Meet Beth Gustafson

We recently connected with Beth Gustafson and have shared our conversation below.

Beth, we are so deeply grateful to you for opening up about your journey with mental health in the hops that it can help someone who might be going through something similar. Can you talk to us about your mental health journey and how you overcame or persisted despite any issues? For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.

Persisting through my mental health issues has been a struggle since I was a teenager. Only recently have I been able to better handle these issues.
As I think the story is for most of us, mental health was never really anything that was explicitly talked about. It didn’t really “exist.” If you did have “real mental health issues,” you were deemed “crazy” or “not right in the head,” other than that, you may have just been “a little goofy,” “overly cheery,” “a worry wart,” or a “Debby Downer.” How you outwardly presented your mental well being or not was simply a quirky character trait and nothing more. In reality, though, for a lot of us, it was always something more that we just ended up suppressing. Being “lazy” or a “Debby Downer” were just things about yourself you could suppress because otherwise, you were just a “normal kid,” right? You had to pick yourself up by the boot straps and just “TRY HARDER!” But when you try so hard that you just end up breaking yourself, you wonder what you did wrong? Are you wrong? Were you always wrong? That’s when you start to see the failure in you. The failure that only exists because this whole time you were living up to the standards of people that were always different from you. You were never like them, but everyone around you made you believe that you were. So, you followed their recipe to success to a T, but this whole time you were using completely different ingredients! And as you can guess, even if you have been following their recipe to a T, if you’ve been doing it with the wrong ingredients this whole time, well, you’re not ending up with the same results, in fact, you’re probably ending up with a disaster of a dish.
I became that disaster of a dish. Over and over again. I was told to ignore the fact that my ingredients didn’t fit the recipe, to just suppress it, and so, eventually, the whole thing blew up in my face! What came out was a hot, steaming pile of goopy garbage! A complete mess nobody would be able to digest, not even myself. But there were still edible ingredients in there, I just needed to find the recipe that made them into a just as edible dish, a dish that made sense for me and my ingredients.
Let’s just say, it took a lot of hot, steaming piles of garbage and even some kitchen fires to finally make sense of the ingredients I was given, and what dish I could even make with them. I needed a LOT of help! I needed firefighters to put out the kitchen I nearly burned down, paramedics for my burns, a contractor to fix the things I charred in my kitchen, and professional chefs to teach me how to finally make the proper dish with my ingredients. And if you’re still following this silly metaphor here, let me say, I still have not perfected my recipe. Far from it! But, I’ve consistently been going to therapy every week for over a year now, regularly seeing a psychiatrist, a community support specialist, regularly taking my prescribed meds, and getting constant medical check ups for my chronic health conditions. I’ve been spending more time socializing with people who share my interests, and going to events I enjoy! (When I have the energy that is.) I’ve been learning what my needs, my limits, my ingredients are, and it’s thanks to the people who’ve been helping through all of this. The people that have finally seen me for who I am, for my struggles, who don’t pretend they’re not real, and are sympathetic to them. I’m persisting because I’m finally learning what I need, not what the person next to me needs, but what I NEED! Though, I still don’t even know all that I need, yet. I’m unlearning and relearning a lot that’s been ingrained in me. The voices that kept telling me “what you’re feeling is not real! You’re over-dramatic, just have a better mindset!” were just worsening what I was already dealing with. Ignoring an issue doesn’t make it go away. Ignoring that I have different needs than others doesn’t make those needs go away. If anything it shows you how much more you really need to meet them. I’m persisting because I’m starting to finally understand who I really am! I am not like everyone else, I’m my own person, with my own unique body and mind, with my own thoughts, opinions, struggles, and set of ingredients!

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am currently unemployed from the work force while I focus on bettering my physical and mental health. As I try my best to keep up with that and all the challenges it brings my way, I’ve also been trying to start up my professional art career!
I knew I wanted to be a professional, working artist since I was like three years old, so this has been a passion I’ve been chasing my whole life, and only recently have I been making leap and real efforts to hopefully make it my full time career! Just this year alone I showed in 15 different art shows and exhibits, I won my first ever honorable mention award, I joined a group called the Saint Louis Ladies’ Art Guild (aka SLLAG,) I become a resident artist at Say Art Studios in Pacific, and have officially sold some of my first original pieces!
It’s been surreal the year I’ve had. This was my first year putting myself, my art, and my new brand out there! It’s been incredibly scary, but so incredibly rewarding! I think the thing I’ve loved the most about it is all the connections I’ve made! Whether artists or just art enjoyers, sharing an appreciation for the arts is something I find incredibly special!

