EP 1 Redefining Mental Health

(0:09 – 1:09)
Hey Kathleen, it is so great to have you here for the Viva View interview series that’s going to be hosted by our very quick Viva View perspective writing we’ll be putting out each month and our big passion is helping the world see mental wellness through a different lens than the dominant narrative, which has been really overcome with the DSM a manual that all mental health practitioners use to label and identify people who are struggling with common groupings of symptoms. It was actually designed out of a census report through a hospital and I personally find it very damning. A lot of people feel like, oh my gosh, I was just labeled with fill in the blank disorder and it sounds like, oh my gosh, even by definition, if you Google it, it sounds very bleak.

(1:10 – 1:51)
It causes a lot of despair and people go into really dark places feeling like they’re broken and that’s our mission is to help people know they are not broken because every single human system is designed to cope, to adapt and to survive. So today’s inaugural interview is on the topic of the old school idea of a label of disordered versus where we’re trying to move the planet and I know you and I are really aligned on this to each person being the hero of their story. So I’m going to talk to you about that and invite you in here before we get going.

(1:51 – 2:07)
I’ll just say Kathleen is an amazing, amazing leader in this space. She’s full of love herself. She wrote a book called Love Seed, which is super inspirational personally to me and really speaks to the concept that I’m talking about today.

(2:07 – 2:28)
So I’m just wondering, Kathleen, what thoughts you have as I tee up our topic of conversation. What came to me when you were talking about people going into a dark place and feeling broken is this quote by Ernest Hemingway back in the 90s when I used to do a lot of workshops. I know what quote you’re going to share.

(2:28 – 2:36)
I love it so much. It’s so tender, but go ahead. It’s that the world breaks everyone apart and some are strong in the broken places.

(2:39 – 2:51)
And I, for some reason, that’s what grabbed me early on in my career. And part of it is because I was broken apart and became strong in my broken places. Yeah.

(2:51 – 3:07)
And it allowed me to become, you know, have a long career helping other people that way. And so I just never believed the BS about the DSM. I just never did because it was.

(3:08 – 3:23)
And so and we’ve met many years since then, you know, this was in the 90s and you’ve been a champion to the many of us who just. We dug our heels in and said, no, yeah, not that way. Yeah.

(3:24 – 3:35)
And you share the quote one more time, just say it again. The world breaks everyone apart and some are strong in the broken places. The world breaks everyone apart.

(3:35 – 3:56)
There’s no shame in that. I think a lot of this old school and dominant conversation about disorders and the DSM and these diagnoses codes and frankly, gosh, you know, money is even tied into it because insurance won’t reimburse if you don’t have a label. Everyone’s broken.

(3:56 – 4:03)
Everyone. This life will break everyone. There are experiences that people have that are really, really hard.

(4:03 – 4:25)
And the good news, in my opinion, is that our bodies are built and designed not by us, but by design to overcome. And obviously, sometimes people don’t. But my bias is that they don’t because the environment around them is telling them in a myriad of ways that they can’t.

(4:26 – 4:40)
And they don’t have enough support and reflection back of their own innate goodness and capacity to you. Yeah. That’s really the role of the therapist or any healer is, you know, we don’t do it for them.

(4:41 – 4:56)
What we we reflected that we there’s an inner healer in every human. And we just have to show them the way. And part of it, I do believe, is that, you know, we who have this privilege to work with people like that.

(4:56 – 5:06)
We have to go through it. Yeah, we have to go through the hero’s journey. You know, you had said, like, each person is the the writer or the hero.

(5:08 – 5:13)
Yes, we are. The heroine or the hero in our own journey. I wrote about that in my book.

(5:13 – 5:23)
You know, it’s Joseph Campbell. He he figured it out, you know, and he didn’t he didn’t use a label. He said, this is a journey and we will go into the belly of the beast at some point.

(5:25 – 5:36)
Yeah, darkness and people. I mean, there’s a madness. There’s another kind of illness that’s that has people running from that or or making that wrong, right? That’s its own madness.

