I've made a few videos today and I was thinking a little bit about the modality of video and kind of liking it because it's a way to have conversation and I'm having conversation at this point just with myself and it could be several months before I put this on anything where another person can listen to what I'm saying or I might never do it i'm not sure but even in playing back some of the videos to myself and listening to what i was saying and I don't plan on exactly what I'm going to say I have a general idea of something that I want to elaborate on but by listening to myself speak I realized that it's almost a way to have a conversation with myself so I had that conversation with the video camera and it was sort of it came out of nowhere in a way and then I listened to it after and it's almost like hearing the conversation for the first time and so I'm actually in a way benefiting from listening to my own video because I'm listening to how I decided to speak what it was that I wanted to elaborate on and some of the things that I say are our new in my mind where some of them I already thought of before so I like that aspect it's almost like having having that as priming for myself because sometimes I feel rather blanked about everything and in this way I can almost reinforce my views I guess it's kind of strange to have my self reinforcing my own views and over the years I've done some research on the topic and I've done quite a bit of writing and I find writing difficult because it's very linear it's it's got to be polished and I just said it's got to be and I don't even think that's a real sentence yet I can get away of saying it because it's a conversation and I like that conversational aspect and and really I just want to I just want to talk about looking at mental health differently and I have a diagnosis of bipolar one and I really feel that I can still utilize my diagnosis and at the same time talk about increased and ever-expanding ways to talk about experiences that I've had based on having this diagnosis and as a result of it so I feel like what I want to talk about is just expanding and elaborating on my diagnosis and my a subjective experience and there's usually not much of an opportunity to do that by so by making videos I have that opportunity and another thing I want to do perhaps is translate some of the things that I've written into video because again a lot of my writing isn't polished and then sort of separate ideas and I don't know if I really have anything to write that's polished that's like a perfect message of some kind my main messages you know who wants to think and feel and see mental health differently and talk about it differently and share about it differently it's not oh this is how you should think about it well this is how you should share its where's the sharing beyond just this is my recovery story this is how I recovered and these were my symptoms and this is what I'm doing now to feel better what about the inner subjective experience of it and really inviting conversation about it and making it as normal as talking about the dream you had last night and you know maybe it's a long dream maybe it went on for 30 days but it's still an experience and a lot of it is very harrowing tales and so just inviting conversation and talking about it and and again I feel I can say yes I have a brain disease if that's what you want to say I have you can't prove it by any test and I can't prove it by my experience that it's actually true but some authority figure is telling me that it's true so I'll say okay sure but I still have some great stories to tell and I still have more to share about it than just that one little snippet of explanation sure that's a great explanation but that doesn't mean that I don't have anything else to share about it and um I feel like talking about it more we'll invite a different way of looking at it and that doesn't mean that it's to the exclusion of that brain disease model there's a lot of there's a lot of people out there that want to have nothing to do with the brain disease model and maybe one day I'll be one of them I have been mostly helped by the system I have had some bad experiences with it too and I'm still within the system and I feel like perhaps one day I will be able to transcend the system but not by doing as much as i can to invite conversation about the transcendence of the system so if i make the leap out of the system it will happen hopefully organically and I'll still say thank you for all the help that you've given me system and it's unfortunate that so many people have so many bad experiences with the system and that's something that I hope will really change and maybe by really talking about our experiences and sharing what it's really like and sharing what it really means for us who go through it the system will be able to make changes to better provide care and if they don't well you know maybe we can work towards something together to help each other for those who can and and maybe helping each other is just having conversation about some of these ways of looking at it because perhaps we've never been invited to have a conversation there's a lot of campaigns about don't hide and speak up about your mental illness but it's all don't hide the story that we've given you don't or speak up about the story we've given you which is your mental illness what about speak up about the stories you have that you've never been invited to share that you're always too afraid to share that you basically were um silenced from ever assuming they had any relevance or meaning to your life you know a lot of people talk about how it's a spiritual experience and and then they just are never invited to talk about that but the system isn't equipped to talk about that but maybe we can talk about that with each other because a lot of also