Speaker 1: It's challenging to one day think that you're a literal
Speaker 1: god and that you control everything, and then the next
Speaker 1: day think that your garbage. It's a whiplash effect in
Speaker 1: your mind and body and spirit that is still to
Speaker 1: this day hard to describe and explain to people.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Gabe Howard
Speaker 2: to the show. Gabe is an award winning podcast host, author,
Speaker 2: and sought after speaker. He hosts the Inside Mental Health
Speaker 2: podcast and is the author of Mental Illness as an
Speaker 2: Asshole and other Observations. He's been featured in numerous publications,
Speaker 2: including Bipolar Magazine, webmdhealthline dot Com, and the Stanford Online
Speaker 2: Medical Journal. Among his many awards, he is the recipient
Speaker 2: of Mental Health America's Norman Gutrie Award and received a
Speaker 2: resolution from the Governor of Ohio naming him a quote
Speaker 2: Everyday hero. In this episode, I talked to Gabe Howard
Speaker 2: about living with bipolar disorder, an illness that is characterized
Speaker 2: by emotional highs and emotional lows. Gabe shares what phases
Speaker 2: of meaning and depression are really like and how the
Speaker 2: sudden shifts feel so jarring even though the disorder has
Speaker 2: its own set of challenges. Gabe is a starch believer
Speaker 2: in taking responsibility for his actions. He opens up about
Speaker 2: his journey of recovery and the coping strategies that have
Speaker 2: benefited him. We also talk about the common misconceptions about
Speaker 2: people with bipolar disorder and public figures who may have
Speaker 2: had this mental illness. We try really hard in this
Speaker 2: episode to humanize bipolar disorder, and I really appreciate Gabe's
Speaker 2: honesty and vulnerability throughout this entire check so that further ado,
Speaker 2: I bring you Gabe Howard.
Speaker 3: Gabe Howard is so great to have you on the
Speaker 3: Psychology podcast today.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really
Speaker 4: really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fellow psychology podcaster, host of the podcast Inside Mental Health.
Speaker 3: Your interest in mental health is it personal?
Speaker 4: It's very very personal.
Speaker 1: I live with bipolar disorder, and I guess the answer
Speaker 1: to the question is yes, Yes, it is personal.
Speaker 3: I mean that was a soft softball lobby because I
Speaker 3: knew today the topic of our conversation today is going
Speaker 3: to be living with bipolar and that'll probably be the
Speaker 3: title of the episode, and we're going to have as
Speaker 3: real a conversation about this as possible. We're gonna talk
Speaker 3: about the standard stigmas against it, and we're going to
Speaker 3: talk about some maybe some taboo corners of the mind
Speaker 3: today because I'm a big of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a big believer, Gabe. I'm a big believer
Speaker 3: in a humanistic approach that doesn't only focus on the positive.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm really all about integration. It looks like
Speaker 3: you've done a lot of integrative work. If I'm understanding
Speaker 3: your journey correctly, would you say that's accurate?
Speaker 1: I do think it's accurate. It's been a long time.
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of work and it wasn't a
Speaker 1: quick thing. So and I'm still learning. The work is ongoing.
Speaker 3: That's true. That's true, it never stops. There's I've only
Speaker 3: had one person in my whole life tell me that
Speaker 3: there are a hundred percent self actualized. But that's only
Speaker 3: one person. It's very hard to find out.
Speaker 4: I don't I don't even need to meet them.
Speaker 3: You're funny. So in starting I'm trying to think about
Speaker 3: what a good inroad to this would be. When did
Speaker 3: you start to think maybe you were different than others?
Speaker 3: Like was it as a kid? You know? In this
Speaker 3: particular way. You thought, hmm, my thoughts, my cognitions, my actions,
Speaker 3: maybe or not, Maybe there's something going on here.
Speaker 4: I never thought that.
Speaker 1: If the specific question is when did I think I
Speaker 1: was different? I thought I was different my whole life.
Speaker 1: But I didn't think that it was tied back to
Speaker 1: cognition or disorder or illness or or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I just it truthfully, And this is as sincere as
Speaker 1: I can be. I thought I was an asshole. I
Speaker 1: just thought I was an asshole because I couldn't do
Speaker 1: anything right. I couldn't follow instructions I was desperately trying to,
Speaker 1: and I would for a while, and then I would
Speaker 1: zag to the left or to the right, depending on
Speaker 1: whether it was you know, maniaor depression or grandiosity or
Speaker 1: all the nice little things that come with bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: And then when those episodes would be over, I would
Speaker 1: look backwards and I'd think, well, I'm an asshole? Why
Speaker 1: did I treat people that way? And then regret what said?
Speaker 3: It So interesting, but you lived on diagnosed right with
Speaker 3: bipower for many years. When did you get a formal diagnosis.
Speaker 1: I got a formal diagnosis when I was twenty six
Speaker 1: years old after being committed to a psychiatric hospital. So
Speaker 1: that's that's the level of crisis that I needed for
Speaker 1: anybody to say, Wow, something's going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you how old are you know?
Speaker 1: I'm forty six, So that was twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: Man, I'm okay, cool, just to get some sort of
Speaker 3: you know, idea of No. I mean, it's amazing how
Speaker 3: fast time flies. So twenty six years old, you kind
Speaker 3: of reached this breaking point moment. Are though maybe you
Speaker 3: wouldn't frame it in such a way.
Speaker 4: I don't want to, No, I'd frame it in that way.
Speaker 3: It was it was an absolute okay, okay, excellent, excellent.
Speaker 3: I'm all about the person being able to drive their
Speaker 3: own narrative. So please correct me if you know. I'm
Speaker 3: not trying to be put to correct. I'm just saying
Speaker 3: I'm trying to be compassionate, So just let me know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And so you had this breaking point moment. And something
Speaker 3: that really interests me about bipolar something you kind of
Speaker 3: alluded to is when you're going through a mania phase,
Speaker 3: sort of the after phase where you kind of are
Speaker 3: more in a reflective mode and you're like almost like,
Speaker 3: what have I done?
Speaker 5: You?
Speaker 3: Know, like or almost like you know, And I personally
Speaker 3: can resonate with that to a certain degree. I tend
Speaker 3: to if I drink too much coffee, I'll go in
Speaker 3: a shopping spree on Amazon, and two days later I'll
Speaker 3: look around my room at like ten new boxes and
Speaker 3: things I don't need, and I'll be like, what have
Speaker 3: I done?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 3: Is this kind of like a just it's a more
Speaker 3: of a gradation versus like, you know, I guess what
Speaker 3: I like to do? When talking about mental illness is
Speaker 3: not treated as though mental illness is you know, a
Speaker 3: special species of human and then everyone else is normal.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean? I like to say
Speaker 3: it's probably just you know, it's all continuum. Would you
Speaker 3: say that's that's along the lines of a similar continue
Speaker 3: but maybe a little bit more intense and maybe with
Speaker 3: other domeans than just shopping on Amazon. But I do
Speaker 3: regret it all often, you know.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 1: Bipolar disorder can best be described as a spectrum. This
Speaker 1: is just wider than the average person. Most people don't
Speaker 1: reach suicidal depression where they think that their mom would
Speaker 1: be happy if they're dead, and most people don't go
Speaker 1: up so high so elevated that they think they're a
Speaker 1: literal god that can accomplish anything and that the universe
Speaker 1: revolves around them. It's not that you can't be excited, right,
Speaker 1: Normal people are excited. That's fantastic, right. And it's not
Speaker 1: that you can't be sad. It's normal to be sad,
Speaker 1: and I think everybody has experienced that. But with my
Speaker 1: polar disorder, it's just wider and you spend more time
Speaker 1: in different sections. Nobody's ever going to call me calm, right,
Speaker 1: nobody's ever going to say, you know, well that Gabe,
Speaker 1: he's as steady as a rock. No, I'm always going
Speaker 1: to be known as sort of the gregarious guy, and
Speaker 1: that part is good. But when that gregariousness leads me
Speaker 1: to think that I can jump off one hundred story
Speaker 1: building and fly like Superman, or when that line of
Speaker 1: thinking makes me think that, hey, if I died, my
Speaker 1: mom would be so happy at my funeral because I
Speaker 1: finally made the right decision, that's when it gets into
Speaker 1: disordered thinking, and that's when it needs intervention.
