How Financial Trauma Shapes Our Mental Health - Janeil Pierre
- Jack Heald
- Feb 24
- 19 min read
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Former military sergeant Janeil Pierre opens up about her deeply personal journey through financial hardship and depression, revealing the often-overlooked connection between money stress and mental health. From sleeping on an air mattress and surviving on minimal wages in New York City to finding her path to healing, Pierre shares raw insights about isolation, self-blame, and the transformative power of asking "What can I control?" Her story illuminates the complex relationship between financial well-being and mental health, offering hope and practical wisdom for anyone struggling with similar challenges. This candid discussion tackles the stigma of seeking help and provides actionable steps toward healing and personal growth.
Contact Info - Janeil Pierre
Jack Heald: Hey folks, welcome to the Predictive Health Clinic Podcast. I am joined today by Janeil. It's really not a hard name to say, Janelle Pierre, who was recommended to me by a mutual friend. And Janeil, we were just talking about the difference between folks who follow rules and those who believe that it's easier to get forgiveness than to ask permission, as I'm reading your bio here you had a decade in the military and you were just telling me about getting out of the military and having to learn how to live in a different kind of environment. So I'm guessing that all, that whole experience informs the message you have for us today. I apologize for taking so long to introduce you.
Janeil Pierre: It's okay. That's okay. I love when things just flow. I'm learning how to accept flow and just the beauty of natural things happening the way they should. So that's absolutely okay with me.
Jack Heald: Good. Those always make the best conversation, even though I've tried to structure this a little bit.
The purpose of Predictive Health Clinic is to give our listeners for them to come away from this one episode with one specific action they can take to either prevent or recover from some sort of health issue. Do you have something like that for us today?
Janeil Pierre: I do. And it's so juicy. I really do. Today I want to talk about something that I have struggled with in the past and I now use as a part of my superpower to help enhance other people's lives the way I have been able to enhance mine. That topic is the stress, the impact financial stress has on overall health.
Jack Heald: You know, that's in some ways that is blindingly obvious. If anybody just sits down and thinks about it for just a moment. The reality, however, is that the majority of people don't connect their health issues to those kinds of external things, do they?
Janeil Pierre: Yeah. So financial stress is one of the biggest, yet most overlooked factors that affect a lot of people's lives today. It contributes to anxiety, sleep disorders, high blood pressure, and even a weakened immune system.
And yet so many people find themselves with these symptoms and they're just treating the symptoms, not focusing on the fact what is causing the symptoms; your financial well-being is directly tied to your physical and mental health, especially mental health. And so many of us miss that connection and so with what I do, it's a pleasure to help so many people realize where the problem stems from and ways in which they can heal and better that because the connection is not made.
Jack Heald: Before we get into the answers, how'd you get interested in this?
Janeil Pierre: So my own struggle back in 2010 and 2011, I was nearing my thirties and I went through a really difficult financial situation that triggered depression and coming out of that experience coming out on the other side, and that's the way I joined the military because I just I didn't have college education, I didn't have anything that separated me and we're talking about post 9/11 and we're talking also about post-2008 recession.
So living in New York with nothing that separates you from another person as far as education and skill set is concerned, I found it difficult to get a well-paying job. So I found myself working for a minimum wage, which was $10 an hour back then, and my rent in New York being 50% of that. So I had to live on a couple hundred dollars a week, take care of myself and everything else.
And so that period of struggle and having to come out of it really showed me the importance of not just financial education, but the impact of financial struggle can affect an individual on their physical well-being, on their mental well-being, it was truly a difficult time period for me, especially because of who I was in that time, you know, and it was 10 years after high school I graduated high school at 16.
So you would think by 26 I would have figured it out by now. And I wasn't. And and I didn't. And so that's what pushed me to join the military. Once I got in, all of the things that I had to teach myself, I started teaching to other people, because I didn't want my friends and my battle buddies to get out of the military and then end up on the air mattress on the floor, the way I was right before I joined the military.
