February 3, 2026 • 34 mins
I trace the path from blind trust in a chemical imbalance story to a research-based, integrated approach for resolving bipolar symptoms. I share the books, experts, tools, and daily practices that rebuilt stability through nutrition, trauma therapy, and mindfulness.
• conditioning to trust credentials over outcomes
• harms from long-term medication, hospitalization and ECT
• turning points as a parent catalyzing responsibility
• micronutrients as neurotransmitter building blocks
• disease model versus drug model explained
• Whitaker and Moncrieff are reshaping assumptions
• therapy that targets trauma at the source
• mindfulness to decode symptoms and reduce reactivity
• building a Mood Cycle Survival Guide
• reframing diagnosis as signals, not disease
• practical steps to start self-led research
If you have any comments or questions, please send me an email. If you haven't developed a Mood Cycle Survival Guide for yourself, make sure you go in the show notes, click on the on the link and get your free Mood Cycle Survival Guide that will start you on your first step to healing and recovery.
FREE Mood Cycle Survival Guide: https://theupsideofbipolar.com/free/
The Upside of Bipolar: 7 Steps to Heal Your Disorder: @upsideofbipolar | Linktree
website: https://theupsideofbipolar.com/
email: michelle@theupsideofbipolar.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theupsideofbipolar/
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Much of my suffering, if not most of my
suffering, was caused by thetreatment.
But it never occurred to me toquestion what I was being told
because the people that I wasseeing had letters behind their
name.
They were the quote unquoteexperts.
They had degrees.
And I don't necessarily faultthem for what they were telling
me because that's what they hadbeen told in school.
(00:20):
That's what they had been taughtin school.
And they genuinely believed whatthey were telling me to be true.
So we were all going along withthis because I've, again, in our
society, we are taught to trustthe experts.
We have been conditioned tobelieve that in order for
somebody to know something, theyhave to have letters behind
their name proving that they'vebeen through the education
system and gotten a stamp ontheir on their name and on their
(00:44):
knowledge that says that whatthey are saying is true.
(01:25):
Whenever I share the informationand research that led to my
healing and recovery, and that Inow use to help coach other
people through their own healingand recovery process, I'm
regularly challenged.
People want to know what mycredentials are, what my degree
is in.
And I started, you know, beforeI would, you know, try to
explain, and sometimes I stilldo, how I came to this knowledge
(01:46):
and understanding, but I'vestarted to kind of be a little
bit snarky in my response.
I have common sense and a brainand the ability to read
research.
But I feel like it wouldactually be beneficial to share
how I came to this understandingand knowledge myself, because I
don't expect anybody to take myword for it.
I would love for people to goand do their own research and
(02:07):
learn these things forthemselves because what I am
sharing is not my research.
I have read the research ofpeople with degrees that has led
me to the understanding thatbipolar can actually be healed,
that you can identify thesources of your symptoms, treat
the sources using theseresearch-based integrated
treatment methods, and you canrecover.
(02:29):
And so on today's episode, I'mactually going to walk you
through the process that I wentthrough as I learned the truth
for myself and then share theresources and research that
helped me to understand thatit's possible to heal bipolar.
When I was first diagnosed backin 1998, I was told that I had a
chemical imbalance and that Iwould have this for the rest of
(02:51):
my life and that the medicationwas like insulin for diabetes.
And it's interesting because inour society, we are so
conditioned to believe theexperts and trust the experts
that I didn't question anythingthat I was being told.
I just believed them.
I didn't ask to see theresearch.
I didn't ask to see theinformation that validated what
they were telling me.
I just believed what they weretelling me because they had
(03:12):
degrees.
And for years, I soughtpsychiatric treatment that just
made things worse.
And over the 12 years that I wasin traditional psychiatric
treatment on medications, endingup in the hospital, having
electriconvulsive therapytreatment done on me, I didn't
(03:33):
understand that what washappening to me was not okay,
that it wasn't helping me, thatit was actually making things
worse.
Much of my suffering, if notmost of my suffering, was caused
by the treatment.
But it never occurred to me toquestion what I was being told
because the people that I wasseeing had letters behind their
name.
They were the quote-unquoteexperts.
(03:54):
They had degrees.
So I didn't question what theywere what they were telling me.
And I don't necessarily faultthem for what they were telling
me because that's what they hadbeen told in school.
That's what they had been taughtin school.
And they genuinely believed whatthey were telling me to be true.
So we were all going along withthis because I've, again, in our
(04:16):
society, we are taught to trustthe experts.
And we don't trust people thatdon't have letters behind their
name.
We have been conditioned tobelieve that in order for
somebody to know something, theyhave to have letters behind
their name proving that they'vebeen through the education
system and gotten a stamp ontheir on their name and on their
knowledge that says that whatthey are saying is true.
(04:36):
When I started to question, Ididn't actually, I don't know
that I necessar necessarily wasquestioning what I had been
told, but I questioned thetreatment.
I could see that I was not onlywas I not getting better, I was
getting worse.
And I had gotten to a point oftotal hopelessness that led me
to make multiple attempts on mylife.
And I've shared this before, butI had two really profound
(04:59):
experiences that kind of thatreally changed things for me.
The first was after my thirdhospitalization when I was
watching my children play oneday, and I had at that point
made a few attempts on my life.
I was watching my children playand had a really clear thought
come into my head that if I eversuccessfully ended my life, that
I would ruin my daughter's life.
She was four years old at thetime, and I can still see her in
(05:21):
her little golden bell dressthat I had made for her that she
was playing in that day.
Her little curls bouncing,golden in the sunlight.
I can see my little girl in myhead because it was such a
profound experience for me thatI can re it's etched in my
memory forever.
And I realized that I had tofigure out a way to survive
because I didn't want to ruinher life.
(05:42):
I didn't believe my life had anyvalue at that point, but I knew
hers did.
And I wanted to make sure thatshe had the best possible chance
of a happy life that I couldgive her.
And so if it meant me justsuffering through the rest of my
life, trying to survive for her,I would do it.
So I did for the next year whiteknuckle it.
(06:03):
I just hung out, hung on fordear life, trying to survive,
continuing with the treatmentthat wasn't working, but it was
the only thing I knew.
And then I ended up in thehospital again.
And after that fourthhospitalization, I was again
watching my children play oneday out in the yard.
And I had this thought come intomy head nobody is coming to save
you.
You have to find a way to saveyourself.
(06:24):
And I started to takeresponsibility for myself.
I didn't know before that thatwas even possible.
I felt like I was.
I felt like I was takingresponsibility for myself by
going consistently to mypsychiatric appointments, taking
all the medications they weregiving me, going to therapy,
even though it didn't do anygood for me at the time, and
going into the hospital when Iwhen I felt like I was a danger
(06:47):
to myself.
I was doing everything that Iknew that I could do, and I felt
like I was takingresponsibility, but I started
realizing I needed to findanother way to take
responsibility.
I needed to find a way to managemy symptoms.
I needed to find a way to trulybe responsible for myself
because hanging on for dear lifewasn't a c wasn't a strategy.
It wasn't working.
(07:08):
And so from that point forward,I started looking for things to
help me.
I started developing the moodcycle survival guide.
I started, I found through afriend the micronutrients
through true hope.
And when I first started takingthem, I didn't, I didn't really
understand them.
I didn't know much about theresearch.
I mean, I got the research andgave it to the doctor.
