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172 - Inside Bipolar with Gabe Howard · The Dr. Joe Show

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How can we make
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The Dr.
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Joe Show explores how you can make positive, personal change
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Your small changes can have big effects.
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Join us now for the Dr. Joe Show.
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With Mark Stiles of Stiles Law, Thomas McCoy.
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And your host, Dr. Joe. Schrag and.
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O welcome.
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To the Dr.
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Juju.
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Very nice.
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Very nice.
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See that you had that guy.
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So your debut show, it was really.
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Yeah. It was fun.
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It's fun. Yeah.
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The introduction is always, I think, the best part of the show.
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You can actually just stop right here.
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Except for our guest, of course.
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I guess I would say that it's very nice.
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It's a nice part of the show, but.
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It's the second best part of the show.
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With that in mind,
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Tom could you introduce our guest for tonight?
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I'd love to, Dr. Joe.
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Our guest tonight is an award winning podcast host,
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author and sought after speaker in 2003, he was diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety
1:21
disorders disorders after being committed to psychiatric hospital.
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He hosts the weekly Inside Mental Health podcast for Healthline Media
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and is the author of Mental Illness is a
1:32
asks.
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You can't say.
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The other part on the radio for some reason and other but
1:37
there's a whole there's a whole part to it there's a whole last part to it.
1:42
And another observation.
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Welcome to the Dr. Joe Show.
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Gabe Howard. Yeah.
1:50
Hey, Howard.
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Thanks, everyone, for having me.
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I love that I have named my book something that the censors are concerned about.
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We have. A pattern with that on this show.
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Don't they?
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We do. We do.
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I mean, you know, sometimes you can say it and sometimes you can.
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It just it just put rectum that they did.
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So. So with with.
2:12
Thank you. That was kind of cheeky. I know.
2:15
All right. I'm going to I'm going to stop.
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Then it stop.
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Gabe, it is just wonderful to have you here.
2:22
How have things been with you?
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This just to people know Gabe and I met when I was a guest on his podcast,
2:28
which will be released sometime over the next year because he has so many shows.
2:33
What's going on, Gabe.
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There?
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I mean, so much is going on, Ray.
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We're we're we're hitting summer. Podcasting is busy.
2:40
Traveling is starting to pick back up.
2:42
But is speaking engagements are
2:45
are they're sort of, you know, creeping out of the woodwork.
2:49
They're not like they were pre-pandemic.
2:52
But but they're they're they're I, you know, the dog is good.
2:57
I love my dog.
2:58
I am married. I should mention that I'm married.
3:01
I do have a wife.
3:02
She's good.
3:05
The house is still standing, right? I.
3:10
Life is good.
3:12
Let me ask. So the.
3:14
The book that you've written, how how did that come about?
3:19
Your book. Is.
3:20
So I really feel like the best things in life have the best stories.
3:25
So I wanted to be a speaker that that's it.
3:29
I wanted to talk.
3:31
I want to be, like, super clear on that.
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I didn't say I want to write a book.
3:35
I didn't say I want to start a podcast.
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I didn't say I want to write articles.
3:39
I didn't want to be an influencer.
3:41
I was like, I want to talk.
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I want people to give me money to talk.
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And that's called being a speaker.
3:48
Well, it turns out that
3:49
if you want to be a speaker, you got to have some sort of platform.
3:53
You need to have written something, done
3:56
something, been someplace.
3:59
I did not know this.
4:01
I was very, very green.
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So I.
4:04
I started writing articles for mental health
4:08
website psychology websites, first as a as a guest blogger.
4:14
Then I started to get my own columns and I,
4:16
I started writing for bigger and bigger sites, you know, bipolar
4:20
magazine, web M.D., Psych Central Health Center.
4:24
I just I started writing everywhere that I could, and eventually
4:28
this turned into the podcast.
4:30
Now, I still didn't have a book.
4:33
Everybody, everybody's like, you need a book.
4:34
And I'm like, I don't want to write a book.
4:36
I better only wanted to write articles.
4:40
And somebody said, Look, you need to write a book because people will buy it.
4:44
And I said, I,
4:48
I apparently I can't say what I said on the radio, but it started with bull
4:53
and it rhymed with fit.
4:57
And I was like, I'm not buying it.
4:59
I'm not buying it.
5:00
So the the people in my life
5:03
who who would take good care of me said, here's what we're going to do.
5:07
We're going to put together a book for you based on the
5:11
at this point, hundreds of things that you've written or curated for you.
5:16
We'll we'll do all of the work.
5:18
Gabe and I said, I like that.
5:20
That is an excellent plan.
5:23
And they put this together and then they started
5:26
kind of putting it out to publishers to see if anybody would pick it up.
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And and and not not big publishers.
5:33
I'd love to tell you that I'm
5:34
with Random House or Penguin or some place you've heard of.
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My publisher is already canceling me listening to this interview,
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but I found this little niche place
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that believed in me and they're like, Look, we will publish it.
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But there's a there's a catch.
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And I said, What's the catch?
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And they're like,
5:52
We want to call it mental illness is I don't know if anybody's got a fever.
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And I was like, No, no, you can't you can't name it that.
6:01
And they're like, No, you wrote an article that was really well-received
6:05
called Mental Illness Is Again, Who's Going Out There?