Jack Heald: Let's talk about the experience, and the health issues, and then we'll get into some of the solutions that you experienced yourself. Depression. What was the physical experience of depression?
Janeil Pierre: For me, it was isolation. I isolated myself from everyone, from everything. I would show up to work at my job, and I would do my work.
And I smile throughout the day. And, you know, cause the last thing you want anyone to know to do is to know what you're going through. Because in my mind, I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me. I don't want anybody to know what I'm going through. I don't want anybody to try to fix the situation. This is my pain. This is my shame. This is my guilt. I did this to myself. I should have done this. I should have done that. I, you know, the blame game, the shame and the guilt, and the depression on top of it was just like a darkness for me. It was a really dark space. And so, where I lived at the time, I sublet a room from a family that had seven members, so I was the eighth person in that apartment in a two-bedroom. And I'll go in the bedroom, close the door and I'm on my air mattress in this empty room, and I would just stay there and I'll cry. And all I did, it was a really difficult thing for me to imagine what it would have been like outside of that situation.
And on the days that I felt like I wanted to see the sun, I would look through the small window. There was a tiny window and I'd look through it. And when I looked out the window, all I saw was everybody else living what I would have liked to live.
In my mind, they had it and I didn't. And in that moment, in those moments, it wasn't accessible. So those were some of my experiences going through depression, feeling like everybody else had it. It was inaccessible to me. I couldn't have it. And this was some form of punishment for something that I did.
Jack Heald: How long did it last?
Janeil Pierre: As long as it could. There were nights and days that I would come home from work, and I would have to, in order to not just stay there and cry and be in that darkness, I would have to go to sleep. And so I slept for two reasons, and I'm not a day sleeper. It's amazing. I was born between the hours of 2 and 5, my mother cannot remember which one it is. But I was born in the wee hours of the morning before the sun came up. And I've never been a morning person. Blows my mind. And I don't, I also don't take naps. But in those moments when I was so hungry that I didn't have food, I would make myself sleep throughout the day. And one day I was just crying really hard. I mean, I was hurt. It was, it hurt so bad to be in that place. And I was crying. I was sobbing, of course, muffled because I didn't want the family next door to hear anything and to, you know, try to fix it. And in that moment, I was like, Janeil, you can't stay here. You just can't, you gotta do something.
This is not where you're meant to be. I know you don't have much, but what can you do in this moment? What can you do? What can you take control of in this moment?
And in my mind, the only thing I can take control of is to prepare for when things changed, right? Because remember, I'm surviving on less than $110 a week at this point. And I didn't have money. I didn't have credit. So I was like, okay, the only thing I can do right now is focus on money, I can learn about it. I can learn about, I don't know where that thought came from, but in that moment when I asked myself, what can you take control of? The only answer was, let's prepare for the future.
Let's start taking control of things so that when things got better, you'll be prepared. You won't lose it and you'll never end up here again.
So I started learning everything I could about money. I started researching. I had a laptop. That was all I had. I had a laptop. So I would get on that laptop and I'll start researching everything about money, everything about credit. I started looking at, the type of home I could actually have, like what, if you can have a house, what would you want it to look like? And I started pulling pictures of the home and saving it on my computer. So within that timeframe, when I was, when I allowed myself to finally imagine what life could be out, like outside of that four walls with a tiny window, that's when I started to kind of just see the sunlight a little bit.
And the opportunity to join the military came my way. My best friend sent me a recruiter's information. She was like, Hey, you should talk to this person. And she didn't even know the depth of everything that I was going through. But she was like, you should talk to this guy. And I reached out and we started talking.
And that's how I ended up signing my contract to the military. And yeah, that's how long it lasted about in months. As far as months, it probably lasted that period lasted about three to six months.
Jack Heald: And you joined the military in your mid-twenties, late-twenties.
Janeil Pierre: At 27, it was, I left the basic training three days after I turned 27.
Jack Heald: Wow. So you're buried under this dark black cloud. You've got a mental focus that's probably focused on what you everything you lack? Motion is just piling on top of you and making it really difficult to see a way out, the change that you were able to make, the rope you were able to grasp was to ask yourself what can I control?
