Voices for Voices®

3 Billion Lives: From Anxiety to Impact | Episode 199

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 199

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3 Billion Lives: From Anxiety to Impact | Episode 199

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From binge drinking to building a global movement—mental health recovery unfolds in unexpected ways. As we approach our 200th episode milestone, I'm reflecting on the journey that's taken our message to over 50 countries and 550+ cities worldwide.

Behind every polished episode lies an unseen reality: the mental fatigue, the burnout, the constant internal dialogue that comes with being on the autism spectrum and managing ADHD. The studio lights that affect my sensory processing, the anxiety before hitting record, the overwhelming awareness that my words reach countless people struggling with their own challenges—these are the hidden dimensions of this work.

My recovery path has allowed me to redirect energy once consumed by unhealthy coping mechanisms toward something meaningful. Guitar playing has become my unexpected therapeutic outlet; despite not claiming any real talent, the emotional release it provides has become essential self-care. The cognitive demands of remembering chord progressions somehow quiets the mental noise that comes with running a growing organization.

What feels most significant lately is the growing weight of responsibility as our reach expands. When looking into these cameras—sometimes just a tiny lens—I'm increasingly aware of the global community we're building. This isn't just content creation; it's a lifeline for people who need to hear they're not alone in their struggles.

Remember that behind every face you see online, whether smiling or serious, there's someone navigating their own battles. I'm still in active mental health recovery while working toward helping billions. We all face curveballs, good days and bad, but we keep moving forward. Whatever you're going through, you're not alone in this journey. Subscribe, share, and join our mission to be a voice for those who need one.

Mental health advocacy requires tremendous energy, especially while managing personal recovery and building a global platform that has reached over 50 countries and 550+ cities worldwide.

• Approaching episode 200 with a goal of 300 episodes by end of 2025
• Redirecting energy from past unhealthy coping mechanisms to purposeful work
• Guitar playing as a form of self-care and stress reduction
• Different challenges between in-studio filming (multiple cameras, lights, teleprompter) versus remote recording
• The psychological weight of realizing our global impact and responsibility
• Mental health recovery continues even while helping others
• The "faces of depression" can look like anything - sometimes smiling, sometimes not
Like, share, and subscribe to help us reach our goal of positively impacting 3 billion people over time. Be a voice for you or somebody in need.

-Support Voices for Voices®: https://venmo.com/u/voicesforvoices or at https://www.voicesforvoices.org/shop/p/supporter
- Learn more about Voices for Voices®: linktr.ee/Voicesforvoices

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Justin Alan Hayes:

Welcome to this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. Thank you for joining us. If you can give us a big thumbs up, if you can like, share, subscribe to our channels, we would greatly appreciate that. Continuing towards that goal of helping 8 billion 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond, we haven't even hit 8 billion people in the world quite yet, so that's why I chuckled a little bit. And we're doing that with the help of you, partner organizations and just fellow human beings that want to help others and whatever that looks like. Not all of it is monetary. A lot of it is just spending a little bit of time, volunteering or even on social media liking, sharing, suggesting ideas. Those are all ways to help us reach our goal. And if you've known about Voices for Voices anything in the past, we are and have really started to hit some pretty big goals for us internally. To get to that point, we've had a number of very grateful media spots where we had the opportunity to show the brand Voices for Voices, talk about the brand, among others. We're doing a whole lot and it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of brain power takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of brainpower right, we know that we're not only we don't always just get tired physically, that we can get tired mentally. That could be considered. You know the term burnout, you know hyphenated burnout, or two words, I guess it would be burnout and really that just means you know we're, we're exhausted, exhausted from, from thinking from. As a previous episode we talked about refreshing. You know, we were a little bit, you know, addicted to that refreshing our, our news feeds, our, our emails, our apps for the newest and latest information and feedback. And that can, that can take a toll, has taken a toll on me working through that. But one of the reasons I'm able to at this current time is because, as you've heard me talk before about the importance of the work we're doing, importance of the stories, of the content that we're sharing, the guests that we are very grateful to interview and share their stories and share where they've been and where they're at and share their goals and tips. And again, it's, it's a lot, a lot of work, a lot of, a lot of little things to kind of go in behind the scenes that you don't. Many people don't see, they just see the finished product. They see or listen to our episodes, which we're very close, if we haven't already hit episode 200. So that's pretty awesome. You've heard me talk about hitting episode 300 by the end of 2025. Well, before we can get to 300, we have to reach 200 and we're just, uh, not even a quarter of the way through 2025 and we're at 200. And we just have some really, really neat things that we're doing and neat guests that we're able to share, both in studio and remotely.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I've been able to one area that I've wanted to be a little more focused on this year, and it can be considered self-care, lowering of stress, and we can do that by a number of different things, and for each of us, those are going to be different, and one of those things for me is playing my guitar. Not great, I know the basic chords, I'm not an educated singer by any stretch and I've wanted to, in 2025, be a little more focused on that little niche for me. For me, because I like doing it, it does reduce stress, even though it is stressful trying to remember the progression of the chords. So, for instance, as we would count one, two, three a song. The progression might be the chord A, then C, then D, and so those are things that I have to remember playing certain songs and then write it. Every song has a little bit of a different chord progression but anyways, regardless of how bad I think I am or not great at it, the emotional tie, the way it makes me feel doing it, and then afterwards it really is kind of a helpful thing for me to do. And so far in 2025, thus far I've been able to do a little bit more intentional focused guitar playing slash, if you want to call it singing, call it talking and so we've been able to do a couple of songs done.

