Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Sarah Fay on Pathological: The Dangers of Overidentifying With a Mental Health Diagnosis EP 144

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Sarah Fay discusses her new book Pathological and how, by researching her six misdiagnoses, she concluded that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is utterly inaccurate. | Brought to you by Masterworks (https://masterworks.io use code PASSION to start your journey). Sarah Fay (Ph.D., MFA) writes for many publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and The Paris Review. She's the recipient of the Hopwood Award for Literature and grants and fellowships from Yaddo, the Mellon Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony. She's on the faculty at Northwestern University and the founder of Pathological: The Movement. She is the author of the new book Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses: https://amzn.to/3McFd7o (Amazon link). -- ► Click here for the entire show notes: https://passionstruck.com/sarah-fay-pathological/  --► Subscribe to My Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles --► Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/passion-struck-with-john-r-miles/id1553279283 *Our Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/passionstruck. This episode of Passion Struck with John R. Miles is brought to you by Masterworks: * Masterworks - 66% of Billionaires Collect Art, so Why Aren't You? Low Minimums, Simple and Exciting. You Can Use Art as an Alternative Investment to Diversify Your Portfolio—blue-Chip Artwork. Go to https://www.masterworks.io/ and use code passion to start. What I discuss with Sarah Fay: Almost one in five people (47.1 million) in the US have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. That number increased by about 1.5 million from last year. More may follow with a mounting sense of isolation in our fragmented country. But is a mental diagnosis the path to healing or a self-fulfilling prophecy? Sarah suffered from six mental illness diagnoses for almost thirty years, all labeled because of the DSM. She realized the DSM is seriously flawed, even useless, but it's all we have through that process. Time Stamps 0:00 Intro and announcements 2:41 Introducing Sarah Fay 5:07 Why Anorexia and Bipolar illness were defining moments 8:29 Why Pathological is eloquently written through the use of punctuation 11:47 How her mental illness diagnosis impacted Sarah 19:08 Why the DSM is seriously flawed, even useless 29:20 Why the DSM has no scientific validity 35:12 Why do we desperately want an answer and relief from our suffering 38:28 Why chronic loneliness is so rampant in the world today 43:53 Why suffering, grief, and loneliness are part of the human experience 46:00 Why the DSM can't define dysfunction 51:14 How her whole world disappeared because of her diagnoses 56:45 Overcoming withdrawal from psychological drugs 1:00:27 Why when she stopped considering herself sick she no longer was 1:05:27 The Cautionary Tale of the Dangers of Over-Identifying With a Mental Health Diagnosis 1:06:57 Show Wrap Up and Synthesis Where can you find Sarah Fay * Pathological: The Movement: https://www.pathological.us/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahfayauthor/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-fay-460570188/ * Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahfayauthor Links * My interview with Susan Cain on her new book "Bittersweet" * My interview with Gretchen Rubin about knowing yourself * My interview with Dr. Michelle Segar on her new book "The Joy Choice" * My most recent solo episode on why you must feel to emotionally heal *My Solo episode on work-life balance: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7AZksXySbYVoMPMuma5DpB?si=_VPv5sn3QBCq2pYVh-LXkg *Solo episode on overcoming burnout: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5keAXxjRs3Q8NKZYWBlPXS?si=N-nf0iQjThSzgsCAutPVPA  *Solo episode on how you stop living in fear: https://passionstruck.com/how-do-you-stop-living-in-fear/     -- Welcome to Passion Struck podcast, a show where you get to join me in exploring the mindset and philosophy of the world's most inspiring everyday heroes to learn their lessons to living intentionally. Passion Struck aspires to speak to the humanity of people in a way that makes them want to live better, be better and impact. * Learn more about me: https://johnrmiles.com. *Stay tuned for my latest project, my upcoming book, which will be published in the summer 2022. FOLLOW JOHN ON THE SOCIALS * Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m * Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles​ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesjohn/ * Blog: https://johnrmiles.com/blog/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast/ * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_struck/    

Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. The point at which the bone heals becomes the strongest part of the bone. And I just love that. And that's how I feel is that I basically broke every bone in my body over 30 years. And that I'm so strong because of it. And I do believe people with mental illness are the strongest people alive. We're treated as weak. But anyone who's gone to that place or touched that place, you have to be strong to be in that struggle. I mean, you may look weak, but it's not. It's the opposite. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people,

and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 144 of PassionStruck, one of the top ranked

health and fitness podcasts in the world. And thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn, how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And in case you missed our interviews from earlier this week and last week, we had some great ones featuring Trisha Manning, who is a former C-suite executive, turned performance coach, and author of the book, Lead With Heart, and Leave a Legacy. Last week's episodes featured Admiral James Stavridas, and we did the official book launch of his new book, Tarisket All, plus covered his other books, Sailing True North, and 2034. We also had on my friend and former Navy Fighter pilot, Keegan Gill, who discusses his harrowing ejection doing almost Mach 1 in an F-18 strike fighter

and his long recovery as well as what he is up to now. And in case you missed my solo episode from this past week, it is about how to deal effectively with your pains instead of drinking them away. I wanted to thank the audience so much for your continued support and giving us so many five star ratings. We now have over 8,000 of them globally on iTunes and these go such a long way in getting the show out there helping our movement and overall expanding its reach. Now let's talk a little bit about today's episode, and I will then introduce our incredible guests. Almost one in five people in the United States have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.

But another way, that's 47.1 million people. That number increased by about 1.5 million from last year, with a mounting sense of isolation in our fragmented world more may follow, but is a mental diagnosis, the path to healing or self-fifilling prophecy. This question is a great lead in introducing today's guest, Sarah Faye, who has a PhD in MFA, writes for many publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and The Paris Review.

