Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 141: Bruised But Not Broken

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” - II Corinthians 4:8-9

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of dreamscapes today we have our friend Steve Wilson he is a retired custom clothing designer uh he was diagnosed with bipolar back in 1978 um he wrote his memoir uh in 2022 teetering on a tight rope my bipolar journey we're going to speak at length with him about all all those things and more for my part would you kindly like share subscribe tell your friends always need more uh volunteer dreamers for these uh uh uh episodes you know you might notice, I don't publish as regularly as I might like to because dreams come in their own time and the more people reaching out to me the better.

That said, there are 16 currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson, available on Amazon and through Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you can find also MP3 downloadable versions of these interviews to take with you wherever you may wander. Also, Benjamin thedreamwizard.locals.com where I'm trying to build a community. I'd rather receive any sustaining donations there. Hey, come in,

you know, kick me up, kick me a dollar. I'll take a dollar. I'm not proud. That's enough of the shilling for me. Steve, thank you for being here. It's good to talk to you. Thank you. Very nice. So, we got a lot to go over. I, you were diagnosed, say, with bipolar, one year after I was born, I was born in 77. So I'm a Star Wars baby in that sense.

So you've been living with it, well, longer than I've been alive, but at least for that long, knowing what you had going for you then. I don't know where you want to start and talking about this. I'm sure the whole thing is fascinating. We can dive into the book. We can just talk about your life, whatever's on your mind. The best way is to start early in my childhood. For the first nine years of my life, I was just a normal kid. Screwing around, going to school, doing whatever.

And then when I was nine, I went to the movie theater to watch a Western, and a guy selected me out of the concession stand took me into the restroom and sexually assaulted me. Wow. I decided after the incident was over that it was probably my fault. I don't know how the hell I figured that out, but that's what I did. Now, that's what a lot of kids do. And I decided not to tell anybody ever. Well, that ever lasted for 30 years.

Wow. And neither my parents knew or my siblings or any of my friends. And I didn't think anything of it. I blocked it out completely. And then about two or three months later, I went into my first deep depressive episode. Yeah. And that lasted about three or four months. And then it lifted.

At the time, I felt like I was worthless. I had nothing to live for. I didn't like anybody. Nobody liked me. And it was just, I didn't know why it started. I had no idea where it came from. But all I wanted to do was watch TV and sit in my room doing nothing.

As I said, that lasted about three or four months, and then I got kind of like back to normal again. And that probably lasted two or three years, to tell you the truth. And then when I was in seventh grade, it started, the depression came back again. and came off and on every three or four or five months, lasted well into high school and college. And then when I graduated college,

I got to be my worst. Thought every day of killing myself, my body was out of control, my mind was out of control, and my mother's sensing that something was wrong, got me in touch with a psychiatrist, and I went into the hospital for three weeks. That's a good place to start. I don't want to interrupt your story too much

because we're going to talk about all of it, but you said, you said so many wonderful things that I think people should really know, so I'm going to highlight them. Your case is, in a lot of ways, very typical, and that is something people should, know as well. Is it like you're not detailing something that is just unique to you in this sense

of how bipolar works. And, you know, well, there's a lot of things to say. Number one, probably back in the day, and many people don't know what we call bipolar today, used to be called manic depression because it was bouts of cycling mania and depressive episodes. So they just threw those together, manic depression. Right. And this was from a much old. older term when we would call people, say they had mania or called the maniacs. And it was, uh, that, as you said, uh, but kind of out of control of the mind and the body and behavior, impulsivity, a lot of that kind of stuff. Um, so there's, uh, you know, number one, going way back to the beginning, which I was taking notes this whole time. I can't remember

anything without. My memory's terrible. Um, not to laugh too much when I go straight to, you know, molestation and whatnot. But it's very, number one, very frequent that, um, um, I'm, um, Um, these things are, are random. I mean, it's very often, um, a family member, but not always. So you're in one of the, maybe more outlier cases where you got selected in public and someone just made it happen, a crime of opportunity in that sense. And very often kids, just like children of divorce and other, other terrible things, traumas that happened in their life, they tend to blame themselves.

Kids don't know. It's like, I must have done something wrong. I must be bad. Something bad happened to me. So it must have been my fault. They don't have the wisdom perspective. understanding to say, damn, I was just victimized and it's not my fault. And it takes a long time to come back from that and to really get that perspective on it.

That being said, now, there's two conditions that bipolar can pop up. And, you know, it's not saying, what am I trying to say? Sometimes psychiatric conditions can be triggered by trauma. You know, something severely disturbing happening to us can kick off a latent, potential. So it seems like that's most likely what happened in your case. And let's say you didn't have a tendency or the possibility, the chemical composition for bipolar, it would still be normal, say, for a kid to have a deep bout of depression after a trauma like that. So that's actually completely normal, but then that can contribute to it. It's almost like some folks may have a latent

possibility, like the brain chemistry may be there for schizophrenia. And that's the kind of kid that maybe shouldn't do LSD, but you don't know until you try it and then sometimes they don't come back or that kicks off something. And it isn't like LSD causes schizophrenia. It's more like if you have a severe enough experience of certain kind, it can open up like a flower, a flower that was already there. It just makes it unfold and like, oh, there you go. You got a condition now. So that's other things. People should know. Um, what was I going with this? Also the idea of cycles. You're talking about, you know, I had a really bad time. I came out of it.

And then I, you know, long gap and I went back into it. Also very common. It isn't, there's a, there's a variety of, and mostly I'm talking to preaching to the choir here for you. Like, you know probably all this stuff. I don't want the audience to know like how this works. There are different types of bipolar as well. So it's bipolar type one and two. They've refined it down.

There are, there's bipolar types where really you never go into mania. quite. You get hypomanic, so you never look completely out of control, but it's major depressive episodes that come and go. And that can be hard to differentiate between just major depressive disorder and the kind of bipolar type of that as well. So that's another thing. But also the long gaps of stability. It's not like you're just a maniac 24-7 for your entire life. It comes and goes. You have episodes, they call it, you know. So all of that. Those are all my thoughts as you were talking. I'm listening. I'm like, oh, look, this is all good stuff for people to understand so that they get a better idea of what is this thing? What does it look like? How does it,

how does it work? So I want to turn it back over to you for any comments or to get back to your story with that. That was my two cents. Well, you mentioned there are two types of bipolar. I am bipolar too, which is terrible depression and then sometime or other followed by hypomania, which to me, to make it easy is 50% between depression or normal and mania. I have never been manic with a hypomania. I've done some stupid things that I wouldn't have normally done. One time I went out and bought my wife a car. She was there.

We bought a car and I looked over and I saw another one and I said, I'll take that one too. Right. An impulsivity. And that's the kind of crows. crap that goes on with this stuff. It's that I wasn't totally out of control, but I was stupid because my mind was saying,

ah, you can do whatever you want. Yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time. It's like in the most extreme sense, yeah. So anyway, getting back to my story, I went into the hospital for three weeks. Now, they first diagnosed me in 1972 as clinically depressed. And they tried the medications they had back then, which were very few, to get the depression under control.

Well, nothing worked. I'd either get sick or I'd get the shakes or I'd be out of control. or whatever. And six years later, my psychiatrist came in and said, you know, I think I made a mistake. You're bipolar. Hell, I didn't know what bipolar was. And then he said, we're going to put you on lithium. Well, lithium was a great thing for me. Almost overnight, I was about 50% better. No more suicidal thoughts that I'd had for the previous eight years. I got 50% better, but the thing it really stayed was the ruminations. The constant chaos in my mind, if I said something mean to somebody,

I would fret over it for days and weeks and just drive myself crazy. It's a horrible feeling when you can't do much else but worry about everything in the world. I had a business that I ruined because I couldn't make up my mind on decisions. or I did make a decision which was completely stupid. So I ruined my own clothing business.

Early on in my life, I couldn't keep jobs. I probably lost six or seven jobs in that period up until I got the lithium. So it's a pretty crushing disorder. But as I said, I got lithium and it was much better. Now, to say much better, there were still some horrendous times, but nothing nearly as deep as it was for those first few years. Now, that was 1978. In the year 2000, I got the fourth ingredient for my first.

cocktail because most of us don't get cured on one medication. In fact, that's not even fair to say because there is no cure for bipolar. Yeah, I was going to say. So I got my fourth medication, which we call a cocktail, and that was Paxil. I'd never heard of it either, but almost instantly most of my ruminations went away. So from the year 2000 till today, I've been pretty good. Nice. I started when I had my store every Christmas, we would hire high school students or junior high students

to run errands for us and wrap packages and do all, because we were extremely busy. And one year I hired this little girl, She was very vibrant, funny, smiled all the time, had everything going for. One Saturday morning, her best friend came in and said she had shot herself in the head the night before. Wow, yeah. And then the next thing had happened. In fact, it was a little bit before that.