(5:36 – 5:59)
But, you know, I had shared with you that I was sometimes I testify in court for people. And this particular case, without going into too much detail, the man was very intent on proving that his ex-wife had a mental illness, was mentally ill. And honestly, they asked me 500 times, and I said, no, no, no, no, no.

(5:59 – 6:26)
Well, how do you explain this trauma, trauma, trauma? And what doesn’t that mean that she has a mental illness? No, she’s been traumatized, you know, to keep doing it. There was a favorite quote shared by Gabor Mate in one of his books, which was the right question isn’t asking what’s wrong with you. The right question is asking what happened to you? Yeah, yeah.

(6:26 – 6:36)
What happened to you? Yeah, which is much more compassionate. It’s like, yes, of course, you just ran a marathon. Of course, you’re freezing cold and you’re dehydrated and you’re weak.

(6:37 – 6:42)
You’re not weak because you’re broken. You’re weak because you just went through something really, really hard. Right.

(6:42 – 6:55)
And think about all the adaptations that we naturally do to cope with things. And some of those are very, very damned by our society. And I’m not suggesting everyone should run out and become an alcoholic.

(6:55 – 7:20)
But a lot of our compulsive struggles with drugs, with food, with shopping, with work come out of our bodies, just scramble to survive something to say, oh, something really hard happened. I don’t want to take a look at that. Here’s how I’m going to doggy paddle on the surface and keep that here because that’s really hard and really overwhelming.

(7:21 – 7:42)
Right. But we know that there is a way not to go into it to relive it, but to rewire the adaptation from it to live in the present, right, to live in the present in a very full, alive, engaged way. And that a lot of those natural coping strategies can also cause a lot of damage.

(7:42 – 7:56)
It’s sophisticated, right? It’s much more sophisticated than just you’re well or you’re sick, you know, you’re good or you’re bad. That’s a very trauma kind of way of handling things. So black and white, and that’s from trauma.

(7:56 – 8:11)
And if you look at what’s going on in the world stage right now, it’s all trauma. And it’s the good news is that there’s more awareness. Like the many people that I never thought I’d hear these words come out of their mouth are saying I have ancestral trauma.

(8:11 – 8:29)
Right. So, you know, whether it be, you know, biographical, ancestral birth trauma, birth trauma. You know, as our cells hold this info, right? Even if we can’t remember it, our bodies are still doing what they need to do to survive.

(8:30 – 8:35)
Right. We do, right. Like if I just told you, oh yeah, I sawed my leg off.

(8:35 – 8:48)
You might be like, wow, that’s really awful. Like that doesn’t seem like a healthy, adaptive thing to do. But if we like widen the lens and say, oh, my leg was trapped in a bear trap and I was in freezing conditions.

(8:49 – 9:06)
And so I did something heroic to save my life. That’s the kind of thing we’re talking about. Like when you just change the perspective and you know what questions to ask and how to look, you can see that it’s really a hero’s move, even if it’s causing destruction now.

(9:07 – 9:19)
Yeah. You know, I’m sure you’ve had this one many times, you know, where people come in or they on, I have an intake, right? Um, so the question is about their childhood. I had a happy childhood.

(9:20 – 9:32)
Um, um, my mom and dad fought every day. In fact, they could get violent at times and there was a lot of alcohol and I was very, I hid in my room a lot. But I really, I knew they loved me and, and I just need help.

(9:33 – 9:43)
I can’t stop cleaning the house and I can’t stop shopping. Right. And I’m wondering why that and I exploded my husband, but I mean, otherwise life is fine.

(9:44 – 9:49)
Yeah. So look at that. Yeah.

(9:50 – 10:03)
And when, you know, when you can say to that woman, Oh, that makes sense. What, what makes sense? Well, and then you start the process to show them and, and even, and, and so there’s a new name. It’s, it’s not a diet.

