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EPI-84: After Your Bipolar Disorder

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September 3, 2023

Troy Steven is my first return guest!

I know I said I’d never interview anyone again. But Troy showed up unexpectedly requesting a talk, and I like him a lot, so I figured what the hell?

Troy has an incredible day job, which is not what he wanted to speak about at all.

He wanted to share news of his latest publication “After Your Bipolar Disorder” and some more about his publishing company, Battle Press.

Troy has a similar wellness plan as mine, the only difference being I found a way out of meds entirely.

But as we discussed in the interview, I learned that most people can’t do what I did, even with the plan I offer.

So it’s nice to have other options, like Troy’s.

Here’s his bio:

Troy Steven has been battling Bipolar Disorder since his first episode in 1993.
He has a Master’s in Engineering and has worked in the Aerospace industry for 25 years.
He currently works as a Test engineer for a Space company in Cape Canaveral FL.
He is the proud Dad of 4 children and Grandpa of 3 grandchildren. Troy’s passion is writing and publishing books.
His new book is “After Your Bipolar Disorder.”

And if you have a book you’d like to have published and don’t wish to fight the big publishing houses, then visit Battle Press to get Troy’s friendly assistance.

As he puts it, “I treat every book as if it was my own!”

Transcript

Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!

Hey. This is Ken Jensen. I’d be bipolar disorder in an all natural fashion back in the mid 2000s. And believe it or not, that’s not even the coolest part of my story.

What I learned through that process and what came next and how that applied to bipolar and wide bipolar was ever even part of the process, was mind blowing to say the least.

Bipolar has hidden within its strengths. I’m gonna show you what I mean and how phone up in my life so you can do the same. Welcome to the bipolar Excellence podcast episode 84 after your bipolar disorder.

So an old friend from over a year ago showed up. He is my first repeat guest on the show. Some of you may recall how I said, rather strongly, I wasn’t gonna interview anybody on the show anymore, and I’m sticking to that.

This was sort of, not sort of. This was a completely unplanned thing. and Troy Steven, who is the author of After Your bipolar Disorder. That’s the second book he’s written. He just wanna come back on the show again, and I liked Troy.

And I was I was glad to help out and give him some exposure for his new book, his second book, as well as the publishing company that he runs. So you’ll find out all the details in the upcoming interview you’re about to see.

So, yeah, I really don’t like interviewing people. It’s not a natural flow to me. It not the same as just holding a conversation. If I was good at interviewing, it would be like a conversation.

But I get to focus on what it is, the goals I’m trying to achieve, what it is I’m trying to help my guests do in accordance with I wanna achieve as the owner of bipolar Excellence.

And I don’t really achieve a flow state as well as I’d like with that. but with with Troy, that’s his pen name. So I trip up his name. But, with Troy. He’s such a pleasant person, and I find him very interesting.

And I just just was glad to give him a hand by doing this. And We had a before and after talk, and the after talk led to something interesting. I’m not gonna share the details. because until the thing becomes something, it’s nothing.

But just in, the after conversation, the after show conversation, Troy mentioned something that was put put to him by somebody in his circle that he felt I might want to be part of as well.

And I do. I’ve been here before countless times with with many things for many reasons. So we’ll just see if if if what he suggested flies with the other parties involved, because it isn’t just up to to him and me, then we’ll see.

I’m I’m all the way on board, and I’m excited. If not, it’s kind of I protect my myself from my own over enthusiasm, which is a lesson I learned the hard way after bashing my own face into multiple brick and stone walls years ago.

You get really excited. I get really excited when I hear something cool that I’m about to be part of and either the thing itself never takes place. or it never gets finished or it never becomes what we thought it would become.

And then it dies. that happened to me numerous times before it reached the place that I’m at now. Now And I think this is critical for some of you to know. Now I don’t have a long range link to anybody’s plan that I’m part of.

Not if you were simply a client. You have me while you have me, and I’ll do my damn to get you to wherever it is you’re trying to go next, but I’m not beholden to the outcome.

That’s really what any good coach should that’s how they should look at it anyway. We’re here to help you figure out your answers with the stuff that’s already in your head and heart.

And then in my case, I imagine a lot of coaches. I’m also an advisor and a consultant. I’m gonna throw in my 2¢ where necessary because it’s it’s gonna be required.

But occasionally, and this is part of my larger goal with bipolar excellence, a project will arise that somebody really wants me to be part of that really appeals to me, and I’m I’m gonna get on board. I want that to be the case.

So there’s been a couple of those in the works now. This is the latest. So we’ll just see. I I want this to work. If it doesn’t, I’m not gonna be crushed because I keep a healthy buffer of detachment in place.

So so that if I’d show more things fail than succeed. So to protect myself, again, from my own hope and dreams and wishes and wants and desires.

I just keep it loose, and then we just see we just see how it’s gonna go. That’s good advice for anybody out there doing anything just so your soul doesn’t get crushed.

Should it not go your way. You don’t quit entirely. You you you pick yourself up. dust yourself off, take a look at what happened, and learn. Everything that happens is feedback. Even god awful terrible things is a form of feedback.

Pick a part why it happened, ponder, mull it over, look at things, introspectively, and retrospectively, and try to figure out why things went the way they did. and you will discover gold.

Eventually, a thing will go the way you want it to go. That aside I am officially back to lifting. I got in my 5th lift last night. My body has already responded responding quite well. My body fat starts going down almost immediately.

Not stunningly so, but you can see changes in in various parts of my body that that I know something’s happening. It’s really weird too because I don’t bother weighing myself other than out of curiosity.

Because the only thing that changes really is my composition. It’s been that way for, I’m gonna say 25 years now. Overall, I get heavier each decade. but I also it’s it’s muscle mass as as well as fat.

And the only thing that changes is how much muscle versus how much fat is present. I just wanna be huge and beast like. And so a certain amount of fat comes with that, and I’m I’m willing to accept it and I don’t care.

And it looks fine. I wear it well. if it gets to be too much fat, terrible things happen, and I gotta wear a shirt all the time. And I’m looking at myself sideways in the mirror. sideways being, what are we doing?

We have to get back in the gym. Look at what’s happening. anyway, again, I’m 55 now. I know my body. I know my training. I respond rapidly just to just a touch in the weights again with the intention of doing something with them.

So I’m really happy about that. It’s going well. My appetite doubled almost pretty much doubled by day 2. That’s another thing. Once my body knows it’s game on, I I pivot fast.

Hunger goes through the roof. My desire to drink more water goes through the roof. My my my willingness to cut sugar down. I don’t cut it out. but I cut it way down. that kicks in naturally and I don’t suffer much for it.

I’m glad that, I’m doing what it takes to make my body function the way I want and perform in a gym the way I want. I did do, I’m almost I’m I’m about 290. Now 2 years ago, I could still do 12 pull ups and I had to work my way up to it.

I hadn’t done pull ups in many years. And I did deads and rows and and and lap pull downs and things like this. A bunch of different things working with the hammer machines. strong lats, but not for pulled pull ups.

And I learned, embarrassingly idiously, some years back, handful years back. I couldn’t even do a pull up anymore. I’ve always been able to pull ups my whole life. Well, I learned, how you get them back as you do holds.

You get into the top position and just hold and resist gravity as long as you can and you do sets of that. you’ll find you hold you hold in the top position longer before you even start to dip and you can fight to dip longer.

And you just do that till whenever, and then you get back into doing regular pull ups. And that’s that’s how I did it last time. That’s how I’m doing it now.

I did a set of 3 where I did. I did, what I do with 10 seconds. Everything felt like I had no strength at all. Then on the second rep, my body was in the game. or second set. And I did, I think, I think I did 15 seconds.

And then on a third rep, I fell solid and I did 20 It’s not. That’s holding 2:90 up in the air for 20 seconds. Maybe it was 25. I don’t know. It wasn’t more than 25. And, I fought hard to to to resist gravity on the way down.

I was really happy with myself. Now I haven’t worked it out with any regularity in a solid year. That was too much. my lats and rear shoulders and and the the long head of my triceps were absolutely shredded like shredded, shredded.

I traumatized them. I didn’t damage them to where it won’t work anymore, but I definitely traumatized them. So I needed an extra day off than what I normally would before I could train again.

But even that had an after effect, it was just I don’t know. I’m feeling it. I’m I’m feeling the warrior wake up again, and it feels really good So I’m back in the gym.

If any of you need motivation along those lines, I hope something I said there helped. this is an intro before you get to the the interview with Troy.

I think about this sometimes because, I follow the routine that Mark Marron and what the fuck pod does where he shares a lot about his personal life before he even gets to the guest, and he’ll go on for quite some time frequently before he even gets to the guest.

I often find I like that more than the interview with the guest. I like hearing what Mark’s up to.

So that’s how I shape my show as well. nobody’s brought this to my attention whether they’re yay or nay on it, but I don’t care. It’s how I’m doing a show. It’s how I wanna do it. It’s being done. You’re either in or out.

If you’re out, the chances are, whatever. We we wouldn’t have clicked anyway. If you’re in, that that’s just one more way we can gauge that we’re meant to work together. So that was a stick to your guns when you do something.

You might have to pivot. I might have to pivot somewhere down the line depending on on what does or does not shape up at all of this, but, this is episode 84, and I’m I’m happy doing the show this way.

I’m gonna keep doing the show this way. So I’m video recording this. If you’re listening on just the audio podcast, And I’m messing around with the Vimeo editing tool, which I’ve I’ve attempted in the past and didn’t get anywhere with.

And, tonight, I just figured some simple things. I found a YouTube video that clarified some stuff, easy peasy. And, this was causing me a certain amount of depression because I don’t I don’t have to edit my videos using that editor.

I have been wanting to. There’s certain things I wanna do so that my branding and my website show inside YouTube in a way that YouTube won’t let happen through their tools.

I forget what. I think it’s once I hit a certain amount of listeners or viewership or something.

I don’t know. So you gotta bake them into the video itself. I never bothered because this is a ton of work putting all of this together, and I’m with what what everything else in my life, I’ve been doing what I could do.

So I’ve been really dreading trying to learn this fucking editing, this this this video editing software inside Vimeo.

I’ve made 5 or 6 or 7 attempts in the past. Finally got my head around it. I feel I feel elated. I’m I’m glad that I hung in there and looked at it again.

I’ll be able to do some more things to really polish up my videos right now. I’m just putting together this latest video with an intro maybe an outro. And then, that’s it. that’s I think that’s all I wanted to cover for the moment.

And I think the cool thing with Troy Stevens is He has an entire other world with his skill set, and he that’s not what he wanted to talk about. He wanted to talk about his book and his publishing company.

And I thought that was really cool because in a way, that sort of the the friction I run into withdrawing by by bipolar people who want help with bipolar And and and and they just shoot right past the fact that I’m building something much larger than fighting bipolar off the story of how I fought bipolar and won.

This is always something that’s tricky to me. I don’t know bipolar excellence will remain titled as such.

Right now, it will because as I’ve said before, it’s too much damn work to unknit it and start all over. I will just shoehorn this thing in and then make it go. The Oh, the to do list. The to do list is it’s it’s done.

There’s nothing left on my to do list. that matters in a way that that has to be done before I could start the LinkedIn marketing machine. I am averse to learning something new. It ages me as stressed stresses the shit out of me.

And even though I’ve been wanting to do this thing since I think mid or late spring, trying to get everything else ready and running into other technical issues has making this last too long before I just get on LinkedIn and just do the official marketing sheen that I’ve been trained to do.

And that’s just how it goes for me. That’s just how it goes. And I’m I’m there now. There’s like, I’m looking over here.

