Chris Piette

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I've approached it in different ways and forms over the years, but at heart, I am a creative. To render a work of beauty in a world that can often seem cruel and unfeeling is one of the greatest acts of rebellion.

My first passion was, and still is, music. I've taught myself singing, guitar, drums, synths, composition, production, writing, and recording, and the combination of these outlets of manifestation is the closest expression of the truths in my heart and mind.

My second (but not secondary) drive is the pursuit of spirituality, occult science, and self-transformation. It's a path that began with a passing interest in the utility of meditation for emotion regulation, but over the past decade has grown into an ever-evolving and constant work of personal refinement. I am convinced that the synthesis of psychology, neurophysiology, psychiatry, cognitive behavioral therapy, and other modern modalities with the wisdom of the mysteries that has been passed through the ages will lead to the next great human revolution - the revolution of thought and feeling. I am here to bring about that change in myself, and then the world around me.

Find out more about Chris and his work / art / music:

Twitter: @NFLM888

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nflm888

Web: https://www.aeonsquad.com

Enabled / Disabled Podcast Co-Producer and freelance C# / .Net Web Developer mentioned at start of episode: Adam Leffert https://www.fullstackdeveloper.com

Machine Transcription provided by Happyscribe

Chris Piette.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

Welcome to the Enabled Disabled Podcast. I'm your host, Gustavo Serafini. I was born with a rare physical disability called PFFD. My journey has been about self-acceptance persistence and adaptation. On the show, we'll explore how people experience disability, how the stories we tell ourselves can both enable and disable, how vulnerability is a foundation for strength and why people with disabilities can contribute more than we imagine. I hope that leaders, companies, clinicians, families and friends will better understand our capacity to contribute to the world and help enable us to improve it.

Chris Piette is a software developer and musician. In this episode, we dive into a big topic mental health. Chris is generous, courageous, and honest in sharing his experiences with depression and bipolar disorder. Chris shares his adaptations, including meditation, music and different spiritual practices that have helped him better understand himself. Chris has a keen intellect, which you'll pick up on right away. It was a great conversation that covers a lot of ground because Chris has such a wide and deep range of interests. There is also invaluable advice here about how to better understand people who are going through depression and what you can do to help.

We have an exciting announcement. We have activated a recording feature on our website where you can ask past guests questions as well as future guests. If we get enough questions for past guests, we'll invite them back on the show to answer your questions. Also, stay tuned for the newsletter where we will be previewing future guests and taking your questions ahead of time. Just go to www.EnabledDisabled.com and press the Start recording button to leave us your questions. Thank you for listening. See you in the next episode.

All right, Chris, thank you so much for being here for taking the time to be on the show. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Savvo. It is a pleasure to be here, and I very much appreciate the opportunity to address the topics that we're going to address. Awesome.

So for people who don't know you, I met you through Adam, who is co producer of the podcast, and he's a phase partner. And you're both software developers, correct?

Yeah. My last job. That's how I know Adam. He was doing contracting work for the company that I work for. So he was like my senior Dev. But the cool thing was he didn't answer to management. He answered to me, I don't mean that in a power answering to me, he wasn't on my back and call. What I meant is that the responsibility that he took on was to make me better at writing code. And then getting the product done was less important than that. It was here.

He played a mentorship role, and I would say now I learned more from him in several months of working together as far as, like practical code development making products than I did in all of College and all of my other jobs combined. So I give them props for that one. That's not an exaggeration. Either that's high praise.

Either Adam's amazing or the schooling wasn't as good as maybe it should have been Brown.

Computer science is no joke, buddy. All right.

You both went to Brown.

Yeah. After we first were introduced, he was like, I went on your LinkedIn, and I saw you went to Brown. Me too. Go, Brunonia. Whatever. So that was funny. Yeah. All right.

So then Adam is just that good. That's good to know.

He'll tell you the same.

Computer science major in College. Talk to me a little bit about that. And then we're going to dive into the other issues. But just so people can get a feel for a little bit about who you are, what your background is, what got you into computer science.

So I'll Zoom out a little bit into the history there. And originally my intention up until I was about August that later. But I went into College wanting to be a doctor. There is a thing at Brown called Pleney program in Liberal medical education. And if you can assess it to that, you get guaranteed admission to Brown Med School. Warren Albert Med School. As long as you do all the requirements, you pass your classes, you do this and that you have to take Orgo, physiology, et cetera.

So that's what I was doing when I was 18. I was like, I'm hot shit. I'm going to be a doctor. Blah, blah, blah. I'm good. But the one really nice thing about Plieme is that you were not required or even expected to get a typical degree, major or concentration, as they call them, the ground reflective of your idea of a physician. So, like, it's common to see people who major in bio chemistry and specialize in things like physiology and organic chemistry, physical chemistry, all sorts of things like that for most Med school admission processes.

That's expected if you didn't take all the right classes and this and that and pay your dues and suffer the way that your forebears suffered, then you want to get in. But I didn't have that gatekeeper to deal with. So I took all classes in all different departments because I wanted to find out what I truly liked. So off the top of my head, some of the departments that I found most interesting were anthropology, sociology and religious studies off the top of my head. But my dad actually recommended to me he was like, you did computer science in high school.

You should try that again. You liked it back then. You're good at it. So try it again. So I was like, okay, that's fair, because I took computer science senior in high school. I liked it. I thought it was awesome. So I got into the intro classes, and I went through there and I was like, this is pretty good. As I went along, I compared the educational experience of the life Sciences and the pre medical path with the educational experience, the computer science path. And so what really bummed me out was such a large part of, like, bio and Chem.

And what have you was what I would call memorization, regurgitation and forgetting. You're not supposed to forget. A good student doesn't forget. But I forgot that because I didn't care about it. I just did it because I needed to get good grades. That was my motivator, right? I didn't really like when I actually got into that material. I like some of it. I thought bio was really cool. I really liked learning about evolution. Genetic stuff like that. Chemistry is very cool. Like, organic chemistry is a pain of a class.

But the reason is very cool concepts. It's all good stuff. But the format showing up in a class of 200 people, just being another face in the row and just being another sponge. That's what it felt like. Whereas when I was in computer science right off the bat, it was very self driven, self motivated. And the tasks you were expected to complete your coursework were very different in nature. I didn't have laboratories. There were exams, but not nearly as many. It was almost entirely projects. They would say, here's your intro project.

Do take, like a string, maybe take some very simple user input, do some word processing, maybe do some math, make an addition, calculator very simple stuff like that. But it would go on and on and on until, like, in one of the intro courses at the end of the class, you had to make Tetris. The game Tetris, the tumbling tetrinos or tetrados. And everyone was like, that was so hard. And then a lot of people who were interested in computer science bailed during the final because they're like, oh, my God, this is too much.

But that's the thing. It felt pretty sink or swim. When I came in, it felt like baptism by fire. I felt like as much as the teachers and Tas helped us. There were things that I can only figure out for myself. People can tell you intellectual concepts. They can explain programming, fundamentals classes, syntax, software design projects and all that stuff. But the term I'll use is grok. Grok is to intuitively apprehend something. So it's one of your past. You've already intellectually and perhaps abstractly understood something.

But then it becomes intuitive so that you don't have to work to recall the information. You don't have to work to engage the problem solving procedures that you've already built up in your head. You just go into them and you flow into them so that's what I was uncovering. It was problem solving. They would give me rules, boundaries and tools. And based on the constraints and opportunities I had, it was just a matter of me time willpower effort and intellect to solve the problems I was given.

