Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 186: The Right Words

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Tyler Kania ~ https://www.tylerkania.com/

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Tyler Kenya. I forgot to ask where you were at in the world if it's okay to say. You don't have to. Yeah, Columbia, Connecticut. Well, there you go. Good. Yeah, I usually write that down and into, okay, well, he's in Columbia, Connecticut and an East Coaster. Um, he is, okay, like I wrote this down.

He is a rugby player, coach, cyber security salesman, crypto entrepreneur, painter and the author of, uh, oh, sorry, the maniac with no knees. you can find uh find him at tyler cania dot com uh that link will be in the description below and you can find his book on amazon excuse me for my part would you kindly like share and subscribe tell your friends uh i always need more uh dreamers and viewers for my video game streams monday friday uh 5 p m pacific 8 pm eastern um wow i can't this morning that's okay we're working We're doing it. We're doing it live. This program brought to you in part by my 17th book, The Fabric of Dreams by Catherine Taylor

Craig. It'll be up on the screen there. You can look at that. I think you can actually read, read the text I've got up there. Anyway, of course, you can find all this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. And if you'd head on over to Benjamin's Dreamwizard. My lips don't work this morning either. Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. Locals.com trying to build a community there. It's one of the best places to reach out to me and connect. It's free to join attached to my Rumble account. And that is more than enough out of me.

Tyler, thank you for being with me this morning or this afternoon for you. No, my pleasure. I'm happy to be here. Wonderful. Well, I mentioned, you know, I always talk to folks beforehand and let them know a little bit about me. What are my ethical guidelines?

How is this going to work? And, you know, try and put people at ease. It's like, I tell everyone, you can't do this wrong. All the pressure's on me. You are you. You are perfectly you in the way you are. You bring you and you do you. And then I try and provide something useful.

So that's not easy sometimes. But anyway, I said, you know, I spent 20 years or so in inpatient psychiatric. And that is part of the topic of your book was coming to terms with, you said, undiagnosed bipolar one. And I don't know if that's where you want to start or if you have some other topic that's a higher priority about describing your journey. Sure. Um, you know, eye polar has, for better or for worse, really shaped my adult life. Um, you know, I had ambitions to play rugby at the highest level. I was, you know, making inroads as far as that goes.

My position was fly half, which is a lot like quarterback in football. Yeah, I know nothing about rugby. So it's all good an education here too. Yeah, yeah. So, um, you know, when I was 24, I ruptured my petteler tendon. Um, it's a very rare injury. It happens once for every one. 147,000 human years.

I've actually done it to both of my knees, which has odds that are close to discovering life on other planets. So the first time that happened was my first ever manic episode. I went crazy. I quit rugby. I quit my six-figure job. I moved out to Idaho. I was broken up with.

My life really got thrown for a curveball. You know, from there I kind of picked myself back together. I was making a quarter million by the time I was 26. But I had this illness, you know, and I was chasing adventures. I was chasing, you know, the highs of life. I moved on to a farm with a bunch of friends, got, you know, tangled with a guy who kept stealing from us, and he got into a domestic violence incident at our house. So all kinds of crazy stuff, and I moved to Boston, and that's where my illness got really bad.

I had paranoia like crazy. I thought my Amazon Echo was listening to me. I thought that when my car got stolen, I thought it was the Boston Mafia and that they were out to get me. And my substance abuse habits really spiraled out of control. You know, I was so manic. You know, I tell people when you're manic,

you can't do anything task-related. So I spilled a bottle of Sprite and I went across the street to the 7-Eleven, and I got a dozen copies of the Boston Globe instead of paper towels. And, you know, I spent basically $40 to clean this spill. You know, I eventually realized that my illness was getting the best of me, and I moved back home to Connecticut with my parents. And over COVID, I quit that really good job.

I spent a year doing nothing but reading in my room. I completely disassociated from the world. I didn't want to be in my life, so I went to someone else's life. But it was a really important period of time, and at the end of that year, you know, I tried to get jobs again, and I ended up attempting suicide because I was having such poor luck. I put a noose around my neck. And, you know, I was thankful that I realized in the moment that my best friend was getting married, one of my best friends the very next day.

So I said, you know, I don't want to ruin that for him. Yeah. And then the next week, I go to a rugby game to watch my friends, and I didn't want to, I was just watching, you know, and I didn't want to, like, you know, really talk to anybody or anything like that. I just want to see my friends play who I didn't see in a long time. And somehow I ended up on the field with, like, a couple minutes left in a tie game, and I assisted the game-winning score.

And so then rugby came back into my life like crazy, I got a job coaching the Eastern Connecticut State University Women's Rugby Team, coached them to a championship. During that offseason, I went manic and tried to start a crypto company, pitched it to all these venture capitalists at a conference in Denver, and then I went home and I basically trusted someone on the internet with my wallet, and they stole $450,000 from me. The next day I went to go coach the women's rugby team,

and I was still manic and I was out of my mind. I lost my job as a result of it. I spent, you know, six weeks in bed, suicidal depression. When I would walk my dog, I would see illusions of myself hanging from trees every day from months. And then that, you know, depression kind of gave way to a manic episode where I decided to just drive south and, you know, I wanted to get a coaching job so that I could tell my friends that I left the other job for a reason. Not that I was forced out. I stopped in Nashville,

played some rugby with my old college roommate. Then I got a job with the Memphis inner city rugby team. At the time, Memphis was the murder capital of America and the neighborhood I was coaching in, Orange Mound. It's the first neighborhood built by the black man for the black man. It's the most dangerous neighborhood in Memphis. But I was really optimistic about it. I thought that it would be a learning experience. I thought that I could grow from the situation. And I thought that it would take me out of my comfort zone, which I thought I needed.

But in reality, it took me away from my support network. And I ended up having a panic attack. And I just started gobbling up all my medication. You know, my psychiatrist, because I was moving to a new city, he gave me three months supply of everything. And by this time, I had been cycling through meds like crazy. I had some that gave me really traumatic side effects. Like, one made me gay for three months. Wow.