There’s 5 or 6 things on my to do list. They’re all long range stuff. No immediate problems. They don’t need to be done potentially if ever. There are things that’ll make things better and cooler, but they do not need to be done now.

To keep me from doing the LinkedIn marketing push. So I’m greatly relieved that I’m finally doing that. I guess the lesson there is, it takes what it takes. You’re you’re better at some things than others.

Don’t fight yourself or beat yourself up too much over the shit you think you should be doing faster and better than what you are. just keep doing something. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to happen in a way it’s supposed to happen.

Sometimes when you hesitate it’s not because you’re really it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s not because you’re, just putting things off needlessly. Sometimes there’s a peace unit knows this is not the way to go.

And you’re chasing after a goal post that was put in put in place by someone else’s well meaning advice who has the life that you want, but it just doesn’t agree with your makeup and one way shape or form.

It doesn’t mean you won’t still have to do it maybe, but maybe it does. Maybe you’re doing something that it look it looked better when that person did it than than what it’s turning out to be for you.

This is a tricky thing you only know with testing and experimenting and and building on the on the fly. And you’ll know you’ll know. If something’s really just giving you an ulcer every time you do it, it’s just not worth it.

It just isn’t even if it sounds like the way you’re supposed to go, And but at least you know. And if you try at something for a very long time, at least you did that.

You didn’t give up so fast that there was nothing to learn. because a lot of people struggle with bouncing from from tactic to tactic instead of implementing just one thing in a strategic form thinking long goal.

They go tactic to tactic. They get shiny object syndrome. Oh, that’ll do it. Oh, that’ll do it. and I’ve done all these things.

Every once in a while, something sneaks in and and I do that again. I catch it faster than before. but I’ll think something will save my ass quicker and easier. And usually for me, it’s technology of one sort or another.

If I can just get some technology to do something I’m doing manual, that’ll speed something up over here, which will speed up something over there and just save me time and hours, stress, labor.

And then I end up losing half a day on the thing that would have everything easier that same day that had I just done it the way I knew how to do it, which might have been rough and not as polished, I’d have got it done in, like, minutes or half an hour, and then I’ve been on my way and through it.

Even that is something that has to happen.

Learning. Learning, testing, experimenting, sampling, seeing where we’re at with something, trying new things. It has to be done in a sensible way, but every now and then some sensible sensibility has to be thrown out the window.

You get better at it as you go. Don’t beat yourself up over it too much. A little bit of beating yourself up is healthy, but not too much. Too much is too much.

You’ll you’ll get all pessimistic and and quit before you ever reach the finish line. Alright. That was 2 sports metal floors and besides the strong man competition. I’m not even a fucking sports fan. I think that’s a signal.

I’m gonna end this here, and this will be the intro. to the interview with Troy Stevens and And if I’m screwing up, if it’s Troy Steven, not Troy Stevens, I can’t remember. I don’t have my notes in front of me because I suck at that.

Okay, guys. Let’s see how this worked. Okay. This is Ken, and I am here interviewing Troy Steven Troy Steven. Troy Steven has been battling bipolar disorder since his first episode in 1993.

He has a masters in Engineering and has worked in the aerospace industry for 25 years. He is the proud dad of 4 children and grandpa of 3 grandchildren. Troy’s passion is writing and publishing books.

His new book is after your bipolar disorder. Welcome welcome back to the show, Troy, since you were here somewhere a little over a year ago, and I was awful excited to see you in my email asking to come on again.

This is this is pretty fun for me. Thanks for coming back again. Oh, thanks for having me, Ken. Good good talking to you again.

It is. we mentioned, Troy and I were talking before the show started. And, Troy used to have a mustache, and my beard is feeling ambiguous about, that the fact that it’s gone, but we’re gonna I’m gonna coax my beard through this.

I should explain, Troy, this beard plays into every damn thing I do online. So I have to listen to the conversation. It’s it’s impressive. It’s impressive. Thank you. Alright. So I guess I’ll provide a little, just a little background.

When Troy and I spoke a little over a year ago, Troy had written a book and he has a publishing company of his own. And he’s since written a second book. And even though Troy is an engineer and quite intelligent.

And that that’s an understatement of massive proportions. His pub his passion is publishing books, and I’m a writer at my core. and I’m I I love books. Books are like people to me. I feel comfortable when I’m in a library.

I feel like I’m with friends, so I’m really curious to hear more about your story, Troy, with how you how you came into the publishing industry, what what kicked that off, how you’ve grown it, and how bipolar ties into it.

Sure. so when COVID hit, I I quit working for an engineering company and was working at home And I wrote my first book breaking bipolar.

Took me about 9 months, and then I published it on Amazon and Hulu and Ingram Spark and other platforms. So I learned all the ropes about publishing books.

And I put an ad out on Craigslist to get a, I will help you edit and publish your books and a couple people hit me up and Since then, I published over 40 books. my company’s called Battle Press Publishing.

I’ve met a lot of interesting people, offers, you know, writing fiction or nonfiction. religious books, the whole gamut children books, and I learned a lot along the way. That’s one thing with respect to bipolar.

A lot of people who are bipolar are very highly intelligent. And so being able to get the disease under control and overcome it, so to speak, although you’re, you know, always in the back of your mind.

Don’t get another bipolar episode happening. But, so I like to tell everyone there’s lots of, you know, there’s hope.

If you’re bipolar, do not give up on hope. If you take the right measures and learn how to manage your illness, then you could you know, exceed in life. Winston Churchill was bipolar. they thought Abraham Lincoln was.

Ted Turner. Kathleen David Jones. There’s lots of people high functioning people who are bipolar that Excel in life. And so, you know, that kinda goes along with the entrepreneurship and getting your own business going and growing it.

I agree. I agree with I agree with all of that. That’s something I I believe when we talked last year, you were only into the thirties in the book that you the amount of books you published.

And now you’re over 40? Yes. Alright. So that’s that’s a bunch in between. Just with one inside of 1 year.

That’s a lot more books that you published. Yeah. And most of them were return return authors that wrote their second book or third book in the series. So people like working with me because I treat every book like it’s my own book.

And they’ll send me their manuscript, you know, Microsoft Word easily, and I’ll edit it. And anything I change, I’ll go put it in a red font. I’ll send them back the manuscript with my suggested edits.

We send it back and forth back and forth until the manuscripts ready to go. And then we do a cover design. Have a great guy that does cover designs. You know, it covers the book.

So — Yep. and then, then publish it, you know, either e you know, publish as a ebook, paperback, hardcover, or audiobook, or all four. on the different platforms. So, yeah, I’m loving it. I like how you mentioned how bipolar.

Either bipolar tends to land an intelligent people or intelligent people seem to be the ones that are more acceptable to being bipolar. but either either way, who knows which, maybe a little of both.

But I found the same thing. I found a lot of people that have buy polar. A lot of them have chaotic worlds because they’re Their minds are too busy and they can’t find enough to do with them or they can’t find something to focus on.

And They’re capable of doing so much, and I believe ordinary life frequently is not enough. that’s a big thing with me. I cannot settle for the status quo.

What seems to make the average person comfortable is me in a depressed state trying to do the same. I I When I was younger, I used to need more excitement and adventure slash misadventure, and and I sought chaos.

And if there wasn’t any, I made it, so I had something to react to. and that’s all since passed. Now it’s more nuanced. It’s more subtle. It’s more about mastering myself.

I found my newest my newest as far as, however long I’ve lived now 55 years, the the last and greatest adventure that I’ve been on for the last recent so many years is the adventure of understanding myself and mastering myself And I find that to be just as thrilling as when I was just out in the tangible world creating carnage and chaos.

And and my my day job, I deal with a lot to have bipolar disorder. And they’re all they’re all some of my most interesting people. Do you think bipolar played a part at all and you’ll be an engineer? Probably so.

I mean, I I always, when I was growing up, I’ve read 10 books a week from the library. My mind was always like that. I played chess. I was a chess champion. math was my, you know, I was the best guy in the class in math and so on.

So that kinda like I don’t know how bipolar fit into that, but that was, you know, the engineering part of me that I was leaning towards. So, how old were you before bipolar became a thing when you could title it as such?

Yeah. See, I was thirty three years old. — That’s same as me. Really? I was probably 202829. I just thought I was going insane. And then they’re like, no. You’re bipolar. And they show me the list.

I’m like, yes. I am in fact all of those things. Yeah. I’m not trying to discount that, you know, I guess Ken and I, we’re in pretty good places right now in our lives, but there is a a a long road before this happened.

I am a co leader of a bipolar support group that needs twice a month. And we have about 10 or twelve people that show up at each meeting.

You know, I’d say the majority of them are on medication. include myself. each of them has ups and downs, and it’s really It’s when I never really wanted to go to the support group meeting once I so I have my first episode in 93.

I could check myself involuntarily into a psychiatric hospital, had a psychotic break. was in there 2 or 3 weeks. Came away heavily medicated. then struggle to try to get my medications right so that the right formula is working.

I was married. 3 kids at the at the time. 3 young children. So I was in the hospital 2 more times, 2005, and 2015. both involuntarily. I threw all my medicines away and went manic.

I guess, leaning up to throw all my medicines away. I was having manic, manic symptoms. And, you know, it just got higher and higher. And so I think the problem was is that I didn’t have the right medications.

I wasn’t doing, like, doing things that everyone should do to have, like, a whole life wellness plan to follow. That’s I talk about in my book where you you master your medications. You you have a you find a good psychiatrist.

You go outside and get fresh air and exercise. You eat right. You minimize or don’t do it all. alcohol, marijuana, and drugs. And, you learn learn mind strengthening techniques like meditation, different things to help your mind.

You try, you know, learn these different techniques that when when things are, like, for example, you start a lot of times people will ruminate where they keep thinking about the same thing over and over and kicking themselves in the butt for something that happened.

Just try to, you know, change that train of thought. So I I what I do is I if I realize I’m doing that, I say the word noise and change my train of thought.

So, anyway, mind strengthening and you learn along the way from my first episode, if I start I could think about my second episode that, hey, the same thing was happening maybe 4.

So I need to do something about it. You know? You get smarter along the way. I guess what I’m trying to say is you have to have, like, a living whole life wellness plan.

A lot of people are suffering from bipolar disorder. 20% suicide rate. So 20% of people I’ve done research you go online and check it out on Google and so on, but, like, approximately 20% of people commit suicide who are bipolar.

It’s it’s the energy. It’s from what I heard, it’s it’s got the highest rate of all the serious mental illnesses.

And and from what I’ve read about schizophrenia and and I work with people who have schizophrenia, that’s something knowing that there’s something worse than that.

And and you and I have lived it. It’s it’s almost surreal. It’s when I think back to what I used to be, you and I you and I had different different well, or sorry. We had similar wellness plans.

The only difference I found some ways of not having to do meds anymore but I know that for many reasons, most people I’ve ever worked with can’t duplicate what I did even though there’s very clear cut steps plans, products, and other people to help.

And I realized there’s a lot of variables involved in in achieving achieving wellness the way I did. And So it would respect to that. You you would need meds just just to keep going so the owner doesn’t take charge again.

And then, some people I think they just feel better on meds and and that’s that. And I tell people I’ll tell you what, if your life works, you’re happy with it, then that’s whatever you’re doing.

Do that. And, it what’s who cares how you got there? If you’re happy and and you can and you can succeed at life, and the onus isn’t leading the way anymore, then then you’ve won.

I was asking you before about engineering and by or the only reason I brought that up? Sometimes this is a very specific thing. Sometimes I miss being manic. because I could consume information the way I think you can organically.

I had a B manic to consume what you sounds like you’ve been doing since you were a kid. I I I, you know, I had to I had to be bipolar in a sense to match your ability to process data.