(10:03 – 10:15)
I don’t even really know that it’s a diagnosis. It’s not even, it’s not even in the DSM yet, but it’s complex PTSD. No, she didn’t suffer a tornado or a hurricane or a house burn or, or rape.

(10:15 – 10:21)
She didn’t. She’s just every day was terrified. Yes.

(10:21 – 10:37)
You know, and that did something to her nervous system and the OCD helps to just keep it at bay. But now that adaptation is hurting everybody. And especially people get so relieved when they, you mean, I’m not crazy.

(10:37 – 10:41)
No, no, no. You’re not crazy. Wow.

(10:43 – 11:02)
So let’s break that down, right? There is a present day adaptation for something from the past. And you even brought in ancestral trauma. So it can be your parents past or your grandparents past that was been passed down to you through epigenetics or behavioral learning.

(11:03 – 11:28)
And here you are today using an adaptation that makes perfect sense from another time, another generation, another era, who knows when you might not even consciously remember it. But I can tell you after sitting with thousands of clients that there is always a reason. There is always a why, whether it’s consciously known or not.

(11:28 – 11:58)
And that why is always tied into that person’s attempts to cope, survive, adapt. And that recognition, stepping out of the what you were talking, she was holding, this particular person was holding a story of brokenness, right? Without looking at or understanding the bigger perspective, her conclusion could only be, well, I’m defective. Look at me.

(11:58 – 12:05)
I’m hurting people I love. I can’t stop cleaning, right? There’s a compulsive component there. My wires must be broken.

(12:05 – 12:16)
They’re not broken, right? They’re still set on something to get through something from the past. So beautiful. It can be wire, and that’s the amazing thing.

(12:16 – 12:36)
I mean, I know that that word rewired is used, and I know that we don’t really have wires, but that there are electric impulses, that we understand now that the electric nature of the brain, right, and of the system, it’s energy. You can’t see it. It’s just moving.

(12:37 – 13:05)
And it’s a long way from the chemical imbalance idea of long ago, where here we’ve got this, we made this medicine, and it’s perfect for your defect, your chemical imbalance, right? And how many times do you hear somebody after 25 years on SSRIs come in? Oh, my gosh. No mojo, no lust for life. It’s been dampened all that time, and it’s not working anymore.

(13:06 – 13:21)
And so they end up coming, you know, I talk therapy hasn’t helped or, you know, whatever, the SSRIs haven’t helped. And first of all, you say, well, when did you go on? Well, postpartum. How old is your child now? 25.

(13:22 – 13:37)
Oh, okay. What happened? Well, the doctor said I’d have to stay on forever. No, maybe in a pinch, you know, through a crisis to get through.

(13:37 – 13:49)
But, you know, all those years, that person’s brain has been affected by those drugs. And the real, you know, the real issue was never addressed. You know, I, yeah, go ahead.

(13:49 – 14:12)
It breaks my heart, really. Yeah, I have two really strong reactions while you were sharing that story. First, like the total misleading of this human being about their body, and what was lost for a quarter of a century in terms of aliveness and well-being.

(14:12 – 14:22)
So that’s the first, like that hit me hard. And the second is that this is all, you said the BS about the DSM. I never heard that.

(14:22 – 14:30)
It was funny, but like, it’s just so much BS. Like, this is not right. Like, and I don’t even know if I blame the doctor.

(14:30 – 14:45)
I think they’re taught that way in medical school. It’s like, oh, you have this problem. We’re either going to medicate it, give it surgery or tough, right? Someone being told, like, this is the answer for the rest of your life is like a jail cell.

(14:46 – 15:05)
And it just feeds into that thing we’re trying so passionately to get away from with the Viva View, like this different perspective is that that really embodies the idea that you’re broken, that there’s a defect. And here we’re going to give you some medications for the rest of your life. It implies your body cannot adapt.

(15:05 – 15:10)
And that is just 100% wrong. It’s so wrong. It’s so archaic.

