The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Teetering on a Tightrope: My Bipolar Journey by Steven W Wilson

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

Teetering on a Tightrope: My Bipolar Journey by Steven W Wilson https://amzn.to/3RSaoM0 As an energetic normal boy of nine, Steven W. Wilson would not have guessed that the most horrifying day of his life was lurking just months ahead. From that terrifying day when he was at the theater, to his suicidal ideations, his attempt to kill his father and his subsequent hospitalization, Teetering on a Tightrope sweeps the reader headlong into the abyss of bipolar disorder. Wilson propels the reader into his sometimes out-of-control mind, inability to perform sexually and overwhelming anger. Despite all that, Wilson gushes about the monumental times when he was in a state of normalcy and could enjoy life's golden moments, all centered around his family and friends. Teetering on a Tightrope shows that those who suffer from bipolar disorder can experience a full and productive life.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We really appreciate you guys being here. 15 years we've been bringing in all the billionaires, all the newsmakers, all the astronauts,

the White House advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, all those people that write the most amazing books and take you on the most amazing journeys of their life and stories and teach you how to be better, smarter, and maybe you can kind of learn from some of the mistakes or some of their stories in ways that you may need to either now or eventually in the future uh that's the power of stories they are the owner's manual of life when it really comes down to it because uh i don't know about anybody else but i didn't get mine in the mail i'm still waiting for it to come and i'm 55 so i couldn't give up hope on that owner's manual to show up i feel like

it was that america Greatest Hero or whatever sitcom where he never got the owner's manual to the Superman suit. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's the author of his newest book that he just put out on December 27, 2022, a story, a journey about his life and what he went through with bipolar and everything else. He put it out. It's called Teetering on a Tightrope. My Bipolar Journey came out December 27th, 2022. Stephen W. Wilson joins us on the show today. We'll be talking to him about his

amazing book and journey. And boy, has he done it it listen to this steve is 74 he's been married for 51 years 51 years people i can't even make 51 minutes on a date so there you go uh he has three daughters and two granddaughters uh he graduated from rollins college winter park in florida in 1970 he retired from the custom clothing business in 2019. In 1978, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Since 2015, he has been facilitating two mental health support in Phoenix and Arizona, where he and his wife, Lenny, now reside. Welcome to the show, Steve. How are you? Good, Chris. Thank you. And it's great to have reside welcome the show steve how are you good chris thank you and it's a great to have you on the show congratulations on the new book give us your dot coms where can people find

you on the interwebs well you can find um the book on amazon and barnes and. It is not in regular bookstores. I self-published it and we'll never do that again. I'm going the regular route from now on. Ah, so now I can find this book on Amazon still, right? Yes.

Okay, there you go. So you've put the book out. It's in Kindle and paperback form. Give us a 30,000 overview of the book, a summary in your words. Okay. Well, it all starts in the year 1958. I was just a normal kid enjoying life. My family was well off. Everything was good. And then one Saturday,

I went to the movie theater to watch a Western. And at intermission, I came out because we usually had two movies in those days. We called it a double feature. So I came out after one was over and I went to the Coke machine. And I didn't notice there was a guy standing there, and quickly he put a dime in for me to get a Coke. That's right, a dime.

And Coke came out, and he said, hey, I need some help here. Will you give me a hand? So he led me down the hall, and we turned into the bathroom, and he sexually assaulted me. Oh, no. And how old were you at the time again? Nine. Nine.

Oh, no. Yeah. So when it was all over, I didn't know what the hell had happened. He had choked me. He had done things to me sexually. He had thrown me up against a wall. He'd done all these things. And I never even knew any of that kind of stuff occurred.

Yeah. You had no concept of sexuality at nine. No. Yeah. So I blamed it on myself. I said, well, I must have looked like I was ripe for the pickings or something. So he picked me, and so I decided. Now, back then, there was not very much in the way of psychological treatment and therapy. Probably not a lot of education either about

what had taken place. Now everyone kind of knows what to watch out for and your parents warn you and the schools hey if you need a safe place watch out for certain people but back then it was, it was still a kind of a, um, I don't want to say new, but unheard phenomenon or no one really prepared anybody for it. So anyway, I didn't get any psychological help. My parents, I never told them, and I mean never, and I went about my life, and all of a sudden, about two or three months later, I went into my first depressive episode. Oh, wow. And it was really deep, and I wanted to think that I was worthless.

