Speaker 1: One of the really beautiful things about literature is that
Speaker 1: we get to experience so many other lives, even if
Speaker 1: we can only live one life ourselves.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is esme Wang,
Speaker 2: a fiction and nonfiction writer and the author of the
Speaker 2: New York Times bestseller The Collected Schizophrenias, as well as
Speaker 2: the Border of Paradise. Today. Eric and Esmey discuss her
Speaker 2: writing in general, as well as her well known substack
Speaker 2: The Unexpected Shape, The One You Feed Podcast is also
Speaker 2: very happy to say that we are finally on YouTube
Speaker 2: in an official capacity. You can find us at the
Speaker 2: one you feed pod.
Speaker 3: Hi As May, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3: We're going to be discussing your substack called the Unexpected
Speaker 3: Shape Newsletter. We might discuss one of your older books,
Speaker 3: the Collected Schizophrenias, and we'll kind of just see where
Speaker 3: this conversation goes in general. But before we go into
Speaker 3: all that, will start like we always do with the parable.
Speaker 3: In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their
Speaker 3: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 3: inside of us that are always at battle. One it's
Speaker 3: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 3: and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents
Speaker 3: things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild
Speaker 3: stops and they think about it for a second, and
Speaker 3: they look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins, And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I think that parable is fascinating because you can look
Speaker 1: at it from kind of a macro level or a
Speaker 1: more micro level. In the macro level, it's like, all right,
Speaker 1: what kind of life am I going to live? Am
Speaker 1: I going to live a good one? Or a bad one?
Speaker 1: And then by the time we die, and if you
Speaker 1: believe in the pearly gates, you reach the pearly gates
Speaker 1: and then they declare you have lived a good life
Speaker 1: or you have lived a bad life, and then in
Speaker 1: your obituary the headline is Esmey was bad or as
Speaker 1: May was good. And the other way to look at it,
Speaker 1: which I think is also as interesting, if not more interesting,
Speaker 1: is the micro version, which is in every single tiny
Speaker 1: thing we do in the day, whether it's deciding to
Speaker 1: let someone cross the street while you're driving, or it's
Speaker 1: you know, walking by a houseless person on the sidewalk
Speaker 1: and deciding what to do in that moment. And I
Speaker 1: think that it's easy in some ways to look at
Speaker 1: the macro view, but it's very challenging to look at
Speaker 1: every single tiny moment in the microview. And so I
Speaker 1: think that there is the great battle in our lives
Speaker 1: between the two wolves in my view, but there are
Speaker 1: also millions if not trillions of battles between the two
Speaker 1: wolves all our lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think you could argue, to some extent,
Speaker 3: the micro is what makes the macro right. It's all
Speaker 3: those thousands of choices we make that add up to
Speaker 3: the bigger narrative of what our life has been. And
Speaker 3: I often think about that same thing that you're describing,
Speaker 3: which is this sense that every moment and every choice matters,
Speaker 3: And how do I not get freaked out by that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I also think that things can change in
Speaker 1: our lives that will make us more likely to make
Speaker 1: one choice or the other. So there is a quote
Speaker 1: from The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso, which
Speaker 1: I read when I first started getting really sick, and
Speaker 1: she says something like, when you become very ill, you
Speaker 1: either become a huge jerk or you become more open
Speaker 1: and kind. And I thought about that a lot when
Speaker 1: I was spending those years very ill, because I found
Speaker 1: that for me, my tendency was to become more open
Speaker 1: and kind and to think about what everybody else was
Speaker 1: experiencing when I encountered different people during my days, whether
Speaker 1: that be online or the few times I went outside
Speaker 1: and as I've come out of the years where I
Speaker 1: was more sick and more unable to do things, I've
Speaker 1: found myself wondering, am I becoming more closed now and
Speaker 1: more self focused? Now that I am feeling better? Am
Speaker 1: I becoming more selfish? Has there been another change in
Speaker 1: the choices that I choose to make because of what's
Speaker 1: happened in my life? And of course, like in the
Speaker 1: last few years, my husband also developed cancer, so I
Speaker 1: was not only looking at my own illness but also
Speaker 1: at his, So a lot of things have changed. But
Speaker 1: I do think that there are things that happen in
Speaker 1: our lives that may push us one way or the other,
Speaker 1: like the tides.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've spent a lot of time thinking about and
Speaker 3: asking people on this show a version of the question
Speaker 3: you just raised, which is, why does adversity seem to
Speaker 3: for certain people become something that grows their character in
Speaker 3: some way, shape or form. And when does adversity just
Speaker 3: break or embitter people? What causes that difference? And I
Speaker 3: don't think there's any clear answers, but I feel like
Speaker 3: you've alluded to this before, which is support is part
Speaker 3: of that answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it actually reminds me of a quote that
Speaker 1: is from the book Happy Baby. It's actually the epigraph,
Speaker 1: and I can't remember where the quote is from, but
Speaker 1: I bring it up in part because it also has
Speaker 1: to do with canines. It has to do with dogs,
Speaker 1: and it's about how X out of X number of dogs,
Speaker 1: when badly beaten, will become violent and rage against people
Speaker 1: and will bite. And maybe one or two of those
Speaker 1: dogs will become very coward and will hide and be
Speaker 1: afraid of people for the rest of their lives. And
Speaker 1: so there is a part of me that thinks, okay, well,
Speaker 1: maybe there is some kind of nature element to it.
