Latest / Authentic Living / Mind Aid with Matthew Dickson (Part I)

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Mind Aid with Matthew Dickson (Part I) · Authentic Living

• 0:01
  Welcome to authentic living with Roxanne, a place where we have as conversations about
• 0:08
  things that really matter in our lives.
• 0:11
  And now here's your host, Roxanne Derhodge.
• 0:36
  Hi, everyone.
• 0:36
  It's, Roxanne Durgesh of authentic living with Roxanne.
• 0:39
  Thanks for tuning in again this week.
• 0:41
  Today, I have a special guest, Matthew Dixon.
• 0:44
  We haven't had such a great conversation, with so much impact that I decided to turn the
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  podcast into a 2 part series.
• 0:54
  Be sure to tune in next week for part 2.
• 0:57
  Matthew brings, a wealth of information around the area of mental illness, having a bit of
• 1:05
  lived experience is long, along with, having worked or continue to work with developing
• 1:12
  countries around the arena of mental illness.
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  So, Matthew, thanks for so much for coming on today.
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  Thanks for having me, Roxanne.
• 1:21
  Yeah.
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  He's got an amazing, name for his business.
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  It's called Mind Aid.
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  So that immediately takes me to a a visual, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm I'm thinking of the
• 1:31
  band aid, Matthew, and then I'm thinking about what the mind aid would do because you know,
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  kind of where where do you need to place it?
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  I'm thinking.
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  And, of course, with mental illness, we'll talk a little bit more about how elusive that could
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  be based on what we know.
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  So, Matthew, Matthew and I met, he reached out on LinkedIn and, the synergies around the
• 1:53
  things that I talk about about mental wellness and, mental well-being was something that
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  captured, my attention to his background.
• 2:03
  So, Matthew, tell us a little bit about, obviously, you're doing this this, work in the
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  world, which is much needed, but your beginnings probably weren't the beginnings.
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  I would assume that you wanted to take to get into this field.
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  So why don't you kind of share with us kind of what happened and, you know, a bit about what
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  gets you here today working in in, in the arena of, mental health and mental illness.
• 2:29
  Sure.
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  So I'm Canadian, and I'm 49 now.
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  At 22, I went to get help because I wasn't feeling good.
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  And I was going through university at the time, almost done my university.
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  I was taking engineering.
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  And I muddled through university.
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  I I would tell friends some things like I feel this way or feel that way, and they were the
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  onset of my symptoms of schizophrenia.
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  So what do
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  you think is where you start to have?
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  Like, was it like kinda like you were feeling down or, what kind of symptoms were you
• 3:08
  experiencing?
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  Because I'm thinking at that age, you know, you're going through a lot of things as a
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  twenty two year old young man at that point.
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  Yeah.
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  Before then, like, my, to early mid teens, I was I don't have many complaints about my life.
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  I mean, I probably would complain about some stuff back then, but it was nothing really.
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  I had a pretty, pretty good life and relatively healthy and whatnot.
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  And so symptoms that started to creep in were just loss of energy.
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  Didn't feel like, would get tired walking upstairs And then some other things over about
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  a 4 or 5 year period, some symptoms crept in.
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  Like, I felt like I was watching TV it, I I felt like I was seeing things in two
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  dimensions, not 3, and that was sort of the start of the disconnectiveness from, the world
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  that you can get.
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  And I would start to not be able to remember what I did the day before.
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  And but these were still these were mild symptoms much as they were distressing and and
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  somewhat bizarre for me.
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  I well, actually, another one was I felt like I had a brain transplant.
• 4:16
  It felt like I had actually had gone through surgery and someone had put somebody else's
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  brain in my in my skull and taken my brain out and I was thinking and doing and saying things
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  that just just warned me.
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  And but I could still do things.
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  I was getting mostly a's in engineering.
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  I was living on my own.
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  Actually, bicycle to bicycle to cross Canada when I was twenty in the middle of university.
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  I went on the rowing team.
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  I did a cryophon, but the symptoms crept in a little bit.