(15:11 – 15:18)
And, you know, again, you said this, I don’t blame psychiatrists. It’s what we understood. There was the time we thought the world was flat.

(15:18 – 15:26)
I know some people still do. But I was thinking the same thing with bloodletting, with like, whatever, leeches or, you know, this is the way we. Yeah.

(15:26 – 15:36)
And so I don’t fault them. I mean, and many have really made progress than the younger ones. You know, there’s just a lot of more interplay, actually, between therapists and psychiatrists now.

(15:36 – 15:55)
There’s, you know, a beautiful joining and an understanding. But one of the other things that, again, this is, you know, I’ll say, well, did you ever try to get off? I did three times. But each time it was so the symptoms were so bad.

(15:55 – 16:07)
And my psychiatrist said, see, that’s why you have to stay on. Those were withdrawal symptoms, total withdrawal. Like, that is not because you have to go back on.

(16:07 – 16:35)
But the tapering needs to be really, really, really gradual if you’ve been on that medicine for a long time. And you need to be, like, working to get to the causes that you never got to, right? So I tell that it happens at least three times a week, I think, that I have this conversation with a potential new client where I say, let me give you this information about tapering. You have to find somebody who’s going to walk you through it really gradually.

(16:35 – 16:41)
You’re going to be OK. You won’t have brain zaps if you do it this way. No, you don’t need that necessarily.

(16:41 – 16:54)
Let’s try. Let’s try without, you know, and as you know, I’ve gotten into using ketamine and other things to help people because that really can ease that process. And then you don’t keep doing that.

(16:54 – 17:11)
You don’t keep on the ketamine. It’s just to help you get through a process, right? So beautiful. And I’m so glad you’re doing this because you can see how I’m never at a loss of words when it comes to this because I have so, so many stories.

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So many stories. I do, too. Oh, my gosh.

(17:14 – 17:42)
Well, and I was thinking about the power of your words when you were just illustrating the story and using the words you would say to them, the power of your words to say, you’re going to get through this. Like any good guide or any good coach of anything, I mean, mental wellness, sports, leadership, anything that is invaluable to say, I’ve seen this a thousand times. I know what you’re going through.

(17:42 – 17:46)
I’m here with you. You’re going to be okay. It’s like you’re in the swimming pool.

(17:46 – 17:56)
The deep end seems scary, but I’m right here. And if you need it for a second, I’m here and we’re going to get you there. That is gold, right? I have chills, actually.

(17:56 – 18:01)
Like how powerful that is. I have to walk with people through it. There’s no other way.

(18:03 – 18:14)
And I say therapy happens in between sessions as well. And sometimes when people are going through a really hard time, we have to give them extra attention. That’s okay.

(18:14 – 18:18)
That’s what we’re here for. It’s not more meds. You don’t need more meds.

(18:19 – 18:29)
You just need more encouragement. You know, you need to be shown that, you know, and the brain plasticity starts to come back after a while. Yes, it’s so amazing.

(18:30 – 18:36)
It’s natural. It’s nature. Yeah, that’s just the most amazing things.

(18:36 – 18:57)
And we’re going to have future, you know, episodes about chronic illness, chronic pain, like those old label words that are being used where someone says, oh, I just have this chronic fatigue syndrome. It’s done. No, I have seen people who’ve gotten that label and it goes away when we take the stress load out of their body.

(18:57 – 19:28)
It’s a topic for another chapter, but there is beautiful stuff that our bodies are capable of. So I wanted to ask you, when you hear the word hero as a different way of understanding, when someone comes forward with like a ton of symptoms, what does that conjure up for you? Or how does that align with the work that you have been involved with? What this is, this came over me a while back and I’ve used it many times. It relates to being a hero.

(19:28 – 20:01)
And sometimes I’m so touched by like who a person is in the world, right? And the way they treat other people and how they are with their kids and the amazing trauma that they’ve been through, like unspeakable. And as I find out, and they used all those adaptations to do all that good stuff, right? And now they’re having a hard time and unraveling. I ended up saying to a woman at one point, you are a miracle.