I didn't really understand whatmicronutrients did.
(07:31):
In fact, for years, I thought itwas you could either take
medication or micronutrients.
Medication worked for some,micronutrients worked for other
people.
Like I didn't really evenunderstand what micronutrients
were doing for me.
I was just desperately trying tofind a way to manage what I
believed was going to be alifelong incurable condition.
And because things had been sobad for me, even when I went
(07:52):
through the cross-titrationprocess and went through
withdrawal and, you know,over-medication and med releases
and all of those things that goalong with, you know, helping
your brain heal from medication,I just hung on because it wasn't
any worse than what I'd alreadybeen going through.
And over time, I started to, mybrain started to heal.
(08:12):
I didn't know it was healing.
I didn't understand what washappening.
I just thought, oh, I foundsomething that actually helps me
manage manage my bipolar.
And then I started understandinghow to use therapy, how to use
it proactively to heal, not justto go and talk about my problems
and be validated and cope.
I actually learned about healingmodalities.
(08:32):
I learned about traumamodalities and EMDR and IFS and,
you know, all these othertreatments that could actually
help get to the root of mytrauma and help me resolve it
and heal.
I started learning aboutmindfulness meditation and I
started becoming friends with mybrain again and being able to
manage my emotional responses tothings.
(08:53):
And I started understanding howto recognize the symptoms for
what they were and startedlearning how to look for the
sources of the symptoms.
This was a gradual process thatjust I kept working at it over a
you know, 12 to 15 year period.
And when I started my blog backin 2020, the end of 2020,
beginning of 2021, I stilldidn't understand bipolar.
(09:18):
I still believed what I had beentold all the way back in 1998 by
my first doctor, that it was achemical imbalance, that I would
have it for the rest of my life,and that I would always need
medication.
And I just thought medicationdidn't work for me, but
micronutrients did.
And so when I first started myblog and I first started sharing
on social media, I was stillworking under that assumption.
(09:40):
And so I was very careful not totalk about healing or recovery
because I didn't understand thatthat's what was happening.
And I was still finishing up thehealing process for myself.
I was still going through, youknow, experiencing symptoms and
still identifying sources oftrauma and learning how to
really practice mindfulnessmeditation.
I was still learning how toapply these tools when I first
(10:00):
started my blog.
So I was still experiencing somesymptoms at the time because I
hadn't resolved all the sourcesof the symptoms and I didn't
know I was healing.
But as I started to become workto become more informed and try
to provide better informationfor people, I started doing more
research.
And I started following peopleonline that were in a similar
(10:21):
space, people that were talkingabout holistic psychiatry, which
seemed like, you know,psychiatry, but you know, more
holistic in its approach, whichfelt like what I was doing.
It felt I felt like I was moreholistic in my approach to
psychiatry.
And that was when I found acouple of people online that
started, I started getting bookrecommendations.
(10:43):
And I had my red pill momentwhen I read Robert Wert, sorry,
Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of anEpidemic.
That was the first, the stepthrough the looking grass.
That was when I startedunderstanding what was really
happening.
And Robert Whitaker's Anatomy ofan Epidemic is one of the most
insightful, well-researchedbooks I've ever read.
(11:06):
And he does a thorough job ofgoing through the research, the
history of psychiatry, theresearch related to all of the
different issues with all thedifferent types of psychiatric
illnesses and or the main types,I should say, not all of them,
but he talks about, he talksabout bipolar, he talks about
depression, anxiety.
(11:26):
Um, and his book, MaddenAmerica, talks about
schizophrenia.
And as I read Anatomy of anEpidemic, the first time I read
it, I actually took a long timeto get through because I became
so angry and I felt so betrayedas I was reading this book.
What I was learning was veryupsetting to me.
(11:48):
I felt very betrayed by thepeople I had been turning to for
treatment for 12 years.
The people that had assured methat the medications, we were
going to find the rightcombination of medications, that
I needed medication, that thiswas going to be solved by
medications.
The doctors who insisted thatwhen I needed electric
(12:08):
convulsive therapy, it wasbecause my brain was like a
computer that was frozen and itneeded to be rebooted.
The doctor that insisted thateven though I had a psychotic
episode when I had taken lithiumthe first time, that it wasn't
the lithium, that it was myuntreated bipolar that caused
the psychosis, and that I neededto try lithium again, which was
(12:29):
actually what led to my firstsuicide attempt.
And this opened my mind up.
When I read Robert Whitaker'sbook, I started looking for more
information.
I wanted to learn more, which iswhat led me to read, begin
reading Professor JoannaMoncrief's research.
And I've had both of thesepeople on my podcast.
I had Robert Whitaker on veryearly.
(12:50):
He was one of the, I think hewas episode, I want to say 21 or
23.
I'll have to link it in the shownotes.
I had him on.
He was the first person that Iapproached him thinking he's
probably going to say no.
And I was so surprised andhonored that he said yes.
And when I had him on and talkedto him, I started realizing
(13:13):
there are other people outthere.
And that's when I started re-looking for more.
And I read Professor JoannaMoncrief's research, and I've
had her on my podcast twice.
The first book of hers that Iread was a straight talking
introduction to psychiatricdrugs, the truth about how they
work and how to come off ofthem.
And when I read her, when I readthis book, I was it was the
(13:34):
first time that I had beenintroduced to the idea of the
disease model of psychiatryversus the drug model of
psychiatry.
The disease model of psychiatryis what we currently have.
That is the idea that bipolardisorder, anxiety disorder,
major depressive disorder, evenschizophrenia are all diseases,
(13:55):
some kind of disease in themind, a disorder in the mind.
There's an underlying diseasemechanism.
They just haven't found it yet,but they are working on the
assumption that when theydiagnose somebody with bipolar
disorder, that they arediagnosing them with an
underlying condition, that theythey believe that the diagnosis
is identifying an underlyingmedical condition, a disease,
(14:16):
and that the drugs are beingused to treat the disease.
Never mind that that has neverbeen true.
They have never found, when theycreated, when when these, and
this is what I learned first inRobert Whittaker's book, and
then I have learned later, thatthe disease model was an
assumption made that validatedthe use of psychiatric drugs.
(14:37):
But it was never, there wasnever an underlying etiology or
an underlying diseaseidentified.
When they created the bipolardiagnosis, they just took a
cluster of symptoms.
There were psychiatrists thatgot together and voted on the
criteria and then created thiscategory based on the criteria
that these all these doctorscame up with together, based on
(14:58):
clusters of symptoms that theyagreed on.
And then when people wouldn'tfit within those clusters, as
the DSM, so we have the DSM fivenow.
There was a DSM one, two, three,four, five.
Each time they come out with anew DSM, it gets bigger because
they identified more diseases,they say, and they change the
parameters of the disease.
The diagnosis, the parameters ofthe diagnosis, the diagnostic
(15:22):
criteria get changed based onwhat the doctors see in their
clinics.
And they decide, oh, well, weneed to make sure that these
people, these people aren'tfitting into a category, so we
need to expand the parameters ofthis category or create a new
category.
And they keep trying to justifythe disorder category by doing
research to look for anunderlying condition.
But they didn't identify anunderlying condition in the
(15:44):
first place.
They just created a diagnosisbased on a cluster of symptoms.
And I've used this analogybefore, but I keep using it
because it's such an aptanalogy.