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  But when the disease hit at the end of university, when I 22 1994.
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  It it hit her.
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  I went from muddling through life being able to do most things.
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  To just throw it up in a ball shaking, not knowing whether you're going to live or die.
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  From one moment to the next.
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  It's, you it hit very hard.
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  And Anyway, I I got on a medication, that worked.
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  Although I described it as working glacially slowly.
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  I I noticed an improvement in my health once a week every single week for my entire recovery.
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  And, yeah, that was, that was sort of how it all started out.
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  So you said you so when you said, I'm curious about this.
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  You said you felt like my old brain was taking out and somebody else's brain was put in.
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  So was it give me an example of something, Matthew, because I'm curious to, like, what
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  What was kind of starting to happen?
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  Was it, you know, something as simple as your taste change or not about things change or how
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  you felt about things changed?
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  Yeah.
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  Just most of my thoughts I would do and say things that just weren't me I mean, they
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  weren't really that out of the ordinary, but it was, you know, with the disease hallucinations
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  common auditory and visual hallucinations affect 75% of people of schizophrenia.
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  I was in the 25% that didn't.
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  I never saw or heard anything that there, which I'm thankful for.
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  I know often with mental illness addiction can be a problem as well.
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  I never had any problems with addiction, thankfully.
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  And but I your your thinking gets very muddled.
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  It's, your thinking is not clear.
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  It's kind of like it's kind of like if you take a book and you take all the words and mix them
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  all up where it's from any part of the book.
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  You mix them totally totally mixed up.
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  You try to read that book.
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  That's sort of how my thoughts are.
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  You can you can you can get peep like, there's the word, I don't know, tractor or there's the
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  word farm or there's the word highway.
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  You can get a sort of gist of what you're talking about.
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  But it's it just it's I wouldn't wanna read a book like that.
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  It just wouldn't make any sense.
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  So visually, the words are are being altered by by
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  No.
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  It's just, that's sort of how that that's, that's just how my thoughts were as if I Okay.
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  Usually if yeah.
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  Not not not actually reading a book or anything.
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  It's just very unclear thinking, but at the same time, you still can think clearly on
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  another level because I I went I went to get help myself.
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  I, I didn't have to get intervention by other people.
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  I wanted to get help.
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  I said, okay.
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  I'll go live in went into the psych ward, lived in a group home for 3 years.
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  I went and finished my degree.
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  I had to fail out of 5 or 6 courses and I went back and got those courses.
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  So I had so I had to make the decision.
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  You know, this term, I'll go and take this course or this course.
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  I I mean, I was making decisions like this through my day.
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  Okay.
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  Like, I'll go for a walk at some time today or I'll do this or I'll do that.
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  There's still a part of your brain that thinks clearly, but it's it's try it's like trying to
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  think while there's just millions of speakers playing 17 different rock songs in your head.
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  Just like an overstimulation where, you know, and, you know, I know that, you know, even as
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  I'm getting older, Matthew, I find that too much to be honest when I was young, I would
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  study with music and all and now as I'm getting older, you know, and I'm work you know, I'm in
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  my office in my home alone, And if I go somewhere else to work sometimes, stimuli that
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  before would have never gotten to me.
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  I'm like, oh my goodness.
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  I can't strain out and keep that quiet mind.
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  And so that was something that you start to struggle with, say, around that that age twenty
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  two.
• 8:50
  Oh, yeah.
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  I mean, I in the psych ward, I would have to be in a room with nothing in it and just just and
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  sit there for hours is trying to get some, just stimulate overload, for sure, sounds, noises,
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  sites.
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  It felt like it felt like I was living in a war zone.
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  In fact, somebody saw me walking down the street where I live, and they said I saw
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  Matthew the other day, and he looked like, he was walking through a world of flying glass.
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  I'm like, yeah.
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  That's what it felt like.
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  And I've heard other people say, and like I said earlier, it's like, you feel like you're
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  living in a war zone and it's it's there's nothing going on.