Speaker 3: Great, So it sounds like we're really much an agreement
Speaker 3: that it is a continuum. Yes, And I think framing
Speaker 3: it in that way allows us to humanize it a
Speaker 3: little bit more. I mean, I love humanizing mental illness.
Speaker 3: Is one of my favorite hobbies is humanizing ment illness.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, a lot of people. What I
Speaker 3: really want to do is I want to bring people
Speaker 3: into this conversation not treated as though like, oh, we're
Speaker 3: talking to some human with a special you know, unique
Speaker 3: species of human with bipolar disorder. And then it's like
Speaker 3: the person totally can't relate, you know. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: we all go through moments where we you know, again,
Speaker 3: like with me, if I have too much coffee, it's
Speaker 3: does something to my brain, you know, Like there's something
Speaker 3: about dopamine, and that's relevant to this discussion dopamine. You know,
Speaker 3: when you have too much coursing through, I feel I
Speaker 3: get very excited about the possibilities of everything. You know,
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, possibilities, possibilities. So that's you know, So
Speaker 3: the mainia stage of serious, you know, diagnosed bipolar disorders
Speaker 3: is that on steroids to a certain degree where you
Speaker 3: sort of see possibility everywhere, right, and you sort of
Speaker 3: you know, you unlimited possibility within yourself, but also possibility
Speaker 3: with every stimuli you encounter. You know, I just I
Speaker 3: just see it as dopamine on steroids to a certain degree.
Speaker 3: But then the other side, that the depression side. Do
Speaker 3: you have tell me about your personal experience. Does it
Speaker 3: usually follow? Have you noticed a cycle? Have you noticed
Speaker 3: like like, can you chart it out where you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I know if I'm like this today, tomorrow I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be like this. Did you notice a pattern like that
Speaker 3: or do you still notice a pattern?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't notice a pattern before diagnosis. I notice
Speaker 1: no pattern. I I I didn't really notice anything. And
Speaker 1: in some ways that's the crippling part of bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: My parents would see a symptom of bipolar disorder, right,
Speaker 1: and you know grandiosity, right, refusing to go to school,
Speaker 1: staying up for three days in a row, thinking that
Speaker 1: I know everything. And they think to themselves, okay, well
Speaker 1: we've got a teenager that things, he knows everything, doesn't
Speaker 1: want to sleep, and doesn't want to go to school.
Speaker 4: So they would punish me.
Speaker 1: Now we now know those were symptoms of bipolar disorder,
Speaker 1: and then they would punish me. But here's the part
Speaker 1: where it gets sticky. I would just naturally cycle into
Speaker 1: the middle. So in my parents' mind, the punishment was working,
Speaker 1: but it was just luck. They could have done nothing
Speaker 1: and it would have worked. It would make an air quotes,
Speaker 1: it would have worked. They could have done absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: and I would have ended up in the middle. Or
Speaker 1: they would punish and punish and punish and punish, and
Speaker 1: I would just ramp up that behavior because you just
Speaker 1: never know what direction it's gonna go. That was the
Speaker 1: hardest part for me. It was like an intermittent mood.
Speaker 1: I just I didn't even know what I was gonna
Speaker 1: get when I woke up or when I went to bed.
Speaker 1: And it's challenging to one day think that you're a
Speaker 1: literal god and that you control everything, and then the
Speaker 1: next day think that your garbage and that your family
Speaker 1: will celebrate your death. It's a whiplash effect in your
Speaker 1: mind and body and spirit that is still to this
Speaker 1: day hard to describe and explain to people.
Speaker 3: That's a really powerful phrase. Have used that before, The
Speaker 3: whiplash effect for a Bible I mean, makes a lot
Speaker 3: of sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's one of my favorite phrases when I describe
Speaker 1: bipolar disorder, because I don't think that people think about
Speaker 1: that enough. They don't think about this idea of going
Speaker 1: from one mood type to another, and how that really
Speaker 1: feels both physically, it does have physical sensations, but it
Speaker 1: just mentally. Mentally, how did you have the self confidence
Speaker 1: to literally think that you could fly and now you
Speaker 1: don't have the self confidence to go to the grocery
Speaker 1: store and buy groceries or get out of bed?
Speaker 4: What is that like? And it's it's a lot.
Speaker 3: It's a lot. But let's get really nerdy for a second.
Speaker 3: You know, from an evolutionary perspective, there's a reason why
Speaker 3: the genes for bipoor remain in the human population. It
Speaker 3: is quite possible, and I don't mean to glamorize it
Speaker 3: at all with what I'm about to say, but it's
Speaker 3: quite possible that the things that people can accomplish within
Speaker 3: that many phase kind of make it worth it from
Speaker 3: a genome perspective, when you look at the total you know,
Speaker 3: the total arc of things, you know, I imagine that
Speaker 3: when you're in that state sometimes you can probably I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe maybe maybe there's a certain threshold. Maybe
Speaker 3: there's like when it's too much, it's obviously you're not
Speaker 3: being productive, But is there a certain like if you
Speaker 3: view it as a curve, an inverted U shaped curve.
Speaker 3: We're too little and too much is not good. Do
Speaker 3: you think maybe there's a there's a kind of optimal
Speaker 3: part of mania that you're like, way more productive than
Speaker 3: you would be if you didn't have by poor disorder
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 1: These are always really tough questions for me to answer,
Speaker 1: because mania it true.
Speaker 4: Mania.
Speaker 1: Everybody agrees that dude is manic, is dangerous, and it's
Speaker 1: not productive because, like you said, you've got all these ideas.
Speaker 1: So you wake up one morning you're going to start
Speaker 1: eleven hundred companies. And I use eleven hundred both to
Speaker 1: kind of be funny, but there is nobody in the
Speaker 1: world that can simultaneously run eleven hundred companies. So what
Speaker 1: you have is this person that is spouting out all
Speaker 1: these ideas that sound really good, and listen, maybe some
Speaker 1: of them are really good, but they bounce from idea
Speaker 1: to idea to idea idea, and you just spread yourself
Speaker 1: way too thin. And again, nobody can run eleven hundred companies,
Speaker 1: and listen, you can use whatever number you want. Nobody
Speaker 1: can run five companies, three companies, ten companies. And that's
Speaker 1: the problem with mania. You don't know when to say no,
Speaker 1: because no isn't part of your vocabulary anymore. But here's
Speaker 1: the second thing that I always say about mania. I
Speaker 1: think that sometimes mania gets credit for things that Frank
Speaker 1: isn't mania. I've experienced mania, and when people see me
Speaker 1: do really well, you know, they see me on a stage. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm six foot three, two hundred and forty pounds, and
Speaker 1: I stand on a stage. The spotlight hits me, There's
Speaker 1: a thousand people in the audience. I'm holding the microphone
Speaker 1: and I'm speaking.