It would be like somebody who'srunning a fever coming into the
doctor and being diagnosed withfever disorder.
Fevers have all kinds ofdifferent sources.
You could be running a feverbecause you have strep throat.
(16:04):
You can be running a feverbecause you're you're you've
been out in the sun all day.
You can be running a fever forall kinds of reasons.
But a fever, the name feverdisorder does not tell you what
the source of your fever is.
It doesn't identify what'scausing the fever, it just
observes the symptom.
And so when I read ProfessorJoanna Moncrief's book, she
talks about this disease modelthat is driving psychiatry and
(16:28):
justifying the use ofpsychiatric drugs that we don't
fully understand.
When they test these drugs, theydon't test them for long-term
use.
None of these drugs have beentested for long-term safety.
They are tested usually forabout eight weeks.
And the the the long-term, quoteunquote, long-term studies that
(16:48):
have been done are just takingpeople off of drugs to see what
happens.
And one of the one of the one ofthe studies that was done was
taking people off of lithium.
And they don't withdraw them ina safe way.
They just remove the drug.
And when they become manicagain, then they say, oh yes,
see, there's a recurrence of thedisease.
Because again, the symptomitself is identified as a
(17:12):
disease.
Nobody acknowledges that it wascaused by the withdrawal of the
drug.
And so they say, see, it thedrug is working.
We need to keep them on thedrug.
That's it.
They have not done long-termtesting, and there is no
acknowledgement that thelong-term consequences of taking
these medications are directlyrelated to the drug and what the
drug is doing to the brain andthe body.
(17:33):
When she talks about the drugmodel, she talks about how there
are people who preferred whoprefer the drugged state.
So it is acknowledging that thedrug is not actually treating a
disease, but that the drug issuppressing symptoms that the
person doesn't like and that wethe person prefers the drugged
(17:54):
state to the non-drugged state.
This was really eye-opening tome.
And she talks about also how itused to be a couple decades ago
that people who were practicingpsychotherapy or therapists
would not treat somebody who wason medication because they
understood that when somebodyhad was in the drugged state,
(18:15):
that their brains could notprocess emotion in a healthy
way.
So they wouldn't treat thembecause it wasn't going to work.
They, you know, the therapywasn't going to help because the
person couldn't process theemotions.
So they didn't used to allowpeople to go or take patients
that were on medication.
Now our the psychiatric industryhas become so completely um
(18:39):
taken over by this disease modelmentality that psychiatrists or
therapists will see people whoare on medication all the time.
And I had lots of therapists whotalked about how therapy is for
learning how to cope becausethey believed they bought into
this idea that bipolar was alifelong and curable condition,
and they were just going to tryand help people cope with the
(19:01):
things that they were strugglingwith rather than helping them to
actually get to the source oftheir of their symptoms and
heal.
I also read later, uh last yearor the year before, I can't
remember, I think it was lastyear, was when Professor
Moncrief came out with thisincredible book called
Chemically Imbalanced.
And this is based on herresearch.
(19:23):
She led the research team thatdid a thorough study of all of
the studies that have been doneon the chemical imbalance theory
over the past couple of decadesand were able to identify that
the chemical imbalance theoryhas been completely disproven.
There was no foundation for thistheory in the first place.
It was a theory that they cameup with to try and justify the
use of medication.
(19:43):
And doctors continue to use thisassertion that there is a
chemical imbalance.
And when she talks about it inchemically and in chemically
imbalanced, she's talkingspecifically about the serotonin
theory, which is which istalking about depression.
But it is the same theory thatis used to justify it, to talk
(20:05):
about bipolar disorder, anxietydisorder, all of these disorders
are touted to be chemicalimbalances, and they have never
been proven.
In fact, every time they go totry and prove that there is a
chemical imbalance causing thesethings, what they actually end
up showing is that the chemicalimbalance didn't exist before
the medication was taken, butthe medication causes a chemical
(20:28):
imbalance in the brain.
As I did more research, Istarted looking at myself, at
the experiences that I'd beenthrough myself and the sources
of the symptoms that I haddiscovered.
The very first one, obviously,was medication.
Medication itself caused achemical imbalance.
It changed my brain chemistry,it made things worse, caused all
kinds of problems for me thatled to hospitalizations,
(20:50):
electriconvulsive therapy.
But I started to wonder how themicronutrients differed.
Because once I startedunderstanding what the
medications were doing, Ithought, well, I don't know,
that doesn't seem to be the casefor the medic the
micronutrients.
So I started doing more researchabout micronutrients.
And I actually was had theprivilege of interviewing Dr.
(21:12):
Bonnie Kaplan on my, she's againone of my very first uh
interviews was Dr.
Bonnie Kaplan.
And she wrote the book TheBetter Brain with along with uh
Dr.
Julia Reckledge.
And The Better Brain is anincredible book that talks about
how the increasing rise of likethe dramatic increase in in um
(21:35):
mental illness that we areseeing is largely related to the
fact that our society is sodeficient in micronutrition.
Our food supply is it has beenstripped of most of its
nutritional value.
We are doing mass farming now,and so the the nutrients in the
(21:58):
food are significantly.
Lower than they were, you know,50 years ago.
We are getting food from othercountries.
I did an interview a coupleyears ago, I believe, with a
farming expert who talked abouthow as food is transported from
the other side of the world,they have to pick it way earlier
than it needs to, than it shouldbe picked, which means that it
(22:21):
doesn't have time to ripen.
It doesn't have time to get allthe nutrients in it.
In fact, there are things in thefruits and vegetables that leave
them as they ripen that arestill there, that lower the
nutritional value and can andcan cause problems.
So they call it food miles.
So the further, the further foodhas to travel to get to you, the
lower the nutritional value.
(22:43):
So there's all of these thingsthat have affected our food
supply, and we eat way moreprocessed food now than we ever
have in the past.
So our food supply hassignificantly decreased in its
nutritional value, which hascorrelated not just with
physical health effects, butmental health effects.
(23:04):
Our brains are not getting whatthey need through our diet to
function in a healthy way.
And this book is so phenomenal.
When I went through the researchin this book, I read it a couple
of times, and then I had theopposite, like I said, I had the
honor of interviewing Dr.
Kaplan on my show.
And then I also interviewed,I've interviewed David Stefan,
(23:27):
who is the vice president ofTrue Hope, which is the
micronutrient company that I useand that I recommend.
And I recommend them not becauseI don't get any financial
benefit from recommending them.
I've been very clear about that.
They are a nonprofit out ofCanada that was started
specifically to address bipolardisorder.
And as they've done research onit over the years, they've
discovered that it also helpswith ADHD symptoms, depression,
(23:50):
anxiety.
Because all of these mentalillnesses that we're seeing, one
of the main sources of thesymptoms is micronutrient
insufficiency.
And as David Stefan talked aboutwhen he when I interviewed him
recently, I believe it was inepisode 71, was when he talked
about this specific item.
(24:12):
There are four building blocksof the neurotransmitters in our
brain which are responsible foremotional response: vitamins,
minerals, omega-3s, and aminoacids.
And if you are gettinginsufficient levels in any of
those, your brain will not havethe building blocks that it
needs to create thoseneurotransmitters in healthy
(24:35):
levels.
And so we end up with our brainsnot being able to function in
healthy ways.
And it's just because our dietis not getting sufficient
nutrition.
Our brains are not gettingsufficient nutrition.