And, you know, so I basically overdosed on medication. And I had to go home. I was flown home and then hospitalized with severe serotonin syndrome. It's hard to know if that was a suicide attempt or not. I was kind of like give me liberty or give me death. But, you know, about a month later, I said enough is enough. I went to the ER. I said, look, all I want to do is kill myself.

I've tried before. I'm going to try again. You know, can you help me? And I spent, you know, like three or four nights in the ER in a pretty traumatic wing. Um, you know, I had a curtain for my bed, but they wouldn't let me close it because I was suicidal. Yeah. Um, and then they eventually moved me to the Institute of Living, which is one of the oldest mental health hospitals on the East Coast. Um, it's a beautiful campus, but as an inpatient,

I didn't really get to see the campus much at all. You know, we weren't, we only went, um, outside on a patio once the whole time I was there. Um, no one really talks. A lot of people are really suffering from schizophrenia, from narcissism, from, you know, my roommate had aphasia, which is when you have trouble talking because of something or other. And I got him to talk for the first time in several weeks, and, you know, we formed up a relationship,

and that was kind of the turning point for me. You know, I was realizing how fortunate I am compared to a lot of other people. You know, I'm white. I'm from a nuclear-educated, wealthy family. I'm a jock who has good looks and wit. You know, I was blessed with so much. So, you know, I started to realize that, and I started to feel better about myself.

I also felt like I wanted to give these people a voice because I was ashamed of who I was. A lot of people with mental illness are ashamed of who they are. They struggle with, you know, feeling alone at times. And they struggle with the general population. public just not understanding um you know i've been treated poorly in the workforce and you know my tribulations are nothing compared to many others um but you know i didn't know really how to express that so i got my life together i got a job at the largest cybersecurity company in the world and i was working hard to get back on the rugby field and by the spring of 2024 i was in the best shape of my life

and I thought it would be the year that I was going to show the whole world what I could do on the rugby field you know and my second game I ruptured my pettler tendon again and I went manic because of the pain because I was a substance abuser

and my parents didn't want me taking the painkillers and I just started something in the moment you know when you're manic you feel righteous you feel powerful you don't care what others think. And I just started typing my life story out to my followers on Instagram. And I had to get hospitalized. I had a really tough time in a hospital that didn't really treat manic episodes the way you wish they should be treated. But when I got out of the hospital,

I had all this feedback from friends, from younger rugby guys, from people that suffer with mental illness. And I kind of realized, like, okay, like, now that I've got my head together, like, let's put this together and, you know, let's not be ashamed anymore. Let's put our true, authentic self out there for the world. And let's explain how things are to struggle with mental illness, to struggle with suicide thoughts, to be taking away your freedom and put into a mental health hospital where, you know, there's no group activities, there's no fun, you know, they don't really try to heal you in that setting. They try to stabilize your conditions so that you're not a threat to yourself or to anybody else.

But yeah, so that's kind of how my book started. There's a lot of things in my life that I can blame on mania. But the biggest blessing it's given me has been this book because I would have never started it without that episode. And it was almost like divine intervention, like someone was helping me write it because there wasn't a single, day that I didn't know what to write. There was no writer's block at all. It was, it all just came together perfectly. Yeah.

You know, so I'm really proud of it. Very cool. That's, that is a hell of a story. And you got, you got a lot. Yeah, sorry. It's so long. No, it's okay. You get a lot to tell.

I'm just listening and trying to process it all. And honestly, trying to wake up enough to have something coherent to say in response. But, you know, it's so we've been on, say, opposite sides of that. I've been a staff in a mental health hospital. And I've seen what you described, too, to different degrees in in other you know there's good staff who kind of get it and some who don't that are collecting a paycheck or there's some that are narcissistic themselves or undiagnosed in other ways and they don't uh you know there and that's that's one thing i wanted to get down to too

was the idea of the stigma around it and how many people keep it to themselves because man the mistakes are embarrassing and you kind of don't want to most people don't want to make it public and then that keeps it in the shadows and it keeps people from understanding what it is And there's this kind of a block normal people or whatnot, non, non neurodivergent, as they might say, don't want to think about it and don't want it in their lives because it's a hassle. So they come across people that are appear to be unstable and they just stay away. You know, and it's tough. It's commitment.

You got to have a relationship with someone. You got to be friends and family. You got to be that support network around someone. And that's a complication in your life. So it's, so I mean, so I. get it from the normie perspective, so to speak, of, of like, most people don't want to deal with that. But then, you know, that doesn't make the problem go away. It doesn't make the person better. It doesn't mean they're not going to be involved in difficulties elsewhere that have

impacts on, on people around them. The thought that popped into my head is there's, there's a problem around shame in that regard. You know, nobody wants to be embarrassed. We're programmed to avoid humiliation and public embarrassment and admitting our faults in a way because it can be very it's just painful we just don't want to experience that that negative emotion um but we also don't want to consider mental health issues themselves shameful necessarily it can it's like what behavior like shames is is a powerful social tool uh if someone's behaving inappropriately in public We want someone to tell them, hey, knock it off. That's not cool.

They can do it privately and quietly and whatnot, but we got to, we got to kind of regulate each other because we got to live together. And there are behaviors that are over the line where you can't do that. That's dangerous or you're disrupting something. And it's hard to know, with the manic stuff I've, you know, seen it many times is there is, as you said, that feeling of power and euphoria and people who, very often for a lot of people, trends towards religiosity in that sense of like,

I must be chosen because you feel so special and powerful. It's like this is that kind of a thing. But then you get instances like you were talking about where divine intervention, the book just came out of you. It never had writers block. You get those. So we got to that there are, you know, grandiose delusions. And then there's actual weird coincidence,

synchronicity, Carl Jung would say, we can't explain that's feel divinely inspired. So I've always said for a long time, you know, working, to try to help my colleagues and, and, um, patients and family understand what's going on is there's a, there's a, there's a, very often a fine line between genius and madness. And it's kind of in the results. If you're getting results. And there, there were a lot of historical, excuse me, who, right into the mic, there's a lot of historical figures that were off their nut and just geniuses. And they did some great things all along that twisty, turning road of all the fuckups and stuff. Van Gogh's my favorite. Right. Yeah. Oh, he had, uh, he had, he had, he was so.

passionate about this he was so in love that he's you know hear me hear my love hear it you know know his final two his final two months um he went to like saint rami which is it was a small village for for painters and he was producing a painting every single day a new one every single day yeah and you know at the end of those two months he went out to a wheat field and he just blew his brains out yeah so he had that proclivity that, you know, the manifestation of mania in, like, the productive sense. Mm-hmm. But as with pretty much every incident I've had with mania,

if there's not intervention from someone outside you, then eventually it's going to steer in the wrong direction, and that could be really bad. For sure. Well, that and that kind of, kind of, okay, piggyback on that and then loop back around. The idea that I had this thought, like, you know, if, if, There's a trope that great art requires great suffering.