And I found it so much more rewarding and intellectually stimulating. And I guess academically fulfilling than what I had been doing. And I was like, this is way more viable of a career for me. So senior year of College, had my first mental breakdown, quit cleaning, had no plan. But I knew that it was the right choice. It was a tough bandaid to rip off, but it was like it needed to happen. So there's my educational background.

It's interesting because it's almost like the computer science methodology is a metaphor for how we should approach life.

Right?

Problem solve, understand the constraints that are around us and work with it as best as we can and use our creativity, our intellect, our resources to make the most of it. So a lot more practical, a lot more interesting. I wish I had gone into computer science now. Never too late. But you said that was the first time you had a mental breakdown. Can you talk to us about that and dive in a little bit more? Yeah. What do you think caused it? What was the experience like, what did you take away from it?

Okay. So I mean, there are a lot of factors to unpack here. This is going to be debts and loan. So when we talk about mental illness, some people might even say that illness is a bad term. Some people might call it disability, but I've also heard the term differently abled. So people will describe different things. But for the purpose of conversation, I'm just going to say mental illness and know that I don't mean anything bad about it. There's no judgment call. It is a medical fact.

If it's in the DSM, it's an illness. And yes, homosexuality used to be in the DSM, but they can't hit every target, right.

For people who don't know DSM.

DSM is diagnostic, something or other. It's the book that every psychiatrist and therapist has, and it has all of the known, like diagnostics and pathology. Open to a page. This is the page where we get general depression. This is the page with ADHD, all that sort of stuff. And there are a lot of different diagnoses. And if you look at some of the titles, some of them are pretty wishy washy, like they're like the psychosis region. I think I saw something that was like unknown or undefined cause, unknown precipitation, unknown psychosis onset by nothing that we can tell you stuff like that.

And sometimes the Psychs don't have an easy time drawing the causal link between events in your life or chemical facts and the manifestation of your mental illness. So mental illness major factors of cause are genetics and trauma. More broadly, I would say lived experience. But trauma is the one I will dig in on. If you know anybody that grew up with parental abuse. Growing up, they have mental illness. It is not a subject for debate. They may not know it. They may not be diagnosed but elements of I guess I'll call them delusory elements.

And when I mean delusions, I mean things like self loathing thinking you're not good enough imposter syndrome, thinking that you're not worthy of being loved, stuff like that. Those are pathological behaviors that are instilled by years of conditioning. And so the accumulation of abuse is called cPTSD complex post traumatic disorder. So my first conception of PTSD, I would think if a soldier has something really bad, go down at the war or like someone had a very bad abusive partner, then generally there would be like one or two or three catalytic events that caused the PTSD to flip on like a switch, like something breaks cPTSD complex.

Ptsd is death by 1000 cups. It is when how do I put it? It's small things that add up. I guess I would say microaggressions and micro abuses. Drop a cup of water in the kitchen and it breaks and spills everywhere. And your parents like, you're such an idiot. That may not seem like the worst thing in the world, but if you hear that multiple times a week for your whole, how many? 16, 1820 something years, however long until you fly the coop. If you keep hearing stuff like that, that negative reinforcement with no actual basis in reality, this malicious stuff coming from the abusive figure.

You internalize it. Even if you know, intellectually, that the things that they impressed upon you are wrong. They become the neurological pathways that cause the experiences of self loathing and self hatred and selfjudgement. Those are exercise every time you experience any abuse. So they become conditioned patterns of thought and they exist in the mind. They exist in the brain. It's physiological and it is mental, and it's emotional. And so accumulated. Trauma is told that I don't know if I believe this. I don't know if this is true, but someone told me that if you have any history of abuse and trauma, you are on the borderline personality disorder spectrum.

I don't know if that's true. I don't know enough about borderline to say, maybe on borderline, maybe I have some of those traits I've never been diagnosed. I don't know, but I get by. But the idea is that chronic mental pathologies can be largely partially or entirely responsible or sorry, entirely caused by treatment, the way you're treated, the way you're raised, the way you're treated as an infant, as a child, as an adolescent, as a young adult, all those experiences from the people around you, the people you care about, authority figures, family, friends.

What have you all of those things add up. And if you just keep cutting the same spot, it's just going to become more and more scarred and tough and messed up. And that's what happens to our psyche. That's what sustained abuse does. I do not use the term abuse lightly, but it can mean a lot of things. I would say that the most grotesque and obvious manifestations of parental abuse are like physical, like if your parent hits you with a Bell or sexual where your parent says or does lewd things that are totally inappropriate with you.

Right. So those are the obvious ones. I don't mean that in a bad way. They're easy to see and understand. Right. But there are so many ways that it can come about casual verbal abuse, using derogatory words to talk about normal behavior, like accidents or developmental things. Not sure if I'm saying that the way I want to.

I think I understand what you're trying to say.

So.

That idea of to bring it back to the PTSD. There's a really interesting autobiography by a Colonel, David Hackworth called About Face, where he kind of described something similar with soldiers. He was a war veteran. He fought in multiple wars and said that everybody you made the analogy of like a water bottle. You go through trauma after trauma, after trauma, after trauma. Eventually that water bottle runs out and that soldier spirit mind, whatever can break either temporarily or permanently. So I think, is that a fair assessment of what you're trying to describe there?

Yes, it's completely accurate. Okay.

And those traumas can be small. Or they can be something much more substantial. So we don't have to get into the specifics. But for whatever reason, in your senior year of College, something eventually manifested where you became depressed.

The abuse and cPTSD is the first half of the story. So that gives you background. And I'm not going to say everything, but I provided enough information in that regard. The other thing is genetics. So I have a genetic proclivity towards bipolarity. I would not learn until too late from my father that his mother and his brother were R, both bipolar. But back in the day, it wasn't really understood or studied. I don't know what year people started diagnosing his bipolar, but it definitely wasn't when my grandmother was alive.

Right. So if you have that genetic disposition, it's just going to happen at some point. The depression, mania, both, they're going to happen. And it's most commonly when you're an adolescent. So, like, 18 to 22 is kind of like the sweet spot for when those things tend to come out. So I'm not really sure why that's, like when a lot of frontal load developments happening, all that stuff you're going your decision making, your cognitive processes are becoming adults, whatever that means. So, yeah, it was something that was the moment I was born, even before I was born, when my chromosomes and whatnot were assigned, that was simply a fact that I was going to deal with being bipolar at some point.

So the catalytic event was medical malpractice. My doctor was a quack. He was my PCP. First of all, he wasn't a psychiatrist. I went to this guy. I didn't know anything about mental health, mental illness, psychiatry, medication. So, like, doctor, I'm sad I feel like I don't enjoy the things I used to do. My passions and hobbies are dwindling. I'm less interested in socializing. I'm having trouble loving and respecting myself. I cry too much. He's like, all right, I know what you're talking about. We're going to get you on some as italopram.

So that was the antidepressant I tried. So after a few weeks, I felt so good, better than I had in my entire life. I called them. I was like, Doctor, the antidepressant works. I feel so good. Not only am I not depressed, but I actually feel happy and excited about things. I feel like the brain fog and the muddiness in my cognition have gone away. I'm more positive. I don't have to beat back as many negative intrusive thoughts. I was like, I'm healing. I'm like getting there.

