that partner, how can I best support you?

Those are some important questions because, when we take it on ourselves and become someone's nurse or doctor, that's where that emotional labor becomes very overwhelming and they can definitely lead to burnout and it can push you away from an individual. It's important that your partner makes sure they have a therapist of their own and not make you their therapist and make sure that your partner is taking ownership for their wellbeing.

It's like what Amy is saying, with diet, with hypertension, with diabetes, it's a personal thing to take care of them when you love to support, support is being an extra set of eyes and ears because sometimes you may not even be able to see when you're in an episode or something that's going on. Also for the support person to have their own support, I recommend that there is family members, they can go to support groups or et cetera.

I believe in treating the entire system, the entire poly tool, coming up with ways to communicate with communication boards or ways to communicate it via text. We have Google calendar for everything, why not have a mental wellbeing calendar. If I'm feeling this way, send me a text and a queue that this is a day not to bother me or some level of communication and I think the responsibility falls on both people.

Jase: Yes, that's fantastic. I'm trying to think through like, when these discussions come up, what are some of the responses to that? I feel like one that comes up a lot is this response of, "But, my partner can't take care of themselves."

Ruby: Well, either that's your perception, that person's perception that the partner can take care of themselves or that's part of the stigma and that stigma that's attached with people who have mental or cognitive differences is that they are incapable of taking care of themselves. They put them in this helpless position when actually there's a lot of strength and resilience that is a muscle with people who have mental differences because they've had to manage it for a lot of years. For the support to trust that they can take care of themselves is something that will also free them up from so much emotional labor because it could be they're putting it on themselves.

Jase: That's beautiful. I feel like very empowering for the person with the cognitive differences too to know that, "Oh, my partner also trusts me to take care of myself."

Ruby: Right. Exactly. To make sure that person tells them, "I'm with you because I love you and I don't need-- if I wanted a nurse or if I wanted somebody to help me, I would hire them. You're my lover, you're my friend, you're my whatever and that's the role I have you in my life and not that." That's important also.

Dedeker: I really want to highlight and I appreciate you putting the emphasis on if you're in a support role, also making sure that you're getting your own support as well. Something that I see happen so often is-- and again, this is even in a monogamous relationship or non-monogamous or whatever, but whenever you have the dyad, like the two people that there can be the person who's going through a crisis or going through a challenge, leaning on their partner for support, and then the person who's supporting gets so burnt out and exhausted that then they come right back to that partner in crisis being like, "I need you to listen and support me in how difficult it is to support you right now."

I see it becoming like passing the suffering back and forth to each other and just exhausting the collective resources even in the dyad, which is something that seems is important to avoid.

Ruby: I agree with you with that. The beauty around being in polyamorous relationships or non-monogamous relationships is that you can have, not necessarily all the time, but you can have those other people who are in caring positions, not necessarily supportive but caring positions that you can talk to and say, "Okay, this is my struggle. This is what's going on. I feel powerless. I feel this, I feel overwhelmed. I don't feel they're doing what they need to do."

Have someone on the outside to talk to that's not necessarily so up close and personal where they can't see that there is a possible solution here and that's what it's important. Sometimes you just want to vent. Sometimes you just want to let it out and it's okay to want to vent. It's better to get it out than hold it in and then that resentment comes and then you really don't want to be around that person.

It's still healthy to have your own support system for your own mental wellbeing because you can get physiologically exhausted and that impacts how you emotionally respond. You can become more volatile, more irritable and then that triggers the person who has the mental differences and because there's already probably some issues going on with self-esteem, you see how that viciousness?

Jase: Yes. It cycles back around like that.

Ruby: Perfect. That energy goes through. That's with any good systems theory, any therapist understands how those systems and those feedback loops can impact and you can come in and disrupt it. That's important. How are you disrupting that feedback loop so everybody can see what's going on? That's a big part of my job in my office is to disrupt.

Dedeker: Yes, 100%.

Ruby: Done a whole lot.

Dedeker: No, it's okay. I want to also ask about you, you talked about how you believe in treating the whole system or the whole polycule and again, creating the systems that allow for that feedback loop to not be happening. Do you have examples of stuff that you've seen of effective strategies that entire polycules have been able to take on to be able to avoid that Daisy chain or that really negative domino effect?