A friend of mine from college called me and said that he went to pick up his son from the police because he got caught breaking into a house. And for a long time, he noticed that his kid was very down. Went to pick up his kid with his wife. The kid got out of the squad car, pulled out a gun, and said, Mom and Dad, I love you, but I can't take it anymore and shot himself in the head. Wow, right in front of everybody, huh?

Yeah, he was about 16, I think. So, because I knew kind of what people were going, through and those teenagers I started speaking to high schools in their their health classes and in their psychology classes about about student depression teenage depression and again this was in the 90s early that early 2000s and I noticed that the kids were really hurt remember this is 20 or 25 years before today. And at the end of each speech or session,

I would ask anybody who wants to to come up and talk to me if they're having any problems. And the first girl came up, and she was the star of the class. She was a senior. She got the highest grade. she was a great athlete. She comes up to me and says, Mr. Wilson, I can't take it anymore.

The pressure for me to always be the best and to get into the best university in the country is just killing me. Now, there wasn't much I could do, but I told her about a child psychologist that she could go to. I never saw her again, I don't know. Right?

After that, another girl came up. She was not the best student in the class. She was in the middle somewhere. Wasn't real popular, but she came up to me and said, Mr. Wilson, nobody likes me. And I don't like anybody. My parents hate me. I want to run away.

I want to die. Now, what this, showed and that happened several times but those are the two I highlight what this proved to me was that these kids are under a tremendous amount of pressure these schools have no idea they have no ability to see when a kid is suffering most of the time sometimes they get it right but most of the time they don't it's not their fault they're never trained to do it the parents don't notice it Today, 20 years later, we're talking about it, but that doesn't mean the parents notice it or care what the kids going through. So we were in Ohio at that time, and we moved out here to Scottsdale about 15 years ago.

I wanted to continue talking to high schools, but they wouldn't let me out here because I said I was too old. had to be 35 or younger. What was their rationale for that? Pardon me? They thought the kids wouldn't listen to you? They took the term peer to an extreme, meaning he had to be just like them or about, age, looks, everything. Interesting, yeah. So they wouldn't let me do it.

So I answered and they had to be a facilitator. for mental health groups. I went through the training and I have been doing it for two groups since 19 or 2015. The groups are comprised not of young people like I would have liked it, but anybody over 18. And I have kids 18, 19, 20, and I have adults my age and everything in between. So that's what I've been doing. I'm going to continue doing that as long as I can. And it's amazing.

It's open my eyes to the fact that mental illness in many cases, I don't know whether it's 20% or 50% is caused by either sexual, mental, or physical abuse as a child. from not strangers like I was, but from parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, best friend of the family, all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

And I've heard some harrowing stories about what these people have gone through. Oh, yeah. But that's what I've been doing. Yeah, oh, that's so much great stuff. I just wanted to listen. And I've got, of course, more commentary is making notes.

There's so much good stuff in there. I can kind of work backwards in some ways. There is, you mentioned, okay, so parents maybe don't know or don't care. That happens sometimes when kids are struggling. Chances are maybe not so much as don't know what to look for, don't know what's not normal, don't know what to do about it if they find it. So there's a tremendous need for that kind of, in a sense, awareness raising, but also education on how do you handle this and what are the potential resources?

And a lot of it is, you know, you have the duration and the severity. And the idea also that you were talking to these kids that, you know, the ones that are obviously struggling, it's obvious that they're struggling. You can see it. And they're having troubles. And sometimes you can even pick it out and go, okay, it looks like this is the problem and it looks like we've got some interventions here. Then you get the kids who looked like they're perfect. And they put on that facade of perfection. And if they just kind of open up a little bit, they'll tell somebody, this is killing me.

the stress, the pressure to perform to be the best. And maybe they've put it on themselves. Maybe they've been encouraged to succeed by their parents because their parents want the best for them. Sometimes the parents want a trophy child in a way, something they can hold up to the community and say, look at how good I am. I raised that kid. There's all, it's complicated across the boards.

I never try to assume malicious intent, but except in the case, well, I never try to assume malicious intent. but the idea of the idea that kids being hurt by people close to them versus strangers most of the time. A lot of these are, as I said earlier, kind of crimes of opportunity. And there's probably the most dangerous place for the kid is in, say, a home where there's a single mother and say, maybe a living boyfriend or something like that where he's not related to you and he can do anything. And maybe he doesn't care. And it's a, it's not, you know, no, no disparagement of men, good men that want to step up and date single mothers and, and be there for the kids. But that seems to be statistically where that kind of thing happens all too often.

And it's something we need to be very aware of. And I don't know how to fix that either. But it's at least something to put out there into, you know, YouTube land to be aware of that, that type of thing. I also wanted to get back to, like, way, way back in the beginning. some of the, some of the thoughts you had about, um, the subjective experience of what it was like to have, uh, these symptoms and then the, uh, the idea of the medication cocktail. So, um, in, in broad strokes, what most people may not realize about psychological conditions is that it's not like cancer. Cancer is a physical object. It's growing where it's not supposed to.

You can see it on an x-ray. You can cut it out physically, remove it from the body, body. And maybe that does the trick. Maybe it doesn't. But there is no such thing as a physical center of depression or schizophrenia, not in the same way as a cancer where you just remove it, you're fine. It's more a cluster of symptoms. It's kind of like saying, I've described it this way before. There is an object and it has a trunk with bark and it has branches and leaves. and it lives on sunlight and water and nutrients from the soil. And you get enough of those things together and you say, oh, that's a tree. That's kind of how we diagnose depression, schizophrenia.

We get clusters of symptoms all together, all together at the same time over a specific duration. And then you go, okay, that's schizophrenia. That's bipolar. That's our best understanding currently. So again, getting back to the idea of the kids, too, if you don't see the symptoms, it's like the tree is invisible. you know, they hide it or it's, you don't know what you're looking for, you don't know what you're seeing. It's very common with people with real manic symptoms to get into delusions, delusions of grandeur, they call them, you know, I am the Lord thy God.

I've heard patients say, you know, and it's like, or we had once, no kidding. And it's funny to laugh at it, sort of, morbid humor style. We had two Jesus Christ on our psychiatric unit at the same time, and they avoided each other. Neither one wanted to confront each other about, which was the real Jesus. So, I mean, it happens. We haven't had a Napoleon. Not in a long time. Not in my 20 years.

I never saw someone who thought they were Napoleon. That's the classic. That's the classic thing. I'm rambling a bit here, but to get around to, you know, so for you, ruminations, and that's very common with depression. We get things that bother us, generally our own mistakes. And we ruminate on it's like, and it kind of, it's a self-feeding downward spiral in some ways is, I already feel bad and maybe a little hopeless and oh, look how worthless I am and oh,

here's an example of that worthlessness and we just can't get it out of our head. We can't just, you know, pick yourself up, chin up, move on. No, it's not as easy as a, and it's almost like on the manic side of things too. We get people with racing thoughts where their brain is just moving too fast. They get so many ideas and they just a little little little little because the pressured speech comes out because all those thoughts are crowding to shove out the mouth at the same time. But tremendous energy levels.

I'm like, if we could, if we could harness the energy levels of bipolar without the negative side effects, I'm like, that's to be amazing. But we're not sure how to do that yet. Also, just briefly wanted to say about the kind of chemical cocktail side of things is psychiatric drugs have, first, they didn't exist. And we just had people locked up in institutions and we took care of them and tried to keep them from hurting themselves. And there was nothing we could do.

And then kind of pharmacology moved along a little bit. And we started getting the first generation or so of antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. I think those mostly came along later. And yeah, lithium was a godsend. It was like we had nothing. And now we've got lithium. We're not just sedating people. We're trying to balance them out so they can function because you could always put someone in a medically

induced coma, it's give them enough morphine or whatever, either. You can always make someone unconscious. But to have them live a life, they need a. medication they can function on. So lithium was a godsend. And there's, um, there's now a whole range of say they, they call them atypical antipsychotics, which, which work differently. And some of them blend over with that mood stipe stabilizing effect. There's a lot of things that are used for dual purposes. They work for bipolar. They work for schizophrenia. We don't know why. We're not sure. We have theories about the mechanism. But all we know is like, if we give someone this kind of medication,

their most severe symptoms decrease. And there's positives and negatives. They're side effects with everything. It happens. And very often, just as you said, it is necessary to do more than one medication. So you get the lithium with say the Paxil and now the full range of disturbing or disruptive symptoms that make your life miserable to experience, make it hard on other people. They're under control. You just kind of chill and be what most people would consider a normal person, even though I think that's not actually something that exists technically. We're all, go ahead. I want to stop you there because there's one thing about medication.