Speaker 4: I'm working the crowd.
Speaker 1: People are cheering and laughing, and I'm a public speaker.
Speaker 4: It is my job.
Speaker 1: Every single time I walk off that stage, somebody will say,
Speaker 1: you harnessed mania up there, didn't you. No, No, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't harness mania at all. I'm just just really
Speaker 1: good at my job and I practiced and I worked really,
Speaker 1: really hard. Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones is not manic.
Speaker 1: He's just Mick Jagger. Nobody ever accuses him of having mania.
Speaker 1: So but they don't believe me.
Speaker 4: They don't. They're like, no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: It's that mania that allows him to really control the crowd,
Speaker 1: like that I can't get a away from that persistent rumor.
Speaker 1: It's not true, but people just don't want to believe it.
Speaker 1: So mania gets the credit for what's actually my success,
Speaker 1: which is another way that bipolar disorder is really horrible.
Speaker 1: I mean, not only is there a fifteen percent death
Speaker 1: rate in bipolar disorder, but whenever you do something well,
Speaker 1: people are like, ah, that's your illness.
Speaker 4: No it's not, it's me. It was Gabe.
Speaker 3: I really appreciate you saying that, just to play devil's
Speaker 3: advocate a second, when you've done something really terrible, are
Speaker 3: you also equally likely to say take responsibility and say
Speaker 3: that was me, Gabe, or do you put that on bipolar.
Speaker 1: Bipolar disorder may be the cause of something, but it's
Speaker 1: always my responsibility. So it really doesn't matter what terrible
Speaker 1: thing I do, it's my responsibility. I want to give
Speaker 1: an example because the audience for some reason has trouble
Speaker 1: grasping this a lot when I talk to people. If
Speaker 1: I am driving my car and I have a seizure
Speaker 1: and I run into your car, Scott, you get out
Speaker 1: of the car and you're like, hey you oh, wait,
Speaker 1: and then you see me having a seizure, you're gonna
Speaker 1: understand immediately what happened, and in fact, you're gonna you're
Speaker 1: gonna provide medical care. You're gonna call nine one one.
Speaker 1: You're gonna say that this man is having a seizure
Speaker 1: and he wrecked into my car, and you're gonna hope
Speaker 1: that I live and do well and get great medical care,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna send me the bill for your car.
Speaker 1: And most people are like, yeah, that's that's really reasonable.
Speaker 1: It just just because you had a seizure doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that Scott has to pay for his own damage. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, when you get to serious and persistent
Speaker 1: mental illness by polar disorder, depression, even alcoholism and substance
Speaker 1: abuse disorder, there's this tendency in the community to say, well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't my fault, therefore I don't have any responsibility
Speaker 1: for it. Nothing could be further from the truth, and frankly,
Speaker 1: it's just not an empowering statement. If you don't have
Speaker 1: any responsibility for it, then you're just owned by your illness,
Speaker 1: and by polar disorder doesn't own me. It gets some
Speaker 1: space in my brain because there's no cure for it,
Speaker 1: and there's but it gets as little as humanly possible.
Speaker 1: I am in control, not by polar disorder, and by
Speaker 1: by saying, oh, that's not my fault, it's by polar Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wins.
Speaker 4: I don't like that. I don't like that it ever wins. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that response due to no large part that
Speaker 3: that's exactly how I would have responded to the question.
Speaker 1: So agree with you did not coach me, everyone. I
Speaker 1: want everybody to know that Scott did not coach me.
Speaker 1: I came up with that on my own.
Speaker 3: I didn't coach you. No, that's correct. I like it
Speaker 3: because it's it's definitely I agree with it. But I
Speaker 3: often like to tell people, you know, I don't believe
Speaker 3: there's such thing as the real self. I don't like
Speaker 3: the notion of their real self, you know. I think
Speaker 3: that it can lead us to not taking responsibility for
Speaker 3: the sides of ourselves that we don't like, you know,
Speaker 3: and only taking responsibility for the size we do like.
Speaker 3: So that's the spirit upon which I asked you that question,
Speaker 3: because I was curious where you were going to go
Speaker 3: with it, and I'm I'm pleased you went with it
Speaker 3: where you went with it. But yeah, I I completely agree,
Speaker 3: and and I like it sounds like you've a very
Speaker 3: healthy attitude. And I would say a healthy relationship now
Speaker 3: with your bipolar side, which is not all of you,
Speaker 3: Which is not all of you, But it seems like
Speaker 3: a lot of the work you've done is changing the
Speaker 3: relationship to that side. Would you say that's accurate.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely accurate. Understanding what it is and what it's
Speaker 1: trying to do is the first step toward defeating it.
Speaker 1: You are right, I've got to learn to live with
Speaker 1: it because there is no cure, and part of my
Speaker 1: life is always going to be spent thinking about managing,
Speaker 1: getting ahead of, or just being aware of bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: There's nothing I can do about that. It's it's my
Speaker 1: lot in life. It's the straw that I drew. There
Speaker 1: are worse things, but it's hard to accept that. I
Speaker 1: do understand, and I've had a lot of practice. I've
Speaker 1: had a lot of experience. I'm forty six years old.
Speaker 1: When I was twenty six years old, it was harder.
Speaker 1: I always try to give like little grass, like something
Speaker 1: that we can really grasp. When I went to the hospital,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of my life was controlled by bipolar disorder.
Speaker 1: And now I would say that ten percent of my
Speaker 1: life is controlled by bipolar disord. So, but it was
Speaker 1: a hard fought ninety percent along the way. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe at one point it was eighty percent was controlled,
Speaker 1: ninety percent was controlled, fifty percent was controlled, then there's relapse.
Speaker 1: Relaps was part of recovery. Now one hundred percent is
Speaker 1: controlled again, right, I got up to fifty and I
Speaker 1: just you know, I flew too high. But now I
Speaker 1: have a consistent and again, these are Gabes' numbers, right,
Speaker 1: there's no way to measure these. I don't want anybody
Speaker 1: to think that, you know, I took a test and
Speaker 1: found out that this is just how I choose to
Speaker 1: view it. But ninety percent is a that's a lot
Speaker 1: of life that's mine. And considering that I started with
Speaker 1: one hundred percent was owned by bipolar and I took
Speaker 1: back ninety I'm going to take that as a win.
Speaker 1: And I think where people get in trouble is when
Speaker 1: they think they have that one hundred percent back, because
Speaker 1: that means that nobody's watching bipolar disorder anymore, and that
Speaker 1: allows it to operate however, at once unchecked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hear you. I thought of another question as
Speaker 3: you were talking, because I'm not ready to completely let
Speaker 3: you off the hook with my question about when things
Speaker 3: go wrong, do you blame the bipolar? The only reason
Speaker 3: why I bring this up is and this is just
Speaker 3: playing devil's act. In the beginning, you did kind of
Speaker 3: sound like you were saying and correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: But it sounded like you were saying, you know, I was
Speaker 3: wondering why I was being an asshole, and then I
Speaker 3: realized it was bipolar, So it sounded like you actually
Speaker 3: were in fact bleaming bipolar, which conradicted what you said later.