Speaker 1: In addition to the nurture, there could be something that
Speaker 1: makes a person more likely to respond to adversity in
Speaker 1: one way or another. But yeah, I don't really know
Speaker 1: what that formula is. And I have talked to other
Speaker 1: people who have experienced severe illness or trauma and found
Speaker 1: that it did make them closed up and bitter and mean.
Speaker 1: And I see it in my life. I see that
Speaker 1: happen to people, and I think, while there is a
Speaker 1: small amount of making a decision at one point to
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, well this has happened to me, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to make a decision. There is another aspect
Speaker 1: that is the voice in your head kind of tapping
Speaker 1: on the shoulder, saying, what choice am I going to
Speaker 1: make today. There was this one time when I was
Speaker 1: taking lots and lots of medical tests and my husband
Speaker 1: and I had just gotten back from the neurologist and
Speaker 1: we'd gotten some pretty bad news and we were very upset,
Speaker 1: and we went to Whole Foods because it was a
Speaker 1: place where we could get these supplements that the doctor
Speaker 1: said we were supposed to get. And so we were
Speaker 1: at Whole Foods and we saw these people walking around,
Speaker 1: and I saw my husband bump into someone in front
Speaker 1: of us, and he didn't notice at all, and he
Speaker 1: just kept walking. And the person he bumped into became
Speaker 1: very angry. I could see him become very angry, and
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, my husband is one of the
Speaker 1: most thoughtful people I know. I'm the person who will
Speaker 1: burst out of elevators or burst into elevators without really
Speaker 1: considering what's happening, or like making sure people come out first.
Speaker 1: He's the one who pays more attention to things. But
Speaker 1: he's so worried about me in this moment that he
Speaker 1: isn't as careful as he usually is. And then my
Speaker 1: next thought was, well, I don't know what's going on
Speaker 1: with this guy who is very upset with my husband
Speaker 1: in this moment. Maybe I don't know why this was
Speaker 1: the story I came up with, but I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe he can't afford anything at Whole Foods. Maybe he
Speaker 1: just comes here once a week and he walks around
Speaker 1: and looks at the things that he can afford and
Speaker 1: dreams about affording them one day. And because of that, today,
Speaker 1: having my husband bump into him was particularly galling, and
Speaker 1: so I think that was a really interesting thing to
Speaker 1: have happened during that time. And when I shared this
Speaker 1: story online, somebody responded with, I'm reading this while I'm
Speaker 1: in the parking lot of a Whole Foods, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to be thinking about this when I go inside.
Speaker 1: So it kind of had this effect to the people
Speaker 1: reading it. But yeah, I think about that a lot,
Speaker 1: like what makes us consider other people when we might
Speaker 1: not otherwise?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know the answer to what allows us
Speaker 3: to consider other people? And I think it's a really
Speaker 3: interesting story that you told, because so much of what
Speaker 3: we do is we attribute things to people. Right, you
Speaker 3: were able to attribute to your husband like he's just
Speaker 3: really stressed out. So he did this right, and then
Speaker 3: you were able to make an attribution towards the other gentleman.
Speaker 3: Now again we don't know how accurate or not, but
Speaker 3: it was an attribution of goodwill though to some degree,
Speaker 3: right it was that there was a reason that he
Speaker 3: might be so angry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I could have thought at one point
Speaker 1: in my life like, gosh, what a mean spirited person
Speaker 1: who was not willing to be open hearted, and to
Speaker 1: look at my husband who might be going through a
Speaker 1: hard time, I think, to realize that we are all
Speaker 1: going through a hard time. We don't know what everybody
Speaker 1: is going through. That's something that I definitely learned when
Speaker 1: I was the most ill.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about your illness, if you're okay with it.
Speaker 3: So you wrote the book The Collected Schizophrenias, which was
Speaker 3: a collection of essays that documented your struggle with schizo
Speaker 3: effective disorder, and later in that book you are starting
Speaker 3: to talk a little bit about PTSD, you're exploring lime disease.
Speaker 3: I know as you've gone on you've been looking at
Speaker 3: other conditions. Can you just give us maybe an overview
Speaker 3: of how you see your health now, what your challenges are,
Speaker 3: and how that's changed over time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so funny. So among writers, there's this general
Speaker 1: understanding that in the New York Times book review, most
Speaker 1: reviews are generally positive, and then at the very end,
Speaker 1: we'll take a slight turn toward the negative. And so
Speaker 1: it ends with this kind of like more negative thing.
Speaker 1: It's like the opposite of the compliment sandwich, you know,
Speaker 1: just to have it not be a complete rave. And
Speaker 1: what mine was was a generally very open and interested review,
Speaker 1: a positive review, and at the very end, the negative
Speaker 1: thing was that I perhaps did not understand what was
Speaker 1: going on with my health, and that even though I
Speaker 1: believed at the time that I was dealing with late
Speaker 1: stage lime disease, that I would probably change my mind
Speaker 1: about that in the next few years. And I thought
Speaker 1: that was so interesting. When the review came out, it
Speaker 1: actually made me kind of upset because I had gone
Speaker 1: through years of treatment. At that point, I was doing
Speaker 1: like automated hemotherapy, where I was having my blood removed
Speaker 1: and ozonated and pumped back into my body, and I
Speaker 1: was doing all of these different kinds of injections and ivs,
Speaker 1: and I'd gotten treatment in different states, in different clinics,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking to myself, how does this writer
Speaker 1: know anything about what's going on with my health? And
Speaker 1: then over the next few years, well, to back up
Speaker 1: a little bit in the book, I do acknowledge that
Speaker 1: I'm not completely sure about the late stage line diagnosis.