Janeil Pierre: What can I control? What can I do? Because I felt so helpless.
I felt like I was being punished and it's so crazy the things you tell yourself when you're under stress. It's like I know I must have done something wrong. I'm the most kind-hearted person you would probably ever meet. And I treat everyone with dignity and respect. I've always been that person. And in that, in those moments, I was searching my mind for things that I did wrong. To, just for me to find, I needed a reason. And it had to be because I didn't do something right. I must have hurt someone. But who did I hurt? It made no sense.
And when the light started coming through just a tiny bit, the question that came up was, what can you do? What can you do, Janelle? What can you do to get yourself out of this? Because it's you versus you at this in this moment.
No one is gonna come in. And I wasn't gonna allow anyone to come in, either.
I promised myself in that moment I will never tell anyone this is my life. I will never let anyone in. So if I had already shut the door to anyone coming in, even my best friend, there was no way I was gonna allow anybody else to come in. So the question had to have been, what can you do? Because you blocked yourself from anybody coming in to try to help you.
Jack Heald: Do you ever talk to addicts? Alcoholics, drug addicts, people with genuine addictions?
Janeil Pierre: Not at this depth. I have not.
Jack Heald: I'm wondering about that. That was it struck me how you talked about when you said that you'd shut yourself off from outside help. And I got to thinking about this, the testimony of addicts who reach a point where they cry out, you know, help me God, I got nothing.
Sounds like you were able to find one thing. And it strikes me that, what I'm hearing you say is in the depression, you were entirely focused on what did I do in the past that's put me here and the moment of transformation was when you started saying, okay, I'm here, what can I do to get me somewhere different in the future? It's a subtle, but important change. Am I hearing that right?
Janeil Pierre: And I love the fact that you talked about addicts because when we think about shutting ourselves out, we think, you know, it's only because of something like, you know, like a physical substance abuse. But in that moment, I was never on any type of substances. But in that moment, I kind of was like an addict was beating myself. I was addicted to beating myself up. I was addicted to blaming myself. I was addicted to making it hurt more. Which is why I made some of the decisions that I made because if I'm here, that means it's my fault, you know, it's my fault that I'm here. And I decided that no one could help me. It was me. No one is gonna understand. No one is gonna know. No one, they just gonna judge me because I was the one who was smart in school. I'm the one who graduated high school at 16. I'm the one that, you know, left her family and moved to New York. So they're just gonna judge me anyway. They're not gonna understand.
Jack Heald: So you found a way to look forward instead of back somehow.
Janeil Pierre: I can't even tell you what it was. I feel like it was a long time ago, I had made a goal to have my own home by the time I turned 30. That was a goal of mine. Like I really wanted to have a home. No one in my family had bought a home before. There were a couple people that built homes and, you know, typical stuff like that. But no one had ever bought home, especially my family that migrated to the United States. And that was just a goal for me. I wanted a house and I wanted a car so bad. And I feel like in that space where my mind took a turn, was because I looked at the calendar and I'm like, dang, I'm right there. And I couldn't deal with the fact, I couldn't deal with the fact that if 30, my 30th birthday reached and I didn't have a home, or I didn't do everything that I could to get into a home, that I wasn't going to be able to forgive myself for at least not trying. I feel like that was the turning moment.
And I've never had that thought as clearly as I did now. But I feel like that was the motivating factor. A house and a car was what I truly desired to have. As simple as those things sound, that's what I wanted.
Jack Heald: So the depression, the stress, are you aware of when it began to lift? Were you aware of any physical changes that you experienced as a result of it?
Janeil Pierre: So as far as physical changes, I was a lot slimmer then because two, I wasn't eating, that's the one thing about would be, it wasn't just one of the reasons why I wasn't eating because I couldn't properly afford to feed myself. That was one reason, but another reason was the depression. When I did eat, it was very small amounts. It was also not very nutritional as well, you know, because I basically lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ramen noodles and tuna and crackers. So when I did eat, that's what I ate because that's what my money could afford, but it was also very small amounts. So it was the physical slimness in my body, the smallness, and that was another reason why I think I kept myself from people. I didn't want them to think, to look at me and see. As far as any other physical things later on, I don't think the depression ever truly lifted until I faced it years later.