She is the recipient of the Hopward Award for Literature in grants and fellowships from Yaddo, the Mellon Foundation, and the McDial Colony, among others. She is on the faculty at Northwestern University and is the author of the new book, Pathological, the true story of six misdiagnoses and she is also the founder of the pathological movement. In today's discussion, we go into how, over time, she came to be misdiagnosed

with six different mental disorders. We talk about how she frames these in her book, so eloquently, by discussing not only her personal memoir, but doing it through a very unique lens, of showcasing it using different aspects of grammar. We then go into the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, known commonly as the DSM, which is the Bible for psychiatry, and why it is fundamentally flawed. We discuss her journey of going through these misdiagnosis, the medical withdrawal she had along the way, and how she finally discovered that she was being misdiagnosed, and how when she stopped

labeling herself as sec, she no longer was. We go through why therapy and mental health is so important to so many people, but how you yourself can take your medical journey and be your own biggest advocate. I did want to warn the audience that we do talk about some difficult topics today, including anorexia and suicide, which some listeners may find sensitive. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, Let that journey begin. I'm so excited today to bring Sarah Faye onto the PassionStrike podcast. Welcome Sarah.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm absolutely ecstatic that you're here because it's topic that I know so many of our listeners are going to want to hear about and it's something that is personal to both you and I. So it's obviously something I'm very interested in as well. And for the listener out there, I'm going to show a copy of Sarah's book before we get into this interview, but there it is. It's called Pathological, and I recommend anyone who's wanting to understand the mental health system from the perspective of a memoir. This is an incredible book for you to do that. So we'll talk a ton more about your book, but I thought the first thing I would do is ask you this question. We all have moments that define us. Tell me about a moment that shaped who

you are today and how. There are two that come to mind. And the first one was when I was in eighth grade and I wasn't eating. My parents were divorcing and I was going to a new high school and I was terrified and very, very sad. And I just had a stomach ache for months and I couldn't eat. It wasn't that I wouldn't eat. It was that I really couldn't. And I ended up losing quite a lot of weight to the point of danger.

And at one point, I could no longer hold down food once I tried to eat or water. And my parents rightly took me to the hospital. And the doctor who was really a pediatrician looked at me and said, you have anorexia. And it was a word I'd never heard before, but that was so defining for me because that was the moment when I started to equate

my thoughts and feelings and behaviors with a diagnosis. And that stayed with me, especially because no one told me that you could ever heal from a diagnosis. That was never on the table. And then the second defining point is when, you know, fast forward, 30 years in the mental health system. And I was on my sixth diagnosis, which was bipolar disorder. I was in crisis. I hadn't been able to live independently. I was living with my mother and was suicidal.

And I ended up going to a new psychiatrist and we had our 30 minute consultation, that quick visit. And I waited for him at the end to proclaim either a new diagnosis or to reify the bipolar diagnosis. And he looked at me and he said, I don't know what you have. And my whole world shifted. And that's when I really started to embark on this investigation into what our mental health diagnoses. And it sounds like you did something similar, which is, what are these diagnoses that I've been getting? Where do they come from? Who invented them? I mean, I knew nothing about them.

At that time, I vaguely heard of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, which is where all our mental health diagnoses come from. But after that moment when he said, I don't know, I started to think no one knows what I have. And I started to write pathological. I think that's a great overview into how this book came about. And when I was talking to your publicist, I told her that I thought it was elegantly written. I think I used the wrong word.

I think it's eloquently written. I read a ton of books. I've read 27, 28 this year and from a writing perspective, this is absolutely one of the best written books out of all of them. And what I loved about is you mixed your memoir experience of the rabbit hole of the mental health system with the DSM that we just talked about, which is the so-called viable for psychiatry. And then you do this analysis throughout the 14 chapters of the way punctuation can reveal and structure thought.

And I just thought what an interesting way to cover this through the use of punctuation. And how did you even come up with that idea? And I'm surprised that as your publisher, who's an incredible publisher, was going through it, I was suspecting they might have asked you to change approach. Oh, absolutely. No, actually, I got very lucky. When I was looking for an agent for the book,

two agents that I was in conversation with about representing me both asked me to take out the punctuation. And then I found my agent now who's real heavy hitter and amazing and she just loved the book as is and miraculously asked for no revisions. We went out with it and then we got lucky and sold it to Harper Collins. And my editors actually wanted no revisions. We did end up doing some substantial revisions, mainly in focusing the book on the DSM. It wasn't quite so heavily focused on the DSM. But the way, I mean, it came up because when I was writing the chapter

about my first diagnosis anorexia and being in eighth grade, I was then an actively anorexic if we could call it that or I should say in danger and in and out of outpatient hospitalization programs and that sort of thing. For about probably three years, but when I was in tenth grade, I almost failed my tenth grade term paper. And my English teacher was just my hero. I mean, he was someone I worshiped. We didn't have a friendship. Sometimes teachers and students do nowadays and it wasn't like that. We were very much teacher student. So I sort of worshipped him from afar, but he pulled me in his office and he told me everything that was wrong with my paper. And then he saw the red

marks on there. And then he looked at me and he said, you use commas like you're decorating a Christmas tree. And I absolutely did. I would just sort of arbitrarily put them in. I had no idea of the rules or how this worked. And so the two coincided for me, my first diagnosis and this idea that what we try to do is order human behavior, thoughts, and emotions by putting a diagnosis on them. And we also try to order language, meaning by using punctuation. And so the two happened in my life at the same time. And so then I just started, and I'm a writer, so I think in terms of them, and I love punctuation. I just think it's this other way of communicating that's so powerful punctuation. I just think it's this other way of communicating that's so powerful in addition to words. Let me give an example for the audience of how you use this. As you said in chapter 1, you open up

about talking about anorexia. You write that the comma was punctuating my life as an anorexic. It's separated items in the list of ways that I was falling apart. And I was hoping for the audience, you might just discuss what were some of the things that you were experiencing at that point, because whether it's anorexia or another mental illness condition, other people out there are probably experiencing some of the same things. Yes, whether or not the label of anorexia, that diagnosis fit me originally is a good question. What I came to learn later, much later, unfortunately, I didn't know much about my emotions is that when I am both anxious and depressed, I get a terrible stomachache and I don't want to eat. And that is some people eat to sort of pacify and some people don't eat. And I'm one of the latter.

So what I was going through at that time though, and maybe what's a little bit different about anorexia is the physical repercussions of not eating. And so my hair was falling out. My nails were broken and brittle. My skin was dry and bleeding at that point. But also, as I said, just really deep depressions and feeling very much isolated and very much remote and not feeling engaged and then also

not really thinking clearly, which people with depression, which I was later diagnosed with in my 20s, know that when you are experiencing what we could just call acute emotional and psychic pain, you're not thinking clearly. So you're not doing your best work certainly. And hence I failed my 10th grade term paper. Almost, I managed to dig out of it. But so yeah, that's what I was going through.

