It's depression mode. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here.

Common mental health problems can mess with not just your mood, but your entire sense of who you are and what's going on.

Depression, for instance, will tell you that you are worthless, a burden to

all around you, not deserving of kindness, respect, or love. And that's not true. And hear me now,

it's important simply by being a human in the world. You deserve love and respect and kindness and friendship and

health care and a lot of things. Those are rights. And then there's anxiety. Anxiety will tell

you that you are a person in tremendous danger even when you're not. So then you're

tensed up, your mind is racing, and it doesn't need to be.

Logic would tell you that it doesn't need to be if logic could be heard above the terrible

clatter that anxiety is making. The world seems different in that state. You feel different

than what reality tells you, because you're being lied to. You're being

fooled. Janet Varney is an actor, comedy writer, host of the JV Club podcast. Janet had the

depression and the anxiety, but the distortion went further. When she was young, Janet was diagnosed

with depersonalization derealization disorder,

or DPDR. It's a disorder that made Janet feel like she was outside her own body, and that what

she was feeling was not, in fact, real. DPDR is a type of dissociative disorder, and it's rare.

The usual treatment is psychotherapy.

Janet has her dpDR well managed now, but I wanted to learn more about her experiences with it.

And I also just wanted to talk to Janet because I find her to be very nice and talented and fun.

In this interview, I sometimes get the name of her podcast wrong. It's the

JV Club podcast. And I get the name of her great TV show wrong. The name of the show is

Stan Against Evil. Janet never corrects me. Well, Janet Varney, actor in so many things and host of the JV podcast here on Maximum Fun,

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