That that kind of goes with the suffering, a suffering artist is a trope because we've seen that pattern throughout history. You have to be really moved. You have to be really passionate. You have to be really almost disturbed by something to get you moving in a direction to invest that time and energy into things. So the thought that popped into my head years ago was, are we going to, you know, Medicaid away

artistry, so to speak. Because if we, if a person was, destined to produce great art, but then we medicate their depression, and then they just go and have a normal, bland, happy life, which is very stable,

but that, you know, do we have an obligation to them, to the world, not to medicate them, say, you're going to die young, you're going to kill yourself, but you're going to produce great art. It's like, should we be hands up?

And I can't approach that and say, yeah, we should definitely do that, condemn people to death because it's good, for society. I wouldn't do that to an individual. No, but just that thought passing through my head is like,

how do we balance these competing goods? In a way, it's good that a person is stable. It's good that we have great art. Can we do the same? So looping back around what I was saying about shame is like, we don't want having problems, having mental health issues to be stigmatized

to the point where people feel it's their fault for the way they were born, to the chemical imbalance stuff. Now, there's things you can control more, than others. But there is, this is always like, as a practitioner in the field,

when I was doing it, I was trying to tease out the line between this is the stuff that's not your fault, and this is the stuff you can control, it's focus on that. And the only shame a person should feel is, is failing to do what they can under the circumstances, you know,

making poor decisions when you have the ability to make a choice. And that can be very hard, very often if someone comes in an intense manic episode, you got to just provide containment, give them a big soft hug and keep them out of trouble. And typically get it medicated to just bring down that mania so that the thoughts can slow down and clarify. I've described it in the past as, you know,

it's like having a really powerful, you know, V8 high torque sports car engine on a golf cart. And those back wheels are just spinning all over the place. It's out of control. So we're trying to calm that motor down a little bit. Not destroy the motor. Motor's going to stay the same. Golf cart's going to stay the same.

But the wheels won't spin without traction. It's to slow it down so you can get traction and point yourself in the direction you want to go. So, okay, all of that to say that probably the biggest stigma we should have is people not dealing with their situation that they're in, not taking it seriously, not saying, wow, something's out of whack. I need to do something. seek help, I need to stay on the meds. And I've seen the difference between success and failure, from my perspective, seem to be the people who took it seriously and said, wow, I was making some pretty crazy choices there. I should probably accept, number one, that I have a condition that I need to take seriously and trust the people around me to be my reality meters, to keep me stable, to give me feedback and let me know, I think you're spinning up. I think you're getting too low.

Maybe we should seek help. Maybe we need to adjust the meds. So I don't know. I threw a lot at you there. I don't know if you have thoughts on those ideas. No, I mean, I think you hit it on the nail. There's really, you know, there's nothing to be shameful about being your authentic self. You know, it's quite liberating, actually.

And I think, you know, I did take a risk, you know, putting, this all together. My professional network does not treat me the same and you know it makes funding a job all the more difficult you know especially you know writing a book calling yourself a maniac you know there's just that corporate bureaucratic kind of persona that is not going to really accept it for good bad or indifferent. But at the end of the end of the day like I said like I have all these blessings unfortunate for so many things and you know I felt like it was my duty like it was my responsibility you know to do something you know because if I wasn't going to speak up then none of the people I was institutionalized with were going to

speak up a lot of them don't have the resources a lot of them don't have the education a lot of them just don't have the confidence you know that I've been able to get back into my life you know for a long time I didn't have any of that but yeah I think you know there's a few things as you can do if you suffer from a mental illness to improve your condition number one like we just said like accepting who you are and not not being ashamed of that number two you got to find a community that you know is able to spend time with you is able to give you that meaningful human connection And you've got to have goals, something to look forward to every day, something that keeps you working towards a better you.

And then lastly, is medication, right? And that can be the most difficult because diagnosing psychiatric illnesses is not as cut and dry as putting a band-aid on something. You know, you might cycle through a lot of things and they might not have the best side effects. But, you know, you will find it eventually. You know, for me, it was lithium in Olanzibur. and those two drugs have saved my life. You know, I can say with relative confidence that I wouldn't be here without them. Yeah.

Yeah. And unfortunately, we just haven't found anything else that works other than chemical intervention for things like mania, for schizophrenia. There isn't really, you know, there's, what am I trying to say? There has been and is ongoing research into dietary things that people think might trigger episodes in both, in both bipolar and, uh, schizophrenia. But that's like part of the picture, but really effectively bringing a manic episode down to an even keel and reducing the experience or intensity of hallucinations or strong paranoia for, for schizophrenics. It just

nothing works like the meds. We just haven't found anything. And it used to be, you know, a couple centuries ago, you would just be untreated, but contained in rather unpleasant circumstances. One of my books actually, hey, let's chill one of my books. I can't remember what the number is. I think it's book seven. It is Tyrion's Dreams and Visions, and it's the writings of a late 1700s psychiatrists, before psychiatry. You know, he was a medical doctor working at the St. Bethlehem Hospital in