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  It's a bright sunny day.
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  There's a bright sunny day right in front of my nose.
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  It's all around me.
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  And I can't feel it.
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  I can experience it.
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  I can't enjoy it.
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  It's right there.
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  I see it.
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  I'm not actually in a war zone.
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  I'm it's right there and I can't break through it.
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  It's like I've got this this bubble around me that I just can't break through.
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  It's all the shrapnel coming at you and you're you're to protect yourself against the shrapnel
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  even though in reality, like you said, your friend saw you, it was just a normal day.
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  But you're responding to all the hallucinations and and and paranoia around you.
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  Well, I never had any Well, I never had any hallucinations.
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  It didn't.
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  And if if I had to, like, paint a picture of what I saw in front of me on any given day, I
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  painted it exactly as it was.
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  It was I I could but it just there's it's just a feeling.
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  It's the it's like if you're on a roller coaster or in something tear like bungee
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  jumping or terrifying or in war, it's it's picture yourself just blind and and and you've
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  got a nice picture of a nice sunny day in front of you, but it's the sounds It's just it just
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  it's a feeling.
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  It's a feeling of being of being having too much come at you.
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  And it it's not so much things actually visually, coming at me too much.
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  It's it's just a feeling of it, and it's it's very, very scary, very scary.
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  And tormenting.
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  It's it because it just never leaves.
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  It's
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  it's, but at the same time, before I get too far into how how awful this is, for people
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  listening or going through it or if someone, they're trying to help go through it.
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  There is hope things get better.
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  At the start, it's pretty bad.
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  But things can lessen as time goes on, and you can get treatment and things can lessen and
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  when the pain lessons, it allows you to keep going for longer and keep fighting and keep
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  fighting and keep fighting.
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  That's what it was with me.
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  And it's I want to instill in people the sense of hope, the sense of, for example, Navy SEALs,
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  when they go through their training training to become a Navy SEAL, they're taught that they're
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  capable of 20 times more than they think they are.
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  And the 20 times is sort of a random number, but it's and that's what I've that's what I've
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  been trying to tell people for years is you are capable of so much more than you think.
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  And it's you think you can't do this or you can't do that when push comes to shove and you
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  have to?
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  Oh my heavens.
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  It's
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  It's interesting what you can do when when you've been you come to to a point where you
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  realize, wow, I have to do something, and I have capacity.
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  But, of course, it's the steps to get you there.
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  So you, you know, said you willingly went, but what happens?
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  And I've dealt with families over my years in practice where someone is, actively,
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  schizophrenic, but they're not wanting they might take the medication for a bit, they feel
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  normal, and then they go off, and then they don't wanna go back on.
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  So but yours yours your path was a bit different.
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  You said
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  Yeah.
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  That that never happened with me.
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  I when when I was told that I have schizophrenia and that I'm going to have to be
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  on a medication and no one says it's going to go away in 2 weeks or 2 months or 2 years or 20
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  years.
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  There's there's nothing like that.
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  They can't put any deadline on that at all.
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  So there's a lot of unknown with that.
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  It's also will I ever get better?
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  Will I ever get my health back?
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  So a lot of unknown with the drug as much as I was disheartened that I had to be on a
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  medication.
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  I mean, it's nothing to me now.
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  I Pop Patel at the end of the day, and that's it.
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  It's it's nothing.
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  But in the early days, it was plus I was so depressed.
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  I couldn't think of things in a more positive light, but I was very burden by this having to
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  take a pill.
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  And but at the same time, as much as I didn't wanna have to take it, I was like, get that
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  into me because it was one of the very few things I could do to get get myself better.
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  I counted the I didn't count the minutes down, like, literally, but I all day, I I yearned to
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  take my pill at the end of the day.
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  As the more I could get that into me, the more days I could get that drug into me, the faster
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  I could get, get better.
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  So
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  So let's talk let's talk about your past to recovery.
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  And what that was like.
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  Like you said, you, you know, you volunteer you recognize, okay, I've I've got this diagnosis,
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  which oftentimes a lot of people struggle with diagnosis.