Speaker 1: It was a diagnosis that was controversial and continues to
Speaker 1: be controversial. It's not recognized by the CDC. A lot
Speaker 1: of the doctors who diagnose people with chronic lime are
Speaker 1: seeing these patients after the patients have already gotten all
Speaker 1: the tests they could and seen all the doctors they could,
Speaker 1: and are still desperate because they're very ill. And I
Speaker 1: do think now, even though I wouldn't put my foot
Speaker 1: down on it and say like this is the exact
Speaker 1: right answer, I would say that a lot of people,
Speaker 1: because they are very desperate when they're very sick, will
Speaker 1: end up trying anything and accepting any diagnosis because what
Speaker 1: else are you going to do? And so even if
Speaker 1: I didn't one hundred percent believe in the late stage
Speaker 1: line diagnosis, I was willing to take, you know, fifty
Speaker 1: kinds of supplements, and I was willing to go to
Speaker 1: all kinds of odd ball clinics, you know, like around
Speaker 1: the country. And by the time I started to get
Speaker 1: a little bit better and then a lot better. So
Speaker 1: by the time the book actually came out, the Collective
Speaker 1: SCHIZOZOPHERNTING has actually came out in twenty nineteen, I will
Speaker 1: say that I was probably past the worst of the
Speaker 1: years of my physical illness, and I started thinking what
Speaker 1: does this mean and what can I attribute my getting
Speaker 1: better to. I think that at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: five years later, I would say that a lot of
Speaker 1: my problems stemmed from chronic and complex trauma. And this
Speaker 1: is something that my original psychiatrist has suggested, which upset
Speaker 1: me a great deal because I thought she was implying
Speaker 1: that it was all in my head, that it was
Speaker 1: some form of hysteria. But I'm learning more about how
Speaker 1: complex PTSD, which is not in the DSM or the
Speaker 1: Bible of Mental illnesses, but it is generally accepted as
Speaker 1: a real thing. And the difference, just to say really quickly,
Speaker 1: between that and regular PTSD is regular PTSD is generally
Speaker 1: one large traumatic event that then causes symptoms, and complex
Speaker 1: PTSD is an ongoing series of traumas that then kind
Speaker 1: of form who you are and can cause PTSD symptoms,
Speaker 1: but generally is more of a thing that will form
Speaker 1: who you are. And so I learned this even more
Speaker 1: because I ended up going through a five month autism
Speaker 1: assessment towards the beginning of this year, and at the
Speaker 1: end the doctor said, what I think you have is
Speaker 1: schizoephactive disorder and complex PTSD, and I think that the
Speaker 1: combination of those things has created in you almost the
Speaker 1: equivalent of an autism diagnosis, but from a different angle
Speaker 1: or from a different source. And so I've started to
Speaker 1: learn more about the autonomic nervous system and how much
Speaker 1: it's affected by trauma. And a lot of my problems
Speaker 1: to begin with were all related to dsodinomia, which is
Speaker 1: why at this point, when I'm discussing my physical ailments,
Speaker 1: I generally just call it chronic illness. If I really
Speaker 1: have to call it something, I'll call it disodonomia and fibromyalgia,
Speaker 1: because those are two diagnoses that I have received, and
Speaker 1: those are diagnoses that are generally more accepted by the
Speaker 1: medical profession. But it's an ongoing conversation with myself and
Speaker 1: might end up being more of the topic of my
Speaker 1: next book. Which will be a nonfiction book. The one
Speaker 1: I'm working on right now as a novel. But yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the things I think about.
Speaker 3: I would be remiss in my job if I did
Speaker 3: not ask you to share one of the autism tests
Speaker 3: that you were given.
Speaker 1: The one that I found really interesting was that he
Speaker 1: said this is the gold standard for autism evaluation. And
Speaker 1: he brought me a baggie and it had a bunch
Speaker 1: of items in it. And I looked at the items
Speaker 1: which he dumped out on the table and I was like,
Speaker 1: you've got to be joking. So like inside was a
Speaker 1: paper clip, Let's see what else, like a block, a
Speaker 1: piece of string, and it just had like a bunch
Speaker 1: of assorted things. And he said, okay, well with these items,
Speaker 1: make a at least one to three minute television commercial.
Speaker 1: And I was like, are you kidding? This is the
Speaker 1: gold stand for autism evaluation. And he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh okay. I have to mention one other item that
Speaker 1: was in there that I found hilarious. It was this
Speaker 1: miniature pair of spectacles made out of wire. I ended
Speaker 1: up thinking about it very long. I used to be
Speaker 1: an aspiring sketch comedy person, and so I just came
Speaker 1: up with something off the cuff and really hammered it up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was fascinating. Another thing that I had
Speaker 1: no idea was a part of the autism evaluation was
Speaker 1: the academic evaluation, which was asking me questions that I
Speaker 1: would have known back when I was in school, such
Speaker 1: as how far is the sun from the earth? And
Speaker 1: I really didn't remember a lot of those things, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it was fascinating.
Speaker 3: I was struck as I was reading that first that
Speaker 3: the test you just described made me laugh out loud.
Speaker 3: What I was struck by, though, interestingly, was how thorough
Speaker 3: that that what screening process is, and how quickly in
Speaker 3: other cases diagnoses are made.