England and St. Bethlehem became commonly known as Bedlam, which is where we get the term, it's Bedlam, it's a madhouse, because it was literally named after the madhouse of St. Bethlehem's hospital, Bedlam. So he worked there, and he gave his, he was actually one of the early advocates for patient rights. What they used to do was they were completely charity-based, and so to keep themselves funded, they would allow, you know, folks to put on their, you know, Sunday top hats and walk through and laugh at the, laugh at the crazy people. And that was not good, it was not good for them. And so he said, hey, maybe we should restrict visitors to only people approved by the patient, only people who are good for the patient that keeps them calm, that does not taunt and jeer them,

that does not exacerbate their symptoms and, you know, for the entertainment and amusement of a crowd that paid a penny on a Sunday morning, you know. So that was the beginning of that kind of trend. Maybe not him specifically began it, but it's one of the works that documents that advocacy. It's fantastic work. So that's a stumbling block for a lot of folks that have conditions is number one. So there's a book that I used to recommend to the family of,

of patients who were struggling with a new diagnosis. It's called, I'm not sick. I don't need help. And that's a quote from the author's schizophrenic brother as he was slamming the kitchen door and walking away because that's what he had told him. So this was this practicing, you know, clinical psychologists struggle with his own family member who was resistant to the diagnosis and thus to taking the meds, which that's why a lot of the foot and it really his what am i trying to say well i'm going to say that a lot this morning

prior to a revolution in the 80s 90s 2000 i mean it was it was around that time it was after the 60s and 70s anyway um previously it was the mental health practitioners model to confront confront confront and breakdown resistance that was a holdover from the night early 1900s and psychiatric models that are now, now out of date. And slowly we realized that the inability to see themselves, to see the delusions as delusions, to recognize the voices as not real, that lack of insight was a symptom itself.

So, you know, it used to be confront delusions until they are relinquished. And then it became, you can't argue with psychosis. It just, it is what it is. You can't argue with that thing. So you got to try other methods to do an end run around it. And that's where we got, you know, okay, we've got inpatient containment. And we've hopefully, to the greatest degree possible, made it like the absolute last, last, last resort to put hands on anyone ever.

But to get that medication into people involuntarily to just start that process of we got to get the symptoms that we got to. treat the psychosis with medication to get the person to be able to see that they're having a problem and then they can reflect on their behavior and go wow yeah that wasn't that wasn't so great maybe i don't want to do that again how do i avoid that well the meds seem to work so if we can get that get to that point where someone has the inside you know you have the best chance of long-term success because you're like i got a thing it's a part of me it's not all of me i just got to deal with it and move move forward that way that your situation is is the is the is the one of the best case outcomes possible yes i have a condition yes it needs to

be treated no it's not all of me i do all kinds of other stuff i'm all kinds of i'm a full-ass human being but i got to deal with this and take it seriously and i don't know if you've um run across that or or if that validates your your understanding your experience yeah definitely um i mean i threw a lot at you yeah like i already said like If you just decide to be authentic with yourself and with everyone around you, then everything gets a lot easier. You know, you're not telling yourself a lie. You're not telling other people a lie. You're just accepting it.

And, you know, the best thing I can do now is, you know, I can't take back those manic episodes where I lost my shit. But I can get the people around me prepared for it. I can educate them. I can tell them about my experience and, you know, why manic episodes might come about, how to intervene and prevent them from going any further. So, yeah, you know, I'm doing the best that I can. You know, a lot of people look at me and say, you know, he's the other half of bipolar. He made it through.

You know, people look up to me, people with this illness, they're asking me, oh, what medicine are you on? Like, what about this? What about that? You know, I'm still struggling. Like, I'm not through this. It's a lifelong illness, and I'm always going to have it. There's not really a cure. Not yet.

Yeah, I mean, I'm stable right now. I only had one manic episode since being institutionalized, and that was when I rupture my pettler tendon and you know it kind of continued in a mild phase for a few weeks but like it was contained and for the most part it came out a positive you know with with my book coming out of it yeah um but you know i'm like i said i'm not through this illness i still you know i still struggle with substance abuse problems i still um i don't i'm not suicidal but i have suicidal thoughts every day. You know, it's just something in passing where, like, I'm embarrassed or something. I close my eyes. I see a noose. And that's something I have to live with. That's something that I have to

kind of harness and understand why I'm thinking that way and understand that, you know, I'm not always going to be thinking that way. And, you know, count my blessings. But yeah, I'm happy with the way things have gone since finally getting intervention. Absolutely. That's great to hear, too, because you know, it's hard to keep that perspective as the person's suffering again. And then as the patient, uh, uh, not patient, but you know, as the family of, of a person, um, when you're in the middle of it, you know, when it, when it's happening, it's like,

God, this is awful. Um, it's also important, I can get, you know, just to, stress again for anyone listening out there that these are currently lifelong conditions we haven't found a cure for that i think we will i think as we understand the brain more we're going to kind of figure out where things go a little sideways and we can i think we're actually entering a fascinating new potential with AI and quantum what say again quantum quantum computing quantum computing is going to make AI. I mean, we're right on that knife's edge between this is going to transform humanity into into near Godlike beings. Or we get the Terminator future. I'm

not sure which. So I got, I'm very, I love making. I make AI music. I do AI, I have generate images for me. I'm using it as a tool, but I'm also very wary. I don't want artificial general intelligence where it like, okay, now this is. like a person with a memory and life and I don't I don't have to do with that as much as I love data from Star Trek I don't know that it's possible to create an artificial being that has a soul in that sense I think that can only come from whatever whatever whatever organic processes there are which is a whole different thing too but but okay so what we're what we're finding the ability to do is so 3D printing with hot plastic you know they do this we can make a dinosaur we can do all

kinds of things with people 3D print firearms at home we can also or the technology is being invented to in a way 3D print medications specifically tailored to the individual so you take their chemistry plug it into the AI and the AI formulates a specific medication that's going to work for them because right now we've got you mentioned lithium and and olanzapine and there's depa coat and there's a bunch of other medications and very often you got to try a bunch of different ones got to try them for weeks to see if they're going to have the effect you want. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes the side effects are too bad.