Ruby: Well, one of the things that tend to happen when you break it down and you do a lovely genogram on the board. I have a whiteboard and I love my whiteboard. I break it down with all of the members of the polycule. I see how they're spinning and that's usually what I point out is a good strategy, is to see how everyone is spinning around the person who is not doing well at any given moment.

That when the system is spinning around that one person, everyone loses themselves. It's like that person in the middle and everyone is going around taking care of that person, so removing that person out of the middle of it and letting them be their own entity and you not necessarily spin around them is a huge piece of the disruption. Because, if they become the focus, then what about all of the rest of your relationships and what you're doing in your life if that person is the center of everything?

Now that it does come to time when a system has to have family members, when it's getting into a place that is very precarious, where you may need to rally around someone and help them, but that's any someone. Any someone may need to rally around. It's recognizing how you can get caught up within the illness itself or within what's going on itself. You can get caught up and then when everyone is caught up in it, you can't really help, if all of this is making sense.

Dedeker: I imagine that that involves a lot of needing to empower the other people in the polycule to have good boundaries and a good sense of their own capacity and expectations. At least that's what I would guess.

Ruby: Boundaries is a fantastic word. I love that. That's definitely it because it's real easy to become enmeshed and polyamory to where you don't know where you end and someone else begins because it is set up around so much communication and so much intimacy that it can sometimes get to a point when it's not balanced, to become very detrimental.

It's a Bolivian theory that talks about differentiation of shelf, which is a therapeutic approach when you start to say, "I'm a member of this polycule or I'm a member of this relationship, but I'm also my own individual with my own boundaries, with my own identity. I'm more than my partner's lover or I'm more than their support or I'm more than their caregiver. I'm actually my own person.

That's another way to stay healthy is each person is able to recognize there's individual selves and take care of those individuals in addition to being supportive, that also helps with the polycule staying healthy. There's a larger echo system of the polycule then there's your little individual ecosystem of self. When both of those are balanced, that's when things are maintained very healthy.

Dedeker: That makes sense.

Jase: Segueing from that a little bit into the next topic that came up quite a bit is this question of, I guess it has to do with boundaries like you were talking about, but trying to evaluate when it's too much. Some examples here is, what to do, for example, when your partner or a metamour potentially is not acknowledging or addressing their own mental health or their own mental differences?

Another example is, when you find yourself in a situation where you feel like you need to make the decision to, "Abandon them to preserve your own mental health" and how some people shared about how they struggle with that debate. Others saying, I had to make that choice years ago. I still feel bad about it, but it was the right choice for me. It's such an emotionally charged topic, that's such a hard thing. I was wondering what your experience has been working with people in those sorts of questions?

Ruby: Oh wow, so big. I'm trying to put my thoughts together on it because I've seen it with personality disorders. I've seen it with people who have untreated bipolar disorder or some people who have untreated depression, anxiety, individuals who have substance abuse. That is such a huge one. When one descend to the position of their-- what's the word I'm looking for? Their wanting that person to stay well more than that person wants to stay well, that's a huge red flag.

When you're scheduling the doctor's appointments or you're going to pull them out of the bar or that individual is, has an episode to where they're very erratic and they're volatile and it becomes abusive and all of these things that are huge red light indicators. There is an unmanageable date that is constant within our relationship. You have to recognize within yourself when you have reached your limitation.

Not to say that you're abandoning that person, but that person has abandoned themselves and you can't be their life preserver. They have to actually put it on themselves and pull themselves up and it can be, "I can't be with you right now because you're not taking care of yourself. It's starting to make me not, well. I'm feeling exhausted and this has been going on for two months and I don't know what to do other than to give myself space so that I can recover."

Because, this is a system, this is a family thing. When someone is not taking care of themselves, it impacts the entire family. Well, imagine other relationships that are being hit because I'm so focused on keeping you alive and I'm dying over here. Those are hard conversations to have but sometimes they need to happen.

Jase: It makes me think-

Ruby: Because everybody has a bottom. Go ahead.