(20:03 – 20:09)
You are a walking miracle. And I meant it. And I kind of teared up when I said it because I really felt it.

(20:11 – 20:18)
And I meant it. And she took it in. And she said, she started looking in the mirror and telling herself that she was a miracle.

(20:19 – 20:23)
Oh my gosh. Yes. And that’s what I mean.

(20:23 – 20:47)
Like it’s heroic to get through it and not repeat it. You know, and not repeat the abuse or the neglect or whatever it may be. And not only that, but to, you know, often at the person’s own expense, to become heroic for other people.

(20:47 – 21:05)
So I feel so blessed to be able to work with a heroic person who I see as a miracle and say, let’s focus on you right now and what happened. And let’s bring that part of you that got left behind into your life. And imagine who you’re going to become and what you’re going to do with all of you present.

(21:05 – 21:10)
And they get really excited. Oh, it’s so exciting. Yeah, that’s the healing process.

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It’s going back. And yet I’m amazed at what people have done. Anyway, yeah.

(21:16 – 21:45)
Well, I was just thinking about your words, again, the power of your words, because if someone’s been through something super hard and they like cut through the jungle and they did what they had to do and they, you know, starved and they did all the things to get through to survive. And they feel like they’re a bad person or they’re causing damage or they’re broken. And you can say, because I’ve had clients where I’ve said something about them being a miracle or they’re, wow, you are so strong.

(21:45 – 21:57)
And they are like, what? Because that’s not their identity. But the power of that is so great. And I know you’re a relationship expert in lots of different settings.

(21:57 – 22:13)
But, you know, a lot of times when someone feels really crappy about themselves, they have a hard time taking responsibility for the damage they’re causing because they already feel like crap. So they’re hanging on by a thread and then they end up being super defensive. But I was thinking of the power of saying, no, you’re actually a hero.

(22:13 – 22:45)
And as they embrace that, or you’re a miracle. And if this woman’s saying it to herself in the morning, every day, I imagine her capacity to be in relationship would go up by a lot because she wouldn’t be holding such a negative self-concept, which then allows you to be more receptive to hurting other, to like how you may have hurt someone else and say, yes, you know, I’m so sorry because inside I know I’m a hero. And there was collateral damage along the way and I can say, I’m sorry.

(22:45 – 22:57)
Whereas when someone feels really, really bad about themself, it’s like impossible to say sorry. It’s impossible to say sorry because it would be too crushing because they already feel sorry. Because they’re already smashed inside.

(22:58 – 23:11)
You know, this morning I got a little message. These are like the great moments that you say, oh, okay. Somebody I’d done some deep work with a few weeks ago, she said, and she was very harsh on herself.

(23:11 – 23:24)
She had a strong inner critic and she had a strong outer critic. So she was harsh with others, right? Some people, of course, and the other women seem to go in but it’s gender based, not really. I think it can be both.

(23:24 – 23:39)
It can be back and forth. And so she said, since I’ve been more compassionate with myself, I haven’t been as mad or judgmental with everybody. Even my parents.

(23:40 – 23:47)
Amazing! I was like, yeah, hallelujah. Congratulations. Yeah.

(23:48 – 24:01)
And that, you know, that work, it didn’t take that long. That long. It’s not like it takes years if you have the right help.

(24:02 – 24:13)
If the issue itself is being addressed and not just the symptoms. Think about it, Julie. Not the band-aids, not the medicine, not the avoiding.

(24:13 – 24:25)
Yeah, go ahead. Certain forms of neurodiversity, ADHD, bipolar disorder, whatever that is. That’ll be an episode.

(24:25 – 24:44)
Don’t worry. Anything that has disorder on it, we’re giving it new names. And trauma and PTSD and even complex grief, complicated grief, all, and anxiety and OCD, all have similar symptoms.