When my mania went away, I I could not read as much think about as much. I lost that, and you probably are familiar with this. It’s like three-dimensional thinking.

I can make connections in all directions up down behind me in front of me. I could include time for the past, the future, all kinds of anything. I could tie together all kinds of bits of data and experiences to come to a solution.

I have an I have a a a memory of that, an echo of that that I can still I still use when I’m helping people or solving my own problems, but it is not as powerful as when I was manic.

The bipolar side, I could solve the crap out of pro problems if all they needed was some heavy duty thinking about them.

I I know exactly where you’re coming from now, and I agree that when I’m when I’m manic, I could definitely outshine when I’m not manic.

You know? Yeah. Cool. Have those connections and just feel in the flow. And sometimes that’ll happen to me even now, but not you know, not not all the time.

But — it’s not as intense. Right. When I was in that state, you know, doing good things, solving problems. people would even say, how how did you even put that together? and I’d tell him, I don’t know.

I see it all crystal clear. I see all of it. It it and somebody far flung bits of data, and it was It was really amazing, and I could see it all in my head clear as day. Almost like, I think it away. I’m always amazed by painters.

I don’t know how a painter looks at what you and I look at and turns it into an awesome painting. That’s that’s just mind blowing to me. I think with this type of thinking you and I are kicking around here.

I think it’s similar to that because we could we could see it easily, and no one around us can. And then we hand the people to solution and they’re they’re looking at us like we’re magicians.

I’m like, I don’t know. I just see it. It’s right there. But, yeah, I don’t have that like I used to. I have it. but nowhere near. I’m not the Superman with it as I used to be.

Something to strive for. So let me let me ask you this. Did you write a book and then in the process decide to become a publishing company? I I can’t remember anymore. Was that the part of the the the order of events?

Yeah. When I first started writing my book, my first book breaking bipolar, I was just I’m gonna write a book and try to make money off of it and, help other help people who are bipolar and loved ones of people who are about bipolar.

You know, I wanted to just help a lot of people do the best book I could and along the way. And then I figured out. first of all, I tried to go through a vanity publisher called Bookwhip.

And and, they were gonna publish my book for me. And that became a fiasco. just, I sent them a manuscript. They edited it and formatted into a paperback format and ebook, send it back.

I made a bunch of changes. And before they I sent my changes to them, and they knew that I would had to give them the go ahead. They went ahead and published the book on Amazon.

And so here’s this book on Amazon. It’s got errors and issues and needs that it’s big time. You know? usually, there’s a process back and forth back fork till the author says, yeah, it’s good to go.

So I had, like, Better Business Bureau take take my book off of Amazon. So that was my first experience. And, so then I ended up finishing up my book and learning how to publish it as a ebook paperback hardcover audio book.

And then once I got through all of that, it was still COVID time. and I put the ad on Craigslist to try to get authors. And then I got a few authors, and then I went on to fiverr and and put on a ad onto the fiverr.

And got a bunch more authors and off to the races. that’s cool. That’s interesting. I we I think we follow I think we follow a similar general path there.

In this case, with business building, I did the same. Wanna be bipolar. I got way up on a pedestal and started screaming every corner to your tech of Fine to tell them I I found the answer.

I have the way. That was a brutal lesson in reality. How that did not work well. But, I learned a lot about the process of telling the world about what I did.

And then, I got, like, a thirty thousand foot view a bipolar in every sense of of how it affected my life and why, and I started understanding myself in ways that had nothing to do with bipolar.

And and in particular, how I ended up beating it and what what my life became later. And, I became a person that’s settled that certain people are drawn to And I didn’t realize what exactly to call myself or what that thing was.

And now that now that we’re in bipolar excellence, it’s it’s it’s all got to do with that, but We both did the same thing.

We started with bipolar. We defeated it slash managed it out of existence, the ways that we did. We told everyone about it, and then it led to something even larger.

And I think anyone on a growth path experience is that same thing. You start out with one thing because you gotta start somewhere. If you got an idea or whatever and you want out of life, then start building something anything.

Get good with the fact that maybe maybe a nail it, but the chances are slim. Maybe it’s really good. those chances are greater, but probably still sort of slim.

But what you’ll learn from the process right or wrong, you’ll iterate your way towards what you’re supposed to be and It’s it’s brutal. It’s brutal advice to hear, but I think you I’m sure you experienced the same, Troy.

The You keep taking a run at the thing till the thing becomes more polished, and you understand and learn along the way, and you learn more about yourself along the way, And as you do, it shapes the clay better as you keep iterating.

Have you experienced that growing as a publishing company? Exactly. Yeah. You you know, you pretty much have to fail and learn from what why he failed.

And then get yourself back up and go after it harder and keep doing that until you’ve learned enough to get you know, to getting on your feet and stable. And then, you know, you wanna grow up bigger and lots bigger and scale it up.

You keep doing the same thing. and a lot of it, I think his team worked coming into contact with people that’ll help you be on your team. You know, I I I had a girl that was doing social media for me, for about a year.

Like I said, the guy that does my creates my covers for the books. Marketing. that’s how I came up came upon you. I had a girl that was trying to get me on the podcast.

And she contacted you. And here we are. So I think a lot of teamwork, you know, having a good team behind you is important. Just depending. But — Yeah. Yeah. There’s I’m a solopreneur. I do most everything myself until I hit a wall.

And then I’ll go for a while at something because it’s like, you know, it’s like a man stop and ask for directions. There is no such thing. Eventually, you gotta stop and ask for directions.

And, hopefully, you’re not into some dark canyon and it’s, 2 AM in a in a foreign land. But, If I don’t hire someone directly to help me, I I’m I’m building a nice network of friends and supporters on on LinkedIn.

And I’m finding that I’ve heard this advice for years, but you offer help to other people first Just be helpful.

Without asking for anything in return, you do that long enough till people get an idea of what your flavor is and what your intentions are.

If you grab their interest, they’re gonna pick you apart anyway. They’re gonna research behind the scenes. And what you’ll find is over time, you gotta pick out this of waters.

You gotta be patient. Some of these people who turn into friends are very, very powerful allies at the at the least, and they’ll see something to you where they wanna help back.

And I’ve had that happen to me more and more and more lately, and it’s becoming very satisfying.

I do all my own technical everything on my own because I’m capable, but, again, even in my case, I I know what to do, but I don’t know that I’d hire me to do it. If I had the money to to get the best, I’d be like, no. No.

You need this and then hire whoever I point you at next. So you do what you got to to get the thing off the ground and keep it alive and going and have world find you. But then, yeah, as much as you can, you don’t wanna do everything.

That’s that’s not why you You wanna do whatever the the kernel, the core of the dream is. You like you, you wanna publish books. You wanna help people get their books done. You don’t wanna do all this other stuff.

So I would imagine, you know, you already have a team in place, and you wanna you wanna get to where they they do the bulk of that other work so that you can You can help the future authors with their dreams and helping them see the future for what their book might do and what it can be.

Does that sound about right? Yeah. And, so when we when I was talked to you before, I don’t know if it probably at least a year ago.

Mhmm. You’ve you’ve got you I maybe didn’t understand, but now what you’re doing on the LinkedIn and you’re you’re helping small businesses or what what are you doing in terms of helping others?

I help existing small businesses try to scale things up or branch in new areas. Usually, if they want my help, it’s because they’re afraid to make a leap.

And then I focus even more so on people that just have an idea. Something they wanna take big and they’re afraid to launch their business. They’re afraid of the online world.

They’re afraid of learning how to integrate with the real world with brick and mortar buildings and online banking and They need somebody at their back that can guide them through the creation of a dream and take it to the completion, in this case, as a functioning small business.

What I share with people the most is with rare exceptions, one of the best ways to move through life is as a small business owner where you have more charge of of of everything in your life.

And it took me a while to understand I always wanted to be in charge of my life and I realized a lot of people, the matrix life in general society trains people to be drones.

So a lot of people get the feeling that they don’t wanna be drones anymore. They’d like to build something that’s their that’s their own that they they are proud of or excited about.

But then they don’t know how to go about doing it. Then they go online, then they get ripped off by all the gurus that know everything. If you just give $8000, they’ll help you do this, that, and the other thing.

And or to get overwhelmed and information overload. So, basically, I take somebody that’s brand new that has an idea, has a few dollars necessary to invest in it to get it the ground and build somebody to keep parts.

And I talked them through it, and I stay available quite a bit. so that they never feel like they’re alone as they get their baby up and walk him. Oh, that’s great. Sounds like fun too.

I did a lot of this years ago on pro when I say unprofessionally, I I was just doing it. I there was no mission involved. I just found myself somewhere where a lot of small business owners were coming to me for advice.

And at the time, I didn’t even have a small business. And for years, I wondered what that was. Why are they coming to me? They’re making money. Some of them quite a bit. Some of them were millionaires.

They wanted my opinion on things. And for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what that was. When I’m with people in a room, I tend to give them confidence, and I can help them stay calm, and I can bring them clarity.

It doesn’t matter if they’re bigger than me. It doesn’t matter if they out earn me by Cajillions. People are people are people.

Whenever they’re getting ready to do something new, it’s a little bit scary, a little bit confusing. I know how to lead people through the woods. bring them back out into the into the air into some shiny new land.

And I like to do it a lot with metaphors, apparently. Yeah. Kind of a consultant. That’s great. Yeah. Where do you see Is there a next level for your publishing company?

Is do you hit, like, a certain amount of books and maybe you got another plan cooking in the background? Just curious. My trust over the last few months has been marketing books.

I’m not so a lot of the books I just published, the people pay me for doing the formatting and editing and cover and publishing, and I didn’t get a royalty from the books when they sell.

But about 12 of the books with local authors here in Satellite Beach, Florida, and other other states also.

I did a contract with them where I get 20 percent of the royalties for each book that sells. So now I have 12 books, including my my two books.

That our marketing recently started using Amazon Advertising and you know, about it’s the same thing about I’ve been trying to lose weight for a while, you know, a couple of years atkins whatever k toed diet.

We finally started using Nutrisystem and lost £25. And I was like, finally, I finally found something that works.

You know, to lose weight. Just, about a month ago, I lost £25. And so then I started I’ve been doing all kinds of marketing, social media, all the platforms, Twitter, YouTube, so on.

Trying to get podcasts for my authors and so on. And then I started trying Amazon advertising about a month ago and having great results.

So I’m like, finally, I found something that I’ll sell books. Oh, that’s awesome. That’s where I’m at now, but I’m like, I like to publish a lot more books. you know, Yeah. A lot of the authors I know are writing more books.

So I’m I’m open to accepting new books contracts and so on, but right now as I’m focusing on marketing. Well, that’s cool though that you added the contract part. You that was smart. And that’s a that’s a huge growth step in its own.

Right? Yeah. Definitely. Well, the one thing we didn’t really cover today, what is the name of your new book and and what is it about? Name of the book is after your bible bipolar disorder.

Bipolar heal thyself. and it’s about creating a personal battle plan for battling for overcoming bipolar disorder a little bit like we talked earlier where there’s different parts of the plan.

Mhmm. one of the first one of the first parts of the plan is the contingency plan. Have someone that’s close to you that that knows about your problems with the illness If you get into trouble, start having an episode, call this person.

They’re your contingency, so you don’t skyrocket into mania or into, you know, go down into depression and end up in the hospital.

So contingency plan, optimize your medications, learn how to rank your medications up and down until you’re in the therapeutic level where you’re optimal, you’re thinking, well, you’re happy, You’re doing good.

It takes a while. It takes a long time to find the right medications to that work for you. training your mind, talked about those mind strengthening techniques, train your body, do the exercise and so on.