6:10
And I was like, Yeah, that was a really great article,
6:12
but it just sort of fit into the public consciousness of the Internet.
6:17
And everybody back then was writing such and such as a is a beat, right?
6:22
It and it all started because some mother got fed up with her three year
6:26
old and wrote a viral article called Three Year Olds or Beeps.
6:30
And then everybody started doing it.
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Husbands are beeps, wives are babes, mother
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in laws are beeps, publishers are beeps, podcasts are beeps.
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So I was like, Well, you know, it's a real mental illness.
6:40
And I wrote an article again just to capture the
6:45
the search engine optimization trend.
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But something in it is a bleep.
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That's the only reason I did it.
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And they're like, No, that's the title.
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And I was like, My, my grandmother is not going to like this.
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And they're like, We don't care about your grandma, dude.
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When like, I care about my people and they're like, Look, we will publish it.
7:06
We will do everything. We will put it out there.
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That's the title. Like, can you censor it? And they're like, Nope.
7:12
Well, listen, I didn't think anybody would care about this book.
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I didn't think anybody buy it.
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And remember, a whole bunch of other people
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convinced me to do it, put it together for me.
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So I'm like, Whatever, here's this garbage do with it.
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As you want.
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And now it's out there. People love it.
7:28
It's it's a great book.
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I'm super proud of it.
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Even though I did nothing, apparently.
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And here's the here's the kicker.
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My grandmother loves the title.
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She thinks it is the best title in the history of titles.
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She's she's like it describes you mental illness.
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Is this you just you just put it out there.
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Gabe And that's why people like you because you're not be asking them.
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And she loves it. She's my biggest fan.
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She gives this book to everybody and she's like, My grandson wrote this book.
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She's like, super proud of this book and she still doesn't know what a podcast is.
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And but I've got the book.
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So that's the story of where the book came from.
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It's not flattering to me, but listen, it's the truth.
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It's the truth.
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And gave us offline, we were trying to talk about stigma and
8:22
and what this really means and what it's done and how it's hurt people. But
8:29
that's.
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How did it affect you?
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I mean, can you tell us the story about Gabe
8:35
Howard and where things started?
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Yeah, so that it's such a difficult question
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to answer because I know that we don't have unlimited time, right?
8:45
People are like, well, what was your childhood
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like with undiagnosed bipolar?
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And and what was it like?
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You, you know,
8:50
you had serious mental illness and nobody noticed what was that like?
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And then they're like, okay, you've got 5 minutes, tell me the story.
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And I'm so I'm trying to like extrapolate 25 years
9:00
worth of data and make people understand.
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And even if I'm giving my keynote speech, right, I have
9:07
I have 45 minutes to condense down
9:11
what is effectively 30 years.
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So I just want people to understand that because I'm
9:18
I always try to hit like high points of high interest
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and then I answer follow up questions based on that.
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But it's it's going to be impossible to get it all out
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in any in any amount of time that is reasonable for a podcast.
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But it sort of started for me in 2003
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when I was committed to a psychiatric hospital, and I was committed
9:40
to a psychiatric hospital because I was ready to kill myself.
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And those are the words that I used back then.
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And people tend to to,
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you know, smack me on the hands like, oh, no, you were contemplating suicide.
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And that's true, I was contemplating suicide.
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But in my mind at the time, I didn't I didn't know any of that language.
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I was planning on killing myself.
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That's what was going through my brain.
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I thought that I was crazy and that I wanted to die
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and then I wanted to be over and that nobody would miss me.
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And and I had the plan.
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I was ready to do it.
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And the universe apparently had plans for me
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because even though my friends didn't notice, my family
10:19
didn't notice, the people around me didn't notice, coworkers didn't notice.
10:22
I just the that the lady at the drugstore didn't notice
10:28
this woman that I was just sort of casually dating.
10:31
She noticed she, she thought something's wrong with this guy.
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And she recognized the warning signs of suicide.
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That's number one.
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Number two, she decided to do something about it.
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And number three, she knew what to do.
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And she walked right up to me.
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It was I mean, this is this is almost like a like a just
10:52
you could almost make a video out of this and train people
10:55
on suicide prevention using her techniques.
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She said, Are you planning on killing yourself?
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Look me right in the eye and said, Are you planning on killing yourself?
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Just just let me just just add the mental health advocate in me reflects
11:08
back on that moment and is so proud of her because it's just amazing.
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And I said, Yes, yes, I am.
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There's way more to the story to this because I didn't know that
11:20
that was unusual.
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I was born thinking about suicide.
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I was born bipolar.
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I was born with this brain as
11:31
whether you want to call it disordered, damaged,
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messed up, different, whatever word you want to use.
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I thought that my brain was the same brain that everybody else had.
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And it was not it was not I other people did not have delusions.
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Other people didn't have psychosis.
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Other people weren't contemplating killing themselves as far
11:51
back as they can remember.
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But I was and because I was born that way, I just assumed
11:57
this was part of the human condition.
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I always use the example that I have never seen my mother go to the bathroom,
12:02
never have never in my in time 45 years old.
12:04
I've never once seen my mom urinate, but I'm positive that she does.
12:08
So just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean that I'm
12:11
I'm I'm unaware of it or I don't know it or I don't understand it.
