Latest / Ryder Lee / Psychotherapist Tells the Truth about Mental Health | Robert Filocco

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Psychotherapist Tells the Truth about Mental Health | Robert Filocco · Ryder Lee

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Now as a psychotherapist, did your methods of interacting with
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: patients that have mental illness or need some form of
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: psychiatric care change when you really started diving deep into
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: these kinds of topics for yourself.
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  Speaker 2: And I really never completely brought into the whole mechanistic
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  Speaker 2: view of mental health and diagnoses and things of that nature.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, they're markers, they're useful. I worked with schizophrenics
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  Speaker 2: for quite a while and had some pretty interesting experiences
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  Speaker 2: with them. I was convinced that they could definitely tap
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: into other dimensions that they were experiencing. But unlike you know,
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  Speaker 2: the Shamani traditions or people who are trained, they can't
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  Speaker 2: really control what's happening to them. They just are almost
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  Speaker 2: passive victims of a lot of content that comes up
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  Speaker 2: a lot of their experiences. They also don't have a
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  Speaker 2: frame of reference in this culture to really make sense
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  Speaker 2: of what they're experiencing. So I was always open to
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  Speaker 2: the idea that, you know, schizophrenia wasn't just a you know,
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  Speaker 2: biological imbalance. Worked a lot with sensitive people often diagnosed
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  Speaker 2: with adhd oc D autism. In the past ten years,
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  Speaker 2: that's become more of like my practice specialty, and those
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  Speaker 2: are definitely individuals who have very high emotional intelligence, a
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  Speaker 2: great deal of empathy, very creative, out of the box thinkers.
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  Speaker 2: I just see them as all one spectrum autism ADHD
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  Speaker 2: O c D. There's been a lot of good material
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  Speaker 2: written on that topic recently that started to move that whole,
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  Speaker 2: the whole thought process away from thinking in terms of
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  Speaker 2: pathology and looking at a lot of the gifts that
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  Speaker 2: these individuals have. A lot of them do have spiritual
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  Speaker 2: what we would call spiritual experiences, I think, probably to
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  Speaker 2: a greater degree than maybe the typical population. You see
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  Speaker 2: synesthesia with them, you see a lot of unusual sensory processing.
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  Speaker 2: They seem to be connected with other realities more easily.
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  Speaker 2: So I can't say it's I think that one has
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  Speaker 2: gone hand in hand with the other. I couldn't really
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  Speaker 2: tease them Mountain say one is sort of affected the other.
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  Speaker 2: But I've always been open to to looking at things
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  Speaker 2: a little bit differently I think than perhaps the most psychologists.
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  Speaker 2: I guess you could say, well.
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  Speaker 1: It's interesting because mental illness seems to be at its
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  Speaker 1: height at the moment. It's estimated that more than one
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  Speaker 1: in five adults in the US have a mental illness,
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  Speaker 1: and that's coming from the National Institute of Health that
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  Speaker 1: it seems if you're just going through the natural points
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  Speaker 1: of your life, right, like the lows and the highs
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  Speaker 1: of your life, you go see a psychiatrist, you'll come
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  Speaker 1: out of there with some form of mental diagnosis. Right.
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  Speaker 1: It seems like we've taken the normal, everyday life struggles
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  Speaker 1: that people have gone through for decades now and turn
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  Speaker 1: them into a mental illness. Would you agree with that
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  Speaker 1: to an extent?
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  Speaker 2: I agree with that to a great extent. You know,
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  Speaker 2: I think just a number of diagnoseses, you know, skyrocketed
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  Speaker 2: in the past thirty forty years with each new DSM,
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  Speaker 2: and it's not I mean, I think that having markers,
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  Speaker 2: having general descriptives of what people are experiencing is useful,
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  Speaker 2: but not to not to pathologize it so much. And
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  Speaker 2: I think most depression is due to the fact that
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  Speaker 2: people aren't living the kind of lives that they want
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  Speaker 2: to live. It's not because of a biological imbalance. Even
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  Speaker 2: the psychiatric community is getting away from the whole idea
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  Speaker 2: of of depression being a biological imbalance of serotonin, dopamine,
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  Speaker 2: things of that nature. It's just not that simple. There's
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  Speaker 2: there's a small part of the population. I think the
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  Speaker 2: way that applies to I think it definitely applies to
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  Speaker 2: certain experiences like bipolar or schizophrenia. But even even though
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  Speaker 2: it's you know, it's a human experience, it's understanding human
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  Speaker 2: experience that's important. The psychiatry tends just to provide medication
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  Speaker 2: at this point. Very few of them do any sort
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  Speaker 2: of therapy or really gets another patient. It's another are exceptions,
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  Speaker 2: and there's a few. There's a number of good psychiatrists
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  Speaker 2: I do work with, But as a whole, I think
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  Speaker 2: that's where that's where the whole medical community has gone, right,
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  Speaker 2: Western medicine, pharmacology. I mean, that's a whole nother rich
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  Speaker 2: topic there. But yeah, there's no question that it's it's
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  Speaker 2: it's easy to live things. I just I use with
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  Speaker 2: my clients, I use the term suffering. If you're suffering,
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  Speaker 2: then it's something to look at, you know, rather than
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  Speaker 2: labeling it as some sort of disorder or you have
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  Speaker 2: a broken brain or whatever thing. You know that stuff
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  Speaker 2: like that. A lot of people with ADHD, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I've I've really had a hard time. It's a world
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  Speaker 2: that's not really built for them. It's being like left
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  Speaker 2: handed in a right handed world, and that that that
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  Speaker 2: whole spectrum has been pathologized a lot too much and
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  Speaker 2: over over, over medicated. And there are a number of
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  Speaker 2: there have been a number of voices out there kind
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  Speaker 2: of working against that and viewing the gifts of Adhd.