And I liked the way the idea when I use the comma and listeners don't get scared. I promise there's not a lot of punctuation in there. And it's funny, the book was reviewed in the New York Times and they were very generous and called it a fiery manifesto of a memoir. But at the end, they kind of just threw in, oh, and there's some punctuation talk in there. No one really knows what to do with this aspect of the book that I really wanted in there. No one really knows what to do with this aspect of the book that I really wanted in there. And what I love about my agent, what she said is, it's such an intense read and it's such

an intense experience that I went through. And it's one that a lot of people can relate to. And we can talk about how that is the case. But she said the punctuation really functions as a breather. So it's kind of a moment to catch your breath in the narrative and the story and just get ready for the next chapter and what's going to happen next. I thought maybe a good way for the audience to understand this. Maybe a good way for us to start unpacking the DSM is for me to share a little bit of my story along with you during today's interview.

For the listeners who've been here for a long time, listening to the podcast, they've heard parts of this talked about before, but kind of in summation over a period of six or seven years, I had five concussions that resulted in losing consciousness. So you would have thought in today's terms, they would have been termed either mild or medium grade train injuries.

And after I'd had the fifth one, my symptoms were more prolonged because the fourth and fifth happened in pretty much a six-month succession. But then they went away, and this would have been somewhere around 97, 98. But then a couple of years later, I started to experience all kinds of symptoms.

Vertigo, vestibular issues, lethargy, I couldn't, I was having chronic fatigue, I couldn't concentrate, I was having memory issues, migraines. And so at that point, I was having chronic fatigue, I couldn't concentrate, I was having memory issues, migraines. And so at that point, I was out of the service. And so I went to, first my primary care physician, talked to him about the symptoms. And he didn't even consider the aspect of it potentially being a TBI.

He sent me immediately to go talk to a psychiatrist who then put me on drugs for at that point anxiety disorder and some other things, but didn't even relate any of this to the TBI. And then this whole sequence went on for years and years. And part of the issue outside of the mental health system is there's not a lot of doctors who truly understand traumatic brain injury. And the fallacy is similar to what we'll discuss with the DSM is that they think by looking at an EEG or an MRI or even a neuropsych exam that those are indicators of a TBI. Some of those might be when it's the injury happened within hours or maybe within days,

but unless you're using a DTI MRI, the likelihood any of those are gonna pick anything up is like 0%. So long story short, what the problem I found is that all of the medical system today wants to be able to put a protocol or a medical condition so that they get paid for it.

Whether that's civilian world or in the VA. So they have all these codes, and so it's become a system of protocols, but no one is treating the patient holistically. For me, I finally found that by the VA has a polytrauma center that has started to look at veterans in a holistic way, but it took me 22 years to reach that point. And even then, they still are unable to use readily available things that are out there in the market. But I did want to add here that I have talked now to hundreds of veterans.

And I'm putting the sound here for the listener because many, if not, the vast majority of them have been treated instead of in this holistic manner, even when it comes to PTSD, they're automatically given these seven, eight mental health conditions that come out of the DSM. And I know some who've been on 13 to 15 different psychological medications. And out of those, the vast majority have tried to commit suicide. So it is a huge issue. I'm happy to report. I'm at this point completely drug-free and have been for a while. And I've figured out other ways to manage it. But I just wanted to put that out there because I've had my own experience with this. And it caused me,

as I talked to you beforehand, to actually read the entire DSM manual, all four or 500 pages of it. So... I'm pretty sure you're the only person who's ever done that. I'm quite sure, actually, including psychiatrists. Well, I want to get more into the DSM and then we'll talk more about your story. But in the book, you make the statement, yes, the DSM is seriously flawed, even useless, but it's all we have. And then some of the most prominent psychiatrists have referred to the DSM diagnosis

as constructs and placeholders and others say that they have no reality and are made up. And in the book, you cite that in Alan Francis's novel, Saving Normal, he says, Diagnosis is in psychiatry, or potentially more dangerous than new drugs because they can lead to massive overtreatment and then you bring up Gary Greenberg who in his book of woe asked psychiatry for one slam dunk diagnosis and he never finds one. So can you discuss a little bit more what the DSM is and why it is so flawed? So the the DSM, and I didn't know this, as I said, I didn't know where any of my mental health diagnoses came from. And you mentioned that a GP was the first to send you to a psychiatrist.

In some ways, you were fortunate in that, at least that GP, I mean, in some ways, it's just as damaging, but the GP at least consulted an expert. And in my case, five of my six diagnoses actually came from my GP. And what I later learned is that GPs or primary care physicians, family doctors, pediatricians are not trained to diagnose patients, but they're really on the front lines now. And part of that comes from a good place in that we want to make sure that everyone has access to care. But the problem is from my research, many GPs only receive 32 hours of psychiatric training.

And much of that is in impatient words. So looking at the most extreme cases, not the people who are going to be coming into their offices. And my diagnoses were given after a 15-minute visit. It was just quick out. You have this, you have ADHD, you have OCD, you have this, whatever it might be. And a couple came from therapists who also are not trained to diagnose. Only psychiatrists are. But you mentioned, so the DSM, as I was saying, is just a book. That's all it is. And the reason why I bring up GPs is that it was very confusing to me,

not to equate psychiatric diagnoses with physical illnesses, like cancer or diabetes. After all, one of my GPs, his office, was actually in the hospital. My anorexia diagnosis came in a hospital. He's wearing a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck. I had no reason to question any of the diagnoses that I was given. I had no reason to think they weren't as reliable or scientifically

valid as, say, a diabetes diagnosis. What never occurred to me is that there was no test. It was really just, and every diagnosis diagnosis is this whenever someone gets one, they're based entirely on my self-reported symptoms or your self-reported symptoms and the clinician's opinion, and that's it. So in other words, not being scientifically valid means that there is no objective marker or test that we can use to say yes this person has depression but even more so, or major depressive disorder, even more so we have no marker to say that depression even exists in the sense of we don't know the line between dysfunction and function, normal and abnormal.