12:15
Right.
12:16
So that's just what I thought it was, just because nobody sat me down
12:19
and told me
12:20
they were planning on killing themselves or that they were having delusions
12:23
or that there were demons under their bed.
12:25
Didn't mean that they weren't there for them.
12:27
I just thought it was one of the many things
12:28
that we don't talk about in a polite society,
12:30
like your mom going to the bathroom.
12:32
It's just it's not not something you bring up during Thanksgiving dinner.
12:36
Right. But it doesn't make it any less real.
12:39
So, yeah, there you go. 2003.
12:42
I woke up in a psychiatric hospital after being committed
12:45
because I was planning on killing myself.
12:47
And that's where I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
12:49
What what were the warning signs that your friend picked up on?
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There were so many.
12:56
The the first one, the first warning signs that she picked up on
13:00
were bipolar disorder.
13:01
She one minute I'm the life of the party,
13:04
but I'm the life of the party in a in a fun way.
13:07
You know, I'm charismatic, I'm entertaining and I'm
13:10
excitable, I'm brave, I'm I'm confident.
13:14
And then that would sort of evolve, for lack of a better word, into all
13:19
of that confidence and all of that energy, but does not make it any sense.
13:24
One of the things that she witnessed that really gave her great pause, she said, is
13:29
one day we were just a local bar and they were playing music, right?
13:33
So there was a band, right?
13:35
So just this picture, just just a regular music bar.
13:38
We've all been to them. We've all seen local music.
13:40
The band is on the stage and I jump up on the the bar, right?
13:45
I'm standing on the bar and and I'm
13:47
singing and cheering and I'm, I'm, I'm so amazing.
13:51
And the people in the room are so enthralled with me
13:55
that eventually the band just stops playing, and everybody in the bar
13:59
turns their attention, and they're just like, get, get, get, get.
14:03
Well, it's amazing.
14:05
And I crowd surf out of the bar and everybody's like jibes, mom,
14:10
I go by bar and they're like, This is amazing.
14:13
This guy is amazing. What you I just just
14:17
just picture this in your head like I am better than the band.
14:20
It was honestly, it was the most amazing night of my life.
14:24
The problem is, is that's not what happened and it's not
14:26
what happened at all.
14:27
The part where I was on the bar happened and the part
14:30
where the band stopped playing happened and the part was security
14:34
carried me out of the bar and threw my butt out.
14:39
Absolutely happened.
14:41
But my bipolar brain, my manic brain
14:44
just just did a little public relations work on that and just turned it into
14:49
everybody was cheering you on and that it was awesome.
14:52
It was not awesome.
14:54
It was it was frightening and concerning for her.
14:58
But in in her mind, because she had more education
15:02
and because she knew me better, she's like, he doesn't realize this.
15:06
He he's not just some jerk who's taking over the bar.
15:09
He honestly believes that something great is happening
15:14
and this was very confusing to her because she she knew me
15:17
when I wasn't manic and she just knew me as the awesome, charismatic
15:23
guy who she like, who she liked to spend time with.
15:26
So that was a real big moment for her.
15:29
And then soon after, because this is how
15:32
bipolar disorder works, I spiraled into depression.
15:35
So now the life of the party, the guy who's got enough confidence
15:38
to climb on a bar and make a band, stop playing and get thrown out of a
15:42
of a of a nightclub, is now suddenly refusing
15:46
to leave his house, refusing to get dressed, refusing to shower.
15:49
He it's
15:51
he he's just not making any sense.
15:53
She said that I never used any language like I want to die or nobody would
15:57
miss me.
15:58
That would have almost been less concerning to her.
16:01
I used language like, you know, chicken
16:04
keyboard, mouse, light pox, and she's like, Those are not words.
16:10
I mean, they're not sentences.
16:11
It's not
16:12
she would ask me questions and I would I would look at her with all the confidence
16:16
of somebody who was answering them, but it was just words salad.
16:19
And she thought to herself, there's something going on in his brain,
16:23
something that sounds a lot like racing thoughts.
16:25
And for those who don't know what racing box is, it's
16:28
when all of these things are just racing through your brain at the speed of light.
16:32
So, for example, it could be, I need to get a new mouse.
16:35
Boy, my keyboard is dirty and I think my niece has chicken pox,
16:40
but it's running through so fast that when somebody asked me a question,
16:43
all I can get out is keyboard mouse pox.
16:47
And in my mind I've said all three of those sentences,
16:50
so I can't figure out why you're looking at me so weird.
16:53
But, you know, because you're not sick
16:56
that I just strung together this this stack of words that make no sense.
17:00
So that started to give her pause.
17:03
And then finally I just stopped going to work, started giving stuff
17:08
away, started, you know, just making general, not plans for the future.
17:13
I'm not sure what exactly was the the final thing and neither is she.
17:19
I've asked her and she's like, I don't know.
17:21
But I
17:23
she said that it's sort of one of those things where if you think somebody
17:26
might want to kill themselves, you should ask.
17:29
You don't need to be sure of the answer.
17:32
You don't need to be certain suspicion is enough.
17:36
And she had that suspicion.
17:37
She asked, and boom, we're now all caught up with the story.
17:41
And it's so important for people to be able to ask
17:44
because so many people think if you ask, you put the idea in somebody's head.