Speaker 3: I'm just a nerd and I hate contradictions, So can
Speaker 3: you read that for me?
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: So the what I meant to imply is that I
Speaker 1: thought I was an asshole. I was doing all of
Speaker 1: these things, and since I didn't have any understanding of
Speaker 1: what was happening, I just thought, well, I'm an asshole.
Speaker 1: And to expand out a little, the people around me
Speaker 1: thought I was an asshole too, right. My parents would
Speaker 1: look me dead in the eyes and say, don't do that,
Speaker 1: and then I would do it, and I'd think, why
Speaker 1: did I do that? Well, I didn't have any understanding
Speaker 1: of my pathology, my psychology, my symptomology. I didn't know anything,
Speaker 1: so in my brain it's like, yeah, why did I
Speaker 1: do that? And humans, they we like answers. We want
Speaker 1: to know why we did stuff. And the only thing
Speaker 1: that twelve year old, fifteen year old, twenty year old,
Speaker 1: even twenty five year old Gabe could come up with
Speaker 1: is well, I must have done it because I'm an asshole.
Speaker 1: It's a nice little bow, and it answers the question
Speaker 1: of why are you behaving this way. It's not a
Speaker 1: good answer, it's not a reasonable answer, and looking back,
Speaker 1: I really wish that I would have thought, why am
Speaker 1: I being an asshole? Like that would have been a
Speaker 1: great follow up question, Scott, But I just.
Speaker 4: Sort of shrugged it off.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I'm an asshole, and then I moved
Speaker 1: on to the next thing, which may or may not
Speaker 1: been part of bipolar disorder thinking. But again, even the
Speaker 1: parts of bipolar disorder that I can't control, even when
Speaker 1: the reason is one hundred percent because of bipolar symptoms,
Speaker 1: it's still my responsibility. I still have to take responsibility,
Speaker 1: make amends, correct it, and do better whatever way that
Speaker 1: looks like. And it can look like so many different things.
Speaker 3: Cool. Thank you. Your team wrote an email to me
Speaker 3: and they said, Gabe Howard is quote nearly unoffendable. So
Speaker 3: I assumed we could have a have a really honest
Speaker 3: conversation today, which is really fine.
Speaker 1: I I think I am unoffendable, but well, we will
Speaker 1: find out.
Speaker 4: You can ask me.
Speaker 3: Talk to your team about that. I don't know why
Speaker 3: they said nearly. Your team did say nearly, so I
Speaker 3: might want to have a talk with them about that.
Speaker 1: We don't like absolutes around the Gabe Howard dot com.
Speaker 1: We really try to stay away from absolutes. But this
Speaker 1: might be one of those absolutes.
Speaker 4: But I'm not sure. Time time will tell.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about some areas that you've argued we often
Speaker 3: gloss over when we talk about bipolar the three areas
Speaker 3: hyper sexuality, lying, deceit, and anger. So let's start with
Speaker 3: hyper sexuality. Can you explain to me what is hyper sexuality?
Speaker 3: I know what a high sex drive is, but how
Speaker 3: do you know when it's hyper?
Speaker 1: The first thing, Scott is, obviously you are a doctor
Speaker 1: and a trained psychologist, so I'm positive that there is
Speaker 1: a legitimate medical definition and I am not going to
Speaker 1: give that. I'm just sort of going to explain what
Speaker 1: hyper sexuality is. And when I know that, I've gone
Speaker 1: from high sex drive to uh oh, a high sex
Speaker 1: drive is you want to have a lot of sex.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what people think that hyper sexuality is. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: hyper sexuality is an all encompassing addiction. You have to
Speaker 1: have sex. And I want to remind your listeners that
Speaker 1: sex isn't just penis vagina or partner sex. It's sex
Speaker 1: is also masturbation. And so no matter what you're doing,
Speaker 1: you're servicing this need to have sex. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in hyper sexuality, let's say that I'm actively engaged in
Speaker 1: intercourse with a partner. While I'm doing that, I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: who am I going to have sex with next? And
Speaker 1: then it is soon as I orgasm, I'm immediately now
Speaker 1: looking for the next person to have sex with. And
Speaker 1: if in a short amount of time, which could be
Speaker 1: ten minutes, it could be a half an hour, it
Speaker 1: could be an hour. If I can't find a partner,
Speaker 1: then and self stimulation, masturbation, it becomes a thing. Everything
Speaker 1: is in surface to this compulsion to be having sex.
Speaker 1: Just that's what hyper sexuality is and I do think
Speaker 1: that people think that hyper sexuality is just oh you're
Speaker 1: you're horny a lot. No, but you know, being horny
Speaker 1: is a great thing. It's being unable to control it. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it ruins sex.
Speaker 4: I like sex. I love sex.
Speaker 1: Sex is fantastic, but when when you have this compulsion
Speaker 1: to do it, it's it's no longer about the joy
Speaker 1: of sex. It's now about servicing that compulsion or addiction.
Speaker 1: It's a need, and then it's it's not fun anymore.
Speaker 4: It ruins it. And I don't think that people understand that.
Speaker 3: So how's that played out in your own personal life.
Speaker 1: It's played out in a couple of different ways. First,
Speaker 1: I cheated on two partners. Now I take full responsibility
Speaker 1: for that. The hyper sexuality did not help. When you
Speaker 1: have this compulsion to constantly have sex, your your your spouse,
Speaker 1: your your partner.
Speaker 4: They want to go to work, they want to do
Speaker 4: other things.
Speaker 1: There's just there's no matching a hyper sexual sex drive
Speaker 1: unless you find someone else who is also hyper sexual.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they can keep up for a couple
Speaker 1: of days, but you know, eventually they they've got stuff
Speaker 1: to do. They're like Hey, Gabe, that was a great weekend.
Speaker 4: But you know, now I'm going to work.
Speaker 1: Well now, okay, well I'm not going to work because
Speaker 1: I got to service this compulsion and I cheated.
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 1: I found other partners, I hired a lot of sex workers.
Speaker 1: I masturbated chronically, and it cost me jobs, it cost
Speaker 1: me marriages, it cost me it cost me the joy
Speaker 1: of sex for a period of time. And that's what
Speaker 1: it looked like. I'm really trying to like dress it
Speaker 1: up a little bit or maybe give myself some cover
Speaker 1: or the benefit of the doubt. But no, it looked
Speaker 1: like a chronically masturbating horn dog and not attractive and
Speaker 1: not something that anyone should want to be.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for your honesty. Can you please
Speaker 3: define chronically with me? What does chronic masturbation look like?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: How many times a day are we talking? Is chronic?
Speaker 3: How do we know if we've gotten to the chronic stage.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the ways that I knew it is
Speaker 1: after orgasm, I would start up again, right, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even clean up. But we're just we're just
Speaker 1: we're just doing it again. I know that that's very,
Speaker 1: very graphic, but.
Speaker 3: Men can do that. Hypersexuality is refractory period refracting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really limits that, I think. And plus I
Speaker 1: was twenty you know that that certainly helps as well.