Jack Heald: Ooh, now we're talking.
Janeil Pierre: Years later. Because remember, I didn't want anyone to know. So what happened once I joined the military and I started, you know, showing my battles and my friends and talking to other people, I talked to them about the money about their money, not so much about my journey. No one ever knew. I still isolated myself in the military. I remember someone said, saying Pierre always stays to herself. She thinks she's better than people.
And I'm like, y'all have no idea. Because to me, in my mind, if I get too close to you, you'd see my pain, and I don't want you to see my pain. So I didn't isolate myself because I was better, or I thought I was better. I isolated it because to me, when I look at me, I see pain and sadness, and I didn't want other people to see that. I wanted them to see the soldier. I wanted them to see the person that was good at their job. I wanted them to see my excellence, not my pain.
And when I got hurt in the military, I had an accident where I broke my spine in three places. I suffered a traumatic brain injury. And before that happened, I had torn the labrum in my left hip.
It's very painful. And when I went, it was after all of those things happened, the depression came right back. The pain chronic excruciating pain brought the depression right back. And when I felt like I literally was not gonna make it, there was this time after those things happened and I ended up on antidepressants and all of that type of stuff, it was in that moment where I felt like I was literally about to lose my mind was when I reached out for help.
And the catalyst, there was a heart murmur. I developed a heart murmur at 34, and when I got that news, I would have to be with a cardiologist for the next couple of years, every year for the next couple of years to make sure that, you know, my heart doesn't get worse. That's when I just then I screamed out for help. It was then, at 34, was when I screamed out for help. And I walked into what we call in the military the behavioral health department. And I'm like, can I speak to someone? And she was like there is no one available. And this is after lunch. And I didn't have an appointment. I just walked in because I came straight from the doctor's office. And that just, there were just so many things I heard. Every time, to me, every time I went to the doctor, I heard something different. I heard something different. I heard there was something additional and hearing about the heart moment literally pushed me over the edge.
When I walked in there and I'm standing in, I was looking at her holding back tears because I'm about to explode at this point and she looked and she was like, there's nothing available. Can you come back maybe tomorrow in two days? And I said, okay.
And I was about to turn away. And I wasn't, I said this before to someone. I said, I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I walked away. I didn't trust myself to walk away. And she must have felt that. And she was like, hold on, Sgt. Pierre, hold on. I think I found someone that you can talk to right now. I don't want you to leave. And I said, okay. And she said you're going to have to wait about 30 minutes. And I said, okay. And I sat in the waiting area, and she kept looking over at me.
There was just something in that moment. She kept looking at me. And I didn't trust myself. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew I didn't trust myself to leave that building that day. And I sat in the waiting area and I was just lost because I didn't understand what my life was. Like, why am I going through all of these things? And after about 30 minutes, someone came from the back, called me, and I was in therapy for 18 months from that day. So that's when I started that's the moment that I started seeking help for the depression that I was going through. It was that particular moment.
Jack Heald: Wow, this is a story. You know, normally what I would ask here is what's, what are the common misconceptions about this particular issue? And what's the truth? My suspicion, however, is that people who suffer from depression already know all this stuff. They probably really relate to what you're talking about. And frankly, they probably, Have a glimmer of an idea of what the truth is, but I think it'd be worthwhile. Yeah, you articulate it. What's the truth about depression and your and how it's affecting you so we can move forward so we can go get this message.
Janeil Pierre: I feel like the truth is there is a catalyst. There is something and for me, it started with my finances. Before I was struggling financially, I never had to deal with that stuff, you know?