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  Speaker 2: Lara Webb was one of the first if she wrote
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  Speaker 2: a great book called The Gift of Adhd back nineteen
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  Speaker 2: ninety nine something like that. So I think that that
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  Speaker 2: that approach is starting to pick up some momentum, and
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  Speaker 2: you know, I'm happy to be a part of that.
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  Speaker 2: I'm actually working on a paper about that whole topic
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  Speaker 2: of no our diversity and you know all the gifts
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  Speaker 2: that come with that. Also why it's crucial for our
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  Speaker 2: culture to nurture neurodiversity as we go through a very
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  Speaker 2: difficult transition period in our history. It's no wonder that
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  Speaker 2: we're seeing more people who are in neurodiverse. Now, some
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  Speaker 2: of that might be due to environmental factors, but I
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  Speaker 2: think there's more positive coming out of that than negative.
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  Speaker 1: So, now you just mentioned this the suffering aspect. Is
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  Speaker 1: there any other patterns that you've seen with people that
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  Speaker 1: are suffering from with depression or anxiety. I'm just throwing
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  Speaker 1: out a few very common ones. But are there any
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  Speaker 1: other patterns besides environment that you have noticed off the
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  Speaker 1: top of your head.
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  Speaker 2: Clearly, what's going on in the world right now affects people.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, what's going on, you know, with the new
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  Speaker 2: wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. I think a
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  Speaker 2: lot of people who are empaths, uh and, and that's
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  Speaker 2: a real term. I think there's a lot of people
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  Speaker 2: who are you know, maybe it's overused, but there are
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  Speaker 2: people who you know, who can't watch the news because
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  Speaker 2: it's it's devastating to them. It's not, you know, not
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  Speaker 2: something they can look at abstractly or or from a distance. Obviously,
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  Speaker 2: COVID had a lot to do with an increase in
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  Speaker 2: in a sense of isolation, hopelessness, helplessness. I think people
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  Speaker 2: are are emerging from that. Just just the lack of
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  Speaker 2: belief in any sort of institution right now that that
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  Speaker 2: has validity. The cynicism that you see out there is
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  Speaker 2: is and some of it is deserved, I guess as understandable,
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  Speaker 2: But just the lack of belief in any sense of
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  Speaker 2: meaning to life I think is much more to do
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  Speaker 2: with suffering then some sort of biochemical imbalance that we have.
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  Speaker 2: You have, you know, the financial stressors that particularly younger
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  Speaker 2: generation is dealing with. It's the whole range of ills
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  Speaker 2: right in the human condition right now. I guess they've
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  Speaker 2: always been there, but this is definitely a uniquely challenging
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  Speaker 2: period for the future of humanity. I don't think anyone
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  Speaker 2: can deny that.
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  Speaker 1: Well, when you think theosophist wise, in theology wise, you know,
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  Speaker 1: some have said that this is the realm of suffering,
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  Speaker 1: like you can't be here in suffering not exist. Would
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  Speaker 1: you agree that we are in a challenging place, that
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  Speaker 1: suffering is inevitable.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's inevitable. That's the whole The essence
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  Speaker 2: of Buddhism is to accept that and learn how to
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  Speaker 2: live with it. I think that there's there's many spiritual
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  Speaker 2: traditions to talk about this planet as being one of
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  Speaker 2: the lower lower planets as far as the development of
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  Speaker 2: spirituality and also sort of a testing ground for spiritual development.
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  Speaker 2: You know, some people see that as have kind of
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  Speaker 2: a cynical perspective on that that you know, this is
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  Speaker 2: some prison planet and you know, reptilians are controlling everything,
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  Speaker 2: and this narrative is is just created so that we
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  Speaker 2: we stay in line, or you know, we don't the
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  Speaker 2: book the system, so to speak. I don't necessarily agree
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  Speaker 2: with that. I think if you look at our individual lives,
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  Speaker 2: often from from adversity comes growth. Right, It sounds cliche,
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  Speaker 2: but it's very true. I don't think we grow unless
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  Speaker 2: we have some tensions, unless there's some internal and external
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  Speaker 2: tensions that us to to evolve, and not just in
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  Speaker 2: a biological way. I think that's the that's the least
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  Speaker 2: important aspect of our This is Darwinian evolution. I think
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  Speaker 2: it's much more of a spiritual evolution. That's why I
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  Speaker 2: think it can. There's been one one reason there's been
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  Speaker 2: such an explosion of autism and ADHD and o c
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  Speaker 2: D and all these, you know, these diagnoses that have
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  Speaker 2: to do with sensitivity, is that you know there is
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  Speaker 2: a a an evolution, in a positive spiritual evolution occurring too.
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  Speaker 2: But it's if you have if you're a sensitive person
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  Speaker 2: in this world, you're you know, you're bound to suffer
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  Speaker 2: more than other people.
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  Speaker 1: M