Having having, I would say, having sex with your partner is good for your mind, good for your emotions, Yes. It is. That’s that’s a street from a Napoleon Hill. — That is.

Other parts of the plan, how to recover from a bipolar episode faster when you, you know, when you’re in recovery, learn about if you’re gonna be in psychiatric hospitals, it’s good to know what what it’s like in there and what the rules are and what the laws are.

I have a chapter in my book about that. I have a chapter about legal rights.

And so the the book is the first in the book is to have a bipolar battle plan, which is really like a whole white whole life wellness plan that covers all the aspects of bipolar, the medication and so on.

And it’s up to you as the person who is bipolar to fit to heal yourself, you know, bipolar heal myself.

Is a is something I like to say a lot, you know, learn all you can about the the disease, you know, You’re the you’re the hero and the story, and bipolar is the protagonist.

And it’s a war. It’s a war. You know? It’s definitely a war. Yeah. That’s what you’re saying.

The whole page of my site, it It’s it’s well, that’s part of that larger view that I realized after I fought bipolar the way I did. Everyone’s at war with themselves. Everyone. But for some of us unfortunate few, it becomes bipolar.

That’s a high level war. That’s a commitment. A lot of energy, a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, but it’s a it’s an ex it’s like an over exaggeration of what everybody’s going through.

And As far as I can figure, it’s why everyone’s on earth. What whatever you believe about whatever. Even if you believe nothing, I think you should at least believe that you’re here to improve.

Otherwise, what are you? You’re in Amiibo. You should be trying to do a little something better with your life. trying to leave them, you know, leave leave the world better than you found it.

Otherwise, you’re an Amiibo or an anarchist. And what you mentioned, Hill thyself, you’re talking and you were talking about self self, there’s self awareness and there’s self responsibility.

My doctor, what kicked off my search to to beat bipolar. Well, no. Let me let me rephrase that.

To survive. I was only looking to survive And if if possible, if possible, if I could get a 5 to 8% reduction in the severity of the symptoms, I would have been ecstatic And I didn’t dare hope for more because I was in such a bad state.

Nothing seemed possible that was anything like wellness, but my doctor gave me a death sentence a literal death sentence.

And he told me, you know, he said, you’re gonna die by cop because you’re that guy. It every time you go off, the Marine Corps comes out of you, cops show up. And he’s like, you’re getting you’re actually improving in this one area.

He said they’re gonna have to put you down to save themselves. And I said, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’re you’re right. That that’s what this is looking into. Well, what it’s looking to become.

He told me you gotta find something outside of of psychiatry. I just don’t know what it is because I’m a psychiatrist, but he’s like, we have a, you know, we have a medical file and you’re a foot thick.

We’re not helping you. We’re making you worse. Now that’s my case. I realize everyone’s different, and I realize I’m even in the minority how everything went for me.

But he said what was telling as as, as far as heal thyself. I was already on the path even as I was melting down, and I didn’t know it until he said this.

He said the one thing I hate for you out of all my patients is that you’re aware. I’m like, what are you talking about? He said everybody that comes and he was the head of all psychiatry at the Veterans Administration.

And he had hundreds of patients himself. He said everybody comes to me. They want the pill They go home. They take the pill, and that’s it.

He said, you come to me. You want the pill just as bad as them. You take the pill. You go home. When you come back, you have a list of a list of questions about that pill, and you want to know what it’s doing with all the other pills.

And why did I pick it? And on and on and on, he goes, you’re the only patient I have that comes back with questions. And I said, that’s impossible. I’m the only one. I’m like, are you, like, making some strong point? He goes, no.

You’re the only one who asked me why my treatment plan is as it is with you. And he said, because of that, you go home and study all this stuff, he goes, you, like no other patient I have, fully understand how screwed you are.

And he said, I wish you didn’t know what you knew so you could die in peace because you ain’t got long to go. You’re forcing it. And we always yeah.

People always say it was terrible, but when I was with him, I said, don’t sugarcoat it. I wanna hear everything straight. I wanna know what I’m up against. Anna Murray. I need to know my enemy so I could figure out how to fight it.

And he respected that. So he told me that straight out. It still was it was it was hard to hear, especially later, but I needed to know it as like a tactician slash engineer my own life. Okay.

This is what we got. This is how real it’s about to be, and he’s saying something’s gotta be different. I gotta be different. And I was trying to heal myself without string outside the parameters of the traditional way everybody goes.

But now the all these years later, I got better, but one of the things, one of the primary things I’ve always taught people, I said, however this turns out for you, You gotta be aware of all the parts, like never before, and you gotta step outside the parameters or whatever the normal chain of information is to find out if something else might appeal to you or fit you better.

And then I said take responsibility for everything in your life. Everything’s your fault.

Because it is. But, really, what people hear that is they’ve screwed up and it’s your fault, and that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you are 100% in charge of every aspect of your life, meaning you can’t fix everything.

But how you react is a 100% in your in your control. And by looking in how to act, how to react to different problems, how to become proactive, If you take ownership of that way of thinking, you’ll come up with out of the box solutions.

But you’ve gotta you’ve gotta understand nobody’s gonna come save you.

Not not fully. Take ownership of what you’re doing. Even if you have people trying to save you, become a better partner with them in the saving of you. Stop waiting for someone to save you, and then you do nothing on your own time.

And I think that’s what you’re saying with your plan. A lot of people just take the pills, and that’s all they do. You’ve come up with an entire book on And this, step, step, step, step.

That’s taking charge of your life being responsible. People need to know that about this. Definitely. Gotta take responsibility. You’re only here once Gotta make the best of it.

Yeah. Alright. That’s a pretty powerful point to end on. I think, Troy. do you have, oh, let’s do the thing. Where can people go to get your book or or, anywhere else you would like people to find you online.

Give them give them all the things, please. Yeah. So the new book after your bipolar disorder is available right now on Amazon in ebook or paperback, and it will be available on other stores in a in a month or 2.

My first book breaking bipolar is available on Amazon and a lot of other stores.

Your favorite source, Apple, and so on. So the two books, breaking bipolar, after your bipolar disorder, and then my Publishing company address is battle battlepress.

Media. So battlepress dot me idea, m e d i a is the website. And, you know, if you’re interested in the help when you publish your book or just wanna buy some books, go there. You could drop me a line in the contact form.

I’d love to hear from you. What are you going, everyone? I self published my one and only book, and that process aged me. The system has improved since then, but, it would be much easier if you went with someone like Troy.

Who’s, particularly if you’re trying to publish a story about something that’s so personal and maybe involves a lot of trauma, but Troy does any book under the sun.

If it’s a good book and he can help you work with it, he’s gonna help you publish it.

So I couldn’t recommend Troy more for this. It’s clear how much you care about the people that are writing their books and how you wanna help them guide that thing to completion and getting it published.

And, that’s It’s very scary. This is this is what I say about everything I do too. Very scary to do something on your own.

And if you’re gonna publish a book, Please go look up Troy on battlepress dot media and check out his book after your bipolar disorder and his other book breaking bipolar and make make sure he’s the man for you, but I can’t recommend him highly enough, especially the first time authors.

You don’t wanna go do battle with a big corporation. Go to someone that’s a person and a human and cares about you, and that is Troy.

Well, thank you for having me on this show, Ken. It’s been great. It is, Troy. We’ll have to catch up again in another year or sooner if if if if you explode in some fashion of awesomeness, I wanna hear about it.

I might be able to. Okay. Alright. Thanks for being on again, Troy. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Alright. Everyone take care.

EPI 46: Bipolar Author & Aerospace Engineer Troy Steven: Breaking Bipolar

EPI 46: Bipolar Author & Aerospace Engineer Troy Steven-Breaking Bipolar

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:32:28 — 127.0MB)

June 15, 2022

Show Notes:

Troy Steven reached out to me somewhere within the last two years. He found me right as I was stalling out on my last two podcasts. So I never responded.

But he was gracious enough to agree to be interviewed again! (Thanks Troy!)

Turned out to be a very fun interview!

Troy’s Story:

Troy Steven got his first taste of bipolar in 1993. He said it made him feel odd, dangerous.

He voluntarily committed himself after that for a 3-week stay. Thus began the heavy meds.

Mania became a regular thing. It hit him hard in 2005.

Another stay in a psych facility took place in 2015.

But Troy has been good ever since that stay. He keeps regular with meds but doesn’t feel they’re the only answer.

He’s big on personal responsibility and optimizing one’s meds.

Troy wrote a book about how he got bipolar under control called: Breaking Bipolar.

Here’s the site for the book: https://breakingbipolar.life

From Amazon:

Breaking Bipolar is an empowering self-help book with clear, detailed instructions on how to create a powerful battle plan to break the hold bipolar disorder has on your life and eliminate bipolar episodes for good.

After reading Breaking Bipolar, you will have the knowledge and skills to:

Create your personal bipolar battle plan
Eliminate bipolar episodes
Optimize your medications
Recognize symptoms of mania and depression
Find a psychiatrist you trust
For a support team
Boost your mental and physical health
Recover faster from a bipolar episode
Deploy your bipolar legal rights if necessary
Navigate psychiatric hospitals
Win the war against bipolar disorder
Make your dreams come true!

He delivered a secret at the end of the talk. Turns out he has his own publishing empire! (My words, not his.)

Here’s the site: Battle Press Publishing

Listen to the whole show. We really got cranking as we went along! I can’t wait to interview Steve again!

Transcript

Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence podcast. I’m your host Ken Jensen. I’m someone who overcame Bipolar disorder in an organic fashion back in 2004.

That process taught me a couple things about bipolar. I was living life so incorrectly in relation to what the better part of me wanted and needed me to do, that it took bipolar disorder to shock me into seeing I should go another way.

The fact that it was bipolar that was to change agent meant. I’m more creative than most.

I have a certain slightly amount of intelligence than the average bear, and I have a way of seeing life and expressing myself that most around me do not, in such a way that I can have great impact on those who need me most.

You might be the same. I wanna help you understand this about yourself and I wanna help unlock your greatness and then unleash it on the world in the best and coolest way possible.

Welcome to the bipolar Excellence podcast episode 46, bipolar, aerospace engineer, and author Troy Stephen, Breaking Bipolar.

So, very much still digging this new format of me sharing from my my life and my experiences of building this podcast and the website and all all that goes with it.

I’m enjoying this. I’ve mentioned before, I’m I’m duplicating just in its most general form, the format that Mark Marin uses over on WTF. And I’ve owned this only the second interview I’ve done, so I’m getting better at it.

But I’m already enjoying it more. The first interview was great. And then out of it, I saw things I wanted to do better, could do better, and I invested in a little bit of extra software to help facilitate the improvement.

And I’m I’m still learning some of that, and it’s it’s just getting better as I go. Troy was a blast to talk to. We had a lot of fun on the call.

I think it went it went couple of directions neither 1 of us saw coming. Nothing real dramatic other than 1 surprise, Troy shared at the very end that I completely did not see coming, and I thought was quite dramatic.

And the most positive of senses, it was really cool what he shared right at the end. So that’s not sales thing like you hear on other things, but you’re gonna wanna listen in the end.

Particularly if you’re writing a book. If you are writing a book, pay attention to or or Pay attention to this thing all the way to the end.

Alright? What else was I gonna throw in here? Along the lines of podcasting, I just got hooked up by a new best friend Not that he knows me.

Let me pull this up and and and note to self and listeners, I cannot wait till I have multiple monitors because I never have these links and things prepared prior to the show because it just doesn’t seem to be how my brain works.

And if I had another monitor, I could easily pull things up and sound much smoother in delivering these helpful links and whatnot.