And in fact, there's a couple things. First of all, every medication doesn't work for everybody. That's a big deal, yeah. You can try and try and try and nothing works. You get sick or whatever. and hopefully you will eventually find the medications that work for you. There is a slight problem. The medications only work about 50% of the time from what I've been told by psychiatrists.

So the other people have to do other things to try to alleviate their problems. There are sources like EMDR, there's behavioral therapy, there's cognitive therapy, there's intensive outpatient, and these things can really help people because when they don't have drugs that are working for them. One of the problems with the drug regimen is the people themselves. They don't want to be on drugs. They think it's a horrible thing. They get convinced to take the drugs. They take them for a week. They say they're not working, so they quit taking them.

The problem is that it usually takes a month or two for the drugs to start working in your system. many times they take the drugs for a couple of months they start feeling good they feel great I don't need to take these drugs anymore right I'm all better so they throw them away and then guess what sometime later they go back in the toilet yeah so people themselves can contribute to their inability to overcome and live with these diseases. I see it all the time in my groups, all the time. Oh, yeah. And it is something that is very difficult to bring people around to do it the right way and follow the regimen that their psychiatrist or psychologist works out for them. Yeah, that's like the old joke. How many

psychologist does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change. I almost made a spit take there. These are fantastic points too. I mean, you, it's, you know, if anyone in the audience out there's wondering, this is this guy, know what he's talking about. Absolutely. This is all, this is all good stuff. I wanted to, again, enhance. Not, not if it's, I'm not challenging anything. You say we were in perfect agreement, but just like really highlighted. it. One thing that the, say, psychological or psychiatric profession gets critiqued on a lot in pop culture is overmedicating, or at least the suspicion that, oh, they just exist to push pills on people. And it's a valid concern. I won't say that's actually happening. Maybe it happens

more than it should, but pills are not always the best frontline defense. Now, sometimes they're absolutely necessary and sometimes they're not. And there's a lot of gray area in between too. It's like if you get someone who's legit psychotic, almost nothing works. There's no reasoning with someone who's really just not there. They need some kind of medicine to chill it down. But from a lot of people, the first line of defense is, as you were saying, get in touch with people to talk to.

It can just be family or a wise elder in your social circle. or someone you know, a best friend, you know. And then you get into things like, you know, the, what you said, you mentioned, cognitive behavioral therapy and other group, group oriented discussions of offering strategies for coping skills and different things like that. Very often you want to try that first before jumping straight to pills. Sometimes you have to, but very often you don't have to.

And, you know, there should never be a, should never be a fear on people's part that they're going to be, you know, I go to see a shrink and my life is over because they're going to judge me and stick needles in me and throw me in a hospital. It's like, that's extremely rare. I mean, I worked with those patients in my inpatient emergency psychiatric for 20 years. So I've seen people that are out of control, cannot keep themselves safe, causing problems, committing crimes, you know, because they're just not in their right mind and it's one of those things where it's like yeah the the most extreme cases need help and it's good that we can provide it but for most people it's the help that you're going to have

available is offered and you take advantage of it to the best of your ability which which can also be a complication because you get you get people on those more extreme ends and you were talking about denial medication compliance and consistency with that is that you get a lot of folks who one of my favorite books out there and I should flash it up on the screen or put put the link in the description is um a book by by a clinical psychologist his name is Javier Amador he wrote a book called I'm not sick I don't need help and it was about his experience with his schizophrenic brother trying to offer help trying to teach him and encourage him as brother I love you you're nuts you're out of control you're not making good decisions I'm afraid

for your safety in your life and I love you and I want to help you and the brother slams the door on the way out of the kitchen saying, I'm not sick. I don't need help. So there's a big issue with denial on some of that. And, you know, and it's not one of those things where you're, you know, psychology doesn't anymore. We don't tend to promote confrontation as a way to break down denial. It's more like if people could see what was wrong, they would see, they would already see it. They would accept it and know what was happening with them and, and admit, yeah, this is not working. I can't fix it myself. Let me, try to get someone to give me a hand um i was going somewhere with all that i think i ran out of

things to say i don't know if you got some more commentary on on my own thoughts one of the one of the things along the lines with uh medications um the fear of side effects it's a big one yeah is huge in my own feelings with medications. I'm on an antipsychotic and then I'm on lithium and Baxilla and something else. And when I first started taking lithium, they said, we want to tell you that lithium can harm your kidneys. And I said, I don't give a damn.

I want to get better. I'm feeling better. So if that's what happens, that's what happens. Well, it did. And I still refused to go off of it until the kidney got so bad that I had to. And two years ago, I had to have a kidney transplant. And then I'll tell you about another side effect that hit me. The antipsychotic, which is called Theothicine. It's way back from the 70s. That's so old. I don't think I've ever heard of it before. Yeah. Yeah.

You might know about another name, Nevane. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. That sounds familiar. It's one of the first ones. Yeah. But anyway, it caused tardite dyskinesia, which for those who have no idea what it is, and I certainly didn't have an idea, it causes involuntary muscle movement somewhere in your body and it caused it in my eyelids. And it was horrible.

It was disabling. I was working at the time and I couldn't do it because my eyes were in stress all day. So luckily, I heard about relief from it

from my eye doctor who was my cousin and I got Botox shots long before they started being cosmetic. I get 10 shots around my eyes every three months, and it freezes my eyelids. And then I hear of a lot of people who gain 30, 40, 50 pounds. And they're in my group, and they'll say, I'll say, well, which, and if they're doing well, mentally, I say,

which would you rather have? Yeah. A good mental life or a few extra pounds. Almost every one of them says, get rid of the weight. Ah, yeah. And they'll quit taking their medication. That's a big deal. Yeah.

There's no intervention without complications. There's always going to be something. I mean, it can be as little as you've got a, maybe a cancerous mole on. your skin and it's as easy as snipping it out and stitching the skin back together. Well, you're still going to have a little bit of a scar, just a little. Now, that's a very tiny complication, but it is not a procedure without complications. Everything, every drug has side effects. And a side effect is basically just whatever impact it has on your body, your mind, your function that is not the intended

remedy. And there is no medication out of Tylenol is hard on your kidneys. It's, you know, And liver or liver or kidneys. I can't remember, probably both. So, and you said, what you said is exactly right, the idea that you've got away the consequences. Like, if you are so out of control, you can't live, is it worth it to have a few extra pounds? Hopefully, and I think you're right, like a lot of people that quit medications that maybe make cause weight gain for whatever reason, whether it's behavioral or chemical. a lot of people would say, no, that is not a side effect I'm going to live with.

I'd rather be skinny and crazy, you know, that kind of thing, which fair enough. I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to tell people they're wrong with a subjective thing like that. It's only if it's really severe and, you know, they're quite, quite literally a danger to sell for others. That's kind of the, the broad strokes hard line where, yeah, that person, if they have a condition, they might involuntarily get put in a hospital for a little while. which I think is, if you look at the alternatives, we used to, well, not used to, but the alternative is jail, because you're going to get punished for a crime because you committed one, or you're going to get help for a condition that caused a behavior that wasn't entirely within your control. So, you know, and then, but we get, then we get the folks in there that said, I'm not sick.

I'm just being persecuted. And it's hard to argue with that because from their perspective, that's what they see. That's what they feel. I'm sure you've maybe dealt with some of that too of folks that are just they're having a hard time accepting what's happening to them and the one who comes to mine is a man of about 30

and he went and he was I don't remember what he was this was about five years ago he might have been schizophrenic but anyway he went to a concert and somehow they got in a fight and he'd beat up some cops. And, of course, they prosecuted him. And his whole belief was it wasn't my fault.

They targeted me and all that. But he was just out of control and he didn't know what to do. His body was angry or whatever. But the answer wasn't that they persecuted him. The answer was he needs a lot of help. Now, I want to say one thing that I think is very important, and I don't want to let this go by. Yeah. And that is the state of help in psychiatry that is available in the United States.

Now, if you're fairly well off, you can afford to go to a therapist or psychiatrist, good for you. But if you're in the at least 50% of the rest of the public who is living day-to-day paycheck to paycheck, and they have some psychological problems, they can't afford to go anymore to a psychiatrist when it was my... I haven't been to a therapist for 20 years ever since Paxil. And when I was going back that time, it was like 20 bucks a session. Well, that 20 bucks isn't equivalent to the $150 or $200. The guy should have to charge now. Air Force to charge a lot more because insurance has all. almost totally cut out the mental health field.

