It's Where I Am with Zandra Polard

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NV studios original program. You're listening to, special programming brought to you by its where I am.com the content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Dave,

Zandra Polard 0:44
good morning, good morning, good morning. It's Sandra Pollard, it's where I am. The show that focuses on mental health and wellness. Today, we're going to be talking about mental health and women's safety. Want to give a huge shout out to Caroline shore, who came up with the topic. So thank you. Now it is the new year. It is the new show of the year. It's where I am is now every second Sunday at 8:30am Yeah, so we made a little change. We made some adjustments. Yeah, it was too much. I was doing the show. Every week I was working, I was coming to the studio, and I realized, you know, I need to dial it back some. I need to take care of my mental and emotional well being, right? So in studio, I have our audio engineer, Mr. West Knight, hello. Thank you so much. Thank you for chiming in today. We're talking about the new it's where I am once a month. Yeah, what do you think about that?

Wesley Knight 2:14
I'm thrilled for you to be able to take something off of your plate as like a weekly show versus a monthly show, like, I think it kind of speaks for itself. So I'm happy for you to do that, and then, yeah, I'm glad that we're continue to have your show on our airwaves. I know I personally, as I have my mental and emotional health to consider on a regular basis. I'm glad that we have, we have you on and we have all the guests you've had in the past. Like, I know it means a lot to people in in the community, whether or not they say anything, but it's like, kind of that personal thing. I'm sure they take a lot away. And I know that I've definitely benefited personally from hearing some of the things that you've have been saying over the over the years of the program,

Zandra Polard 3:03
oh, thank you. And, you know, I'm surprised, because people will come up to me and say, do you still have your show? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, well, aren't you listening?

Wesley Knight 3:14
Yeah, that's true, huh? That's true, yeah.

Zandra Polard 3:17
But you know, a lot of people who listen, they don't always tune in, you know, during the broadcast, no, right, right, right, yeah, they'll go to, like, the podcast

Wesley Knight 3:29
platform, yeah, they'll do streaming so all the stuff like that. And I feel like, I feel like that's pretty common with a lot of our a lot of our shows, like, we have wonderful listener listeners. Hi, everybody. But we, we do offer all of our talk shows on streaming afterwards. And I think we that having that posterity brings in a lot more listeners, a lot more ears, and always happy to serve the community. So yeah, anywhere, anywhere in the world, pretty much they can tune in and find us.

Zandra Polard 4:02
And, you know, you can't stop, you know, bringing the awareness, right and the reminders. You know, a lot of times, people already know the stuff I'm telling them. Of course, of course, yeah, but do we remember it all the time?

Wesley Knight 4:14
No, no, and it sometimes it just helps to hear it from somebody else, because you don't feel alone. It's like community is as simple as, like, Oh, that's my neighbor. They live in, you know, whatever different neighborhood, you know, like, I live in Boulder City, but I'm still here at UNLV, and I'm still part of this community here, so both Vegas and Boulder and, you know,

Zandra Polard 4:38
yeah, you know, what else I like? I like that. People can hear me all over the country, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. So my family, I'm still, like, connected with them, you know, people on the East Coast, down south, you know, whatever.

Wesley Knight 4:52
You don't always hear from them, but all I hear you, you know exactly, there you go. That's awesome. Yeah?

Zandra Polard 4:58
And then sometimes people remind me of. Shows, it's like, oh, wow, I forgot

Wesley Knight 5:01
about that. I did, I did have that conversation, yeah, I guess, yeah, absolutely.

Zandra Polard 5:05
And then some of the subjects I noticed, they like overlap, yeah, yeah. It's gonna happen.

Wesley Knight 5:10
You know what? I think, like, humans contain such multitudes, but we kind of fall into similar patterns a lot of the time, so we talk around the same thing. So frequently, that's true, yeah,

Zandra Polard 5:22
well, today, you know, we're gonna try and stay focused on mental health and women's safety. You know, this young lady was concerned about it, you know. So I told her that, you know, we make that the focus for today. Okay, yeah, so what I have found in my research from Nami, which is the National Alliance. What is it? I should know it from the top of my head. I just say, Nami,

Wesley Knight 5:51
we've mentioned a lot in the past, haven't we?