I am failing you. I’ll get it I’ll get it straightened out and improved there too. 1 more note for the book.

So polymash, I found this guy through 1 of the and forgive me if I say your name wrong, Yergin Bergkessel. But it’s at polymash dot com. I was put onto polymash by something out of 1 of these podcasts helpful podcast.

I don’t know what you call them. I get these newsletters about the podcast industry. And from 1 of them, some link I needed to know something about led me to Polymash and Yergens been pretty helpful.

Pretty helpful indeed. He just put me on to something called share link generator dot com. When you have a podcast episode and you wanna make it very easy for your guests to share it on their social sites.

This free software does that. It’s I don’t know what else to say about it. It’s free. No catches. No nothing. You throw in a link, and and you throw in your info, and it it poops out a link.

The other thing that he sent my way that I just signed up for, oh, let’s see. It was text expander dot com. Now this is something I wish I had years ago. Back when I was really seriously deep into developing my websites.

Right now my website is Mostly static other than updating the podcast pages themselves. So I don’t have to write a lot of fresh code. Little bit here and there, but not much.

But I used to reuse snippets of code like crazy. And you gotta save them somewhere, find them, copy them, and paste them. And now I’m finding the same problem with emailing people things that are the same information for each person.

Nothing changes other than their name. It’s a lot of it’s a big time expenditure, and I don’t have that much time. Even if I do have time, I have a limited amount of energy and or discipline to do things well.

So I always have to get out ahead of myself and find shortcuts to beat The things in my life I can’t be, including my own inability to work harder.

So check out textexpander dot com. It’s you save snippets of anything written, anything you gotta type at all, and it works anywhere that you type online period.

Or on your computer itself, and on all of your devices. So I just found them. I just signed up. I think actually I took a 30 day trial.

I didn’t pay anything just yet. But it’s, like, 30 dollars for the year. Like, 30 and change. So to save time of retyping and copying and pay and searching for for files, I can’t wait to beat this thing to death and make my life better.

Now I could’ve sworn what what there was 1 other thing maybe. I signed up for something called xsplit, It’s the letter x and then the word split. It’s xsplit dot com. Now in this case, they’ve got a couple things they do.

And the thing I signed up for was Vcam, where I can use my computer camera, in my case, I’m getting a a logitech thingamajigger to put on the top of my laptop, and it allows you to remove or replace and blur your background.

And I think it does a bunch of other stuff, a whole bunch of other stuff. They got something called broadcaster.

With live streaming and recording studio. But right now, it’s only on PC. It’s only on Windows. So I’m sure it’ll have Mac thrown in at some point. V cam, I’m pretty sure is both. You’re good to go there.

And so I’m just using V cam. And I’m really excited about that because what I’ve been using is my cell phone on a a tripod, with an app called I think it was called well, I better not say, I think it was called anything.

I’m pulling it up right now in my apps, let’s see here. You know, they always say they never have dead time on on radio, which is all this really is, is radio, and I really don’t care.

You know who partly made me not care? Found the app. Focos Live, F0C0S, Live. You go into the App Store and buy it.

That does some really cool stuff right from your farm. That I’m now hopefully gonna replace with Vcam because it’ll make my life a little easier, less less machinery involved, quicker, transitions between tasks.

Back to the silence, the voids within conversation on podcast, There’s a guy named Jocko, navy seal. He appears to be monstrous in in any way, every way.

He’s a warrior amongst warriors. I don’t follow his show. I’ve listened to it every now and again. And nothing against the guys nothing about it really makes me wanna listen to it a whole lot.

But every now and then, I’ll listen to him. And he has a lot of he speaks very slow. He has a lot of Dead time where he just sits and let you drink in what he just said.

He’s massively popular online. I found him on YouTube, Like I said, ironically, I listen almost no podcast. I listen to WTF. That’s for me that’s for me personally.

I like what Mark does. I like who he’s doing it with. I like how he does it. I like why. I like learning about Mark’s life. Then there’s other podcasts I listen to purely for training purposes, not entertainment.

And that’s about it. And there’s nothing to be done for that. I feel almost like I’m somehow letting down the podcasting community, but I don’t have the time or the will to care.

That’s where I’m at. Hopefully, 1 of you guys or a bunch of you guys out there are picking me the way I picked Mark. That that could be a thing.

I feel solid on that. I’m still getting better at using squadcast. That’s at squadcast dot f m. Squadcast lets you do Internet based recording. There’s, like, no way to screw it up, and they keep copies of everything in the cloud.

So even if you if it goes sideways and you screw something up as I already have a few times. They’ve nothing’s lost. You can’t really blow this thing up. You you just stumble your way through the learning process.

And they’ve got you they’ve got your back, so you you can’t really hurt anything. I’m already getting better with that. And I’m just liking how my whole system’s coming together for delivering these podcasts to you guys.

It’s a lot of work. And when I get supremely pissed off at something. I start considering, reconsidering, does this thing even need to be in place?

Is there a better way to do it? A simpler way, a cheaper way, a faster way? Or do I even give a shit that it’s here at all really when the point is to get the shows at out? On that note, I did away with transcribing.

It’s another irony. On the last episode, I really spoke highly of transcription and why it needs to be in place, that’s all still true. But the way the voice to text editor I was using worked, it wasn’t working well enough for me.

And the act of transcribing was starting to age me. And it was now that I’ve gone to interviews and these things are are so long, Like the other night, I worked for 17 how was it?

No. No. I worked for 2 hours, and I got 17 minutes of an hour and a half long audio transcribed. I’m like fuck this. I I literally hate this. I hate this shit.

I don’t wanna do it anymore. I wish this thing was working more like what they showed in the ad. And I know in my case, the way my voice sounds, I could see how it was tripping up the the AI and the transcription service.

The way it was phonetically writing things, it thought I was saying. I’m like, I’m never gonna win this fight because with my eyes closed, I it sounds like I’m saying what it’s writing as well. It it’s it’s no good.

So I decided to dump that for now. I and what I’m gonna do is the audios are the audios. They’re here. They’re podcast episodes. They’re done. When I’m in a better position to do so, I hire out the job on fiverr dot com or something.

I hire out the transcription service to somebody else that you just come in behind me transcribe all these episodes, and I’m never gonna touch again.

Give me the the written file and I throw it in on the episode page within my site. Bipolar excellence dot com. And that’s how that’s gonna go.

And I’ve gotta tell you what a load off my mind that was because I’ve been fighting real hard hard to find the discipline time and energy to transcribe and it’s I can’t. It’s it’s beyond me even with with software help.

I know that because of how everything works in the world particularly online, they’ll get better at some point where the mistakes that a software makes are gonna be less and less, which will make them easier to use, but they’re not there right now that I can see.

And I’m I’m done fucking around.

I clipped them out And I feel so much better because it doesn’t matter. They need to be there and they will be there. Do they need to be there right this second for me to achieve my goals and to help you guys the best?

No. They can sit until they’re ready to be acted upon. That’s the kind of decisions you gotta make sometimes particularly as a bipolar creator.

We we have the energy to really hang in there even when it’s killing us. And the part of our mind that likes fighting certain kinds of fights and taking on the complexity of everything won’t give up because it’s it’s food.

Problemsblems like that, depending on where you’re at in your bipolar journey, problems like that are like manna from heaven to your brain.

It just gobbles it up. It’s like being stoned and eaten pizza. Your brain’s like, this ain’t working. The the the more intelligent party was like, this ain’t working.

I’m wasting a lot of time, but but the other part of you that enjoys the fight and and having something for all your many neurons to do within their constant firing, won’t give up.

And that’s a really tricky thing to know when to give up on a project or some piece of a project. I did an episode about dead somewhere not not long ago in the life of an outsider series.

So Look for that. Something about when to quit. I’ll try to find the link and put it in the show notes. And that’s about it. I I supremely enjoyed talking with Troy. And I think you’re gonna like what he says.

He has a very similar way of fighting bipolar. It’s not exactly the same as mine, but it’s awful damn close. And he and I had a very similar at least in the most dramatic slash critical points, bipolar life before we both healed.

So I’m really glad to bring him to your attention. I hope you go into the links that he he provides in his episode to go and check out the the book that he wrote, he’s gonna write another 1 soon, and also the secret.

You gotta check out the link to the secret thing he mentions the very end of the podcast. It just blew me away when he said that, and it was so fun to learn it the way I learned it.

And it’s making it’s just 1 more thing that makes me so glad that I I knotted up and decided to go do these interviews because I had a bit of fear going into these interviews.

Just the doing of them and I was much happier to just be a lone wolf and and make my own training sessions.

And I knew I knew better than that. I knew not to maintain that perspective. I knew I had to go interview people, and it’s been Fran now and now Troy.

And for different reasons, I love speaking to both those people. And that’s that’s always gonna beat away be that way. I know how I am with people and their stories. I’m gonna love everybody I interview.

If you’re a potential guest, I’m gonna love talking to you. You’re gonna say something I wouldn’t have thought to say. You’re gonna have a way of helping somebody that has nothing to do with how I help people, and everybody wins.

And we’re just gonna have a good time. Alright. That’s it. Let’s go into the Troy Stephen interview. Hello everybody. Hello, Troy. This is Ken Jensen, and I’m with Troy Steven. Troy wrote a book called Breaking By Polar.

Troy is an aerospace engineer, and he Shares in his book his wellness plan for fighting bipolar, with the main point of bipolar heal heal thyself, He believes we should take personal responsibility in his fight as do I.

And Troy has a few benefits of being bipolar that he’d like to share which completely and totally matches what I’ve been telling people for years about this illness.

Troy found me online or I believe maybe Maybe you’re did you have an agent at 1 time? No. I did approach you online though. Okay. Few people reached out that had books.

Troy reached out quite some time ago when I had a different show which fell flat because I wasn’t sure where it was going and couple years later, he was gracious enough to still wanna sit and talk with me.

So thanks thanks, Troy. I don’t think he’s having me on the show.

So what is your bipolar story? What how did it how did it show up in your life in the first place? It the first time I had a bipolar episode was in 19 93. I was married living in Raleigh, North Carolina at the time, had 3 children.

And I started getting paranoid in having hallucinations, it it was really gradual, but it ramped up pretty quick. I got to the point where I was going to sleep in the la z boy downstairs, not able to sleep hardly at all.

Feeling a little bit like what the heck’s going on and maybe even dangerous a little bit. And so I ended up I decided I was gonna drive to Florida and hunker down in a motel for until I figured out what the heck was going on.

I I got about 2 hours out of town and couldn’t keep going because I was gonna miss miss my children too much. So I drove back to Raleigh. I went to an emergency room of a hospital and told them what was going on.

They they transported me to a psychiatric facility, and I voluntarily admitted myself had a psychotic break while I was in the hospital. Was in the hospital about 3 weeks.

Put on heavily medicated on medication and returned home and kinda got myself out of that hole, but it was a life changing thing. You know, it was never the same. After that, you know, I was working as an engineer.

My next episode happened in 2005 where I started getting manic, maybe they’re skyrocketed. I ended up throwing away all my medications. And quit taking medications. And actually, I still had a bottle of lithium.

I took a bunch of lithium. I hadn’t, like, planned to kill myself, but I just ended up, like, spontaneously took this medicine Jeez. Yeah. I ended I ended up calling 911 myself and then went to a regular hospital.

And then, you know, how long like, it’s it’s interesting that bipolar people when they’re not having bipolar symptoms are just like a normal person excelling, work you know, working?

Yeah. And then when you are having the symptoms, it’s it’s I didn’t have my next episode in 2015.