And one of the other things thatthey talk about in the better
brain is that there are geneticpredispositions to require
higher levels of micronutrition,which is why you see
(24:57):
generationally within familiespeople displaying the same
symptoms.
Their brains are not gettingwhat they need to function in a
healthy way.
As I continue to do to learnmore about like sources of
symptoms, I also learned aboutthe sources of symptoms that
come from trauma.
And I read The Body Keeps aScore by Vessel Vanderkoek.
(25:20):
And that was so eye-opening tome because I, for a long time,
believed that my bipolar hadbeen triggered by trauma, but I
thought that it was triggering adisease because I believed,
again, what I had been told bythe expert that, you know, the
experts, I should say, that Ihad a chemical imbalance.
(25:40):
And I had, I believed that I,you know, what I had been told
that that trauma can trigger thedisease.
And the interesting thing isthat the trauma is being, is
causing sort symptoms, but it isnot triggering some kind of
disease.
It is triggering a traumaresponse in somebody.
And if you can address theunderlying source, if you can
(26:00):
identify the trauma and usetrauma-informed modalities like
EMDR and somatic therapies andIFS, which is internal family
systems or rapid resolutiontherapy, you can actually
resolve the source of thesymptoms.
You can resolve the trauma, healthe trauma, and resolve the
symptoms.
(26:21):
You have not triggered a diseasein your mind.
It is the brain's response totrauma.
The symptoms are the brain'sresponse to trauma.
And then I continued to do moreresearch and I had started using
a lot of these treatmentsalready, not fully understanding
what they were.
I didn't, I didn't, again, Ilike I mentioned with the with
(26:42):
the micronutrient nutrients, theEmpower Plus from True Hope.
I didn't understand what it wasdoing in my brain.
I was just desperately lookingfor something that would help me
manage my symptoms better.
And it worked, and so I kepttaking it.
But I didn't really understandwhat I was doing.
I didn't understand what it wasgiving to my brain.
I didn't understand when I wasseeking therapy that I was
(27:04):
actually resolving the sourcesof my symptoms.
When I finally found atrauma-informed therapist, when
I finally found, you know, I forme I used EMDR and I used some
somatic therapies, breath workand yoga, that helped to resolve
the underlying sources of thesymptoms, helped me to heal the
trauma, which resolved thesymptoms.
(27:25):
And then I started, I had alsobeen using uh mindfulness
meditation, which was a hugegame changer for me.
When I very first was introducedto mindfulness meditation, I was
working, uh, I had beenintroduced to it through um John
Cabot Zinn, who is consideredthe father of Western
meditation.
And I've talked about him beforeon my podcast.
(27:46):
And I could feel that it washelping me, but I couldn't
meditate for 45 minutes a day.
I I was a mother with youngchildren, and I didn't have the
ability to block out 45 minutesa day to meditate.
And when I bought his book, itwas more than I could handle
when I first bought it.
It's it's called FullCatastrophe Living, and it's a
fantastic book.
(28:08):
But I couldn't, at the time, Icouldn't read a book that thick.
I didn't have the ability toconcentrate that long, and nor
did I have the time or desire todo it.
I didn't really want to do thatat the time.
But I found Mindfulness, aneight-week plan for finding
peace in a frantic world by MarkWilliams and Danny Penman.
(28:29):
And again, I've had theprivilege of interviewing Danny
Penman twice on my program.
And that was a game changer forme.
They broke down why mindfulnesshelped, what it is actually
doing for the brain, how it ishelping you regain the ability
to manage what's happening byjust learning how to stay
(28:50):
present.
When we pathologize about thesesymptoms, when we treat them
like diseases and call themdiseases and believe they're
diseases, when we believe thatmania is a disease and
depression is a disease andanxiety is a disease, it takes
the ability to do anything aboutit out of our hands.
(29:10):
We don't have control overwhat's happening, we become
victims.
But when you recognize thatsymptoms are information, it's
the brain's way ofcommunicating, and you learn how
to stay present with thesymptoms and stay present with
the the emotions and look atthem with curiosity, without
without judgment, withcuriosity, without judgment.
(29:32):
You can look for clues, you canbecome a detective in your life.
And that is one of the thingsthat mindfulness meditation did
for me is it helped me becomemore self-aware, helped me learn
how to stay present withdiscomfort and try and instead
of trying to just escape it,look at the symptoms with
curiosity over judgment, andthen that helped me start
identifying the sources of thesymptoms, which helped me become
more effective in treating thesources and resolving the
(29:55):
symptoms.
I have not gone to college yet.
I'm actually in the process ofapplying for an advanced degree
because I do want to turn mythis this treatment approach
into a replicable treatmentmodality that can be used,
licensed, and used in clinics tohelp other practitioners use
(30:17):
this to help people heal.
But no, I don't have lettersbehind my name right now.
I have a brain, I have theability to read research and
understand it and apply it, andI have applied what I have
learned in my own life, and ithas helped me to heal
completely.
I have resolved the sources ofmy symptoms, and I help other
(30:39):
people do the same thing.
And as I have done thisresearch, as I have read these
books, as I have learned aboutthe the history of psychiatry
and the truth about psychotropicdrugs from people with letters
behind their names who have donethe research, who were doing it
with an unbiased in an unbiasedeffort to understand what they
(31:01):
had been taught, I learned thetruth and I started to
understand that I had beenmisled when I was told that I
had a chemical imbalance.
I had been misled when I wastold that I had bipolar
disorder.
I don't even like using thatterm anymore.
It is a meaningless term thatturns people into victims, as
(31:24):
I've mentioned on previousepisodes.
Yes, bipolar symptoms are veryreal.
And yes, they can be very scary.
I do understand that there aretimes when somebody is a danger
to themselves or others and theymight need medication
temporarily to help them getback to a stable place so that
they can then start working onhealing.
But medication and diagnosisshould not be the long-term
(31:48):
solution.
None of these drugs have beentested for safety for long-term
use.
Our brains were not designed tobe on chemical, to be chemically
altered permanently.
That is not the natural state ofour brains.
And it is not healthy for ourbrains.
It is important for us to makesure that we learn how to trust
(32:11):
ourselves.
When we say trust the expertsand give them our blind faith,
we put ourselves at risk.
I would love it if we could justtrust the experts.
That would be amazing.
But the experts in thepsychiatric field are being
taught from curriculum that hasbeen written by psychiatrists
(32:32):
who are paid by drug companies.
There's evidence for that.
That was one of the things thatwas made me the most angry when
I read The Anatomy of anEpidemic.
So it's critical that you doyour own research.
Don't trust me.
Don't trust the experts, trustyourself.
Do the research yourself.
Read about it yourself.
(32:52):
I will link all of these booksin the show notes, and I
encourage you to begin learningyourself.
I would start, I would encourageeverybody to start with Anatomy
of an Epidemic.
That was so eye-opening to me.
It helped me to realize that alot of the intuition that I had
over the years about what wasgoing on was spot on, but I
(33:13):
didn't trust myself because Ihad been conditioned to trust
the experts.
I want to invite you to learnfor yourself.
You can start with my book ifyou want to just learn about my
own experience.
I list all of the research inthere that I used that helped me
to learn about each of thosetools and how they can be
effective in helping to treatdifferent underlying sources of
(33:34):
symptoms that leads to healing.
And then if you're so inclined,you can start reading these
books for yourself and learn foryourself the truth about these
symptoms and that they canindeed be resolved.
