Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:03 Welcome to the doctor's week show where I show you how bad States of mind, difficult life issues, aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen. All right, let's get into it. Greetings people. Thanks for tuning in today. I'm going to tell you about a really interesting client, Jeremy,
Speaker 1 00:00:38 Which is his pseudonym was a 20 year old man who came to my clinic practice in Zurich. He was referred to me by the clinic director, a psychiatrist and professor. It happened under really strange circumstances, which I explained back in episode, number 16, processing depression versus masking it with antidepressants. If you want the whole story, listen to that episode. But basically I bet him that I could help his client, who he insisted was incurable and just needed meds to manage his symptoms. Before coming to the clinic, Jeremy had stopped speaking. Wouldn't go to his university classes and had withdrawn into his apartment. When his parents visited him, he sat completely still in the corner. Wouldn't talk to them and didn't even make eye contact. They forced him to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with selective mutism disorder, which is a type of social anxiety that makes one clam up in certain situations.
Speaker 1 00:01:48 The diagnosis didn't make any sense to his parents since Jeremy had always been outgoing. So they sent him to another shrink. The second doctor told them that selective mutism usually starts in childhood. So it was unlikely that that was the correct diagnosis. He diagnosed Jeremy with PTSD and try to elicit a description of a traumatic event from him. Only problem was that Jeremy wouldn't answer. When the doctor asked him questions at their wit's end, his parents sent him to one more professional. My clinic director, he diagnosed Jeremy with depression with catatonia. Catatonia basically means that someone just sits there and doesn't move or speak like they're in a trance. The doctor said he exhibited three important identifying symptoms that led him to the diagnosis. He gave no verbal responses to questions or instructions. He physically resisted the doctor when he tried to reposition Jeremy's body and he mimicked the doctor's movements.
Speaker 1 00:02:58 He prescribed an antidepressant and a tranquilizer. One day, about a week later, his parents noticed that the bottles of medication he'd been given, hadn't even been opened. They pleaded with him to take the meds, but he just sat there, staring out the window. They told the clinic director, and he was about to recommend inpatient treatment. But that's when we made our bet. So he told them Jeremy should see me the next Monday morning, Jeremy arrived at my office with his parents. They entered and I did something weird riffing on what the doctor had told me about Jeremy's mutism. I didn't talk. I just smiled, shook their hands, gestured for them to sit down. And I took my chair. The parents were a bit taken aback, but seemed to sense what I was doing. They said, they'd go for a walk. So Jeremy could talk to me, which of course he didn't do.
Speaker 1 00:04:03 I didn't say a word to him for the entire hour, nor look at him more than a few times. At the end of the hour, I calmly stood up, smiled and let him out. During that week, his mother left me several messages where she was extremely worried that his withdrawn behavior hadn't changed. I called her back and told her it'll take some time. The following week, he returned on his own. This at least gave his parents hope that something good might come out of his work with me. The second session was exactly the same as the first I meditated while he sat there staring at the wall, same with our third session. Not a word was spoken between us. We didn't even exchange non-verbal forms of communication. We just sat together in the same room. By the fourth session, I was getting bored and decided that next time I'd bring my guitar, which I did about halfway through our fifth meeting.
Speaker 1 00:05:09 I felt I needed to do something besides just sit there. So I got my guitar out of the case and started noodling around. After a few minutes, Jeremy spoke dust. Cool. I nodded and kept playing. I didn't want to engage him verbally and take away any sense of control over his process of verbal communication. I didn't yet know why he wasn't talking, but I knew it was a relationship process. He had to lead. That's all he said that day in session. Number six, I, once again played my guitar and he commented Margus, which means I liked that. I said Donka, nothing else got said, but he spent the whole session engaged watching me play. Same thing happened during our seventh meeting, he said one or two brief things. And that was all in our eighth session. We had a breakthrough, I was playing something on the guitar and he said, thus, this chicer translation. That shit.
Speaker 1 00:06:27 I burst out laughing. And so did he, sorry, man. You want to play? I said in Swiss German, while trying to give him the guitar, he just shook his head and smiled. I said, it's okay, Jeremy. He nodded it's totally okay. More nodding. Here's the translation from German to English of what ensued. I said, you know, back in 1973, there was this awesome dude. He stopped talking on his 27th birthday because he found himself arguing with people all the time. He didn't talk again for 17 years, Jeremy's eyes widened. He also gave up driving cars or riding buses because he'd seen an oil spill on the San Francisco Bay and wanted to make a statement about the environment. People thought he was nuts. His girlfriend and parents thought he'd been taken over by a California cult. Eventually his girlfriend came around to understanding what he was doing.