Speaker 1: Well, not only are diagnoses made very quickly for some people,
Speaker 1: but also there's been this very large movement towards self diagnosis,
Speaker 1: and so there are a lot of people now, especially
Speaker 1: on places like Tumblr and TikTok and Instagram, that are
Speaker 1: saying you're okay to diagnose yourself. And while I understand
Speaker 1: where this impulse is coming from, and I do agree
Speaker 1: with it in a lot of ways in that you know,
Speaker 1: if you feel like this diagnosis is helping you, if
Speaker 1: it helps you come up with workarounds for your life
Speaker 1: or ways to live a life that is easier for you. Also,
Speaker 1: not everyone can afford an autism diagnosis. I did not
Speaker 1: have to pay for my evaluation because it was part
Speaker 1: of my HMO, But a lot of people are paying
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars for these evaluations. But yeah, some people
Speaker 1: when they heard about out my five month long experience,
Speaker 1: and in part it was five months long because I
Speaker 1: have so many other confounding factors. I have different diagnoses,
Speaker 1: I have this schizoepective disorder, I have the trauma. They
Speaker 1: really wanted to be certain, or at least this particular
Speaker 1: doctor wanted to be really certain when he was making
Speaker 1: the evaluation. And when I read the report, I was
Speaker 1: astounded by how thorough it was. It was a very
Speaker 1: thorough and very lengthy report. And when I wrote about it,
Speaker 1: a lot of people reached out to me to say,
Speaker 1: my evaluation was not nearly as long. And there are
Speaker 1: places that you can pay like quite a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and you go online and you do this evaluation. It's
Speaker 1: pretty quick and then you can get a result. So
Speaker 1: I think there's a spectrum of ways to get diagnosed
Speaker 1: or not diagnosed.
Speaker 3: I want to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 3: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 3: see people making, And that's really that we don't think
Speaker 3: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 3: the context of our entire life. Right, Habits don't happen
Speaker 3: in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
Speaker 3: that we have. So when we just keep adding I
Speaker 3: should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 3: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 3: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 3: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 3: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 3: might I.
Speaker 2: Need to remove.
Speaker 3: If you want to step by step guide for how
Speaker 3: you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf,
Speaker 3: go to Goodwolf dot me, slash change and join the
Speaker 3: free masterclass. You mentioned that the recent non autism diagnosed
Speaker 3: has said that they thought schizo effective disorder along with
Speaker 3: complex PTSD was kind of what's happening. So I'd like
Speaker 3: to go back to the book that you wrote, the
Speaker 3: Collective Schizophrenias, and there was a couple of things in
Speaker 3: there that really struck me, and one of the things
Speaker 3: that really struck me was you talking about I'm just
Speaker 3: going to read a little bit of what you said.
Speaker 3: You said It's one thing to be able to say
Speaker 3: I saw blood dripping down the walls, or the landlord
Speaker 3: has installed cameras in my apartment, but it's another to
Speaker 3: talk about how it feels under the skin to see
Speaker 3: and believe things that aren't real. And I was wondering
Speaker 3: if you could just share some of that with us,
Speaker 3: because I've never read that type of description before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually wish I kept a copy of the
Speaker 1: book on my desk, which I don't, because I would
Speaker 1: read a little bit of what I was talking about.
Speaker 1: But what I meant, basically was the sensation of losing
Speaker 1: your sense of reality, and not just the actual belief
Speaker 1: or the thing you're seeing or hearing, but the actual
Speaker 1: creepy Crawley sensation. At one point, I describe it as
Speaker 1: being in a pitch black room with no sight of
Speaker 1: where to put your foot on the next step. I
Speaker 1: think I also talk about crossing a wall that bucks
Speaker 1: you to and fro and won't throw you back again,
Speaker 1: things like that. That was actually one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a writer, or at least wanted
Speaker 1: to be a writer that wrote about mental illness in
Speaker 1: this particular way, because I found that I was not
Speaker 1: satisfied as someone who has experienced psychosis and continues to
Speaker 1: periodically experience psychosis. I had not read about what the
Speaker 1: actual sensations under the skinness was like, and I found
Speaker 1: it a great challenge, great both meeting big and also
Speaker 1: terrific challenged to be a writer and to try and
Speaker 1: make it something that people could parse, even if they
Speaker 1: hadn't experienced it themselves.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about potentially reading part of what you wrote.
Speaker 3: Can I just read a little of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, so it would be better in your voice,
Speaker 3: but listeners will get by with hearing it in my voice.
Speaker 3: You say, the more I consider the world, the more
Speaker 3: I realize that it's supposed to have a cohesion that
Speaker 3: no longer exists, or that it is swiftly losing, either
Speaker 3: because it's pulling itself apart, because it has never been cohesive,
Speaker 3: because my mind is no longer able to hold the
Speaker 3: pieces together, or most likely some jumbled combination of the above.
Speaker 3: And then you also say, after the prodromal phase, I
Speaker 3: settle into a way of being that is almost intolerable,
Speaker 3: and so I just thought both of those sort of
Speaker 3: spoke to how terrifying and unsettling this experience is. Where
Speaker 3: you realize that this is starting to happen again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is a phase where things are starting to
Speaker 1: fall apart, and I don't quite know it, although if
Speaker 1: I were to step back, I would realize, Oh, you're
Speaker 1: starting to cling really closely to your rituals and routines. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're starting to write down more about the details of
Speaker 1: the day than you normally do, or oh, you're reading
Speaker 1: a lot more self help books than you normally do.
Speaker 1: But once I cross into areas of stronger psychosis, I
Speaker 1: kind of lose that insight and I am less able
Speaker 1: to believe what should be believable or believe the real
Speaker 1: you said.