to a lot of people that do get themselves out of the system end up turning around and putting a lot of energy into being mad at the system and fighting the system and and you know bashing the system and that's not in my view that's not going to invite collaboration I feel the system is a bunch of human beings that are mostly caring people that given the right given something I don't know what will start to listen but they're less likely to listen to angry bashing and they're more likely to listen to heartfelt stories of experience and and people just opening up with what it's really like and sharing what helps and sharing what doesn't help you know they're people just like us and we can help them understand at least I feel that way and and we can help change it for people that will experience it in the future even if we weren't so lucky to escape it and not have to go through it you know people 20 years ago went through it way worse than I have in the last five years and hopefully people 20 years from now we'll go through it way easier than I did in last five years and and it's possible anything's possible such as conversation the system is not perfect it has some great things not and it has some not-so-great things and I think the biggest detriment the biggest detrimental thing is the story that we're given that it is a brain disease and here's your treatment and here's your diagnosis and that invites self stigma that invites so many things and then they say recover from what we just told you when they never took the time to listen to what where a person was at when they were when they first were experiencing the mental health system so they talk more so nowadays about person-centeredness and and I feel like one day the person centeredness will extend not just 20 the person's directs some of their recovery and treatment plan and things it will also be person centered in that the person decides what's going on for them the person decides the story there's no paternalism even in terms of the story that's given as to what is going on and I don't know how that will happen but even if it's even if it can happen for a person personally subjectively there's still value even if the system never changes that way but there is an understanding that a person can decide their own experience inside of what happened because maybe there's someone to talk to about it so they're able to make meaning about it you know maybe the diagnosis would be one thing but the meaning of the experience would be something altogether different all the people with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder do not or did not have the same experiences internally subjectively and make meaning out of all the things that happen in a different way but there's a lot of similarities what I'm saying is there's meaning beyond just the diagnosis just as a person with cancer might completely change their life because they realize there's different meanings in life I from my experience I felt different meanings in life because of my experience so same thing both are diseases but there's still meaning that people make out of things and that's the part to me that is missing and um and it's one thing for the meaning but it's also how does that affect and impact one's life going forward so to dismiss everything as a brain disease I think there's so much missed in terms of the meaning of the experience of what can be incorporated into somebody's life from the information from the experience and that's something that is not taken into account and another reason to make videos is I want to be able to embody the conversation I want to have so I don't want to spend so much time writing and then it just sort of gets lost in a file in my computer and then when the time comes to utilize it in some way it's just a piece of writing and then it goes into whatever or doesn't and then it's not something I've ever really talked about in a really long time so by talking about things and by translating some of the writing of done and research into video it's a way to actually have that conversation with myself and embody having those conversations that i want to invite other people to have to so if I was thinking oh and body this conversation and then I spent the next 10 years writing a book for example I wouldn't be embodying the conversation I'd be writing a book about embodying the conversation and then it would be 10 years wasted not embodying the conversation and I don't see the point of that and a good thing about video to is then I can have a conversation if I do put it out there with a lot of different people at the same time and I don't actually have to be there and another thing too is for people like me with a diagnosis there was a period of time over medicated or just not able to concentrate because of medications so videos are a bit easier to follow I have read some great books on some of the themes that I want to talk about but they're like big long thick books and it was a period of time when I was able to concentrate and focus and read them but you know first of all somebody has to find that book they have to be interested in it and then they have to be able to read it and um that could be difficult so I feel like just having conversations about ideas and inviting more conversation as people like me can just have conversation we don't need to write books and things back and forth and and really convince each other of our ideas because at least in my experience there's not really any convincing necessary and that's the thing too about writing verses video is that I'm not trying to like carefully craft some kind of convincing message I'm just trying to invite conversation and I just i'm interested in conversation and and sharing and and wondering about what other people think about actually ascribing meaning to some of the experiences