Speaker 1: You know, I was twenty years old and I was
Speaker 1: hyper sexual the record that I have, and I want
Speaker 1: to admit to everybody that this was you know, ten
Speaker 1: years later I figured this out, right, I wasn't counting
Speaker 1: at the time. I didn't have a clicker, but I
Speaker 1: orgasm twenty six times in a day, which is more
Speaker 1: than one an hour. And on one hand, there's like
Speaker 1: this part of me, this like toxic masculinity part, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had twenty six orgasms in one day.
Speaker 4: Yeah I did.
Speaker 1: But listen, it was not an enjoyable day. It was
Speaker 1: an awful day. And I can clean it up and
Speaker 1: make it sound awesome, you know I can, but it's
Speaker 1: it's not a good day. I use the example of
Speaker 1: a roller coaster, right, think of your favorite roller coaster, Right,
Speaker 1: you get to ride it, and then when you when
Speaker 1: you pull back into the station, like, hey, we're closing
Speaker 1: in a couple hours, you guys want to go again.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to wait in line. You're like,
Speaker 1: oh my God, this is the greatest ever. I get
Speaker 1: to ride the roller coaster again, but.
Speaker 4: Then I keep doing it over.
Speaker 1: Now you're on the fourth time, the fifth time, the
Speaker 1: tenth time, the fifteenth time, the twentieth time, and you're thinking,
Speaker 1: I just want to I just want off this fucking
Speaker 1: roller coaster, and nobody will let me off the roller coaster,
Speaker 1: except that nobody as you. You won't let yourself off
Speaker 1: the roller coaster. And I want to remind all of
Speaker 1: your listeners that I didn't know why. I didn't know
Speaker 1: why I was doing this. I was just doing it
Speaker 1: because I had to. And that's also kind of scary.
Speaker 1: What causes somebody to behave this way?
Speaker 3: Tell me the arc of the journey of this one.
Speaker 3: So did it get better? Are you?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: Where are you at now with this? Do you only
Speaker 3: master be twelve times a day? Now? You know?
Speaker 1: I have a very high sex drive, and I've always
Speaker 1: had a very high sex drive, And.
Speaker 3: There's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.
Speaker 1: There isn't the only thing that's wrong with having a
Speaker 1: high sex drive is if your partner doesn't have a
Speaker 1: high sex drive, that can cause some issues. But I
Speaker 1: want to be clear that causing issues and infidelity are
Speaker 1: very very different things.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: This is where open communication really matters. This is where
Speaker 1: deciding what you want really helps. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: things that helps. I just just to throw it out there,
Speaker 1: is one of the first medications that I was ever
Speaker 1: put on for bipolar disorder. It had sexual side effects
Speaker 1: just like WHOA, and it took that hyper sexuality slash
Speaker 1: high sex drive, you know that range, and shot it
Speaker 1: all the way down. And I know this is going
Speaker 1: to sound funny, but I went from wanting to have
Speaker 1: multiple orgasms a day to wanting to have one a day.
Speaker 1: And for many people that sort of you know, dropping
Speaker 1: off a significant amount of your sexual desire is bad.
Speaker 1: But that was very helpful. That was very helpful to
Speaker 1: get me refocused and on my way. There's so much
Speaker 1: to talk about there in terms of I don't want
Speaker 1: anybody to hear that sexual side effects and medications are
Speaker 1: a good thing, because for most people and most of
Speaker 1: the time, they are not a good thing. But in
Speaker 1: this particular case, it did help get me straight. The
Speaker 1: next thing I want to remind the listeners of is
Speaker 1: hyper sexuality is not one hundred percent of the time
Speaker 1: I would be hyper sexual for a while, and then
Speaker 1: I would drop back down. I was always in the
Speaker 1: high range, but hyper sexuality. It wasn't twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: It was moments.
Speaker 3: Attract the mania stages. Like I assumed in the depressive swing,
Speaker 3: you were not as high sex drive. Is that accurate?
Speaker 1: When I was really depressed, I wasn't anything.
Speaker 4: I wasn't get up and go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: I just laid there, frankly, trying to will myself to death.
Speaker 3: God, Gabe, I hear you. I hear you. Or that hit,
Speaker 3: that hit, that hit, I hear you. Because we haven't
Speaker 3: talked so much about that other side, have we yet,
Speaker 3: the depression side. In the depression side, do you would
Speaker 3: you ever feel something that would resemble the feeling of
Speaker 3: dead inside?
Speaker 1: Yes, it's I talk a lot, it's my job. I
Speaker 1: write a lot, I host a lot of podcasts. I
Speaker 1: answer questions all over the country. I'm here right now
Speaker 1: being as honest as I can, and I struggle to
Speaker 1: describe the emptiness of severe depression. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: staring into the abyss.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a good phrase, because if you're
Speaker 1: staring into the abyss, you're actively participating in the staring.
Speaker 1: Well that that that shows you've you've you're you're doing
Speaker 1: something that that that almost sounds fun like we we
Speaker 1: we stargaze. You're staring at the stars, staring at the abyss.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you do you have an opinion about
Speaker 1: the abyss? You're you're aware that there's an abyss there
Speaker 1: that almost sounds pleasant. It's worse than that. It's it's
Speaker 1: complete nothingness. It's it's is, it's as nothing as you
Speaker 1: can get while still being aware to some extent that
Speaker 1: you're alive, but you just don't want to be and
Speaker 1: and the pain is so intense, but it's not physical pain.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a pain that that's unstoppable.
Speaker 4: You know, you can't take painkillers.
Speaker 1: This is why people self medicate with drugs and alcohol,
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's about the only thing that gives
Speaker 1: you a different sensation. I want to be clear. It
Speaker 1: doesn't help the pain. It just changes the pain from
Speaker 1: one sensation to another sensation, and that sensation might be
Speaker 1: more tolerable because hey, at least it's different.
Speaker 4: I just I I lack the words.
Speaker 1: I just lack the words to describe what this feels like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, there's something. There's something really profound
Speaker 3: here that I'm trying to articulate. It seems like there's
Speaker 3: a deep existential pain when you're in that stage. But
Speaker 3: it also seems like when you're in the grips of
Speaker 3: a Manias episode there's a great existential liveness as well.
Speaker 3: It almost seems like they're both. Can you get one
Speaker 3: without the other, because like in the Manniat stage, don't
Speaker 3: you often feel like you're fully alive? Like it's exact opposite.
Speaker 1: It is the exact opposite, And that's we're right back
Speaker 1: to my whiplash analogy. To go from feeling nothing to
Speaker 1: feeling everything is it's just a lot. It's an incredible amount.
Speaker 1: But I want to give a little pushback on the
Speaker 1: phrase feeling a lot. I don't know that I feel
Speaker 1: alive in the mania. I certainly feel something. But when
Speaker 1: I think about feeling alive, I at least want to
Speaker 1: be aware of what's happening around me. One of the
Speaker 1: things that mania does so well is it changes what
Speaker 1: you see. The example that I love to use is
Speaker 1: I got thrown out of a bar once. Here's what
Speaker 1: I think happened, and as I'm sitting here, Scott, if
Speaker 1: lie detectors were real and work, I would pass it
Speaker 1: because this is what my brain shows me. Went to
Speaker 1: a bar there was a local band, plane I jumped
Speaker 1: up on top of the bar. I started singing. The
Speaker 1: crowd was like, oh, this guy is an amazing singer.