Let me give you a little example. When I was about 25, I got my first life insurance policy. At the top of the page was, mental health conditions are excluded. Today, that isn't the case unless maybe you commit suicide in the first year. something but with normal psychiatric problems insurance companies have forced because they won't cover much people to not get help and the reason I know all this is for my groups my groups are made up of a lot of people who have nowhere to

go except for groups like mine they can't get help help if they go to a clinic, which if they're on disability, can be free to them. The clinic is overcrowded. There's thousands of people going to the clinics when you're lucky to get an appointment and say you're in distress, and the appointment is over. They'll say, well, I'll see you in a month. But when you're in distress, you need to come two or three times a week. So the system in this country has kind of turned us back on mental health.

Now, by doing these podcasts, and I do, I've done several from other countries. The problem is universal. 20% of Americans have some type of mental illness. I don't know what the figure is of those 20% of people who get help is from normal way can't be over 50%. Because I see people all the time, they only have groups like buying as an outlet. And what the groups give them are comfort and the realization that they're not alone. But we can't prescribe anything.

We're not, we're not professionals so we can't suggest anything. We can just listen. Very much so. Yeah. No, that's, that's a big problem. And it's not like we escape the costs by any means. That's that that is a big, a big deal because you're going to have either sick people out of control in your community or you're going to, and that has carries its own cost. of disrupted lives and financial stuff, you know, or you're going to have the cost of

providing some kind of treatment. So there's really no escape from paying that bill one way or the other. It's going to negatively impact people or you're going to have to pony up and do something about it. I did want to just mention it. It's referencing back the idea that the whole insurance thing, that's, I think, part of where the, oh, psychiatrist just push pill. comes from because a lot of times that's all insurance will pay for because look are you prescribing

something or not because we'll pay for that but what do you what do you do you're just talking to people we're not that's too expensive we're not we're not covering that yeah yeah so that yeah that leads us to this situation where the the public perception is now you know they're just a bunch of greedy pill pushers and it's like that that's kind of all they're allowed to do in in a lot of it's it's funny that you bring that up I just had my group I do them Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I think it was last Thursday, that a lady who's had a lot of traumas in her life, I mean, the worst kind you can imagine, continuously for the first 30 years of her life, and she's 70 now. When she was trying to get help and there was insurance, they said,

yes, we'll cover $500. Now, today, that means about three sessions. Yeah. But mental illness is a lifelong disease. And you can't do much in three sessions because it takes two or three sessions to figure out if you got the right psychiatrist and if you're a match. Yeah. So. And if they're the right psychiatrist, it takes them twice as long again to just get to know you and figure out what is a problem and what isn't. longer still to figure out what are the biggest problems that we feel we can actually do something

about, which is not the same thing as what is the actual biggest problems. Now you've got to work up to that. And then you got to check in regularly to say, how's the progress going on addressing these things based on how we've discussed it and strategies that have been suggesting? You've got to try some things they don't work. You try some other things. You refine the plans. It's a whole thing.

And speaking of which, too, this whole, and we should probably. get to it soon, but the dream thing I do, this is not actual dream analysis, Youngian style or Freudian style even, or by any, by any style. Like if you brought in a serious dream that had real meaning to you and you and the psychologist decided together, we should look at this and figure out why it was so intense and disturbing and what it relates to in my life. Just talking about one dream could take weeks. and that's not even getting into anything else about your entire life.

It's like it is a very intensive process. I mean, if you got, as you were saying, if you got the money for it, I think it's usually worth it to do these kind of things. If you don't, it's probably still worth it. You just don't have access to it. You just don't have that kind of opportunity to draw that kind of benefit. That's my comment on my process. My process is very kind of ad hoc.

My own method, we try and pack it into a show. I try and give people something useful, but it's not the real in-depth analysis that would be best, the best possible for a particular client. I don't know if you had any comments about all that. I know nothing about dreams. Like everybody else or most everybody else, I dream and I tend to dream the same type of dream over and over and over again.

And I'll have multiple dreams each night. But I don't know anything about what they mean. Oh, yeah. And no therapist of mine has ever brought it up. Yeah. So a whole different ballgame on that respect to me. For sure. It's not something that every therapist feels they have a good grip on.

You know, and like mostly if you are specifically a youngian psychotherapist or Freudian psychotherapist, you know, doing psychoanalysis, those traditions or schools of, you know, of, you know, you know, but, you know, but, you know, but, you know, those traditions or schools of, of, you. learning and theory have built into them an understanding of where dreams fit into these different processes. Most cognitive behavioral therapy has nothing to do with that. They don't even, they don't get into it at all. And, you know, I was not ever specifically trained in this myself either. I'm not a young Ian. I'm not a Freudian psychoanalyst. I just kind of have a knack for talking to people about what they experienced and drawing connections. I've got a little, So I've got my own mental health conditions of diagnosed autistic. So I'm trying to make my superpower work for me.

This weird ability to connect the dots in some abstract ways. So as you were saying, you don't have, say, maybe a good understanding of how dreams fit in it. I think one of the best ways is, you know, watch my episodes. I've got 140 of them at this point. But also going through the process and kind of feeling your way through it with me and seeing how we put something together that makes sense. and you go, that's how it works. That's okay. I get it.

Just doing it with me, I think it'll give you a pretty good idea. You feel like you're ready to get into that? I don't know if you need a break or anything. Sure. Okay. Well, my basic process has three parts. Number one, I shut up and listen.

Number two, we go through it again in a little more detail. And then part two and part three blend together, but we start putting together between the two of us, collaborative. What seems to make sense and how it relates to your life? and then we get some kind of an answer. So, I'm ready when you are. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you

pierce the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his DREAMs program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dremescape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms,

and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the Wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature, available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the DreamWizard.com. The dream I was thinking about is one that happens pretty regularly. I don't know that it has been all my life. In fact, I don't think so. But I'm pretty sure it's because of my bipolar.

Because when I was in high school, I was a top student and then when the depression really got bad down and went my grades and I couldn't study. I couldn't participate in class. I couldn't do anything. So I turned to cheating. And let's just say, sometimes I wonder if I would have made it through high school the last two or three years that were considerable. worse than any others if I hadn't cheated. That brings me to my dream.

It's a two-parter. One, I find myself constantly, continually dreaming about having a particular teacher in my high school, maybe two of them. they're very tough, they're very good, they're the hardest classes, and I'm never prepared for. So in my dream, I see myself as looking for ways to get out of taking tests and things like that. So I'll just skip class, I'll lie, I'll do whatever to get out of the test. The second component of that is that I'm usually naked, running around high school with maybe a towel around my front. Never a towel around my rear end, but always covering the front.

And I have that basically, I don't know, two, three times a week, probably. So what's you got? Okay. Yeah. Good stuff. Like making a little timestamp notes here, so I know where we're at. very interesting very interesting so we've got reoccurring dreams and as as recent as this past week yes okay wow that are still going on and they might have been going on for years but i don't think

they went on when i was in college and right after that i don't know when they started but it didn't start the day i started cheating let's put it that way gotcha yeah yeah so sometime later there's this callback in your mind to something you did to get by, to cope, to succeed in a way that, you know, and, you know, you don't mince words call it cheating. So in your mind, it's like, what is cheating? Cheating is not good. It's not the right way to do it. But it's what seemed to be necessary.

So it's this, there's a tension maybe in your own mind about I had to do something. Even I didn't think was the right thing to do. but I didn't feel like I had a choice. I felt like it was necessary enough to get through this experience in a successful manner that I was willing to do some slightly shady things I'm not proud of. It does seem like a fair assessment of kind of how you feel about it looking back. Yes. Okay, fair enough.

And this is also part of the process too. None of these answers are in me. I get ideas about framing and what it looks like. And the way I describe it is you are inviting me into your mind as a guest. And all I'm doing is standing over your shoulder shining a flashlight around. I was like, do you see what I see there? Is that what that is? No, you don't see. Okay, never mind. It's something else. Let's go look over here. Rattling a lot of doorknobs that sometimes don't come open. So, so there was some, so we look at it that way in those broad strokes kind of,

I did what I had to do, but I'm not proud of it. It type of framing. There may have been something you either did or considered doing at some point since then that then start. started this as a necessary, started it as an image that crystallized in your mind that was the way you were conceptualizing this dilemma you were facing. Like, do I repeat that? Am I in another situation where I need to bend the rules a little bit to get by, to succeed, to make sure a worse catastrophe doesn't happen? That's usually what will re-spark these iconic images of of a certain time that really encapsulates a specific type of idea. So I don't know if that brings anything to mind.