Jase: It was making me think about what you were saying earlier about trusting your partner to take care of themselves and that your job isn't to fix them, but to be there to support them while they're dealing with themselves. It almost seems like it's an extension of that. It's like, also not being like it's-- not only like do you not need to fix them because I think sometimes people feel guilty like, "Oh, but I should." But you can't actually. That just not a thing you can do from the outside.

Ruby: Absolutely. You can't force-feed people recovery or wellbeing. Either they're going to swallow it whole and digest it or they can choke by not wanting to deal with it. That's one of the things that I use, I use a metaphor of choking and digesting. Sometimes people can get caught in their own stigma around being flawed and shame. Shame is real big, it can eat your lunch if you have mental differences or cognitive differences or emotional or substance abuse or personality. All of these things can eat you up if you're so over-identifying with being flawed or having shame.

Dedeker: I want to do an entire episode on shame. I've been doing a workshop myself on healing shame for counselors and coaches and therapists and stuff like that. It’s just so huge and so all-encompassing. I feel like specifically in American culture, we're so indoctrinated to like carry shame by pretending that we're not ashamed. So many people are caught up in that push-pull just all the time and it just spills over into so many different arenas of life.

Ruby: I'm going to a training the next three days with Brene Brown and it's the Dare to Lead training and a huge piece of her work is about how shame impacts vulnerability and that's one of the things is, individuals do not want to get vulnerable and even say, "I'm scared that this is going on. I can't control it. I don't know what to do about it," and just stating certain things like that is what builds that shame, resilience. Sitting down in front of a polycule or a quad or just people who are in a dyad, sitting down in front of them and saying, "When's the last time you told your partner that you're scared?

Scared of them leaving you, scared of not being who you think you should be within this relationship. When's the last time you said that?" That's another thing is that people don't want to admit those things. Even a support, "I'm scared that I won't be able to do this or you're going to do this." It comes from everybody just naming it. That's a huge one. Just name what's going on.

Dedeker: I feel like I've seen this added level I think as there's more people who are more "savvy" to non-monogamy culture and polyamory culture and stuff like that or people who've been doing it a long time that there can be then this added layer of, "Well, I shouldn't be scared because I've read all the books and listened to all the podcasts and out of how love is so abundant, it doesn't change the way I love my partner or how they love me and then it's okay." I know I've definitely felt that personally in the past that it's like, I shouldn't feel scared.

This vulnerability shouldn't come up because I should know better. I think I'm starting to see a little bit more of that, this added layer to delving into those more vulnerable sticky feelings.

Ruby: Isn't that amazing how people who are monogamous don't have those same internal dialogues? I've been non-monogamous since I was an infant. I shouldn't be. No. That's that Holy Grail mentality that there's one way to do this one way to do that?

Jase: If I just figured out the right way, it'll never be hard again.

Ruby: Right. Then it doesn't.

Dedeker: I want to dive into what I would argue was maybe on the thread that I posted, I guess the topic that came up the most compared to the rest of these, and so, I'm just going to read a couple examples. Someone asked, "How do I differentiate when my behavior stems from symptoms of mental illness or past trauma that aggravates those illnesses or when is it me being a crappier controlling person who needs to step back?" I have another related question. How do I tell the difference between unmanaged mental illness and just bad behavior? I don't want to stigmatize mental illness and I also need to figure out my own boundaries around others behaviors that affect me negatively.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which end is up and we got a lot of comments related to that if people wondering both about their own behavior and a partner's behavior may be a metamorph's behavior of, how much of this can I chuck up to mental difference or mental health issues? How much of this can I chuck up to someone just being crappy or behaving poorly?

Ruby: Wow. That's a lesson. That's a nice dichotomy right there.

The thing is, that comes with time. Just like we build trust incrementally along a relationship, we begin to see people's true selves the same way. Having an understanding of what you're dealing with is really important. Do your own independent research, do your own reading, go to support groups, talk to people, that's when you become that learner. Once you become that learner, you're better able to see things because you have information. You can have "bad behaviors" and you can also have a mental difference diagnosis or something of that effect.