There's a lot of fine-tuning. The dosage, the specific drug, the specific dosage for the specific person and their condition. Oh, but we're on the cusp of that where we can just like you do, what is it? Like the diabetics, they do a little prick and then they test their blood for blood sugar. We're on the verge of being able to do that. And they'll go, oh, bipolar one. Here's your pill. you take it and cured

instantly. We could see that I think within 100 years for sure but probably a lot faster or at least drugs that are tailored to the person so specifically that they cause infinitely fewer side effects

and negative experiences of the person taking them because you know because you got a balance and I'm sure you know and I've heard this story over and over again that they're like yeah the drugs give me X, Y, Z side effect but it's a lot better than demons screaming in my ear 24-7 and I can't sleep or I got to drive to another

city and have a panic attack trying to get a job because I'm you know because I thought it was a good idea at the time you know that's like this I'm actually very very hopeful about that but you know we just got to make do in in in the time being so I'm glad you're able to be out there and be a be an advocate that kind of stuff because I think more I think there need to be more voices. And for myself, I think I've said it before, but just to spell it out explicitly, I've got diagnosed with the history of major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and full on Asperger's autism. I think it's part of the secret to my success in terms of connecting the dots with the dream thing. But it also makes me very scatterbrained and

it's hard to, it's hard to get tasks done in a way of like an organized manner. And then again, I need very structured routines in my like, I do exactly the same thing at the same time every single day. And it makes me so happy. I'm just very calm. You throw me a curveball. My wife and I've had these, these discussions. She's like, oh, I need to go shopping today. I'm like, can you just tell me yesterday?

Please. Just let me get prepared for this. I need to know a little lead time. And then I can alter my, I can plan to alter my routine. So it's one of those things where I'm like, you know, I've got my own conditions that I got to work with. And I can't be ashamed of. just got to go, that's me. I mean, you don't have to like me and you don't have to be around me and I'm not

hurting anybody, but this is how I got to do things for myself. And it's, it's part of the condition. You know, and I push my limits and I change things I can. Sometimes shit hits the fan and you're like, routines out the window, this is an emergency. And I can usually deal, but, you know, I can't live my like that way. Like every day, every day cannot be an emergency. I can't live like that.

Anyway, that's just to share my own story with you too. I don't know if you had any kind of final thoughts on this subject before we maybe transitioned into doing your dream. Yeah, no. Thanks for plugging my book. Absolutely. Fellow author, that's awesome that you've written so many of them. Yeah, there you go. Very nice.

Yeah, go out and check the maniac with no knees. It did pretty good right out of the get-go. It was best-selling new release in three different categories. Very cool. um psychology rugby and cryptocurrency um so i'm proud of that and um yeah i'm really thankful that i've been able to get the kind of audience that i've gotten and the kind of feedback that i've gotten you know it it uh you know makes me want to keep going very cool that's another thing too to have your recovery process or choices you know once you get to a stable place to then have those choices

that you've made to get yourself there validated by success. That's fantastic too. So I'm very, very happy for you. And I'll say once again, then of course I'm going to say it again at the end, but this is, you can find him at Tyler Kenya.com.

And that's, you know, T-Y-L-E-R-K-A-N-I-A.com. And, of course, his books on Amazon, but you can find the link through there. And, yeah, definitely check it out if you've enjoyed here in his discussion. You can hear his thoughts on paper. That's crazy, too. that's there's so much there's so much magic in this world that people are people don't realize it

because they get used to it there's there's there's kind of a normalcy bias of well it's just normal that I can make vibrations in air with my mouth and then thoughts appear in your head that's bizarre that's I can't believe I can't believe we can do that that's magic to me and people go it's just normal there's people talking I'm like yes it's magic that's what I mean it's everywhere so anyway um okay So as per my usual process, I'm going to shut up and listen. Our friend Tyler's going to tell us his dream, kind of beginning to end as a narrative. And then we're going to talk about it and figure out what it means. So I'm ready when you are.

Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you. Here's 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 DreamScape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring 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, documenting 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 Dream Wizard.com.

Yeah, sure. You know, I figure, like, I've been through a lot of traumatic incidents, and some of them, you know, come back to haunt me in my dreams. I don't want to necessarily do that one first. just because it's a really delicate subject. I witnessed the most horrific thing to ever happen to someone. And, you know, it was because of seizures, which was because of something we took. And, you know, I thought I was going to lose that person.

And so when I sleep, my dog sleeps at the bottom of my bed. And sometimes dogs kind of shake in their sleep a little move around. And every time that happens, I'll have a dream about seizures. But I don't want to focus on that one. I think, you know, a more fun one would probably be, you know, like you said, words can be magic. And, you know, for me, like the marriage failure rate for bipolar is not very good. I've had my own lack of success in the relationship category.

And, you know, at times it certainly feels like I'll probably never have a kid, which is really sad to me because I want to be a father. But this book has kind of become a legacy for me, you know, something that can grow beyond myself, something that can last past my lifetime. and so obviously that contains a lot of headspace in my mind and I worked tirelessly on this book for every day for eight months, six months of editing. And, you know, I realize that you're never going to find that perfect sentence. You can get close, but the language of English is so, diverse and so

like you know multiplicity like yeah it's such a hodgepodge of other languages too we just we just throw it in why not shut in front

I have this recurring dream where you know I found the perfect sentence I found this thing it's on the tip of my tongue but I can't find any paper I can't find my phone or my computer and I'm

frantic because I know that I'm about to forget what I want to write. And so I just search high and low. And, you know, then I forget what I'm about to say, and the dream ends. You know, and maybe I couldn't find the paper to write on because the book's already been published. You know, it's kind of funny in that way.

That's a great connection. but um no it does bug me i mean i'm right now i'm writing a book of short stories not short stories short essays they're all one page long um about addiction and suicide and um institutionalization stuff like that um and you know now that dream is kind of bled into that like i'll think of the perfect short essay and then it'll just be like poof there's nothing to put it on, nothing to capture it. So it's bugged me quite a bit. You know, it's, you wake up with anxiety because, you know,

you're always trying to find that thing, right? Like, I'm trying to do 100 short essays. You know, a book with a nod to Carrie Fisher, it's going to be called Postcards from the Edge. Ah. Yeah. And, yeah, that's, that's pretty much it for the most part.