And I'm not trying to out you and say, you know, confess to something you did or didn't do a few decades ago. But it's also a common theme in people's life is looking back at their choices and saying, how do I feel about that now? Did I make the right decision? Would I do it again if I felt like I had to? That's all very situation dependent. I don't know if you have any general comments on that,

if that sparked any memories or ideas. Yeah. Most of my working in adult life, I have done everything on the up and up. Never cheated on my wife. I never get my kids. I never did anything. If I was working and someone was questioning a bill or something else,

If we couldn't sort it out, I would give them the benefit of that. I never wanted to take advantage of anybody. Years later, well, that's not fair to say years later, at that time and from on, whenever I came up against a situation that required me to, in certain instances, and I'm only talking about maybe three or four in my life, I took advantage of people. Now, not in a big way. $50, $200,

maybe I got extra out of them. But I was, in my mind, so opposed to doing that that it was a real conflict. And I can see where you're coming from, that that might be the case. Yeah. I think we are kindred spirits in that in that regard. So you're describing a situation where you had the feeling I took advantage that I didn't have to or maybe shouldn't have.

Now, whether that's true or not is actually irrelevant. It's that was your experience of it. It's like I got an, as you said, I got an extra 50 bucks. I didn't really have to charge that. But I got away with it. And it's what I wanted at the time. but is that right? And then the idea that looking back on it,

even maybe even immediately after it happened, it doesn't sit well with you. You look at, no, I know exactly that feeling of like, I'm pretty dedicated to almost to the penny fair exchange. And even a little bit more inclined towards generosity, because I don't like that feeling at all.

I'm pretty, I'm pretty in my pride about not taking advantage of anyone ever. And I can't say I've never done it, but I can definitely say, you know, if I ever did, I'm not proud of it. And that's not who I want to be. So that exact kind of thing will stick with you, especially when it's a real, real personal kind of moral question of like, who am I?

What, how do I see myself? If I look at a particular kind of person, I say, well, they're bad and wrong and that's shady dealing. And I hold myself above that. And then you have some instances from your past where you look at me and you go, damn, I did the same thing. I do not like that at all. I don't like that I did that.

I would take it back if I could. and I will, number one, it's, it's kind of like regretting anything. You look at that and going, not going to do that again. I don't like the way that made me feel. I don't think I did the right thing. And I'm going to now recommit to a different, it's kind of like the idea of, uh, repentance and, and salvation in some ways is like, you got to look at what you did and be absolutely, be contrite about it.

Like, I screwed up. And then, that's genuine repentance. It's like, I know I did wrong. And I'm going to commit to not doing it again. The salvation that comes from it is, uh, there's all, you know, very, uh, uh, uh, uh, spiritual or Christianesque terms, but the salvation then comes in, the living your life then as a better person into the future, a person you want to be.

These are all kind of tangential, but around the basic concepts that we're dealing with in your head. And this is where dreams come from, in my estimation is we get these visual, sometimes sensory, auditory, phenomenon, definitely very often connected to the things we've directly experienced or past behaviors. And they get represented in our head as a certain kind of imagery.

And we tell ourselves a story that's very often a thought experiment about, about that concept or sometimes it's just trying to describe and understand a concept to ourselves. Sometimes it's saying, okay, I got the bare bones. Now what do I do about it? How do I feel about this? What's the solution to this type of conundrum? it's possible. Where, where we go with this?

There's so many possibilities. One thought that popped into my head is that you're still dealing with the tail end of maybe some ruminations about the potential for ruminations. Like sometimes we get symptoms under control and it's like 99%. And the little 1% kind of hangs on there. It's like, okay, all the ruminations are the tendency to ruminate hasn't gone away completely. So it may be one of your highest priorities in your mind in terms of your sense of self-worth

and whatnot that you maintain being a good person who's a fair dealer. So you might have these dreams coming back saying something along the lines of be hypervigilant to never let this happen again. And so it's almost like it's always on your mind. Like am I doing the right thing? Let me double check.

I get the same thing. So I've got autism. but I've also got a little bit of generalized anxiety disorder. When it was out of control, I would get down the road towards work. 10 minutes, 10 minutes down the road, and I'm going to be late for work, but I have to turn around. I turn my car around and I go back and I check the front door because I cannot remember if I shut it. I can't remember if it's locked. It used to drive me crazy, this impending sense of doom type of thing that was always hanging over me.

And getting that under control was huge. but then I'm still kind of a let's just be careful and double check kind of guy. So that's never going away. It's kind of in my personality. I might just stop there and let you comment before we move forward any further. You haven't

any thoughts? Yeah, the thing you said about the rumination still being there in some way that is very true. I can tell that. Now, I would say it's 95% going to

but every once while it comes up. But you haven't touched on the naked part yet. Oh, no, no. We haven't even actually done, this is all kind of talking around the general idea of the dream. So do you remember the most recent instance, like from yesterday or the day before? Does it, does a narrative about the most recent type of,

type of this dream come to mind. All right. For that, we have to go back 60 years. That's the one that you have the most clear memory of. Okay. Wow. Yeah. This may be the first one, huh?

I was a seventh grader. I was a good athlete. I remember I had been sexually assaulted just a couple years before this. Yeah. And I went out for the football team, and all of a sudden I just knew I never wanted to play football again. I hated it. But the worst thing about it was the locker room. All these guys naked running around.

And I didn't know it at the time, but I suppose the incident in the theater had something to do with it. Probably. But I sat in a corner and cut. covered myself with my towel not wanting to expose myself or get up into the shower with them. Now that is, I don't ever, that's in my book by the way. And I relive that incident, but in these new ways. I never think about that incident. I didn't think about that incident until I put it in a new way.

my book. But here it is 60 years later and the thing with being covered in the front like I was when I was sitting in that locker room, I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with it. I think the fact that that came to mind and it and it is almost exactly the same experience or imagery that is in the dreams probably very strongly connected, I would say. Again, kind of going to the meta level on these kind of things, what does it mean to be? Okay. number, I'll back it up even further. There is a long tradition of many great minds, researching dreams, trying to identify what are the typical dreams, dreams of falling, dreams of flying, dreams of being in class

when you have not prepared for a test, very common, and dreams of being naked, often at the same time. I'm naked in class and I haven't prepared for the test. There's then also kind of broad strokes, collective unconscious style of, commonalities between these experiences and to narrow it down specifically to the idea of being naked is nudity is uh or or being without clothing it's not even nudity as much or nakedness as such but without clothing is a vulnerable state and it closes what keeps the weather out it's what keeps also other people from seeing our flaws perhaps so there's kind of a strong association with most

people, the idea of being exposed, bear to the world for all to see warts and all, that kind of thing. And that's very much encapsulated in the idea of being naked is I cannot hide imperfections of my flaws. I'm vulnerable to cold or heat because I don't have a layer of protection. No shoes on your feet is and walking out broken glass is a, you know, a dream I talked about with someone once. it's this idea of of being unable to say protect yourself in some ways. So there's a lot of these things.

And then to have you have a very specific kind of traumatic experience that involved your body and probably the barrier of clothing being removed or absent or pierced, you know, being insufficient to protect you. And then to suddenly be completely without it in a locker room. scenario, covering yourself. And there's two ways of looking at that too is like covering your front in the dream is, is maybe the bare minimum. And it may be specifically related to this locker room experience where you did exactly that. But what came to my mind with the, you know, the towel never wrapped all the way around, meaning you were never able to

fully protect yourself, never able to even even make the barrier. of a thin piece of cloth be entirely complete the circle in a way so that there was always a portion of you left exposed um is is one way to look at some of that stuff um so we've we've got from and these are fantastic too this idea of the recurring dreams because there seems to be you know there's the one-offs that are like recent events and you have some imagery and an experience about it. And that means one kind of thing. The recurring dreams tend to be like unresolved issues that you haven't gotten your

mind wrapped around or ongoing concerns in a way of like sometimes things are never settled in our life, in our mind. It's a some, some problems are perennial. They just keep coming back. Because we confront the same type of thing over and over again in our dealings with people. um did you need uh did you need a break i saw you looking off off camera to um my wife was here and she asked me if i was done oh not that's it okay no i'm fine yeah if you if you need a break or you got to chat with the the wife i always take a break if my wife comes in and he needs me for a sentence so that's

perfectly fine do i never i didn't ask you do you have a time limit or are we good for another 20 minutes or so sure okay i've got any problem when you're retired all of a sudden your time is your right isn't that nice well i didn't know if you had a you know a brunch to get to or something. Who knows? Well, in the middle of the afternoon brunch, but you know what I mean. Early dinner. So, okay, I was going somewhere with all that, I think.