Speaker 3: You still do continue to have times of being in psychosis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it usually happens when I'm very stressed. The last
Speaker 1: time I experienced a more prolonged period, and it still
Speaker 1: wasn't as long as it used to be. Since I
Speaker 1: started taking heldaal which I mentioned in the book, I
Speaker 1: have had far fewer symptoms than I used to. But
Speaker 1: in about twenty twenty two. I did have symptoms for
Speaker 1: some days, and yeah, I probably will go on to
Speaker 1: have symptoms here and there for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: But it certainly is much better now than it used
Speaker 1: to be. And these days I'm actually grappling much more
Speaker 1: with complex PTSD. So yeah, life is a rich tapestry
Speaker 1: and things are always changing.
Speaker 3: I've said before about me and my depression that one
Speaker 3: of the things that has happened is I've gotten better
Speaker 3: at being depressed over the years, Like when it comes on,
Speaker 3: I know how to do it better than I used to.
Speaker 3: Is the same thing true for psychosis? Can you do
Speaker 3: it better or is the break so extreme that there's
Speaker 3: no real way that, like your previous experience informs your
Speaker 3: later experience.
Speaker 1: I tend to experience with any kind of mental health issue,
Speaker 1: whether that be depression or menia or psychosis, something that
Speaker 1: I call phase blindness, which I would say is the
Speaker 1: biggest challenge for me when I'm dealing with these things.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder if it's something that you deal
Speaker 1: with and is something that you are better at grappling with.
Speaker 1: When you say that you are getting better at being depressed,
Speaker 1: and what phase blindness is? This is just a term
Speaker 1: I made up myself. This is not an official psychiatric term,
Speaker 1: but what it means to me is being unable to
Speaker 1: think of a world outside of whatever phase you're in.
Speaker 1: So when you're depressed, never being able to imagine the
Speaker 1: sensation of not being depressed, being like I've been depressed
Speaker 1: my whole life, what are you talking about? Just like
Speaker 1: I've never been happy, Or when I'm in psychosis, like oh,
Speaker 1: this is just the world, Like I've just been psychotic
Speaker 1: all this time, and it will never not be psychosis.
Speaker 1: And so I think in some ways it's the phase
Speaker 1: blindness that's the real trick of it, because being in
Speaker 1: it means that that's your forever and that's your always
Speaker 1: You've always been like that.
Speaker 3: That's a great term for it, phase blindness, because I
Speaker 3: feel like if I were to give depression qualities, you know,
Speaker 3: like that would be one of its qualities, is this
Speaker 3: sense you've always been this way, you always will be
Speaker 3: this way. And I do think that is what I've
Speaker 3: gotten better at doing. I've gotten better at going that's
Speaker 3: not true, that's not true. Yeah, I've described before sometimes
Speaker 3: with depression that I sometimes treat it a little bit
Speaker 3: like I call it the emotional flu. And what I
Speaker 3: mean by that is like, I've got a cold right now,
Speaker 3: you can hear in my voice. And so for a
Speaker 3: couple of days, I'm going to rest a little bit
Speaker 3: more and I'm going to take some vitamin C and
Speaker 3: I'm going to try and take care of myself. But
Speaker 3: I'm not going to make much out of it. I
Speaker 3: will recognize, like, yeah, I feel crappy, but that's part
Speaker 3: of this thing, and it's going to pass.
Speaker 1: This is not a holistic statement of who I am
Speaker 1: as a human being.
Speaker 3: And so it's easy to do with a cold. It's
Speaker 3: far harder to do, I think, with a mental health condition.
Speaker 3: But that's part of what I think I've learned to
Speaker 3: do a little bit more is go okay. We don't
Speaker 3: need to suddenly think that the world has gone wrong
Speaker 3: and that your life has been wasted and everything you've
Speaker 3: done up till now doesn't mean anything, and you've always
Speaker 3: felt this way and you always will feel that way.
