A CONVERSATION WITH JULIA GRACE

There’s no doubt about it: mental health is a hot topic in little ol’ NZ (as it is in much of the Western world). And most of our stats point to the fact that things ain’t great in the minds of many of us in the Land of the Long White Cloud.
Our shelves and websites are cluttered with self-help books on the subject – all vying for our attention and hard-earned cash. Some are okay, a few are good, most are … meh. But a tiny handful are excellent. ‘Be Kind to Your Mind’ is one of those rarities. It’s funny, powerful, engaging, helpful … and good for our health! And best of all, it’s Kiwi-made!
We got to chat with author Julia Grace before she jumped on a cruise ship for a speaking engagement. And what better place to start than with an introduction …?
JULIA GRACE: I’m a mental health presenter and educator, a teacher and recording artist. And all of that has combined into the perfect storm of becoming a professional speaker! So, when I speak, I educate … I entertain … I sing … I tell stories. And the point of all that is to encourage people in their mental health journey.
I also bring to the table my ‘lived experience’. I have a diagnosis of depression and anxiety – which, for me, is kind of the secret sauce of what I do! Being able to say that what I write about is not just theory; it’s also the stuff that has been helpful in my journey.
GRAPEVINE: Your book is full of great stories. Was that an approach you used to help ‘Be Kind to Your Mind’ stand out from the plethora of other mental health books out there?
JULIA: Yeah, absolutely! But I try to use story in a way that’s also productive. I was a teacher for 30 years and used to love telling stories just for fun. But I’ve picked the ones in the book, out of the hundreds I could’ve used, because they guide the reader into a space where it can then apply to them. What I mean is, I don’t tell my story just for the sake of telling my story. I tell it so that the listener (or, in this case, the reader) can then superimpose my story on their own journey, in the hope they can find something useful to take away.
I was quite determined not to just write a memoir – because the teacher in me says, “That’s nice – but how do I apply it to my life?”
So that’s probably a point of difference …
GRAPEVINE: What made you first think, “Okay, I’ve got to get all this stuff down on paper and out to the masses …”?
JULIA: I was writing for blogs, and I wrote an online course. So it was a natural progression to then go, “Well, how could this be something bigger than it is?”
But probably the biggest motivator was people asking me when I would put it all together and create a book. I didn’t really feel like tackling that until I had a 360-degree view of what I wanted the book to be. But the angle I thought of was this: a book of two halves, with each chapter divided into my part, your part, and what we can do next.
GRAPEVINE: Your humour and love for analogies are evident throughout the book. Something that grabbed my attention was the title for the first section: Saddling Up The Chihuahua. Can you explain what that’s all about?
JULIA: So, Saddling Up The Chihuahua is the inevitable end process of being knocked off your high horse. Of being disappointed, let down, hurt by your own decisions, hurt by the decisions of others – all that stuff. It’s also about becoming less judgmental and more gracious.
I was raised in a very structured environment, and life was simple and pretty easy. I didn’t have too much that went wrong; I didn’t have a traumatic childhood. So I tended to sail along and kind of wonder why everybody else was having such a hard time of it. I believed that life was beautiful, people were trustworthy, and that my faith and good deeds would protect me from pain, loss, and trauma.
But as time went by, I discovered (as we all do) that simply being a person of faith does not inoculate us from going through a difficult time. And that some of the amazing things in my life that I thought were perhaps from my good decision-making or the blessing of God … simply turned out to be good luck and good management by my parents and family!
It would be years before I was knocked off my ‘high horse’ with the realisation that I was just as liable to be disappointed, heartbroken, let down, or to fail as anyone else. I remember standing up after my ‘fall’ (metaphorically speaking), brushing myself off and thinking, “Mmm, maybe I could be a little less judgmental!”
So, those of us ‘chihuahua riders’ – those of us whose high horse has slowly gotten smaller and smaller – live in a pretty great space, because our chihuahuas are close to the ground. There’s not far to fall! But when I see people watching from their ‘Ivory Towers’ looking down on the rest of us … I think, “Oh, it’s a long way down to reality. And reality can hurt!”

GRAPEVINE: Do many people make it through life still saddled on their high horses?