Zandra Polard 5:53
Yeah, it's the National Institute for mental health, basically. And when I was trying to figure out what are some differences between men and women with mental health anxiety, came up real strong, right? Of course, yeah, we as women tend to ruminate a lot more, okay, yeah, and the difference between men and women is 1.5 to two times more than men. Wow. Okay, so we must get less sleep. Take on some of my anxiety. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I think by helping around the house would help,

Wesley Knight 6:39
yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Zandra Polard 6:44
So you're not a woman. No, no, but Do you can you think of something you know, maybe your mom or your sister, your grandma went through that you never had to deal with? Okay?

Wesley Knight 7:00
So first of all, I feel like I've terms of safety, in terms of safety, right? Of course, I feel like I should give this like first disclaimer of like, I'm I'm a man. I'm not speaking for anybody literally, but I'll speak on behalf of anybody who sees me as a safe person. So that's where I'm with on that the first thing that kind of pops in my head, of like seeing something completely that I would never, I would never face typically, is it's difficult to describe. Some years ago, there was a tenant in the the front part of the house I live in was being rented out to somebody else, and my mom was responsible as the as the property manager of of the situation with the tenant he used, he got in the door and seemed like a normal person, very quickly dropped that person, that fake personality to show it was a very, a very like just overall abusive person doing anything he could to try to gaslight and manipulate my mom into thinking that There were these problems, and I'm going to call the cops for things that are literally like, just made up nonsense, and then having to deal with police on the back end of that for safety reasons. I'm speaking very vaguely and generally, because the point of it was they saw my mom, who was a five foot 123, inch, 60, mid 60s at the time. Woman. And this is a big guy, tall, bigger, built everything. And he simply came in with a lot of clearly like misogynistic, sexist attitudes towards women. And thought that, combined with his appearance and His overall demeanor and his attitude, was that he could strong arm and manipulate my mom into getting out of just having an issue with a utility bill, trying to create a problem, to then look like the victim and Try to gain something on the back end of it, it was weird. It's hard to describe

Zandra Polard 9:25
overpowering her physically. And,

Wesley Knight 9:28
yeah, I wouldn't say there was literally physically, but yeah, but I mean just by him being much bigger, present presence, exactly, yes, yes. Perceived, perceived, exactly. And, you know, there is something to be said for, you know, again, these things that happen where you just know you and you feel unsafe because this person, when you're stuck around, a person you have to deal with because they're in your house, and then you feel unsafe in your own house, because, you know, police only can they say they. Only do so much they made by her, paraphrasing her experience, they made her feel like she was in trouble for simply being the person in need of help somehow, and always feeling like she was like, up against, like, rolling a boulder up a hill type of thing so they didn't see any physical abuse. No, right, no, but it was just word against word, yeah, and it was compounded, which cranked up our anxiety, yeah, and all these things and the safety thing. And I speak all this knowing that nothing ever got physical. It was nothing ever more than like verbal arguments and these displays of power from him, but being the person that in private moments, was doing my best to be there for her in a situation where, you know, I'm not always around to deal with these things while she has to be and I'm sitting with her and hearing from her that she's she's scared in her own house, she's already a private person. Takes her privacy very seriously, but she's now, she's locked the door every time you leave these these indicators of of she is on edge, and it's not helping that she has to feel like she's not being fully heard, and she's dealing with a situation where it's just a bunch of He Said, She Said, because this is made up and this, here's the reality, but here's what's being made up, and here's what really happened. And, like, logically, normally, none of this stuff makes any sense. Should never have happened in the first place, but we're not dealing with, like, a sane individual who's causing the problem. So it's that's kind of those things. So I can speak to having seen it by just relaying that these things are, unfortunately do happen and are real. But when it comes to managing the mental health through it as we've gotten through it, was the best thing I could do was show up for her when she's saying this is happening. This is what he's saying. This is what I'm doing about it. But this is, these are the obstacles that were that were hitting

Zandra Polard 12:08
so but what you're speaking to are social and environmental factors, right, that are unique to women,

Wesley Knight 12:16
yes, yeah. And the unique part of it, the unique part of it, is that, that that disconnect, that that comes from he's projecting his beliefs about women onto her, and that just making everything more difficult, because these systems, when they already fail women so much, they protect these men at the same time. And so it was just being up against that, on seeing what she was going through.