So you've got some iconic typical dream imagery on two different fronts of the idea. And I always say to people, dream dictionary is not so good. One symbol doesn't always mean the same thing to all people. Kind of, you can get some broad strokes thing. We're all human. We all interact with water in the same different ways. So there's a range of things that it probably means. But you've got an idea of, what is it?

So the typical experience of, we've talked about nakedness and vulnerability. That's, it's fairly typical, not always, but usually in that direction. School tests specifically. The idea of performance anxiety is one way to look at it. But the idea that you will be expected to demonstrate you have learned. learned a lesson. And there's a, when you, when you, when you hear a phrase like, learned a lesson, you think of someone who learned their lesson. They're like, well, they won't make that same mistake twice. So there's,

there's elements of that too with, with the, with the school imagery and, and I think specifically related to you, um, because you, let's say, you're running these groups where you're trying to help people and you have a, a, a, an experience from your past a couple of them that came to mind where you didn't feel proud of yourself in having taken advantage of people. So, you know, however a minor, 50 bucks. It doesn't matter. It could have been literally one penny as long as it's how you feel about that looking back. You've got these people that you are responsible for in a way. You are responsible not to fix them, but to be good to them by your own standard, to do what you can to the maximum extent you can without.

take an advantage of that's a big thing where someone is in a trusted position is and that's what we consider one of the one of the biggest betrayals to say you're in a trusted position and you took advantage of someone that trusted you that's huge we look we look down on that i think almost universally if you're not a sociopath you look down on that and go that's not right and yeah you judge people pretty harshly then i would i would say rightly so you know to be in a trusted position then to take advantage of someone that's like extra messed up so and Now, okay, all of this, I'm not saying you're doing any of that. I'm saying you're worried about it.

I'm saying you care so much about doing right by people that it is always on your mind. Am I doing the right thing? Am I helping these people as much as I could? You know, did I get tired towards the end and I didn't give someone my full attention? And should I be down on myself for not focusing harder and pushing through to be of more benefit to someone else? I'm going to stop there and let you just tell me what you think so far. Well, as far as the groups go, I have learned over these eight years that there's no way I can say everything right. That's true.

What I think is good advice for someone, and we don't give advice. We give scenarios, which means that if somebody says something that they did or whatever or something they're thinking about doing, we don't say, we'll go do that or go take a walk. We'll say, well, if I was in your position, I might consider doing this. No direct advice. Other than the persons who can help you, most of that are psychiatrists and psychologists. That's as far as we go. But having learned that I can't say the right thing all the time

or do the right thing all the time. Because I run the meeting. I speak more than anybody else, except for I let everybody go around and talk about whatever they want to talk about. But I cannot do everything right. What I think is a good suggestion to somebody, it may tear them apart.

I don't dwell. on that. Okay. Because there's nothing I can do about it. Fair enough. It feels like you made your piece with that idea. Go ahead. So what I suggested was, is this related to the group dynamic and your own assessment of

your own performance, say to speak, and vulnerability? And you're thinking maybe that's not quite it. It doesn't feel like that's connected because you feel like you got a pretty good handle on that and your boundaries on that and what you're, you have a good idea of when you are doing everything you can and you're not judging yourself too much for minor minor failures is that where you're at yeah if if i didn't feel that way i couldn't do it because i'd be worrying about doing something wrong to somebody every damn meaning yeah yeah i kind of still have some of that anxiety when i'm talking to people like this i don't want to do i don't want to give any

advice i don't want to say the wrong thing i don't want to give people the wrong understanding i can just say what I think, you know. So that cannot enter my mind. Okay. Sometimes I find out about what I said didn't help somebody or hurt somebody. Most of the time I never do. Gotcha. Most of the time the people call somebody in the group and say,

did you hear what that son of a bitch said to me? Oh, no. You know, so it's all in me trying to say the proper thing. but not knowing how they're going to take it. Gotcha. Yeah, no, for sure. Well, that's why this is, that's why I tell people the answers are not in me

is because I had an idea. I saw a possible connection. I throw it out to you and you feel it right here and you go, I don't think that's it. I don't think that's it. So I'm not latching onto it going, no, you're wrong. I know what I'm talking about.

But I think I'm on to something in this broad strokes. And so if we take your your feeling of rather certain competence with the group sessions thing, you've put enough of your life into it, you feel like you got to handle on what's going on, you do your best, you're comfortable with your own performance. So we would want to, okay, fair enough. Is that it? No, close that door. We put that aside and say, is there another area of your life maybe where you have more

doubts on your competence and performance? some areas, whether you're doing everything you can to do the right thing as you see it. There may be some other area that's fitting these themes, that's making it necessary for this kind of nagging doubt to come back two or three times a week. So there's got to be something in there that is a recurrent concern for you along those lines. I have no idea. Fair enough. And we may not get that specific answer.

That's the other thing too is what I can do is kind of tell you what I see and break it down a little bit of like the broad themes. And then sometimes the connection pops up in people's head and they can say, that's it. I have this new project I started. And ever since I started that new project, this dream has been happening. And I didn't think of that until just now. And I'm like, okay, the epiphany. Everything starts to make sense. So we're still dealing with identifying kind of what it is that re-triggers the need to consider this same type of problem over and over again.

And it's also possible that I haven't really captured the essence of it yet. I haven't described the shape of the object so that you know where it probably came from. That's always possible as well. A bit of a failure on my part, too. if that's, if that's happened. And not, not that you failed at all me either. You can't do this wrong. So, um, that's why I was asking about the idea of the most recent incident. Cause usually what I do with these is I say, let's go through one specific occurrence of this type of dream. And really try and nail it down and pull out some of the images and the, and the sequence. Um,

one thing we can do is, you know, so you gave me a lot of the recurring elements. This is, um, the setting. is in a school. So it's very much lessons, learning, knowledge, education, that type of thing going on there. I think we're on that side of it versus some people, some people and their kids see school is nothing but a prison full of their tormentors. I don't think it was that for you. No, you weren't excessively bullied or picked on by teachers or, you know, it wasn't a miserable experience.

That's a different thing. I didn't get that impression. But the way you describe it, too, is you've got. two kind of tough but fair competent teachers that you know so you're you're looking at um the judge the judge you've placed over yourself in the dream to to look at your performance is is not an unfair judge that's a different type of judgment it's like a a reasonable standard is what it is versus an unreasonable expectation um so we've we've got very much hi puppy I don't know if you knew I had a dog in my lap.

I saw the cat. Oh, yeah, yeah, the cat's come and go. Yeah, they run around in the background. There's one sleeping right there. That's baby. So that's a very different and specific type of experience. This kind of thing of, okay, so let's imagine there's a reasonable standard. And I'm going to be judged accordingly.

Now, how do I respond to it? And some of your responses to that have been, we'd say broadly, avoidance. I'm going to skip class. I'm not there. can't judge me. I'm not here. You don't, you don't see me. Um, and the other way to do that is maybe to cheat, to, to find a way to satisfy the requirement that isn't as honest, but it gets the job done. Those are two broadly different ways that a lot of us approach, uh, approach different things. Um, what would it be? Uh, I don't know, I hadn't experienced the other night. A person legally

distinct from myself may have been exceeding the speed limit and saw a police officer in the distance and, uh, slowed down so that I was no longer. breaking the law. This other person legally distinct from myself. That's, that's also one way to do it is to bring yourself into compliance with the, with the judge, with the expectations, is to alter your behavior. Cheating might be a radar jammer or avoidance might be, I see him in the distance. I'm just going to take a, take a turn here and not go past the cop. So I'm just going to stay away from him. When you think of judgment, reasonable standards and your approach to satisfying reasonable standards that may be better or worse in different different ways.

Does anything come to mind along those lines? Any random associations? I guess the thing that comes to my mind is that I early on was a high achiever. I did very well at sports. I was very smart, smarter than everybody else. or one of the smartest. And I never needed to cheat in those early years. I was always prepared.

But when the depression, and you know, at the early years, I had a wide open pathway to do whatever the hell I wanted to do. I would have been very successful. Now, these are the things you don't think of as a kid, but it was the fact that you're back on it. But all that changed in that 10 minutes with that guy in the theater. He took my life from me of what I might have achieved.

And I have always wondered if that hadn't happened, and then the bipolar may or may not have happened where I would be. I mean, I've had a good life even despite the bipolar. But I've had a lot of bad times, too. Yeah. Been married 51 years, got three great kids and all that. But I failed at every business I ever tried. Where would I be with that if that incident hadn't happened?

