Susan u. S. Representative smith has a new book that is coming out with a pretty stark title. Lost and broken rep. Smith well, i like the subtitle, my journey back from chronic pain and crippling anxiety. The title isnt the most optimistic, but there is a path back. Susan what is the story you tell . Rep. Smith basically, i went through a bout of anxiety and chronic pain. There were lifelong aspects of it. This is stuff that i was feeling when i was a kid. High stress, i had anxiety then, and actually a knee injury when i was 12 years old that manifested itself out. But i dealt with it without any significant problems until i was 40 when i had an uncontrollable bout of anxiety that lasted five months. Eight years after that, the anxiety came back and i couldnt find a way out of it. Shortly way thereafter, chronic pain sudden. I had three hip surgeries. That lasted about six years of struggling to figure out what was wrong with the and what do i do about it did it was a very difficult period. Susan why did you decide to write about it . Rep. Smith i wanted to capture what happened. I was coming out of it in mid2019. Was finally starting to feel better, close to where i was at. I finally got off of all the medications i was taking in april 2019. Then, the physical therapy and psychotherapy had been kicking in. Then the pandemic hit. So, i had a lot of time. So, i wrote it does to keep it fresh in my mind and remember what happened. As i was writing it and thinking about other people, tens of millions of people who suffer from some combination of anxiety my depression, or running pain. I thought it would be a story that would be help in the larger debate of how we address those challenges that so many people face. Susan over the course of a couple decades, you say an estimated 100 health care professionals. That is a lot. What does that say about our Health Care System . Rep. Smith it says the answers arent as easy to find as they should be. I think on the Mental Health side, it was probably only about 10 or 12 therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists thought i saw. The bulk of that number comes from is a goal therapists. Massage therapist, osteopathic surgeons, chronic pain specialists, personal trainers, and acupuncturists, a couple put out your trysts. I think one of the biggest things it says is that health care is very specialized. You dont really have that person who goes ok, lets look at a whole body and mind and get the diagnosis right first. The whole thing is connected. It is almost a cliche at this point. Just because your foot hurts, it may not be direct to your foot, it might be connected to Something Else in your body. Anxiety and depression can lead to chronic pain. Susan you are in a situation where you can have impact on health care policy, is there anything you would change . Rep. Smith the number one thing is universal access to health care. That does not solve the whole problem. There are too many people out there who dont have insurance. You will struggle to find a solution. I will say that of those 100 plus people, probably over half of them didnt take insurance. Universal access to health care. Second thing is, lets emphasize primary care, the doctors who are supposed to look at you holistically. The third thing is, we are way too reliant on drugs and surgeries. That is sort of the easy button in health care. It is expensive and often times makes the problem worse. Susan one thing i would like to have you explain, over the years, there are questions about members of Congress Health insurance. How does your system work . Rep. Smith it is very similar. Federal employees have a solid Health Care System, but it is not the best. Because of the Affordable Care act and we are little thing, all members of congress are forced to buy on the Affordable Care act plan. We got bumped off of the previous plan, and we had to buy into. The marketplace. I forget what my premiums are, it is five or 600, pretty significant. You may not be in the network. My wife works for king county and has much Better Health insurance than i do. She is on that Health Care Plan and our children are with her on mind it is complicated and difficult, but there are a lot of psychiatrists and psychologists who werent covered by my insurance. Susan capitol hill is a pretty small town. Are you anticipated as your story comes more widely known . Rep. Smith it is hard to say. I dont think much will change. Fortunately, i have been here 27 years. People know me. This is not going to be that shocking. I am open and honest about what is going on with me for the most part, but i will be interested to see. Susan when you wrote the book, did you find it difficult to go through, was it cathartic . Rep. Smith it was. I am an excessively logical person. I love to be able to explain things. I will have a town hall in a couple weeks to talk about it, and i am fascinated to talk through that. For me, this was like explaining it. So what happened . How did i wind up in this place in the first place . And how did i work my way out of it and what were the lessons that we learn . So, it was not really solving a puzzle, because the puzzle have been solved, it was understanding how i saw the puzzle. Susan can we work through some of the stories in the book, beginning with your origin story . Where were you rank . Raise . Rep. Smith i was adopted. My mother was a code clerk, i was conceived in prague. They were not married and my biological father did not want anything to do with it. So my biological mother gave me up for adoption to her older brother who was living in seatac. I was born at George Washington hospital, then flown to seatac and thats where i grew up. I did not know i was adopted, nobody ever told me until after both my parents had passed away and my biological mother sent me a letter explaining it to me. Susan were you able to resolve issues . At that point you were both grownups, how did rep. Smith we had a decent relationship before that, and we still do. Do is still alive actually. We talk regularly. He certainly had conversations throughout the years and talked about it. Susan there is a sad note to the story, she didnt have much choice about giving