JULIA: I think some people probably make it through most of their lives like that? But I tend to be drawn to those who’ve found themselves on the chihuahua. Because those are the people who understand what it is to be under and not over – rather than always triumphalist and “life’s great!”
Don’t get me wrong. Life is great – but it’s not always easy. Awful things can and do happen. And we’re quick to put those things that happen into a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ category. However, sometimes (and I think we all have stories like this), things can be bad … and yet kind of good. You know what I mean? It’s like there’s been an element of that bad experience that’s also worked for us.
I use the terms ‘Gad’ & ‘Bood’ to describe those times.
GRAPEVINE: When I first read that, the editor in me thought, “Oh dear, here’s a typo!” But obviously, it wasn’t a mistake. Can you explain that concept a little more?
JULIA: Gad & Bood are a mixture of bad and good! I’m always fascinated, at the beginning of every year, when people jump on Facebook and declare that it’s going to be the best year ever! But you don’t know that! I remember at the beginning of 2020, everyone was excited about a new decade, thinking it would be amazing, and … nek minnit … it all turned to custard!
No one can guarantee that things are going to be good. But I can guarantee that over the next little while, there will be disappointments, triumphs, and challenges. We’ll lose loved ones and gain loved ones … some will pass away, others will be born … beauty will enter our world, and so will ugliness. We’ll have all those things.
But I can also guarantee that the grace of God walks through all of it! There doesn’t have to be this triumphal march to the top, where everything must be perfect for beauty to be seen. I mean, if I hadn’t been knocked off my high horse, I would never have written this book, I wouldn’t have learned resilience, or helped others find healing and hope.
Things can sometimes be Gad & Bood – it just depends on how we look at them!
GRAPEVINE: Okay, let’s look at New Zealand’s mental health … are we getting anywhere?
JULIA: Well, it’s a mixed answer! And sometimes we’ve got to look back to look forward. We’ve got to remind ourselves of what was. It’s fascinating to see the different views towards mental health, depending on the period you lived in. We’ve gone from blaming the gods for raining their vitriol upon us … to trying all sorts of crazy ‘treatments’ (like bloodletting or electric shock treatments or lobotomies) – to where we are today, where we’re learning to view brain-health through a lens that sees a combination of biological, physical and psychological factors.
So, in actual fact, I see a slow move in the right direction. We’re understanding more about what’s happening in the brain and the body – which is vital. When you don’t know what’s going on, you come up with pretty wacky theories.
GRAPEVINE: You refer in the book to one of my favourite treatments during the ‘Enlightenment’ period: spinning on a stool to put the brain contents back in place!
JULIA: Well, if you knew nothing about physiology or biology, that would actually make sense! If you’re like, “My brain feels confused …” it sounds plausible to be told you should go round and round until it goes back in place! So you can see where these wacky ideas came from!
The more we learn about the brain and body, the more we understand that our body is doing its natural job, most of the time – it’s just trying to keep us alive. All of those reactions – those mental health challenges – are part of the body’s reaction. It’s just doing its job, trying to keep you safe. But sometimes it gets it wrong. Sometimes, it sets off the fire-alarm when it shouldn’t. And sometimes, it sets off the fire alarm repeatedly.
But fundamentally, it’s not out to get you, and neither is anything else. It is trying to do its best. And that’s where the idea ‘be kind to your mind’ has come from.
So, to answer your question, I feel like we are making progress. In many ways. But we’re also fighting against some huge social challenges.

GRAPEVINE: Are some of those challenges social media use and smartphones?
JULIA: I don’t have a beef against social media and smartphones per se. But we do need to control our consumption. Look, I could go out and drink sugary drinks all day, every day. Then I could say, “Countdown is trying to kill me – it’s providing too many sugary drinks!” Or I could blame the dairy or the café for putting sugar on the table.
But who actually gets to control how much sugar I consume?
So, I’m the one who turns on that smartphone … the one who flicks on the laptop. And in fact, with these personal devices, we’re in more control – because we get to choose. So, we need to challenge the narrative – ‘it’s everyone else’s fault’ that we’ve got too much coming into our brain. We need to take some personal responsibility for how we control that.
GRAPEVINE: What are some of the mental-health challenges we face from these personal devices that are now such a part of our everyday lives?