That doesn't mean that one is feeding the other one. That's something also important to recognize that everything is tied to that. Now, they did mention trauma, and I'm going to put a pin in that one and come back to it because trauma responses are very interesting. Having an understanding of the individual, talking to the individual and asking, "So, I've noticed this, is this something that's a part of blank or is this something else. I just want to call it and I want to name it because I can sit here and come up with my own assumptions and I don't want to assume."

Then when they say, "This is this and is because of this," and then I'll say, so they have identified the problem, now they have to come up with their solution to it. After a while, if you keep pointing it out and you keep saying the same thing, you may want to take stop and, "Maybe this is something more than their mental wellbeing, maybe this is something different," and that's like that wait and see or that investigation that we do within relationships with anything until that's my best solution to that. Then you have the trauma responses.

Typically, those activating events, I use the word "activating" because trigger is so watered down, it's so reused and so misused, but those things that activate us. With those activating events, there's certain responses, no fight flight freeze, that can happen, which can be very bizarre behavior. For example, I like to use this analogy. There's been a lot of shootings, I work a lot with black queer people. There was a lot of shootings with cops in on black bodies. One of the things that I like to point out is that, when you're in an activating situation like that and they say, "Get down on the ground," you're frozen.

You don't know how to move or how to maneuver with that and people don't recognize that sometimes things are a trauma response because, there's this consistent attack on someone just being black and you asking them to get down on the ground, don't want to make a sudden move because you don't want to get shot, but yet you get shot anyway. Does that make sense?

Dedeker: Yes, 100%. This is something that this is going to sound weird to say but it's near and dear to my heart because for myself, I left a physically abusive relationship a few years ago and then for the first time in my life, started experiencing PTSD symptoms and never had in my entire life. It was my first time ever having to figure out how to deal with this or learn about this and I really went down this big rabbit hole of learning about trauma responses and doing training and stuff like that.

It really is just this I say the word amazing, not necessarily with a positive bent, but just almost like all inspiring kind of what the body can do with a very, very little activation essentially or like an event that would not seem activating to anybody else in the world but to you, it gets you into that frozen up, locked up trauma response. That's another one where I want to do whole other episode just talking about PTSD and trauma because, that's definitely something that I think more of us need to be talking about.

Ruby: Yes. That also goes into attachment. We talk about it within relationships, attachment, there's disorganized attachment, there's anxious, there's avoidant, there's that rescue attachment, all of these different types of attachment that comes from being insecure within your relationships or insecure within self or the environment. That can also bring about behavior.

I think attachment is something that is amazing to use within non-monogamous or polyamorous relationships because how we attach to people dictates a whole lot about our anxiety, our depression, our moods and all of that, the insecurity that we have and the lack of confidence within our relationships is also something to explore with mental well-being.

Dedeker: Yes. I was only familiar with fearful avoidant attachment, anxious attachment secure attachment. You mentioned a couple others I wasn't familiar with. You mentioned the disorganized and I think one other.

Jase: Rescue attachment.

Dedeker: Rescue, yes. Can you give just kind of a brief like cliff notes versions of those two.

Ruby: Disorganized is when you have both the avoidant and an anxious and they're operating in the same space is kind of like, get away from me but come towards me, get away from me and come towards me or you have that friend foe. That friend either you're my enemy or I want to be around you but I can't stand being around you and it kind of creates that wibble wobble that people say, "They're giving me mixed messages. I don't know what to do." That type of space that you're operating within is because you don't want to do, the person who's in that particular attachment. They're scared, they are overwhelmed, but they love you and they want to be with you. Then you have that rescue attachment. That's the person who wants to go in and fix, and they get their sense of worth by fixing and taking care of or becoming indispensable in some type of way, so that's that one.

Dedeker: Gosh. I could think of a billion examples just hearing about that, but different to that.

Jase: That's the one in my personal life that I've had to work very hard to stop doing, the fixing.

Ruby: Rescuing?

Jase: Yes.

Dedeker: I very relate to the disorganized one. Honestly, I think I'm much more on the avoidant side of things, but that disorganized one, that push, pull, and the back and forth, and the hot and cold, you can see that in so many places in so many relationships. It makes perfect sense.

Jase: I wasn't going to say it, but I thought so too. I was like, "Yes, I think for sure."

Dedeker: Good. I guess it's good I said it first then.