you up at the time. Rep. Smith it is funny, people think the world we live in today and all the conflicts we have the depth of sexism in america is really not fully understood. Up until probably the mid70s, the expectation was if you are a woman and you got married, you didnt need a job. In fact, if you had a job you are taking it may man who had a family to raise. The state department did not allow married women to work in certain post. They did not allow a woman who had a child out of wedlock, she could not keep me and her job that forced the decision for some extent. What i can gather from talking to her, it was an agonizing decision right to the moment of me hopping on that plane, she wasnt sure. Susan you were raised by bluecollar parents, you went to college in new york city, how did you accomplish all that . Rep. Smith first in my family to go to college. My mother basically raised me and my two brothers who were not adopted my father had big ambitions for me. That was the other thing that drove my childhood. In retrospect, he felt a responsibility. He has got to do something. So, he pushed me to do more than i otherwise would have. He expected bigs of me. Big things of me i was mediocre, i was ok. I wasnt going to be a star or whatever. I have that feeling, i got to do something. I felt like i had to challenge myself, which is what led me to go to the university in new york. I had a friend who was from new york whose family moved to seatac and we became friends, and i followed him there. Susan how did your jesuit education influence you . Rep. Smith i am a philosophical person, but i wasnt raised religious. I was baptized, never quite worked out. I was very interested in those subjects, in philosophy, the meaning of life, theology. The jesuits are a great group of people to hang out with if you want to study that it was a good education. Susan you wrote fear and insecurity were near constant companions as a child, and it didnt mix with my very large ambitions. Can you tell us that . Rep. Smith everybody, when they are young most people feel a degree of insecurity, it is part of growing up. You dont know who you are or who you want to be. Mine was a slightly higher level, i was afraid of a lot of things. Particularly new experiences. I was afraid of heights, being on the water, really afraid of interact with people that i didnt know. At the same time, i was pretty ambitious and competitive. Sports were a great outlet for that until i screwed up my knee and arm. Sports just give you a place to go and have some focus. I was very insecure and very ambitious at the same time. The great thing about college was, i am going to new york. I was petrified. My father died my first year and i was trying to figure that out. It was a very difficult and challenging experience. The main thing i got out of it was to learn how to deal with difficult and challenging experiences. I had to push myself forward pass that fear and insecurity and lack of confidence. Susan does that come into play later when you are dealing with these problems . Rep. Smith yes and no. That primarily came into play when i was pursuing what i wanted out of life. It drove me to be really into, i am just going to do it. When the anxiety and the pain hit, i had no idea what to do. For the most part, when i was trying to accomplish something, and i felt like i couldnt do it, very self pitying. But then i would be like, ok. What are you going to do . I had my little list, my little yellow note pad. When i was running for state senate, i could walk out the door and knock on doors, i could do something. Did here, what can i do . I have this feeling of unbelievable anxiety, i cant sleep, i am in pain, trying to exercise, but i cant. I was lost. I would say, no, i guess in one sense, i never gave up. Im not going to stop until either i physically cant move forward or until i find the answer. In that sense susan your First Campaign was at age 25 for the state senate. When i was reading it, i was thinking, why was this crippling anxiety to choose such a public career . Rep. Smith i didnt think it through on that level. Susan why did you join politics . Rep. Smith because of my father. He was the secretarytreasurer of his union. He was interested in politics and subjects, that is what he wanted to push me into. I have this sense that despite all of that insecurity that i had leadership qualities. That i like to solve problems and bring people together to try to find how to resolve it. I liked doing that. I liked bringing peace and order to the immediate world. I thought it was something that i could do, and also, i thought it was my destiny. I just did, ok . I thought this was what i was supposed to do. I forced myself, i was terrified of the water, so i wasnt going to swim. They were taking us to swimming lessons in the fourth raid, and i refuse to try. Then i just jumped in the water. Susan just like your political campaign, just jumped in. These the story of your life seems to be stretches of really good times and then bouts of anxiety and pain. You were the youngest state senator in the United States at the time. You had a good 15 year run. What was working . Rep. Smith confidence was the big thing. I did not have confidence prior. I have a sense of ambition but also thought, i am not going to the able to get there. I had a lack of confidence, but then won that election and found i was actually pretty good at it. If i could just think and interact with people that i sort of knew how to do this. You know, i was fortunate as well, i got to chair the Judiciary Committee two years after i was elected to state Senate Congress was available, it was a tough campaign against an incumbent republican. I was pretty good at it. During that timeframe, it was a high stress time. My general approach to getting through these difficult challenges was think, think, think, work, work, work, worry, worry, worry. That wears you down. That intense and that stressed, my knee, and my back, and a bunch of other things werent working great at the time either. Susan havent even gone to the congressional seat yet. I was trying to put the timeline together, you did have two notable incidents during that 15 year