I thought I had no friends. Nobody loved me. I couldn't sleep. I felt sick all the time. And that lasted two or three months. And then I got over it because of what I found out later on was that bipolar and depression come in waves. They don't last day in, day out. So most of the people can get relief, which is really good for you if you have that condition. Off and on ride lasted junior high, high school, college.

And then at the end of college, I came back to Ohio and I crashed. I got really bad suicide liaisons. I wanted to kill myself, although I never tried. I thought there was nothing to live for one day I got in a fight with my father next thing I knew I was in a mental hospital in Columbus, Ohio and I was there for three weeks they originally diagnosed me as clinically depressed.

And they had some medications for that, but not many, just a handful. At that point, had you still not talked to anybody about what happened to you as a child? Didn't talk to anybody about it for 30 years. Wow, for 30 years? 30 years. Wow. So anyway, they diagnosed me as clinically depressed. None of the medication worked, and I got, I don't think I could have gotten any worse, but I continued to be really bad for the next six or seven years.

Then my psychiatrist came in one day, and he says, Hey, you know what? I think I made a mistake. You're bipolar. I said, what in the hell is bipolar? I'm not even polar, let alone bipolar. Some people respond to, let's help people who might be experiencing this in the audience and they don't know what's up. So what is the conditions of bipolar that you were suffering from? What were some of the things you would exhibit?

You know, I ought to start out by describing the different kinds of bipolar because there are really three. First one is bipolar one. That is depression, which is debilitating. And then it can go into out and out mania where you think you are the top guy in the whole world. You can do nothing wrong. You don't sleep. You don't eat. You can do nothing wrong. You don't sleep. You don't eat. You're on a treadmill.

You just run, run, run. Six months later, you fall out of the mania. You go back into depression. You look around. You've ruined your home life. Your wife might have divorced you. You spent all your money. You're in debt. It's horrible. I never experienced mania. The one I did experience, which I call, well, it's

not bipolar 2, but it's like number 3 if you really categorize it that way, which is a hypomania. And that's kind of in between feeling normal, if there is a normal, and mania. I'll give you an example of what happened to me when I was in a hypomanic state. I went to buy my wife a car, and she picked out the one she wanted and we were getting ready to leave and I looked over and saw another car and I said, I'll take that one too. So hypomania you have no real judgment. You just do

stupid things but you don't go off the rails. Now bipolar 2 is what I have, and that is the deep, deep debilitating depression, followed by two months later, it could be a year later, it could be a week, followed by normal times and maybe some hypomania. But I got some relief off of the deep depression because it does go in cycles.

It's like a roller coaster. So I suffered that terrible ride until 1978 when they said I was bipolar. They put me on lithium, which was the miracle drug back then for anybody suffering from depression and bipolar. I have some of my coffee right now. Pardon me? I have some of my coffee right now. I'm just kidding. We do the drugs, Randy.

That's all right. They put you on lithium. Did it help? It helped. Got me back about 50%. And it worked almost overnight, which is unheard of. Yeah. Because most psych medications take a month or two or three to start to work.

Yeah. They have to dial in the right dosage. So I was able to get part of my life back. The thing that has continued all these years until the year 2000 was massive ruminations. You don't know what ruminations are. They're a runaway mind. In other words, if you made a mistake and it hurt somebody or you said something that wasn't very nice,

most people could just say, oh, I'm sorry and get over it. When you are in the feeling of tremendous ruminations, it just goes round and round and round in your mind, and you blame yourself, and you can't stop it. And the worst time is at night when you're trying to sleep. Keeps you up all night. And I had that. Now, did your wife know? You said for 30 years you hadn't told anybody.

Somewhere in there, you had to have gotten married, start having kids, and you're trying to maintain a marriage life. Yeah. And she still doesn't know. I didn't tell her I'd been raped. Yeah. But she knew all about my condition. But she didn't know about what probably set that off as a child, correct?

No. Just to clarify. I didn't tell her until 2015. Wow. And how long were you married by that time? Must have been about 45 years. Oh, wow. Somewhere around in there, yeah.