17:48
That is not the case at all. The idea is there.
17:50
The fact that it's acknowledged is powerful.
17:54
And, you know, I'm curious, you said nobody else notice.
17:58
I mean, all the people in your family, the people who knew you
18:02
is this is this is just well, this is just okay.
18:06
This is it.
18:08
This is the meanest part of bipolar
18:11
disorder, the cruelest part of bipolar disorder.
18:15
See, it's that everybody thinks that bipolar disorder is the two poles
18:20
or right.
18:21
The godlike mania and the suicidal depression right there.
18:25
Everybody is really, really focused on these opposite say,
18:29
you know, the weather becomes bipolar when it's sunny
18:32
one day and raining the next, the two extremes.
18:36
But here's the thing.
18:37
Bipolar disorder is actually a spectrum.
18:40
And those two things that we just mentioned are the two poles.
18:44
But there's also this wealth of symptomology or information or behavior
18:49
or whatever word you want to use in between those two poles.
18:53
And what's in between those two poles exists the middle.
18:57
There's the middle.
18:58
Now, the middle has many, many words to describe it.
19:01
There's normal, there's stereotypical, there's baseline, there's average.
19:07
People call the middle, all kinds of different things.
19:11
But here's what the middle is.
19:12
The middle is when you're fine,
19:14
normal, average, stereotypical, it's when you get good grades.
19:18
It's when you get a good job.
19:19
It's it's when Doctor
19:21
Joe says, Hey, can you come help me mow my lawn and do some landscaping?
19:25
And and Gabe says, Yeah, sure. And Dr.
19:27
Joe says, Be there at nine and I show up at nine and do it.
19:30
So now, two weeks later, when I'm symptomatic
19:33
and all of a sudden I don't show up, I don't honor my promise.
19:36
I, I misbehave.
19:38
I let you down. You've got a problem here.
19:41
You can think to yourself, Oh, I wonder if Gabe has serious
19:45
and persistent mental illness. But who thinks that way?
19:47
Nobody thinks that way.
19:49
Just even PhDs and psychiatrist don't think that way.
19:52
What they think is it?
19:54
My buddy was here two weeks ago and showed up on time
19:57
and now that beep isn't here.
20:00
And I've got the U-Haul, I've made plans.
20:02
People are counting on him.
20:04
Why is he letting me down? And you're mad?
20:07
Because that's.
20:08
That's what you would expect to happen.
20:10
People aren't doctors.
20:11
So my parents saw me, quote, be good and then they saw me be bad.
20:16
They didn't think when I was bad, I was symptomatic.
20:19
And when I was good, I was normal.
20:21
They just thought, we've got a problem here with Gabe.
20:25
And you add you've been to that and my parents just thought that they had
20:29
they just thought that they had a child, a teenager, a young adult on their hands
20:34
who needed some guidance and why wouldn't they?
20:39
He's making things happen with that podcast. Dr.
20:41
Joe Yeah, this is really impressive.
20:43
I listened to the episode with Alanis Morissette today.
20:47
Well, I. Was my favorite.
20:48
I know I shouldn't play favorites with guests, but I my favorite.
20:54
She was so good.
20:56
She was so eloquent.
20:57
And and and as you were able to dig into it, so very different
21:01
than I thought when her jagged little pill came out.
21:05
I think it's I wish I always wish I had more time.
21:09
I don't care if I'm if I'm interviewing Alanis Morissette, Dr.
21:13
Joe or the lady I met at McDonald's picking up my my Diet Coke.
21:19
I always wish there was more time.
21:21
Whenever I hang up with anybody, I'm like, I should have asked X, right?
21:27
And then when I go through and edit the show, I a lot of people don't realize
21:31
it. You know, you record for like 45 minutes, you get like 45 minute,
21:34
60 minutes worth of raw file and you condense that down
21:37
into like a nice 25 minute, 30 minute show.
21:40
And even in that 30 minutes, you've got bumpers and advertised.
21:43
So you only really have about 22 minutes with the guest.
21:48
The rest of it is, you know, extra and you know, the
21:55
credits and stuff like that.
21:56
I don't know why I'm explaining this, but the stuff that hits the cutting room
21:59
floor is, is sometimes just so incredibly sad.
22:03
I, I know we've gone off on a tangent, and I just want to say this, that Alanis
22:07
Morissette, I ask every single celebrity that I interview this question.
22:11
I say, Hey,
22:12
people don't want to listen to you because people don't want to hear
22:15
how you have a mental illness or how you're suffering
22:17
or how you have anxiety or whatever
22:19
it is because you're rich, famous, beautiful, and nobody cares what say you?
22:23
I ask some variation of that question to every single celebrity
22:28
that I ever interview,
22:29
and there's been dozens over the years, and the answer always gets cut.
22:33
The answer always gets cut because one, you've got to cut something, and two,
22:36
because the answer is not very good.
22:38
Alanis Morissette, ladies and gentlemen, is the only person
22:41
in the history of the show who answered that question so well.
22:46
We didn't cut it.
22:47
And I you've got to go listen to it if you want to hear it.
22:49
I'm not even going to try to speak for Miss Morissette, but amazing answer.
22:54
And it will change the way that you view
22:56
celebrity and mental health and mental illness.