Each of these 3 episodes, I ended up in a psychiatric hospital. I decided to start writing a book about really a self help book to help myself as well as I always wanted to write a book.

I’m a big reader. Always wanted to be an author. So I started writing my book, came up with a battle plan, like a whole life wellness plan, that I could follow to to overcome my symptoms and so on.

And since 2015, I’ve been good. No more bipolar symptoms to speak of, and I’m actually feel like I’m I’m optimal at this point. That’s interesting that you bring up the lithium.

I did the same exact thing. With the same reasoning. I I had a I was completely out of my mind 1 night with with something with bipolar, and then I went and drank, which was a common thing for me.

And then when I came home in a rage, I it was like a lashing out and I I took a whole month’s worth of lithium.

And as you know — Oh, man. — heavy metal. That’s too much. That’s too much. And then they sent a lot of cops to get me because I used to I used to have huge rages.

I’m a marine. I’m a war vet. That stuff would all come out. And the cops got there in time enough to save my life, but I fell into a 2 week coma off of that.

Holy cow. And then I had to convince them they put me in the psych ward for a few days. And interestingly, Not too many months before that.

I had been a I had been a security guard working in psych a lock a psych lockdown ward. Oh, wow. So irony. And yeah. That I had to convince them I said this was like self harm, not suicide. I just I was freaking out.

I was enraged at everything. I just wanted to hurt. Everything in anybody including myself. So I I slammed that lithium. So what where was your head at when you took your extra lithium? What what what did you say kicked that off?

I had I was on a mess and, you know, I wasn’t didn’t stop taking my meds, but I went into a manic state, and it you know, like he’s it’s kind of a slow ramp up and then toward the end, it starts to skyrocket.

I was very paranoid. I went to grocery store and thought I got followed home by some Mexicans that wanted to kill me. Hallucinations. And like you, I also when I get to that point of high mania, I feel dangerous — Yeah.

— and have to distance myself from people and and scared to go to sleep. Once you start loo you know, sleep is crucial for people who are bipolar and once you start losing sleep and not getting good rest, it exact exasperates things.

Yep. The last thing I remember after taking the the lithium I laid down on a couch. And then I think it was about 30 minutes, 45 minutes later.

I I kinda thought I heard piano music from upstairs, I was living in the downstairs department, and that woke me up in time to call 911 and apps the thing is is no 1 upstairs had a piano.

So it saved me That’s something. You gotta wonder, I I have I’ve had a handful events that happened during my active bipolar years that I don’t know we share.

I don’t wanna go in too deep here, but you gotta wonder about how some things played out during the bad years that that helped us survive it.

Because some really odd stuff happened to me. I would imagine being the way I was, drew some really odd people my way at at different times and strange things and conversations came out of this.

That stuck with me even when my head was completely spun that ended up helping me later in life. I don’t I don’t know what to make it at, that they were very strange events with different people.

That helped either in the moment or meant something to me later that I’d have never met him if I hadn’t have been on a bipolar tear of some sort.

Did you ever run across anything like that with just I don’t even know. Just odd events colliding like that with other people in some weird energy space?

I know what you’re talking about and I can’t think of I’m sure I had some of those run ins with people and so on, but I kind of have have evolved into where I think I’m a, you know, I’m on a life path.

I actually, you know, follow a higher power, and I try to stay on the escalator and I, you know, I feel like every day right now every day is I’m thankful for being here.

There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t say I’m thankful and that’s that’s a huge thing in your mental state. I feel the same.

I used to I had to read about it and learn it. But I had a bad habit at the end of each night for some years of running down the list of all the ways I failed and all the people I’d harmed, and I’d go through it and I’d add to it.

Or then I might even pray and the names I’d pray for to list would grow obsessively long. And I couldn’t stop trying. Just trying to, like, a tone, like, tying to a tone every night before going to bed and it was exhausting.

And then I read that 1 of the first things you have to do to get well is let go of your guilt and shame. And that this thing with the list at night a common 1.

They’re like you’re taking out all of bed and then your subconscious is working on it. You’re just keeping things alive that need to rest and and you need to forgive yourself. And it’s very hard to do.

I don’t know about you. I caused a lot of harm, and it was really hard to forgive myself. But I I had to work on it just to break that part of the cycle. That was the lowest end of the cycle, and it was utterly destroying me.

And when I got my head around it and stopped running through that list at night. It was such a relief. Was that part of your experience at all? Yeah. As I 1 of the things I in my book, it’s called train your mind.

And this to help people who aren’t bipolar, but especially people who are bipolar. And like the internal dialogue where in your mind you — Yes. You’re ruminating and going over these negative things in the past.

1 thing my psychiatrist recommended that helped a lot was if I know somehow negative thoughts or ruminating, then I say a key word, noise, out loud, and change my try to change my train of thought to something positive and, you know, get rid of all that negativity and what’s ruining my day and wasting every second in my life and I wasted enough time due to this illness and just generally And as you get older, life goes faster and faster, I just try my best not to waste time.

Yeah. This is so good talking to you, I you’re you’re you’re just mirroring back so many of my own experiences and thoughts. And I don’t often get that. Well, this is nice. I think this is all turned into low level therapeutic for me.

I feel fine, but I’m just it’s really good to connect with somebody in such a so far complete fashion. Absolutely. You know, I Another good thing that’s helped me a lot is I started attending bipolar support groups.

Mhmm. And, you know, you go into a room with with people who have experienced the same things as you and and you you could say whatever you want because there’s no judgment.

It really helps a lot to connect with people. And, yeah, that’s the face to face getting to know people a little bit and talking and laughing and other people who are bipolar has helped a lot.

Yeah. The the job I have in the real world now, I work with dual diagnosis people, and I’ve been doing stuff for the past I don’t know.

I think about 5 years now. I’ve had a million jobs in the fifties. I’d just show up and if I can get through the interview to Jobs and mood.

I’ll figure it out. I learned out about myself a long time ago. But in the last 5 years somehow I’ve I’ve I’ve managed to stay on a more I’m more of a career path within 1 industry, mental health, really, that suits me.

When you when you say dual When you say dual diagnosis, what do you mean that what are the dual things? You get people that have mental health issues and addiction problems.

And you almost that’s it’s almost a foregone. You almost can’t have 1 without the other. It’s it’s pretty common. And since I can relate so well, and I was exposed to so much.

And bipolar, I experienced every every version of it. It makes it real easy for me to talk to people that don’t think anyone’s gonna understand them. And and I feel 4 though, my empathy, but I’m also fascinated by their stories.

People like yourself, it’s I like knowing how the mind works and why, particularly when it goes sideways. And it took me some years to realize, I think it’s because I’m gathering Intel to help myself. That was never my direct.

That wasn’t my intention. The fascination’s the fascination. But I’ve learned over the years, the more I talk to people that have been down roads like what you and I have been down, indirectly or directly, it’s it’s been helpful to me.

I guess it’s almost like a spread out version of the bipolar groups like you’re saying.

Yeah. You know, as you have these episodes and as you’re living with bipolar, in the beginning, you’re crashing and burning and you’re actually learning what to watch out for. And I think that’s a lot.

What you were saying there is, you know, knowing what happens and watching out for it would in yourself and realizing and recognizing something’s going on and maybe you need a medication adjustment, maybe, you know, you need to change something but you know something’s going on and you know what happened in the past.

It turned into disaster so you’ve learned stuff Yeah. I’m big on parameters. In my case, medicine only fueled the fire. Every medicine they gave me worsened the condition, and I didn’t want it that way.

I wanted a pill to make this pain stop, but it it didn’t appear for me. And I was told in a clinical fashion, I needed to go somewhere other than psychiatry.

And the doctor at the time, I trusted fully. We just talked straight. It was at the VA, and he was the top guy. He said, you gotta do something other than psychiatry, but because I’m a psychiatrist, I don’t know what that is.

But he’s like, you got about 6 months before you die by cop. So you better figure it out. And he goes, I wish I could help you, but I don’t I don’t think any psychiatrist can. And that’s what led to me discovering the things I did.

And then part of it was parameters. I’ve been symptom free since roughly 2006, but it’s because I became aware of my parameters. I don’t stray outside them. I don’t think the illness went anywhere.

I just don’t feed it in any way, so it’s not a part of my life. But I’ll get little warning signs in a day. If something’s not quite the way I need it to be, I’ll get like this low rumble and it’s it’s it’s the other guy.

He’s like, you better do something with this right here. I’m gonna hang out a minute, but you better start looking into and this.

And I’m like, oh, 0, shit. He’s right there. Okay. And then I’ll I’ll I’ll get myself out of this situation or change whatever. And nothing becomes anything. It’s just A quiet little knock on the door.

I’m gonna come in if you don’t fix this. Where are you at with that? Because sounds like you you mentioned that earlier something about parameters and and it sounds like do you take meds still?

I’m not anti meds, by the way. They didn’t agree for me, but I I learned a lot of people. There’s all kinds of ways to skin this cat.

And if it works for you, I’m I’m happy. Where are you at with that, with your care? Yeah. Absolutely. I do take medication. I think some research well, if people who are bipolar can manage without medication, then that’s awesome.

You know, that’s great. I think the majority of people, I could be wrong, take medication to to to treat their illness I wrote a chapter in my book called Optimize your medication.

Mhmm. And it’s the whole process where, you know, you go to psychiatrist and he puts you on a 200 milligram tablet of say seroquel.

And then he says, in in 2 weeks, ramp it up to 300 milligrams and then 400 milligrams. And maybe at the same time, he said, okay.

That medicine you were taking lamictal that that’s not working and you have any symptoms and that’s why I’m replacing it with Saroqua, you need to ramp it down slowly So there’s a ramp up stage, a ramp down stage.

I have checklists in my book to to tell you whether, you know, maybe 10 or 12 are are you manic and these are some checklists, are you depressed?

These are some some checklists. The other thing you gotta watch out for medication is side effects, and they can be severe side effects.

I took a medicine. Once I started on medication and 3 days later, I was in my la z boy watching TV and I just started puking instantaneously, I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom.

I thought I had the flu. About 3 or 4 days later, I realized it. I contributed to the medicine, went back and saw my psychiatrist, at this time, computers and such wasn’t I mean, never there, but he pulled out this 6 inch thick look.

I forget the term, you know, what this name but and he looked up what’s just what’s the percent of people who take this medication that have that throw up and it was like 20 percent.

And I thought to myself, man, you should have told me this when I started taking it you know? Yep. Yep. But yeah, I take medication and I, you know, optimizing my medication.

After the 2015 episode, I was able to, I think, come up with the medications. I take 4 different meds, and I was able to come up with the strengths of medications and the the right medications where I, you know, I’m not fuzzy.

My brain is thinking optimally, but it took a long, you know, it took from 2003 and of 2015 until I came upon the right right ones that worked for me and all along along the way, I’m going to my psychiatrist and saying, hey, I’m not optimal I’m feeling like this.

I’m feeling like that. Try a different med.

So it was a finally I think if you look, you know, read my book in optimize your medication chapter, you know, there’s a process you can follow and you just need something to fall back on until you get things to where, you know, you’re living life like you want to.

Yeah. I agree. It’s You have to know yourself like few other people do. You can’t leave anything to chance. I’m fond to telling people there’s there’s there’s different things we all know.

Once you’re a certain age, we all know the things we’re supposed to do just to live healthily. But by the time bipolar’s made the scene, the shoulds become have to’s.

Our our body in our mind needs every bit of help we can give it to deal with the illness wherever you’re at with it because I I know in my case, I was overwhelmed by how how powerful it was, how powerful the symptoms were.

I did not realize I did not realized fear could be as large as that I had panic attacks that would last 4 to 5 hours at full strength.