And he's like, That's awesome. So now that you're there, you don't need the antidepressant anymore. You can just stop taking it. Which anyone with any experience in psychiatry will tell you is a huge mistake that is violently negligent. I will assert, when you have someone on a psychiatric medication, you are supposed to monitor them and talk to them regularly, at least once a month. For months, I heard the range nine months, which, you know, Ballpark, sure. And I was under his observation for about three or four weeks.

He called a good ripped me off of the antidepressant. There was no weeding up or weeding down or also produced titration going from a low dose to a small dose plateauing than going down. We didn't do that. We didn't do any of the things that I later learned were absolutely fundamental to psychiatric practice. I'll define this term later, but the antidepressant triggered hypomania in me, but then going off of it caused me to become severely acutely pathologically manic to the point where my decision making, cognition, executive functioning were all severely compromised.

And what followed that was a severe, really bad, long depressive episode come up, peak breakdown, depression. That's what happened. And that's been the trend. That exact phenomenon has happened to me. I would say about four times, four major times in my life. There have been a couple, like, really short hypo manic episodes in between, but nothing bad happened. I didn't care. It was fine. So, yeah, super manic. And then super depressed medication, mismanagement, genetic proclivity abuse, catalytic factors. And this was also accompanied by my first real foray into existential banking.

When I first started getting depressed, I was lying in bed and I was like, Why do I do anything that I do? I really thought about it. I couldn't find the answer. I was like, Am I serving myself? Am I serving a higher purpose? Is there value to what I'm doing? Like, do I need to contribute to society? Do I care about society? Do I want to change it? Do I want to conform to it? I didn't know I felt completely lost. So that was the philosophical aspect was also a thing.

So it was a perfect storm. There was a lot of factors happening at once, and the dam broke. That's what happened. The floodgates opened and I lost. It, flew off the handle, completely destabilized and had to take had to chose to take a month off of school.

I'm sorry to interrupt. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions by all means?

Okay.

When you're in that mental state? Manic mental state. How did you know how to ask for help or get help or do something about it, as opposed to just something else? Like what was the how can we help other people who might be going through that? Think through that process and understand what they're going through? If your executive decision making is off the handle, your manic, how do you know how to ask for help? How do you know when you need to reach out and make a change?

That's a very good question. I'll tell you quickly. Getting help for mental health is very hard, and it puts a lot of onus on people that are already compromised. And I would say that it may not be intentional, but it feels like victim blaming. It feels like there are parties that should be aware and responsible of people with these needs. Yet these people have to advocate for themselves before they can truly get help. So I'll back up a little bit. The answer to your question is one of my old sites told me a really good guy.

He said the first symptom of mania is lack of self awareness. And so what happens when you swap from depression to mania? Is that all the personality trait? Pathologies over excitement, racing thoughts, egotism. Those things are lost on you. Normally, if those things would happen to you, you would notice it's. Like, Why is my speech pressured today? Am I anxious about something? But no, that self reflection just stops happening. So the only help I got was feedback from the people close to me. So the most immediate one is my family.

My mother and sister were helpful beyond words. I would not be alive if I didn't have them. My dad gasoled me into thinking that I was psychotic, which I will get into later. I was not never have been psychotic. And that's a term that gets thrown around without being understood. And she's very, just compassionately in some circumstances. So my family is like some of my friends are like, Chris, you're acting differently. You're getting way too excited. You're taking all these different projects. You're not focusing on things.

You just look and seem unstable. What's going on? I was like, I don't know. I feel good. I'm doing all these things that I love. I'm enjoying life. I'm making friends. I'm making music. I'm happy. I'm doing all this stuff. What's the problem? How can you see me enjoying life? And think it's a problem. But then the symptoms ramped up. And it wasn't until the depressive episode began that I had any cognizance of the manic pathology. And so people just kept saying, like, word of value, blah blah blah.

And helping me and supporting me is the way that they could. But sometimes I wouldn't take the help. I was like, I'm not sick. I don't need it. When I became depressed. Depression is something that is easier to understand, especially since I had experience. Everyone goes through depressive bowels. To some degree, it's natural, whether it's clinical or pathologizable. That's a matter of opinion and severity and cuteness. So when I got to the severe depression, I was like, wow, the way that I was acting and thinking was not normal.

But the thing is, I rejected psychiatry because my malpracticing quack of the PCP royally screwed up my brain chemistry with S tauthran, and I didn't trust anybody. And I tried some therapists and I thought they sucked. I was like, depressive and having trouble talking about myself. And they keep saying, like, oh, you know, what do you want to talk about? Give me a topic, blah blah, blah, blah. They couldn't help me with the conversation. When my social anxiety and my ability to self express were compromised, they didn't meet me where I was.

I have a good therapist now. He's awesome. And I'll briefly plug BetterHelp com because I think that they are better therapeutic resource than any of the ones I've gotten through my insurance in the past. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I really paid $80 a week. Blah blah.

Can you tell us a little bit, Chris, again, for people who don't. And for me too, I've definitely had my bouts of depression in my life. But what's the difference from what you said? The difference between when you're manic is you lose your sense of self awareness, that for you was the leading kind of thing. That the leading symptom that you can look back on and say that was the difference. That was the difference in the experience. And then as you fell into that depressive state afterwards, you gained back that self awareness because clearly you said, hey, I'm not acting normally.

This isn't right.

Is that correct?

Am I understanding that absolutely depression, like with any illnesses I'll use the term again is accompanied by delusions delusions of feeling like you're worse than you are. Like the quality of your characters low. You have no potential to have you. But unless you're, like, severely depressed, as long as you're not on the suicidality line, which we can talk about later, it's a better advantage for self understanding and self awareness than the manic viewpoint. That is just a fact. Yeah. Any other thoughts or questions?

Well, let's get back to it. So you, your sister and your mother and some close friends helped you see that you were going through some shit and you were serious and you needed to get help. And as you went into that depressive state, you realized that as well. And so what was the learning process like, how did you find a good therapist? How did you not give up on it after, obviously for good reason, mistrusting that horrible first experience. What was that process like?

So the process of actually seeking healing, recovery, support.

Correct.

That is a lifelong process. It's something that I'm not sure will ever end. The most important aspect of my healing throughout my entire life has been my spiritual practice. There are three reasons why I am alive today. One, my family, two music, three spirituality. If I did not have all those things, I wouldn't have either killed myself or got myself killed. Undoubtedly, there is not a shadow of doubt in my mind that's true. So even despite all the things that were going Ham, going wrong, going haywire, there were a couple of fixed points of love and care and passion and identity.

My love of music forming, recording and singing, everything. That was something that it persisted through the mania and through the depression. It was a constant fixture of myself, my persona that I could look at. It was a star in the sky that reminded me that there was something to me beyond pathology and uncertainty in despair, to more directly. Answer your question. When I first started getting a little bit depressed, this is a month or so before I got into the antidepressant for the first time, I got into meditation because I was like, reading about what are ways to address depression in your life.

Go for a walk every day, read a book, get some sunlight, call your mom. Whatever. Those are all valuable things. Those are all, like, healthy self care things. I was like, I've done those things. The girl I was dating at the time, I was telling her about my depressive boss, and she's like, she's like, Have you really tried challenging your negative thoughts? I was like, yes, that was the first. Are you kidding me? Holy shit. What a thing to say. We were kids, so she gets to pass.