Speaker 1 00:07:39 But when he said he wanted to walk from California to Oregon to explore the wilderness, she broke up with him. During this time he got a bachelor's master's and PhD in environmental studies. He learned sign language so he could communicate. And he walked across the United States playing his banjo. He became known as planet Walker. After 17 years of not speaking, he finally felt he had something to say, people came to hear him talk about the environment in a hotel in Washington, DC. His first words were thank you for being here, but he didn't recognize his own voice and started laughing. His dad was in the audience and thought his son must be crazy, but he wasn't from studying and listening to thousands of people talk about the environment. He had realized what a narrow understanding we have. He explained how it's about far more than saving trees.
Speaker 1 00:08:50 It's about how we treat each other, which includes gender and economic equality and civil rights. He met his wife just after he started speaking again. And because his PhD had focused on oil spills, the us coast guard hired him after the Exxon Valdez disaster. Now he teaches in schools and gives talks around the world. He started using vehicles again in 1995. After 22 years, when walking through Venezuela to Brazil, he realized that walking had become a prison for him. He still practices being silent every morning. And sometimes doesn't speak for several days at a time. It reminds him to listen to people properly. Instead of judging what he thinks he's hearing in interviews. He says he loved not speaking because it gave him great inner peace. His name is Dr. John Francis. You can read about him. Jeremy had a tear in his eye, but I still didn't want to engage him directly.
Speaker 1 00:10:02 So I continued. I said a while back when I was writing and recording 50 songs, I didn't talk for a year. I had to do this to protect my vocal chords for some singers. It's not a problem. But if I sing every day, all day, I can't also talk. Some people thought I was deaf and mute. Others didn't understand what was going on with me. I used simple sign language to communicate and was cool with it. In fact, it taught me some incredible things. I learned how people relate to each other in incredibly unconscious ways, by adapting to so many social rules and this causes them to lose contact with their true selves. I gained an awesome independence from the world. A sort of self-contained spiritual sense of self that stayed with me after I started talking again, suddenly Jeremy stood up and walked toward me.
Speaker 1 00:11:12 It was a shocking moment up until then. He had always walked super slowly into my office, sat in the chair without moving for the whole hour and then left my office in the same lethargic way. This time he bolted up Strode over to me and gave me a hug. Then he went back to his chair and sat down. He said, thank you. But I have nothing to say. I said, you're welcome. You don't have to say anything in the next session. Everything changed when he arrived, he greeted me with a hug. And before I had even closed my office door, he started talking. He said, everyone's full of shit. Everybody's a phony, it's all a game they're playing. I don't want it. I don't want to join. I don't want to talk to anyone. I said, you don't have to, but everyone thinks I'm crazy. I said true, but who cares? He burst out laughing. I told him that I don't give a crap. What people think of me? I said, you say everyone's phony. I think everyone's dreaming. Each person is in his or her own dream world projecting their psychology onto everyone else. Who cares? I don't waste my energy on that. I just do me. But what if they say you're crazy or bad? I said, I am crazy and bad. And I like it.
Speaker 1 00:12:52 Jeremy leaped up out of his chair, scaring the crap out of me. This is awesome. Who the hell cares? I'm going to tell it all. Tell it all. Tell it. I said not knowing what he was talking about. He shouted nature sees us. Nature feels hurt. Nature is mad. She has feelings and she's watching us. I was dumbfounded. My story about John Francis had been intended to show Jeremy, someone else's process of going mute. The part about the environment was incidental. So when he started talking about the environment, I could hardly believe it. It reminds me of Gretta. Turnberg the 17 year old world-renowned climate activist who told reporters that she had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, selective mutism, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Aside from all these made up diagnostic labels. It's fascinating to hear several people's stories in which they had extreme psychological reactions to humanity's lack of concern for the earth.
Speaker 1 00:14:12 I totally agree. I said, this is what the native Americans and indigenous people from around the world have always said, the earth is alive. It's alive. Jeremy yelled. I responded saying, yeah, but in order for science to develop, people needed to get rid of that idea. I guess he replied, why can't we have science and know that she feels things too, right? But you're way ahead of the curve. Talent. Tell the world, Jeremy, how what's your major in school? I asked math, screw that, change it to environmental studies like John Francis did, but no one's ever going to listen to me. He waited all those years. I asked him why people won't listen to him. And he said, I'm too young. I said, true. You need to get more educated, but you can do it. And you don't have to wait so long. You can get a degree in environmental studies in two years and become a teacher writer, lecture, whatever you want.