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  Right?
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  They're like, you know, I don't wanna accept that I've got this.
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  Right?
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  And, you know, I often say to people, you know, if it's you know, if you if you're diabetic,
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  you're not gonna say, hey.
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  I'm not gonna take that insulin because so it's it's generally when it's you know, kind of a
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  medical not related to mental that people are more accepting.
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  But as soon as it ends up being, you know, like, you know, I've got deep, you know, I've
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  got chronic depression, for instance.
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  People try to think, well, well, I don't wanna accept that just because.
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  It means, you know, something's wrong with me.
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  And I say, well, if if if your body's telling you, you know, that it takes that much to kind
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  of get level every single day.
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  And when you drop, it it's kinda like, you know, a free fall, and then it takes that much
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  more to come back up.
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  Obviously, your body and your brain is giving you indication that this need for something
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  different, but most people struggle with that.
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  Accepting, you know, that I have this disorder, and they'll try everything else, but until they
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  realize at some point, they've been living, like you said, that that's your amount of pain.
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  And then they start to, you know, think, well, maybe maybe I need to accept this, but
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  sometimes it's a grieving process that I found with people that have have had a diagnosis.
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  Okay.
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  That was not with me, and I have no idea why I'll I'll probably never know why I so how it
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  worked was they I went to the hospital saying I don't feel good, and this is like, 1994.
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  So I hadn't learned about bipolar or OCD or depression or anxiety.
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  This, mental illness, I knew nothing about and Prozac had maybe just been invented or
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  something.
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  I don't know.
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  But anyway, so I said I don't feel good.
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  They took me to the psych ward.
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  They started doing test.
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  And after so many weeks, they said, well, we think it was schizophrenia.
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  And I'm like, woah, that's a bomb to drop.
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  And so, anyway, I asked the nurse.
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  I said, how long might it take before I get better?
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  And she said, sometimes it takes people a couple years before they better.
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  I have no idea where she got that 2 year.
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  It's just a sort of almost like a random number to pull out of your hat.
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  But that's all I really had to go on.
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  And I said, well, can I live with this pain for 2 years?
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  And I said send him just out of the blue, just out of the blue, no.
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  I didn't weigh any pros and cons.
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  Nothing.
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  I said, I'm gonna try to fight this.
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  I'm gonna put my life on hold.
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  I accept the fact that I will do nothing that I enjoy for 2 years.
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  If when the 2 year mark comes up, I'm better, I will pick my life up from where I left off and
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  carry on.
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  And so, anyway, the 2 year mark came and went.
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  I still wasn't good.
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  I was living in a group home.
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  And I said, okay.
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  Well, I'll try for another year.
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  Another year came and went and still wasn't good.
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  Still in a group home.
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  And after that, I just, you kinda reached a point of I fought this hard.
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  I'm still improving.
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  I keep improve I kept improving every week.
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  And I said, I can't turn back now.
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  I I just I just kept going.
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  And it was February 11th this year, 2021, where my symptoms just stopped.
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  For good.
• 17:21
  So from 1994 to 2021, And you were taking the medications routinely, you were you involved,
• 17:31
  with a therapist or of that time as well, Matthew?
• 17:34
  So I saw a psychiatrist in the early years, like, probably the nineties.
• 17:39
  I think the last time I saw a psychologist or a counselor I saw a counselor weekly for 6, 7, 8
• 17:46
  years.
• 17:46
  So probably 2002,002, somewhere in there.
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  I stopped.
• 17:49
  He said, I think you're free to go, Matthew, sort of things.
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  So I got a job working, in 97, and I'm still working there now, with the government And I I
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  in 2000, I started I went to the bookstore and started reading books on how to get myself
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  better.
• 18:09
  And apart from taking the medication and getting counseling, the other things I could do
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  are mostly lifestyle.
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  Choice lifestyle, you know
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  Now that's about some of those things.
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  Those lifestyle things that you did.
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  Like, what did you to learn.