Jase: I'm going to move us to another topic here. I feel like this is one that we could just keep talking about for another two hours and do a whole other mini series on it, or something. This next one is about basically ways to disclose mental health status or mental health differences or something. Again, I'm going to give you some examples of the way this question showed up.

How do I disclose my own mental health status or trauma history to a potential partner? When should I disclose that? Then relatedly but from the other side, is it okay to disclose my partner's mental health status to other partners? Another one is, what one should look for or ask to vet whether a potential partner or partner's mental illness is going to be a red flag or a disqualifier for an intimate relationship. That covered a broad range there, but maybe we can tackle the first two first and then move on to that one.

Ruby: Yes, disclosure. Disclosure, number one, I wouldn't disclose another partner's. I'll let that partner disclose for themselves, I just want to cough it out there first. I gave this example. I did a panel at Black Poly Pride and we did a roleplay. Within the roleplay, I played the person who was going to disclose.

I had been seeing this person for six weeks, and we decided, our vetting period, our consideration period, using that kink terminology, was around six weeks to two months out. You see that as probably you want to go somewhere and you decided to disclose to the individual and speak in I statements.

Disclosing can be as big or as little as you want to it to be. Would I lead in with it going into a new relationship, personally, I probably would not. That's up to you. Going into it when it's appropriate timing because sometimes we can overshare things about ourselves, and it can be off putting. Not that you have to keep it a secret, but there's parts of you you got to make sure people can handle. They build their trust that they can handle yourself and all you are and giving that to them.

The example that I gave within the workshop is that, we've been seeing each other for a little while, and there's some things that I want to share about me because I want you to be informed. I want you to have informed consent about who you're going to get within this relationship. I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I have a psychiatrist. I take my medication and I have a therapist.

I just want you to know that I'm taking care of myself, but I think it's important that you know these aspects of me. I trust that you can honor and respect that I'm taking care of myself. Those type of conversations. I think it's important that when you're disclosing to let the person across from you know that you're taking care of your business and what you need to do. Does that answer your question?

Jase: I think that's great adding the piece. I think that especially if it gets shared early on that I have found that there can be this reaction of panic like, "Oh gosh. Does that mean I'm going to have to take care of you? Does that mean I'm going to have to learn to be your therapist?" I think we are taught that assumption that we end up being the everything to our partner including their therapist and their doctor and their personal trainer and whatever else. I like that including that piece.

Ruby: With polyamory where like everyone can't be my everything. We have that ingrained within us. You can't be my everything, and that's absolutely correct. I don't want you to be my therapist or my psychiatrist. As a therapist, I have to say that all the time. I'm not your therapist. You don't pay me.

Ruby: I make this amount of money an hour, and I don't do dual relationships. I'm not your therapist and I'm not your mother.

Jase: It's one or the other. Can you also real quick, I wanted to clarify something. You talked about the vetting period or you had another term for it that's from the kink world. For our listeners who are not part of the kink scene or who are new to it, could you explain real quick what that means?

Ruby: Being under consideration?

Jase: That's the one.

Ruby: I'm a top. That means that I'm a dom. I'm femdom. When someone wants to be a submissive, I call it being "under consideration", which is the interview stage, to where we figure out if our values, or wants, what we're needing, what our expectations are, protocol. All of that is part of the discussion. For me, the under consideration are the vetting stage. Which is you can use that interchangeably is a long process like six months to nine months. During that time, this is when all that information will come forth. In the kink world, dealing with that, dealing with mental differences and cognitive differences really plays into negotiation, and so that's a whole other episode.

Jase: Could we go then to the second or that last question that was part of that. Which was, what should one look for or ask to vet whether a partner's mental illness or a potential partner's mental illness is a disqualifier or red flag, or something for having an intimate relationship with them? That's when you are like, "Woah."

Ruby: If they say that they don't believe in medication. Not that everybody has to be on medication, but that's a strong statement of that having a mental differences is about neurochemistry, and about how we fire in the brain somewhat. Having a medication as part of it can sometimes be very necessary. Sometimes being on vitamins, B12, vitamin D, folic, that can definitely deal with it and you can manage it that way.

