The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dr. Fred Moss: Helping People Find Their True Voice and Undo Mental Illness

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Dr. Fred Moss: Helping People Find Their True Voice and Undo Mental Illness https://findyourtruevoicebook.com/ Drfred360.com Welcometohumanity.net About the Guest(s): Dr. Fred Moss is a mental health advocate, psychiatrist, keynote speaker, and author. With over 45 years of experience in the field, Dr. Moss has dedicated his career to helping people find their true voice and providing high-quality care. He is the creator of Welcome to Humanity, the True Voice Course, and the Moss Method. Dr. Moss has traveled around the world, studying mental health practices in different cultures and sharing his expertise through podcasts, workshops, and coaching sessions. He is passionate about promoting authentic communication and connection as the foundation for healing and personal growth. Episode Summary: In this episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss interviews Dr. Fred Moss, a psychiatrist and mental health advocate. Dr. Moss shares his journey from being a childcare worker to becoming a psychiatrist and his realization that authentic communication is the key to healing. He discusses the impact of psychiatric medications and the importance of finding one's true voice. Dr. Moss introduces the concept of the Moss Method, a holistic approach to mental health that focuses on gratitude, mindfulness, nutrition, and other factors that contribute to overall well-being. Listeners are encouraged to embrace their authentic selves and connect with others on a deeper level. Key Takeaways: Authentic communication is more powerful than agreement. Speaking from our true selves allows for genuine connection and opens up space for others to be authentic as well. Many people have learned to pretend to be someone they're not in order to protect themselves, but this can lead to feelings of disconnection and unhappiness. The Moss Method, developed by Dr. Moss, emphasizes gratitude, mindfulness, nutrition, and other practices that promote overall well-being and help individuals align with their true selves. Psychiatric medications can be helpful for some individuals, but they can also cause imbalances and perpetuate symptoms. It's important to consider alternative approaches and explore the root causes of mental health issues. Finding one's true voice and speaking authentically is a powerful form of healing. It allows individuals to connect with others on a deeper level and embrace the full range of human experiences. Notable Quotes: "Being authentic and speaking from our genuine core values and inner self allows us to be free from the burden of pretending and remembering who we're supposed to be." - Dr. Fred Moss "Authenticity is even more powerful than agreement. Even in times of disagreement, speaking authentically creates a space for genuine connection and understanding." - Dr. Fred Moss "When we connect with others and share our authentic selves, healing takes place. It's a reminder that we're not alone in our experiences." - Dr. Fred Moss

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We have Dr. Fred, or otherwise known as Fred Moss, and otherwise known as The Un-Doctor. There you go. That's the Un-Doctor is the one I like to have for my proctologist exam. Dr. Fred Moss is a mental health advocate, psychiatrist, serving in many capacities, keynote speaker, psychiatry expert witness, podcaster, mental health coach, and teacher. He has a desire to help people to be real and heard and has been the driving force leading him to multiple settings and roles as a psychiatrist over the years and compelling him to continue

to look for better, more effective ways to provide the highest quality care to align people with their most authentic self to deliver into an eagerly awaiting world. He's the amazing creator of Welcome to Humanity, The True Voice Course, Healing the Healer, and Global Madness, which is what we were going to name the Chris Voss Show, but we went to Chris Voss Show. But Global Madness and Carnage, I think, was the original podcast name we had for it. He's also the author of a couple books. His latest we'll be talking about is called Find Your True Voice for Leaders, Coaches, Consultants Who Are Ready to Make a Real

Impact, 10 Insights to Finally Get Your Message Heard. Welcome to the show, Dr. Fred, how are you? I'm really great. Thanks for having me, Chris. I'm really looking forward to today's conversation. Thank you very much. We're looking forward to it as well as I'm going to have you. Give us your dot coms. Where do people need to find you on the interwebs yeah the best place to find me is the main place where you can find really what i'm up to is at drfred360.com that's a pretty cool website that shows all the podcasts that i've been on it gives you access to the pdfs of my books it has some lead magnets it has a button for the discovery calls and all sorts of fun stuff over there that I've done over time and some freebies and a fun place to see all the places

that I've been and all the things that I'm up to day by day. Ah, there you go. There you go. All the good stuff. So give us a 30,000 overview of your book, Find Your True Voice. So Find Your True Voice is know, most of us have really learned over time to not be speaking our real self. A lot of us have learned how to pretend to be someone that we're not in order to protect the person that we are, right? And we all know that. We learned that in elementary school, basically. You know, it wasn't, although that was a place where maybe we're going to learn how to communicate. Instead, we learned how to do what other people wanted us to do more than what we knew we wanted to say or how we wanted to communicate.