22:59
And I'm so thankful that that she rose to the occasion
23:01
because I've been desperate for somebody in her position to answer that question.
23:05
Well, for years.
23:07
Well, with that in mind, how could people listen to this game?
23:11
They can head out.
23:12
So just search for inside mental health.
23:13
On your favorite podcast player. That's way number one.
23:16
If you are more low key than that, you can go to Psych Central dot
23:19
com slash show and I will get you to the official website.
23:23
And you can of course listen on the embed player there.
23:27
But the easiest way, of course, split up iTunes or Spotify or Google Play
23:30
or whatever you prefer and just type in inside mental health and you will find me.
23:35
And folks I can endorse.
23:36
It is really, really good.
23:39
Really good.
23:40
It's a cool show.
23:41
Thank, thank, thank you. Mark, I, I really appreciate it.
23:44
And I'd love to take credit for it, but it's mostly the editors and the guests.
23:49
I'm just I'm just along for the ride.
23:51
I like your humility, but you're a very, very, very good interviewer.
23:55
You take them along in a way that's comfortable, it's safe,
23:59
and they open up, and it's it's you're really doing something special.
24:03
I hope you I hope you realize that.
24:05
I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.
24:07
It's the goal.
24:08
That's the goal. And you and you're achieving it.
24:11
So let's let's go back to the psychiatric hospitals. So
24:18
we've got a we've got a question from Jay Thomas here.
24:21
Are there triggers that might pull you in one direction or another?
24:26
Those are always very difficult questions to answer
24:29
because first and foremost, I believe that there's triggers
24:32
that will pull every human in one direction or another.
24:36
I don't care if you have a serious and persistent mental illness or not.
24:40
I think we all have bad days.
24:42
We all, you know, just just just just just lose
24:45
ourselves over something because we've stayed up too late.
24:48
Or I sincerely, I believe everybody has something right.
24:54
So in that way, I am absolutely human. So.
24:57
Yes, yes, of course.
24:59
When it when it comes to being human, having bipolar, having just whatever
25:04
they're there are things
25:05
that absolutely get under my skin in a way that perhaps they wouldn't get under Dr.
25:10
Jo skin or mark skin or, you know, my wife's skin.
25:15
And it will pull me in a direction that I don't want to go.
25:18
So, yes, but I also want to say no, because identifying
25:22
those triggers is the absolute first step to better handling them.
25:27
I can say avoiding them, because I do think that there's a
25:30
I do think it's a good strategy
25:32
to try to avoid things that perhaps you are not well equipped at handling.
25:36
My mother always said that
25:37
she could never be a school teacher because she'd murder all the children.
25:41
And so she avoids helping young children
25:45
with their homework because she just has zero patience.
25:49
So she is avoiding that trigger by not helping her
25:53
children, her grandchildren, her nieces and nephews with their homework.
25:57
If you show up to my mom and say, Can you help me with math?
26:00
She will look you right in your adorable little eyes and tell you no.
26:04
So that's that's a good strategy for my mom
26:07
because she doesn't want to break down crying at the kitchen table over math.
26:12
But sometimes there's things that you have to deal with.
26:14
Right.
26:15
It just I can get stressed out really, really easy.
26:18
And I'm going to use the podcast as an example.
26:22
It it can be a challenge, right?
26:25
There's there's a lot of behind the
26:29
there's a lot of behind the scenes things
26:31
that I don't think people take into account.
26:34
It can it can be scary asking somebody about their suicide
26:40
on a recorded show, especially when they're a celebrity.
26:43
Let's go back to L.A.. I love L.A..
26:46
I don't know her personally. She's not my friend.
26:49
She's never been to my house.
26:51
And I would bet dollars to donuts if you said, Hey, what did you think of Gabe?
26:55
She would say, Ooh, because she gives a hundreds of interviews
27:00
that that's not me being that that's me being realistic.
27:03
Not not even humble. Right?
27:04
You can't possibly remember every name when you're at her level.
27:08
She talks to a lot of people.
27:10
So but but I was the right age when I was when I was in high school,
27:14
when that album came out.
27:15
You know, they talk about a I generation defining album.
27:20
That was my generation, right? Like I was.
27:24
I loved her.
27:26
She was awesome. Like, I bought the magazine.
27:28
She was the pinup.
27:29
So here I am all these years later, talking to her about her struggles
27:32
with anxiety and suicidality and being in the public eye
27:38
when nobody cares that she's suffering and just being forgotten.
27:42
You know, one minute she's got and she's selling 30
27:46
million copies and then 15 years go by. Just
27:51
do they care about you now?
27:52
Alanis Like, that's a really hard question to ask somebody, right?
27:56
It's also not lost on me that here's this woman who's got an album coming out
28:01
right now, and I'm asking her about her album from 25 years ago.
28:05
But that's got to feel some way.
28:06
It's like, Hey, you know, I make new music.
28:09
Why are you asking me about my old music?
28:12
And there's, like, this part in my chest that's like, I'm aware of this,
28:15
and I'm sorry, but nobody cares about the new thing.
28:19
They care about the old thing.
28:20
I don't know why I didn't make the rules of the Internet.
28:23
So all of that converges.
28:25
And here I am sitting alone in a room, waiting for her to say hello.