Speaker 3: I've gotten better at just going okay, just relax, take
Speaker 3: care of yourself for a little bit. This is going
Speaker 3: to pass. I know it doesn't seem like it's going
Speaker 3: to pass, but it will. And maybe it's going through
Speaker 3: enough cycles of it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think something that's helped me with that issue
Speaker 1: is that I keep very detailed records, so like I
Speaker 1: keep basically like half hour by half hour records of
Speaker 1: every day, and I do it in a planner, and
Speaker 1: so it's easier for me to physically turn the pages
Speaker 1: of the planner and say, hey, you feel right now
Speaker 1: now very bad and sad and anxious, and you feel
Speaker 1: like this is how you've always felt and how you
Speaker 1: always well feel. But look, not that long ago, five
Speaker 1: days ago, you actually went to an event and you
Speaker 1: had a good time. It says right here, I was
Speaker 1: happy and I had a good time, And so you
Speaker 1: are proving yourself wrong here because you wrote that that happened.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's very helpful for me. And
Speaker 1: then for longer periods of not feeling well or struggling
Speaker 1: with mental health issues, then again I can turn back,
Speaker 1: I can go okay. So it is true the last
Speaker 1: three months have been really hard, but if you turn
Speaker 1: back to like the very beginning of the year, or
Speaker 1: like the very ending of last year, or even like
Speaker 1: two thousand and twenty one, there was this time when
Speaker 1: you were having quite a few good months that you
Speaker 1: have forgotten about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great to be able to go back and
Speaker 3: look at that. Let's change directions now a little bit.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that you do on your
Speaker 3: substack the Unexpected Shape newsletter is you say that you
Speaker 3: provide inspiration for ambitious people living with limitation such as
Speaker 3: chronic illness, caretaking responsibilities, and or disability. And one of
Speaker 3: the things that comes through your substack and came through
Speaker 3: your book also is that you are, by nature a
Speaker 3: fairly ambitious person. You are a person who likes to
Speaker 3: do and create and make, and yet you have faced
Speaker 3: significant limitation in doing that. And so I thought we
Speaker 3: could explore that topic for a while, both what does
Speaker 3: it mean to be ambitious? Is this a good or
Speaker 3: a bad thing? And how when you are limited more
Speaker 3: than you would like, do you make peace with not
Speaker 3: being able to do all that you wish you could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a really big topic for me,
Speaker 1: as you can probably tell. So the kind of name
Speaker 1: that my company goes under, or my business goes under,
Speaker 1: is the Unexpected Shape. And that comes from a story
Speaker 1: that I heard from a friend about her father's analogy
Speaker 1: of a baseball diamond. And I'm not a big sports person,
Speaker 1: so I can't tell you that much about baseball, but
Speaker 1: I feel like this works pretty well. So with a
Speaker 1: baseball diamond, there's the certain shape of the baseball diamond,
Speaker 1: but they're also the rules of baseball. So you hit
Speaker 1: the ball and then you run from first to third
Speaker 1: to second to home if you're lucky. Now, possibly it
Speaker 1: would be easier for you to win if you could
Speaker 1: just run from first to third to home or from
Speaker 1: first directly back to home and then score that way,
Speaker 1: but that's not how the game of baseball is played.
Speaker 1: And so I look at limitations as kind of like
Speaker 1: the borders of the diamond or the rules of baseball.
Speaker 1: So we all have these unexpected shapes in our lives.
Speaker 1: We don't know what the shapes will be when we're born,
Speaker 1: we don't know how they'll change as we grow, but
Speaker 1: as we are living through life, it's one thing to
Speaker 1: call them imitations, but I could also call them just boundaries,
Speaker 1: like they're just the boundaries of the lives that were
Speaker 1: living and part of the quote unquote game. Even though
Speaker 1: that can sound like a flippant way of putting it
Speaker 1: is to live your life with those boundaries and within
Speaker 1: those boundaries. So one thing that I like to teach
Speaker 1: in terms of living with limitations, because limitations are frustrating
Speaker 1: and I live with a lot of them, such as
Speaker 1: chronic fatigue, is workarounds. So I started writing The Collectives
Speaker 1: Schizophrenias pretty much entirely on my iPhone, and I wrote
Speaker 1: basically the whole thing on an iPhone or an iPad
Speaker 1: because I used to sit at my desktop and write
Speaker 1: for hours at a time, you know, like all day really,
Speaker 1: and I did that with my first book, but with
Speaker 1: my second book, I couldn't do that because I was
Speaker 1: too tired. I lay in bed all day. So I
Speaker 1: found that what I would do is I would tap
Speaker 1: out the draft of the book using one finger on
Speaker 1: the drafts app And that's a workaround. I mean, it
Speaker 1: might not be as fast as typing on your laptop,
Speaker 1: but it certainly is better than nothing. And so I
Speaker 1: think that one thing we can do is look at
Speaker 1: our limitations and see what our workarounds could possibly be.
Speaker 1: And our workarounds may also be based on resources, So
Speaker 1: we can look at our resources. Maybe your resource is money,
Speaker 1: Maybe your resources community. If your resources money, maybe you
Speaker 1: can pay someone to clean your home once a month.
Speaker 1: If your resources community, you can barter something that you
Speaker 1: do for your friends for something they can do for
Speaker 1: you that's harder for you to do based on your
Speaker 1: limitations or your boundaries. And so yeah, I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about what limitations mean, especially if
Speaker 1: you are in ambitious and to speak of ambition. I
Speaker 1: think also my thoughts on ambition have changed over the
Speaker 1: last few years. I actually pitched my next two books.
Speaker 1: So the next book that comes out is a novel
Speaker 1: called Soft Creatures, and the book after that will be
Speaker 1: a nonfiction book. But I am not entirely sure at
Speaker 1: this point what it'll be. But it was going to
Speaker 1: be about being ambitious and living with limitations. But I
Speaker 1: have seen in the five years since I signed that
Speaker 1: two book deal that society's relationship with the word ambition
Speaker 1: has changed a lot. It is actually, I think, more
Speaker 1: of a dirty word, especially among the more liberal leaning
Speaker 1: community or the leftist leaning community, than it used to be,
Speaker 1: because it implies work and drudgery and capitalism and not
Speaker 1: protecting yourself and your health and so many things that
Speaker 1: have become more valued in recent years. And so I've
Speaker 1: been wondering to myself, like, is a book about being
Speaker 1: ambitious and living with limitations? Is that something that I
Speaker 1: even want to write anymore? But I think that these
Speaker 1: are all challenging ideas that I've certainly been thinking about,
Speaker 1: and I bet other people have too.
Speaker 3: I have seen a change in culture around the word ambition,
Speaker 3: I think, and for many of the reasons that you've said.