So, yeah, meditation was the first real tool that I tried to use to directly address my emotional dysregulation. So I did a little bit of reading, and I got pretty much the most basic meditation that any learner is given. Focus attention. Focus on the breathing. You focus on your breath, and that's either your nostrils, the sensation of the wind passing or your sinuses or the raising and falling of a diaphragm. Those are, like, the most common anchor points, because with any focus meditation, you have to have a singular anchor point for your attention.

I did the breathing exercises, and it was hard. Anyone who's ever started meditation will tell you that it is difficult because you realize that you have a lot more internal commentary than you may have given yourself credit for. And that is a hurdle, but that's beginner stuff everyone deals with that. They call it monkey mind and super. True. It's like imagine you're pushing a shopping cart down the aisle and you have a monkey in the shopping cart. It's grabbing every other can of cereal box as it passes by.

Right? That's what the untrained, unrefined mind is like in a certain sense of thinking. So I was shocked by the results of meditation because within, like, my second or third sit, I had what I would call my first mystical experience. Mystical experience is a loaded term. We can get to it in a bit. But I'll say that it was very mild. There were no trumpeting Angels. I didn't see God, nothing like that. I entered a very mild altered state, which I would describe as trancelike, but not hypnotic.

I felt clear of mind. My internal shatter was quieted, and my fixation on the comings and goings of sensory phenomena was softened. And looking back, the activities of my ego mind were quiet for a short period. And that sounds like maybe not much, maybe a trifle. But once again, looking back through the lens of experience, that was the first real Breadcrumb that turned me on to my now lifelong pursuit of what people call the mysteries capital M mysteries. So, yeah, started off as an emotional tool.

And then I had a couple of really good learning experiences of Brown. I took some cool meditation in Eastern philosophy classes. I took a cool neuroscience class. I took a cool Egyptian religion class. Those are all foundational. So what happened was once I got into the meditation, I started reading more about the philosophical underpinnings. Like, Why do we breathe a certain way? Why do we wash our breath? Why do we want to quiet the mind? Why is that an objective or means? Why do the monks sit on the wooden floor for 50 years?

Why? So I started asking these questions. I started Googling around and finding books. And whatnot and what I discovered was that there is this worldwide entire duration of history practice that humans everywhere have been engaging in and is most simply put, as mysticism. Every religion that has been codified and organized is preceded by a mystical system. Mystical practice, mystical school. The idea is like these Mystics, they perform techniques that allow them to apprehend the ineffable. Allegedly, reportedly, these people receive divine transmissions. They learn about the nature of the Cosmos of the human.

They record this, and then those philosophies are they're turned into rules and morals and structure, which is where churches come from. So there's an additional social element added on top of it. So when I say mysticism, I kind of use mysticism and spirituality interchangeably. That's a little bit reductive. It's a little bit wrong. What I will say is that mysticism is a loaded term, and it's something that is not really well described. I heard the term many times growing up. But I never knew what it meant.

My best understanding was the term like, mystify like, that's mystify. I understand it that's obscure to me. Term I'll define here is spiritual technology. So technology is something that lets you achieve a goal for all these people.

I would say.

Right. So it's like the human hunters are like, we can't catch fish with our hands. What we do? Oh, let's take this stick. Like, oh, let's sharpen the stick. And then some genius is sharpening the stick with a stone, and he's like, Wait a second. Sorry. They're like, wait a second. I can just fix this sharp rock onto the stick, and I can kill the fish way better. Right. So that technology. You have the idea that there is a need to fulfill. There's a goal to complete, and you need to find a means.

Right. So when I say spiritual technology, I mean that there are techniques used to develop faculties beyond what is considered in the typical average expected range of waking material, ego consciousness. Now I know that's very bad.

As somebody who is a meditator, I used to do it a lot more than I did today and studied Zen Buddhism a lot. Study philosophy a lot.

Maybe.

I don't want to oversimplify what you're trying to say.

But.

Maybe it's helpful to think of again, for the listeners. Mysticism, to me, is just going into the unexplainable things that we experience as human beings that aren't necessarily scientifically understood right now. It's just other parts of our human experience that philosophically. We think of ontology as ontology, as defined as the ground of being. So what are the fundamental principles? What are the fundamental grounds of our experience as human beings that we can't necessarily explain scientifically? Maybe we never will be. But we can't right now. And so we have these practices that help us understand ourselves in other ways.

Yeah. You nailed them ahead. That was not reductive or simplifying. It all that was completely correct.

Okay.

Yeah. Just technique in the area, right? Yeah.

I think that's great. And it's powerful, and we don't talk about it enough. So let's dive deeper into that. Did you have somebody Besides books that helped you that you learned from that you studied with that helped guide you?

Yes. There were two people, both of whom I met in College that were absolutely foundational to my investigation of mysticism. One of them is my dear friend, who we got interested in meditation at the same time. We both took this meditation class and we first got on. He was the first person that I said to have you ever heard about magic in a completely unironic way. And most people who said that would laugh or scoff, but he was like, what do you mean? I read such and such and such.

And we got into some stuff together. We grew up together as mages, and that is something that is incomparable. It is a relationship that is not just friendship. It's not just family. We grew up spiritually with each other. We developed ourselves and uncovered aspects of our personality and our passions and our reasons for living together. He was also a good sounding board. He was like, I would tell my thoughts about something and he would say, that sounds right. Or maybe that's not grounded. Maybe what you're saying is more of a reflection than of some internal angst and truth.

Right. Maybe you're overreacting. Maybe you're underreacting. You keep me in check. And the process of mysticism and magic is not easy. You uncover a lot of psychological rocks that most people keep on turn you open them up and you see the ants and the beetles crawling underneath them and you're like, oh, my God, I need to do something about that. So him, my dear friend. And then the other person was the professor of the aforementioned meditation classes. Super smart guy studied in the tutelage of some serious.

He was part of a really good Buddhist lineage. I say lineage. I mean, the wisdom is passed down over from master to master. Right. So he was descended as the term you would use from, like, some very seriously attained people. Right. And so this guy was bringing the years of practice that he had monks, monasteries, scientific research, everything. And he broke down the fundamentals and gave us the Readers digest. As far as getting started, getting your feet wet and having some apprehension of what you're actually doing in terms of mystical practice.

So that was Buddhism and Taoism that we directly addressed in that class. And those are good systems. I would encourage anybody to read about them. And if you encounter any meditations in those systems that interest, you, try them and you will be rewarded. Absolutely.

I want to quote you here because I think you merit quoting. And this is directly kind of tied into what we're talking about. You wrote in an email. You said psychological complexes arise from negative fixation. Victory, in this case, is derived from laying down one's arms and allowing oneself to experience all emotions without prejudice.

I said that, oh, my goodness. Sometimes I just write things and I immediately forget them. I'm kind of stream of consciousness like that. Well, I'm glad you enjoyed that quote. So, yeah. You want to dive in on that? Yeah.

I think that ties into a little bit of a leading statement, but it ties into I think I'm guessing right. What meditation helps you do, at least in part, is to accept all the emotions, to sit with them, to not necessarily let yourself go down the rabbit hole of one emotion or a series of emotions.