Wow. Were there things in your marriage that you saw that gave signs that you were having trouble still with depression and bipolarism? Oh, sure. I mean, she told me not too long ago that the first six or seven years we were married, and remember, that was when I was diagnosed as clinically depressed, so I didn't have lithium at the time. She told me it was hell for her. Wow. Problem is, I didn't have a clue because I was all screwed up myself. Yeah. It's hard to help other people when you're suffering. Yeah.

There's one thing about that I think the audience can glean from is that bipolar is incurable. And if you have a loved one who's going through it or a good friend or something, you need to be positive and supportive. You don't tell him or her what to do. You don't say, go take a walk. You're just there for them.

And that's the biggest thing you can do for them. When I first had it, I had no support group. Yeah. And so I had no one to talk to. I just sucked it up and went through the day. Kept on going. And so the first iteration must be you told your wife first, or in 2000, you gave me two dates.

One was 2000, and then I think. 2000, I didn't explain it yet. 2000, I went to another psychiatrist told him about the terrible ruminations and he said well there's just a pill that's come out and you ought to try it it was called paxil oh yeah and it turned it completely around i still have ruminations but not not very often. I don't have anxiety anymore. So basically in 2000, I was about 90% back to whatever normal is. Mm-hmm. So since then, well, about 1995 or so,

I really got my first inclination that the world was inundated with mental illness. Not just me. You were watching politics, weren't you? Boy, that can screw you up now. That's a good dipstick indicator of how much mental illness there is in the world. So anyway, since I had been through all this stuff, I had hired a little girl, 16 years old, to work for me in my clothing store. And at Christmas time, because she ran errands and wrapped packages and stuff like that.

And she was wonderful, bubbly, good looking, would do anything, smiled all the time. One Saturday morning, her best friend came in who also worked for me all the time. One Saturday morning, her best friend came in who also worked for me at the time. She was crying and said that the girl had gone to bed the night before, took out a gun,

and killed herself. Right before that, oh, and I never found out why she did it. Nothing. Right before that Oh and I never found out why she did it Nothing Wow Right before that a good friend of mine from College called me up And

We talked all the time So I knew what was going on And his son of about 16 Had been having troubles I don't know if he was in drugs Or he was depressed, but anyway, it doesn't make any difference. He started breaking into houses and eventually he got caught and the police called his parents and said, come down and get

him. And when they got there, they got out of the car and he was in the squad car and it got out said mom dad i love you but i can't take it anymore pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head holy crap so i realized what i had that could have been me and i started talking to high school health and psychology classes on teenage depression. Well, at the end of my talks, I would ask anybody who wanted to, to come up and tell me if they have any problems they can't discuss with anybody else. And not many of them took it. But one day, two girls came up, not together.

The first one was the star athlete. She was the number one student academically. She had everything going for her. She looks at me and says, I can't take it. I have to be the best. My parents are forcing me to go to an Ivy League school. They're just beating me down. I don't know what to do. I want to die. She was a top student

and had everything going for her. Yeah. The next girl came up a few minutes later and said, I have no friends. Everybody hates me. My parents hate me. I want to run away. I want to die. Wow. So that made me realize that I'm not the only one who could have gone either way.

So I continued speaking to high school classes. And then in 2008, my wife and I and our kids and their families all moved to Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona. And I wanted to continue talking to high school classes. And when I checked on it, they wouldn't let me because I was too old. What? Which didn't make any sense. Yeah, it doesn't make sense at all. I mean, wage is wisdom, man.

I can tell you I got a lot of wisdom. I've learned the hard way a lot of can tell you I got a lot of wisdom. I've learned the hard way a lot of times. So I got a lot of wisdom. So anyway, I answered an ad to become a facilitator for a mental health support group. I got the job, did the training, and I now do two support groups. That's awesome. So was there a time that you connected the two in your mind that, hey, what happened to me as a child probably did some damage that has led to this bipolar and mental health issues that I have? Yes, I've talked to many therapists about this as I was going through it. There's no definitive answer to it,

but there is a connection. They believe that the trauma, then if you are prone to having depression or something else, doesn't mean you were going to have it. But if you're one of those unlikely enough that it affected you that way, it all works together, and that's how I became bipolar. There you go.

There you go. And so you're going through this journey. At what point do you talk to your wife about what happened to you as a young man, and does she kind of connect that, hey, maybe this is the reason he's had trouble these years with depression? Well, again, I never told her about the assault, so she didn't really know what had prompted all this. But have you told her now, is my question? 2015. 2015.

