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| 🎶 You, you, you oughta know 🎶 that Alanis Morissette has been one of the most influential singer-songwriters of her generation. She's also an avid supporter of mental health, female empowerment, and spiritual and physical wellness. Here are some of our favorite quotes from Gabe's chat with Alanis about anger and depression on the Inside Mental Health podcast. |
| *This interview has been edited for length and clarity. |
| Q: | I'm thinking of the "Jagged Little Pill" days. All the way back in 1995, everybody said "this album is so angry." Has this followed you around your career where they just assume that you're bitter? | |
| A: If someone's going to one dimensionalize it out of the gate, I'll take anger. I don't mind. Anger is actually a really good friend of mine. Not the destructive acting out of anger, but anger itself. |
| I think what wound up happening –– going into radio stations and otherwise –– was that people were confused. Their sense was that I'd walk in and be raging, knocking things over, and acting out. But then I'd come in and be irretrievably Canadian and relational, you know? I think there was confusion as to how can this person who's socially graceful be so angry? How can this female be so angry? |
| It was a real opening for the multitudinousness to be included in all humanity, not just women. We all have a part of us that is angry. We all have the part of us that has the capacity to be jubilant and joyful. We have all these millions of parts in us, so for anyone to be reduced to one thing is a violence, and it's ridiculous. |
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| A: We're such beautifully complex creatures. We have our thoughts, behaviors, soul, senses, intuition … we have all these parts. Anger's just one part of it, and I completely agree with you. |
| So many times in the midst of deep, swampy, quicksand-y depression, I've been livid –– just repressed, sublimated lividity. For me, it's about having the energy to become unstuck. As soon as I express and articulate it, whether it's in a therapeutic context or with a trusted, safe friend, it moves. I have to just stay responsible and look at every element of what causes depression and certain thoughts to come streaming in and keep me in that state. |
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| Q: | What's it like from your vantage point to hear people dismiss your mental health issues because you just so happen to be in the public eye? How do you deal with this? | |
| A: I get it. People don't want to hear about it, for the most part. Thankfully, I haven't had people "poo poo" my journey as a human being. I've had therapists, mentors, and teachers who couldn't have cared less that I was subject to abundances and fame. In fact, they saw it as a compounding of my challenges [and] a greater way for me to isolate. I mean, it's a natural tendency when I'm in pain or struggling –– my tendency is to hide, go within, and kind of disappear, and that's the recipe for even more isolation, pain, [and] suicidality. |
| Paying attention and having a quality of inquiry or curiosity is one of the most amazing ways to crawl up and be pulled out of the quicksand through relationships. I can guarantee that if I feel like sh*t, there are some false thoughts going on … there's something I'm believing that isn't true. And it's really hard to investigate that alone. We want to be with a safe other who's got some wisdom and [can help us] really look at it and show where it's false. |
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| A: For me, it's an invitation to stillness, spaciousness, inquiry, talking to different parts [of me] who've been ignored and really need our attention or they're going to act out, or it's just a break. But the one qualification that I do want to make around this record is that meditation, when it's super silent, can actually be an anxiety-inducing process, and it's actually not helpful. So, sometimes, music or guided meditations can be helpful because there's some implication of relationality built into it. |
| The irony here is I'm putting a meditation record out and letting people know that it's not always part of that. Sometimes it's just about having someone love you across from [you]. There's so many different states of our sweet humanity that this record really touches on. |
| Want more? Listen to the full interview on our Inside Mental Health podcast. And don't forget to scroll down to the end of this email to rate this interview! |
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