JULIA: We’re dealing with things like compassion and empathy fatigue, where we are over-stimulated and over-challenged. Back in the day, we were probably capable of really caring about our own health and the health of our immediate family – our children and parents. We probably cared about the needs of the village and our friends and cousins … but then, beyond that, everyone else was a horse-ride away!
If something awful happened in the next village, we wouldn’t know about it until someone came riding in and told us. And our response would be (for example) to build higher fences or prepare for conflict. These days, we know what’s happening in the next village, the next village beyond that, and the village on the other side of the world! Not only do we know it, but we can also see it, hear it, and almost taste it. We can experience it in such a powerful way that our brains can’t tell the difference about whether it’s happening here or happening over there.
When you watch a movie, you have a full physiological response. Watch a scary movie, and you get a fright. For a moment, your brain can’t tell that the ghost that jumped out in the movie wasn’t real. In the same way, when you flick open Instagram and see footage from a war zone, your brain will initially struggle to tell whether that threat is real. You will end up overriding that, but for the first six seconds, your brain will just consume it as though it is.
So those things are anxiety-inducing. They are overstimulating. They set off the fire alarm all day, every day. We no longer get the news at 12 and 6pm. We now get a constant barrage – and our bodies are responding accordingly.
So, I’ve had to be really mindful about how much of that I do consume.
GRAPEVINE: Do we have enough professionals in this space to help cope with the mental health crisis?
JULIA: The quick answer is that more professionals are slowly being trained in this area. But there’s a huge lack. I’ll tell people to go and talk to a professional, knowing full well that often they can’t even get an appointment. Or if they do get an appointment, it’s so expensive that they can’t afford to go.
Now, most counsellors are charging at a fair rate – they’re good people doing a great job – so this is no criticism of them. It’s the lack of resources and funding that’s the issue.

GRAPEVINE: I like the approach to this subject you call your ‘BIG 3’ – the idea that mental health and wellness issues are Reasonable, Universal, and Manageable. Can you explain that concept?
JULIA: Firstly, mental health challenges are a reasonable response of the body to the pressures of life – just like breaking your ankle is a reasonable response of the body to falling down the stairs. It’s not nice; it’s not pleasant; a lot of treatment is needed to heal that ankle. But it’s not some great shock.
When we put a lot of pressure on the body, it fights us back … and it’s the same with the brain and central nervous system. It’s going to react and respond to that pressure and sometimes do things that don’t always work.
The second of the BIG 3 is: universal – that we’re all on the mental health and wellbeing spectrum. This takes away the idea of it being about ‘those’ people. There are no ‘those’ people. There are just people! If you’ve got a brain in your head and breath in your lungs, you’re going to deal with mental health challenges.
Now, they may be very mild. They may be feeling slightly anxious, stressed, or burnt out. Or they may be a full, heavily diagnosable, treatable mental illness. But it’s understanding that those things are all on a spectrum … and that spectrum can change.
So, no matter where you sit, you can lead a beautiful life. For example, someone with a heavily diagnosed mental illness with good support can flourish. And someone with no problems at all can languish and feel like rubbish.
Then, finally, the best news of the day is: it’s manageable. There are lots of tools in the toolbox to deal with these challenges. And there are lots of things we can do to flourish – anywhere on that spectrum! And, if you want to remember the BIG 3, they spell RUM!
GRAPEVINE: You talk about your Very Rude Friend … and why we all need one! Tell us more, please?
JULIA: Well, I think we all need a Very Rude Friend! I was dealing with depression, but I hadn’t been diagnosed at this point. I was feeling very beige, but I was putting up a good front – doing my best to keep up appearances. But people started to notice.
One of the biggest challenges of mental health issues is they’re happening inside your head. It’s so easy when it’s obvious: you break your finger, it’s like, “Argh!” you know? Everyone can see it. But when it’s happening inside your head, you’re thinking, “Is it …? Am I okay …? Did I feel like this yesterday …?” It’s tough to quantify, and often changes don’t get noticed.
Anyway, my very rude friend, Lee, took me out for a coffee!