I would love to hear from you.
If you have any comments orquestions, please send me an
email.
My email address is linked inthe show notes.
(33:57):
If you haven't started yourhealing process and you think
you're ready to get started,send me an email and let me
know.
If you haven't developed a moodcycle survival guide for
yourself, make sure you go inthe show notes, click on the on
the link and get your free moodcycle survival guide that will
start you your first step tohealing and recovery.
I hope that you will learn howto trust yourself.
(34:19):
Learn how to do your ownresearch.
Learn for yourself the truththat will set you free.
SPEAKER_01 (34:25):
Until next time, upsiders.
Much of my suffering, if not most of my
suffering, was caused by thetreatment.
But it never occurred to me toquestion what I was being told
because the people that I wasseeing had letters behind their
name.
They were the quote unquoteexperts.
They had degrees.
And I don't necessarily faultthem for what they were telling
me because that's what they hadbeen told in school.
(00:20):
That's what they had been taughtin school.
And they genuinely believed whatthey were telling me to be true.
So we were all going along withthis because I've, again, in our
society, we are taught to trustthe experts.
We have been conditioned tobelieve that in order for
somebody to know something, theyhave to have letters behind
their name proving that they'vebeen through the education
system and gotten a stamp ontheir on their name and on their
(00:44):
knowledge that says that whatthey are saying is true.
(01:25):
Whenever I share the informationand research that led to my
healing and recovery, and that Inow use to help coach other
people through their own healingand recovery process, I'm
regularly challenged.
People want to know what mycredentials are, what my degree
is in.
And I started, you know, beforeI would, you know, try to
explain, and sometimes I stilldo, how I came to this knowledge
(01:46):
and understanding, but I'vestarted to kind of be a little
bit snarky in my response.
I have common sense and a brainand the ability to read
research.
But I feel like it wouldactually be beneficial to share
how I came to this understandingand knowledge myself, because I
don't expect anybody to take myword for it.
I would love for people to goand do their own research and
(02:07):
learn these things forthemselves because what I am
sharing is not my research.
I have read the research ofpeople with degrees that has led
me to the understanding thatbipolar can actually be healed,
that you can identify thesources of your symptoms, treat
the sources using theseresearch-based integrated
treatment methods, and you canrecover.
(02:29):
And so on today's episode, I'mactually going to walk you
through the process that I wentthrough as I learned the truth
for myself and then share theresources and research that
helped me to understand thatit's possible to heal bipolar.
When I was first diagnosed backin 1998, I was told that I had a
chemical imbalance and that Iwould have this for the rest of
(02:51):
my life and that the medicationwas like insulin for diabetes.
And it's interesting because inour society, we are so
conditioned to believe theexperts and trust the experts
that I didn't question anythingthat I was being told.
I just believed them.
I didn't ask to see theresearch.
I didn't ask to see theinformation that validated what
they were telling me.
I just believed what they weretelling me because they had
(03:12):
degrees.
And for years, I soughtpsychiatric treatment that just
made things worse.
And over the 12 years that I wasin traditional psychiatric
treatment on medications, endingup in the hospital, having
electriconvulsive therapytreatment done on me, I didn't
(03:33):
understand that what washappening to me was not okay,
that it wasn't helping me, thatit was actually making things
worse.
Much of my suffering, if notmost of my suffering, was caused
by the treatment.
But it never occurred to me toquestion what I was being told
because the people that I wasseeing had letters behind their
name.
They were the quote-unquoteexperts.
(03:54):
They had degrees.
So I didn't question what theywere what they were telling me.
And I don't necessarily faultthem for what they were telling
me because that's what they hadbeen told in school.
That's what they had been taughtin school.
And they genuinely believed whatthey were telling me to be true.
So we were all going along withthis because I've, again, in our
(04:16):
society, we are taught to trustthe experts.
And we don't trust people thatdon't have letters behind their
name.
We have been conditioned tobelieve that in order for
somebody to know something, theyhave to have letters behind
their name proving that they'vebeen through the education
system and gotten a stamp ontheir on their name and on their
knowledge that says that whatthey are saying is true.
(04:36):
When I started to question, Ididn't actually, I don't know
that I necessar necessarily wasquestioning what I had been
told, but I questioned thetreatment.
I could see that I was not onlywas I not getting better, I was
getting worse.
And I had gotten to a point oftotal hopelessness that led me
to make multiple attempts on mylife.
And I've shared this before, butI had two really profound
(04:59):
experiences that kind of thatreally changed things for me.
The first was after my thirdhospitalization when I was
watching my children play oneday, and I had at that point
made a few attempts on my life.
I was watching my children playand had a really clear thought
come into my head that if I eversuccessfully ended my life, that
I would ruin my daughter's life.
She was four years old at thetime, and I can still see her in
(05:21):
her little golden bell dressthat I had made for her that she
was playing in that day.
Her little curls bouncing,golden in the sunlight.
I can see my little girl in myhead because it was such a
profound experience for me thatI can re it's etched in my
memory forever.
And I realized that I had tofigure out a way to survive
because I didn't want to ruinher life.
(05:42):
I didn't believe my life had anyvalue at that point, but I knew
hers did.
And I wanted to make sure thatshe had the best possible chance
of a happy life that I couldgive her.
And so if it meant me justsuffering through the rest of my
life, trying to survive for her,I would do it.
So I did for the next year whiteknuckle it.
(06:03):
I just hung out, hung on fordear life, trying to survive,
continuing with the treatmentthat wasn't working, but it was
the only thing I knew.
And then I ended up in thehospital again.
And after that fourthhospitalization, I was again
watching my children play oneday out in the yard.
And I had this thought come intomy head nobody is coming to save
you.
You have to find a way to saveyourself.
(06:24):
And I started to takeresponsibility for myself.
I didn't know before that thatwas even possible.
I felt like I was.
I felt like I was takingresponsibility for myself by
going consistently to mypsychiatric appointments, taking
all the medications they weregiving me, going to therapy,
even though it didn't do anygood for me at the time, and
going into the hospital when Iwhen I felt like I was a danger
(06:47):
to myself.
I was doing everything that Iknew that I could do, and I felt
like I was takingresponsibility, but I started
realizing I needed to findanother way to take
responsibility.
I needed to find a way to managemy symptoms.
I needed to find a way to trulybe responsible for myself
because hanging on for dear lifewasn't a c wasn't a strategy.
It wasn't working.
(07:08):
And so from that point forward,I started looking for things to
help me.
I started developing the moodcycle survival guide.
I started, I found through afriend the micronutrients
through true hope.
And when I first started takingthem, I didn't, I didn't really
understand them.
I didn't know much about theresearch.
I mean, I got the research andgave it to the doctor.
I didn't really understand whatmicronutrients did.
(07:31):
In fact, for years, I thought itwas you could either take
medication or micronutrients.
Medication worked for some,micronutrients worked for other
people.
Like I didn't really evenunderstand what micronutrients
were doing for me.
I was just desperately trying tofind a way to manage what I
believed was going to be alifelong incurable condition.
And because things had been sobad for me, even when I went
(07:52):
through the cross-titrationprocess and went through
withdrawal and, you know,over-medication and med releases
and all of those things that goalong with, you know, helping
your brain heal from medication,I just hung on because it wasn't
any worse than what I'd alreadybeen going through.