If there is no level of intervention, that's a huge red flag. There has to be some level of intervention going on or present. If people have seasonal affective disorder. Right now I'm asking clients, "Are you going to a tanning bed? What are you doing to take care of yourself?" Winter time is a struggle for many, many clients because of just what's going on within the environment period. This is a busy time in my office.

Those are some of the questions like if you want to ask, "How many of your relationships ended because of something? Are you in other relationships right now?" How they talk about those relationships. Just the questions that give you an idea of how things are being managed for them, and how they're perspective and how they see what's going on with them or some questions. Those are really valid questions to ask, very valid.

Jase: I feel like those are great questions to ask even if you are dating monogamously of just like--

Ruby: Right.

Jase: Asking someone about how was your previous relationships? It's like asking a job candidate, "Why are you not at your previous job anymore?"

Dedeker: Geez.

Jase: Seriously though that it's if they go like, "Well, she was crazy." It's like, "Okay." Maybe that's a red flag that you're actually that you're here.

Dedeker: Yes. Right. It seems it boils down to just seeing if this person has an awareness of how they need to care for themselves and how they need to manage what's going on, like that channel around that is open.

Ruby: Yes. There's a couple of questions that you can ask if you want to, and that's stuff that-- and please allow it to happen organically.

Jase: Okay. Don't sit down at the interview table.

Ruby: No, let it happen organically over a course of conversation, if I can say anything about any of this. It doesn't have to be an interrogation, like you said, rapid-fire questions. Things can just ease into conversations very naturally, and if someone wants to disclose something to you, they'll disclose it naturally. Eventually, things will come out. I encourage people just to let it happen organically.

Dedeker: Yes, that makes sense. I feel like--

Ruby: Is that fair?

Dedeker: It does. It reminds me of the meme that I've seen floating around a couple of different places, where it's just like, "Hey, can you tell me all your traumas and baggage right now before we get into relationship and you start projecting that shit onto me?" Basically.

Ruby: Send me that meme.

Dedeker: Yes. Here's another recurring one that came up. Basically, a lot of people are asking about what have you have two people in a relationship who both have some mental differences? Maybe both or neurodivergent, maybe both have certain mental illness or both have trauma or something like that? The way that a lot of people phrased it is like, "What if these things are incompatible?"

Here's some examples some people gave. For example, you have one partner with a need for transparency due to anxiety, and another partner with a need for total privacy due to trauma or something like that. Another example someone gave was, one person needs to have super clear plans in order to feel safe, and another person can't make super clear plans because of issues with executive functioning or things like that. Have you come across situations like that also?

Ruby: All the time. It is intention, and that's all I can say. When there's something like that, where there's typically when someone is a need of holding back, is around fear, when someone is in need, of anxious and needing to know that's around fear, and it's around confidence. That's attachment stuff that we talked about. Trauma responses and I'm the person who wants to be private, it's like someone has hurt them along the way to where that privacy was trampled on or it was used as a weapon.

Jase: It was used against them.

Ruby: Or some level of gaslighting, or something like that is going on. One of the things is to allow that safe container to be built, is one. I'm trying to make this real simple. I can go into a litany of things that can happen, but is going to take each person being intentional and understanding what each person needs, yet not cutting themselves off at the need with themselves, not getting what they need from that other person.

There's going to be a level of reciprocity that has to happen. To me, incompatible means that it's not something that can be pushed through. It's just not going to mesh and it may not work. Is like putting a nail in the coffin. I can't think of anything better to say right now.

I believe that there's certain things that are incompatible, but someone who has a trauma response and someone who has anxiety, I think that's something that can be worked through and time will tell on that one. Both people have to be patient and be able to give a little give and take in those particular situations. That's a real difficult one and answer straightforward. A plus B equals C.

Dedeker: Right. That seems very context dependent, dependent on the people involved because, yes, it makes sense. Again, in this scenario, if it's the one person who needs transparency because of their anxiety, and the other person who needs privacy because of their trauma.

That it sounds like you're saying that if both of us can figure out the give and take figure out, what are the areas where we can push through this and push the edge, work outside the comfort zone to find a new normal that works for both people then that's good. If it's a situation where it's more of a black and white of a like, "No, I just can't compromise on needing total transparency," or, "No, I just can't compromise on needing complete privacy." That then maybe that's just straight up incompatible at the end of the day.

