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Episode 10: Mad Enough to Imagine Peace · psychophobia* podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_02: There's a presumption that the anxiety is bad.
0:02
SPEAKER_02: So say the anxiety is a message, right?
0:05
SPEAKER_02: Say the message is it's okay to be you,
0:08
SPEAKER_02: but society's told you it's not okay or you're not good enough.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: You're not good enough, you're not good enough.
0:15
SPEAKER_02: Eventually it gets, I think it gets louder.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: I think it gets louder because it wants to be heard.
0:20
SPEAKER_02: So it's a fine line between not romanticizing suffering And letting suffering breathe.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: You don't want someone to suffer unnecessarily.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: So that's why it's like,
0:33
SPEAKER_02: if this pill works,
0:34
SPEAKER_01: take it, whatever it gets you
0:35
SPEAKER_02: through the night, if it's going to help.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: But if it prevents you from getting into an encounter with yourself,
0:42
SPEAKER_02: that means that your experience is one of expansiveness, depth, beauty, acceptance.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: That's in a whole different area.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Psychophobia Podcast.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: So, Brandon, you're a genius of high, high, high level.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: And I say that and I mean it on various planes,
1:11
SPEAKER_02: but not least of which you're a communication expert.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: I've also heard you play back.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: Which we could just pause it there and that's the only introduction really you would need.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: Though you were playing it in shorts and sneakers, which was rad.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: But no, there's a lot of things I would like to say.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, you're central to everything that we've done on the podcast.
1:38
SPEAKER_02: When things were challenging, you were there for me.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: I'll never forget that.
1:43
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people thought they were, but they weren't.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: We'll get into that in season two.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: But I think
1:50
SPEAKER_02: After 20 years of really campaigning and engaging and practicing in five countries
1:57
SPEAKER_02: and researching and PhDs and blah, blah, blah,
2:02
SPEAKER_02: I know conclusively what people need when they're in a moment of great distress.
2:10
SPEAKER_02: They need a friend.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: The last person they need is a professional.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: Or somebody calling themselves Dr.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: This or Dr. That.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: They need a friend.
2:22
SPEAKER_02: They need witnessed.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: Because how do we really know what's going on for the other person internally?
2:29
SPEAKER_02: We don't.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: So we can just try and witness what they're going through.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: And for me, you bore witness.
2:36
SPEAKER_02: When things were really difficult.
2:37
SPEAKER_02: So that's how I would introduce you.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: You were very much a life saviour when things were difficult and I was doubting myself.
2:46
SPEAKER_02: And no one can ever take that away from us,
2:49
SPEAKER_02: what
2:49
SPEAKER_02: you contributed and what I received,
2:51
SPEAKER_02: because it's difficult also for me to receive.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: It's always been difficult.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: So I was able to receive the gift that you gave and that was very, very important.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: And that's why we're here and that's why we're going to do season two.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Michael.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what can I say to that, to be honest?
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I am your friend, obviously.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: When did we meet?
3:15
SPEAKER_00: We met two years ago.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Why?
3:20
SPEAKER_02: Well, we met, so the idea originally was to create a platform for the book, Psychophobia.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: And what happened was, I just had decided to do a podcast, that would be a great idea.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: But it was primarily just to create a little bit of a presence,
3:40
SPEAKER_02: because I don't like social media.
3:42
SPEAKER_02: I don't really engage, I just find it difficult.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: But what happened was I started to do a few episodes and then started to take sort of shape.
3:52
SPEAKER_02: And then I was introduced to you as a professional,
3:55
SPEAKER_02: somebody who could really do something with it.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: And it started to take a life of its own.
4:01
SPEAKER_02: Exhausting in terms of the learning curve,
4:04
SPEAKER_02: but humbling in the content because there was no format.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: It was bringing people who are really experienced in this space,
4:14
SPEAKER_02: who have written books,
4:15
SPEAKER_02: Who are connected through love and light, as I like to say a little phrase.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: And they were putting something really special into the world.
4:22
SPEAKER_02: And I was really privileged to have them in my kind of network of close friends.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: So it was an opportunity to get friends on and just dialogue and communicate.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, whoa.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: I think there's so many people who know what needs to be said.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: And maybe aren't empowered where they are to say it.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: So having the show as a space to shed light on some of the things that we shed light
4:56
SPEAKER_00: on, which are how to deal with people in extreme mental states.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that extreme mental states aren't reserved for the other.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: They're not reserved for people outside.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: It can happen to anybody.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: And so learning how, for me,
5:14
SPEAKER_00: I think an important part of this is helping people understand how
5:19
SPEAKER_00: to encounter someone in your life.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Or imagine it's you, right?