run. One was after your victory, severe bout of depression, and then in 1994, a little break down at the democratic caucus. Did either of those raise warning flags to you . Rep. Smith no, they should have but they didnt. I won that election and i was very confident. My mother passed, my adopted mother. Early the night before i got elected to state senate. And my father passed away, so i am home alone, living in the house i grew up in, life was good in a wide variety of ways but just it was depression, it was like nothing interested me. I just have this black feeling for reor four months and i told nobody about it. A colleague of mine who i interned for when i was in law School Called me one day, he was a statehouse member and i was in the senate. He asked me if i was ok, i walked past you today and you just looked terrible. It didnt even occur to me that i was Walking Around looking like [indiscernible]. It went away and i didnt really give it much thought. Whenever i felt the 1994 story is when i failed to pass a bill i was supposed to pass. I broke down in tears trying to respond. That feeling of failure just, it just broke me. Susan you also got married during this time. And had two kids. Your kids are ydults, what are they doing . They are here, actually. My daughter is 22 she is the stsistant in her office, she just graduated from college last year. My son just started an internship out there, he has a sophomore at washington state. On this long road, how where was your family . My wife was very aware of it. It kept going. I did what i could do. I didnt want to lock myself in the bedroom and stay there for a week. They were very aware of it. There is no avoiding it. Susan in 1996, you are in a very stressful position and responding to that stressed by intensity of work, you decided to run for congress. Rep. Smith i loved politics, but state senate was a parttime job. I was looking for a fulltime job in politics. They republican revolution was in 1994, i stayed in washington and got hammered with that. We had eight democrats out of the nine seat, we lost six of them or you do we lost six seats. It was a very stressful experience. So im trying to make sure i dont have a primary, and then a woman was a superintendent of construction, i had worked i hear this rumor she has got a and she is going to run for the ninth district seat. That turned out true, she did have aids, a transfusion issue, i think. She is still doing well, which is great. She became this Huge National story and we thought she was going to run. In the middle, the dcc asked me to come back to bc to do a candidate thing, which i didnt want to do. I did it, then the plane is delayed and i am stuck in detroit in january trying to connect, and there is the national news. I put my head down on the counter, the exact thing i said is, why did i do this to myself . I could have done something a lot more peaceful, and it probably spent an hour like that. I got out my notepad and said, ok, what are we going to do . She didnt run, which helped. It wound up being just a oneonone. The stress was always there, that is what im trying to get out. I stressed my way through all of that. Susan other than alaska and hawaii, you have probably the longest commute of any member of congress. You made the decision for your family to stay back in washington. In retrospect was that the right decision . Jumping on airplanes every week. Rep. Smith the Pacific Northwest is a great place to live, my wife is very close to her family who lives in portland, oregon. I am glad that my children were raised in the district. Truthfully, i dont really mind Airline Travel that much. It gives me a time to relax, think,. , organize. When i was going through the pain and anxiety, that was a different story. But it was the right decision. Susan we hear about members of congress who do as you do, because the two homes are very expensive to keep up. You lived in your office. Rep. Smith not when we first moved out, but our second child was born in 2003 and it didnt make sense to go back and forth. I stayed in my office for 18 years. I am a minimalist, do you have a pullout mattress susan in your office . Susan rep. Smith i would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, i slipped on the couch for a while, and one of my hips started going bad i bought a box frame that i slid into the closet. Susan i have this vision of this Congressional Office building with a few members here and there in the middle of the night. Where do you cook, whered you use the restroom . Susan i have a restroom in the office, and i pay for the gym, shower down there. We had a fridge and microwave, so i would buy stuff for breakfast, but lunch and dinner i ate out susan is there a community of people who slept in their office . Rep. Smith absolutely. Prior to the pandemic, it was a lot. Paul ryan and Kevin Mccarthy he might still sleep in his office. There is a lot. They shut the gym down during the pandemic, so a lot of members found alternatives. I stuck it out in a variety of ways. It is not insignificant. Susan you were in the minority when you arrived and remained there for 10 years. What was that experience like for you . Rep. Smith if you are coming in as a freshman, coming in as a minority is not the worst situation did you are trying to figure out how do i make all this work . How do you make it work for your family . After 10 years, you start to think, is this ever going to change . A lot of the job of congress has to do whether or not you are in the majority or minority. You are responding to emails, dealing with social security, medicare, tax problems. Talking about issues and introducing bills. It is not terrible being in the minority in my view. A lot of what i do is about the constituents. Listening to them and responding to them on a consistent basis. It is different. Susan i hope i remember correctly, but i think you wrote that there was a much more congenial place until 2008. What happened . Rep. Smith that is a good question. I think keep in mind, in 1996, when i got elect, we won the cold war, kicked as in the first gulf war. The budget was balanced. It was a surplus for four years. The republicans were in charge of the ho