Just an author who's got a phrase at the tip of his tongue, but he can't get it out. Yeah. That's a great example, too, of how dreams really work is they show you or you have the experience of things that are relevant to what you're doing in real life. The dream speaks to you in your own language, so to speak. So if you were a stock car racer and a mechanic and you worked on cars and you loved cars, it would be, you know, I need to, um, uh, adjust the timing belt and I can't find my wrench. It would be a very similar thing. And there's actually history, uh, speaking of my books again.

That's, that's why I love to this, these, these, uh, reading, editing and republishing these historical works has filled my head with, it's been my own master class in like, okay, well, what's gone before in, in the dream realm? So they always speak in your language. So for you, you're a writer, it's the perfect sentence. and I can't find a piece of paper. And that's actually very, it's, there's been dreams where, uh,

inventors and scientists have dreamed of the perfect formula or the solution to a problem, but they weren't able to carry it out of the dream with them. Now, a lot of them did. A lot of them wake up in the morning and they're like, they got their inspiration from a dream. They're like, problem solved that that happens all the time. That happens more than people realize that. Even if you don't remember your dreams,

if you go to bed, confused, uncertain about something, you don't remember a dream at all, but you wake up in the morning and your mind is settled on it. You've had the time to let it process. But I call it let it percolate like coffee. Coffee takes as long as it takes to make. You know, you get to brew the water and all that gets it. It'll be coffee when it's ready, you know. So that I started right now at some, some ideas.

I don't want to get to those just yet because I want to see it or hear it or feel it from you a little bit better. Can you remember the most recent. instance of this kind of dream when when it happened yeah probably um last week okay and immediately you connected it to okay i probably or might have had this because i'm working on a new book now and you're always trying to find the perfect sentence as a writer of course you're like can i say that better um so does it always happen in the same form or there's slight variation Like you said, sometimes I can't find paper or sometimes I can't find my computer. Yeah, that varies.

It's different. Okay. That's, that's actually kind of common for recurring dreams. Like not every, okay, some recurring dreams are exact to the motion, to the gesture, to the sequence of events. When those are frozen like that, that's, that's one kind of a thing. But this is different. This is like, it's the general theme. And it just expresses itself in slightly different ways.

So do you feel like you have enough recall of the, events of the dream to kind of give me a narrative of like it started here and then I did this and then I thought that or is it it's pretty bland but it's almost like an empty room and you know

I it's almost like sometimes I actually have a pencil in my hand and the thought disappears and then the pencil disappears when the thoughts coming back. So it kind of changes.

Like it's a empty room and I'm still looking like there's something behind something but there's not really anything there. You know, or like I know exactly where I had put my pen or my phone because I do a lot of writing on my phone. I always have my phone. So that's kind of, you know, crazy. You're just making some notes here.

Yeah, it's interesting. Okay, so when you say an empty room, is it like, do you see it as just a blank white space with four walls? Or do you see it like a red chair? So I did describe it correct. It's a blank white space. Yeah, with a red chair. With a red chair. Interesting, red chair.

What kind of a chair? What's it made of? It's metal. It's like one of those tall chairs. A metal chair. It's tall. So are you talking about like you'd see in medieval movies with the high back sitting at a dining room table? It's got like the long legs.

You'd see it in like some kind of tech office basically probably. Gotcha. You know, it's like when I worked at a company called Fortinet, we had these chairs. And, you know, it was kind of like all the cubicle guys had their cubicles. But if you were just a traveling salesman who was in the office for a day, you sat. like kind of on the side in these big, tall, red chairs. Okay. Who did you say those chairs before?

What was the phrase? A traveling? Traveling salesman. Like, you know, I wasn't in the office every day, so I didn't have a permanent desk. Okay. That's interesting. So just exploring that, like, idea of what the space that you're in. And immediately, I saw you light up a little bit.

Oh, and a red chair. It's like, now, bam, the visual's coming back to you. And it's specifically, so you're in this empty space. And the only thing in there is a symbol representing like a temporary presence. You know, the traveling salesman is not a part of the company. He doesn't have a cubicle with an office chair. He's got his own special kind of chair. And that has become an iconic connection for you with this with this.

So it also feels like it connects with the idea of the ideas you're coming up with that you're trying to express being temporary as well. You're in a space devoid of other contexts outside of an icon of temporary presence, just passing through. Just as in some ways, these ideas are just passing through. And in some ways, you got to grab them while they're there and get them out. Or I've had that experience, too, where I'm like, that's genius. I got to write it down. And then five minutes later, I couldn't do it.

I'm driving or something like that. And I got to get to my desk. I got to pull over before I can find a pen. Gone. Got the perfect first. Like a poem, a full thing, like gone. And I, how do I? Yeah.

And to take your analogy a little farther. Yeah. Like, so that was the job I got when I was released from the mental health hospital. And, you know, my first year, like, I wasn't given any good customers. So I was, I worked harder than I've ever worked in my life. And I was just breaking through. I had found this, like, massive. global deal that was going to make my life and then I went manic because of my rupture

patella tendon and I lost the job as a result you know I sent two emails to the wrong person so that that time at Fortinet you know it was me trying to find the perfect sentence basically and right when it was on the tip of my tongue right when I was on the precipice of all this success, it just went proof with a manic episode. Yeah, there is all of that brought in there, too, is like, we're seeing the dream iconography or dream experience of things phrased in an analogy of writing. But if we go up a level, meta-wise, you know, there's a lot of similar experiences. And like I was saying, I, first thing I did, counterfactual, what if this was a mechanic and said?