And then by becoming someone different than who we were, over time, that crack in the cement has got larger and larger, and we never went back to actually repair it. So what Find Your True Voice actually does is help people take those steps necessary to find that authentic self that's been there the whole time, maybe rediscover what's been there the whole time, and then to speak it effectively to the people in our inner circle or the people that really matter to us. This is what the whole True Voice methodology is. And frankly, it uses podcasting as the background template because there is no better place to speak our true voice than inside podcasting. The three levels of podcasting, the hosting, the guesting, and the listening all really help us to find our authentic voice and to speak it effectively.

Yeah. I find my authentic voice in podcasting in the food tray in the green room. I hear you. There you go. There's lots of candy that I have in there and there's some great coffee. All the guests partake of it, really, I think. I don't know. I don't know how that works. They haven't told me. Being authentic, why is that important? Yeah, you know, look, the opposite of authentic is inauthentic and ingenuine. And when we start

actually speaking our authentic self, we don't really have to remember anything anymore. You know, I know that when I'm not telling the truth, I have to remember who I told it to and who they probably told it to. And I have to, it's so much work to not be authentic. What I've learned over time is that being authentic and actually speaking from our gender and core values and inner self, we have an opportunity to actually recognize that authenticity is even more powerful than agreement. You know, sometimes there's some divisive stuff out there, right? There's some divisive issues going on in the world right now. Really?

Where there's polarized, like diametrically opposed people sitting at the same table together. And we've reached the point where many of us are just not speaking our true voice anymore. We're either not speaking and staying quiet when we know we should talk, or even worse, Chris, a lot of us are actually saying things that even we don't believe when we say it. That's just absurd. It's preposterous. It's ludicrous. It's really kind of insane. And what we really get to do when we start speaking our true voice and being authentic is open up the space for other people to be authentic. Yeah. Even if people are in full disagreement, have you ever noticed that it's easier to listen to someone who's wrong, right?

Someone you know is wrong about a particular issue as long as they're being authentic and speaking from the heart. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people that, I mean, this has gone on for decades, and on Twitter you would find people talking about yourself in tweets. You know, and I remember one time I found some tweets about me, and they're like, yeah, I really hate Chris Voss.

And the other person's like, yeah, I hate Chris Voss too. And they're like, yeah, he's always talking about stuff and thinks that people care. And he's always, you know, doing stuff and making noise. And I just find him really annoying. And the other person, yeah, I find him annoying too. But I follow him because I just want to see when he has the car crash. But what was funny was they identified that I talk with an authentic voice.

I talk about stuff that I care about. I remember there's one example where it really struck me as how important being authentic is and i i've always been important but there were some things about my private life i never really shared you know struggles you're having things like that and one day my dog died over a seizure in the middle of the night and it hit me it hit like a ton of bricks because it was you know you think sometimes you're gonna have time and it was over in a moment yeah and so i came home from the emergency room pour myself a large bottle of vodka and poured out what i was feeling onto a facebook post and after writing it i sat there for about 45 minutes going, I don't really want to share this. This is, you know, in this case, too authentic, too real.

You know, who cares what I feel? And it's just too personal and stuff. And it's kind of selfish, really. I mean, I'm like, boo-hoo, you know, this is kind of me being selfish sort of pose me and i didn't understand how much of a difference that post would make and how it would resonate and so finally i had a vodka that i just i was ready to go to bed and i was probably trying to drink myself so i didn't wake up the next morning and i hit post on the on the on the post and it's probably one of the most, uh, most remembered posts I've ever done. People still remember from 2014 and what I didn't realize by being authentic and transparent and sharing, just bleeding out my pain and, and suffering. And what I was feeling about the

loss of my love dog is my loved one, my love dog, they're you know I mean this is like losing a kid for me and I didn't realize how much effect it would have on people and the next morning my phone was ringing I had people that were crying on Facebook saying wow I realized through your post that I never got in closure with my father I never got in closure with my dog I never it made me you know it made a lot of people realize that they had gotten closure and things and it really helped a lot of people and that was the thing you know here I thought there was this moment of selfishness that I was doing that was you know a bit too much to where really we all kind of discover we're human and we're not alone.

And that's really important. It is. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I've noticed over time is that when I'm authentic or I'm with someone who's authentic, it creates like a harmonic resonance in the space for the other person to be authentic too. It's like there's an open invitation for both or everyone in the room to find their own level of authenticity and share from there. And once we do that, we're all kind of sharing this human condition together. And so people really, really aligned with your loss of your dog, which I feel even today as you speak towards it, how impactful it was for you and others. And it makes a big difference. It has us feel like we're alive,

like we're actually on purpose or on vision or on task, like we're together as a group or unified as a human race, if you will. I mean, there's something about not just pain and suffering. Authenticity is more than pain and suffering. You can do celebration you can do loss you can do gains you can do ecstatic beauty you can do all sorts of things as long as you're speaking from this true self this thing that is you know unimpeded by the rust and the web the cobwebs and the you know dirt and the dust that often gets in the way of who we are and then who we pretend to be mm-hmm yeah it it was amazing how much it resonated and made me realize that often gets in the way of who we are and then who we pretend to be. Yeah, it was amazing how much it resonated.