Yeah. That's a really good point. Once again, more directly address your earlier question, the utility of the mystical techniques and philosophies that I learned where, for me, transformation of the mind. When I say transformation, I mean cleansing negative and unwholesome aspects. Pathological bot behaviors. Okay, so what was the first thing we talked I talked about in that sentence. Negative fixations. Yeah.

You said psychological complexes arise from negative fixation.

Okay, so if you drive your wheelbarrow down the same road every day, it will create a rot or trough neurological pathway is at the same way. It's physical. When a certain pathway is activated. If that pathway keeps being run over, it's going to get deeper. And you can study this more on the topic of neuroplasticity. So if you have let's say there are various thoughts that we associate with depression. Let's say you have a thought, which is, I can't be loved. And every time you think that and you believe that consciousness is complicated.

There's a lot to it. But there are electrical signals. There are physiological correspondences between your thoughts. Sorry. They're physiological condominium phenomena that arise from thinking. That is not only in the mind, the mind already being an abstract thing, your brain, your neurotransmitters, the electricity, your nerves, that all plays a role. So going down and building up those habits is the problem. We have the idea of, like, virtues and sins. Right. But I guess the better way to describe it would be in Buddhism. There's the eightfold path, and one of them is called I need to check the eight fold path really quick.

Okay. It's right thinking. And they create a binary which binaries are meant to be destroyed. That's part of the spirituality resolving dualisms is a big thing. But they say a lot is either wholesome or unwholesome. So unwholesome thoughts are things that they're toxic thoughts that feed into the desire and aversion. Complex. Desire and aversion are core tenets of Buddhism, and they give rise to suffering, suffering being the main characteristic of existence. We refer to it as Samsara. Samsara. An unwholesome thought is like, I think the most common when they give it's a very monkly thing to say.

It's like lust, you know, like fixation on a hot body, right? It's like, you know, it's okay to be attracted to someone, but if you keep thinking about it and just making a big deal out of it in your head and building them up and putting expectation desire on somebody, you reach a point of diminishing returns where you're not helping anybody and it becomes a fixation. And what I'll tell you is that desire stands between you and what you want. The last real requirement for getting something is to stop wanting it, which may be a bold assertion and perhaps a reductive generalization.

But it is something that has happened to me. Time and time again. I think it bears keeping in mind paradox.

I get it.

Yeah.

You have to let it go in order to get it back.

Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead.

I didn't mean to interrupt.

So when I say these thought complexes come from negative thinking, negative fixation. It's the recurrent presence and emergence of unwholesome banking, negative thoughts, toxic thoughts, lost. I hate to use the term sin, but the seven deadly Sins are great examples of unwholesome thoughts. Lust, gluttony, enemy, wrath. Those are all things that anyone will tell you are not good. And they're right. And so, you know, the Christians codified it. And so did the Buddhist.

So, yeah.

Wholesome and unwholesome thinking. So that's a large part of the paradigm for dealing with mental illness.

The impression I get is that. And this is again, from my limited experience, too, is that meditation helps you with your own self awareness.

Right.

Because you're actually sitting down or lying down or however you're doing it walking meditations.

But.

You'Re recentering yourself and becoming more aware of what's going on. Hey, these are all the thoughts that are going on in my mind right now. These are the ones that I'm triggered by. They're bothering me. These are the ones that not so bad, but your self awareness is increasing.

Yes. Right.

So again, that's something that is going to help it help you. It helped me heal through that process. It's not just the focus. It's not just the calming down, but you're raising your awareness of yourself.

100%. So one of my favorite graphic novels and movies is Watchmen. Alan Moore. He is a big time occultist. He's worth looking into. He's really cool.

I'm an Allen Moore fan. So yes, for people who don't know.

Yes.

Check out Alan Moore. Swamp Thing was amazing.

Yes.

And he is. But go on. So your big Watchman, one of your favorite graphic novels.

Why? So one of the characters in Watchman is Doctor Manhattan. And so he's like this godlike being that resulted from this crazy laboratory accident happening. He's like a quantum consciousness. He can teleport anywhere in the world. They sent him to Vietnam. He turned into a 50 foot monster, aimed his hands on the Vietnam and exploded hundreds of them at the same time, using nothing but his will. And so for all intestine purposes, he was like a deity. And my favorite quote from him second favorite is approximately as follows.

I have walked on the surface of the sun. I have witnessed processes so small that no one else could say that they exist. That is self awareness. That is the growth, the increase in perception, cognition and spiritual development that you get from engaging in meditation and mysticism. So you're talking about self awareness. And like noticing all the cognitive phenomena being sensory Qualia, passing thoughts. And the scale that you build is you notice them arising, you feel them. You allow the experiences to pass through you. And then the experience passes away.

And that's the whole thing. You are the mountain, and they are clouds. You do not grasp the clouds. They pass over you and through you. And then they're out of your vision. That is the relationship between the meditator and their internal psychology. The point that practice is removal from attachment. Attachment is considered one of the roots of suffering. Attachment breeds aversion and desire. This brings us to the neurological concept of valence. Every experience that you ever have. Your brain assigns either positive or negative valence to meaning.

I like and want this experience or I dislike and do not want this experience. So that is where desire and aversion arise from and desire and aversion create fixations. If you love someone that's good, but if you cling to them and need them for everything and you allow yourself to become co dependent with them, that's not good, right?

Yes, I agree. I see that. So attachments. I think of it in a similar way. And so again, the meditation helps you. I'm going to get back to this in a second. But one thing that I want to emphasize, too, is whenever you dive into something new, whether it's something spiritual, whether it's meditation, Buddhism, any new field, I think for me anyways, it's important. You clearly have a very keen intellect. You're super smart guy.

Thank you.

And you use that intellect very wisely.

So.

I think it's important to not take things at face value. So you can say this is me and I may be terribly wrong, and I don't want to offend anybody. But when I read something, it can be a new author. It can be the Bible. It can be anything. I don't take it at face value. On first read, I'm questioning. I'm thinking. I'm analyzing how I'm responding to it. I'm not taking it literally. I'm exploring. And I think it's important that whenever we do dive into these topics, there's a certain sense which I try to stay grounded, right?

I trust my reason. I trust my experiences. I trust who I am as a human being. And I test it out like a scientist.

That's the correct approach. What you're describing. I call the grain of salt view. Right. Take it with a grain of salt. Read it ingest it. Make your own judgments about it. Don't subscribe to anyone's. Dogmatism off the bat. Don't believe everything you hear. Weigh the information that you get against your personal experience, your history, your thoughts, your opinions, and make that comparison. Don't submit intellectually to new information just because it's new information. You have to be critical of everything as much as you need to be open minded.

You also need to be a skeptic.

And that applies with doctors, too.

Right.

That applies to being an advocate for yourself. That applies for your own, your own, your own determination of what you think is best for you and your own path.

Absolutely.

How did you learn that? How do you keep that grounding and keep that skepticism as you're diving into the abyss of human experience?

It's true. When you gave them to the abyss, the abyss gazes back. Does it not call it la Pel Duve, the call of the void? Perhaps even the call of the Cthulhu. But that's another story. So how do I stay grounded? How do I stay skeptical? So my abuser was Catholic. I was raised in constant and utter fear of going to hell. I was told that if I did such and such, that was immortal sin, right? Irrecoverable. And I was just like, pretty blase about, I don't know, man, that doesn't sound right.