And over time, I started to, mybrain started to heal.
(08:12):
I didn't know it was healing.
I didn't understand what washappening.
I just thought, oh, I foundsomething that actually helps me
manage manage my bipolar.
And then I started understandinghow to use therapy, how to use
it proactively to heal, not justto go and talk about my problems
and be validated and cope.
I actually learned about healingmodalities.
(08:32):
I learned about traumamodalities and EMDR and IFS and,
you know, all these othertreatments that could actually
help get to the root of mytrauma and help me resolve it
and heal.
I started learning aboutmindfulness meditation and I
started becoming friends with mybrain again and being able to
manage my emotional responses tothings.
(08:53):
And I started understanding howto recognize the symptoms for
what they were and startedlearning how to look for the
sources of the symptoms.
This was a gradual process thatjust I kept working at it over a
you know, 12 to 15 year period.
And when I started my blog backin 2020, the end of 2020,
beginning of 2021, I stilldidn't understand bipolar.
(09:18):
I still believed what I had beentold all the way back in 1998 by
my first doctor, that it was achemical imbalance, that I would
have it for the rest of my life,and that I would always need
medication.
And I just thought medicationdidn't work for me, but
micronutrients did.
And so when I first started myblog and I first started sharing
on social media, I was stillworking under that assumption.
(09:40):
And so I was very careful not totalk about healing or recovery
because I didn't understand thatthat's what was happening.
And I was still finishing up thehealing process for myself.
I was still going through, youknow, experiencing symptoms and
still identifying sources oftrauma and learning how to
really practice mindfulnessmeditation.
I was still learning how toapply these tools when I first
(10:00):
started my blog.
So I was still experiencing somesymptoms at the time because I
hadn't resolved all the sourcesof the symptoms and I didn't
know I was healing.
But as I started to become workto become more informed and try
to provide better informationfor people, I started doing more
research.
And I started following peopleonline that were in a similar
(10:21):
space, people that were talkingabout holistic psychiatry, which
seemed like, you know,psychiatry, but you know, more
holistic in its approach, whichfelt like what I was doing.
It felt I felt like I was moreholistic in my approach to
psychiatry.
And that was when I found acouple of people online that
started, I started getting bookrecommendations.
(10:43):
And I had my red pill momentwhen I read Robert Wert, sorry,
Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of anEpidemic.
That was the first, the stepthrough the looking grass.
That was when I startedunderstanding what was really
happening.
And Robert Whitaker's Anatomy ofan Epidemic is one of the most
insightful, well-researchedbooks I've ever read.
(11:06):
And he does a thorough job ofgoing through the research, the
history of psychiatry, theresearch related to all of the
different issues with all thedifferent types of psychiatric
illnesses and or the main types,I should say, not all of them,
but he talks about, he talksabout bipolar, he talks about
depression, anxiety.
(11:26):
Um, and his book, MaddenAmerica, talks about
schizophrenia.
And as I read Anatomy of anEpidemic, the first time I read
it, I actually took a long timeto get through because I became
so angry and I felt so betrayedas I was reading this book.
What I was learning was veryupsetting to me.
(11:48):
I felt very betrayed by thepeople I had been turning to for
treatment for 12 years.
The people that had assured methat the medications, we were
going to find the rightcombination of medications, that
I needed medication, that thiswas going to be solved by
medications.
The doctors who insisted thatwhen I needed electric
(12:08):
convulsive therapy, it wasbecause my brain was like a
computer that was frozen and itneeded to be rebooted.
The doctor that insisted thateven though I had a psychotic
episode when I had taken lithiumthe first time, that it wasn't
the lithium, that it was myuntreated bipolar that caused
the psychosis, and that I neededto try lithium again, which was
(12:29):
actually what led to my firstsuicide attempt.
And this opened my mind up.
When I read Robert Whitaker'sbook, I started looking for more
information.
I wanted to learn more, which iswhat led me to read, begin
reading Professor JoannaMoncrief's research.
And I've had both of thesepeople on my podcast.
I had Robert Whitaker on veryearly.
(12:50):
He was one of the, I think hewas episode, I want to say 21 or
23.
I'll have to link it in the shownotes.
I had him on.
He was the first person that Iapproached him thinking he's
probably going to say no.
And I was so surprised andhonored that he said yes.
And when I had him on and talkedto him, I started realizing
(13:13):
there are other people outthere.
And that's when I started re-looking for more.
And I read Professor JoannaMoncrief's research, and I've
had her on my podcast twice.
The first book of hers that Iread was a straight talking
introduction to psychiatricdrugs, the truth about how they
work and how to come off ofthem.
And when I read her, when I readthis book, I was it was the
(13:34):
first time that I had beenintroduced to the idea of the
disease model of psychiatryversus the drug model of
psychiatry.
The disease model of psychiatryis what we currently have.
That is the idea that bipolardisorder, anxiety disorder,
major depressive disorder, evenschizophrenia are all diseases,
(13:55):
some kind of disease in themind, a disorder in the mind.
There's an underlying diseasemechanism.
They just haven't found it yet,but they are working on the
assumption that when theydiagnose somebody with bipolar
disorder, that they arediagnosing them with an
underlying condition, that theythey believe that the diagnosis
is identifying an underlyingmedical condition, a disease,
(14:16):
and that the drugs are beingused to treat the disease.
Never mind that that has neverbeen true.
They have never found, when theycreated, when when these, and
this is what I learned first inRobert Whittaker's book, and
then I have learned later, thatthe disease model was an
assumption made that validatedthe use of psychiatric drugs.
(14:37):
But it was never, there wasnever an underlying etiology or
an underlying diseaseidentified.
When they created the bipolardiagnosis, they just took a
cluster of symptoms.
There were psychiatrists thatgot together and voted on the
criteria and then created thiscategory based on the criteria
that these all these doctorscame up with together, based on
(14:58):
clusters of symptoms that theyagreed on.
And then when people wouldn'tfit within those clusters, as
the DSM, so we have the DSM fivenow.
There was a DSM one, two, three,four, five.
Each time they come out with anew DSM, it gets bigger because
they identified more diseases,they say, and they change the
parameters of the disease.
The diagnosis, the parameters ofthe diagnosis, the diagnostic
(15:22):
criteria get changed based onwhat the doctors see in their
clinics.
And they decide, oh, well, weneed to make sure that these
people, these people aren'tfitting into a category, so we
need to expand the parameters ofthis category or create a new
category.
And they keep trying to justifythe disorder category by doing
research to look for anunderlying condition.
But they didn't identify anunderlying condition in the
(15:44):
first place.
They just created a diagnosisbased on a cluster of symptoms.
And I've used this analogybefore, but I keep using it
because it's such an aptanalogy.
It would be like somebody who'srunning a fever coming into the
doctor and being diagnosed withfever disorder.
Fevers have all kinds ofdifferent sources.
You could be running a feverbecause you have strep throat.
(16:04):
You can be running a feverbecause you're you're you've
been out in the sun all day.
You can be running a fever forall kinds of reasons.
But a fever, the name feverdisorder does not tell you what
the source of your fever is.
It doesn't identify what'scausing the fever, it just
observes the symptom.
And so when I read ProfessorJoanna Moncrief's book, she
talks about this disease modelthat is driving psychiatry and
(16:28):
justifying the use ofpsychiatric drugs that we don't
fully understand.
When they test these drugs, theydon't test them for long-term
use.