With my heart, both the numbers over 200, and me thinking like there’s no way my heart’s gonna it I’m gonna die.

I’m gonna have a heart attack from this. And and I I used to joke. This illness is so powerful you gotta be in perfect health to have it because it’s gonna ask a lot of you.

How bad did it get for you? How intense did it get like that? Very intense. Like I said, I I had that 1 suicide attempt, which was a life changer where I, you know, I decide I’m I’m not gonna let that happen again.

I’m gonna do everything my power and not let it happen again. I don’t know if you’ve heard these there’s statistics out there, you know, and different studies come up with different things, but a lot of it’s it’s kinda like the overall.

If you go on Google and Google, how many people who are by polar commit suicide actually died from it.

20 percent of people who are bipolar commit suicide and 40 to 60 percent of people who are bipolar make an attempt to commit suicide once in their lives or out in their lives, you know.

That’s a scary statistic, you know. Yeah. Per 20 percent of us got it. Do something and not let it happen. It is. I I remember reading about that a long time ago that this this mental illness had the highest suicide rate and I I get it.

I I lived I honestly can’t tell which was worse. I lived between The fear of death which bipolar enhanced when I thought about the great unknown and dying, that would fill me with a terror and dread that would literally take the breath.

I’d have trouble breathing just at the thought of of the unknown and fear of dying. And then Separate on the other side of that, waking up and doing life was stupid because it was pure pain.

And I had no say in it for a number of years. I just sat and and took the symptoms, and they were so powerful. So I lived in a purgatory.

I don’t wanna be here. I’m too afraid to go wherever it comes next. And it’s strange. I was I was never suicidal, but I’m on I’m almost unsure of why because I I just My god, it was bad. Yeah. I could I could relate with you.

I feel I feel for you. My my kind of bipolar I go manic first and then, you know, crash and burn in some manner. And after I crash and burn, I’m you know, they medicate me, maybe increase what I’m taking.

But at that point in time, you know, it’s like, you know, I’m out of the hospital, and I’m going say I go to a library and I’m on the third floor and there’s a railing, I have to distance myself from the railing because I’m afraid I’m gonna spontaneously jump over and kill myself, or I’ll be like in a target, buying some groceries and all of a sudden, I feel like I’m getting dangerous.

It just scared as hell and I, like, go running full speed out of the target. It’s kinda interesting. Winston Churchill a lot, you know, he was people think thought is is, yes, he had bipolar disorder.

He was always scared of going to a to get on the train and jumping in front of the train, out, you know, jumping to the tracks in front of the train, so he had to stay away from being close to the rails.

You know? So that’s a you know, it’s kinda like doctor Jackal, mister Hyde.

And all of a sudden you’re fine. Nope. Nothing’s going on. And then all of a sudden you feel you feel like something, you know, you might do something to kill yourself it’s it just comes on you quickly at least in my instances.

Another chapter in my book or 1 of the weapons in my battle plan is called the contingency plan. It’s a written 2 page thing you form you fill out and the main characteristics are you have an agreement with your psychiatrist.

You can call call them 24 hours and get get help. I made a the other another of the things is have form a support team of people you can call if you’re feeling like things getting out of control or you want someone to talk to.

So I have my uncle bud, my oldest daughter, Rachel, on his team, And then 1 other thing that when I talked to my psychiatrist about those instances where I was gonna be I felt dangerous and was gonna jump off of a bridge into traffic or whatever.

He told me to carry around a 400 milligram tablet of seroquel, if I start feeling like that to take it right away instantly and even chew it if you have to to, you know, keep your get you back to where you’re not feeling dangerous.

So contingency plan in my mind is very important to where you you know how to fall back onto something that’ll get you back on track? Yeah. I think that’s very wise.

I think that’s gonna be really helpful for people that that read what you put together. I I call that all impulse control not in my case. It wasn’t suicidal. It would look suicidal later to anyone that reviewed the scene I created.

But I used to just I’d ponder. I’d ponder death defying things. And like you said, I used to hike a lot. 1 of my things was getting near the edge of a cliff. I just wonder about jumping.

Didn’t wanna die. Frequently, if I was there, By default, if I was hiking in the woods and on the edge of a cliff, I was having a great day. That was that was where my peace was. And yet I’d get near the edge.

You’d just start thinking, what if? And and it would get so powerful. I’d almost feel my body moving closer, and it would scare the hell out of me. And I was like, what What am I doing and I knew it was part of the the the illness?

That that was 1 of the things that lingered As all my many, many dozens of symptoms bled away across a period of about 2 years and change, that little bit of impulse control was a tricky 1.

Where I’d have to watch myself. I’m like, why are we even in my head? Why are we even talking about this?

This is bad. Don’t turn into the tractor trailer coming down the highway that’s no. And I’d sit there, like, my god. There’s a piece of me that just wants to do it just to see like a science experiment.

I’m like, what is that? I think, you know, bipolar disorder is a biological illness, and things will change the chemicals in your brain, you know, are are moving around and fucking with you.

Excuse my language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they are. So I think what would be helpful, could we do like a like an outline run through of your book, how it helps people?

Yes. Let me start out with 1 of the chapters in my book you know, talks about the positive personality traits common to bipolar individuals.

And I’ll start out with that, you know, the link between bipolar disorder and creativity is well established, Vincent van Go, you know, comedians, Owen Owen. So then exuberance is another abounding oubilant effrocessants emotion.

That’s a celebration of the passion and joy and mania and hypomania — Mhmm. — and it starts with that person who makes everyone smile. Emotional’s perspective, what goes up must come down and then go back up again.

And then after having experienced in all these ups and downs that are a lot more severe than than normal people, I would say, you gain this perspective and you know how to handle things better.

Hyperosexuality is another — Oh, yeah. — feature, Romania, which isn’t really a bad thing. No. I sort of missed those days. Be honest with you.

Resilience after suffering through tragic bipolar episodes, people where bipolar act of resurrecting themselves, gives them resilience to handle almost anything else that may come their way through life, encourage tied in with bravado and grandiosity, and its most severe courage can entail dangerous risk taking.

Yeah, his best courage is rare, inspiring, and heroic.

And so, you know, there’s like I think it’s a whole, like, your thrust of your show is that people who are bipolar can excel at things sometimes better than people who aren’t bipolar.

I have something to say to that when I was applying for disability, from the federal government years ago, my doctor who I I loved.

He was he was very smart. We talked straight and I could keep up with him with the vocabulary and the and the his word choice is the lexicon of the of the psychiatrist world.

So we had fascinating conversations, but He told me to get your disability, there’s a test I have to give you, and you have to fail it. And he said, you’re I’m not gonna lie for you. I’m gonna I’m not gonna I’m not gonna game it.

But he said, I’m telling you right now, you will fail it. I know you. But he’s like, it’s gonna give you problems. I’m like, what do you mean? He said, what’s the first question? First question was, do you take unnecessary risks?

And I got disheartened. I was like, No. And he he grinned. This guy barely cracked a smile or got loud about it. He was very quiet, and he was like, You are 1 of the most risky people I’ve ever met in my life.

He’s like, you have no fear of anything, but it’s because you have a higher standard of risk. What’s a risk to most people is normal to you. So he goes, you are never actually in danger when you do things.

But you do very dangerous things no 1 else would even think of doing. And he goes, that’s why you’re gonna fail this test. And then I got happy. I was like, Alright. That’s good. And then the very next question was something similar.

I was like, well, this one’s and he’s like, relax relax. You’re not doing so well as you think there too. And they’re He goes, you’re fine. It’s how they need to see you so we can prove your case.

So that fascinated me when he when he said what I was With my risk taking, I was like, yeah. Yeah. I don’t have fear of much anything with anything. He goes, yeah, that’s a mystery to other people.

Yeah. I I guess go along with positive people who are bipolar and people who have excelled that have dealt with bipolar. I named, like, 3 different, well known bipolar’s, you know, a quote from them, the first one’s Mariah Carey.

I think it’s completely reasonable to feel like you’re unwilling to face your diagnosis in the beginning. It’s important that you keep trying day by day. Next 1 is Damey Lavato.

I I pulled depression and really got my life off the track. But today I’m proud to say I’m living proof that someone can live, love, and be well with bipolar disorder when they get the education support and treatment that they need.

And 1 other is Kanye West when you ramp it when you ramp up, it expresses your personality more. You can’t become almost adolescent in your expression. We don’t take medication every day to keep you at a certain state.

You have the potential to ramp up and even end up in the hospital. So here’s 3 well, you know, people know know these 3 people and they’ve been able they they’ve been diagnosed bipolar.

They’ve had all these kind of bad episodes like we have, but they’ve been able to overcome it in their life. Yeah. Yeah. That is that is the key thing to my show.

I believe there’s it’s not all bipolar people. It’s just a very hyper a percentage of bipolar people, and then bipolar people themselves are more apt to fall into the creative role than non bipolar.

So it’s like on 2 different levels we’re ahead of the game in certain areas. And I think where the problem arises, is where do we put ourselves?

I know that 1 of the things that literally drove me crazy, was holding jobs. I can’t stand. Never getting to express what I’m really about. And if I did, sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t, but I was always limiting myself.

And that that holding in whatever the better part of me was, the creative side, that was intolerable and bipolar started growing because of That’s how I saw that. Stress. Yes. That’s so bad. That’s 1 of the things to wash out for.

So what else is in your book? Okay. So I mentioned I have 9 weapons in the book. We talked about the contingency plan. Next chapter is enemy recon. This is where you need to learn as much as you can about bipolar disorder.

You know, Google it, learn from people that have bipolar disorder. You need to get a PhD in bipolar disorder. You need to and never stop learning. I talked about optimize your medication.

That’s another weapon. Find the right psychiatrist. That’s key. It’s kinda like, you know, finding the right psychiatrist is kinda like finding the best mechanic for your car that you won’t anyone work else work on it?

Mhmm. And I have a check a couple of checklists in that chapter on how to find the right psychiatrist.

Next chapter is train your mind and this chapter has a lot of the information from our processes and techniques from self help gurus. Napoleon Hill has a process called auto suggestion. My Galrie West Carlos Castaneda.

And so there’s about 8 or 9 different things that that you can use to train your mind. Another chapter is train your body, you know, take care of yourself outright. Drink a lot of water, get some exercise.

It’s good for people are bipolar to get out in the sunshine and get some fresh air. I have checked her in another weapon called recovering from the episode. Another weapon is psychiatric hospitals.

It tells what it’s like to be in a psychiatric hospital and just being aware of what what it’s like to be in the hospital, is very helpful when you’re recovering from it when you’re in the hospital with an episode and the final weapon is called legal rights It talks about the American Disabilities Act.

If you’re you’re, you know, get into trouble and you’re not making it to work or, you know, you’re basically, if you have problems on work because of your illness and they fire you, you have recourse And another thing about legal rights is sometimes people that you’ve your family or things that, you know, you’ve had that’s run your relationships.

They can involuntarily commit you to an to a psychic Azure’s hospital.

I think it’s called the Baker Act. And so if that happens and you’re really not know, maybe they’re just like pissed off at you and they try to get you put in the hospital.

Yeah. You have you have things you could fall back on, you know. So those are the 9 weapons. And like you said at the beginning, bipolar heal thyself. It’s up to us to take responsibility for our illness.

No 1 else is gonna do it for us. And the main thrust of my book besides that is you can make your dreams come true if you follow this battle plan don’t ever give up, you know, life’s too short.

That is definitely true. That was I still get it once in a while now, but it’s not it’s not because of the the illness.

But 1 of the things I get told frequently enough is the fact that I never give up. Now it’s more, let’s just say, it’s more entrepreneurial and regular life problems.