That sounds like over the top. How can you assign infinite punishment based on finite moral decisions? I didn't have that understanding when I was like, single digit age, but that's the idea that distance me from religion. Right? Seeing that play out and being used as a fear tool turned me off. And then there were two real catalytic factors. And they both happened when I was in high school at Catholic school. So we had this guy come and give a whole schoolwide assembly and they called him the abstinence guy.

He's like, you know, don't go around trying to slay, but don't let yourself be driven by your carnal desires. Pray for your future spouse. Remain celibate. Save yourself for them. But if people want to do that, I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't think it's something you should force on people, but I think that it's a legitimate choice and it's not wrong. Here's what got me, though. They gave out these pamphlets afterwards. They had frequently asked questions, and one of the questions was, What's the deal with gay people as far as, like, relationships, sex, marriage.

What have you and I will never forget this. The printed text in his media flyer that he gave to everybody said, we have to forgive our homosexual brothers and sisters. We have to forgive them for having homosexual impulses. When I heard that I was floored, I was shocked that such casual and violent bigotry was being disseminated to kids aged 14 to 17. So that was tough. And then the other half thing that happened was, I don't know, when it was mid late 2000s, when the Catholic Church sexual abuse stuff came to light in the popular media.

And I was told for the first time that for many years, many, many Holy men sexually violated many young children. And when I learned that the moment that I learned that I said, I am not a Catholic and I do not belong to the Catholic Church. I don't care how true anything else they say is, if they are complicit in that type of behavior, then they are an oppressive institution. And yeah, I never looked back. So feel free to interject now. But that's the ground I want to lay out.

I was spiritually uninterested in all capacities and anything proximate to religion or spirituality felt like poison to me at worst and boring and false at best. So I know that's heavy. I don't have any bad things to say about Christians. I think the Christianity is a beautiful religion. I think that the Christ story is fundamental in human. And I think that the message God is loved. That's what I was told many times growing up. It's true. If you asked me if there is a God, I would tell you that God is love and love is God.

I think that's beautiful. And I have nothing but the only thing I would add, I think that a lot of people who are not religious or don't explore spirituality are turned off or traumatized by the human institutions that in some ways have I don't want to use that strong, but they've messed it up basically right. And so when I was studying it, when I went to divinity school, which I don't tell most people. But, hey, it's on the podcast now. So, yes, I'd love to hear about that.

I was studying to be a professor, so I wasn't studying to be a Minister. I was on the professor track. I wasn't on the Minister like a theologian.

Theology, right?

Exactly like a theologian. These traditions and the thinkers that have come from them are so much deeper and more complex and more interesting than we give them credit for because of the way institutions work. So don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. If you want to throw out the institutions, go for it. But there's a lot of amazing human beings that have lived and experienced and written about those experiences that we can learn from.

Yes. So as far as throwing the Beta at the bathwater, that is pretty much I was doing. What I will tell you is that despite everything the whole time, I always admired Jesus. I always thought he was a good dude. And I thought that if everyone did the things that he said and did you have a much more peaceful world, I still believe that. I think that he was a good guy. I think that he has the right message. And I think that he tried his best.

Whether or not you think he's divine. That's your opinion. But I'm going to tell you that no matter what, he was a human and he did a lot of the right things. Yeah. But the thing is, why can't I draw inspiration from other religious figures? Why don't they teach me about the Buddha? Why don't they teach me about this? And then whomever? So as he mentioned, the institutions, they muddied the waters. Jesus was talking about love and forgiveness and mercy. And then the crusades happen. They result in cognitive dissonance.

Holy shit.

So let's swing it back a little bit. Here to another one of your anchor points that I would love to talk about, and we don't talk about enough. The other anchor point for you is music. So I think music is vastly underappreciated today. I think it is a huge influence on my life, too. It has gotten me through some difficult times. It has made me appreciate life much more. So tell me about your relationship with music and how it's helped you.

Yeah. Music is huge. Music is my favorite thing to do. I never feel more alive than when I am making music. So performing, recording, producing, writing, everything, the whole process. I absolutely adore it. And I feel like when I'm doing that creative work, I feel like I'm the truest version of myself. It is a calling. It's something that just hit me in the head. One day I was like, wow, I need to do this for the rest of my life because it gives me meaning and it fulfills my passion.

And it's a place for me to apply my will without any reservation or compunction, because I'm doing it for myself. And I'm doing it in the service of beauty itself. I think that to create works of beauty in a world that may seem cruel and unfeeling is one of the greatest acts of rebellion that a human can perform, to go through your life and see despair, suffering, war, poverty and say to yourself, despite all this, I am going to use my mind and my materials to create a work of beauty, something that people will gaze upon and be happy about to do that that is creation, and that is putting positive energy into the universe.

It's for yourself, but also for everybody.

Do you have any musicians that you look up to respect, admirer.

I went through a huge beetle space, but then I found out that John Lennon abuse his family, and I completely got off the wagon from one of my biggest influences. And when I learned that I was like, how am I supposed to? I was like, okay, I guess the Paul songs are better anyway. So, yeah, that's one of my first answers. Most influential musicians. Mikhail Gillette, lead singer, guitarist and writer of The Airborne Toxic Event, Matthew Bellamy, frontman, guitar, singer and writer of Muse. Yeah, I guess more than anybody, those two individuals have influenced me.

Matt Bellamy is what made me want to go from playing rhythm guitar to playing every guitar part, lead rhythm, anything in between. He's also the guy who made me first tried the falsetto range, the really high range that, you know, when I say falsetto, I say, think of Freddie Mercury or Prince, the super high range. That is like, you might even call it Immascular or something, right? But because of hearing him, he inspired me. I was like, Maybe I can sing like that. Maybe I can hit those crazy high notes.

And I couldn't. But years later, I could and just a matter of work. And then the other one is Mikel Gillette, the guy from the Airborne Talks event. For me, it was for him as the writing. It was the storytelling, and it was the conveying of emotional and psychological experiences through music. It was one of the first times that I've really got that you can use music to explain things more effectively and faster than with words alone. It's a means of communication. It's a lot broader and denser of a channel of information than words alone.

He wrote about sickness and disability and relationships and depression and all things that were very relatable to me. I first had them during high school and just all those things that were purkly in my mind at the time. He gave voice to a lot of those things. I still listen to those songs. I still play them. And the musical imprint, the creative and artistic imprint that he and his band left upon me. Is it's indelible? It's a large, intrinsic component of my identity as an artist.

Well said. Thank you for sharing that. Is there another anchor that you want to talk about or anything that we miss diving into in terms of your experiences and advice and help that we can give to people who do have some type of depression? Mental illness.

Again.

We don't mean that in a bad way, just in terms of something that they're going through that they need help with.

Yeah. Okay. So I have a few things to say about that. The following message is for anybody that has ever dealt with any kind of mental illness. If you think that you are mentally ill, depressed, anxious, OCD, anything. If you have any thought that you might be experiencing such pathologies, do your research? Go on Wikipedia. Go on. Mayo Clinic. Read scholarly articles. Read about mental illness. Pathologies. If you think you might be depressed, read about depression. Learn about lack of energy, lack of willpower, suppression of personality characteristics, loss of passions.