None of these drugs have beentested for long-term safety.
They are tested usually forabout eight weeks.
And the the the long-term, quoteunquote, long-term studies that
(16:48):
have been done are just takingpeople off of drugs to see what
happens.
And one of the one of the one ofthe studies that was done was
taking people off of lithium.
And they don't withdraw them ina safe way.
They just remove the drug.
And when they become manicagain, then they say, oh yes,
see, there's a recurrence of thedisease.
Because again, the symptomitself is identified as a
(17:12):
disease.
Nobody acknowledges that it wascaused by the withdrawal of the
drug.
And so they say, see, it thedrug is working.
We need to keep them on thedrug.
That's it.
They have not done long-termtesting, and there is no
acknowledgement that thelong-term consequences of taking
these medications are directlyrelated to the drug and what the
drug is doing to the brain andthe body.
(17:33):
When she talks about the drugmodel, she talks about how there
are people who preferred whoprefer the drugged state.
So it is acknowledging that thedrug is not actually treating a
disease, but that the drug issuppressing symptoms that the
person doesn't like and that wethe person prefers the drugged
(17:54):
state to the non-drugged state.
This was really eye-opening tome.
And she talks about also how itused to be a couple decades ago
that people who were practicingpsychotherapy or therapists
would not treat somebody who wason medication because they
understood that when somebodyhad was in the drugged state,
(18:15):
that their brains could notprocess emotion in a healthy
way.
So they wouldn't treat thembecause it wasn't going to work.
They, you know, the therapywasn't going to help because the
person couldn't process theemotions.
So they didn't used to allowpeople to go or take patients
that were on medication.
Now our the psychiatric industryhas become so completely um
(18:39):
taken over by this disease modelmentality that psychiatrists or
therapists will see people whoare on medication all the time.
And I had lots of therapists whotalked about how therapy is for
learning how to cope becausethey believed they bought into
this idea that bipolar was alifelong and curable condition,
and they were just going to tryand help people cope with the
(19:01):
things that they were strugglingwith rather than helping them to
actually get to the source oftheir of their symptoms and
heal.
I also read later, uh last yearor the year before, I can't
remember, I think it was lastyear, was when Professor
Moncrief came out with thisincredible book called
Chemically Imbalanced.
And this is based on herresearch.
(19:23):
She led the research team thatdid a thorough study of all of
the studies that have been doneon the chemical imbalance theory
over the past couple of decadesand were able to identify that
the chemical imbalance theoryhas been completely disproven.
There was no foundation for thistheory in the first place.
It was a theory that they cameup with to try and justify the
use of medication.
(19:43):
And doctors continue to use thisassertion that there is a
chemical imbalance.
And when she talks about it inchemically and in chemically
imbalanced, she's talkingspecifically about the serotonin
theory, which is which istalking about depression.
But it is the same theory thatis used to justify it, to talk
(20:05):
about bipolar disorder, anxietydisorder, all of these disorders
are touted to be chemicalimbalances, and they have never
been proven.
In fact, every time they go totry and prove that there is a
chemical imbalance causing thesethings, what they actually end
up showing is that the chemicalimbalance didn't exist before
the medication was taken, butthe medication causes a chemical
(20:28):
imbalance in the brain.
As I did more research, Istarted looking at myself, at
the experiences that I'd beenthrough myself and the sources
of the symptoms that I haddiscovered.
The very first one, obviously,was medication.
Medication itself caused achemical imbalance.
It changed my brain chemistry,it made things worse, caused all
kinds of problems for me thatled to hospitalizations,
(20:50):
electriconvulsive therapy.
But I started to wonder how themicronutrients differed.
Because once I startedunderstanding what the
medications were doing, Ithought, well, I don't know,
that doesn't seem to be the casefor the medic the
micronutrients.
So I started doing more researchabout micronutrients.
And I actually was had theprivilege of interviewing Dr.
(21:12):
Bonnie Kaplan on my, she's againone of my very first uh
interviews was Dr.
Bonnie Kaplan.
And she wrote the book TheBetter Brain with along with uh
Dr.
Julia Reckledge.
And The Better Brain is anincredible book that talks about
how the increasing rise of likethe dramatic increase in in um
(21:35):
mental illness that we areseeing is largely related to the
fact that our society is sodeficient in micronutrition.
Our food supply is it has beenstripped of most of its
nutritional value.
We are doing mass farming now,and so the the nutrients in the
(21:58):
food are significantly.
Lower than they were, you know,50 years ago.
We are getting food from othercountries.
I did an interview a coupleyears ago, I believe, with a
farming expert who talked abouthow as food is transported from
the other side of the world,they have to pick it way earlier
than it needs to, than it shouldbe picked, which means that it
(22:21):
doesn't have time to ripen.
It doesn't have time to get allthe nutrients in it.
In fact, there are things in thefruits and vegetables that leave
them as they ripen that arestill there, that lower the
nutritional value and can andcan cause problems.
So they call it food miles.
So the further, the further foodhas to travel to get to you, the
lower the nutritional value.
(22:43):
So there's all of these thingsthat have affected our food
supply, and we eat way moreprocessed food now than we ever
have in the past.
So our food supply hassignificantly decreased in its
nutritional value, which hascorrelated not just with
physical health effects, butmental health effects.
(23:04):
Our brains are not getting whatthey need through our diet to
function in a healthy way.
And this book is so phenomenal.
When I went through the researchin this book, I read it a couple
of times, and then I had theopposite, like I said, I had the
honor of interviewing Dr.
Kaplan on my show.
And then I also interviewed,I've interviewed David Stefan,
(23:27):
who is the vice president ofTrue Hope, which is the
micronutrient company that I useand that I recommend.
And I recommend them not becauseI don't get any financial
benefit from recommending them.
I've been very clear about that.
They are a nonprofit out ofCanada that was started
specifically to address bipolardisorder.
And as they've done research onit over the years, they've
discovered that it also helpswith ADHD symptoms, depression,
(23:50):
anxiety.
Because all of these mentalillnesses that we're seeing, one
of the main sources of thesymptoms is micronutrient
insufficiency.
And as David Stefan talked aboutwhen he when I interviewed him
recently, I believe it was inepisode 71, was when he talked
about this specific item.
(24:12):
There are four building blocksof the neurotransmitters in our
brain which are responsible foremotional response: vitamins,
minerals, omega-3s, and aminoacids.
And if you are gettinginsufficient levels in any of
those, your brain will not havethe building blocks that it
needs to create thoseneurotransmitters in healthy
(24:35):
levels.
And so we end up with our brainsnot being able to function in
healthy ways.
And it's just because our dietis not getting sufficient
nutrition.
Our brains are not gettingsufficient nutrition.
And one of the other things thatthey talk about in the better
brain is that there are geneticpredispositions to require
higher levels of micronutrition,which is why you see
(24:57):
generationally within familiespeople displaying the same
symptoms.
Their brains are not gettingwhat they need to function in a
healthy way.
As I continue to do to learnmore about like sources of
symptoms, I also learned aboutthe sources of symptoms that
come from trauma.
And I read The Body Keeps aScore by Vessel Vanderkoek.
(25:20):
And that was so eye-opening tome because I, for a long time,
believed that my bipolar hadbeen triggered by trauma, but I
thought that it was triggering adisease because I believed,
again, what I had been told bythe expert that, you know, the
experts, I should say, that Ihad a chemical imbalance.