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  Right?
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  Because, of course, we know that movement has everything to do with brain chemistry.
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  And, you know, but what kind of things did you How was therapy different from what you did and
• 18:35
  learned on your own?
• 18:38
  So with all these book size rating, a lot of them were world class people, and I could go
• 18:43
  straight to the source straight into their heads for 5, 6, 7, 8 hours.
• 18:46
  However, long it takes you to read a book.
• 18:49
  And learn from them.
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  And I I just devoured books on a little side note here.
• 18:53
  A friend of mine, her mom had a stroke and she read voraciously.
• 18:58
  And so many months later, she walked out with, I think, something like a 98% of her brain.
• 19:03
  She was not she was hardly damaged at all.
• 19:06
  And the doctor said that she had readers brain, which I've never heard of before, but just,
• 19:11
  keep that in your back pocket for anyone listening.
• 19:13
  I I'd like to learn more about that.
• 19:15
  I haven't found anything online.
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  Anyway, I read voraciously and I read books on people skills because for me, talking to people
• 19:24
  is painful with my disease.
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  I was hard to read social cues more.
• 19:30
  I read books on fitness and diet.
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  And, yeah, it's I had to learn relearn a lot of the things I already knew.
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  And, plus, I was learning things learning how to do those things better too.
• 19:43
  So, can I give a little tip to your re to your
• 19:46
  Oh, absolutely?
• 19:47
  No.
• 19:47
  No.
• 19:48
  Absolute anything.
• 19:49
  Because I think for anybody in this thing, Matthew, that say struggles, It's important
• 19:53
  that they hear, like, to actually hear someone's path that has been through it.
• 19:57
  And I'm gonna assume that you, continue this, these healthy lifestyles every single day as
• 20:03
  much as possible.
• 20:05
  So please do please share that.
• 20:07
  Yeah.
• 20:07
  One of the top top books I recommend to people is verbal judo the gentle art of persuasion by
• 20:14
  George Thompson, Roxanne, and he's a police officer, and he developed the system of how to
• 20:21
  deal with people, not with with weapons.
• 20:23
  This is all words.
• 20:24
  How to how to talk people out of situations and and get them as a police officer, that's what
• 20:30
  you have to do.
• 20:31
  And the book is written for the general public.
• 20:33
  And it's he says if it doesn't work on the street, it won't work at home.
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  And he he says if you're trying to get your teenager to take up the trash, it'll work with
• 20:41
  them.
• 20:42
  And it has helped me so much this this way of dealing with people.
• 20:46
  It has helped me so much.
• 20:48
  And I've heard that psychologists when when people come in to talk to them often, they talk
• 20:52
  about the people in their life that are giving them trouble.
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  And it's it's made my life so much easier.
• 20:58
  It's not perfect, and George says that in the book.
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  He says that sometimes you're the one who's out of control and upset about something, but it's
• 21:06
  it's really helped me keep a more, keep a better baseline and just get along with people
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  better and understand people and not get upset about things that go wrong in conversations and
• 21:18
  at home at work, whatever.
• 21:19
  So, yeah.
• 21:20
  And how
• 21:20
  were your relationships through this, Matthew?
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  Like, what was happening?
• 21:24
  Who was in your life and kind of what was the impact on them and what what did you have to
• 21:28
  work through with them.
• 21:30
  Yeah.
• 21:31
  I would've appreciated more, more interactions with people My job was a little bit solitary.
• 21:41
  More interactions at work.
• 21:42
  I would have would have enjoyed friends and family.
• 21:46
  Everyone was supportive.
• 21:47
  No one really gave me a hard time.
• 21:50
  I, the sit I'm well, when I after I when I grew up after high school, I went to another city to
• 21:56
  go to university, and that's when my disease hit.
• 21:59
  So I was kinda as everyone does it, going to university, they've got a lot of changes to go
• 22:05
  through.
• 22:06
  And I went to a city and got this disease, with that makes it painful and difficult to talk to
• 22:12
  people.