And I don't say that stuff dismissively. I just, it was like, life was different before I had that traumatic experience. And I feel because of that traumatic experience, it brought more traumatic experiences because I sat in a container and beat myself up and judged myself and punished myself for things that it was just a phase. Someone said to me once, she was like, pain is the thing that happens. Suffering is what you make it mean and put all the things you put on top of it. And I put myself, the fact about the matter was I was working for someone that didn't really care. That was the thing, that was the pain, right? And when I tried to, when I attempted, when I attempted to get another job, he found out about it and cut my hours. That was the event. He cut my hours and now I'm really struggling.
I put everything else on top of it. I made it mean other things. It's not a blame game, it's a responsibility. I had to learn to take responsibility for what I made the event of losing 10% of my paycheck mean. Because the same way I figured it out, I probably would have figured it out sooner, had I not put myself, had I not decided to go down the road of it must mean I did something wrong. I'm a bad person. I'm this, I'm that.
So when it comes to depression and finances, how those two work together is that finances is about so much more than numbers. It's about your mindset.
Someone can have a lot of income and still be struggling while someone can be making less and living a more decent life. You know, a happier life. It's all about the meaning, and the beliefs, and the thoughts because all of those things lead to the action, and the decisions that you make. To me, that's what it is.
Jack Heald: So let's give folks a hand something they can grasp onto some for those who are seeing themselves in your story. What do they do now? What do they do next? What's the best next step you can recommend?
Janeil Pierre: Just pause, really truly just pause, just pause. In that moment of pause, that's when the sunlight comes in, starts to come in. You can take responsibility for where you are without blaming yourself because in the moments where you made the decisions that you made, you thought it was the best decision.
You made the best decision you can with the knowledge you had at the time. If you thought something else was going to work better, you would have made that other decision. So just pause for a moment and give yourself grace.
Moving forward allows you to only look back and pull the lessons, not live in the past. Just pull back. Okay. What worked? I made this decision. What about it was good? What about it do I not need to do it again? I did it. It didn't work. Okay. There is something that you learn. As much education as you have, as many degrees as you have, life is the greatest experience, the greatest teacher. The life, your life experience is your greatest teacher, right? Okay. What lessons did you learn? What can be repeated? What are you leaving there? And you just leave that stuff behind.
It's been a long journey from 2010, and 2011 to right now, 2025 for me. And had I known then what I know now, I'm sure I wouldn't have struggled, but I'm grateful for the struggle, because now it allows me to have a deeper level of empathy for other people, and to help them in a way where they know they're not going to be judged.
And the first and worst judger of you- is you. So just pause. Pick out the things that you did really well, repeat it. And the things that didn't work so well, don't repeat it. And don't, oh my God, if I could say this in a different way, I would.
But please don't block yourself out. Reach out for help. There's so much power in reaching out for help. There are people who want to help you.
It's my life's mission to help people. And it brings me the deepest level of joy. Please don't struggle in silence.
Jack Heald: I'm, I want to wrap this up with my favorite question. We didn't really follow the template today, but that's okay because I love the story.
My favorite question is if you had only one message to deliver to these folks. But you were limited to no more than eight words. I call this the billboard question, because eight words is about the most that you can effectively put on a billboard. What would that message be?
Janeil Pierre: For me, you deserve the most epic Life possible.
Jack Heald: You deserve the most epic life possible.
Janeil Pierre: And I came in under eight words.
Jack Heald: You did. So if you see yourself in this speaking to our listeners now, if you see yourself in Janiel's story, suffering from depression and all the mental and physiological side effects of depression and you're blaming yourself for where you are, rather than blame, take responsibility for where you are and go forward, you deserve the most epic life possible.
Janeil Pierre: The most epic life possible.
Jack Heald: The most epic life possible. Our guest has been Janelle Pierre. Janelle, tell folks how to the best way to get a hold of you.
Janeil Pierre: I'm on LinkedIn, TikTok, my personal Facebook page and Instagram as @JanielPierre.
Jack Heald: Very good. I will provide all the contact information in the show notes. You can connect with Janiel Pierre through any of the links that we'll provide. Thanks for joining us. This has been the Predictive Health Clinic. We'll talk to you next time.
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