not in order to get stuck in those experiences and be like well i need to have that again or you know oh that defines the rest of my life or oh such a great feeling i need that back no just to make meaning about it and and to be able to move on even from it by making meaning so just inviting conversation and again i'm not trying to like carefully craft some convincing message because from what I've experienced even in reading those great books that I read it all really resonated with me and that's the thing I've and I'm not sure if this is true for you but a lot of it just resonates it's just conversation and if you if you see it if you see eye to eye or you have some level of understanding of that experience and that stage it kind of makes sense it's not can it's not to convince anybody so if a person watches this and they've gone through some kind of altered state a lot of what I say might just really resonate and you might just understand not in that you had the exact same experience but it's like you know describing describing somewhere where you've been and somebody else has been there and like they can understand what how what you're describing just because you've both been there and then if somebody watches this and I haven't been there maybe it'll seem like oh I'm trying to convince you of something but I'm not really i'm just talking about my experience of somewhere that maybe you've never been so you know you you might be able to kind of picture what I'm saying or understand but maybe it's not going to resonate in the same way but maybe you know somebody that or you're caring for somebody that has been through these states of experience and perhaps it'll help with understanding some of what it's like or invite you to think about in different ways which if you're able to think about it and see it in different ways but actually change the person you're helpings response to you because you're at least attempting to see what they're saying or you're at least interested in hearing about what they might want to share about it which is something that maybe they've never been invited to do before and just to approach it with curiosity as I'm curious about it myself like I've been there I've been in you know psychosis as they call it four times and I don't think it's anything that I'm ever going to figure out I don't think it's something that I'm gonna be able to say this is what it is um you know whether it's a disease of the brain sure okay that doesn't explain everything sure if you want to say it's a disease of brain fine but there's still a lot more to it just like you can say to someone well it's cancer well there's a lot more to it than its cancer there's physiological processes there's environmental factors there's genetics there's so many things so just like the biological brain disease of psychosis you know if you want to say it's that that's fine I can say it's that but that still doesn't explain everything obviously there's psychosocial factors in a while would they have psychosocial rehab it you know there's psycho biosocial spiritual ethno eco you know factors there's so many different factors so it's not something that I'm trying to figure out it's more something that I'm very curious about and I'm also curious about the meaning of it and I feel like there's a lot more to be said about the meaning of it then the cause of it or the explanation of it and there can be a lot of value harvested from it I feel if it was looked at that way and it is difficult to look at it that way because there's a lot of terrible elements of it but there's a lot of terrible elements to most things like diseases or processes it's you know even something as simple not simple but even something like going through University is hard it's a struggle it's a learning experience it's you know it's draining it's tiring but it's a learning process and then it's the same with something like psychosis it's like going to inner university like the University of one's interior yourself and it's not just one's own personal interior self it's the collective unconscious and the collective interior yourself that we all share that we have in common that we need to have in common and that's how we can empathize with each others because we all share that that's what empathy is it's that shared experience otherwise if we all had completely different experiences we'd have nothing shared and nothing that we would be able to see eye to eye about and I feel that people that have gone through these experiences can resonate with conversation about it and I feel like the conversation would be rather easy and effortless in that it's just like talking about any other common human experience and maybe not every human experiences this particular thing but a good percentage of people do and you know just like two people that went through cancer treatment might talk about that to people that went through psychosis and the system can talk about their inner experiences in order to share and make meaning and and validate and say you're not alone say hey I felt that too whoa I'm not an alien that's something similar happened to me and a lot of that can help with the stigma because so many of us except the stigmatizing story of biological brain disease and then isolate and by isolating we're self stigmatizing and by self stigmatizing we we isolate so we're not talking to each other we're not telling each other it's okay that that it happened it's okay that you felt like you were gonna kill your mother you didn't you know people kill their mother in their dreams they didn't do it um you know it's just thought it's just material saying people think about killing somebody and you know they don't have the same terror associated with it because it's just a thought but um I shouldn't use that example of the killing people one because whatever