There's no way to test it. And this is a frightening, but also intriguing story, which is that Robert Spitzer, who was really one of the main, he's a pivotal figure in psychiatry, and also one of the main architects of the DSM, he was asked why you need five of nine symptoms to receive a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. And he said it was just consensus. We went around the table and foreseen like two few and six seemed like too many. And that's the same criteria we use today. So that's just to give you an idea that it really is a book that's written by in the past. It's been members of the American Psychiatric Association and primarily white men and they are the ones who've created the diagnoses that we identify with and accept today. And in some ways, there isn't anything wrong with that

if the public and the patients and their families knew this. Where I took you take issue and why I see the DSM as being knew this, where I took it take issue and why I see the DSM as being just utterly flawed is that we don't know the truth about it and psychiatry does. I was on MPR and they brought on Paul Applebaum, who is chair of the DSM 5TR, the most recent addition, that steering committee, and also Thomas Insul, who's a former head of the National Institute for Mental Health. And I said this that really the problem with the DSM at this point, it is what we have. It's useful because we use it. The problem is the gap between what psychiatry knows

in giving out these diagnoses and what the public knows in receiving them. And in a really hopeful moment, they agreed. And I just thought that was such a positive, wonderful thing, which is that there has been in the past these sort of wars between psychiatrists and psychiatry hiding things and wanting diagnoses to seem like they're biological when we have no proof of that.

But that felt like a moment of change that they were actually deferring to me. And I'm just every patient. Like I symbolize all patients. And that felt very hopeful for me. We'll be right back to my interview with Sarah Faye. Oprah Winfrey, she's living, breathing proof of the power of passion, running away from home at age 13, starting a media empire, and now worth $2.6 billion.

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our listeners everywhere now. Back to my interview with Sarah Faye. I'm glad you brought Robert Spitzer up because I was going to do it right after you got through this segment, but I've got a continuation question about him. In chapter 12, you start introducing not only quotes, but scare quotes, and you use them to describe why the terms inside the DSM should be taken with skepticism. And in it, you discuss Robert Spitzer, and how will you wanted his findings to coincide with fighter criteria? What is this criteria? And why is it so relevant to understanding today's DSM? So that was a group in the 1970s. And what they did is they took 12 diagnoses, and they tried to really pinpoint or at least theorize

that they were caused, they were biologically caused. They didn't have full proof of that, but they took the diagnoses and they did make a pretty good argument that possibly we could find a biological cause for these 12 diagnoses. Now meanwhile, there were 265 diagnoses in the DSM, so just 12. And what Robert Spitzer did is he was very inspired by the finer paper.

And he decided that he really wanted psychiatry to be a respected medical field. It wasn't at that point. It wasn't at that point. And so he really pushed this biomedical model on the public and basically said that the DSM three in particular that those diagnoses we would soon show that. We're still waiting and it's been 40 years. Thomas Insul, who head of the former head of the NIMH, he gave $20 billion to research, to show that DSM diagnoses are biological and they couldn't do it. And he has a new book out where he says, I'm sorry, basically, that I used all that money instead of putting it toward treatment and recovery programs. So the idea that we'll ever find that DSM diagnoses are biologically caused very unlikely, if not impossible,

we may find that mental illness, so meaning psychosis or certain symptoms of what are now mental health diagnoses are biologically caused. We don't have that right now, but I can entertain why that might happen. But that's what Spitzer's sort of mode or kind of goal was to do, and it really influenced psychiatry and it's influenced the public. There's a recent study that was done by Baylor University and it found that 80% of people still believe that DSM diagnoses and most mental health diagnoses are caused by a chemical imbalance,

which has been debunked, was debunked 20 years ago and was only a hypothesis to begin with. So... Well, before the show we talked about one of my latest interviews I did with Dr. Michelle Seeger and Dr. Katie Milkman. And one of the things I found that was interesting, especially in Dr. Seeger's interview was she talked about how we are conditioned from such a young age into the things we believe, such as what you just brought up about the DSM,

and these things just exist within us for so long. Most of the time, people don't ever question them or ever change their mind about them, but I think she brought up a really good point that until you start questioning and having that skepticism, you're gonna keep believing that belief. I thought the other interesting thing was, I've talked in other podcasts about

how so many people today are projecting themselves, I call it with a shroud of pretense. And I liked how in the book, you just kind of described the DSM as a pretense of a work of science. And why does it have little more than a veneer of science? So again, the idea that it has no scientific validity, so we have no, we don't have these external markers. And then what happened to, and what's happened now is basically the psychiatry.

And again, I don't want to sort of demonize psychiatry. I'm very pro psychiatry actually. I still see a psychiatrist and he's always been very transparent with me about the flaws in the DSM. But basically, what happened initially was they tried to prove that diagnoses were scientifically valid. They couldn't do that. So then they went toward reliability. And what that means is that they're somehow useful in the sense that reliability is when tooth clinicians can see the same patient at the same time, with the same symptoms, and come to the same conclusion as to what diagnosis

that patient has. And what's shocking or will be to a lot of people, at least it was to me, is that the majority of diagnoses in the DSM have very little reliability. So to give you an example, generalized anxiety disorder, which one of the most common diagnoses given has got, it's called a capis score and it's between zero and one. It's score and reliability is a point two. It's unacceptable, like by any means, yet it's still in the DSM and we're still using it. So it's got a veneer of scientific validity, but also just a veneer of reliability, too.

And you talked about diagnostic codes that where we are now is essentially, the DSM is, in my opinion, administratively useful. We need it. People need to get disability. People need it. We need those codes for some clinicians to be reimbursed. We need it for certain legal situations for social services, educational services. So there is a

role that it plays. And I do think that what the problem is, and this goes to your earlier point, and it actually is my passion right now, and what I'm trying to do, I have pathological, the memoir, but then I also have pathological, the movement, which is a public awareness campaign. And what I'm trying to do is just educate the public on four facts. And the first one is that a diagnosis, a mental health diagnosis, is a label clinicians use to get you treatment. That's it. That's all it is. It's not an identity. And what I did, which was a real mistake, especially because I got it so young, so many teens, children are getting diagnosed right now due to really mental health. We've been in this mental health crisis, or it's been kind of growing since 2016, but certainly because of the pandemic.

So it's very easy at that age, or at least it was for me, to totally over-identify with this diagnosis and just see myself as someone who's broken. But if people can just know that it's just a label, that's all it is. It's supposed to be for doctors to speak to other doctors. And what was fascinating in my research that I learned is that in the basically until 1980, most patients didn't ever know their diagnosis. They just received treatment. And so that's where I am right now, which is that, as I said, that doctor I saw who said, I don't know, I still see him.