Ruby: That's why you're the writer, and you can put things in that way.

Dedeker: Oh, gosh.

Ruby: You said that very well. Can I steal that?

Dedeker: Yes, if you like.

Dedeker: Facts. Okay. This also brings up for me personally, I don't know if this counts as a mental different thing or not. Maybe this is something we should have covered in the scheduling episode, Jase, that we just recorded a little while ago. Something I have bumped up against in my life, I see a lot of people talk about this, but around the planning incompatibility. That there is one person where it's like, the way I organize my life is around Google Calendar.

I need to have things planned out, I need to know what's going on in relationship with the person who's like, "I don't know what's going on until an hour before I do it." I can see that some of that could come down to mental different stuff. Lime this person mentioned in their example someone who has an issue with executive functioning and maybe can't make plans ahead of time, but it seems like it also comes down to preference as well. Have you dealt with people who have those same differences around planning and scheduling?

Ruby: Yes, people like to call it type A, type B, I like to call it being ambiguous and committed. The reason that I say it that way is that some people like to have that-- there's many things. Some people feel pressure by schedule, they feel like they can't uphold the schedule. Some people have issues around fear of missing out. They don't want something better to come along. That formal stuff will eat you up all the time.

Those are some of the things that can happen. I don't know if it's any particular cognitive difference, other than-- This sounds also partly like personality issues, because I'm trying to think cognitively, what would that fall under that couldn't necessarily be like a mental well-being thing? I'm trying to think, all I can think of is, if someone is in a depressive episode or a manic episode, what bipolar or depression.

They're sad, they can't really come forth and make a commitment to anything, either because it's the racing and that sense of euphoria, and they're not able to pin them down, or someone who's so depressed and not able to make a commitment because they're just trying to make it day by day. Those are the things that popped into my mind, and I don't know if that's the question that people were or the question that you had about yourself personally.

Dedeker: It did not make sense. That totally makes sense how I would apply here, for sure.

Jase: Yes. As we said, we could talk about this stuff just on and on for many episodes, but we have reached the end for today. However, Ruby--

Ruby: Really?

Jase: Ruby, I know it just flew by. Ruby, you do so many things and you organize so many things. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about what you have going on and where they can find more of you more of your work all the things that you do?

Ruby: You can find my work at blacksixgeek.net. I organize a conference called PolyDallas Millennium, we're on our fifth year. It's a conference that focuses on individual and non-monogamous relationships, rather experience questioning or curious. We center folks that are non-binary trans or folks of color. We do not exclude anyone. We like to laugh, have a good time. This upcoming one is July 10th through 12th. We're going to have, one of our speakers is Tristin Taraamino. We have Adam Mandalay, who's going to be speaking. We have, how do we say this one? Kimchi Cuddles, Tikva Wolf, who's going to be speaking.

Dedeker: Kimchi Cuddles. Yes, right.

Ruby: Yes, Kimchi. Thank you. I didn't say that well. Please forgive me, I will say that well. She's going to be speaking. We have several speakers that are pretty awesome in the community that are coming out. We also have Marla Stewart, and she's with Sex Down South, all that.

Also upcoming, I'm collecting manuscripts on the special editor of a journal, Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships. There's a special edition on polyamory, the first that's ever been done well. If you want to submit a manuscript for academic journals, please I'm accepting them. All you academic people out there on polyamory and race. I have a chapter of a book that just came out, and I do relationship coaching online, and that's me.

Dedeker: You're a writer too? You can't call me the writer.

Ruby: Yes.

Ruby: I love to write.

Dedeker: Wonderful. Yes, so many things. My goodness. We'll also, we'll be including links to all of those things in the write ups and in our social media posts that people can find them easily.

Jase: They can find that all through your site, right?

Ruby: Yes, you can find it all through my website. Absolutely.

Jase: Awesome. All right. Ruby is going to stick around for a little bit with us to do a bonus episode for our patreons, and in that we are going to get Ruby's thoughts about how to evaluate whether a therapist or a counselor is right for you. Which is another question that comes up a lot in discussions.