28:30
And what if she's mean?
28:32
Like Dr. Joe Mark?
28:33
What if she's mean?
28:35
Like, what if she answers?
28:36
The phone gave I hate you and your ugly.
28:38
I know now that you know others say never meet your idols like this.
28:42
This starts to like compressing your chest.
28:44
Plus, the room is really hot because, you know, it's got all the sound,
28:48
the door shut.
28:49
I had to turn off the air conditioner not to have the
28:52
the thing blowing across the mic.
28:53
And I'm like, what if she hates me?
28:56
Right.
28:56
So there's there's these, like, really hard moments.
29:00
That is absolutely a trigger for me.
29:02
But I want to get through it because I want to interview
29:04
celebrities on my podcast.
29:06
So the steps that I take to try
29:08
to deal with all of that, you're thinking, Oh my God, what does he do?
29:12
There are steps to take one bank.
29:14
Lots of time.
29:15
I should not be coming from one interview into another interview.
29:19
There should be a solid few hours in between.
29:21
I should get a good night's sleep.
29:23
I should be well prepared.
29:24
I shouldn't be learning
29:25
about what questions I'm going to ask her the day of her interview.
29:29
That should have been three days ago.
29:30
So I have time to practice it and think about it and and, you know,
29:34
have lots of what I was getting ready to hold up water on a radio show.
29:36
I have lots of water handy for when the dry mouth comes in tape.
29:41
Take big deep breath script.
29:43
The first couple of questions so that if I lose my mind, which I know
29:47
I will, all I have to do is read it when my mind inevitably goes blank.
29:52
There's no problem there because it's written right there in my notes
29:57
and then just move through it until I get my confidence
29:59
and then I'm comfortable and then just go from there.
30:02
Knowing that that's going to happen every time allows me to prepare.
30:05
That's my preparation, ritual, that and many,
30:07
many other things that I won't bore you with.
30:10
That's how I handle that trigger.
30:11
So yeah, yeah.
30:13
Avoid it.
30:13
If you can't avoid it, plan, plan, plan, and then plan some more.
30:21
Which is
30:22
anticipating the future by doing that planning.
30:25
But there you are.
30:25
I want to go back.
30:27
You're in a psych hospital?
30:29
Yeah. Years ago. I didn't plan for that.
30:31
I didn't plan for that. Right.
30:34
So can you
30:36
can you walk us through there?
30:37
Because that sounds like a turning point.
30:41
A pivotal moment.
30:43
In a psychiatric hospital is when I was diagnosed
30:45
with bipolar disorder. And when I was diagnosed
30:48
with bipolar disorder, I had only ever known one person.
30:51
And like literally in the history of the world famous, living dead,
30:56
just one person with bipolar disorder.
30:59
And that was Kurt Cobain, who was the lead singer of the alternative rock band
31:04
Nirvana, another band
31:06
that I you know, young Gabe Howard, absolutely adored and looked up to.
31:10
And I knew that he had bipolar disorder and I knew that he died by suicide.
31:15
So when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I thought I was dead.
31:18
I mean, just again, Kurt Cobain, great,
31:22
rich, famous, once in a lifetime musical talent.
31:25
Did I mention the part where he was famous and he could not beat bipolar disorder?
31:30
With all of that going for him?
31:32
He couldn't beat the illness that I was just diagnosed with.
31:35
Now, I'm not rich, I'm not famous.
31:37
I'm not a once in a lifetime musical talent.
31:39
I'm not anything. I'm some schlub from Ohio.
31:41
So it stood to reason in my brain in the psychiatric hospital
31:46
that if the rich, famous guy couldn't beat bipolar disorder,
31:49
neither could the loser from Ohio.
31:51
And that's honestly what I thought.
31:53
And why wouldn't I think that?
31:55
I only have one example.
31:56
I have one example.
31:57
Hey, you ever known anybody to be bipolar disorder? Nope.
32:00
Can you think of anybody living well with bipolar disorder?
32:02
Nope. Yeah.
32:03
Many examples of mental illness ever turned out well for people.
32:06
I do not.
32:07
Well, there you go. That's all you need to know, buddy.
32:09
Your life is over.
32:10
That that that seemed.
32:12
But I now know that that is not the case.
32:15
But, listen, that was a reasonable conclusion to draw
32:18
with the information that I had where I was sitting at the time.
32:21
And that's what I believe the day that I was diagnosed.
32:24
Again, as you said, Doctor, just sitting in a psych hospital.
32:27
Yeah,
32:29
it's a it's a powerful moment.
32:31
And I, I having made the diagnosis on many people,
32:35
what I can assure you is no one is a diagnosis.
32:39
No one.
32:40
No one is a diagnosis.
32:42
People are much more complicated than just a series of symptoms.
32:46
We're much more complicated.
32:47
And before we get back to the inpatient side,
32:50
how do how do they find a game, not just a podcast?
32:53
You have a website people can get the yeah.
32:57
You can find everything about me over it gave Howard Ecom
33:00
it's like one stop shopping Gaby ho w R.D.
33:04
Tor.com the book is there some other swag that is decent?
33:08
How to book me if you need a speaker of course.