Read about those things. It's more than being bummed out, right? That's not impression. So educate yourself. Engage with the subject matter. Don't be afraid of what you uncover, because the sooner you learn such aspects of yourself, the happier will be. The sooner you can deal with those things, the sooner you address them, the better and more healthy you will be. Sooner. Next, actively seek help. If you're feeling like you have mental illness, you have a few supports that I would say you absolutely need to engage if you're going to recover first is social support, family and close friends, perhaps partner or lover.

Depending on the situation, people that you can truly confide in, people that you love and you know that they love you back, people with whom you share unconditional love and utter compassion. You need to have those people or find them. You absolutely need to. Humanity grew up as tribes and towns and villages and civilizations. The social aspect cannot be overemphasized. Next. Psychiatry mental illnesses. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Most of them have associated chemical imbalances. We attack those imbalances and restore neurotransmitter homeostasis.

Through psychiatry, you talk to psychiatrists and they give you options. So for I take a mood stabilizer, which is highly recommended for bipolar. I take an antidepressant, which is a selective norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor sleepmen. So I take for insomnia. I take ambient and serophlo. And the way that we arrived at this medication cocktail that I take every day through years of experimentation. So that's the tough part about psychiatry. You're not going to show up and the doctor be like, oh, see, you're depressed. You're bipolar.

All right, I got you. Take this. Take this. You're going to be good. You're never going to have a problem. It's never going to be like that. No, it's a lot of feeling around and playing with numbers. I got put onto very low mood stabilizer. Does be aware of any changes in your condition. If you start feeling suicidal, if you have this behavior, if you have that behavior, tell us, because that's not supposed to happen. But there are side effects, right? Not everyone can tolerate every medication.

I've had bad medication experiences, as I mentioned. And so spent months playing with the mood stabilizer dose, raising it up and down. Right. And then I had an antidepressant and start a low dose. Bring it up. See, it doesn't help. Stay out for a few months. Bring it up more. If you have to, maybe bring it up more. It's like, oh, I'm starting to get manic. Bring it back down. Right. And so it's fine tuning. It's like you're mixing a drink, right. Like, you don't know if it's going to be good until you taste it.

Almost. Here a serious bartender. But even these psychiatrists who went to Med school and have been practicing for 20 years or more, they've made their mistakes on me. They're not fallible. They're not perfect. That being said, psychiatry, in most cases, mental illness is an unavoidable process. Once again, I'll tell you, do your personal research before you even go to your psychiatrist. If you are depressed, read about antidepressants. If you're anxious, read about anti anxiety. If you're bipolar, read about mood stabilizers, obviously.

The bad experiences or the difficult experiences taught you what to avoid the next time. But how do you learn or how did you know? Hey, this psychiatrist. I can trust this person. I feel comfortable with this person, even though they're going to make mistakes because we're human, and that's what we do. I'm comfortable enough to trust that this is the person I want to go on this journey with.

Yeah. So here's what I'll say. Every doctor has baseline table stakes, expertise. There's a skill set and the set of knowledge and theory that they're all supposed to know. And they all do. You know, most of the people they know, the diagnostic manual, like the back of their hand. They know all the common pathologies. They know which medications are most commonly used, and they'll take you down the tried and true methods of things that have been proven, things that have been clinically studied, all that stuff. They have their information, they have their practices so that being said, the most important element of a doctor who I will Zoom out and call a healer.

The most important aspect of a healer is compassion. You do not treat the illness, you treat the patient. And so the first thing is that I really liked was a super nice guy. He would always ask how I'm doing. And it wasn't like, you're at the grocery store, and you see the cashier like, hey, how are you doing? I'm good. How are you doing? Both? No, he's like, how are you doing? I feel good today because such and such happens, like, oh, that's awesome. I'm so glad you had such a best experience.

That's gross. No, I feel like crap today. Such and such happened that triggered me. I backflip. He's like, Man, that happens. We'll talk about it, we'll work on it. We'll see what we got to do. So he always had a kind, supportive and helpful answer for everything that I had. And he didn't always know the exact solution. He admitted it's experimentation, there's feeling around in the dark, there's trial and error. And he was upfront about that. I was like, yeah, that's how it is. I understand that I accept that.

And what kept me going back to him. And what kept me trusting him was that the phrase he would use every month or some weeks after I saw him when I had, like, a medication adjustment, he said, do you feel like a real person? No. Do you feel like a real person? I'm like, well, I guess I was less depressed last time, but no, and it was kind of a joke, but also, it was a good perspective because, you know what? When I'm depressed, I don't feel like a real person.

I feel like a shallow husk. I don't feel anything when I'm depressed, my moods are despair and boredom. That's pretty much my range of feeling. So hearing him say, like that and really legitimately care, that was huge. He earned my trust by demonstrating his love for his patience and his passion for making people's lives better. That was his calling. And he did it because he really cared. And I could tell that's why I liked him. And that is how, you know, you have a good psych.

And then I had to stop seeing him because I've changed shirts. That's the way the news goes, man.

Yeah, insurance. Sounds like we need to do a whole other podcast episodes with a bunch of people.

Experts.

And patients on health insurance. And the many ways better. Yeah, the many ways in which we can do a lot better.

So psychiatry absolutely crucial. Do your research. Talk to your psych. Don't be passive in your conversations. If they say that they're going to raise their antidepressants, you ask them why. And if they say, oh, because he's sad. It's like, no, what happens when you raise the struggle? Is there, like, a limit? Is there a maximum dosage. Are there different ranges that imply different side effects? You have to think of everything and ask everything. I know that that's a tall order, but you really have to be exhaustive as you can with your questioning, because doctor can have all the expertise in the world, but it's your head only you can really know what's going on.

Which goes back to your point about do the reading.

Do the research.

Become your own advocate. And it's crucial that's the thing.

Another major thing I would say is therapy. Not everyone likes therapy. I would say that not even everyone needs therapy. I would say that you need to think about it. Consider talking to therapists, clinicians, social worker. There are all different types of people. Their backgrounds vary so much and they all have their own personalities. Some people you're going to jail with. Some people you won't. Some people describe funny therapists as like shopping or being on a dating app. You see a different one every week. If you need to, don't consider yourself locked in to the first therapist that you find because you're not there to please them.

They're there to please you. You're not in service, and you're not acting in deference of any of these professionals. They're working for you.

And there are some psychiatrists who are also psychotherapists.

Correct? I would say definitely. I've never seen a combination one, but I believe that they exist.

Okay, so they're rare.

So the last thing I'll say is your mental illness. But really, for anybody, you need to find your true will, the things that you do that provide reason for living, the things that fulfill you, the things that you're passionate about, the things that give you energy, the things that make you feel proud and accomplished. You need to find those things and pursue them and never stop. When I realized that music was my passion, I never looked back when I realized the spirituality of my passion. I never look back because all the times that I've been super depressed and stopped doing both of those things, it has led to even further degradation of my mental and emotional States.

When I stopped playing guitar and singing, I get even more depressed when I stopped doing emotional regulation meditation, my emotions wouldn't you know, I get even more dysfunctional, right. So find your passion is important, because if you don't, you'll feel emptiness and unfulfilled.

Those anchor points. Those anchor points are fundamental. How about have you had any experience with? I know we're getting kind of hour and a half here, which it's been awesome, but I don't want to take up too much time.

Either.

Have you had any experience with group sessions or going to a support group talking with other people? Has that helped?