But he never told me what my diagnosis was. He changed it twice, but I asked him not to tell me. And I still don't know what it is. I could call right now and find out. It's on my medical record, but I don't want to know because if I knew I would inevitably attribute all of my thoughts, feelings and behaviors to the diagnosis. So whenever I was sad, it was because of my bipolar disorder,

my bipolar disorder because I'm bipolar, right? Like as if I inhabit it. If I were hyper or high energy, I was in a manic episode. Everything went to, you know, any behavior if I was irritable or short with my mother, it was because of my bipolar. And so that inability to do that now I have to just process it. Like yesterday I had a panic attack and it was an hour long anyone who's out there who has a panic attack. It was a brutal one and I just had to sit in it. And what I would have done, you know, years ago is I would have run to my psychiatrist, most likely we would have changed my meds or changed the dosage, which leads to a whole other set of problems. And instead, I just had to have a panic attack

and just have it. And it's like part of my life. Well, I'm sorry you went through that and I wanna talk to you in a little bit about withdrawal, something that I've experienced myself. But before we go there, I wanted to ask you, why do we try to swallow both the diagnosis and the pills, and we do it without thinking twice?

And then when ends up happening, once you start, you can't remove yourself from it. So you said it led to you feeling an internal sense of cracking. Why do you think this is so prevalent today that people just take these for face value instead of doing their own research and even questioning what they're told. I think you brought it up with TBI, which is that we want an answer. I understand that. I desperately wanted an answer and relief from my suffering. So I understand people who do this. I also understand how destabilizing everything I'm saying is to someone who identifies with a diagnosis. And that's not always a bad thing to identify with a diagnosis. It's over-identifying with it. And there's even an exception to that.

And one that I like to mention is autism. Autism is one of the few diagnoses that actually has positive traits. It's sort of associated with genius. It has all these positive connotations. And no other diagnosis does, but that community, the autism community, is very much bolstered by their diagnosis. They're empowered by it. They get services because of it. They get funding.

That's not happening in the depression community or the bipolar community or this gets a frinny at community, certainly. So I just want to mention that to people who might be feeling like, I mean, when I found out everything that I just mentioned about diagnoses, it felt as though the world had been pulled out from under me. I mean, I so it was, I was my diagnosis. But I think people, I did that, and we do that because we're conditioned to, as you said, in physical illnesses, we want the diagnosis and the diagnosis to hold the key. And sometimes that's true. If you get

a cancer diagnosis, the doctor can tell you what the cause is most likely, what the symptoms are, what the treatment should be, and what the prognosis is. That's the definition of a disease. But mental health diagnoses aren't that. We don't know what causes them. We don't really know the symptoms because symptoms of anxiety can show up in depression, symptoms of anxiety can show up in schizophrenia. And then we don't know the best treatment, as you said,

often a psychiatrist or a GP will automatically recommend medication. And we don't know what the prognosis is. I mean, right now the other real passion I have for educating the public is that there is no evidence that any psychiatric diagnosis is chronic. Yet we believe they are. And what happens is we get a diagnosis, we get treatment, and that ends. We're never told we can heal. I was never told that I could heal.

In fact, I was told that all of my diagnoses are lifelong. I think we look for the answer in diagnoses, and the problem with mental health diagnoses is that the answer isn't there. We can't do what we can do with some physical illnesses in the same way. So it's a dead end. Thank you for that explanation. I also wanted to say I'm not anti-therapist. I have some very close family members including my sister who are mental health professional. I, along with you,

want to educate the public on you need to be your own best advocate when you're navigating the medical system, whether it's the mental health system or just the general health system. And I think that's the most important thing. And as I learned, and as so many of the veterans, I know learned, and as you learned, so many of the things in DSM are overlapping and they're not only overlapping with mental health issues, a lot of them overlap with other physical ailments that people can experience. I think that's what makes putting a label on it so difficult to do. But as you said, the reason that they have to, and I brought it up before, as well as in order to treat you, they need codes, and that requires a diagnosis. So that's where this all stems from.

But at least when you're in the VA, you can't avoid the diagnosis because it's over every single paperwork that you have, which I never saw as much of that in the civilian world, but in the VA world, it's definitely there everywhere you look. Well, I wanted to jump from there into chapter four, you discuss the topic of being unjoined, and you do that through talking about grief. You had a person very close to you say, you need to figure out what makes you happy. And I wanted to just bring this up. And one of my latest podcasts that I did

on why we need to be living a more balanced life, I make the statement that the opposite of joy is not unhappiness. The opposite of joy is feeling helpless towards surroundings and the chronic loneliness so rampant in the world today. And in chapter 13, you talk a lot about isolation and loneliness. Why do you think that this is such a big issue that's plaguing so much of society today? You bring up so many great point. One is our obsession with happiness, which is something I've really stopped doing as well, which is that I don't even kind of consider happiness.

I love joy. Happiness is a little bit like a sugar high, and joy is like a very fortifying meal. It's very grounding and just rich and fortifying. So I think there's that piece, but then also just the way in which we look at our lives and the way that we see ourselves as either connected or not. What really interests me is the difference between solitude, isolation and loneliness. I was in crisis. I felt very isolated and alone.

I had been living with my mother and moved out and moved into a studio apartment that looked out onto a brick wall. It was not a good apartment for me and it was extremely isolating. I think part of it was that I told myself I was isolated and I told myself I was lonely. Right now, although I have very close relationships

with my family and I make a point to see them, each one of them, some of my father, my stepmother, my mother, and my sister, I have appointments with them every week, and I don't miss those appointments. I mean, they're the most important people in my life, and they save my life multiple times, and they are definitely the heroes of my book. No question, and I think people who've been through this will agree that families are the heroes. And so even friends and anyone who supports someone going through serious mental illness, what I'm trying to say is that now I spend a lot of time alone, but I don't feel lonely and I don't feel isolated. Maybe it's because I have a cat. I got a cat. And so, but that could be part of it. But I think it's even before that, I really love solitude. And what I've started to do is instead of seeing myself

as there's something wrong that I like to be alone, I now think of it as a superpower. Like, it's just what I love to do. And there's nothing wrong with me. And I think that we do, even though it's meant well, there's a bit of an obsession to right now about connection. Like you have to connect, you have to connect, and some of us only like to connect a little bit. And I think accepting whatever level of connection that is right for you is part of achieving that kind of defense against loneliness, if that makes sense.