33:10
Inside Mental Health Podcast Links are over there, but Gabe Howard, XCOM,
33:15
I will try to say it Gabe Howard dot com three more times
33:18
to make sure that somebody is like where's the pen?
33:20
Where's the paper?
33:21
It's my name.
33:22
Ladies and gentlemen it's Gabe Howard dot com. Check it out.
33:25
And yeah by the book I'll sign it I love it.
33:27
It is a good book. It is sincerely a good book.
33:30
I would not I would not be pushing it if it was terrible
33:33
because it would just make me look bad.
33:36
So if I go to the website and buy the book
33:38
through the work, through your website, it's an autographed copy. Yep.
33:41
Yeah, I can sign it, personalize it, write whatever you want.
33:44
I throw a bunch of swag in there.
33:46
It's, it's it's not really cool.
33:48
You can also get it on Amazon.com or wherever fine books are sold.
33:51
Unfortunately, I can't sign those because they come straight
33:54
from Amazon's warehouse and they won't let me in anymore.
33:58
So I we we have a few minutes left before we get to the two questions.
34:03
I'm just curious, can we talk a little bit about about the stigma
34:07
that is still associated with bipolar, with all psychiatric conditions?
34:12
And was that part of your experience on your on the inpatient unit?
34:16
Was there a stigma even there?
34:19
So stigma is a beast, right?
34:22
It's like it's like it's like a beast with many arms
34:25
and many legs and many appendages and it's got weapons.
34:28
And here's why I say that.
34:31
We tend to think about stigma as something that somebody did to you.
34:35
And we don't like to talk about the stigma that we put on ourselves.
34:39
And I want to fully admit and and put as much out in the world
34:45
as I can, that as soon as I heard I had bipolar disorder,
34:49
I thought every awful thing that you could think about somebody
34:52
with bipolar disorder, about myself, I didn't have any hope.
34:56
I didn't think I could get better.
34:58
I thought that it was a miracle that I didn't murder my family because,
35:01
you know, violence and mental illness was in my brain so intrinsically linked.
35:05
I, I believed all of that misinformation about myself.
35:11
So I was I was beating myself up that I should do better.
35:15
No better.
35:16
It just it's an ugly, ugly mess.
35:19
And I did it to myself because I was raised in the same culture
35:23
of misinformation about mental
35:26
illness and mental health, as is everybody else in my family.
35:29
So that's problem number one and society.
35:32
I don't know why. I just blame my family, just society at large.
35:35
And then there's number two.
35:36
I have to move forward and get better and I wanted to get better.
35:40
I really did.
35:42
But you've got a couple of things.
35:44
Again, we always want to talk about stigma
35:47
like the big bad person who is mean
35:51
and hates you and is pushing you down while you're trying to climb up.
35:55
And those people exist.
35:56
Those situations absolutely exist, but I don't think they're the worst ones.
36:00
I think the accidental stigma is much worse
36:04
where people believe that they're making the right decision.
36:09
But it's hurtful, like, hey, Gabe, you just got out of the psychiatric hospital,
36:13
so I think maybe we're going to pause you coming to little Johnny's birthday party.
36:18
And on one hand, that that's so, like, I'm trying to get better.
36:22
And you just told me that I can't see my niece, nephew, grandchild,
36:26
whomever, little Johnny is.
36:28
He's clearly somebody that you love and you are now being summer
36:32
rated for little Johnny, and that's got to hurt.
36:34
But if the parents have all this misinformation
36:38
and it's hard to get mad at them
36:40
if they honestly believe that they're doing the best thing for their child.
36:44
But they're also perpetuating the stigma because little Johnny is like, Hey,
36:48
where's Uncle Gabe. Oh, he's bad.
36:50
So why is he bad? Bipolar. Aha.
36:53
And this this just converges in all of these ugly ways.
36:56
And you think, where did all this misinformation come from?
36:58
Well, I'm going to tell you,
37:01
people believe what they see.
37:02
Whether it's good, bad or not, is really irrelevant.
37:06
And what they see here is crisis.
37:11
Crisis with mental illness is public.
37:14
It is very public.
37:16
If I go to the grocery store tomorrow
37:19
and I have a psychiatric symptom, right.
37:22
I think the soda machine has a dragon and I start screaming at it.
37:26
I break down in the corner crying.
37:28
I start throwing cans at an invisible monster that's trying to hurt the clerk.
37:33
People are going to talk.
37:35
They're going to be like, there was this crazy guy at the grocery store.
37:38
There was there was this dude. The police came and arrested him.
37:41
He was just ranting and raving about Elvis.
37:44
Follow them around and then they're going to.
37:47
Yeah. Hey, what a habit of that guy.
37:49
Oh, he had bipolar disorder. Yeah.
37:52
You know those bipolar, right?
37:54
That that's that's the scenario that's going to play out.
37:56
And it plays out constantly all over America.
37:59
But if I go to the grocery store tomorrow and I'm a groceries
38:03
and go home, nobody says, hey, I do with bipolar disorder.
38:09
Came in here yesterday and bought refuse.
38:11
Nobody says that that never goes anywhere.
38:15
Everything angel time I did something well it's man does something
38:19
well every single time I did something bad it was man with bipolar disorder
38:24
does something bad
38:25
so do the uninitiated to the average person to the person
38:28
who's just walking around trying to live their lives that doesn't have a Ph.D.