5:26
SPEAKER_00: You would want to be encountered with some level of calm, And,
5:34
SPEAKER_00: you know,
5:34
SPEAKER_00: what we really talked about in season one is this fact that if someone is going
5:39
SPEAKER_00: through psychosis or they're going through a schizophrenic episode,
5:43
SPEAKER_00: that the response of the people around them is something that makes
5:50
SPEAKER_00: the situation worse.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just the people around them,
5:53
SPEAKER_00: it's not the untrained people around them, it's the trained people as well.
5:58
SPEAKER_02: So one of the original ideas of doing the podcast was to refine and formulate ideas.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: So I think in the webinars I was doing and the public speaking,
6:11
SPEAKER_02: I talked about, it wasn't my concept, epistemic injustice.
6:18
SPEAKER_02: Where people are not believed because they've been given a label.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: So you take psychosis, don't listen to what they're saying, they're psychotic.
6:24
SPEAKER_02: So they lose their voice and they lose their capacity to be believed.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: And then I added on epistemic loneliness.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: The loneliness of not being believed.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: And then I added in, my own contribution was epistemic destabilization.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: So when the people around you start gaslighting,
6:45
SPEAKER_02: not intentionally, what's really going on for you, Brandon?
6:50
SPEAKER_02: Are you getting any sleep?
6:50
SPEAKER_02: You're really tired?
6:51
SPEAKER_02: What are you saying?
6:52
SPEAKER_02: It puts the person in a state of kind of emergency where they're pushing back.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you see that defensiveness?
6:58
SPEAKER_00: You could only send that if you're...
7:00
SPEAKER_00: What would be an example of what someone in one of these states would say?
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, what would create that response?
7:08
SPEAKER_02: They could have a social awakening.
7:11
SPEAKER_02: Where suddenly they see the injustice in society and they start speaking,
7:15
SPEAKER_02: trying to speak truth.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: A religious, spiritual experience where they have a big experience of divinity.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: Very common in these spaces where people are taking- I
7:26
SPEAKER_00: mean it, right?
7:27
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like one and one with psychedelics.
7:30
SPEAKER_02: Can I say that?
7:34
SPEAKER_02: Life change.
7:36
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to be in a relationship with you anymore.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: You must be mad.
7:43
SPEAKER_02: What's really going on for you?
7:44
SPEAKER_02: Or, I want to leave the cult.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Brandon, what's really going on for you?
7:50
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by cult?
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Do you mean just sort of like an organization that...
7:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, for years I studied cult consciousness.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: So I don't think there's...
8:02
SPEAKER_02: I think it moves around.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: So you could have a perfectly solid,
8:06
SPEAKER_02: grounded organization,
8:08
SPEAKER_02: and you could have a pocket Where you have somebody with a messiah complex or
8:14
SPEAKER_02: the followers of the guru.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: So what I found was it wasn't often the guru was the problem.
8:19
SPEAKER_02: It was the people around them that wanted to hold on to the power that was bestowed
8:22
SPEAKER_02: upon them by being around the guru.
8:25
SPEAKER_02: I think of Jim Jones in the tragedy in Ghana.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: When you listen to the recording of The Last Hours,
8:35
SPEAKER_02: People were held at gunpoint,
8:37
SPEAKER_02: you know,
8:38
SPEAKER_02: so people talk about mass suicide,
8:39
SPEAKER_02: but actually, there were people who were doing- Forced.
8:44
SPEAKER_02: Forced.
8:45
SPEAKER_02: So anyway,
8:45
SPEAKER_02: I don't get it,
8:46
SPEAKER_02: because it's quite graphic,
8:48
SPEAKER_00: and I started in- Well, but the content of the podcast can be intense at times.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but yeah, on that one, it's extreme.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: It was the biggest civilian casualty prior to 9-11.
9:00
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people don't realize,
9:03
SPEAKER_02: because it happened in Ghana,
9:06
SPEAKER_02: You know,
9:06
SPEAKER_02: it was over there,
9:07
SPEAKER_02: but I remember even as a kid,
9:09
SPEAKER_02: you know,
9:09
SPEAKER_02: there were photographs of that when I was in primary school in the UK,
9:12
SPEAKER_02: so like maybe seven, eight, nine,
9:14
SPEAKER_02: and you know that you have these books,
9:16
SPEAKER_02: and there's the pictures actually of the body, so it was definitely a symbol.
9:23
SPEAKER_02: But I think we're in a time where people have seen through the Guru a little bit.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: There's been so many breaches of trust in that and I think we're in a time
9:36
SPEAKER_02: of eminence where people really need to connect with their own self-worth and love
9:42
SPEAKER_02: and then put that into the world.
9:44
SPEAKER_02: There's enough teachings.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: There's enough.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: Say that one into the camera.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: There's been enough teachings.