Speaker 3: I think there's a sense that if we are working
Speaker 3: hard for something, that it's because either we are shallow
Speaker 3: or capitalist, or all the things that you said. And
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily buy that. That's same way that people
Speaker 3: used to say like nobody says on their deathbed, like
Speaker 3: I wish I'd spent more time in the office. And
Speaker 3: on one hand, I believe there's obviously a lot of
Speaker 3: truth and a statement like that, And yet for people
Speaker 3: whose work feels really important and meaningful to them, you
Speaker 3: very well might have wished that you had put more
Speaker 3: time and energy into whatever this thing was that you
Speaker 3: were bringing to the world. I was also thinking about
Speaker 3: a term that you used. You posted a picture of
Speaker 3: a bird. You've been sketching birds every day, and you
Speaker 3: said I wasn't able to do anything useful today. But
Speaker 3: I created this bird and that will have to do.
Speaker 3: And that term useful I actually thought about and think
Speaker 3: about often, because that's a term that I relate with
Speaker 3: very well. Actually, I think it's good to be useful
Speaker 3: because it doesn't mean that I'm necessarily creating something, but
Speaker 3: it's an orientation to being in the world for me,
Speaker 3: which is that what I do here is useful to
Speaker 3: other people in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: Right, Like I was not selling that bird to anyone.
Speaker 1: It wasn't part of the capitalist machine, you know, Like
Speaker 1: it was a bird that I painted and then I
Speaker 1: shared online. And what shocked me genuinely shocked me. You
Speaker 1: know when people sometimes say, like, oh, I posted this
Speaker 1: tweet and it went viral, and I was so surprised.
Speaker 1: I often think to myself, yeah, right, like you thought
Speaker 1: that might go viral, But this genuinely like, I don't
Speaker 1: use Twitter anymore, but I do use notes on the
Speaker 1: subsetac app, and it went kind of viral, and I
Speaker 1: was genuinely very surprised because I had not given it
Speaker 1: much thought. I genuinely was feeling like, oh, I haven't
Speaker 1: done much today, but like, here's a bird, and like
Speaker 1: I hope people like it, but people really really did,
Speaker 1: and like hundreds of people responded to this saying something
Speaker 1: about like how no, this bird has brightened my day,
Speaker 1: or like this word is enough for today and this
Speaker 1: you know, and beauty is enoughness and beauty is of
Speaker 1: use and that really struck me. And so I did
Speaker 1: end up writing a substack piece called like what is
Speaker 1: it to be useful? Which was about that experience. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think usefulness is an underused word. Honestly. I think
Speaker 1: people like to use the word productive or like productivity
Speaker 1: or things like that, but I think useful is a
Speaker 1: very good word.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think we have to watch for matter of degree
Speaker 3: where we don't want to think that every moment has
Speaker 3: to be useful or productive or whatever your word is.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, I think there is value
Speaker 3: insane Am I using my time in a way that
Speaker 3: feels valuable to me? And I see you wrestling with
Speaker 3: this question out loud through your substack, which is given
Speaker 3: that I have these health challenges, could I be pushing
Speaker 3: myself a little bit more? And I think that all
Speaker 3: of us have some some measure of this. I think,
Speaker 3: like you said, we all have our own boundaries or
Speaker 3: our own shape. And so I think that it's a
Speaker 3: very common thing for people who want to do things
Speaker 3: in the world to question, you know, when I sort
Speaker 3: of just said, like I'm out of gas for today,
Speaker 3: I'm done. I'm just I just need to relax and
Speaker 3: do nothing, like did I really need to or could
Speaker 3: I have pushed? You know, could I have done more?
Speaker 3: And I wrestle with those questions. I wrestle with questions
Speaker 3: of my energy level at fifty four is different than
Speaker 3: it used to be. It just is I don't know
Speaker 3: what's appropriate energy level at my age. So you get
Speaker 3: into these like, well, am I could I do more?
Speaker 3: Should I do more? Should I do less? I think
Speaker 3: everybody wrestles with these questions.
Speaker 1: And I think that again, to go back to something
Speaker 1: we had said earlier, things that happen in your life
Speaker 1: will change how you feel about these things, whether that's
Speaker 1: growing older or having less energy. For example, my husband
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with cancer last year, and he may have
Speaker 1: come close to dying several times, and I was very,
Speaker 1: very burned out. Recently, I might still be pretty burned out.
Speaker 1: I had just relaunched the unexpected shapewriting Academy, and I
Speaker 1: had also just turned in one hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 1: word manuscript to my editor. And for a while, I
Speaker 1: was like, why am I feeling so unable to do anything?
Speaker 1: And then I remembered, oh, yeah, you just did all
Speaker 1: these really big things. And so because I recognized that,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, Okay, so instead of working this weekend,
Speaker 1: you are going to force yourself to rest on Sunday.