Speaker 1: He's doing way better than the band. So they all
Speaker 1: turned around and they watched me instead of the band.
Speaker 1: The band, eventually, realizing how great I was, stopped playing
Speaker 1: so that they too could gaze in my wonder. They
Speaker 1: were cheering for.
Speaker 5: Me, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, and then people came over like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, you're amazing, and they walked me out
Speaker 5: of the bar so so happy that I was there
Speaker 5: and that they got to see me.
Speaker 1: This is what I remember with every fiber of my being.
Speaker 1: Here's what actually happened. I climbed up on the bar
Speaker 1: and started screaming. This of course alerted security eventually, because
Speaker 1: they couldn't get me down, they made the band stopped playing.
Speaker 1: Everybody who was watching the band turned around to watch
Speaker 1: this and was screaming all kinds of you know, get down, motherfucker,
Speaker 1: Get down, asshole, you stupid prick. But you know I
Speaker 1: didn't see that, and then eventually security coaked me off
Speaker 1: the bar and threw me out, embarrassing me and my
Speaker 1: family and my friends. Now, listen, I do remember that
Speaker 1: other thing. That's what's in my brain. But you and
Speaker 1: I both know my version cannot happen. First off, how
Speaker 1: did the whole crowd know my name? And nobody? Nobody
Speaker 1: can sing louder than a microphoned bar band. That's just
Speaker 1: not even remotely possible. None of my story makes sense.
Speaker 1: But Mania convinced me that's what happened. And here's the
Speaker 1: good thing. To your point, I feel like it. Did
Speaker 1: you know how cool it is to be bigger than
Speaker 1: the band? It's it's such a great feeling, but it's
Speaker 1: not a real one. So when we determine, like did
Speaker 1: you feel alive? I felt something, but it wasn't true.
Speaker 4: So what do I do with that?
Speaker 3: Well, there's something at a lot of things very profound
Speaker 3: with that. I know that when I felmost existentially alive,
Speaker 3: it's usually in the quieter moments where I'm feeling a
Speaker 3: real authentic connection with someone, or I'm watching a beautiful
Speaker 3: sunset or I'm in nature. It's usually during the Pateau experience,
Speaker 3: as Abraham as we called it, not the peak experience.
Speaker 3: So what you do, what you do with that is
Speaker 3: probably you recognize that and recognize that it's almost like
Speaker 3: a yeah, like a the devil tempting you in a way.
Speaker 3: But and I say devil tempting because I really I'm
Speaker 3: fascinated with something your team told me. They said, at
Speaker 3: one point you felt like you had a demon inside
Speaker 3: you or a demon was chasing you. What do you
Speaker 3: think what's going on there?
Speaker 1: So I had delusions, which to explain delusions, are you
Speaker 1: feel that it's true, but you can't see it. So
Speaker 1: it's not like a hallucination where you can see it
Speaker 1: or hear it. It's even though I never saw the demons,
Speaker 1: I knew that they were there. I was positive they
Speaker 1: were there. They were always right around the corner, right
Speaker 1: under the bed. They had just left the room. They were,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, they were trying to
Speaker 1: hurt me, but I would always stop them at the
Speaker 1: last minute, or if something bad happened. I was positive
Speaker 1: they had a hand in it.
Speaker 4: And I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like a nineteen eighty Spy movie right where you
Speaker 1: know you've got the mark, and then the spy is
Speaker 1: following them, and the Mark keeps turning around, but the
Speaker 1: spy ducks behind the corner at the last minute, so
Speaker 1: the Mark never actually sees the spy, but the Mark
Speaker 1: is pretty sure they're being followed. That's what it felt
Speaker 1: like all the time. And make no mistake, the demons
Speaker 1: were trying to do me harm in the same way
Speaker 1: that the spy was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how did you confront your demons? So to speak?
Speaker 3: You know, like where like like where are you at
Speaker 3: right now today? Do you still feel the demons? Do
Speaker 3: you still feel the hyper sexuality?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Where are you right now?
Speaker 1: I am in as close to perfect recovery as that
Speaker 1: phrase can allow. The medication did a really good job
Speaker 1: of stopping mania. The medication did a really good job
Speaker 1: of halting the demons. And once those two things were gone,
Speaker 1: that allowed me to start working on coping skills to
Speaker 1: handle anxiety, depression and things of that nature, understand suicidality. Also,
Speaker 1: it allowed me to take a good look at some
Speaker 1: of my coping skills. Right My coping skills were not healthy.
Speaker 1: My coping skills were things like sex and food, drugs, alcohol,
Speaker 1: even even drama. You know, just get in a fight
Speaker 1: with somebody and hey, at least you can spend an
Speaker 1: afternoon screaming at somebody and you'll feel something. These are
Speaker 1: coping skills, they're just not good ones. Once I was
Speaker 1: able to look good all of that thing, all of
Speaker 1: those things, I could start making much better decisions. So
Speaker 1: where I am today is I've got the medication to
Speaker 1: help me control the extremes of the emotional spectrum that
Speaker 1: I was unable to control on my own. And then
Speaker 1: I've got years of therapy and practice and experience and
Speaker 1: coping skills to learn the best way to handle situations
Speaker 1: that frankly I was unable to handle before. And I'm
Speaker 1: really big into example Scott. I always use the example
Speaker 1: of you know, the very first time you get in
Speaker 1: a car to drive, it is just incredibly overwhelming.
Speaker 4: But after you learn to.
Speaker 1: Drive, you're just you know, you're you're just chilling along.
Speaker 1: You got one hand on the wheel. You don't even
Speaker 1: realize you're doing half the stuff. You were all checking
Speaker 1: our cell phones, which is dangerous and we should stop it.
Speaker 1: But at one point we went from terrified to drive
Speaker 1: and worried that something bad was going to happen. To
Speaker 1: so comfortable and secure in our driving, we're checking our
Speaker 1: cell phones. That's sort of my journey. Right when I
Speaker 1: first started, I just I was so terrified of everything,
Speaker 1: and I had to work all the way up to
Speaker 1: becoming comfortable in my own skin. Now, I don't want
Speaker 1: anybody to hear that I'm perfect. I do have setbacks.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a little bit of mania slips in, or a
Speaker 1: little bit of depression slips in, or a little bit
Speaker 1: of hypersexuality slips in, or a little bit of grandiosity
Speaker 1: slips in. The real big difference is I spotted immediately,
Speaker 1: whereas before it had to do real damage before I noticed.
Speaker 1: And that's really the difference. I don't have to wait
Speaker 1: until the entire house is engulfed in flames to realize
Speaker 1: that if a couch cushion is on fire, I need
Speaker 1: to get the fire extinguisher.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a really good point. I've personally found, not
Speaker 3: to the same degree as you, but I found that
Speaker 3: a regular mindfulness practice has been essential to me. I think,
Speaker 3: how has mindfulness played a role in this at all?
Speaker 3: In your life?
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of mindfulness. And I always
Speaker 1: get booed when I say that, and I deserve it.
Speaker 1: Here's why I deserve it.
Speaker 4: I'm not well.