9:54
SPEAKER_02: Listen to the Beatles.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if it's all too complicated theologically, love is all you need.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: Give peace a chance.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like, imagine peace.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: But people aren't necessarily listening.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: I think you talk about kind of a mass movement of love,
10:12
SPEAKER_00: let's say,
10:13
SPEAKER_00: which is
10:16
SPEAKER_00: nothing more than
10:19
SPEAKER_00: asking people to recognize,
10:21
SPEAKER_00: especially in the context of psychophobia,
10:24
SPEAKER_00: that when someone is going through something, you meet them not with your own fear.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's going to come up.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's also part of the show is When you're working with someone,
10:36
SPEAKER_00: whether it's your loved one,
10:37
SPEAKER_00: whether it's a patient, your fear is going to come up, actually.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: There is something in you that is encountered when you're with someone going through
10:50
SPEAKER_00: an extreme state, right?
10:52
SPEAKER_02: Well, it throws people back upon themselves.
10:56
SPEAKER_02: What is real?
10:59
SPEAKER_02: Right.
11:00
SPEAKER_02: So I was using that term epistemic.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to add in a new one, which is epistemic annihilation.
11:09
SPEAKER_02: So it's not that people aren't heard and not listened to.
11:13
SPEAKER_02: Their whole being is annihilated.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: You don't exist.
11:19
SPEAKER_02: You don't have rights.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: So in the mental health system, you know, you talked about All of us can happen.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: One in four people will have some sort of major breakdown or hurdle
11:31
SPEAKER_02: in their life emotionally, right?
11:34
SPEAKER_02: What we weren't really talking about is forced incarceration can happen to anyone.
11:42
SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't matter how wealthy or how privileged or how whatever.
11:48
SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately,
11:48
SPEAKER_02: there's a very high percentage of people in the mental health system who are
11:53
SPEAKER_02: from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
11:59
SPEAKER_02: Homelessness is traumatic.
12:02
SPEAKER_02: It's trauma in and of itself.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: But I think what we didn't touch on on the last,
12:10
SPEAKER_02: we were feeling our way into it,
12:11
SPEAKER_02: is actually forced incarceration can happen to anyone.
12:14
SPEAKER_02: And then statistics and the numbers of incarceration rates in America is pretty staggering.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Forced treatment.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: When you say forced incarceration,
12:25
SPEAKER_00: you mean into prisons or you mean into like a psych ward you're saying?
12:30
SPEAKER_02: Not sure of the difference.
12:32
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: Is the prison surely somewhere where you're not allowed to leave?
12:40
SPEAKER_02: So if you're taken away for an assessment for three days and they decide
12:43
SPEAKER_02: that you need to stay for longer than three days, you've lost your liberty.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: Right.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: So what's the difference?
12:50
SPEAKER_02: I think that's an important question.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: So if you had cancer?
12:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: You wouldn't be taken away and forcibly medicated against your will.
13:00
SPEAKER_02: Even if it was going to kill you.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: Even if it was going to kill you.
13:03
SPEAKER_02: I've never heard of that happening.
13:05
SPEAKER_02: Not yet.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: But if you have beliefs or behaviors that don't quite fit into society,
13:15
SPEAKER_02: like walking down the street with bare feet,
13:17
SPEAKER_02: for example, it's a real example, you could have the police
13:23
SPEAKER_02: Questioning your intent and your motive.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: Or I would say the thought police, because how do they know what you're thinking and believing?
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Also, why does it matter in a country with free speech
13:41
SPEAKER_00: based on freedom?
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Why would that matter?
13:44
SPEAKER_02: Why would it matter?
13:51
SPEAKER_02: What if some of those people are saying things that we don't like or don't want to hear?
13:55
SPEAKER_00: It depends on who we is, right?
13:58
SPEAKER_00: I guess you're saying if we're in power.
14:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know,
14:03
SPEAKER_02: if you want to get historical,
14:04
SPEAKER_02: the psychiatric system has been used in all totalitarian regimes.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: Really?
14:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: I do want to get historical.
14:13
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Brandon must be losing it because he's saying that the government are wrong.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: The party's wrong.
14:22
SPEAKER_02: Brandon, two and two make five.
14:25
SPEAKER_02: What are you saying?
14:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's Orwell, right?
14:28
SPEAKER_02: That is Orwell.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: Well, no, actually, that was Soviet Russia.
14:32
SPEAKER_02: So when they were talking about their agricultural targets,
14:37
SPEAKER_02: there's actually a Soviet poster with two and two plus equals five.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh, boy.
14:42
SPEAKER_02: It's talking about we can do that, we can make more, we can do more, we can produce more.
14:51
SPEAKER_02: But it was symbolized in 1984,
14:55
SPEAKER_02: so the idea was,
15:00
SPEAKER_02: you know, the party was saying, we can say whatever we want is reality, right?