Speaker 1: And that was actually very challenging because I kept finding
Speaker 1: myself starting to do work and then being like, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I was going to read like profit first, and then
Speaker 1: I was like, no, you can't read profit first, as
Speaker 1: like reading on your resting day. So I decided to
Speaker 1: read a mystery novel instead. But then later that day,
Speaker 1: and I think that I might not have seen this
Speaker 1: as useful or productive or whatever word you want to
Speaker 1: use before, but my husband and I made a steak dinner,
Speaker 1: just like a very modest, little steak dinner, and we
Speaker 1: listened to records and we sat and cuddled on the
Speaker 1: couch with our dog. And that was the best thing
Speaker 1: I had done all week. It was the best thing
Speaker 1: I had done all week, and I was so glad
Speaker 1: that I had taken the time to do that and
Speaker 1: to kind of refill my well a bit after being
Speaker 1: so tired, and also to think, no, this is the
Speaker 1: most important thing that I have done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have a line where you said, I've found
Speaker 3: in the end that aggressive pursuit of one's ambitions is
Speaker 3: a skill that is not as important as living a
Speaker 3: good life, Resting with my husband see who's in cancer recovery,
Speaker 3: cuddling with my dog, doing work that I care about
Speaker 3: in bits and pieces instead of hours on end. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it is that balance of those things, because
Speaker 3: I do think that is the one thing that ambition
Speaker 3: can do which is really pernicious, is robb us of
Speaker 3: the ability to appreciate actually where we are. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: we've got to be getting somewhere all the time. For me,
Speaker 3: that's certainly its shadow side. And again, my ambitions are
Speaker 3: when I use that word, I don't mean necessarily make
Speaker 3: more money. I just mean do the things in life
Speaker 3: that feel important and meaningful to me. But it is
Speaker 3: true for sure that too much focus on that is problematic,
Speaker 3: and so I've often spent a lot of time thinking about, like,
Speaker 3: how do you do both those things? How do you
Speaker 3: want to change and grow and create and be these things,
Speaker 3: and how do you also simultaneously appreciate right where you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this reminds me of something that I used
Speaker 1: to focus on just as much as ambition, which is legacy.
Speaker 1: And I think about legacy last these days. But I
Speaker 1: found that my happiest definition of legacy was not just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to win the Nobel Prize for literature, or
Speaker 1: I would want to win this or that or make
Speaker 1: X amount of money. It was also really important to
Speaker 1: me to leave a legacy where people would say, esme
Speaker 1: was a really kind person, or as me was a
Speaker 1: really generous person, or the legacy that you leave when
Speaker 1: you smile at the barista and give them a big
Speaker 1: tip and they feel good for a few minutes. Again,
Speaker 1: we were talking about the macro of the wolf parable
Speaker 1: and the micro of it. I think there's also a
Speaker 1: macro and micro of legacy and productivity and ambition.
Speaker 3: Something else that you wrote recently on Substack that jumped
Speaker 3: out at me because I felt this way so often
Speaker 3: in my life. You said, I found that one of
Speaker 3: life's greatest fundamental frustrations as well as one of its
Speaker 3: great terrors is that I only have one life. Rechoice
Speaker 3: I make is finite. I've made certain decisions that have
Speaker 3: led me down certain paths, and whether I am happy
Speaker 3: or not with the path I am on is not
Speaker 3: so much the point. The point is that I did
Speaker 3: not choose any of the sentillion other paths that I
Speaker 3: could have gone down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and surely enough science fiction movies have been made
Speaker 1: about this topic. I don't know sliding doors counts, but
Speaker 1: that is one. So yes, I agree with what I wrote.
Speaker 1: That is true of how I think about life. I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the really beautiful things about books
Speaker 1: about writing. I contributed to an anthology that Penguin UK
Speaker 1: did and it was called Why We Read, and mine
Speaker 1: was generally about how there are so many things that
Speaker 1: I am not doing and cannot do at this point
Speaker 1: in my life. I was once told that the social
Speaker 1: psychology field would be much poor if I did not
Speaker 1: become a social psychologist. Well, I am not a social psychologist,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm sure they're doing just fine without me.
Speaker 1: But what I can do because of books is read
Speaker 1: about social psychology, is read about what it's like to
Speaker 1: be a social psychologist. I didn't become like an expat
Speaker 1: and live in London, but I can read about other
Speaker 1: people's experiences of being expaths and living in London. I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the really beautiful things about literature,
Speaker 1: is that we get to experience so many other lives,
Speaker 1: even if we can only live one life ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, It's one of the things I love
Speaker 3: about reading. I think the other thing that is embedded
Speaker 3: in what you said is that recognition that whether I'm
Speaker 3: happy or not with the path I'm on is not
Speaker 3: so much the point. It also means that there is
Speaker 3: no other life except the one that I did choose,
Speaker 3: and that can be comforting, also because I realized that
Speaker 3: questions of what I have been happier if I did this,
Speaker 3: or what I've been better doing that, they're meaningless questions
Speaker 3: because they presume some reality that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Although I do find that some people look at quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics as one way to comfort themselves in this manner,
Speaker 1: like they think like, well, there are all these like
Speaker 1: other dimensions out there where I'm doing all these different things,
Speaker 1: and I'm in this one, but there's an asm out
Speaker 1: there somewhere. Who did become a social psychologist, and so
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I necessarily subscribe to that belief or that way
Speaker 1: of thinking, but I do know people for whom it
Speaker 1: is a great comfort.
Speaker 3: It's back to what we said before about the micro
Speaker 3: and macro. It's easy to think that there could be
Speaker 3: these other worlds. At every decision point, there's a choice made,
Speaker 3: and you go this way or you went that way,
Speaker 3: and it spins off alternate universes. But when you realize
Speaker 3: how every moment is a moment of choice, then you're like, well,
Speaker 3: hang on a second. This becomes mind boggling. It's not
Speaker 3: just whether I chose to be an author or a
Speaker 3: social psychologist. It's also the hundreds all decisions that I
Speaker 3: made all morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, oh, I lifted this water thermos and
Speaker 1: I took a sip. What if I hadn't done that precisely?
Speaker 3: Well, as may thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3: I think we're about out of time, but I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed talking with you. I've enjoyed reading your sub stack
Speaker 3: and reading your books, and I'll be excited to read
Speaker 3: you one hundred and thirty thousand word manuscript that's a
Speaker 3: lot of words.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. The words will get cut down
Speaker 1: for sure, but I've really appreciated this. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me.
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