Yes. I have a very good experience with therapy. So the most recent time that I started having a manic symptom after about two years of being chronically depressed was mid July, July, I had a new medication adjustment with my antidepressants. I was starting to feel manic, and I was like, Doctor, I'm feeling manic. Can we please lower my antidepressant or raise my mood stabilizer or something? She's like, no, what do you mean? No, she's like, We're not going to adjust those. You need to stay on them as they are.

So I'm like, but I've been sleeping less, and I feel like, agitated and stuff. And she's like, Are you losing sleep? I'm like, yeah, I sleep like, six or 7 hours. I'm used to ageing nine. She's like, okay, well, if you lose more sleep, then we'll talk. What do you mean? If I lose more sleep, if you sleep less, then you have to do something. What do you mean, do something? Then you go to the hospital. So that night, I didn't sleep 1 minute. I didn't sleep at all.

Someone to the emergency room, 9 hours. They gave me three options one, check into inpatient indefinitely. Hell, no. That's prison option two, partial hospitalization program, also known as outpatient therapy, also known as group therapy or psychiatric rehab. Option three, stay over the night, stay overnight in the Er and see what happens. So I took option two because option two was the only one that was going to get me out of my fucking paper clothes, get my wallet and my phone and my ID back in my pocket.

I had to give the guy my hair band because it was a potential weapon. All right, that's how bad. That's the only time I've been to the emergency room. And I will tell you, I do not want to go back. So they're, like, go find a partial hospitalization program. So I did. I think it was Southern New Hampshire Medical Center or something like that. And I called dozens of places, and they were the first place to get back to me. So I was like, I'm doing this.

I'm not going to shop around. I'm not going to read my Google reviews and my Yelp or whatever. I need this now. So I got into the PHP, and it was all group based. We had systems therapist is what she described herself as we had a substance abuse guy, and there's a combination of lessons about pathology and coping skills and discussion. And there was a lot of person sharing. We had it was like, maybe 15 people and people cycled it now because it was like a seven to ten day cycle for the PHP and people that I had only known for hours or days.

I saw them crying and breaking down and talking about how their mom would beat them or, like, dad would drink or all this, and that we would talk about all this heavy, traumatic stuff that you talk about with almost nobody. Perhaps nobody. Maybe talk to your close friends or family. Maybe you don't. And so people were sharing some serious stuff and I started sharing serious stuff, and it was healing to hear and see people go through the same things that you have is validating. And it is a vector for recovery.

When I saw someone crying about their mom doing terrible bad stuff to them, I was thinking back to all the child abuse that I had dealt with. And I said to myself, as bad as it's been, I recovered from a lot of that stuff. I saw the experience that that person was happy. I was like, you know what? It doesn't affect me in that way anymore. It's still a trauma. It's never going to go away. But I've overcome it as far as I'm concerned. And so to see that was like, eyeopening.

I was like, wow, it really happened, growing despite all the pain and setbacks. And so, yeah, that's an example. But like, there was so much sharing and so much we revealed our psychology, our emotions, our feelings, our thoughts, our opinions, everything. There was this free space of expression without judgment. And it was so good to be able to just let loose and say, whatever you want about your mental health experiences is immensely liberating beforehand. I never thought anything of group therapy. I saw the movies with, like, the rehab or the AA or what have you or the people in the mental institution sitting around with the chairs in a circle?

That whole thing. I was like, I don't know, that doesn't look really helpful, but it was. It really, really was. And that was one thing that helped me get back on my feet. And so for the first time, despite getting hypomanic, I did not cross into the severely acute pathological mania. I didn't lose my shit. I came back down. But then I didn't get depressed either. That's the crazy part. I didn't fall back down. And since then, with a couple of ups and downs right now, I am the most stable and happy I've ever been in my entire life, even pre mental illness.

And if you had to ask me where I placed myself on the spectrum, I would say that I'm hypomanic. The clarification I'll make is that hypomania is not pathological. Hypomania is something that many people go through their entire lives without being diagnosed with pathology, someone that has Southern bouts of energy. So, like, be dead to the world, clean their house all day, work on a project all day and night. Stuff like that, that's manic behavior. And the thing is that energy and that increased cognitive processing power that's valuable.

That's empowering those are increased cognitive resources that you have and can utilize. It literally brings about a boost to your willpower and your ability to execute and plan and solve problems. And this is the type of thing that a lot of psychotherapists would say. They would say that I am romanticizing my illness. Absolutely not, because I've been all over the affection of experience. I know what's bad. All right. And what I can tell you is that if there is a space where you are not depressed and you are not out of control of behavior, you are not gibbering.

You are not megalomaniacal. You are not talking over people. You're not having your moral decision making short circuit, you're not letting your in or your lizard brain take over because that's what happens. That's the bad stuff. Hypomania I can tend is the best possible operating baseline I could be in, because when I'm depressed, my personal agency evaporates. And when I am path type of manic into pathological mania, I am dysfunctional. So there you have it. Those are the boundaries of my existence. And I'm going to devote myself to staying within those bounds because that is where I feel most alive and empowered and healthy.

Thank you for sharing that. I think that's important. And just I'm Super grateful that you were so open, so willing to dive into the experiences, the good and the bad. And I just feel what I would reinforce. And I want people to just really understand is having those spaces where we can share, where we can be vulnerable, where we can be ourselves so valuable. It's not weakness. It's strength, right? It's not disempowering. It's actually empowering. It's so important to find those spaces where we can do that.

And we need more of that in our culture and in our lives.

Buddhists call that victory their surrender surround. That's my earlier point. You defeat your demons by laying down your arms, ending the opposition. It begins to end with you.

Chris, is there anything else that you want to share? Talk about? Are you on social media? How can people connect with you if they have questions, how can they learn more about you?

The only real public facing social media that I have is my SoundCloud, which is not really a great forum for emails. I don't know. How do people usually answer this question?

Some people have social media accounts. Some people have companies or nonprofits, so it just depends. It depends on the person. But how about we leave that as a to be continued? Maybe that's something that you can think about working on down the road where you can have a website or you can have a Facebook page or something where you can just help people sharing experiences.

Yeah, I have an email address. I have an ultimate email address that I can give you, and I have my sound file link, which I can give you. I would say that if anyone wants to contact me, talk about the stuff. Mental illness. True. Will creativity, music, art, spirituality? Any of the things we talked about? Send the email be nice, but ask me anything, right? Yeah. That's what I got. And then to reiterate the point of music is the thing I love most. This is the thing I've been doing longest and quick brag.

I'm a one man dance. I play guitar, drums, bass, vocals. Since I do production, I do recording. I do everything because I haven't found someone that can match my speed. That may sound conceded. But I've had a couple of people so called collaborators that were really just trying to ride my coattails once again sounds conceited, but people will associate themselves with artists to try to buttress their own artistic opinion about themselves. That's the thing. I haven't found a real creative partner yet. I haven't found someone that is at the same place that I am as far as what they want to say, what themes they want to address, and then the more practical matters of genre composition, et cetera.

Writing. I haven't found the compatibility point yet, but I do believe it exists, and I do believe that I'm going to find my band at some point. It's only a matter of time and striving awesome.

I hope you do, too. And thank you so much. I look forward to continuing the conversation offline and having you backed for some future episodes. But you're an awesome guy. I'm so happy Adam introduced us. I'm so happy we got to have this conversation.

Connect with Chris Piette on Social Media:

• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nflm888