15:05
SPEAKER_02: Two and two make five.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: You say two and two make four, you're an insanity of one, a minority of one.
15:13
SPEAKER_02: What are you thinking, Brandon?
15:15
SPEAKER_00: We need to re-educate you.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: I would say two and two make zero.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: That's a little inside joke.
15:29
SPEAKER_02: But that's very important because say,
15:31
SPEAKER_02: take out of the example, have you heard of the Emperor's New Clothes?
15:36
SPEAKER_02: I've heard of the Emperor's New Groove.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: So take the Emperor's New Groove, right?
15:44
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: So say you're a very famous pop star.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: Happened to Paul McCartney, right?
15:51
SPEAKER_02: Paul McCartney's made some of the greatest music in history.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: He's also made some of the worst.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: The frog chorus, Ebony and Ivory, was that right?
16:03
SPEAKER_02: His Christmas song.
16:07
SPEAKER_02: And he will say himself in the recent documentary,
16:09
SPEAKER_02: he didn't have people around him to say, Paul.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: He's a creative genius, he's just outputting.
16:17
SPEAKER_02: You could say all of it was brilliant and creative,
16:21
SPEAKER_02: but you may want to listen to it over and over again.
16:23
SPEAKER_02: But the point is, this guy is just channeling creativity.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: But you also need an editor to say, you know, or did he?
16:36
SPEAKER_02: Or did he?
16:37
SPEAKER_02: Because in 1972, he put out a song called, Mary Had a Little Lamb.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: You know the nursery rhyme?
16:47
SPEAKER_02: And everyone mocked him and laughed at him.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: But that wasn't his first
16:54
SPEAKER_02: Single with Wings.
16:56
SPEAKER_02: His first single with Wings was Give Ireland Back to the Irish.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: And it was 1972 after Bloody Sunday.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: So did he know exactly what he was doing when he put the second track out,
17:11
SPEAKER_02: which was a lamb to the slaughter or the lamb of God?
17:16
SPEAKER_00: So this has obviously particular significance for you.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about that?
17:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I think,
17:28
SPEAKER_02: so I grew up in the Troubles in Northern Ireland and
17:36
SPEAKER_02: probably one of
17:36
SPEAKER_02: the single most difficult periods was during what was called the hunger strike.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: When a man called Bobby Sands thought he could sacrifice himself and
17:47
SPEAKER_02: that sacrifice would lead to an end to the armed struggle.
17:52
SPEAKER_02: And he thought that when a female prime minister took power,
17:56
SPEAKER_02: here was the chance a woman would be compassionate.
18:00
SPEAKER_02: A woman would see a man starve himself to death.
18:04
SPEAKER_02: There's no warrior on this planet would sit
18:07
SPEAKER_02: and watch another warrior starve themselves to death.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: They just wouldn't do it.
18:14
SPEAKER_02: Not only did she do it, but she let one man after the other die.
18:20
SPEAKER_02: So 10 men starved themselves to death.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: So I'm like 10 years of age and every night it's like he positioned them two weeks
18:27
SPEAKER_02: after each other.
18:29
SPEAKER_02: Even his best friend, Joe McDonough, he had no belief that he was gonna let these men die.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: He was in charge.
18:38
SPEAKER_02: He was prepared to die.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: Under no circumstances did he want his friends to die.
18:45
SPEAKER_02: But as he was dying he had to watch the consequences because he didn't give in.
18:50
SPEAKER_02: So my escape was the Beatles.
18:54
SPEAKER_02: I find that the red album and the blue album in a jumble sale, what do you call that in America?
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Like a yard sale?
19:02
SPEAKER_02: A flea market?
19:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, except it was in a church.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: So they taught me about psychedelics, about surrealism, about love and all that stuff.
19:10
SPEAKER_02: And then, I think it was 81, John Lennon got assassinated.
19:15
SPEAKER_02: Not far from here outside the Dakota building.
19:20
SPEAKER_02: And that was devastating because it was like if a man of peace
19:26
SPEAKER_02: and love who's singing something like Imagine can get shot in the back,
19:32
SPEAKER_02: the world is a frightening,
19:33
SPEAKER_02: it's way more frightening than what's happening in my home city.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: So it was like the death of innocence.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: But to go full circle, I think his legacy is peace.
19:48
SPEAKER_02: Right.
19:48
SPEAKER_02: So Yoko Ono finally got credited for writing Imagine with Jonathan.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: So years later, she came up with this idea of Imagine Peace.
20:01
SPEAKER_02: So we, I'm going to say,
20:03
SPEAKER_02: have a charity called Peace Fire International,
20:06
SPEAKER_02: and it's basically the foundation is Imagine Peace.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: So it's this idea This idea of you have to imagine it.