Zandra Polard 12:42
Well, that's everything that this study is speaking to. Higher rates of interpersonal trauma. That's what you're speaking to, right, right, abuse, harassment, there's also things such as caregiving, discrimination, gender roles, yeah, yeah. These are extra stressors we

Wesley Knight 13:09
have absolutely yeah. You see a moment or a node that represents all of these issues coming together, and it's hard to see in one example, all these things working in the background simultaneously to create these issues like gender roles. Is exactly it like? But we assume of both men and women, and so we pigeonhole and box them into certain, you know, expectations, categories, tasks. I mean, it's kind of speaking to what you're talking about.

Zandra Polard 13:37
But I also would think women would be more open to report, you know, anxiety than men. Yes, yeah, I think there would be a lot of under reporting,

Wesley Knight 13:45
on on on on, just reporting anxiety alone. Absolutely, I don't think

Zandra Polard 13:50
men are gonna say a lot of unfortunate I'm experiencing, you know, high anxiety right now. No.

Wesley Knight 13:56
I mean, I would like to believe that with my generation of like that, like as I'm basically like, youngest millennial, oldest Gen Z age, so I'm like, in this weird middle spot. I would like to believe that more men than the previous generations are, in some way, shape or form, getting in tune with like, with their emotions, with being introspective. Well, we're working on, well, it's not, it shouldn't just be your job, and it really shouldn't have been.

Zandra Polard 14:27
Well, I mean, as far as being an educator, you know, they're working that into the educational system.

Wesley Knight 14:31
Yes, I'm a big champion of that, absolutely. But it's that, it's, it's, it's the, it's, it's the, it's the gendered roles that men are often ascribed at growing up, that they get from their environments. And what that does in these in these situations, is the disconnect of not having, like an emotional lens to think think through something, or an empathetic lens to think through, like putting ourselves in someone else's. Shoes in a sense that really helps them understand. Well, if that really was me, I would feel horrible getting that in their, in their in their mind's eye, or feeling it in their chest or the nervous system, a little bit like anything to understand, like it's a genetic lottery that this is happening, happening statistically and systemically to these groups of people versus your own. And maybe, maybe there's something that you can on that literally but hypothetically, unpack there as to why that is, and start kind of taking yourself out of the box that's been that you've been put in. Because I myself like I'm I'm friends with more women than men, because I don't fit. Not to make this about me, but to eliminate what you're saying, I don't fit a typical, like macho male role. So that gets me grief in a way that I can relate when in that intersection, when a woman says, I feel unsafe because the this guy is acting this way, or behaving this way, or treating me as this way, and all these things, and I get, I get a part of that in not measuring up to an expectation of masculinity versus being a woman, so I'll be treated as lesser.

Zandra Polard 16:27
What if you were a woman? What if you were a young woman, like the young lady who brought up this topic? Well, I would say in terms of being, you know, out in public, I think a woman should always have a whistle, absolutely, yeah, because, you know, we have our cell phone, but it's not gonna work as fast as a whistle.

Wesley Knight 16:53
Okay, so I'm thinking, if I was, if I was a woman, it would be a young woman, a young woman particularly have I would have mace and possibly a taser in my bag.

Zandra Polard 17:12
Getting Young. Well, you okay, I'm gonna say she's under 18. Under 18, yeah, they can't carry mace. That's why I mentioned the whistle, your cell phone, your whistle, your location. Location should always be shared.

Wesley Knight 17:23
I was gonna mention location, but exactly to what that the thing of it's not because I've heard I've heard two things as people who with their location, I don't want anyone to know where I'm at ever, and that's how I used to be, and that's how I'm gonna stay safe, versus I have certain people who know and that's safe, that's actually far safer. Effectively, I would say that,

Zandra Polard 17:47
wait a minute. Now I'm old school. Okay? So I didn't like sharing my location, no, especially with the people I should be sharing it with, which is my kids and my kids and my husband, I really didn't want

Wesley Knight 18:03
them to. Wanted some private time. Yeah, wanted to kind of check out for a second.