so again it's just conversation I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything I'm not convinced myself I have no idea it's some one of those things that's a mystery and it's just like talking about something mysterious it's a mysterious phenomena and again I'll never figure it out I'm not trying to figure it out I feel like by having conversation it'll create sort of a network of[Music]almost protection in a way because people will start to understand it or reinforce their understanding and which the understanding might just be I can't understand but this is what I feel it meant and I don't I don't get it why does this happen or this is what happened to me or this is what I experienced and I feel like by creating these conversations will be able to create a sort of relational mind so dr. dan siegel talks about the embodied mind and the relational mind and how so much of our minds not our brains but our minds which is different than the brain there we're all enmeshed in each other and if we have our own little understanding of what happened with us and we don't share we're not creating it in an interpersonal neurobiological network and that's just by having conversation and that would actually be reflected in the structure of our brains in that we're having a conversation about this and somebody else is having a conversation back and we're all talking about it so it's in our brains and in that way it would start to spread amongst common society and maybe people that haven't even experienced it will start to understand some of the experiences that happen and that would almost maybe protect them from if it did happen from being so afraid of it because there can be a lot of scary scary parts of it but I think it's really time to have these asians not just conversations about how much the system sucks not just conversations about how much we hate the pharmaceutical companies and how much damage they've done and they've done damage but if we're just talking about that we're not doing our part to say how it is to say what it feels like to say what it's like for us subjectively to say how we want it interpreted to say how we interpret it and to say that with each other how else are is anyone going to see anything differently if we just say don't we don't want the drugs but we don't say what we want or how it is or start talking about things so other ideas about what might work and what might be better start to actually spring from the conversation of what it's like not just saying what we don't like and what we don't want that there isn't there's alternatives but by having more and more conversation the modalities or the things that might help will come into play that suit and fit the conversation so if it's just let's fight the system then we're just going to be fighting the system and I personally don't want to fight the system the system still might get the best of me I don't know I'm not through it and and it's still you know they're scaring me in the background but I think fighting the system isn't going to help us transcend the system we have to create the new paradigm and let the system die off when it's time you know some people really like the system and the system is there the system is necessary if it wasn't it wouldn't exist it's completely necessary and it exists and that's why it exists we have to make it not necessary we have to make it so we don't need that we have to make it so we can say no thank you i have somewhere else I choose this other option the system is not going to do that for us but we need to start talking to each other and we need to have different conversations and not just about the system but just about ourselves and and what it is to be human now they talk a lot nowadays about our genetics you know even now the genetics of mental illness they have psychiatric genetic counseling yeah you think about the system and how wasteful it is and of all the things they could create as the next thing to help people they create psychiatric genetic counseling like what is that I tried how ridiculous I'm curious about what they actually say like they don't test your genetics they just I don't know do a family tree and say oh you're susceptible because you're your aunt's cousin twice removed cat had psychosis I'm not sure what they say I shouldn't totally make fun of it my point is that that's the next field of study of all the things that are even already out there they just always need to create more medical pseudo medical stuff like if it wasn't already pseudo medical enough in so many people's minds they gotta go create you know I don't know a family tree analyst but and like actually make that a position but anyways I might remove that rant because just after I said don't complain about the system invite about the system I started yapping about something in the system but basically we are worried about genetics as in general but what we need to really be worried about is the medics means which are thoughts or bits of information or words and in my experience of psychosis it's memes out of control thoughts out of control thinking and then that thought leads to that thought and the next thought and then 10 thoughts from there at the same time and it's overload and it's words all those things are like recorded in my brain as words and thoughts and they're all memes so what's it's more important to protect ourselves from the memes and one of the memes is the stigma story of mental illness and it's okay to say yes I have a mental illness or to keep that as a piece of information but don't actually let it get encode it in your brain it's a nice tool to have a diagnosis but it's not actually you it's not something that should actually infect your brain cells and in fact you're being so be careful of those memes

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