Speaker 1 00:15:26 We spent the rest of the session, having an animated and productive talk about his future. He changed his major to environmental studies and combined it with his own study of philosophy and indigenous religion, fertile grounds for amplifying his perception, that nature isn't only a biological phenomenon, but a spiritual one as well. A few weeks after this session, he started speaking to people again, but he didn't return to who he had been prior to going mute. He began living his life in a very purposeful way, focusing on his goal of making a difference in the world, by educating people about the environment socially, he began spending time only with friends who shared his interests and passions, who was on a new path and was excited about life. So here's the question is being weird. Abnormal Jeremy's behavior was totally extreme and weird. You might've thought, Whoa, this guy is mad when people act in a way, not in line with the cultural agreements of their society.
Speaker 1 00:16:45 In this case, not speaking, the immediate reaction is they must be sick in some way, but they're not. They simply have a process that people don't understand. And oftentimes they don't understand themselves being totally contrary and bizarre. Isn't a mental illness. It's a radical process of change and growth trying to come to the consciousness, not only of the individual, but of his or her community as well, but let's go further with this. Everyone is totally weird in some way. You, me and everyone, the idea of being normal is complete bullshit. Normal in one place in time is abnormal in another, the stricter, the rules of conformity in a culture, the more people in that culture have to suppress their unique weirdness and they suffer hidden problems. As a result, mental health diagnoses aren't even consistent across countries and cultures. You could get diagnosed for something in America that isn't even seen as a problem somewhere else.
Speaker 1 00:18:02 Or you might have been diagnosed with something at one time. And now that illness isn't even considered to exist. For example, did you know that being gay used to be diagnosable as a mental illness? It was in the psychology diagnostic manual from the 1950s to the 1970s. How messed up is that in the last decade or so? Psychiatry has expanded the notion of abnormality to basically include everything we feel, think, and like to do. The current manual has over 300 mental disorders. I guarantee me and you have at least 10 of them, but there's absolutely no empirical evidence to support these behavioral classifications as diseases. There are 1,000,001 ways to be weird. And none of them to note an illness, yes, someone can act totally nuts, antisocial and even violent. But these aren't diseases, they're meaningful processes, expressions of something in the person's psyche. And they can be worked with just like I did with Jeremy during my time working at the clinic, I spent a lot of time with the most extreme nutters you can imagine.
Speaker 1 00:19:31 And I never met someone I couldn't communicate with and help. Each of us is an utterly unique character who experiences their own form of strange perceptions, feelings and desires, and has behaviors that don't conform to consensus culture. It's a matter of degree, but it's all on the continuum of the human process. We're all nuts in our own way. Some folks just hide it more or put on a better act than others, but there's a secret, beautiful madness in all of us. It's our deeper human processes, trying to express themselves to get us to evolve. Either a sensitive individual is allowed and encouraged to develop their own creative soul in this world, or they aren't and have to experience the psycho havoc of their repressed process. I want to leave you today with this powerful quote by Swiss psychologist, Carl Young hold onto your reality because it's a doozy be silent and listen, have you recognized your madness?
Speaker 1 00:20:48 And do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in, in a friendly manner, you wanted to accept everything. So accept madness to let the light of your madness shine. And it will suddenly Dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life. If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness since it makes up such a great part of your nature. Be glad that you can recognize it for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life since life itself is full of craziness and is at bottom utterly illogical man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself.
Speaker 1 00:22:06 Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life and quote, what he's expressing is that life isn't the static, concrete, absolute thing. We make it out to be beneath all our definitions, opinions, judgments, beliefs, diagnoses, and false confidence is simply our process. A process of what you ask a process of awareness. That's all we have. There's no way to know for sure what the hell is going on here. But by embracing and honoring the mad processes in our lives, we get closer to the answer. I think this is what draws me to music and songwriting music has mathematical rules. And so does language to some extent, but beneath these rules is the true chaos, the mad feelings that drive creativity and life, and you'll never be able to understand or diagnose or tame that. And it's not meant to be see you next time. Stay weird in a way
Speaker 0 00:23:36 You can follow me on social media at doctors awake and you can sign up on the mailing list at doctor's wake.com where you'll receive discounts on private coaching events and merchandise starting in 2021 weekly personal growth tips and lots more
Speaker 2 00:23:52 Be well.
