Bipolar disorder isn’t just mood swings—it’s a lived experience that can shape everything from careers to relationships. In this episode of Beneath the Noise, I take a deep dive into what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder, from hypomania’s deceptive highs to the terrifying reality of full-blown mania. With a mix of personal storytelling, humor, and hard-earned insight, I explore my journey from undiagnosed chaos to hospitalization and, eventually, treatment. I talk about the messy reality of managing medication, the impact on friendships, and the relentless trial-and-error process of therapy. This isn’t a clinical breakdown—it’s a raw, honest look at what it really means to navigate life with bipolar disorder. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like from the inside, this episode is for you.

Mental health is big business, and the algorithm knows it. Every anxious Google search, every doomscrolling session, every TikTok video about trauma responses—it’s all data. And that data gets turned into profit. Not for you, of course. Never for you.

In this episode of Beneath the Noise, we’re peeling back the curtain on how tech platforms don’t just show you mental health content—they shape your reality around it. From the rise of hyper-personalized algorithms to BetterHelp’s data-sharing scandal, it’s clear: your struggles aren’t just relatable content; they’re currency.

So, how did we get here? Why does the internet know your diagnosis before your therapist does? And most importantly, how do you reclaim your privacy without throwing your phone into the ocean? Let’s talk about it. Because the machine is always watching—but you don’t have to make its job easy.

Ever feel like you’re trapped inside a meticulously crafted David Fincher thriller or a Chuck Palahniuk fever dream? You might be. In this episode, we dive into two of the most fascinating, unsettling, and two of my favorite creators of all time—David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk—exploring how their work dissects power, obsession, identity, and the illusion of control.

I’ll unpack why Fincher’s characters believe they can master the chaos and why Palahniuk’s characters surrender to it, the real horror of Fight Club, and how these stories resonate with mental illness, self-destruction, and the search for meaning in a world that doesn’t care. If you’ve ever felt like life is just one long nihilistic monologue with a Trent Reznor soundtrack, this episode is for you.

"Self-care" has become a buzzword, repackaged and sold to us as $8 green juices, expensive meditation apps, and Instagrammable bath bombs. But let’s be real—none of that actually fixes the feeling of barely holding it together. So what does real self-care look like, especially when your brain is actively working against you? In this episode, we’re cutting through the BS and talking about what actually helps.

First, we get into the fundamentals—sleep, nutrition, movement, and why your brain hates doing things that are good for it. Then, we tackle the mental health industrial complex—why some advice is solid, some is useless, and some is just another way to make you feel like you’re failing at life. Finally, we talk about survival strategies that actually work—how to trick your brain into cooperating, why humor is an underrated coping skill, and why sometimes, the best self-care is just getting through the day in one piece.

Whether you’re dealing with burnout, depression, or just trying to function in a world that demands way too much, this episode is for you. No toxic positivity, no impossible standards—just real talk about how to keep going, one ridiculous day at a time.

All music found on Pixabay 

New Year’s Eve has always been my favorite holiday—until 2018, when it became a dividing line between the person I was before my hospitalization and the one I was trying to become after. In Into the Fog of Psychosis: Part 2, I walk you through what comes next—the exhaustion of recovery, the identity crisis that follows psychosis, and the quiet war of trying to exist in a world that wasn’t built for people like me.

From job interviews that feel like performances to the infuriating reality of getting (and affording) the right medication, this episode is about what happens after the crisis, when the world expects you to be fine again. Because the truth is, recovery isn’t linear, it isn’t neat, and sometimes, just existing is the biggest battle of all.

All music found on Pixabay

Reality isn’t fixed. It bends, shifts, warps—sometimes so slowly you don’t notice until you’re too far gone to claw your way back. At first, it’s just a feeling. A whisper. A pattern hiding in plain sight. And then, suddenly, it’s everything. The world rearranges itself into a puzzle only you can solve. The messages are everywhere. The connections are undeniable.

Except… they’re not.

In this first part of Into the Fog of Psychosis, I take you inside what it’s like when your mind turns against you—when certainty replaces doubt, when fear becomes fact, and when the very foundation of reality starts to slip. Psychosis is terrifying. It’s surreal. And it’s not what people think it is.

This is Beneath the Noise. Welcome to the fog.

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all music found on Pixabay 

I was 25 the first time I had a psychotic break—standing in a hospital shower, staring at my own reflection in an anti-suicide showerhead, trying to make sense of the person looking back at me. It wasn’t the beginning of my story, and it definitely wasn’t the end.

Beneath the Noise is a podcast about mental illness—the raw, disorienting, sometimes absurd reality of living with a brain that refuses to play by the rules. It’s part memoir, part cultural analysis, and entirely uninterested in neat, easy narratives.

This isn’t about self-improvement. It’s about survival, diagnosis, misdiagnosis, the long road of recovery, and all the ways mental illness collides with work, relationships, pop culture, and identity.

If you’ve ever found yourself spiraling at 3 AM, side-eyeing your own brain like it’s an unreliable narrator—well, you’re not alone.

This is Beneath the Noise

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