Zandra Polard 18:06
But now I've given my location. I could tell you right now, if you called him, you wouldn't know where I was. You don't even know how to find it, right? You know what I mean. But that being said, still, you know, only certain loved ones

Wesley Knight 18:26
have my location, right? And I think that's, I think that's the the the, like, the middle of the Venn diagram there, that I think is most important, yeah, I now, now you got me thinking, not just, I have to, because I was thinking, like, yeah, a young woman like, I work at a university, I can, kind of, I can picture that I I work with the radio station students all the time, but under 18, I haven't been in in high school for, oh, geez, like, over a decade. Now, unfortunately, I don't like that, and I'm thinking about, like, what's what's rolled back even more for when you're under I mean, your have your have your, have your location with your trusted people have, like, know what you're gonna do in the event of something happening suddenly. And the only thing I can think of because, like, you're telling me, You're giving me new information that they can't even carry, like a thing of like a mace or something like that. You're take. I've heard of this being used. I don't know if this is common. If you have a key ring, you put those keys, the smaller ones, the in between your knuckles, like, like Wolverine and the X Men. And if, if something happens where you're walking to your car, or you're alone by yourself, cars West, well, I don't know. Oh, that's true. See, I haven't thought. See, what didn't trip me up was thinking more on the shoes of a woman, but now you got me thinking like a high school girl, and I have, I don't know.

Zandra Polard 19:57
Well, one, you don't go anywhere alone. That. You share your location that, yeah, and just stay aware and alert. If someone asked you to help them do something. Do you do it? They haven't? You seen Silence of the Lambs?

Wesley Knight 20:13
Yeah, yeah, great movie. But, yeah, help me put this couch in the car. Like, no, actually, I can't. No. Sorry, my I have a bad back. Actually, I can't do that.

Zandra Polard 20:22
Sorry, yeah, absolutely. Stay safe out there. And you know, in terms of being safe with your mental health, you know, it can be hard to approach your parents and tell them, you know things you're going through, you think they don't understand.

Wesley Knight 20:38
There's a lot of compounding things there. It could be just the generational I don't think they're going to understand me. It could be a stigma in the household of like we are not the type of family, or don't come from the kind of background that talks about our our mental health, or our emotional health, or anything like that. Yeah, it comes like that, like environment plays a big role in in whether or not, I think, more than sometimes we realize, in whether or not people discuss the mental health. Let it be known, use that that environment to then, you know, make phone calls to get access to resources like you. You mentioned Nami stuff like that, you know,

Zandra Polard 21:24
yeah, yeah. Well, Nami, the phone number, you can text, 62640, they also have an email helpline@nami.org Now, if this is like crisis situation, like, I need help right here, right now. Yeah, then you want to go to the crisis lifeline. They're 24/7, and you can just text 988, there you go. Now, let's say someone is young and they want to get some help. Don't know how to talk to the parents. You know, I would just start out by saying, and I'm not saying that this person has these issues. She just helped me come up with a topic for today. Thank you. All right, but even parents don't even know how to help. So what you can do, if you're listening, you can ask, what is our provider? Who is our provider for mental health that's on the back of your insurance card? If you hold your own insurance card, turn it over, find out who it is. If mommy and daddy have it, tell them, you know, think I want to talk to somebody. Can we get the number for our provider? It's on the back of my insurance card. And start from there. There you go. You know, it's another great thing. There's also all these apps. Yeah, yeah, you can find an app. There you go, yeah. All right, so and I'm here, yeah, and you can't talk to me, you can only listen. But you know, you can catch me every second Sunday at 8:30am I gotta get used to saying that, and I'm available 24/7 on Spotify, Apple and Amazon. All right. So you guys have a lovely day. Make sure you work in some exercise today. Super important day, and I'll talk to you guys next month, right here, 91.5 jazz and more. Oh, wait, wait, wait, what's up? Let's leave him with the song. Oh, absolutely, yeah, I want to feel good today. Let's play the second time around by Shalimar.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai