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Dr. Will Miller talks coping strategies, sports' role on LIVE

Therapist Will Miller was our guest on Gold and Black LIVE on March 26 from Hovde Hall.. Click here to see this segment and also the two segments with president Mitch Daniels.
Therapist Will Miller was our guest on Gold and Black LIVE on March 26 from Hovde Hall.. Click here to see this segment and also the two segments with president Mitch Daniels. (Ryan Delaney)

Dr. Will Miller is one of the nation's most respected authorities on stress & coping, interpersonal relationships, organizational health. Miller is a former headline comedian and late night show host, and now serves as a minister, social media professor at Purdue therapist and works closely with the Lafayette area police.

We was our guest on the third segment of 'Gold and Black LIVE' on March 26.

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GoldandBlack.com: There's nobody more important in you in terms of right now trying to keep that message of hope and inspiration while not sugarcoating anything. This is not a happy time. But tell me about where you are with all this right now.

Miller: Well, (wife) Sally and I are safe. We're healthy, but we're in the age group where we need to (be vigiIant). The first thing I want to say is, I am very privileged that my work as a therapist for a very long time has really focused in recent years on first responders, police, and EMTs. Our concerns are for their health and their well being.

Obviously, we're all looking out at the big issue. You know, looking at the news, wondering what's going to happen. But then there's the in the house experience where people are living in closer quarters than they usually are. There are parents who now all of a sudden are homeschooling their kids, they never expected to do that. There are husbands and wives in good marriages, but those tensions get difficult. I've heard from a lot of people saying, “He's driving me crazy, he's driving me crazy” because we wind up being in such close quarters, some of those tensions.

Before all of this (COVID-19) started, 40 million Americans, that we know of, have an anxiety disorder. 50 million, are depressed. That's just the numbers we know. We live in a very agitated culture of busyness and it's fraught with anxiety. So now you're hunkered down in your house. Managing your anxiety is job one. That's what we have to do.

The best way to think about that is distraction that takes you to good places. That's why sports is so fantastic. I've had a lot of my friends talking about how they've been reveling in going on YouTube or someplace to rewatch this game or that game and that's been a great help. You can lose yourself into that.

What the science tells us, I'm a trauma specialist, the treatment for PTSD comes down to two things. One is feeling safe. You feel safe in your house safe with your people. And movement. I mean, not just exercise generically, yes. But they recommend yoga and walking and being out in nature, deep breathing. All of those things facilitate (good mental health). The most difficult, complicated part of the human brain is the frontal cortex, and what brain science and psychological sciences really come to believe is this is what gets us the most distracted and the most difficulty. Meditation or meditation practice, whether it's walking out in nature, losing yourself in a game or some uplifting thing, shuts this down so that your body, your blood pressure, everything calms down, and that's what we need. All the more reason for us to be on the front line for the frontline people who don't have the chance to do that.

GoldandBlack.com: We talked about social media and sometimes it works kind of both ways. It can play a huge role.

Miller: No question. Professor Glenn Sparks, right here at Purdue and I, have been studying social isolation for a long time through our book, “Refrigerator Rights”, and it's not like it was like a glib demonization of social media. But everyone fairly would critique about losing yourself in social media, with your phone versus engaged in face to face. The incredible irony now is it's kind of flipped over and now these tools become a really helpful way, especially when you have to be quarantined in space. You can’t even like visit your parents, your kids, your siblings, etc. I’m able to stay in touch through Zoom and FaceTime and Facebook with my own kin scattered all around the country. It's a good tool.

It's good, but my word is keep it positive. Anyone who has enjoyed the catharsis of angry rants on social media, it's time to just, what do we say, shut your yapper. Be positive and it will affect you back.

GoldandBlack.com: Ohio State's football coach, Ryan Day, posted something on Facebook take it one day at a time. We have to take this in small chunks, or it can overwhelm you, correct?

Miller: What is the operate lesson of good sports and team management? It’s focus. Focus and paying attention to what you need and pushing out distractions. Everyone has to be on this team in that way. So we rely on the best advice we can from the medical community, and probably from sociology and psychology.

Update yourself, so you know what's going on. But the rest of the time, keep your focus on what will help you be healthy. The blessing here too, is that at least we can safely be outside. Preparing yourself and taking care of yourself in your quarantine, as Sally and I are, you can walk every day, you can get out. As president Daniels says, the good blessing is that the weather will facilitate being out in the sunshine and watching the flowers.

I was talking to a guy in a supermarket when I could last go to the supermarket, and he was really elderly. I always chat with everyone. He was 94. And I said, we talked about how my dad was in World War II. And he just looked at me and he says, 'if we got through World War II, we're going to get through this." That's a really good perspective.



Miller is a popular speaker and standup comedian. Click here to visit his YouTube channel.
Miller is a popular speaker and standup comedian. Click here to visit his YouTube channel.

GoldandBlack.com: Is there a collective good? Because we are all in the same boat?