Speaker 1: You should based on what I'm about to say next.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of mindfulness, but I'm absolutely
Speaker 1: a big plant, a big fan of being aware of
Speaker 1: your surroundings, your body, your emotions, and focusing on things
Speaker 1: in order to calm down, which everybody points out to
Speaker 1: me is in fact mindfulness. I'm like one of those
Speaker 1: vegetarians that won't admit they're a vegetarian, but won't eat meat,
Speaker 1: Like that makes you a vegetarian.
Speaker 4: Nope, nope, not a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: I just don't eat meat, right, that makes you a vegetarian.
Speaker 2: Nope, nope.
Speaker 4: I won't take the title. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Why I don't like the phrase mindfulness, because being aware
Speaker 1: of yourself, being aware of your surroundings, focusing, taking a
Speaker 1: break and not reacting. And by taking a break, I
Speaker 1: don't mean a fifteen minute break. I mean you know,
Speaker 1: somebody does something that makes you mad and before the
Speaker 1: very next nanosecond I would want to jump, And now
Speaker 1: I can take a moment, take a deep breath, wait
Speaker 1: three seconds to respond, and the world changes for me.
Speaker 1: That's a mindfulness technique. But I don't like it, so
Speaker 1: I say, I don't do it like I said you should.
Speaker 1: You should really throw something at me, it would be
Speaker 1: very very fair.
Speaker 3: Well, that's not my style. First of all. I also
Speaker 3: think that that's your you know, sort of contrary and personality,
Speaker 3: which we're not blaming on bipolar. That's just part of
Speaker 3: who Gabe is coming out. I believe that there probably
Speaker 3: is a contrary inside to you. So I hear you
Speaker 3: that's that's cool, that is that is mindfulness. But I
Speaker 3: actually think that it is important to distinguish, as I
Speaker 3: often do, between mindfulness meditation and every day mindfulness. And
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a big fan of every day mindfulness
Speaker 3: as well, you know, and being able. You know, we're
Speaker 3: practicing that in this moment. Absolutely Okay. A couple of
Speaker 3: the things that were the scarier realities in addition to hypersexuality,
Speaker 3: anger I believe is one and lying deceit. Where are
Speaker 3: you at with those? Now? How many times have you
Speaker 3: lied to me today?
Speaker 1: I have never lied to you, Scott. I assure you
Speaker 1: I want to touch online form them because people hear
Speaker 1: lying in the deceit and they're like, aha, see, I
Speaker 1: knew that people with bipolar disorder were manipulative and dishonest,
Speaker 1: and that potentially maybe right. But when you start saying
Speaker 1: that everybody that's X is why you get yourself into
Speaker 1: trouble and there's certain things that we would never tolerate.
Speaker 1: Could you imagine if somebody said, well, all women are EX.
Speaker 1: People are like, oh my god, that's so sexist. That's misogynistic.
Speaker 1: Why would you say that? But yet it exists in
Speaker 1: society where people say, well, people with bipolar disorder are X,
Speaker 1: and everybody's like, yeah, that's true, that the lion and
Speaker 1: deceit is one of them. First off, it is certainly
Speaker 1: possible that they're not lying or being deceitful at all.
Speaker 1: They're just wrong. There were no demons under my bed.
Speaker 1: I can't be more clear. Demons were not chasing me.
Speaker 1: But I told everybody and their brother that I was
Speaker 1: worried about this, that somebody was following me, that I
Speaker 1: solicited help based on this external threat that did not exist.
Speaker 1: For people who didn't understand what I was going through,
Speaker 1: they're like, look, he's pretending that he's in danger to
Speaker 1: illicit sympathy. Can you believe that deceitful liar. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know that the demons were very very real
Speaker 1: to me. And I think that people don't understand that
Speaker 1: we do a lot of things to protect ourselves based
Speaker 1: on our feelings and our perceptions, and perception is reality.
Speaker 4: And I think a lot of.
Speaker 1: Times people with bipolar disorder are put in this really
Speaker 1: small little box that they're being manipulative and lying and
Speaker 1: being deceitful for one reason and one reason only, and
Speaker 1: that reason is malice. They're bad, they're doing it on
Speaker 1: purpose when you really need to scratch below the surface
Speaker 1: and see that there is just much more to it. Now,
Speaker 1: all that said, it's certainly possible you can live with
Speaker 1: polar disorder and be anything. We love to say, hey
Speaker 1: do you have by polar disorder? You can be anything
Speaker 1: that you want to be. And I'm like, well what
Speaker 1: about a connord? No, no, no, no, bipolar people are good.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, wait a minute, you said we can
Speaker 1: be anything, so that by definition encompasses all of the
Speaker 1: bad things as well. But painting anybody with one single
Speaker 1: brushstroke is dangerous. But I do hope that the listeners
Speaker 1: who maybe love somebody with bipolar disorder or don't understand
Speaker 1: by polar disorder, Stop and think for a moment, Hey,
Speaker 1: is my loved one lying?
Speaker 4: Are they being deceitful? Or are they just wrong?
Speaker 1: Because being wrong is a very different flavor than being
Speaker 1: maliciously lying, deceitful, or manipulative.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I needed to let that sit for a second.
Speaker 3: That was That's a good quote, all things equal. Now,
Speaker 3: knowing everything you know, do you prefer being even keel
Speaker 3: over ever experiencing a manic episode? Would you take no
Speaker 3: ever experiencing that high if it means that you'll never
Speaker 3: experience that low?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh, in an absolute heartbeat, just yes, like unequivocally yes.
Speaker 1: But I want to give pushback on the phrase even keel.
Speaker 1: Nobody is gonna describe Gabe as even keel.
Speaker 4: I am loud, and I am funny, and.
Speaker 1: I am boisterous, I am gregarious, and I'm all of
Speaker 1: these things right, And so that's the trick. I think
Speaker 1: that's the trick. So many people with bipolar disorder believe
Speaker 1: that what therapists and doctors and medication are trying to
Speaker 1: do is turn them into you know, boring, monotonous one
Speaker 1: trick ponies that just hello. My name is Gabe. I
Speaker 1: am cured from bipolar disorder, and I am here to serve.
Speaker 1: I just that, and I understand that part of the treatment,
Speaker 1: especially in the beginning, if you're being over medicated, or
Speaker 1: you've got an overzealous therapist, or you yourself are being
Speaker 1: over zealous because of the pain, frustration and damage that
Speaker 1: being untreated may have caused, I can see how people
Speaker 1: end up there. I want to be very clear. If
Speaker 1: you end up a boring, monotonous person and you don't
Speaker 1: want to be a boring monotonous person, you haven't reached
Speaker 1: recovery yet. There's still a lot of work to do.
Speaker 1: You've got to figure out how to get out of
Speaker 1: that and have more of your personality as much of
Speaker 1: your personality as you can safely get in. But you know,
Speaker 1: mania is not real, depression is not real. There's a
Speaker 1: fifteen percent death rate, right you know. We love to
Speaker 1: we'd love to talk about like Vincent van go Well,
Speaker 1: he has bipolar disorder and he was a great artist.
Speaker 1: You know he's dead right like like he killed himself.
Speaker 1: He died by suicide. He's no longer here. You can
Speaker 1: talk about his great arts until you know, the cows
Speaker 1: come home, but he's not able to create anymore. And
Speaker 1: his family they miss him, his friends miss him. That's
Speaker 1: what bipolar disorder ultimately did to him. Whether or not
Speaker 1: it helped him create great works is certainly up for
Speaker 1: a debate, But even if it did, it's still ultimately
Speaker 1: ended his life, and I think we do need to
Speaker 1: sit with that for a moment and recognize that these
Speaker 1: symptoms of bipolar disorder are dangerous and the people who
Speaker 1: they hurt the most are not around to remind us
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 4: I don't know how Vincent.