20:14
SPEAKER_02: You have to be mad enough to imagine peace for it to happen.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: And it's really interesting because during the summer I was
20:20
SPEAKER_02: at Oxford studying George Orwell and I presented a review he did of
20:26
SPEAKER_02: a book called We.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: And it was nearly a precursor to 1984 but a totalitarian state.
20:34
SPEAKER_02: And they could do this operation that removed the imagination.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: So a lobotomy.
20:41
SPEAKER_02: More or less.
20:43
SPEAKER_02: And then I thought, well, why would a totalitarian state want to remove imagination?
20:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, you don't want to imagine things.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: You only want some people to have imagination, right?
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Because out of imagination comes manifestation, right?
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And if you can imagine peace, then you can have it, ideally.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: If you can imagine a building, you can build it, right?
21:07
SPEAKER_00: That's, I guess, maybe a more rudimentary...
21:11
SPEAKER_02: 100%.
21:12
SPEAKER_02: You don't need eyes to see, you need vision.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
21:16
SPEAKER_02: I remember passing through a hospital,
21:20
SPEAKER_02: and I actually sang, they had a karaoke, and I sang Bloody Sunday by U2.
21:26
SPEAKER_02: And there was a woman there who was blind on a stick and she was the only person
21:30
SPEAKER_02: who could see me.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like you're asking,
21:39
SPEAKER_00: like what we're talking about with psychophobia is about actually creating that sort
21:44
SPEAKER_00: of ability to see another person in that way.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe like, it's like seeing to someone's core that they're a human being just like you.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: And maybe they're saying things that throw you out of whack,
22:01
SPEAKER_00: but you gotta turn the, you know, the fingers are pointing back at you.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: You're the one who's feeling out of whack,
22:08
SPEAKER_00: and this person who you're with is having,
22:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
22:11
SPEAKER_00: going through whatever they're going through,
22:12
SPEAKER_00: but they're a human being first, right?
22:16
SPEAKER_00: And their experience is just as valid as yours.
22:20
SPEAKER_02: I buy to your optimism.
22:23
SPEAKER_02: So in the mental health system, I think your product
22:27
SPEAKER_00: In the current mental health system.
22:29
SPEAKER_02: In the current mental health system, I think your product.
22:32
SPEAKER_02: So one of the things,
22:34
SPEAKER_02: and this is a terrible epiphany,
22:36
SPEAKER_02: but I'm going to share it with you, since the last season,
22:40
SPEAKER_02: I couldn't understand the preoccupation with suicidal ideation.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: I did research on it, you know, in risk.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: So in the UK, I was trying to work out why people are so risk adverse.
22:52
SPEAKER_02: We were into this whole concept of mic risking.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: But what I was interested in is how a clinician deals with someone
22:58
SPEAKER_02: who expresses suicidal ideation, but actually it's healthy for them to express it.
23:04
SPEAKER_02: In this territory of where in society can you go to scream?
23:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like would you rather someone just not express it and then...
23:12
SPEAKER_02: So I've been in a group with five people,
23:15
SPEAKER_02: and I think four of them were hospitalized because they screamed,
23:20
SPEAKER_02: because they told the clinician what was going on for them,
23:22
SPEAKER_02: what they were feeling and thinking,
23:24
SPEAKER_02: and the clinician goes, whoa, no thank you, you're going to hospital.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: So that is frightening and that is connected to liability.
23:38
SPEAKER_02: They don't want to be sued for, right?
23:43
SPEAKER_02: Right.
23:44
SPEAKER_02: So I was thinking when someone is incarcerated against their will
23:47
SPEAKER_02: and they're woken up every five minutes or 15 minutes,
23:50
SPEAKER_02: depending on the order, it's because of liability, right?
23:54
SPEAKER_02: You don't want them dying on our watch.
23:57
SPEAKER_02: But then my epiphany was if you're dead, you're not worth anything.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: Right.
24:04
SPEAKER_02: We need to keep you alive.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Right?
24:07
SPEAKER_00: You don't have the right- You can bill if you're alive.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Insurance can bill if you're alive.
24:12
SPEAKER_02: Insurance can bill if you're alive.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: So it was like,
24:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm not even saying that, you know, sometimes the power of a system isn't conscious.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: I don't think ours is.
24:22
SPEAKER_02: So it's not that somebody's going, hmm, keep this person alive.
24:25
SPEAKER_02: But that's how it's manifested, right?
24:28
SPEAKER_02: It's like,
24:31
SPEAKER_02: The thought of ending your life means you can no longer consume.
24:36
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I don't follow that.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Consume?
24:38
SPEAKER_00: Product, services.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I see.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: If you are the product, right?
24:45
SPEAKER_00: If you being the, not the client, but the patient, are the product?