Justin Alan Hayes:

We've done more than what we put out, which is incredible that we still have a lot of incredible content that is still waiting to be scheduled because some current events happen and come up. We like to capitalize on that, and so I believe we have out there memories from Maroon 5, crews from Florida-Georgia line, and that might be all. I might be missing one. I'll take a take a look after film this. It's not really important. I don't have superstructure goals when it comes to it, other than when I ruminate and when I do my refreshing of emails and and the like, if I'm able to take some time away from that and practice a little guitar, maybe learn, uh, learn a song or two and figure out if, uh, if that song or those songs plural will will be something that it will put out for kind of the world.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Because we, we are worldwide, which you've heard me saying another uh, another episode that it's really starting, uh, to hit me, that we are worldwide, that we have a global audience. You've heard me or seen me say you know over 50 countries, over 550 plus cities across the world. You know we are based here in Northeast Ohio where we spend most of our days, and I'm not sure really why. I just as, of late, started to feel that way of really feeling well, the momentum, and that we're just continuing to expand and expand content, audience wise, each and every day and really by the hour, and then, as I'm sitting here talking or whether I'm in the studio, when I'm in the studio, I guess it's a little bit easier to be a little bit not, as I have more things to focus on it when I'm in studio. So sometimes, well, that's teleprompter and they'll be lights, and lights really do affect me on that, on the autism spectrum, and so I focus on whichever camera that I need to, and really the cameras are like kind of that big as far as where I'm looking, so I can kind of generally look in that direction and then when we have guests, whether they're coming to us virtually or whether they're in studio, try to remain and have that eye contact with them and not worry which particular camera is being used. There's five different cameras that the staff toggles in between. They've known me pretty well after doing quite a few episodes, so they understand a little bit of my lingo and probably how my eyes shift, and so they're able to do a great job there. So I have a few different things that can take my attention when I'm in studio, when we're shooting remotely, whether it's a solo episode like this or or whether we have a guest with us.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I guess my mind is able to expand a little bit, and it's interesting because when I maybe expand it, I think it's the right word. It's what I mean by that. I mean that one of the biggest things that as human beings we get afraid of throughout life, you know there's obviously taxes, you know dying, public speaking and when I started kind of my public speaking in college. It's definitely super nervous and again, I medicated with alcohol and the like for quite a while and that was kind of my I say my go-to. But the way I could continue and do what I needed to do whether that was a speech, a presentation and kind of get through it, because that's kind of the deal right Is get me through it. Just like I had blood work done a couple weeks ago, I was like just get me through it, just get me through this. And with speeches and interviews or the like, with speeches and interviews or the like, very much the same, get me through this speech, get me through this presentation.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Interviews for jobs, for scholarships, for anything, any type of interview, interview when I'm being interviewed, it really just consumes me, my mind's racing all over the place. What do I want to, what topics do I want? To make sure I share and, and you, we just have a flurry of activity going on in our head and that's very much the same with me, and so when I'm in the studio I know I have several things to kind of focus on or just be aware of. That's kind of that flurry of activity for me in my mind when I kind of come out of that studio setting and it's just a camera, even if I have a light behind the camera or not, whether it's the camera we're using now or we have a couple different cameras that we use. And the big thing now is just the time. So to make sure that the best I can to stay around 30 minutes if at all possible. So that's kind of the big milestone for these remote episodes, because when I'm in studio there's a clock and I'm able to follow that, follow that, and so for someone like me that I also have ADD, adhd, I guess, use that to my benefit, I guess.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So, whereas when I was using substances and alcohol specifically, whereas when I was using substances and alcohol specifically, mostly that's where I was focused. I was focused on okay, when am I going to get that next drink, and not even the drinking of every day, but more of the binge drinking on weekends of I got to make sure I have something at home, you know, to pregame before I go out, and where am I going to go, and that's what was occupying my mind, whereas now I'm taking prescribed medication for my diagnoses, able to use a high amount of that energy towards the show, the organization, and that's huge because I really redirected kind of that energy from something not great to something a lot better. Again, nobody's perfect, I'm not claiming to be where I'm at, though is in a much better spot with the energy, better spot with the energy. So that flurry of activity for the show in studio is where I experience a lot, a lot of that flurry of activity. You know a question progression, you know what answers have been given and where should we go from there, and so there's just a lot that I've learned over time.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So my interviews now are much better than what they were when I just started. And that's just like any athlete or anybody, and the more practice you have in general, the better off you're going to be. Does that mean you're going to? You are so much better? And no, it just means we're moving that pendulum. We're moving in the right direction from where we started, just like if we're studying for an exam or a test. If we study for five minutes versus 10 minutes and then we take a break and then we do five minutes and whatever that is. The more our mind gets kind of conditioned, the better off we're going to be, just just like when we take an exam, when we see what type of questions are being asked, and so we know going forward. When we study for a future exam quiz, we know what to look for a little bit more than when, at the beginning, we didn't really know what to expect.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Is it fill in the blank? Is it essay, is it multiple choice? Is it true-false combination? Whereas again, when I'm doing these shows remotely, my mind is able to be a little bit more. Since I've done it quite a bit, I'm still nervous. I still get nervous every time before I start. But for me, in these remote episodes, I'm able to settle in, and while there is still some anxiety there's, there's much less than in studio, so I'm able to.

