Untether Your Life with Shelly Sood

How does a woman keep her sanity while helping her partner recover from mental illness? You’ll be hearing all about this today from guest Shelly Sood, the author of "Untethered," and an entrepreneur who has had a unique experience navigating mental struggles with her husband. During our candid interview, Shelly reveals her husband's diagnosis of bipolar disorder, how this illness can go unrecognized in a relationship, and how they overcame this experience together to build an even stronger marriage. The founder of Untether Your Life, Shelly Sood is dedicated to mental health, mindfulness, and personal growth coaching. On this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast: How the changes in her husband first appeared. Why her husband thought divorce was the solution for happiness. What bipolar disorder looks like and the ways in which it presents itself. How her husband's family reacted when Shelly reached out for support. What prompted her husband to finally get help. How Shelly used writing in her healing process. How she came to realize she needed to find support for herself too. The good that has come from this difficult time in her life. Why you need to trust your intuition when it comes to mental health. What Shelly wished she had done sooner with her husband. The project she’s working on with Hollywood producers right now. Shelly’s number one question for listeners to consider. Connect with Shelly Shelly’s website: www.shellysood.com Quick Links: Join the Live. Love. Engage. Community Intuitive Business Coaching The Live. Love. Engage. Book Support the Podcast with BuyMeACoffee.com Enjoying what you're hearing on Live. Love. Engage.? Subscribe on Goodpods or your favorite podcast platform, and click here to leave a 5 STAR Review. You can also watch the conversation on YouTube. TRANSCRIPT You're listening to the live love engage podcast. on today's show how one woman kept her sanity while helping her husband recover from mental illness. Stay tuned. I am Gloria Grace Rand, founder of the love method and author of the number one, Amazon Best seller live love, engage how to stop doubting yourself and start being yourself. In this podcast, we share practical advice from a spiritual perspective on how to live fully love, deeply and engage authentically. So you can create a life and business with. Impact influence and income. Welcome to live love, engage Namaste and welcome to another addition of live love, engage. And I am looking forward to this discussion today because I've got a guest here who is, she's an author, she's a mother of three, a wife and an entrepreneur. And life is, is pretty good for her right now, but it wasn't always the case, but we're gonna get more into that in a moment. But first I want to welcome Shelly Sood to live love, engage. Thank you, Gloria. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm really happy to have you on the show because we're gonna be talking about some stuff that was not so nice, I guess that happened in your life and how you've managed to turn things around. So let me, let me set the stage for our listeners and viewers on YouTube. So six years ago, Shelly had a picture perfect marriage lived in an upper class neighborhood, married to a high powered banking executive. And as I mentioned, she had three awesome kids. And when suddenly her world changed and her loving husband who turns out, had suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder for decades, suddenly transformed before her eyes; filed for divorce and became hell bent on her destruction. Just not anything that you want to have to go through in your life. So I thought what we'd do is, is start off with the, you know, what, what did that look like? I mean, what was, what was really happening in, in your life and in your marriage and with your husband, that all of a sudden, you know, things, things so radically changed for you. It, it was quite a long journey. I mean, when we, when he had filed for divorce, I mean, just the rug was pulled out from underneath me, basically. you know, I kind of had an idea that he was struggling with a little bit of, you know, anxiety, or maybe some things like. Maybe potentially depression, but nothing that was official or diagnosed or anything like that. So, you know, he, every time he would, you know, lose a job or something would happen, that was life changing in his life or our, our lives. I was his number one supporter, and I would just prop him up and I'd say, it's okay. You know, get back on the horse and do it again because you know, you have to repeat mistakes and failures and you learn from them. And succeed eventually, it's just that one fine moment where, you know, you cannot succeed without enduring some failure in life because that's how you really learn. Exactly. So that was kind of my position. And I think deep down, maybe I subconsciously kind of knew there was something more going on, but that real revelation. Didn't come to me until it was too late to the point where it had trickled into our personal relationship, because you know, the bipolar disorder we didn't know was there officially, but it definitely had, you know, come out in other parts of his life with travel. And when he was talking to colleagues or when he was, you know, breaking relationships or lashing out at people or whatever it may be, there was that volatility that I didn't see. It never trickled into our marriage. And so when this happened and he thought his road to happiness was to leave the marriage because you know, a lot of people, they have the midlife crisis. They have things that they go through in their forties, in their middle of their career, where they make huge changes in life. And think that that is the road to happiness. Whether it is coming from something internally or they're listening to their therapist or their friends or their family. Those kinds of things happen all the time. So that's kind of where we were at, at that point. Now, for those of who are listening, who maybe don't really know exactly, they've maybe heard about bipolar disorder, but they don't really know what it is. Can you explain a little bit about, I guess maybe how it manifests, you know, how, how, how. How do people act? I guess one might be a good way to say that. So a lot of times bipolar disorder manifests in your late teens or early twenties, typically early twenties. And, you know, it can manifest in a number of different ways. There's several different types of bipolar disorder, but if we're gonna talk very basic general terms. It's somebody who is cycling from manic highs, meaning they have feelings of grandiosity. They have feelings of potential narcissism. They're irritable. They're they're not sleeping. They have huge bouts of creativity and they think that they're invincible. Like they could become the next president. Just things that are not realistic to the general world. Right. They could go on spending sprees and, and they're just so elated. And this is not always a long term thing. Now with my husband, it lasted 18 long months. During our separation, that manic episode, which went unrecognized. Then you have the other set of coin, which is depression and depression can manifest with, you know, just listlessness, sleeping all the time, not wanting to get out of bed, high rates of suicide between 20 and 40% of bipolar patients attempt suicide at least once in their lives. So there's a high percentage of that. And so it, it's such a drastic shift from mania to depression, that it's very hard to figure out. You know, if somebody's cycling for years, who is this person like, who is the real, you know, person that you see underneath all this? Now you, you wrote a book about this journey and, and, and it's called untethered. How… well, tell us a little bit about that. How did that, what, what is that book about? And cuz I, I really want, you know, I've read your bio, but I want you to tell a little bit more about your story. So what, what is the focus of that? Cuz I, there is a good outcome to this story, right? The focus really is on my life journey and how I was able to untether my own life. And how my husband had his own journey as well with mental illness. And what kind of impact that has when you don't diagnose a disorder like this for nearly two decades. And what happens to the family? What kind of devastation can happen? And we're talking not even just one generation, but multiple generations to come. So, you know, we were able to each one of us in our own ways, professionally, personally, untether. Our, our beings untether our souls to the point where we were able to come for a full circle in our lives for a better, more stronger marriage, a stronger family life, children who are thriving now at this point, you know, and we were able to really face our demons as well as we were able to untether our lives professionally. How, how did you do that? I mean, did you intervene, you know, specifically with him, because especially, you know, if he's, he's wanting to, you know, be separated from you and, and everything. So what did you do? That was the biggest fight of my entire life. Mm. I, you know, when you're manic, most people, they don't wanna get treatment. And so that's the challenge with bipolar disorder. They don't wanna be on medication. They don't like the way it makes them feel. They don't think they need help. I mean, why would anybody want help when you're so creative and you don't have to sleep and you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. so that was kinda where, what was very difficult is because he would not. Believe me at that point. And prior to that point, I was not seen as the enemy and he was willing to potentially talk to a therapist or do marriage counseling or whatever it may be. you know, I, I was, he adored me for 15 years. And,...