Yeah. That's what I think of. For sure. No, and I got some great kind of impression. and intuitive understandings that I think might might relate to it. So if we think of it this way, potential is in some ways a judge. And we treat it like it's real, even if it hasn't happened yet. We say someone's wasting their potential or not reaching their potential.

So potential in a lot of ways is a judge against which we say, have I done everything I can. And the, what I can is, is that potential line that, you know, we judge how close we've, we've gotten to it. So there's also the idea of, say, potential being stolen from us by circumstance, acted upon, made a victim of a trauma, absent which the potential may have been significantly greater. So that gap between what we could have achieved and what is now possible based on having been molest, having had bipolar, that shortens, shortens, it steals that higher end of potential from us. Speaking of cat, she heard her name, then she came straight here. She's going to drive me crazy. Well, she sensed the need for a little comic relief in the middle of a very heavy,

heavy subject. So there we go. She comes to give me love. So there may be some of that going on. So we've got this. So if we link the idea of judgment, and judgment can be good or bad. I mean, it's not just judgment for punishment. It's the, it's an assessment of our own performance in some ways or an assessment of our own satisfaction with something.

So there's a lot of different ways that, that a, that an icon of a judge like a tough but fair, uh, teacher might, might come in, come into that. Um, there is the possibility and it struck me. So where was I going with that? Um, there, there's a, there's a tough thing. that can happen to folks who have had trauma, who have, who have experienced involuntary conditions medically, I've got diabetes, I've got schizophrenia, you know, etc. I was born without a leg, whatever. There's real potential limitations. There's real limitations in maximum potential that happen as a result of these things. Then there's the potential or the possibility that we make

excuses. Oh, I can't do that. I don't have a leg. Or, oh, I can't do that. I've got a condition XYZ. And sometimes, sometimes we're not even really sure how much our conditions and traumas limit us. And we might even have that internal feeling of, is it me? Is it really the condition? Or am I holding myself back? Because I don't believe I can. Or I'm a little bit lazy and I don't want to admit it. So, you know, those things do happen. It's, you know, and there's no judgment on you in terms of judgment, whatever the case may be. But more the possibility that you're considering that as an idea.

Like, where am I, have I succeeded as much as I really can? Or have I held myself back a little bit thinking, I don't have to try so hard because I have an excuse. You may be wondering about that? I don't know. That came to mind. Absolutely. I got the feeling well after the trauma that my parents thought as after the change had occurred. I was lazy.

Didn't want to work. It kind of led me to believe that's the way they felt. but on the other hand, they never talked to me about it. They never brought up, why are your grades dropping like a rock? So I have been confronted with the fact that they think I'm lazy. And on the other hand,

I've been believing all these years that it's my condition that makes me feel like that. and that's what I really believe because I wasn't like that when I was young, young. Mm-hmm. But that's my impression anyway. For sure. Yeah.

And there's a lot of moving pieces in there, too. There's like the, I mean, kind of at the top level of everything, and we'll go down a little bit. There's the reality of the situation. Then there's the accuracy of perception of that reality. How clearly are you seeing what's really going on? And then there's people's assumptions and judgment calls, personal feelings and opinions about stuff that are kind of even even a third layer removed from the reality.

So it's like the objective truth. Then there's kind of how well we see that. And then there's kind of now, how do we interpret the facts as we may or may not see them clearly? It's so many, I'm amazed we can do anything. I'm amazed our brains work and we can keep ourselves from getting eaten by, say, to the tigers. There's so many opportunities for communication to go wrong, for perceptions to be faulty. But, you know, on the flip side, we're pretty well designed to kind of get by until we can

reproduce. And so humanity is still around. But so you've got a situation where there, there probably are some real, there is some real stolen potential because of the trauma and because of the, um, uh, uh, psychiatric conditions, uh, which, you know, there's, there's hardly, hardly any way to separate those two once you've been through something terrible and then you kind of deteriorate afterwards is it related almost guaranteed was it going to happen anyway maybe but but you know all of that being true um so there's the situation where you're yeah your parents didn't as you as you talked to a lot of folks today um parents didn't know what to look for with the kids didn't know how to talk to you about it didn't know anything could be done about it they're looking at a kid who he used to try

so hard what happened to him why doesn't he care anymore well he's kind of hopeless because he's depressed and he feels like he can't do it he doesn't deserve to do it the success and nothing you do is going to actually succeed so why bother it looks like laziness even when it isn't so you've got that kind of what's the reality what's the perception of it and then what are people doing with those with that set of facts um and i and i can imagine you being in the same boat of wondering how much of this is my fault and and i remember you saying when you were a kid you're like you just just assumed it was all your fault. I must be responsible for this somehow. I must have deserved it. I must have done something wrong because it's hard for kids to wrap their brain around the idea

that, well, life is absolutely not fair and bad things happen to good people and it's not your fault. But I'll stop there. You probably have some feedback. Well, I do have one thing. As you may recall, when I was sexually assaulted, I decided not to tell anybody about it? And I didn't for 30 years. Now, the first 15 years of that 30 years, I never saw a therapist or psychiatrist,

and I never told my parents. So I really had no one to tell. 15 years later, one day I'm in a therapy session for the psychiatrist I'd already had. And at that day, I walked in there knowing I was going to telling him about my sexual assault. So I sat down in his office. And I said, Dr. Harding, I want to tell you something. I was sexually assaulted years ago.

Dr. Harding said, well, how do you feel today? I'm doing all right today. And he never said another word about it. Wow. We never discussed it again. It never came up. being a mental patient means for a lot of people never questioning the superior authority meeting the psychiatrist. So I never said anything either.

And that's another thing I wonder. What if that would be 30 years ago I had gotten that out instead. of it being 50 years? What difference would that have made in my life? Yeah. So I guess one reason I bring that up, because we always talk about this in my groups, and I've told them about what the psychiatrist did to me.

And we are now talking all the time about confronting your therapist if you think they're on the wrong path or you think the medication they're giving you is bad instead of this feeling like the therapist is king whatever he says goes and a lot of people have stood up from themselves from my group and got the good results

but in my day you never said anything yeah so i don't know how that fits in but that's what happened to me yeah well that's that's the purpose of me kind of rambling is to inspire these kind of thoughts and when i when i go off on these little tangents and i try and describe what i think i'm seeing and you go hey i just had a thought that's connected somewhere in there very very much so so we got going on and that's i mean this this is all it's probably one of the best interviews i've ever done just because you are I grant you the title of honorary wizard for with all my with all my absent with all my absent authority as a representative of my people is a duly duly self-appointed representative right um it's a very common experience for someone to say hey I got a problem and to trust someone that should know whether that's a problem or not and what to do about it to run with the ball like catch and if the person went to it's a ball threw it over their

older you're not playing a game anymore he really dropped the ball on that one and that's a great metaphor I think uh really he needed to go I mean not just well how are you doing today like it's no big deal but like wow that's serious literally when you when you first said that I was like he was checking in with you how are you feeling right now how do you feel today about telling me this and that's an opening opening the door to okay are you strong enough to talk about no no let it go either didn't think he didn't care maybe who knows a psychologist or people too and some of them are assholes, didn't know how serious it was

and that it really needed to be discussed. Maybe he should have known better. Maybe the state of psychiatry wasn't what it should have been or what it could have been back in the day. Maybe he was personally uncomfortable with it. Or, you know, any number of reasons, but really what should have happened was that opens the door to a discussion.

Let's work this out, get it out in the open and figure out what to do with it. So not to, the other thing too was, you know, confronting and you can how do you how do you confront um gently saying a doc do you think we should talk about that that's kind of messed me up for a long time it's i mean i'm okay today but i'm not okay with what happened you know that's so just just saying it like that maybe uh any number one any psychologist or psychiatr's worth their salt should should take that ball and run with

it and know what know what to do number two if you need to step up there's ways to say actually i'm not okay you to have that when he asked you are you okay today? Maybe you could have said, I'm doing my best, but no, honestly, it's still,

still mess with, so responsibility enough to go around, but you didn't know any better, and he sure as hell should have known better. Yeah. So I was going somewhere with that. Should have known better and what to do about it and sharing that experience.

Now, I lost it. But now you're, you're kind of bringing this insight. Well, you know, your experience to these groups, not to bring it around it.

Oh, Oh, that was the other thing. Okay, so two things. I hope it's been, what I hope to model in these conversations with people as well is I'm not, I call myself the wizard and it's tongue in cheek and I think it's serious, but also, I'm nobody special. I'm just the guy. Maybe I know some things. Maybe I've got some perspective.