It made me realize that sharing stuff about our pain, you know, a lot of the authors like yourself that we have on the show, they come on and they talk about their lessons, their failures, their cathartic moments in life, how they overcame them. And a lot of the importance of this is realizing, you know, sometimes we feel isolated, we get depressed, we feel like the world's against us, it's, you know, everyone's got our number and they're beating us over the head. And we feel alone, like I'm, you know, I'm the only one suffering from this. And that can lead to some very self-destructive things you know some people commit suicide some people do drugs or alcohol or things that that will destroy them

eventually and or act out in different ways and and and there's kind of this awakening when you realize that hey i'm not alone there's other people that are suffering and maybe they have a pathway. Maybe they have a blueprint. Maybe they have a roadmap out of this. And that's the beautiful thing that, you know, we hear from authors like you and people that share their journeys on the show. Let's talk about your journey. Talk to us a little bit about your upbringing, how you, you know, what led you to want to become a doctor and work in the business that you're in and do the things that you're doing? What was your influences? Yeah.

You know, I was born in Detroit, Michigan, and I was born to a family that was in a fair amount of chaos and disarray. At least that's what they tell me. I had two brothers, 10 and 14 years older than me, with my parents. And I can only imagine that the two of them or the four of them were in a fair amount of, you know, strife and times, you know, they're just two young adolescent boys. And there was a lot of anger in the home. There was a lot of pain. And I think I was brought in to bring joy and love into that family. So I was a bundle of joy. I was kind of fun and funny. And, you know, I was very precocious. And my brothers taught me everything, you know, long before I went to kindergarten. So that by the time I went into kindergarten, I knew a little bit about rock and roll. But I also knew how to read.

I knew how to, you know, do math. I knew how to speak. I knew some simple things that most kindergarten didn't know. And I went into school hoping that I would learn how to communicate because I had watched my family communicate. You know, a couple years earlier, my sister was born after me. And so that was her and I communicating. And I used to be her sort of translator. And the idea was, how do I learn how to communicate? I remember sitting up in my playpen and actually watching my brother speak to my parents and thinking, someday I'm going to be

like that. And where else would I expect to learn that was in school, right? But when I got to school, I realized that isn't what they really wanted from me. What they wanted from me was to be quiet, sit down and do what the teacher asked. And although no elementary school teacher ever forgot having Fred as a student, for sure, because I spoke a bunch as a child, it isn't where I learned how to communicate. And I just kept on wanting to learn, learn, learn. I was so enchanted with learning how to communicate. So as the years went on, I expected that to happen in junior high because it wasn't going to happen in elementary school. And of course it didn't happen there and it didn't happen in high school. And by the time high school was over, I was like, one last chance. Let's go to college.

And, you know, since it was only 40 minutes away down the road and they had really cool helmets, I decided that I'd go to the University of Michigan. And that's where I went. And, you know, I started there and worked there for, you know, played and worked in Ann Arbor for a year and a half and then decided school wasn't for me. And I left and got on a Greyhound bus and went to Berkeley, California so I could actually find myself. That summer, I did find myself, Chris, but it was an unsustainable summer. It was just the summer of a 20-year-old trying to find himself. And I did do, but it was time to try school again. My parents convinced me to come back to school and learn this new industry that has just coming out. You might have heard of it. They said

it had a future. It was called computers. Oh yeah. There's a, it's still coming. It's a thing now. Yeah. And so I went back to school to learn computers and the only real computer in all of Michigan was at the university of Michigan. So there's where I went. It was a two acre facility and we had punch cards and batch jobs and all that. And I did what I could to learn Fortran and COBOL and put in these work there in the computer office, but that wasn't going to be me either. So I dropped out one more time. This time I came home and told my parents, I'm never going back to university ever.

And they were like, okay, Fred, no problem, but you got to get a job. So they got me a job. And the job, I mean, that's what parents are like that. Yeah. I mean, they don't do that anymore. And they just go into the basement for 20 years. Yeah. So they got me an application as a childcare worker in a state mental health facility for adolescent boys. And there I was finally able to learn how to communicate. These kids were like six or seven years younger than me. And I was getting paid to actually communicate and connect with these children.