It does, and I appreciate you explaining it through those terms of how you were trying to look at the difference between those three. And it's interesting because I recently interviewed Susan Cain, and she has a new book called Bittersweet that's Out out where she's trying to look at some of the same feelings, but through sorrow and longing, how those things actually, in the end, bring us meaning, bring us fulfillment, bring us understanding of who we are and can actually bring us joy. So I think it's a great thing to explore. I do think today we have way too much hyper individualism that's happening that causes us to isolate ourselves, which can cause this loneliness to

happen as well. Yeah, I love that you brought her up in her new book. I'm a big fan of hers as well. I love that idea. And this took me really not identifying with my over identifying with my diagnosis anymore, which is that pain and suffering and grief and loneliness and all of that are part of the human experience. That's the other problem with mental health diagnoses. There isn't a symptom, well, we could say psychosis maybe and a couple of others, but most of the symptoms of any mental health diagnosis are things we feel every single day or most days. And that's problematic because we're basically saying

there's a level of grief that you should feel after. My cat of 16 years had died and I was living in New York City and I was terribly sad. I mean, I was mourning and I mourned for too long, according to the therapist that I saw, but who says, why is some grief acceptable and other grief is not? Why is some sadness acceptable and other sadness isn't? But just, I'm learning now that, like, when I had the panic attack, not saying it was a bad thing even. Not everybody has panic attacks, but I do.

I have migraines, too. I don't know. And so I just say, okay, I'm kind of a sensitive soul is what I've found out, which is that I can smell things to blocks away. I mean, I'm just like a very sensitive system. And so that's just who I am. And so accepting that that's part of it, we have a kind of 50-50 balance of positive and negative emotions. Yes, we certainly do. And I think you bring up a good point in that no two people experience trauma the same way. Likely, no two people experience grief in the same way. So when you look at someone and how they're grieving, you're not them. You don't know their feelings. You're completely made up differently from every aspect of you. So why question how someone is doing it compared to someone else?

Because you don't know the inner perspectives. Yeah. And what's interesting is, and I didn't know this, but I mentioned this briefly, but that the DSM calls a mental disorder, so the point at which depression, which is a normal human emotion, becomes major depressive disorder, is dysfunction, but they can't define dysfunction. And so what is dysfunction for one person versus another?

And what's interesting is in previous editions of the DSM, dysfunction really was extreme. It meant you couldn't go to work, meant you couldn't live independently. But now, and I hear this said all the time, it's limiting my quality of life. Well, my cat limits my quality of life sometimes, but he meows at three in the morning.

But so, and I only say that because that's not actually a definition in the DSM. Limiting of quality of life is not a reason for diagnosis. And now I'm not saying anyone shouldn't get a diagnosis for that reason. I mean, the reality is we can get it for any reason we want at this point. But and it can be helpful. But I guess just going to that, that we don't know what dysfunction is.

I did want to jump to a couple more. What I thought were important topics. One of them was the use of alcohol. And I thought it interesting that you were semi-a. I'm not sure if you still are one today, but I have a number of friends who are semi-a's and the vast majority of them no longer drink. Many of them became alcoholics and found that they weren't just tasting it but they were consuming it night after night after night. But I wanted to ask you, how do you think during those times when you were drinking that it impacted

the rest of the symptoms that you were feeling? What's interesting is that whole time. So I drink very heavily in my 20s and I stopped drinking when I was 31. And I had a couple of sort of bouts where I went back to it for short periods of time, just a couple. But I've never thought of myself as an alcoholic, and that was only because I never adopted that label. I don't think there's any question that I was drinking to the level of alcoholism. I mean, there was just, I have a, as I said, a sensitive system. So I would kind of lose motor function, basically almost every time I drank, and I was drinking a bottle of wine a night. I mean, the amounts were there, or there's just no question. But I don't think of myself as that. And quitting was, I don't want to say it was easy,

quitting was, I don't want to say it was easy, but because I didn't have a story about it, I think it was easier for me than if I had gone and made it quitting or alcohol the center, continued to make alcohol the center of my life the way it had been when I was drinking, when I wasn't drinking. And I can see how that's helpful for some people. It just wasn't helpful for me. Plus, I was battling and end dealing with mental health issues. And that was those were the center of my life, one labels swapping for another. But certainly when I was drinking, it was horrible for my mental health. I mean, there's no question I would never, ever, I'm writing this sequel to pathological right now. And it's about how I healed from mental illness and cured myself. I don't believe that I'm in recovery.

I don't believe I'm in remission. And we know, as I said, that no DSM diagnosis is chronic or mental illness is chronic. And I think we're not told that enough. So that's my next goal is to get that out there and with my book and really document for people very specifically how I did it in case it would be helpful for them. But one way is that I know, I mean, I could never go out and start drinking. I can never go out and start doing drugs. I mean, that was something that

it just would never work. One way that I've heard mental illness described and that I love is that it's especially a crisis or serious mental illness is that it's like breaking a bone. And I didn't know this, but in physical medicine, when you break a bone, the point at which the bone heals becomes the strongest part of the bone. And I just love that. And that's how I feel is that I went through,

I basically broke every bone in my body over 30 years. And that I'm so strong because of it. And I do believe people with mental illness are the strongest people alive. We're treated as weak. But anyone who's gone to that place or touched that place, you have to be strong to be in that struggle. I mean, you may look weak, but it's not. It's the opposite. But I love this idea of that. At the same time, I really honor and respect what I've been through and what I lived through. And the fact that I'm even alive and that I survived. So I'm not going to go out and party and drink. And I don't think I can go back to whatever we want to call a normal

or typical if we want to call it that. So there's no standard. But what many people do, I'm not going to do that just the way if I really broke in every bone in my body, I'm probably not going to go skiing. I probably wouldn't bungee jump. There's certain limitations, and I don't even see them as limitations. It's just my life. I appreciate you being so vulnerable with that answer. I'm going to ask you to do it again on this next topic. I try to highlight anything to do with suicide prevention on the show that I can because like many people I've had several close people in my life, unfortunately, take their own lives. I always like to give some of the statistics. I'm going back to the numbers and pre-COVID, but the United States alone in 2019, there were almost 47,000 suicides. And in the military community, there were 5,000 casualties

during the 20-year war on terror due to combat. But there were between 120,000 and 140,000 due to suicide. Many of them resulting from mental health issues. So this is something that you talk about throughout the book, and you also talk about how the stigma of it is people who do it are portrayed as weak. It's immortal sin, it's selfish, even egotistical. But how did it become a marker for insanity?