Miller: Absolutely. I think again, President Daniels said it right. When he was talking about things like reset. Think about yourself 2.0, 3.0 whatever it is, for you and your family. Is there anyone out there who would argue with the fact that their hope that's valid as we come out of this kinder?

I understand there are sociopaths out there. I mean, I'm in that business. I know that there are disturbed people, but they're really in the minority. The other thing that's from PTSD studies that's amazing is they talk about post traumatic growth, some studies out of Canada after you've had a trauma. It's not only movement and exercise, but also spirituality, like surrendering yourself to the openness. Churches are online now, but also spiritual talk, spiritual reading, uplifting reading, move out of yourself and beyond yourself. That is a profoundly healing experience to have.

GoldandBlack.com: What goes through the minds of the athlete when you're a high level person, and everything shuts down?

Miller: The voice of their coach I think lingers. So for example, all the athletes who are maybe off campus now and in their own training regimes, however isolated they are, they can hear the voice of their coach, literally by communication. Also, they know well from their high school coaches and now here at Purdue, what they need to do to focus.

GoldandBlack.com: You obviously do a lot of work with the police in the frontline. What's that message to them a they have to deal with it face to face sometimes?

Miller: We need to equip them to prevent that from happening. So that's what we have to really pray about is that everyone is masked and gloved and has everything that they need to serve the people they're serving without risk of being infected themselves,

GoldandBlack.com: How do we have that happy medium of having good inner being, but also listening to the experts and saying, This is what we have to deal with?

Miller: I think it goes back to what I was saying before. Sort of like the outer voice of what's going on, and then the inner voice of self care. As far as the outer voice, I try and just do a little bit of news feeding every couple of hours rather than watching it all day. But when you do that, there is some exciting things. As President Daniels says, right here at Purdue, the scientists are active and doing this.

I am confident we will come up with the game-changing stuff (to fight and defeat COVID-190. That's a good thing to dose yourself with. Stay tuned for what you know is challenging about the news, but keep your hope alive by tuning in with these amazing people are doing

GoldandBlack.com: Dr. Will, your other 'day job' is humor. What is the importance of humor in all this?

Miller: Humor will never run dry and engaging in that stuff is great. You can go on Netflix or Hulu and you can watch reruns of classic comedies that will just be a delight. You can look at you know, "Mary Tyler Moore," "The Odd Couple", or something like that. That's a good way to dose yourself. By the way and all of those parents who are now homeschooling guess what they're doing? They're spending a lot of time exasperated, slapping the foreheads and then laughing hysterically at the kids.

GoldandBlack.com: It’s a hard thing when you when you throw in the financial concerns, people are concerned about their jobs and all that.

Miller: It goes back to what I was saying: the operant issue here is anxiety, managing your anxiety. These are all strategies to do that you know about exercise and distraction, etc. It's just slowing down the noisy part of your brain to kind of relax.

GoldandBlack.com: Will’s family member is Josh Lindblom, the great Purdue pitcher that has gone on now and pitched in Korea , and now got signed by Milwaukee. Bring us up to date on him and his family.

Miller: This has been such a delight. Josh is our nephew and I have to tell you, I don't know that I've ever encountered a more profoundly inspiring story. He's been a pitching elite right through high school and college, he was drafted by the Dodgers. He had a great coming out and then had some bumpy times of going here and going everywhere and then goes over to Korea and finds himself at 28 or 29. He was the equivalent of the Korean Cy Young Award winner two years in a row.

I've always been amazed as a baseball fan, how many pitchers don't come into their own until their late 20s. Some are phenoms right out of the gate, very few. Mostly, they come into themselves after five and six years, knowing how to pitch. I remember that with Sandy Koufax, he knew exactly how to pitch.

GoldandBlack.com: Obviously, we're all waiting for baseball, but Dr. Will and Mitch Daniels have a commonality of both being Dodgers fans and today I think was supposed opening day,. That day will come, hopefully soon.

Miller: Anyone out there, and especially all the Gold and Black fans, have personal stories about close ties with an athlete. They know from the time they were little kids, they had a laser focus on their sport. And that's what we've had fun with Josh is watching him relentlessly pursue this. I never had that.

GoldandBlack.com: You do a psychological wellness things online, tell us tell our folks where they can find it.

Miller: I’ve been on Facebook for quite a while but now I'm on YouTube. The YouTube channel, Dr. Will Miller, and it's about health and wellness. It has episodes a couple of times a week, and that are just short three to five minutes with a message kind of sharing what I've learned in psychological science etc. And again, (it is meant to be used) to be uplifted.

Closing note: Special thanks to Ryan Delaney, Gordon Jackson and everyone at WLFI for their help in making this interview happen. This was the last scheduled show of our 10th season of Gold and Black LIVE and we are grateful for our sponsor Triple XXX Family Restaurants, Hilton Garden Inn and State Farm Agent Trent Johnson.

Dr Will Miller has been a popular guest on  the "Bob and Tom Show" and hosted a show on Nick at Nite.
Dr Will Miller has been a popular guest on the "Bob and Tom Show" and hosted a show on Nick at Nite.
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