Justin Alan Hayes:

When I say sit in, so I'm able to. When I say sit in it, I'm able to in my mind, instead of ping-ponging between which camera? What question? Where am I at time-wise? You know what type of delay do we have if we're on a Zoom call, a Zoom interview? And instead of that, I'm able to really sit here a little bit or a lot more calm and able to think a little bit more clear in the given time frame that we have.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So when I talk about recognizing and it just starting to hit me about how worldwide our organization really is and how worldwide and how many people worldwide from all over the world, I can't stress that enough, that we're helping and we're sharing information, we're sharing content. We've just come so far and if we didn't have goals you know, these huge goals of wanting to help $3 billion over the course of my lifetime and beyond I don't think I would be in this position where I would be kind of starting to feel a little bit of that weight. Because to you right, you're watching or listening it probably sounds and looks very similar than what you've seen before or heard before. But to me, with the camera setup that we have for this particular episode, it's much smaller in that there's just different sized cameras and you can use a phone, you can use a GoPro, you can use a variety of cameras, and so with the camera setup we have now, I'm truly looking into, let's say, like a, like a little bit of a dot, but kind of, uh, a small area, and to know that that small area in general, compared to other cameras that we use, just depending on availability they're charged, if we have memory, and and how many episodes we're gonna film and those types of things to to know that we are reaching so many people and that has been, that has been the goal and we're not done yet, we're not anywhere close, but just to see how far we've come in a short period of time and we're gonna. We're hitting 200 episodes for the show. We're gonna hit 300 by the end of 2025.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Uh, our guests are just amazing and we're just really grateful to be able to bring that those interviews and content to know. Some's ultra serious, some's a little bit, you know, light, more lighthearted and and just what's what's going on in life. But just know that, no matter what is covered behind my eyes, if you check out any of our social media, there's one post in specific and I believe it's nine different headshots of me, so pictures of my face at various times doing various things, and it says something like you know, the faces of depression. You know, sometimes I'm some of those. I'm smiling. Some of them I'm not, some of them I look down and so, no matter what type of episode, the content, the individual or individuals we're interviewing, whether it's in studio, whether it's remote, I'm still a person that is going through active mental illness recovery and for anyone that needs to hear that you're not alone, you're not the only one. We're all going through something. Some things are similar, some things are different, but we're all going through this thing called life and it makes me feel good being able to share like this. It very closely replicates, say, therapy, when I go to my therapy appointments, because I'm just sharing.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I'm talking about topics, things that are going on in my life, that have gone on, that are coming up, that are currently going on, things that are in the works. You know having okay, well, we want to do 300 episodes in 2025 overall, and so some things we're working towards. But just know that, no matter what we're working towards, that every episode, no matter how easy it looks to you or sounds to you, I'm still somebody that is in active recovery and I get curveballs thrown at me all the time. Good days, bad days, a combination, good days, bad days, a combination yeah, and I think that's what I want to really really convey and we do from episode to episode. So sometimes we talk about that and the stigma, and we can't do anything about that and the stigma, and you know we can't do anything about that. We can.

Justin Alan Hayes:

We for me, I just keep my head down and trying to stay as busy as possible with the organization and trying to bring the best content and help as many people. We got the re-entry program going. We're helping a ton of people that way, but we were running for about half of 2024. And we've seen a couple episodes with the individuals who lead that here in Summit County, and so I'm spending my time just kind of keeping my head down and working. So, yeah, that does lead to burnout from time to time. Things that are hopefully much better, as far as much healthier than binge drinking on weekends or whenever that was. And so am I doing everything else perfectly healthy? No, but I've eliminated that aspect and some toxic behavior that I'd been doing for quite a long time. So that brings us oh, wow, so we're right at 30. So again, thanks for all your love, your support. Give us a big thumbs up, subscribe, like, share, follow and until next time, be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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