How would he experience it? I'm tuning the timing belt, can't find my wrench. It's the tools for the job in a sense. It's, and it's a creative endeavor too. And creative can be, sometimes we think of, we say the word creative and we think, oh, poet, artist, musician. We think they are creating. But engineers are creators as well. They, not only do they create in the sense of ideas,

which is what we generally associate with with music and other quote unquote creative endeavors, but they literally physically create objects, which are machines that perform a function. So I would say, you know, there's more creators out there and there's more creativity than we give credit for. We just, we just have this, I think a bit of a broken sense that it's,

well, you're only being creative if you're creating art. Only art is creativity, be it written or visual or musical or whatnot. And I don't think that's true at all. I think there's a lot more. You've got a school teacher and she creates a lesson plan. And that involves creativity.

I have to come up with words to say about the subject matter and I got to make sure the people I'm talking to understand. Okay, all of that, all of that to say, this, if we go up a level, it's more, it's not about the writing per se, even though it is. And it's all, or rather to say it's also about the writing because that's what you're through at the moment. And I would say definitely that's what's what's triggering this. So it's generally we have some life experience and we need to understand it for whatever reason. Good, or bad. How do I have more of this success? How do I avoid this failure? How do I solve this

problem? And that'll come to us in dreams. So but then also sometimes we just have dreams that are like, I need to understand like the first step is understanding the problem. They say, you know, with recovery stuff. First thing is, admitting you have a problem, then you can deal with it. So that goes, that's just general, generally true of anything in life. The first step to solving a problem as an engineer, a mechanical problem. We have to see there's a problem. Step one. Sometimes our brains start there. And what we're trying to do is understand the nature of the problem specifically enough to then attempt to formulate solutions. But it seems to be a lot of the problem. But it seems to be a lot of

like for you because this is if this was a one-off that's probably where I would spend most of our time focusing on it but this appears to be a series of recurring dreams you said the the the most recent one was it was about a week ago is when when did they start this type of recurring dream of looking for paper or computer trying to express yourself in that way um yeah i mean typically it's on days where I was writing into the night I think that it tends to be later in the night like it comes close to morning a lot of times I'll wake up and I'll be morning

yeah no that's very that's very common too there seems to be and this is a bad analogy because it's like dreams almost exist in like a fourth dimension there's no there's no there's no vertical scale but it's a it's it's an approximation the idea that um you dream at all levels but you remember the dreams that are closest to consciousness so early yeah yeah now see we used to think um they would look at dreamers and they would say oh look his eyes are moving but it doesn't happen all the time so they started waking people up during rapid eye movement and asking him hey were you

dreaming and they'd go yes I was and they'd go there you go rapid eye movement means you're dreaming and they assumed that then when there was no REM, you were not dreaming, but they did recently, and recently could be 40, 50 years ago, whatever, but there was a revolution in that is they started waking people up when there was no rapid eye movement and say, hey, were you dreaming? And they said, yes, I was. It turned out no matter when you woke up someone in their sleep cycle, they were dreaming. But that's where they got the idea of maybe not in the first little bit, but definitely a lot of dreams, popped up at the end.

A lot of, you know, closer to that, and if you wake up in the middle of the night, you got to go to the bathroom, you know, the dog barks or whatever. If anything wakes you up, you will find you were in the middle of a dream. Our brain almost never stops processing. Or I would say, like the heart and the lungs, it just does what it does until you die. So there's always something going on in your head. There's no, sorry, Buddhist, there is no quiet mind. There's just the ability to distance yourself from the noise.

But they know that. That's actually a part of the teaching. It's going somewhere with all that, too. Dreams near. Oh, I was asking you about the, how long ago the first dream of this kind started? Was it five years ago, 10 years ago, you know. I wasn't a writer five or 10 years ago. It's all been since starting my book.

probably when I was like getting kind of late in the editing stage and a couple times it reminded me of things to include in my book like a few times it worked in the last probably in the last eight months because it didn't happen when I was

when I first started writing it got you fair enough just trying to get a little bit of it so this isn't something that's like oh, the first time I had this dream, I was 12 years old and I was in, you know, middle school. Right. Yeah, yeah, just establishing that timeline. So it is, it is more recent that. And, and again, this, I would say this is dreams speaking to us in our language based on current events very, very often.

And something about that experience of having that dream the first time really crystallized the idea. That's how I can conceptualize these things is it took a very, a very, vague notion and said, this is what it looks like to me. And then every time that similar situation comes back or becomes more intense, the dream returns to say, hey, you're having this experience again. What is, what is the point of it? Because like in your waking, that's driving me crazy a little bit, a little bit too, because in your waking life, you know that's a problem.

You know it's a problem not to be able to write stuff down. So why would your dream need to, need to bring that up to it's saying it's saying something about that experience um when you wake up from a dream like that do you feel panicked or do you feel anxiety you do feel anxiety okay could have been a very different experience um and hopefully through our discussion the experience of that kind of dream it'll stop completely because you don't need it anymore or it'll change in some way that hopefully leaves you waking up feeling less distressed. You know,

because that would be, the difference between a nightmare and a pleasant dream is how you feel about it. Is it scary or is it happy? So we can just, you know, make all nightmares happy. There would be no nightmares anymore. So that's kind of a thing.

But I think we need nightmares to process bad things too. That's, I don't think we'd want to take that away. Sometimes negative emotions are good for us, even though they're not pleasant too. experience. We need it. So, Matt, there's, that, that leaves me to think that there's something in here that you feel like you need to understand. Um, okay. So you're in the blank, blank room, uh, tall red chair

representing kind of, uh, this, this just passing through temporary, but also not only that, an icon of, of, of a time you were struggling to put your life back together in a job that was very difficult and made, more difficult by your symptomology and eventually that you lost anyway. So there's a lot tied up in that red chair. How often is it that that is the specific beginning of the dream? Blank room red chair. That's just the most recent.

I don't know that. The most recent one anyways. Got fair enough. Fair enough. If it was a consistent icon. That's why we talk these things through too because the, the dream you're having now maybe speaking to a slightly different aspect of the same issue than the same dream earlier with different icons.

So they're going to point your brain in a different. So for this one specifically, is that sure? And then what happened in the space? Like you, okay, you appear there. You see what is before you. You know where you are. And then what did you do? Or what would you think?