24:50
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And you express suicidal ideation,
24:55
SPEAKER_00: then the system meant to profit off of you goes into alarm bells,
25:00
SPEAKER_00: alarm bells, alarm bells.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, put them in the padded room, you know, make sure that they can't do that, basically.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: In order to what?
25:15
SPEAKER_02: Make money.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: So one of the things we'll talk about in season two is an example of a hospital
25:21
SPEAKER_02: in America that's meant to be for acute psychiatric care, right?
25:28
SPEAKER_02: The average stay is 15 days.
25:32
SPEAKER_02: That's not acute psychiatric care.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: It's half a month.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: It's an automatic 10 days.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
25:39
SPEAKER_02: But if it's an automatic 10 days, what about if somebody only needs one day, two days?
25:46
SPEAKER_02: But also to have an average of 15 days means you've got way over the 10 days.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: At least by half.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: At least by half.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: You're better at math than me.
25:57
SPEAKER_02: But the great thing about America and
26:03
SPEAKER_02: I was going to say totalitarian states, Freudian slip.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: Many states, they document meticulously.
26:11
SPEAKER_02: If you go to Cambodia and look at Pol Pot, they document it meticulously.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: Tattooed numbers, they documented meticulously.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: So these hospitals do the same.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: So the statistics are freely available often.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: So you can sort of go, whoa, do the maths.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: This is all just freely available information you're saying?
26:38
SPEAKER_02: Freely available information.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: And we'll have experts in these different areas on.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: If you create a beast, it needs fed.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: It's not a conspiracy.
26:51
SPEAKER_02: When I lived in Malaysia, I saw Big Pharma enter a relatively new market.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: And what I thought was a conspiracy was just business.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: When you look at the opioid crisis, that was just business.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: They were telling their sales reps to get out there and sell.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: It was based on a bed of lies, right?
27:16
SPEAKER_02: But the reps mostly didn't know.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: They've been told that this is a medication that can reduce pain.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: The doctors who are looking in the face of pain,
27:26
SPEAKER_02: day in, day in, they're like, wow, we've got a pill that can reduce pain.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: What?
27:33
SPEAKER_02: And it's non-addictive.
27:36
SPEAKER_02: Double the dose, give them more.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: But that's not true.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: It's one of the most addictive substances, opioids, fentanyl.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: When I was working in a community clinic,
27:46
SPEAKER_02: I did not meet one single person who was on heroin or opioids who didn't get into it
27:53
SPEAKER_02: through an accident.
27:57
SPEAKER_02: Car accident, back accident, sports injury, veterans.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: The VA were giving out tubs of Percocet.
28:07
SPEAKER_02: To the veterans and then they're becoming addicted to opioids.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: The person giving it doesn't understand.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: They're giving it to reduce pain.
28:21
SPEAKER_02: They're not trained to think critically about the medicine.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: The same way some of these so-called shamans aren't thinking critically
28:33
SPEAKER_02: when they're,
28:34
SPEAKER_02: they're not shamans at all,
28:35
SPEAKER_02: but when they're giving out these medicines time and time again to the same people.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: Hallucinogenic.
28:41
SPEAKER_02: Without the integration.
28:44
SPEAKER_02: We'll talk about that.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: We're going to do some big stuff in that.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: Came back from Thailand,
28:48
SPEAKER_02: met so many people who were lost, who were dipping their necks into sacred medicine.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: But there has to be a question of why are they being given it in that way too?
29:04
SPEAKER_02: No medicine man that I've met of any worth would do that.
29:10
SPEAKER_02: They know what they're doing.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: So if I can see it on a beach,
29:14
SPEAKER_02: if I can walk up,
29:14
SPEAKER_02: or a stranger walks up on a beach,
29:17
SPEAKER_02: and I can get a read on them in 60 seconds,
29:19
SPEAKER_02: and then hear their back stories, a proper medicine man can count 10 times over.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: So,
29:28
SPEAKER_02: A big part of the psychophobia project is the concept of pharmakon,
29:33
SPEAKER_02: which is a Greek word that Derrida interpreted as a poison or a cure.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: So it's not that these medicines are bad in themselves,
29:40
SPEAKER_02: it's how they're used and how they're administered.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: So I've been very categoric in talking about psychiatric medication.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: For some people, it's a lifesaver.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: If you were in a state and someone could give you medications just
29:54
SPEAKER_02: to calm you down enough to get perspective back without exploding your whole life,
30:00
SPEAKER_02: I'd take it, would you not?
30:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: But if I said, look, I'm okay, I'm just going through something, I'll be fine, just trust me.
30:08
SPEAKER_02: And the security come in and say,
30:11
SPEAKER_02: you come with us,
30:12
SPEAKER_02: hold you down and inject you against your will and then keep you on.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: That's a very different proposition.