I thought I was doing such a good job of faking it … until we sat down, and he said, “You don’t look well. You need to go to the doctor.” Now he’s British, so he’s very rude and cheeky – straight up front! And, although I was offended in the process, I’ve said to him many times since, “I’m so glad that you’re so rude!” He didn’t take the usual Kiwi, “yeah, nah” or the, “I’m fine” for an answer. He just called it.
So that was a tipping point for going and getting medical help, which then allowed me to get good medication, which then allowed me to get access to therapy. And through that process, I was able to start some of the self-care things that I also do.
GRAPEVINE: Kiwis are a little bit, “She’ll be right, mate. It’s all good …” when, at times, that’s the last attitude we need! So, how do we develop such honest friendships?
JULIA: We need to create those relationships on the good days. Usually, we leave it until things start to fall apart, and then we think, “Uh-oh, now I need help … Now I need support … Now I need somebody to drive me to the doctor …!” And in that moment, we have what I call a SOBOB brain – Stressed Out Brains are Offline Brains – when our ability to problem-solve has gone offline.
By this stage, of course, our chances of actually reaching out to someone are diminishing by the minute. So we need to have a plan in place. And the best thing we can do is to have a robust, brave conversation when you are feeling robust and brave – not leave it to the last minute.
For us Kiwis, that’s counterintuitive and countercultural, but I’m hoping we’re making some progress.
Something I encourage people to get themselves is a Jelly Buddy. And a Jelly Buddy is a person who you’ve agreed with in advance – you’ve sat down, eyeballed them across the table and said, “I give you permission to speak into my world if you notice that I’m wobbly and I can’t tell. And if I CAN tell, I will do my utmost to let you know.” By having both of those sides of the agreement, it means that things don’t tend to fall through the cracks.
And I’ll say to guys: you might think Jelly Buddy sounds lame. So, call it the Concrete Club or whatever – I don’t care! Everybody needs one of those friends in their lives – guys included.
GRAPEVINE: Having a Jelly Buddy is one of the tools you describe as ‘Grabable Words’. What are grabable words, and are there other examples we can use?
JULIA: Brené Brown says it like this: “Language is the greatest tool for meaningful connection, and having access to the right words changes everything.” It’s the key to communication. Grabable words are simply words you can ‘grab’ when you’re under pressure.
A little child with no language will have to cry, scream, or throw a tantrum to get attention because he or she can’t explain to you clearly what’s going on. So, agreeing on key phrases that everyone understands when everything’s great means we can ‘grab’ for them and use them easily when everything’s falling apart. It means when your stressed-out brain’s gone offline, and somebody asks, “How are you?” rather than struggling to find the appropriate words, you can reach for something productive to say …
“Hey Mike, to be honest, I’m a bit wobbly …”
“Babe, I’ve got a SOBOB brain … I can’t get my head around this; can you help me?”
And because we both know what those phrases mean (not necessarily a full understanding), we now understand that things aren’t really great in our world.
So those pieces of language are bright, they’re colourful, they’re fun, they’re easy to remember … and I’m hoping that when people are under pressure, they can use these ‘grabable words’ (along with others mentioned in the book) as a template for meaningful conversation.
GRAPEVINE: Any last words of wisdom you’d like to leave us with?
JULIA: I reckon just lean into the fact that all of life’s ups and downs are simply part of the journey. We are so allergic to feeling anything other than happy! We need to understand that it’s both the light and the shade that comes together to create beauty. And so, while things might be challenging in the moment, you never know what will come out of that time.
I have literally created a message out of the mess that my life was left in. I went through disappointments, divorce, depression, debt … all the ‘D’ words! And my life today is almost unrecognisable from what it used to be – but it’s beautiful in its own way. Something beautiful can come from something difficult.
It doesn’t mean that ‘it was meant to be …’ or that ‘everything happens for a reason …’ or that ‘God made it happen …’ or anything like that! It simply means that our brains have an incredible ability to work with the cards they’ve been dealt.
And so, as time goes by … as we learn and grow … as we sit back and reflect … and as we ‘be kind to our minds …’ we can actually learn to use our experiences to help others.
TO FIND OUT MORE, VISIT WWW.JULIAGRACE.NZ HER BOOK ‘BE KIND TO YOUR MIND’ IS AVAILABLE AT ALL GOOD BOOKSELLERS.