Speaker 1: Van Gogh feels about dying prematurely due to suicide, but
Speaker 1: I got a figure. Maybe he feels not good about it,
Speaker 1: but we'll never know because he's not here. All the
Speaker 1: tear is the people that can love his art, and
Speaker 1: that sort of elevates the romance of some of these things.
Speaker 1: Maybe in a way, that's that that doesn't serve us
Speaker 1: as much as we think that it does.
Speaker 3: Did Vincent van go Vincent van Goch did he have?
Speaker 3: Did he have bipolar disorder?
Speaker 4: So that's a tough one.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of diagnosing people posthumously, but
Speaker 1: the bipolar community loves to claim them, so they we
Speaker 1: don't know. Bipolar disorder wasn't a thing back when Van
Speaker 1: go was alive. You know, it wasn't wasn't diagnosed. We
Speaker 1: certainly had like mental conditions, but you know, the DSM
Speaker 1: didn't exist.
Speaker 4: So whether or not.
Speaker 1: He actually had bipolar disorder is up for debate because
Speaker 1: obviously no modern psychiatrists, psychologist, or therapist could evaluate him
Speaker 1: because you know, he lived not in our lifetime, but
Speaker 1: people feel like, you know, he had it and Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln had it, even though again these people are never
Speaker 1: evaluated by modern psychiatry.
Speaker 3: Do you realize that you have an uncanny physical resemblance
Speaker 3: to Vincent van Goch.
Speaker 1: I have been told that more than once. I want
Speaker 1: everybody to know I have both ears.
Speaker 3: I mean it's really uncanny. I mean, just do a
Speaker 3: Google image of search.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be gave van go from here on out.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be my new stage name.
Speaker 3: How do we know you're not Vincent van Goch reincarnated.
Speaker 4: I mean we don't.
Speaker 1: And listen, remember we have people right now who believe
Speaker 1: the Earth is flat. So I think you might have
Speaker 1: started the next big conspiracy theory. I love it. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be at least this will get my name out
Speaker 1: there and hopefully can raise awareness about living with serious
Speaker 1: and persistent mental illness.
Speaker 3: Fair enough, Well, you know, we're definitely not in the
Speaker 3: business of formally diagnosing public figures. However, when you see
Speaker 3: Kanye West, what do you see? Do you see some
Speaker 3: characteristics that are in the similar family as bipolar.
Speaker 1: Well, Kanye West has come out and said that he
Speaker 1: has a bipolar diagnosis, so that obviously changes it we know,
Speaker 1: but there you go. Yeah, I mean that's he was
Speaker 1: evaluated and given the diagnosis, so we know that he
Speaker 1: has it. But in some ways, Kanye West has a
Speaker 1: textbook case. But you know, nothing's as simple as a
Speaker 1: as a quick answer. Right, here's one of the problems
Speaker 1: with with diagnosing bipolar disorder. Right, let's look at mania
Speaker 1: and grandiosity. If I said to you, the whole world
Speaker 1: loves me, and I am the best there ever was,
Speaker 1: and I am the greatest, you, as a psychologist would think, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's kind of grandiose thinking. So maybe Gabe showing
Speaker 1: some symptoms. But when Kanye West says it, he can
Speaker 1: defend it. He's a multi platinum artist. His clothing lines
Speaker 1: have made millions of dollars, but literally a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I think three or four now, he was
Speaker 1: sitting in the Oval Office talking to the President of
Speaker 1: the United States. He has millions of fans all over
Speaker 1: the world. So is that grandiosity or just fact? And
Speaker 1: it does make it difficult I think if you were
Speaker 1: a public figure like Kanye West, to decide whether or
Speaker 1: not this person is actually experiencing these symptoms. Now we
Speaker 1: can move on to his personal life. The way that
Speaker 1: he's treated the mother of his children, the behavior that
Speaker 1: he's exhibited in front of his children, the things that
Speaker 1: he has said that are vaguely threatening and not connected
Speaker 1: to reality and scale. Those things are really the bigger
Speaker 1: clues into Kanye West's illness. And I think that this
Speaker 1: is where him being wealthy and famous is doing him
Speaker 1: a disservice. I think if any ex husband, father of
Speaker 1: somebody's children behaved in the way that Kanye has towards
Speaker 1: the mother of their children, their ex wife, they would
Speaker 1: get help. Somebody would say, look, dude, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: You can't hide in the bushes, you can't threaten people.
Speaker 1: You're scaring your children, and if they weren't arrested, they
Speaker 1: would certainly be herded in the direction of help. Kanye
Speaker 1: West isn't being herded in that direction. In fact, people
Speaker 1: just sort of watch him as a side show. He's
Speaker 1: like a a nineteen twenty circus freak show. As far
Speaker 1: as the tabloids and most of America is concerned. As
Speaker 1: someone who lives with bipolar disorder, I have a love
Speaker 1: hate relationship with him. On one hand, he's doing vast
Speaker 1: amounts of damage, is absolutely hurting the people around him
Speaker 1: and to members of the public by saying things like well,
Speaker 1: I don't need medication, I don't need treatment by polar
Speaker 1: disorder is a gift that's very, very dangerous. But on
Speaker 1: a human level, this man is in real pain and
Speaker 1: he's missing an opportunity to watch his children grow up.
Speaker 1: And it all because he can't get the help and
Speaker 1: support that he needs for an illness that he did
Speaker 1: not ask for and I imagine he does not want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for answering that question. I want to
Speaker 3: understand something about the medications you've taken in your life.
Speaker 3: Are the mood stabilizers I assume.
Speaker 1: Yes, mood stabilizers anti depressants, antipsychotics, anti anxiety. I've been
Speaker 1: on all of.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're on a cocktail.
Speaker 4: I got the cocktail.
Speaker 3: Cocktail, what was the one? Okay, Well, we don't need
Speaker 3: to mention specific things. That's fine, okay, Gabe. I really
Speaker 3: want to thank you so much for coming on the
Speaker 3: podcast today and being so honest. Your team told me
Speaker 3: two things about you, fun facts. One you hate being
Speaker 3: called brave and you hate being called a hero. And
Speaker 3: they also said quote, ultimately, he is open to anything.
Speaker 3: I can say that after talking to you today, I
Speaker 3: agree with that.
Speaker 4: Oh, I love it.
Speaker 3: Thank you and I really enjoyed this conversation today. So
Speaker 3: thank you for raising awareness about what it's like to
Speaker 3: live with biboard disorder.
Speaker 1: Oh Scott, thank you. Thank you so much for getting
Speaker 1: me out to your audience and raising the profile and
Speaker 1: having me on your podcast.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: My pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of The
Speaker 3: Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way
Speaker 3: to something you heard, I encourage you to join in
Speaker 3: the discussion at thus Psychology podcast dot com. We're on
Speaker 3: our YouTube page the Psychology Podcast. We also put up
Speaker 3: some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well,
Speaker 3: so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being
Speaker 3: such a great supporter of the show, and tune in
Speaker 3: next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior and creativity.