30:18
SPEAKER_02: And I think we talked about,
30:20
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:20
SPEAKER_02: the young,
30:21
SPEAKER_02: it was the example,
30:21
SPEAKER_02: the comedian,
30:22
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:22
SPEAKER_02: she talked about she had suicidal thoughts, she was given an antidepressant.
30:27
SPEAKER_02: That's it.
30:28
SPEAKER_02: It went away, but then they kept her on it and she lost her capacity to orgasm.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: So the Iotrogenic,
30:39
SPEAKER_02: which is a big word,
30:40
SPEAKER_02: but a really important word,
30:42
SPEAKER_02: the impact of medicine,
30:44
SPEAKER_02: the damage that medicine can do in and of itself is hugely central.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like we're trying to just smother the presenting issue,
30:58
SPEAKER_00: which could be, I'm unhappy, I feel overwhelmed, I'm in X area of my life, right?
31:03
SPEAKER_00: I need something to help me feel less anxious, right?
31:07
SPEAKER_00: Then it's like, okay,
31:08
SPEAKER_00: let's do everything we possibly can to make you feel less anxious,
31:12
SPEAKER_00: and then all the side effects are the side effects,
31:14
SPEAKER_00: and we'll deal with those, which leads into
31:19
SPEAKER_00: But it's very first-order thinking.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: It's, okay, what's the issue?
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Let's put this fire out first.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: And then it's like, oh, well, second-order issues will crop up, but you know what?
31:31
SPEAKER_00: We'll deal with it when it comes up.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: So let's take that as an example.
31:38
SPEAKER_02: If I was going out of my mind with anxiety, something happened, and I just needed to function,
31:47
SPEAKER_02: And you said, here's a Benzo, just one, just to get you through.
31:53
SPEAKER_02: It's a wonder drug, right?
31:56
SPEAKER_02: Wonder drug in that terms.
32:01
SPEAKER_02: If you said,
32:01
SPEAKER_02: I want you to be on it three times a day for three weeks,
32:05
SPEAKER_02: not only does the efficacy of the reduction in anxiety go down,
32:12
SPEAKER_02: arguably your anxiety will go up.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: So the medicine, when administered wrongly, generates...
32:24
SPEAKER_00: What creates that?
32:25
SPEAKER_00: What creates the intensified anxiety after being on it for such a period of time?
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Is it that your body's no longer producing,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: you know, whatever dopamine, serotonin that it would to suppress it?
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Or is it that it's kind of introducing something new?
32:45
SPEAKER_02: It's a great question.
32:47
SPEAKER_02: So I'm going to answer this from the heart and not technically.
32:53
SPEAKER_02: There's a presumption that the anxiety is bad.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: So say the anxiety is a message.
33:03
SPEAKER_02: Say the message is it's okay to be you.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: Politically, sexually, romantically, gender-wise, whatever it is, it's okay to be you.
33:13
SPEAKER_02: Work, anything, yeah.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: But society's told you it's not okay,
33:17
SPEAKER_02: or work,
33:18
SPEAKER_02: or somebody or a series of encounters has created a narrative
33:25
SPEAKER_02: that you're not good enough, right?
33:29
SPEAKER_02: And then you put sticky plaster, you're not good enough, you're not
33:34
SPEAKER_01: good enough.
33:36
SPEAKER_02: You're saying on the voice in your head.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: Right?
33:39
SPEAKER_02: You're just like...
33:40
SPEAKER_02: Eventually, I think it gets louder.
33:43
SPEAKER_02: I think it gets louder.
33:45
SPEAKER_02: Because it wants to be heard.
33:47
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's where...
33:51
SPEAKER_02: So it's a fine line between not romanticizing suffering and letting suffering breathe.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: Right?
34:02
SPEAKER_02: So you don't want someone to suffer unnecessarily.
34:05
SPEAKER_02: So that's why it's like,
34:06
SPEAKER_02: if this pill works,
34:08
SPEAKER_02: Take it, whatever gets you through the
34:09
SPEAKER_02: night, if it's gonna help.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: But if it prevents you from getting into an encounter with yourself,
34:16
SPEAKER_02: that means that your experience is one of expansiveness,
34:19
SPEAKER_02: depth, beauty, acceptance, that's in a whole different area.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: So I think that You said I could say what I want.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: Say what's in your heart.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: I remember a Buddhist teacher said to me once,
34:35
SPEAKER_02: you know, all mental suffering comes down to spiritual crisis.
34:40
SPEAKER_02: And I think that since the last season, I think I've got the confidence to say that out loud.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: I think that if you're not in tune With your own mind.