So what was her response she was very supportive and she's been supportive all through these what are actually 53 years because we were two dating two years before we got married wow 53 she was very supportive even during the times that as i told you she was thought things were very bad she was very supportive. Even during the times that I told you she thought things were very bad, she was very supportive. That's good. I one time changed psychiatrist because my first guy had died. And this new psychiatrist said, throw away your pills. I got a wonder drug for you.

Stupidly, I was really hurting at the time. This was in 89, I think. I was really hurting with the rumination. So I said, okay. He said, don't worry about it. You'll be perfect. Well, I threw away my pills, took his wonder drug. And for the next eight months, I was back down in the toilet like I'd been in before.

Oh, no. Add to it that I went into detox from my regular medications and had a terrible couple of days, and my wife stood by me the whole time. Wow. Good for her. Yeah. She's been very good. So you find your way out of this. At what point, I mean, I imagine you're still on medication, right?

Yes. For your bipolar. And you decide at this point to tell your story and put it into a book uh tell us about how that journey goes and what made you decide to write the book well i had been a sports writer and the sports information director at ohio westland university Iowa Wesleyan University. I had some writing background, but what really prompted it is about four years ago, I was, even though the ruminations weren't bad at that time, I still had three things I needed to deal with that I never got closure to and that bothered me. So I went to a trauma therapist. And she started me out from day one of my life that I could remember

and took me through every incident that happened through my life. That took several months. When we got done, she said, you know, you ought to write a book about this. You got so much shit in there. Somebody might like it. Yeah, you can help other people that way. You were helping people up until that time. And it might give you an expanded audience to help more people.

So that's why I wrote it. It wasn't difficult to write because I knew everything that I was going to put in it. It was in my mind. Yeah. So I didn't have to do a lot of research and stuff. The really hard part is

getting the book published. Yep. Yep. That's definitely a challenge. Very challenging. But I got it done, and it's out there now, and I hope some people will read it and get a lot of things out of it. There you go. Hopefully they will, too. You know, there's a lot of people that go through this

journey and trauma uh you know we've had a lot of doctors and scientists on the show trauma does distortions to the brain ptsd uh even car accidents or injuries there the brain takes damage the brain gets in injured and it sometimes it's damage, but there's a marker there. There's a scar in the emotional damage that stays with them. And a lot of times people kind of do what you did. They cover it up, and they go, okay, well, whatever. I mean, it happened, and let's move on and make progress. But they don't realize that damage is still there. And it carries through the arc of

their life. And it has influence on them emotionally, sometimes intellectually, sometimes sexually on how they go through life. And so it's important that we tell these stories because as you probably know, when you talk to those young two teenagers that came forward and, you know, talk to you about their issues at the, at the speech, um, the, one of the most important things about people who are, have trauma or have things that they don't want to talk to anybody else about that they're, you know, they might be embarrassed about or they feel that there might be shame, uh, regarding that.

And the most important thing you can learn is that you're not alone, that there's plenty of other people who have had similar traumas. And, you know, that's a really good message for people that you're not alone. Um, I remember watching Oprah Winfrey during a show about the Michael Jackson, the two boys, uh, and Michael Jackson, I think it was called leaving Neverland. And there was a guy who stood up and he had been assaulted by a police officer when he was a boy. And it was really hard for him because the police officer was seen as a person of trust and he had hidden it and live with it

through his NFL career. And when, uh, and it was tearing him up inside. He was having all sorts of issues and problems. And it wasn't until he came forth and told people and started talking about it that he could finally heal. And he made a comment that I thought was really interesting. He says, it's like a poison that's inside you. And until you let it out, until you free it, it just sits in you and boils and toxifies and keeps poisoning you. And talking to other people, discussing it, getting help, being open about it is probably the only way you could really get resolution. Because if until then, you know, you feel alienated, you feel alone, you can't figure out what's going on. You know, a lot of people don't connect the two sometimes until later in life.

And so I think it's important that you wrote a book like this to share with people because the more people can go, hey, I'm not alone. This happens to other people. It's not okay, but there's people who've become okay and helped try and heal themselves and find a way to work through it, and so can I. And it's kind of like a light in the pathway of that tunnel. Yeah, that is exactly right.