And they weren't really children. They were almost my peers, right? They were just a bit younger than me. And I loved communicating. I loved being a childcare worker. In fact, 45, that was 1980. And in 45 years, 44 years since then, I'd like to think that I'm really just a glorified childcare worker who's picked up a bunch of degrees and a bunch of accolades and accomplishments

in the meantime. Because what I really wanted to do was effectively get that communication is where healing comes from. There I was with these kids. And as soon as we would connect, as soon as I would treat them as another human being and be very curious about them, healing would take place. Not only for them, for me, for everyone, that resonating thing we were just talking about. It was so wonderful.

And the thing I hated about that job, and I love the shift. I love the people I worked with. I love the kids. The thing I didn't was psychiatry, believe it or not. I was like, man, psychiatry, these psychiatrists are just silly. You know, we would call them when Timmy was up too late or Jimmy and Johnny got in a fight and they'd come down from the call room. They'd interview the kid for three seconds.

They'd interview us for seven seconds and they'd go into the nursing station, write some noise inside of a chart. Then we'd have to go retrieve the kid, hold them down in the quiet room and jam them full of some, you know, anti-psychotic cocktail injection. Oh, wow. Right. So that's Fridays around here. Dude, that is every day still in all the hospitals around this country, many hospitals around this country, this is still going on. You know, let's not fool ourselves. This isn't ancient news. This is today's news. Yeah. And it was happening. And I was like, this is crazy and barbaric. And us childcare workers had a chance of getting hurt too frequently. And I did get hurt a couple of times. And it was like,

that isn't how the future should go in psychiatry. I'm going to go in and actually bring communication into the psychiatric field. My brother had already become a psychiatrist. He was 14 years older than me. And so I knew there was a pathway. So back to school, I went to finish my undergraduate degree and then apply to medical school with sole purpose of eventually becoming psychiatrist, coming through medical school, getting my residency, getting my child and adolescent fellowship. And there I was being spat out into the psychiatric world. What I didn't predict was that Prozac had been invented in the meantime. And Prozac, dude, Prozac changed the world. What I didn't predict was that Prozac had been invented in the meantime. And Prozac, dude, Prozac changed the world. It changed the world. Most people who weren't around at that time

don't understand the impact that Prozac made. It was an impact just as large as some of the other stuff that's happening right now. Prozac was on the cover of Newsweek all by itself. It was on the cover of Time all by itself the next week. The idea was that Prozac was on the cover of Newsweek all by itself. It was on the cover of Time all by itself the next week. The idea was that Prozac was going to be washed into the water systems of Los Angeles and New York because it was thought to be the new panacea. And it changed everything about mental health. The idea was if you were uncomfortable, that meant there was something wrong with you and that this pill could fix that. So biological psychiatry, biological psychiatry and chemical imbalance were words that got created at that time. So when I got spat out of the program, I was now a diagnostician. I became by necessity, by typecast necessity, I became

a psychopharmacology expert expert someone who could make the decisions that psychiatrists make over the next 30 years you already know this if I ask you what's the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist more than likely you'll have one thing that you say which is oh psychiatrists they're the ones who prescribe medicine yeah right that was the last reason I went into the field. That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I became really, really good at it. Over the next 20 years or 15, 20, and now over 30 years, my heart broke every time that I would write a prescription. I had soul sacrifice. I had massive heartaches about the whole thing. And there I was, people counting

on me to make diagnoses and call people wrong and bad and afflicted and defective and sick and ill and mentally ill and all those things. I was like, not really, but I hear you. And in 2006, I made a big change. And this is what led to who I am now. And about that year, I decided I would do something that at the time was considered brash and bold. And I took a bunch of my lower risk patients off their medicine. I know. Dude, I know. It's like wild stuff, right? Wow.

It's funny that we think taking people off medicine is more dangerous than putting them on medicine, which is also a whole hilarious idea, by the way. But that's what I did. And guess what happened? They got better, way better, reliably better. And in most cases, actually lost the diagnosis that brought them to my office in the first place. Now, when I learned that, what I really learned is that these medicines and these diagnosis often, you know, actually cause induce, at least perpetuate or increase the symptoms they're marketed to treat. Really? Wow. Yeah. That's what I learned. And I learned it on a regular basis. And I wanted to get up on those mountaintops and just scream it. If there would have been such thing as podcasts at the time,

I would have done it from a podcast. You need to know, you need to know that this stuff is working backwards, you know, that the horse and the cart have been, you know, have been reversed. And, but that wasn't a good way to bring this news to the public. Being violent about it and screaming it from the mountaintops is not a way to get it, people to hear you. So I had to learn how to really wash that down. And, you. And I even have quit medicine on a number of occasions because I could no longer be aligned with what was being asked of me. But I washed it down and got to the point where I could be conversational about it. Even today, as I speak to it, there's a fair amount of pain and suffering and duplicity involved in who I've

been for my life. But over time, I again was at the space where let's bring communication and connection to the heart of all healing. Let's realize what is, which is when you connect with another person, it's more potent than any medicine that's ever been created by anybody. And I began to really be an advocate for that level of human connection. So since 2008, I ended up, the two years later, I ended up sort of unfolding my practice because my patients got better and left. And I started doing work around the country as a traveling psychiatrist. And then around the world, I did work in Thailand and Nepal and Bhutan. I did work in Israel and Italy and France and England. And I wanted to learn how is psychiatry actually dealt with and how our mental health problems dealt with in all these countries. I learned a whole lot about humanity in my travels, for sure.