(24:46 – 25:22)
And it’s kind of luck of the draw. Whatever your particular diagnoser is focusing on, what are you going to get? You know, and it’s, you know, if you just look at the symptoms instead of the cause, the root, you know, as I’m gardening and all of that, I was gardening this morning, you know, and I am looking at, you know, there’s so many little weeds coming up and I can even just pull them up and then they’re going to grow right back or I can actually take the time to go, you know, get it out there, right? And so it takes longer, but then it really, it doesn’t. In the long run, it’s more efficient.

(25:23 – 25:49)
Absolutely. Just because I feel like your book is so simpatico with this like beautiful vision of the world and this very loving stance. It’s called Love Seed, but I’ll tell you my takeaway from it, which is on a more global perspective is that we all have this beautiful purpose and reason and higher kind of vibration that we can be operating at in the world.

(25:49 – 26:22)
And that oftentimes there are, like we talked about at the beginning, these challenging things that happen in life and from them, although we don’t wish them on anyone, on ourselves or anyone else that we can really even grow stronger or grow more in our relationship with this dharma right out in the world. I wanted to hear your perspective as the author. And by the way, I just want to say for anyone listening, you should go to her website, which is Kathleen Hannigan.

(26:23 – 26:48)
I’m sure we’ll tag all these things, but it is just like a little love bomb. You go there and you like see beautiful quotes and you feel inspired and there’s links to cool things and you can get a beautiful meditation and a part of her book. And anyway, I just want to put that out there, but also get a little bit on your perspective, kind of philosophically about how people navigate through the hardships that the world provides.

(26:49 – 27:26)
Yeah, I’ve always, you know, my spiritual and my psychotherapy path have always been very interwoven, right? And I, you know, the concept of the wounded healer that Campbell was the first one to come up with that has to do with the fact that the place we’ve been wounded, it’s the same, it’s the quote, you know, we can become strong in those places. We could even, if we’re called to, become a healer in that direction. And there are many different definitions of healer, right? It could be somebody focused on the environment, on children.

(27:28 – 27:50)
So the idea is, and then there’s a chapter I wrote from karma to dharma, like, you know, karma is kind of like, what happens to us? No, it’s not punishment. It’s just, it’s like based on the law of, you know, what goes around comes around, it’s energy, you know? So we have a certain karma, we live out. We aren’t all born into wealth.

(27:51 – 28:16)
We aren’t all born with healthy bodies. You know, we have things to deal with, different illnesses of every kind. And those parts of us that go through that, you know, they can either become exiled and buried, or we can really use them to create what I call our dharma, right? You know, the dharma is like, it’s the best, you know, translation would be purpose.

(28:16 – 28:49)
It’s what our calling is in the world, right? And that the place you are broken and unhealed, and you then turn your attention to do that healing, opens you in a way, opens your capacity for compassion, because the only way you can heal is to start to have compassion for yourself, and bring compassion for the world, right? And so that healing of the self, that transformation from, you know, the adaptation to the true self, helps the world. And that’s what the book is about. It’s a template for birthing a new world.

(28:50 – 29:06)
Like, what if we all went around, automatically, we understood if there was a trauma, we needed to go do some work to heal it. You know, like my dogs, they shake things off, right? They know how to do that. You know, or we’d have a place to go to say, I just experienced this loss.

(29:07 – 29:23)
Could you help me get through it? You know, it’s starting to happen. People are more aware, and they come and they say, you know, I lost someone I loved, and it’s bringing back all my grief. So could you help me get through it? And they don’t think they’re broken.

(29:23 – 29:35)
They just think it’s a normal thing, right? But of course, this is something. I don’t want to carry it on, or I don’t want to burden my husband. So those are the heroes going through this journey.

(29:35 – 29:52)
And it really does lead us to have more compassion. You know, Gabor Matei, you know, his whole work is based on compassionate inquiry into the self. It changes the way you see everything, the way you work, the way you do everything.

(29:53 – 29:58)
So I, you know, it’s, some people say, I feel that, you know, I’ve heard this,