In my groups, and I've seen over a thousand people in these groups, the majority of them, when they come to their first meeting, will say, Damn, I thought I was alone. There are more people out there who suffer like me. And when they tell their stories they eventually get, if they come back, when they get comfortable with telling their stories I found out that a very high percentage of what's caused their problems is having been assaulted sexually or verbally or physically when they were a kid. And that age for a kid can be 20 or 30 years old, too.

Because the average onslaught of bipolar disorder is age 25. So these people, and in my groups, I do all mental health issues. I just don't do bipolar. So I can handle about 15 people in a session because I let everybody speak and tell what they're going through. And they all talk, in addition to describing their condition and how it's affecting them, the majority of them will talk about the difficulties in getting therapy and relief in the United States. If you've got enough money, you can get good therapy. Yeah. It's kind of one of the unfortunate things about our economy here in America.

You know, it's a very money-driven sort of thing. But the nice thing is people have, like, your book that's out there. People can read it. It's fairly inexpensive. And hopefully get on that journey on that ride to finding out they're not alone finding out how they can help themselves as we go out any further thoughts you want to share with people or encouragements to get them to pick a pick up the book yeah one thing i want to make sure that i get forth on this talk is that there are many reasons why a lot of people can't get the proper

health care, and we've talked about money, but we can also talk about the insurance companies. Oh, yeah. The insurance companies have made it very difficult for people to get covered with mental illness. They have made it very difficult for therapists to get paid a fair amount for treating these people. So anybody who is, say, making $30,000 or $40,000 or less doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of options to get help. That's true. They fall through the cracks.

And then if you look around, our government doesn't do much. They'll say, oh, we've got disability income and things like that. But it's a pittance. Yeah, it is there are there is 20 percent of the people in the u.s suffer from some sort of mental illness yeah especially if they watch politics it's a good callback joke on the show uh well this has been super insightful uh steve and i'm glad that you share your journey i'm glad that you put it in a book form so you can spread the word and the knowledge um it is important if you're out there listening that

you're not alone and if you and if you feel that you need professional help or you feel that things aren't just working for you please reach out and get professional help um i people often ask me you know they'll joke around on Facebook and they're like, what would you tell yourself if you go back to your 16-year-old self? And they're always kind of a little surprised at my answer. And my answer is go get help, see a psychiatrist. Trauma is trauma and it comes in many different forms and we all go through our challenges in life. In fact, if you're out there alone and you think that, you know, no one else has problems, a lot of people do. It's, I don't

know anybody who has a perfect ride. So, but the best thing to do is to seek professional help, see a professional. You can open up to family and loved ones, but sometimes they're not fully equipped to handle what you went through and maybe what you're going through. And it doesn't hurt. It doesn't, there's no shame in it. And usually if you talk to a professional, they're not going to shame you. They're not going to guilt you. Most of that is kind of what you're thinking in your own head. So if you're out there dealing with any of this, please get help. Pick up Steve's book. Reach out to people like Steve who help people go through this journey. And it is

a journey, but it can be better, and it does get better. So I want to encourage people to do that. Thank you very much, Steve, for coming on the show. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. My website is author stevew if you would find you on the interims, please. My website is authorstevewwilson.com

I'm also on Facebook and Instagram and it is stevewilson4990 but I'm having trouble getting that one to show up. I have two Facebook accounts. One is when I was in the custom

clothing business. There's another account there. I do put a lot of stuff on my website. I'll give you my email if anybody wants to reach out to me. It's S-W-W-I-L-S-O-N dot Wilson at gmail.com. There you go.

There you go. Well, Steve, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you for sharing your journey and hopefully we can save some people and help some people get down the road

and honestly I know it seems hard what people might be going through right now but it's so much better on the other side reach out for help

find a professional thanks Steve for coming on the show we really appreciate it man thanks Chris I appreciate it there you you go. And thanks for being brave enough to share your journey. Happy to. There you go.

And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Order the book, Wherever Fine Books Are Sold, Teetering on a Tie Rope. My Bipolar Journey came out December 27, 2022 by Stephen W. Wilson. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Foss,

youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and I'll say one thing in follow-up, too. If you know somebody who needs this book, please order it for them, share it with them, and help share the story. Even if you don't know what their issue is, if you think they might be suffering trauma or having other issues, there's things that some people won't talk about,

and maybe a book can open that door for them. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Be good to each other, stay safe, and I'll see you guys next time. There we go, Steve.