And what's the same about people and what's different about different cultures. And then when I came back from my travels or in and out, I came back to the U.S. and came back home, wherever that was. I was a nomad for about 10 years. It was clear to me that the human experience is exquisite, even if it's terrible. Right. Like it's like having a taste of all of what it means to be human is why we're here. That includes the things that are not very uncomfortable or even miserable, unspeakable, intolerable. All of those things are part of the beauty of being human. And once we can connect with each other and really resonate harmonically, like you already mentioned, with another person about their pain, about their suffering, about their experiences in life.

It is precisely at that moment that healing takes place. Now, Welcome to Humanity got born from that thought. Welcome to Humanity as a brand, it became self-evident to me. Seriously, there is very few things that happen to life where the answer might not be Welcome to Humanity. It's. It's like, that's what fits in almost all of our experiences. And then from there, that's where Global Madness came out, where it was going to be a documentary. I was going to be like Anthony Bourdain and go around the world and document how mental health is treated and dealt with in all the different cultures, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Reykjavik, Auckland.uckland i had a whole plan but then this thing there was a

lockdown i know you know about the lockdown right i've heard about that yeah it happened some of the toilet paper and things it was a world it was a world thing it would happen at the world level yeah i'll have to read up on that i think it's yeah it stopped a lot of things in the tracks for sure believe me i know and and i no longer was able to pursue Global Madness as a documentary, but I still would love to do that, to be honest. If you want to help me, let's go do it. We could have a lot of fun. We were going to name the podcast Global Madness, too. That was another title we had.

You said that already. That's kind of cool. Was that different than the first one? I forgot the first joke reference I did on that. But Global Madness is a great name. And I had it in globalmadness.com and all. It was important. And then I got to really understand over time again, it's not the medicines that are the problems. Medicines, after all, they're just a thing.

They're not human. They don't make decisions. They're not the problems. Medicines, after all, they're just a thing. They're not human. They don't make decisions. They're not the issues. The issue is that people think there's something wrong with them. When you're uncomfortable, you think there's something wrong with you. Maybe not you, maybe like most people, but probably not you. You don't think that something's wrong with you. You think a lot of people, when they're uncomfortable or when they're sad or when they're scared or when they're anxious or when they're depressed or when they're scattered or when they feel awkward or when they're feeling aimless or hopeless, they feel like that's something wrong with them because that's the way psychiatry has built us to think. But when we really get that

the real answer here is if we can get people to see that being like, you know, I think it was Christian Murphy said being well adjusted to a sick society is no sign of being mentally healthy. It's really true. This is a very sick society. And if we feel sick, if we feel uneasy in a society, the answer, of course, is welcome to humanity. That's where true voice got built from there. You know, the whole idea of finding, helping people find their true voice and communicate effectively with others as a source of all healing. And that's where creativity got built in as well for my other book. There you go. Yeah. got built in as well for my other book. There you go. So this is what you built into your website

that you have called welcometohumanity.net. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly. So welcometohumanity.net has been the website that I've had for a number of years. It's still going through a major upgrade and we're introducing the Moss Method into that website. The Moss Method just takes about 20 different things. It's probably more than 20, but we have 20 basic things that one can utilize to get ourselves back into the human race. Things like gratitude, things like meditation and mindfulness, things like eating organic food, things like being of service, getting out in nature, reading books, sleep hygiene, drinking a lot of water, Tai Chi, Qigong, and those kinds of things, things that are time tested to keep us, excuse me, to keep us, you know, aware of our own humanity

and to have us see that we are not our anxiety. We are not our feelings. We are not our emotions. We are not our fears. We are not our physical sensations. Those are part of who we are, all of those things, but we don't have to collapse ourselves into being all that. Like we don't have to be, have to, you know, just become those feelings when we're experiencing them. And all of these different areas of the Moss Method help us stay aligned with who we are as humans and then aligned with other humans as a sort of like a tuning fork, you know, being resonating as we talked about making ourselves available to help people heal in our presence. There you go. You know, interacting

with other people really helps because there's the dopamine and the, what's the other thing, dopamine and the oxytocin, serotonin in the brain. You know, we've had brain scientists on, and they talk about how these screens are really mucking up our cells because we don't process well two-dimensional stuff. We process being in front of another human being, seeing their body language and information being given to us, and the way we collect that data and the