As for what I’m up to next, well, currently I am just getting started at my residency at Say Art Studios, the Gallery at 123 East Saint Louis St. in Pacific. I, along with several other amazing artist that I already met earlier this year, will be having our original artwork and creations for purchase at the gallery! We rece

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I’ll be honest, as someone still starting out, I’m still gathering a lot of the major skills and knowledge I need for my tool bag, but trying to look back, one of the first things I can think of is taking advantage of the resources that were already right in front of me! I dropped out of college very early in, so I learned how to find the opportunities for learning around me in my everyday life. Now school is obviously a fantastic resource to take advantage of, especially in college! It’s a great opportunity to connect with fellow peers, teachers, and school programs that can help you learn a lot of great things! But as someone who separated myself from that environment early on, due to personal reasons and also just from not being that book-smart, I learned my life lessons and skills in other ways! For instance, from jobs! Working with the public will never not be an incredibly useful tool to have. Unless you go to live in the middle of nowhere, you will constantly have to deal with strangers in person and online, and with all the jobs I’ve had, I’ve gotten the chance to experience both! It’s so incredibly important to know how to eloquently deal with a client or customer, especially if you’re someone who wants to run your own business. Staying calm, cool, collected, and firm in what your doing with difficult clients is so important! You need to show *them* you know what you’re doing, not get walked over, (trust me I would know a thing or two about getting walked over..) and stay firm in what you know to be true for the business, and be honest when you don’t. No matter what you’re always gonna get great and not-so-great clients and customers, so it’s a great skill to know how to deal with them all, and the best way to do that is through practice!
Another learning opportunity I took advantage of was listening to my peers and mentors. I’m incredibly lucky to have met many amazing people who have taught me so much of what they know! Managers, older siblings, in-laws, work colleagues, even just friends have taught me a lot of things I never knew about prior! Just listening and learning from people who have skills or knowledge in areas you want to learn and improve in is a useful tool to utilize! And a lot of these people are just as happy to inform and teach you as you are to learn from them! I’ve learned it never hurts to politely ask when you don’t know!
The last thing I took advantage of to help me learn a lot of things is a very obvious one but, the World Wide Web has been one of my biggest sources for learning new things (for better or for worse, sometimes..)
Now the internet obviously looks VASTLY different than it did when I started using it consistently for the first time like… twelve-ish years ago? Man it even looks vastly different than it did when the pandemic started! So I say all this with the clear understanding of how overloaded and full of misinformation the internet is now even more so than it’s ever been! Yet, still, the internet my first, free-learning playground! To give you a quick background on me, I grew up on 50 acres in one of the more rural parts west of St. Louis, I was home schooled with no way to leave the house without my parents, and only two extracurricular activities outside of the house, which were church/Sunday School and dance classes. All that to say, there was only so much I was able to learn in that environment, so the internet was my gateway to learning even more than I could imagine! The internet has taught me a lot, probably a lot of it false, and probably a lot more than I ever needed to know in this lifetime. but it helped me hone one of my most important skills to me, my ability to create art! My techniques, styles, the supplies that I’ve come to use, are all shaped by all the amazing artists, animators, and creatives I solely found online! The internet is definitely a wonderful learning tool, but also one to be very cautious of, especially today. And I don’t get me wrong I love this place! But I’ve been on it long enough to see all the people trying to grab your attention with useless gunk, fake news, get-rich-quick schemes, scam courses, and misinformation. Which you know, I guess is another thing the internet inadvertently taught me, how to navigate it’s gunk.
But despite all that, I think gathering skills and knowledge in all these areas has completely impacted the way I currently approach things. It’s all still an ongoing learning experience, it never stops, but these have been the things I’ve learned and experienced that have helped me the most so far!

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

Okay, this might be so cheesy and cliche, but my Therapist(s) that I’ve been seeing almost weekly for over a year now has been the most helpful person in my life as of recent. She’s been helping me overcome a LOT of stuff!
I am someone who deals with very low self esteem and who constantly doubts myself and my abilities, so good and consistent therapy has been the biggest thing that’s been helping me overcome a lot of my own personal challenges. Without my therapist, I don’t think I would have made the strides I made in my art career this past year.
A lot of the skills I’ve lacked for most of my life are the ones that have anything to do with taking care of myself, my mental health, and my overall needs. All of which are incredibly important skills that apply to literally any part of your life! I think a lot of what makes you a great worker, business person, or entrepreneur, is showing people both your confidence and humility. That you have great skills that your are confident in, but that you are also human and make mistakes which you need to know how to own up to.
Along with my poor self-esteem and and self-doubt is also the constant need to be a people pleaser. If you’re constant pleasing people and staying on their good side, they won’t attack you for your flaws, right? Any relater, aha??
But I’ve learned, (with a lot of help in therapy), that when you’re a people pleaser there’s no room for mistakes, which is unrealistic as hell. So, I’ve been learning to embrace imperfection, embrace that pleasing everyone is unrealistic and exhausting, embrace that some people won’t like me, but if I’m true and confident to myself, the people that do like me for me will stick around!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/bethagart/

Image Credits

Tracey Jane Weidel, Chris Strunk