And then why in chapter two, did you use a colon to represent the depressive who has suicidal thoughts? I think why it how it became a marker of insanity was it was really a judgment and a moral judgment against people, but it started with St. Augustine and the confessions and him basically taking the Fifth Commandment, if I'm not mistaken, which is thou shalt not kill and applying it to the self as well. And we could argue if that was adequate or good interpretation or not, but it was one man's interpretation. And so in no way am I advocating that suicide isn't, but by portraying it as murder and not a separate act altogether, right? Murder being a transaggression against another, he equated it and criminalized it in some cases. And so, but also that if you could say that you

were insane, at least in Elizabethan, England, then you wouldn't be as denigrated as if it was not a marker of insanity. So that is actually how it became that. For me, I can only speak from my experience of being suicidal and I had my first suicidal ideation in my 20s and then was actively suicidal for about five years in my 40s. And that was an extraordinarily painful time.

I mean, it almost is so difficult to describe. And I was actually trying to describe sort of the moment I came closest to ending my life in the new book. And what I was trying to explain to people who may not have been there is that the whole world disappears. Like it's just you and your thoughts in that moment. And your thoughts are not

rational. I mean, when we think of psychosis, we know it's a break from reality. And for me, when I was suicidal, it was a break from reality. Our brains are designed to keep us alive. Like that's all they're designed to do. Not make us happy. They just keep us alive to progry. And so when you think about it, if to contemplate ending a life is a break with reality, we aren't actually, that isn't not what we're supposed to do, but that's not what we're designed to do. Let's put it that way. And that was only helpful for me in that,

it was just an error, like a thought error that I was going through. It wasn't some moral failing, it wasn't a sign of weakness. It wasn't anything. It was just like something off in my thinking and that it had gone, it got to an extreme point. But what you were saying that people who've been suicidal

or completed a suicide or something along those lines or ended their lives, that that is somehow a sign of weakness. Anyone who's touched that dark place, again, you have to be so strong to even have gone there and no human being should ever have to go there. And again, that's not saying that's a good thing. I don't wish that on anyone, but I think that we see it the wrong way.

How I would like to see it, first of all, the term suicide survivor is not used enough. And I believe I am a suicide survivor. And often it's used to refer to the families of those who've ended their lives. And that's great. I mean, I think they need recognition as well, but so do we.

And I wish that we had like cancer survivors, this very visible, strong group that someone who is in that dark place could remember seeing us on TV or remember hearing us on a podcast and think, OK, if I can just make it through just one more day, I could be like them. That there's this sort of model held up of, and instead, we're kind of put into the shadows

if you've survived that. And I think that's unfortunate. My other thought in this is absolutely just my opinion, but in my experience, much of the reason why I ended up suicidal was because I believed I would always beat bipolar. No one told me I could heal ever. And I mean, if you want to talk about hopelessness, that's the easiest way to have hopelessness. I mean, I thought I would die 10 years earlier. I thought I would be on disability. I would never hold a full-time job. I would never be in a long-term relationship.

I mean, what kind of future is that? And that's what I was told. And I think that we're really undermining people when we tell them the depression is lifelong. There's no evidence of that. No, I think you bring up some really good points. And again, thank you for being very vulnerable in the way that you shared them. I myself reached a very dark point. And it was actually the one and only time I was on SSRIs. And I wanted to use this kind of as a segue to talk about withdrawal, not only from those,

but other things, but I remember my own experience. And I have a second cousin who is one of the leading psychiatrist in Washington, DC, if not the world, a big name person. And he didn't prescribe me on this, but when I told him what was happening, I said, can you give me the protocol to wean myself off? You know, when I followed it to a T, but I can't remember if it was weeks or a month, but for a very long time, it was the weirdest sensations I have ever felt. It was like you had sit-napses that were misfiring in your brain constantly.

And it like this, I almost considered it like a web of just this cloud of darkness that was constantly encircling me. And you just wanted to tear yourself out of that moment because it was so uncomfortable. I'm not sure if you've experienced that yourself, but it was one of the worst things I've ever gone through. Oh yes, I didn't mean myself,

but with a physician's care, under a physician's care to get off my SSRI, my antidepressant, and I wasn't able to. I was so suicidal at that point, but also what you're talking about, brainzaps and it feels like you're being electrocuted and brain shivers and panic attacks and deep depressions and everything,

which is why I just really wanna say to people, I'm still on medication. And if we go back to the broken bone analogy, bones heal differently for each person. And so when you're healing, if you've been on a medication and you're healing from mental illness or from a mental health diagnosis, sometimes the bone won't set right. And some people will have chronic pain and need to be on take Advil for the rest of their lives or whatever it might be.

And I think that that's how I see myself, that just because I'm still on medication doesn't mean I haven't healed. It's just that your body becomes dependent on them and we know that. And so I for one would never risk trying to go off my medications again. It just isn't worth it. I almost ended my life at that point too.

It's just not even a consideration. And the other thing I would stress, there's a lot of pill shaming that goes on and I think that's just ridiculous. I mean, what we need to do and sort of my message is the first thing to do to achieve healing in mental health is to get treatment and commit to that treatment. Now that treatment might be medication for one person

and meditation for another. And that's okay okay. Either one whatever is right for you. But the second step is then not to believe that a diagnosis will always be with you necessarily or that you will always be that diagnosis so that there is actually healing after treatment as well. And it may be that that healing includes staying on medication. And I mean, for me, one way I like to think about it is that I will always see my psychiatrist at least once a year, just the way I see my GP. It's just kind of like a checkup. And I'm just gonna go and that's just how it will be. And I might even do that if I weren't on medication.

I don't know. So I think we can start to think of healing in different ways. I'm going to wrap us up here in a little bit of a different direction. And that's kind of how you came out of this, which I think is a good way to end. I want people to read this book. So I'm not going to give away much more. Towards the end of the book, you started talking about evolutionary psychiatry and how it helped you view things differently. So that's something that I think would be helpful for one of the listeners

if they're interested in that to read. You also kind of start questioning might emotions like anxiety and depression not be pathological, but instead be evolutionarily beneficial to us but instead be evolutionarily beneficial to us because there are nature's way of helping us deal with the new stresses that are impacting society. But I kind of wanted to end this portion of by you explaining this statement. You said, when I stopped labeling and talking to myself as a sick person, I no longer one was one.