and the oxytocin and all that stuff dopamine and things like that that go on through the interaction humans and we need that it's part of it's part of our our living uh being and exactly you know so many people are cut off i was talking to somebody giving counsel somebody yesterday who said they were suffering from depression and i gave him my gratitude skills that I use and I'm like you know if you feel you're depressed you feel you're overwhelmed start practicing get gratitude every morning wake up and you know count your assets count what you exactly you know that's the first step of the moss method by the way I'm glad you're alive really I didn't even know gratitude i just found that the hard way i think i think maybe eckhart tolle maybe turned me on to some of that but i even do a every sunday is as gratitude sunday so i try and focus on that day on things

that are important to me and and valuing them and the rest of the day i devalue them all but or rest of the week i never mind that joke just flopped it was it had it had good intentions but sometimes they cannot be winners when you're a big star like you you can blow up jokes like that that's what we do we sometimes we do on purpose just for fun so yeah finding gratitude is really important now you bill yourself as the un-doctor and it sounds like from the conversation we've had this so far you this is why you are the un-doctor and so you're basically helping people un-doctor their mental illness exactly yeah that's what we're talking about so when we get to the edge of where i just was you can see that it's really not the medicines that are the problem right it's this

idea that people come to me and they want to be confirmed that there's something wrong with them. In fact, Chris, you know, it turns out that psychiatry is very unique in the medical field because if you tell somebody that they're okay, they get really pissed. I know a hypochondriac that's in my family that used to go to doctors and if they were told that they didn't have anything wrong with them, even though they're suffering, they would go get a second opinion. Exactly. That's exactly what's here. It's true with psychiatry too. People come in, they tell me there's something wrong with them and I try to convince them that maybe there's nothing wrong with them and they just think that I'm wrong. And then they go next door and get their diagnosis and get loaded up on medicine. And by the way, when you get loaded up on medicine,

you will have something wrong with you. Now promise. There you go. No, I have. Yeah. You see the medicines nowadays when they list off the warnings and then they, and the risks.

And then half the time you need one medicine to, to counteract the side effects, the other medicine more than half the time. Yeah. Yeah. But what about those people on Facebook and social media and Twitter that I see? It seems like there's some people that need to be chemically regulated. Yeah. Again, I think what you have to get here inside of the chemically

regulatable people, the people out there who are very clearly imbalanced, is that most of them are actually doing things that leave them imbalanced. And some of them, many of them might be taking psychiatric medicines. And as we already talked about, once you think there's something wrong with you, then there is. And once you think there's something wrong with you and you start taking medicine, now you actually do have a chemical imbalance, right? Because that's what the medicines do. They imbalance your chemicals. That's what we all know that they do that. And they have us for a moment feel like there's something that we're better. Now, I want to make it very clear, since you got a big show here,

and you got a lot of listeners, and there's probably people who are still on the show, even right now, this late in the show, let's make it very clear that there are some people who are very happy with their diagnosis, very happy with their treatment, very happy with their medications, wouldn't trade it for the world, think that they're at the top of the game with all the treatment they're getting, and they wouldn't want to trade it, and then they think that I'm wrong. You know what I say to them? Please continue doing exactly what you're doing. If you have found something, you know, you found a way to be empowered, you've found something that works in your life at that level, you have to keep doing it because life doesn't

have a lot of places that leave you that assured that you're doing the right thing. But if you're sure you're doing the right thing, your medicines are working for you, your treatment's working for you, your diagnosis is working for you, you've never had it better and you wouldn't trade it for the world, please keep doing that. This conversation is not for them, right? It's like, okay, listen and be curious, but you don't have to crucify me. Instead, this conversation is for the hundreds of millions of people who are feeling misdiagnosed, underdiagnosed, overdiagnosed, overmedicated, undermedicated, mismedicated, whatever they are. This group knows that what I'm saying is actually an issue. This group is very, very curious about how to go through mental health issues, what have been determined to be mental health issues,

without being thrown off their horse in the meantime. And this is what I'm talking about. The un-doctor is someone who chooses, with the help of the client or the customer, or some people still call them patients, chooses to undiagnose and then unmedicate, because if you don't have a diagnosis, you don't need to be fixed. And then upon unmedicating, giving alternative ways, like we talked about in the Moss Method, and then, like you said, undoctrinating people. So undiagnosing, unmedicating, and then undoctrinating people is the whole theme behind being a de-undoctor.

Ah, there you go. You know, when I was in my 20s, when I started my first company and I started a second company, I went through massive ADHD. And I'd had ADHD and probably a compulsive disorder before that when my teens were growing up. But it really made it worse. And I was going through basically a panic attack every day where my chest would seize up, my stomach would seize up, and basically my heart would just probably be squeezed. Pounding through your chest. Yeah. Yeah. And I would get angry over absolutely nothing.