What did you feel? What's like a sequence of events? Yeah. like I said, sometimes I have a pencil and I don't have the thought. And sometimes I have the thought and I don't have the pencil. This most recent times? I'm looking high and low. Like I'm just searching for something.

And I'm never, never, never able to find it. So that's, that's more common to the broader experience. But this specific one, blank room, red chair. And you were looking for a pencil? I had a pencil. You did. In this one, you had a pencil. And you were looking for paper.

or something to write on? I think so. Or I didn't have the thought. Okay. Like the thought was on the tip of my tongue and then I lost it. So your experience was, let's see if I can try and characterize it back to you. You had the experience of holding the pencil and knowing that you had just lost an important thought. That's kind of what the experience was.

and then the sequence, I think we just described it to me, was that when the thought came back, the pencil had disappeared. Okay. There's another, I'm thinking of another experience. Again, in these, in these, in these dream books, I'm trying to relate it back to what other people have already said, because it's all, because very little of this is new in, in terms of describing human experience, dreams specifically. So there was one guy who he was reading a book, but he was. couldn't read the words on the page, he just knew what it said, and it was brilliant, and it was a solution to his specific problem. And then when he woke up, he could see in his mind him sitting in the chair, reading the book, he could not read the words on the page. And that's actually very

common in dreams of, um, we can hear sounds, but we've, and we can read books and materials, but, but, but it's not reading. You can't like look in your mind's eye and see there are words on the page. It's very uncommon that we see letters, numbers, full written paragraphs in dreams. It's more the suggestion of it, the idea of it. So what happened then after the idea came back in the back? How did the pencil go missing? You just looked at your hand. It's gone.

Did you set it down somewhere? It just disappeared. So there's this disconnect. I'm looking for it. I can't find it. Where do you look in an empty room? Was the room empty? Were there, was any kind of furniture in it other than the chair?

I think it was empty. So where do you look? Did you look under the chair? Did you look? Yeah. You did kind of look. You remember you. Look under the chair.

Look on the desk. Look high and low across the room. So initially you described blank room, tall red chair. Now there's a desk. When did the desk appear when you started looking? Like it wasn't there before? As far as you can tell? I don't know.

I think there was a one. desk, but I can't really remember. That's fine. That's fine. I only have about five minutes, by the way. Oh, you got to go. Well, we'll, we'll, uh, we'll wrap it. Let me, let me do what I was going to do in the beginning. I wanted to talk to you.

Yeah, talk it through a little bit more. So my initial thoughts were you've got a desire for self-expression and these dreams appear to be about the disconnect between the, the goal and the tools to get the job done. I don't know if that makes sense. Does that feel right? So there's probably the purpose for it is to direct your attention to that feeling. And or anytime that feeling comes back to you in the waking life, the dream says, I remember what this is. It's like having a brilliant idea and no, no pen and paper to write it down with.

And so you can't capture it. You can't it's not monetize as the wrong word, but effectuate. You can't, you know, complete, complete the circuit between goal and, uh, and, uh, you know, methodology to outcome. It could just be a dream highly, that you just need to say, it's like in your waking, like, I'm so frustrated. You just need to tell somebody.

So in your head, you're telling yourself, this is maddening. This is, this is unpleasant. This is, I don't like this experience. And it may be trying to direct your attention to the possibility of a solution. Like, okay, how do I deal with that? How do I get, do I connect my talent with with my outcomes with you know what what is a successful method

and I don't know if you've been thinking about that lately of how to improve your process not really not really that's okay maybe that's the wrong this maybe that's the wrong track but but you have had the experience of you know losing the perfect phrase I mean maybe yeah maybe I mean like my first draft of my book was published straight to the notes app, and then published to Instagram. And then, you know, even this second book I write on the notes app and then move it over to a Word document. And sometimes, you know, stuff gets lost.

So maybe I'm trying to work on my process. Maybe I'm trying to tell myself that I need to work on it. It's just one suggestion. So this is how you test it. And we'll get you out of here real quick, I promise. but if you focus a little bit of attention on organizing your process, maybe standard times for writing or different methods for capturing ideas, maybe what you need is just, you know, everyone's got a phone and we got a recording device. You just go, oh, shit, record. Speak it in there and then you've got it

and it's not gone. Even if it's a mess, even if it's imperfect, now you can go home and work on it. So if implementing some kind of modifications to your process that feel more successful, if that is what this dream is about, then it should decrease the return of the dream. It could end completely. It could become very rare to the most difficult moments of frustration. And it's possible that the dream will come back. but this time you got a desk chair. This time you got a computer.

This time it's you writing furiously. And you're like, I got it. I got it all. So that'll be the proof in the pudding. The dreams will either stop or change in some way and we'll know we hit on something. If they keep coming back in the same form, then we just looked under the wrong rock and we've got to reevaluate it. It's about something else.

Sometimes you've got to trial and error and test things out. Anyway, I think that's the best answer we can get in the time frame we have. We've got to get you out of here. You don't have any additional questions or it is what it is. No, I mean, maybe we can sync up personally off there and talk about another game. Absolutely. That sounds fun. Well, let's do this.

We'll do the closing and then we'll get you out of here. This has been our friend Tyler Kenyf. Where did you say you were again? Sorry. Columbia, Connecticut. Connecticut was Connecticut. I was going to say it. I didn't trust my memory.

He is a rugby player. Oh, yeah, yeah. Hold it. Hold it up there. Rugby player coach, cybersecurity salesman. crypto entrepreneur, painter, and author of The Maniac with no knees. You can find him at Tyler Cania.com. Link in the description below is books on Amazon.

For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. I play video games, most days, Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific. this episode brought to you in part by ABC Book 17, The Fabric of Dreams by Catherine Taylor Craig, all this and more, of course, at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, and if you would please become a free, free member at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.locals.com attached to my Rumble account, and hopefully I'll see you there. Tyler, thank you for joining me and sharing your story. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Benjamin. I had fun. Good deal, me too. And everybody out there, thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.