Why was that so important to you? Seeing myself as broken or sick was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, then our minds are so powerful as anyone who suffered from depression or anxiety or schizophrenia or whatever it might be. I mean, that's our minds doing that. So we can kind of use it for ill or for good. And I'm not saying we have control or can stop those things necessarily. But that when if we also, in addition to whatever we're going through that might, that isn't in our control necessarily

or can't be fixed with a thought, if we're also telling ourselves how sick we are, the way that I was, it would have been impossible for me to heal. I had to start talking to myself as someone who, if nothing else could possibly maybe sometimes in the future be well. You know, even if it was never gonna happen.

But I had that possibility out there. And I have been amazed, again, my symptoms aren't gone, as I said, I had a panic attack yesterday. And, but they have lessened so much simply because of that and how I speak to myself. And when you talk about evolutionary psychiatry, that has been just pivotal for me in the way I think about my brain and the way my brain works, which is that we're pretty primitive, as I said, and it's designed to keep us alive, and it does that by looking for what's wrong. It's like all it does all day long. And my brain is excellent at that. We just have to say, if we were sort of prehistoric on the savannah, you would have wanted me on your team, because I am looking for lions all the time,

opening email. And so it's just, I have that brain. And one thing I started to do is every morning I wake up just a very practical thing. And I sit down and I write on a pad of paper, like, like this one, I just write down as a list every thought that I have, like one after another. I just as a list. And they are so negative. They're like unbelievably negative. And since positive psychology doesn't, you won't believe something. I think our brains are designed to be negative. And so I kind of look at it and I look at all the thoughts like this isn't going to work and that person doesn't like me and you'll never succeed or whatever it might be. And just say, oh, that's my brain looking for danger.

Like, that's all it's doing. It's trying to tell me this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. And then I just crumple up the piece of paper and I throw it away. And it's like, okay, you've been heard. Like, we know, like evolutionarily, we're, we're ready to go. And I just go on with my day. And it's not just some miracles, not like I don't have negative thoughts all the time. But my day and it's not just a miracle. It's not like I don't have negative thoughts all the time, but I know what they're there for and they're pretty much 90% of the time they're wrong. Like there isn't a problem where I see that there's a problem,

half least maybe 90% of the time. So yeah, but that's been really pivotal for me. In terms of emotions and how emotions work, in terms of how we're designed and evolutionarily speaking, I know that that's up for much debate and whether or not we have this primitive brain that's separate from our prefrontal cortex and all of that, but I still think it's really fascinating

that it's been theorized that depression is actually comes after a period of intense anxiety. And it is a way to just calm the body down. And I feel like I have noticed patterns like that, whether or not it's evolutionary or just me or whatever it might be. And I think that's a really fascinating way to look at it. It's like a fever. Your body is actually fighting an infection when you have a fever. And so that depression could be fighting an infection. It's making you slow down, it's making you rest or whatever it might be, not that it's not horribly painful.

I'm not trying to say that. But I always like to end on this question when an author is on the show. And that is, if a listener picked up your book, what would be the one thing that you hope they got from it? Pathological is a cautionary tale of the dangers of over-identifying with a mental health diagnosis. And I think that's so important for all of us to understand mainly so we can heal, but also for parents, especially, as I said, with the mental health crisis

among teens and children, I've never gone through what they're going through. It's unprecedented, but I do know what it's like to get a diagnosis at a very young age and not understand it, and not understand what it is and what it isn't. And my book is really also a way to correct a lot of the misinformation that's on the internet. And so if you want, I have over 500 citations and they are all from peer-reviewed journals and academic sources. So if you want the truth, that's what my book is, too. You know, I think I will also mention that you hired a fact checker to make sure even more so that you got the facts right. Yes, and it was fact check several times and so far I've only been called out on one error and that was about a book by Tony Morrison, which is horrible for me because I have a doctor

in English, so I should have gotten, I haven't checked to see if it's right, but that was the only thing and people have read it like Alan Horowitz who's an incredible, he's written books like Laws of Sadness, he's a sociologist, and he's really a DSM scholar. And he read it and didn't find any errors. And I thought, okay, you like it. Good, yeah. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your story,

for putting it out there to the world. So so many people who probably identify with you and many of the things that you're feeling feel that they're not alone. And I think that's so important and such a gift that you're giving the world. And I'm very interested in your next book and would love to have you back to discuss it because I think this is the beginning chapter. And that's just the next chapter of how you start healing yourself. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

It's such a pleasure. You're such a great interviewer. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for that compliment. Thank you. I thought that was an extremely important interview to have with Sarah Faye. And I wanted to thank Sarah and Harper

one for giving me the honor and opportunity to interview her. During today's episode, I brought up a number of past episodes that I wanted to highlight, so you knew about them. One was episode 19 on the Power of Choice, one of my most downloaded episodes out of everyone that I've done. Episode 124 on how you create a balanced life.

Episode 99 with Jeff Walker, who we referenced several times during today's interview, an episode 135 with Dr. Michelle Seager, who we also referenced in today's interview. And we also have a ton of other great interviews coming your way, including next week where we're gonna do the official book launch of Michael Seligman's new book on June 7th.

We also have coming up on the show Dr. Katie Milkman, who's a behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, Kathy Heller, who is one of the top podcast hosts in the entire world, and Jean Owen, who I got to interview, who is the founding CEO of Virgin Unite, the philanthropic arm of the Virgin companies, and so many other incredible guests. If you are new to the show, or you would like to introduce this to a friend or family member, we now have episode starder packs both on Spotify and on the PassionStruck website. These are collections of your favorite episodes organized by topics such as overcoming adversity,

entrepreneurship, relationships, living your best life, dreaming the dream, and so many more. And to get a hold of those starter packs, just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And if there's someone like Sarah who you would like to see me interview, or a topic you would like to hear me address, and one of my momentum Friday episodes, please reach out to us at momentumum Friday at PassionStruct.com or you can go to Instagram or at LinkedIn at JohnArmiles. Now, go out there yourself and become PassionStruct. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make Passion Go viral. And we do that by sharing with you the knowledge and skills that you need to unlock your hidden potential.

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