And then I would get so stressed I would basically want to go take a nap and have to go sleep for 10 minutes and then it just became a repetitive cycle and I knew that there was a problem when I was having road rage and I was thinking about buying a gun for the car

and I'm like I think I need help I think the difference between two choices of buying a gun for the car and i'm like i think i need help i i think the the difference between two choices of buying a gun for the car because i keep making road rage scenarios pissing people off and flipping people off i think the gun isn't the right way to go i think maybe it's time to seek help and so i went and saw the drug psychologist is a psychologist that does the drugs psychiatrist psychiatrist that does the drugs i got into an. Psychiatrist that does the drugs. I'd gone into an Instacare and they'd put me on some heavy elephant tranquilizers and

Zoloft. And then they said, go see this guy. So I went and saw that guy and he explained to me, you know, the difference between in psychiatry between the one who gives you drugs and advice. And so they kept me on the elephant tranquilizers that were I after nine months I couldn't take half of one without falling asleep I was it was amazing how jacked up I was and the Zoloft too but I only took it for six to nine months and what I had to start doing was you know he told me that what I was taking was highly addictive and I was really concerned about that. And so I said, I need to figure out what, what's triggering this. And so I started

listening to my body. Once I got the Zoloft dialed in and I could see what, you know, the real world looked like again, when I, they finally got me on Zoloft, the right dial in. And so then I had to start deconstructing what was going on with my body you know I'd feel my stomach seize first so I'd have to learn to know okay my stomach seizing I need to calm down I need to back away from wherever I'm at because if I don't this this chain reacts and then I started to look at my triggers and what was going on and so I basically weaned myself off the tranquilizers and the Zoloft over nine months. I slowly kept taking it down.

But I knew where reality was and I knew how it used to be. So if I ever started losing pace again, and there's been one other time in my life where I went through some massive depression where I got back on Zoloft because I couldn't figure out what was going on. But my intent was, and realizing that, hey, I need to wean my stuff off this. I've got to figure out what's going on. And I did that both times and it kind of helped me get back into reality. But yeah, staying on a long term was not in my interest yeah yeah they they do serve a purpose you know and and but they do cause frequently do cause more problems than we really pay attention to so yes they can really blunt depression or they can blunt anxiety or they can blunt you know sort of outrageous impulsive behavior or sometimes they can can blunt our mood swings and our scattered nature when it comes to

ADHD. Yes, but they also blunt all of life. And so you end up losing a whole lot of what else is going on in life. You know, you live going through life in kind of a straitjacket or in the world of some of these medicines, you know, you're set free, but you're set too free and you start speaking way too much or you start getting yourself into way too many disinhibited situations. And then, you know, the downside is when the medicine, you could say when they wear off later in the day, or you could say it's just an effect of the medicine, is that the opposite also happens. And upon discontinuation, and you already know this because you've had your own discontinuation on at least a couple of occasions, you get a spike of the symptoms the drug is marketed to treat. And when you get that spike, you're pretty sure that's you coming back because you stopped taking the medicine.

So it couldn't be the medicine anymore. So that's you coming back and the symptoms are louder and larger than they were even when you started the medicine. And the only thing you can think of is this didn't used to happen when I was taking the medicine. I don't like taking the medicine, but the only way to get back to my real self or to get some kind of relief here would be to restart the medicine one more time. And that cycle that you're talking about is, although it felt unique for you, like you said, you feel very alone, like you're the only person going through this. This is something that tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people can associate and deal and resonate with is your experience, because that's really the experience of the

psychiatric medication world. And we listen to our doctors. You know, we do. We think that our doctors actually know and that doctors really can really help us feel better and that we know that when we take these medicines or when we give these medicines to patients, they're going to get better. But most doctors haven't taken those medicines even once in their life and they wouldn't dare because they know better than to take it for themselves or to even, in most cases, feed it to their children or their spouses or friends. Because these medicines are very powerful

and frequently cause much more problems, inducing, increasing, perpetuating, and sometimes actually causing the symptoms that they're marketed to treat. Yeah. I know some of my friends on Zoloft or Prozac, they get reduced sexual interest. For sure.

Almost 100% of the time, even though it's said to be 10%, it's much closer to 80, 100 percent of that and sometimes you feel dulled you just yeah whatever out of it I eventually came out of that the first I felt like you know people will fight it they feel like they've slowed down but technically you're just operating reality but yeah rounding out to the end of the show how do how can can people onboard with you and get involved with what you're doing at the different sites and your book and the Humanity site?