34:52
SPEAKER_02: Let's take it up a level.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: If you're not in tune with your own spirit or your own soul,
34:58
SPEAKER_02: if you're not in tune with that which is beyond the egoic view of oneself,
35:05
SPEAKER_02: then you're disassociated.
35:07
SPEAKER_02: Disassociated with yourself.
35:10
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps you're dead, dead inside.
35:14
SPEAKER_02: Because being in tune with that which is beyond ego is luminous, luminosity, spaciousness.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: You feel it.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: You just feel it in life, right?
35:24
SPEAKER_00: When you allow yourself to...
35:25
SPEAKER_02: Even just saying it?
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Right?
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even just hearing it.
35:30
SPEAKER_02: Maybe just even hearing it?
35:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:32
SPEAKER_02: So it's...
35:34
SPEAKER_02: You know, since we last spoke, I was dipping more and more into the Sufi tradition.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: Some beautiful teachers in that tradition,
35:44
SPEAKER_02: but it's this idea of,
35:45
SPEAKER_02: you know, in some ways we have to arrive into the soul, arrive into the spirit.
35:51
SPEAKER_02: And I think that there are times in people's lives when they encounter that opening.
35:59
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes they look away.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: Or sometimes they're in prison and the doors swing open.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: They don't get up and walk.
36:07
SPEAKER_02: To use a terrible example, the story goes when the Allied forces, sorry, when the Nazis fled
36:17
SPEAKER_02: The prisoners didn't flee.
36:20
SPEAKER_02: They were so brutalized and conditioned and full of fear that they didn't flee.
36:28
SPEAKER_02: The Allied forces arrived and they're all still there.
36:33
SPEAKER_02: So that can be the power of the conditioning where people don't even realize Of
36:38
SPEAKER_02: an oppressive system.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: They don't even realize they're free.
36:41
SPEAKER_02: Because our natural response is,
36:42
SPEAKER_02: the Nazis are going, get the hell
36:44
SPEAKER_01: out of there.
36:44
SPEAKER_02: But it's like, we're in a state of... Oppression.
36:53
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's beyond that, isn't it?
36:54
SPEAKER_02: It's like, dehumanized to the point of... Dehumanized to yourself.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: We can't even imagine our freedom.
37:04
SPEAKER_02: So in the same way,
37:05
SPEAKER_02: spiritually,
37:06
SPEAKER_02: we're in times when it's very hard to imagine what freedom really would be.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: To be in a non-psychophobic encounter with oneself.
37:17
SPEAKER_02: I'm anxious.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: It's alright.
37:20
SPEAKER_02: It'll pass.
37:21
SPEAKER_02: No emotion is permanent.
37:24
SPEAKER_02: Wow, it'll pass.
37:27
SPEAKER_02: This anxiety's trying to tell me something.
37:30
SPEAKER_02: Now that's the difference between crippling anxiety where I can't leave the house, right?
37:34
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps you need a friend, right?
37:38
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe a professional.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: Maybe a friend first.
37:41
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe that person can't leave the house because they don't have any friends,
37:43
SPEAKER_02: they don't have the community.
37:45
SPEAKER_02: It's another huge modern problem.
37:47
SPEAKER_02: Loneliness.
37:49
SPEAKER_02: Loneliness.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: Loneliness.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: Disconnectedness.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: What would you say to those people who are listening right now, gearing up for more of this?
38:00
SPEAKER_00: What's the one thing that they should hold and take away from it?
38:05
SPEAKER_02: Love.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: Very good.
38:13
SPEAKER_02: Love.
38:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's not that complicated.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: In the Dzogchen tradition,
38:19
SPEAKER_02: they talk about the fetter being too close, too immediate, too accessible.
38:25
SPEAKER_02: Love.
38:27
SPEAKER_02: If that's the filter, I'm going to be generous.
38:30
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to be helpful.
38:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to be peaceful.
38:32
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to try and create harmony.
38:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to reach out an open hand, not a fist, right?
38:39
SPEAKER_02: But we overcomplicate it.
38:42
SPEAKER_02: All the great teachers, we overcomplicate it.
38:45
SPEAKER_02: The Buddha's teaching you could summarize in four lines,
38:50
SPEAKER_02: spent two and a half thousand years over complicating it.
38:54
SPEAKER_02: Christ's message was so simple,
38:57
SPEAKER_02: love thy neighbor,
38:58
SPEAKER_02: crucified him for it,
39:01
SPEAKER_02: and so on and so on,
39:01
SPEAKER_02: Martin Luther King,
39:05
SPEAKER_02: people who continually spoke truth to power, love,
39:12
SPEAKER_02: Very threatening.
39:13
SPEAKER_02: So go out there and threaten the world with love, not a close faced and open hand.
39:18
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
39:20
SPEAKER_02: Beautiful.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
39:23
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.