(25:40):
And I had, I believed that I,you know, what I had been told
that that trauma can trigger thedisease.
And the interesting thing isthat the trauma is being, is
causing sort symptoms, but it isnot triggering some kind of
disease.
It is triggering a traumaresponse in somebody.
And if you can address theunderlying source, if you can
(26:00):
identify the trauma and usetrauma-informed modalities like
EMDR and somatic therapies andIFS, which is internal family
systems or rapid resolutiontherapy, you can actually
resolve the source of thesymptoms.
You can resolve the trauma, healthe trauma, and resolve the
symptoms.
(26:21):
You have not triggered a diseasein your mind.
It is the brain's response totrauma.
The symptoms are the brain'sresponse to trauma.
And then I continued to do moreresearch and I had started using
a lot of these treatmentsalready, not fully understanding
what they were.
I didn't, I didn't, again, Ilike I mentioned with the with
(26:42):
the micronutrient nutrients, theEmpower Plus from True Hope.
I didn't understand what it wasdoing in my brain.
I was just desperately lookingfor something that would help me
manage my symptoms better.
And it worked, and so I kepttaking it.
But I didn't really understandwhat I was doing.
I didn't understand what it wasgiving to my brain.
I didn't understand when I wasseeking therapy that I was
(27:04):
actually resolving the sourcesof my symptoms.
When I finally found atrauma-informed therapist, when
I finally found, you know, I forme I used EMDR and I used some
somatic therapies, breath workand yoga, that helped to resolve
the underlying sources of thesymptoms, helped me to heal the
trauma, which resolved thesymptoms.
(27:25):
And then I started, I had alsobeen using uh mindfulness
meditation, which was a hugegame changer for me.
When I very first was introducedto mindfulness meditation, I was
working, uh, I had beenintroduced to it through um John
Cabot Zinn, who is consideredthe father of Western
meditation.
And I've talked about him beforeon my podcast.
(27:46):
And I could feel that it washelping me, but I couldn't
meditate for 45 minutes a day.
I I was a mother with youngchildren, and I didn't have the
ability to block out 45 minutesa day to meditate.
And when I bought his book, itwas more than I could handle
when I first bought it.
It's it's called FullCatastrophe Living, and it's a
fantastic book.
(28:08):
But I couldn't, at the time, Icouldn't read a book that thick.
I didn't have the ability toconcentrate that long, and nor
did I have the time or desire todo it.
I didn't really want to do thatat the time.
But I found Mindfulness, aneight-week plan for finding
peace in a frantic world by MarkWilliams and Danny Penman.
(28:29):
And again, I've had theprivilege of interviewing Danny
Penman twice on my program.
And that was a game changer forme.
They broke down why mindfulnesshelped, what it is actually
doing for the brain, how it ishelping you regain the ability
to manage what's happening byjust learning how to stay
(28:50):
present.
When we pathologize about thesesymptoms, when we treat them
like diseases and call themdiseases and believe they're
diseases, when we believe thatmania is a disease and
depression is a disease andanxiety is a disease, it takes
the ability to do anything aboutit out of our hands.
(29:10):
We don't have control overwhat's happening, we become
victims.
But when you recognize thatsymptoms are information, it's
the brain's way ofcommunicating, and you learn how
to stay present with thesymptoms and stay present with
the the emotions and look atthem with curiosity, without
without judgment, withcuriosity, without judgment.
(29:32):
You can look for clues, you canbecome a detective in your life.
And that is one of the thingsthat mindfulness meditation did
for me is it helped me becomemore self-aware, helped me learn
how to stay present withdiscomfort and try and instead
of trying to just escape it,look at the symptoms with
curiosity over judgment, andthen that helped me start
identifying the sources of thesymptoms, which helped me become
more effective in treating thesources and resolving the
(29:55):
symptoms.
I have not gone to college yet.
I'm actually in the process ofapplying for an advanced degree
because I do want to turn mythis this treatment approach
into a replicable treatmentmodality that can be used,
licensed, and used in clinics tohelp other practitioners use
(30:17):
this to help people heal.
But no, I don't have lettersbehind my name right now.
I have a brain, I have theability to read research and
understand it and apply it, andI have applied what I have
learned in my own life, and ithas helped me to heal
completely.
I have resolved the sources ofmy symptoms, and I help other
(30:39):
people do the same thing.
And as I have done thisresearch, as I have read these
books, as I have learned aboutthe the history of psychiatry
and the truth about psychotropicdrugs from people with letters
behind their names who have donethe research, who were doing it
with an unbiased in an unbiasedeffort to understand what they
(31:01):
had been taught, I learned thetruth and I started to
understand that I had beenmisled when I was told that I
had a chemical imbalance.
I had been misled when I wastold that I had bipolar
disorder.
I don't even like using thatterm anymore.
It is a meaningless term thatturns people into victims, as
(31:24):
I've mentioned on previousepisodes.
Yes, bipolar symptoms are veryreal.
And yes, they can be very scary.
I do understand that there aretimes when somebody is a danger
to themselves or others and theymight need medication
temporarily to help them getback to a stable place so that
they can then start working onhealing.
But medication and diagnosisshould not be the long-term
(31:48):
solution.
None of these drugs have beentested for safety for long-term
use.
Our brains were not designed tobe on chemical, to be chemically
altered permanently.
That is not the natural state ofour brains.
And it is not healthy for ourbrains.
It is important for us to makesure that we learn how to trust
(32:11):
ourselves.
When we say trust the expertsand give them our blind faith,
we put ourselves at risk.
I would love it if we could justtrust the experts.
That would be amazing.
But the experts in thepsychiatric field are being
taught from curriculum that hasbeen written by psychiatrists
(32:32):
who are paid by drug companies.
There's evidence for that.
That was one of the things thatwas made me the most angry when
I read The Anatomy of anEpidemic.
So it's critical that you doyour own research.
Don't trust me.
Don't trust the experts, trustyourself.
Do the research yourself.
Read about it yourself.
(32:52):
I will link all of these booksin the show notes, and I
encourage you to begin learningyourself.
I would start, I would encourageeverybody to start with Anatomy
of an Epidemic.
That was so eye-opening to me.
It helped me to realize that alot of the intuition that I had
over the years about what wasgoing on was spot on, but I
(33:13):
didn't trust myself because Ihad been conditioned to trust
the experts.
I want to invite you to learnfor yourself.
You can start with my book ifyou want to just learn about my
own experience.
I list all of the research inthere that I used that helped me
to learn about each of thosetools and how they can be
effective in helping to treatdifferent underlying sources of
(33:34):
symptoms that leads to healing.
And then if you're so inclined,you can start reading these
books for yourself and learn foryourself the truth about these
symptoms and that they canindeed be resolved.
I would love to hear from you.
If you have any comments orquestions, please send me an
email.
My email address is linked inthe show notes.
(33:57):
If you haven't started yourhealing process and you think
you're ready to get started,send me an email and let me
know.
If you haven't developed a moodcycle survival guide for
yourself, make sure you go inthe show notes, click on the on
the link and get your free moodcycle survival guide that will
start you your first step tohealing and recovery.
I hope that you will learn howto trust yourself.
(34:19):
Learn how to do your ownresearch.
Learn for yourself the truththat will set you free.
SPEAKER_01 (34:25):
Until next time, upsiders.
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