38:32
that isn't reading about this.
38:33
All they hear about is people with mental illness
38:36
who are in crisis, scaring people and causing problems.
38:40
And then when somebody says, hey, do you know they can get better?
38:43
They think, No, they can't.
38:44
I have never once heard of somebody with bipolar disorder living well.
38:49
I've never once heard of somebody with serious and persistent mental illness
38:53
living well, of course not. Of course not.
38:56
Because as soon as we get better, we shut our mouths, we hide.
39:00
And you know why we hide?
39:03
Lean in everybody.
39:04
We hide because we don't want to be discriminated against and stigmatized it.
39:09
But unfortunately,
39:10
it allows all the misinformation to rise unchallenged to the top.
39:15
And then it's just rinse and repeat after that.
39:17
It's one of the reasons that I'm so vocal about living with bipolar disorder,
39:21
because I just want to balance out the conversation
39:25
so that somebody somewhere thinks, okay, there's at least one guy
39:29
who is doing great things in spite of bipolar disorder.
39:33
Yeah.
39:34
So with that,
39:36
as an introduction to the two questions, because it's it's it's powerful.
39:41
So the I am is basically saying we're all doing the best
39:43
we can, that no one is broken,
39:46
but we're influenced by four domains, our home domain, the social domain,
39:51
the biological domain and the I see domain how do I see myself?
39:55
How do I think other people see me?
39:56
We've been talking a lot about all four of those.
39:59
We've been talking about your home domain.
40:00
The social domain with this friend said you're going to kill yourself.
40:04
The I see domain of how you're seeing yourself,
40:06
how you think other people see you.
40:07
And the biological domain, which really is part of bipolar
40:11
because of four domains interconnect.
40:13
A small change can have a big effect.
40:15
We don't need to change everything.
40:17
So what small change can you recommend to our listeners?
40:21
So perhaps they have a deeper appreciation, understanding
40:24
of bipolar.
40:27
The smallest change that that I believe that everybody can do
40:31
is if you live with bipolar disorder, be honest to somebody.
40:34
I'm not saying that you have to be gigantically out on Facebook
40:38
and make every post about it or scream or wear short shirts or
40:42
but but just be honest to the people around you.
40:45
Make it a point to pull your mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt,
40:48
uncle, grandma, grandpa, best friend, social circle, gaming group.
40:52
It just say, you know, I live with bipolar disorder.
40:54
It's one small part of me.
40:56
But I want you to know that the guy that you play cards with every Thursday
41:01
or the the woman who is on your bowling league
41:05
lives with bipolar disorder.
41:08
That's why I'm sharing it.
41:09
And there are some responsibilities that come from that
41:11
and be prepared to answer questions.
41:13
Don't get angry if people freak out.
41:15
Sometimes it happens.
41:17
Be just just be prepared.
41:20
And if somebody is like, Oh, my God, I'm scared. Why?
41:22
Why are you scared? How can I help you?
41:23
How can I answer questions and be there for those people?
41:27
It's hard, but you're asked how you can influence people
41:31
if people start to see the people
41:33
that they know as people who aren't just the person they play cards with, but
41:37
the person that they bowl with play cards with who also lives with bipolar.
41:41
It starts to fill in those gaps, and I do believe that we all can do it again.
41:45
Pick your moments.
41:46
I'm not saying
41:47
walk into work tomorrow and announce that you have bipolar disorder that's
41:50
coming out in the in the workplace with bipolar disorder is is is harder.
41:54
But if you're on a bowling league, just just tell them just tell them
41:58
if you're in a card group, tell them just I don't know if you make model cars.
42:04
A lot of us are a little clubs just share it.
42:06
It's important because then somebody may go, whoa, I had no idea.
42:10
And that's exactly what we want.
42:13
Exactly.
42:14
We want to say, well, you're kidding.
42:17
That's it.
42:18
So with that in mind, the second truth of the I am,
42:22
everybody's interested in what you think of feel about them.
42:25
You're part of someone's former social domain.
42:27
And through the I see domain how you see other people, you know,
42:30
it feels different when you feel respected or disrespected.
42:33
There's an effect on the
42:34
biological domain, which means you control no one.
42:38
You influence everyone.
42:39
You get to choose the kind of influence you want to be gave power.
42:44
What kind of influence do you want to be?
42:47
I sincerely want to be a positive influence for change.
42:50
I have said since I started this that I'm not looking to make fans.
42:53
I'm looking to make critical thinkers, that that's sort of my North Star for I.
42:59
I don't know if I was a corporation, I think it would
43:02
be, you know, like on the wall when you first walk in.
43:05
I like it when people disagree with me.
43:07
I like it when people say that I miss the mark.
43:09
I like it when people critically think about the things
43:11
that I say, apply it to their own life and make the adjustments.
43:15
So that's that's who I want to be.
43:17
I want to be a positive information giver for change
43:21
so that people feel empowered to move forward, make their own decisions
43:25
so that they, too, can live their best life.
43:27
Hey, thank you so much for being here.
43:30
Folks gave Hollywood.com go to the site, get the book listen to the podcast.
43:36
Thank you so much for being here, folks.
43:38
We'll see you next week on the Dr.
43:39
Joe Show, Love.