• 22:13
  So plus back in the nineties.
• 22:15
  I know things have improved a lot more in the last 10 years, especially the last year of
• 22:19
  COVID with mental health.
• 22:21
  But in the nineties, I just couldn't walk up to people on the street and talk about talk about
• 22:26
  mental health.
• 22:26
  I can talk about talk about mental health with strangers in the grocery store now in the so
• 22:31
  many years because of end of the year, the Bellot's Talk program that was huge for getting
• 22:36
  people talking about mental health.
• 22:39
  And but in the nineties, I kinda to zip it.
• 22:41
  And, if I wanted to talk to somebody about mental health or depression, I had to so to
• 22:46
  ease that into the conversation after, you know, sort of sniffing them out, like, will
• 22:50
  they be okay with me talking about this?
• 22:53
  And so Yeah.
• 22:55
  But at the same time, I I I don't have too many complaints, but I would have it's plus it's
• 23:02
  hard.
• 23:02
  You know, someone going through schizophrenia or or other severe mental illness, you might
• 23:07
  not want to reach out to them.
• 23:09
  It's a it's a I don't know them that well.
• 23:12
  We are oftentimes very fearful too as well, right, because if you say to someone, hey, how
• 23:17
  are you doing?
• 23:18
  They're they're saying I'm having a bad day.
• 23:20
  That that that kind of directs the conversation.
• 23:23
  But if you say, well, I've been struggling with mental health, and that, you know, oftentimes,
• 23:27
  I think most people get afraid of what what What should I say?
• 23:31
  What should I not say?
• 23:32
  You know, am I gonna, you know, see something wrong and make that hurt that person?
• 23:37
  But what you're saying is in fact, the opposite was needed, you know, for you to just be able
• 23:42
  to dialogue openly about things.
• 23:46
  Yeah.
• 23:46
  And, I mean, post back then in the nineties, people didn't talk about mental health for very
• 23:52
  much at all.
• 23:52
  So it was, the conversations we're seeing in the last so many years of people opening up,
• 23:58
  it's it's it's phenomenal.
• 24:00
  Just absolutely phenomenal, and I'm so happy.
• 24:02
  Mhmm.
• 24:03
  I mean, COVID has been horrible.
• 24:05
  I I I but the mental health benefits of talking about the stuff is oh, it's just wonderful.
• 24:13
  Yeah.
• 24:13
  So one positive thing that has come out of COVID.
• 24:16
  I think you're right.
• 24:16
  You hit it on the head there.
• 24:18
  The nail on the head, is that in fact, now we're quite open to say I'm, you know, I'm
• 24:22
  having a tough day or I'm anxious or, you know, I'm depressed.
• 24:25
  I haven't moved today or, you know, I wanna, you know, I'm not getting along with my husband
• 24:29
  and my children.
• 24:31
  People are more open versus ever before when you'd ask the question, hey.
• 24:34
  How are you doing?
• 24:34
  Oh, I'm fine.
• 24:35
  How are you?
• 24:35
  And people are gonna be losing quite figuratively losing limbs and not sharing you
• 24:40
  know, that they're they're having a tough day.
• 24:42
  And it's it's it's normal and natural.
• 24:44
  It's human to to have, days that are not good, and there's nothing wrong with teaching, I
• 24:51
  think, especially your children about the vulnerability about saying, yeah, today is not
• 24:55
  a good day.
• 24:57
  I'm having a rough time or I've had a tough day at work or I've had a conflict with, you know,
• 25:01
  x, y, z, or this isn't going well.
• 25:04
  I think that permissiveness models things that allows people around us to recognize, hey, it's
• 25:09
  okay to just be vulnerable and that creates a a deeper level of connection as well.
• 25:14
  Thanks for tuning in to authentic living with Roxanne, creating the space for positive San as
• 25:21
  a keynote speaker, psychotherapist, and coach to work with Roxanne, visit roxannedurhaj.com/
• 25:30
  blueprint.
• 25:31
  We'll see you next time on authentic living with Roxanne.