Yeah. So the cool place to go, I said, is drfred360.com. And from there, your listeners can have a free discovery call. We could talk about whatever the issue is. If it's you or if it's someone you care about or someone you're caring for, I can help you. Maybe it's me that will be able to help you directly, but if it isn't me, I've been in the field for 45 years. I have a lot of friends, and I'll be able to direct you in a pathway that actually works for you. So that's one thing that we can go with. And if you really, my book is what I really, my book, Find Your True Voice book, you can find that at findyourtruevoicebook.com.

And I'll, you know, give it away for free with just the cost of shipping and handling at this point. Or you can come in and take a couple of my courses. I have a couple of courses I'm very proud of. course where you can find that at truevoicecourse.com is a course where you can really use this theory, the whole template of podcasting to, you know, it has six modules and 18 lessons and 54 prompts and a 72 page workbook. It's a big deal. This course was really fun to create and you get access to me and the rest of the group who's taking the course while you're in it. You learn a lot about really getting to the core self of ours. It's really fun to get authentic, right? It's really, really fun to get it so you don't have to stammer and stumble and remember and actually trip over

the words that you're saying that you don't even agree with. Henry David Thoreau said, the mass of men go through life in quiet desperation and go to their grave with their songs still in them. That's like the saddest thing that happens to all humans. You get through life and no one ever knew you? What the hell is that? I mean, that just sounds so despondent. And that's what we do. It's really what we do. And we really, we sort of choose to do that day after day because we're afraid to step into that core self. We're afraid, like you were on the day when your dog died, you know, afraid that, hey, who am I to think that anyone cares? Maybe I'll be dismissed.

Maybe I'll be misunderstood. Maybe I'll cause more damage. But finding our true voice is such a beautiful thing. And you start really being able to be authentic with other people because, frankly, pretending to be someone that you are, I mean, pretending to be someone who you're not in order to protect the person you are doesn't work. You're still going to get dismissed. You're still going to have haters. It's just not going to be for you. It's going to be for this person you're pretending going to get dismissed you're still going to have haters even it's just not going to be for you it's going to be for this person you're pretending to be so i really invite people no matter what you're doing is to whether you contact me or not i'm here to talk to you i'm here and we

can talk about many different ways including you know corporations that might be interested in getting help for their staff or having a workshop designed for them. I certainly know how to do that and can be glad to do that. But in no matter what goes on in your life, if you can, if your listeners can hear that taking a bite into the authentic self is where real magic is, and then resonating harmonically with the people in your inner circle is where healing and love emanates from. And there's nothing more potent that's ever been created in a laboratory that brings that kind of magic forward. Then I think we will have come a long way in making a difference in this conversation,

Chris. There you go. This is awesome. This is great data because, I mean, that's how I got off the drugs is just figuring out what was going on with me and listening to my body and i certainly didn't want to be you know the the the tranquilizers they had me on from the moment i walked into the in the instacare and and from there on out i slowly weeded myself off and there was two pills i think a day i would take or twice a day and and they would bring me back to

normal because i was so jacked up um they would bring me back to normal because I was so jacked up they would bring me back to a normal human being where I could function I wasn't like the giant asshole of the world and I remember slowly weaning myself off those to where I would I would cut the pills down and I would get them down to I finally got down to one and a half and one and half of one and then finally down to zero. Because he told me they were really addictive. And I don't know what they were, but let me put it this way. By the time I retrained my body down after nine months, if I took a half one of those pills, it would knock me out and I'd go to sleep for hours.

That's how powerful those pills were. That's how jacked up I was too. I was like, how did I take two of these and not die? Like, I take a half one now and I'm falling asleep. But yeah, getting off of those pills, you know, I mean, you know, you see the stuff we have now with opioids and all that stuff. Give people your final dot coms as we go out and tell people how they can onboard with you.

Yeah, drfred360.com is a way that you can find me and hit the button there for a discovery call. If you want to look at my website, it's a welcometohumanity.net. And there you can see a lot of things that we also have done over the years, including like the testimonials and the podcasts and the courses and different ways to get a hold of me and different programs that we're designing. And then I buzz around Facebook. I think I'm on a Facebook live right now if I'm streaming to my crowd. And I also hang out on LinkedIn. I like LinkedIn more than any of the other sites. But a little bit on Insta and X, but generally we're really talking about LinkedIn primarily, Facebook secondarily, and I'd stay away from most of the other sites. There you go.

Dr. Fred, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on. It's been great, Chris. Thanks for having me on. Really beautiful. There you go. Thanks, Miles, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, FortressChristmasLinkedIn.com, FortressChristmasChristmas, one of the TikTokity, and all those crazy places.

You can pick up his book free at his website, FindYourTrueVoiceBook.com. It's Find Your True Voice. You just pay the shipping there, and you can get a copy of it. Thanks for everyone for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.