I'm trying to do the right thing. But I always tell people the answers are not in me. And if you tell me it's not something, well, then it's not. And maybe you're wrong. Who knows? but I'm not here to point fingers and have confrontations with people and tell you I know better. I don't. This is your dream.

It's your experience. It's your life. I'm trying to help you find the answers within yourself. And that's what people should be doing. Okay. That was just a thought too. It's like, yeah, yeah, like the idea of like I don't consider myself that kind of authority. Like, I know some things.

I'm kind of competent. Maybe I got something useful for you. But I'm not playing God, that kind of thing. And that's a very big problem. with doctors in general and anyway psychiatrists especially you know with fragile fragile brains in their hands um that said there may be a connection there also with the it's it's kind of how you're let's okay i go all over the place i guess so scatterbrain because it's explosion of ideas um kind of peaches i think uh life stages and uh you know at a certain point we get old enough

And we look at do I stagnate and fade away or do I, it's stagnation versus generativity. I generate positive benefit to others around me using who I am and what I know, the wise elder type of thing. We've got to figure out, am I going to be the, you know, hermit in the cave that doesn't talk to anybody and I get off my lawn? Or am I going to be the, the wise elder of the village that people come to because they know, I've seen some things, have done some things. maybe I got some useful advice or perspective. And that's kind of more of the generativity thing is passing along what you've learned of benefit to other people. So that's a pretty common, I think you're in it.

I mean, most folks by retirement age is kind of where it is now, what now? What am I doing with my life? I'm not working anymore. I'm not raising a family. That's all behind me. How do I make the most of my remaining time? So I think there's something going on there with this second guessing self-dressing, self-doubt judgment of authority figures exposed, exposed invulnerable imagery of the nakedness

in the dream. If I throw all of that out there as a kind of idea, does that inspire some more thoughts? Yeah. And that's why I wrote the book. Because I looked at other, I decided to write the book because my trauma therapist of a few years ago, when I was a little bit of it, went through my entire life because there were a couple things even after all these years that were still bothering me. I couldn't get a handle on. So she takes me through my whole life, starting with the year before I was sexually assaulted. And when we got all done with that, she says, Jesus Christ, there's a lot of stuff in there. Let's write a book about it.

Right? Yeah. Oh, I did. Yeah. Well, first thing I did was look at other bipolar and mental health books. And there's a lot of good ones out there. There's a lot of really good ones out there. But I didn't find any that specifically took the reader through his or her life in chronological order day by day.

But that's how I decided to write the book. And the reason I wanted to write the book was because two things. I am lucky enough to have been one who has, even with the assault and the depression and bipolar, been able to lead a pretty damn good life. So I wanted people to know that they can do that. the same thing if they really are willing to do what they need to do. And the second thing I wanted to get out was that stigma from other people has to change. Yeah. So I didn't just write the book for people to read that and get it. I wrote the book so I could find a path to get on podcasts,

to do other things to try to get the word out in my own little way. And that's what I'm doing. Nice. Nice. That's great. That's great. I'm hoping as much as I don't care too much, whether I leave a legacy,

I want to have been a benefit to someone. So I am kind of going to leave some things behind for the benefit of other people, I hope. Not for me as much as like, Remember me. I'm very important. The statue of Ossimandias in the desert, you know, nothing but the crumbling feet left behind. But, you know, maybe after I'm gone, the books I put out there will still be there.

And for you, certainly, you know, it's, uh, even after I can't do podcasts anymore, you might say, this book is there and people can still read it and say, hey, that's me. I, I, I, I, I can see myself in this book and I can see that this person succeeded. it. I can see how they did it. I can see maybe some things that could have done better. Maybe I'll try. Well, that's why I love the warts and all type of stuff. It's like, yeah, you know, I did the best I could, but I didn't do everything perfect. Nobody does. So if I were to give a broad strokes idea of what you've got going on in these recurring dreams, it does seem to be, as I was saying just just previously, the idea of you've got a tough but fair judge. you're remembering your history of maybe not confronting things as well as you could have or avoiding some problems or taking shortcuts that you got the job done but you weren't

entirely proud of and the idea that you're always at risk of being vulnerable and exposed and you know no one's immune to being redramatized by another horrible accident or event beyond your control that kind of thing so we're all constantly vulnerable in some ways the people who have had past trauma feel it more acutely maybe than other people that have been very fortunate. So if we've captured, let's see, if we've had enough discussion around the imagery and the concepts involved, and we've captured a little bit of the narrative of what seems to be playing out in the dreams, there's a good chance that if we hit something useful to you, the nature of these dreams will change going forward. You'll experience them a little

differently or they may stop entirely because they've served their purpose they've brought to mind what they brought to conscious mind what you need to understand about how you're looking at your life and your situation um so in some ways only time will tell i mean you can and i'd love to hear from me again in terms of uh you know let me know hey it's been two two months i haven't had that dream since i used to have it every you know three times three times a week and it hasn't come back we hit we hit something that made sense to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to one or both of us, well, mostly to you, but, uh, um, or also, I'd love to hear back of the idea of, of, of, you know, I had that same dream

again, but it was different. Let me tell you why it was different. Let me tell you what I did differently, or how it felt different, how, how it, the, the, the, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't hiding behind a towel anymore. I was wearing a suit of armor, and I felt powerful. That would be a fantastic experience to change in that dream. Um, you never know, you never know until it happens. It's going to be unique to you. But yeah, do you have more questions about it, or do you feel like we did the best we could with what we had? Well, you had done a lot of things that I have been thinking about in the abstract, meaning

not welling on them, they pop in my mind every once in a while. But this was good. This is telling me some things I can relate to. why they, why I function the way I do. And as you say, we'll see what the results are. Yeah. Sometimes that's all we got. And there's, these experiences are always unique.

I mean, there's one I just failed completely. It was a guy who was, he was strapped to a chair and his feet were sinking in sand. And it's like broken like Roman Colossium out in the desert. I gave him nothing. We couldn't figure out anything about that dream. Usually I get a little bit of something. I think you and me here have been on kind of the mid range of something useful, something relevant. but and then I get some people where it's like we nail it like this dream happened from a specific incident and it featured specific people and we know exactly why those are always very satisfying but this is this is pretty common too with the dream analysis thing and if you were still seeing a therapist I would say take what we've broadly discussed hold it loosely not as a matter of fact and just take it to them and say here's what I talked about with this other guy what do you think about that what more could we get from it so if I were to give advice that like you say it's the only thing you're the only thing you're

as a see a professional if you wanted to pursue it further right yeah well one thing that i that we have accomplished here is that most of my therapists have told me that there may or may not be a relationship between the trauma and the bipolar and my and my understand that, but I never believed it. It's kind of like saying, well, here's a dollar, but it might be 50 cents. Yeah. And the way I look at it, what we talked about, solidifies my belief that the two would have come, or the two caused, in my mind, the reason the rest of my life was the way it was.

Yeah, there's a good chance. It's kind of like the conditions for a fire. You've got to have oxygen, fuel, and a spark. And you may have had the oxygen and the fuel kind of hanging around and then a spark lit it up. You know, and it might have been some other trauma later in life of a greater or lesser degree that kind of brought it out. Or it might have remained kind of relatively unexpressed. It's hard to say, which is worse. get it out in the open to deal with it or never quite know why you're a little off.

I don't know. That's been my struggle throughout my life. I've always been an odd duck. I've always been a little off. So and then 40, 43, four, five, whatever, how many years ago I got diagnosed with autism? I'm like, of course. That makes all those sense in the world.

So anyway, um, okay. Well, this has been a great talk. I appreciate your time. Let me, let me do this once again. We'll do the whole wrap up thing. We'll plug your, uh, plug your book. And I'm going to put the link in the description, of course. This has been honorary wizard Steve Wilson out of, I didn't say Scottsdale, Arizona. He is a retired custom

clothing designer and now author, have been living with the bipolar diagnosis since 1978. His memoir published in 2022 is, I can't read my own handwriting, teetering on a tight rope. my bipolar journey. Link in the description below, of course. And for my part, I'll say, would you kindly, like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers,

viewers for the game streams. 16, currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent dreams in their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson. All this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, including a full list of all the books and book 17 coming soon, I hope.

And Benjamin thedreamwizard.locals.com trying to build a community there. And that's where I would prefer to receive any sustaining donations if you were so kind. And again, really, Steve, great, great talk. Probably one of the best interviews I've ever had. Well, thank you. I appreciate your great too. Thank you very much.

I always appreciate that feedback, you know, and it's folks, it's not scary to talk to me. I'm really a nice guy, no matter what I say on Twitter. Anyway, okay, then we'll wrap it up and I'll just say to everybody out there listening. Thanks for watching.