Back in the day, it was dealing with bipolar, and people that have read read my book, they just can’t believe how bad it got and that I just kept going. And I used to That was nice to hear, and I thank people.

And then even years later, with bipolar in my past, I came to lean on that. It became like an insight. Other people handed me an insight to myself that I I forcefully leaned on a little more when anything got rough.

I I became more aware of the fact that, like, yeah, I don’t ever give up. I still just because I’ve dealt with bipolar, doesn’t mean there’s not ups and downs.

You can have certain certain feelings, particularly like a panic or an anxiety attack, it still will happen to me. I get them very rarely. They’re measured in years apart.

Every now and then something will it’ll rise up, and it comes up quick, almost like like magma in a volcano. And I feel it and I’m like, oh, shit. You gotta be kidding me. This is back because it comes out of nowhere for no reason.

And I learned through a number of of ways to Sometimes these things just happened and are completely normal, and they got nothing to do with bipolar. And the other thing is I don’t resist them anymore.

I’ve learned through actually a very particular type of chiropractic called network spinal analysis, that doctor taught me a way of experiencing these bad feelings without getting emotionally involved in them.

And the reasoning is something’s trying to process and get out and finish. If you fight it and tamp it down and don’t let it finish, It’s still waiting to be dealt with and it’ll come back to haunt you.

So if you can let these things just do what they gotta do and knock it all wrapped up emotionally, They will simply process and you’ll feel fine.

It’s a very hard skill to to to put into play. It was not easy in the beginning, but I actually got my head around it.

Another person that used to teach that was a man named Bill Harris. From a company called CenterPoint that did meditation that helped me a lot. He said the same thing.

Shadow material, all kinds stuff. He’s like a lot of what’s what what’s up with these mental illnesses is something needs to finish. We can’t deal with it, and we’re fighting them down instead of letting them come on out and be done.

Not easy but That’s excellent point for sure. What’s what’s the title of your book and what’s it about? My book’s called, it takes guts to be me, how an ex marine beat bipolar disorder.

I wrote I wrote all the the Marine Corps plays a heavy part, pretty much in any Marine’s life, where We’re marines forever, good or bad, and it just shapes us because it’s it’s intense and there’s a lot of meaning behind it.

But it’s wild. When I was into marines, I fought the marines.

Because really, bipolar was starting to, like, get a foothold. It just wasn’t it didn’t look like an illness yet. And The Marine Corps taught me things about discipline and how to handle yourself that I never used while they had me.

I was just a canker sore to them. A highly skilled canker sore as was my whole shop. We were kinda like we were like regular construction workers in the real world. That draws a pretty intense, wild group of people.

And years later, when bipolar settled into me, and my doctor gave me my he gave me my death sentence. 1 of the things he told me was he goes, I feel worse for you than anybody else out of the hundreds of people I treat.

And I said, why? He said everyone else is hurting. They want the pill. I give them the pill. They go home. You’re the same. I give you the pill. You’re the only 1 that comes back with questions. Why that pill?

Why that dose? What’s it doing with the other pills? I’m doing this here in my life. Is that gonna affect what this pill does? I read about these side effects and he went down his list. He’s like nobody else asked me anything.

I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. They just take this stuff and and the end, he’s like, yep. I said that’s crazy. How can you not be curious? So anyway, I said I had more responsibility with that than when I was doing street drugs.

And so He gave me that sentence, and I I went home that day. I had to drive home over an hour, and I got home, and I was sitting at my desk, and I was doomed.

And at that point of the illness, all I felt was, let’s see, fear, despair, and rage. That was the only 3 things I could pinpoint that I ever felt.

No love, no happiness, nothing. Fear, despair, rage. And I sat there with my head hanging, and I knew the doctor was right. Just based on my track record, like the cops are gonna have to take me out just to save themselves.

I’m becoming too much. And while I’m sitting there wondering what to do, I heard a tiny voice and it sounded like somebody standing on the other end of a football field yelling into the wind.

I could barely hear it, and it was the marine part of me. And he said, this is not the way a fucking marine goes out. Do something, fight. Well, in a movie, maybe this is where the music would get fantastic and I’d rise up like, no.

I was still fear despair and rage. So I sat there and all I did was made an agreement with myself. I was like, fine. Fuck it. I’ll fight. I didn’t feel any different.

I didn’t feel any better. Nothing. I just agreed to fight. And then some very interesting things started happening. The universe moved into into my favor, and it was amazing what started dropping out of the air with certain regularity.

And I started finding the pieces to my puzzle. And then when I wrote the book, III hired a company, and I just wanted to write about my time in the marines because it was basically like a Hunter s Thompson novel.

It was just madness, and really really fun stuff. And when I wrote it, my writing coach said, that’s a movie. Don’t ever lose that. But we gotta help you write something where you figured something out.

And I said I didn’t figure anything out. That began a 2 week argument with this a very nice lady from Missouri cursing me out nightly for 2 weeks straight before I was like, well, I don’t know.

I beat bipolar without drugs. She’s like, what did you just say? She’s like, nobody says that you idiot.

That’s the other half of the book. I was like, it is. I was so happy grateful to just be well again. I didn’t realize what I’d done. I really didn’t. I just was so glad to be okay and be a person again.

And that became the second I had to rewrite the second half of the book, and then that kicked off a few different things happened prior to you meeting me now in this iteration. And now, now I’m to the point where I use my story to help.

People like yourself that are high functioning bipolar. They got their they got their game together, they got their footing back, and that creative things coming out of them, they wanna do something with it.

But they need someone covered her back who understands the certain amount of wiggliness that might be present with the bipolar mind, to keep them on track as they build, That’s what this has all become.

Yeah. That’s huge. Fighting back. That’s that’s you know, that’s when you you say, okay, I’m in a war. Yes. My life’s going through a war.

That’s when in my book I say, you know, the subtitle is is breaking bipolar, fighting the war against bipolar disorder, and I always mentioned bipolar warriors, you know, everyone needs to be a bipolar warrior.

The marine of me is loving this whole military aspect to your thinking.

Where are are you former military? No. Oh, okay. I’m a I’m a aerospace engineer. You know, like the try to put this book into, like, a prop us, you could follow us. That’s that’s — Right. — engineering information.

I find out a very that’s a very fun combination. First, she started off with the breaking bad reference. Which is just such a delightful show. And and and and then your whole military battle plan attack, that That soothes me.

Yeah. It’s like, alright. This is the fight. Here’s what we gotta do. And it it’s empowering. Before bipolar took me out, When I first found out it was bipolar, that was empowering.

And and I knew I knew what I was fighting in. It took a lot of it it took a lot of stress off the off the page. When when bipolar started showing up for me, it was just stress.

I was stressing about absolutely everything and the size of the thing that could stress me was getting smaller, and it was happening more and more each day. And my regular doctor checked me out. I was in my late twenties.

He said, you’re healthy as a bear. You’re the healthiest client I have. I think it’s between your ears what’s going on, and he sent me to a psychiatrist. I said, I don’t care who you sent me to. This has to stop.

And then that’s when I was diagnosed. And that was the first time I felt empowered. Now I know what the enemy is. It’s got a name, People know something about it. Now I can fight. Didn’t happen right away for me, unfortunately.

But it’s still Don’t really have this to anybody right away. No. I I think the illness I’m not gonna say this for everybody but I know for me it was a blessing that you don’t understand it as such until it’s in retrospect.

What I tell people is I was living my life so incorrectly, and I really was, in so many ways, and I was so, like, I don’t give up.

So I would not give up these habits that were not taking me where I needed to be in life and I was my life was a skin disintegrating because of it and I was ignoring the better parts of me.

And because I was so strong willed, I believe the other part of my mind threw bipolar on me just to knock me out of that mindset because after I came part coming out of bipolar was letting go of a lot of old ways of thinking and beliefs and habits.

And I I’m still me and a fun way that I was prior to bipolar. But I’m way more wholesome in in I’m just an I’m just a better person after bipolar, and I realized it it took bipolar to shock me into this next version of me.

That’s, you know, another what came to mind of when you’re talking about being in the marines was a lot of people who live in the military have PTSD, which is a mental thing.

Yep. And about 20 percent of people who are in prison this is just what I’ve heard. I can’t say the exact percentage, but about 20 percent of people who are in prison have a mental illness.

That’s you know. I’d wondered at at this point, I’d wonder almost if it was even more. And — Right. — and then I have I got diagnosed with PTSD.

I’ve been in a I don’t know at this point. A 20 some odd year battle with the VA to get disability benefits. And right. It it we’re going we’re going for D. Well, I never thought it it it kinda cracks me up.

I never thought through any of this about PTSD. Red about it constantly, but I was very hyper focused on bipolar. And then it it turns out a PTSD is just wrapped up in that and I had lots of it.

And then they gave me some tests because the metal the the doctors needed tests to prove that I I had it or experienced it. And when I took the test, I was like yeah, as far as what they’re saying, I I’m riddled with it.

Even now feeling fine. And So I know that PTSD Cripes, if you didn’t even have it going in a bipolar, you’ll probably have it after because you’re gonna do something in the middle or experience something that’s gonna put it in you.

Right. And it’s it’s That’s 1 of the things that’s always blown my mind is bipolar is so all encompassing that other diseases are totally encapsulated within it.

Yeah. It holds groups of entire other illnesses that that we have had to deal with. It’s like We’re tough stuff. The fact that we’re alive to even be talking about it, we’re made of something a little stronger, I think.

And I like that he you know, guys like you and I are here now trying to do something with it to help others get out of that nightmare or at least alleviate it.

You know, we were talking before the show about substance abuse and people who are bipolar.

About 40 percent of people that a bipolar people abuse alcohol or drugs, I know myself and it, you know, exacerbates people the bipolar condition. I’m not saying not to not to do them at all.

I know personally, I smoked pot for a long long time. Yeah. Me too. And I finally quit after my last episode in 2015. I stopped smoking pot, which I think has been a big contributor to me getting well.

And, you know, drinking came along with it. I still drink, you know, a few drinks every once in a while, but the thing is is just don’t abuse it. Don’t abuse — Right.

— alcohol and pot. Just cut down, you know, if you’re if you’re if it’s bothering you you just have to realize and and give in to the fact that, yeah, it is it is harming me you know, I need to quit drinking as much.

I need to quit smoking pot as much, and that’ll help. It’s it’s interesting because I’ve had in my in my travels talking about bipolar’s.

A lot of people that have benefited from smoking weed I smoked for about 9 years, I I figure a lot. While working out and everything, I was 1 of those guys, and and I didn’t look or act apart, but at home I was I was that.

And then eventually it was just too much. But when I first got diagnosed, that doctor said You’re all stressed out. You smoke a lot of weed for that stress?

I said, yeah. He goes, why you’re gonna hate this part? And he showed me in some book. It was on the list as 1 of the number 1 exacerbators. Now that that was back in like 90 late nineties, somewhere in the late nineties.

And since that time, there’s been a lot of people that come my way to get help by smoking weed or doing CBD stuff and but I think they’ve like you said, I think they found ways to use that stuff micro dosing that seems to actually help people, and III used to tell people if you’re doing any drugs or drinking at all.

Like you just said, it it’ll exacerbate and I still feel that way. But I think maybe for some, There’s a variety or version or a limit where if they don’t cross it, it’s therapeutic.

It’s amazing to me that you and I have such similar thoughts and so on about by far conclusions. Great talking to you about it.

Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, it’s very I don’t know. It just feels good. I’m normally teaching, or I’m talking with somebody that’s still quite a bit in it. In my in my other life, not not not the stuff I do in relation to my website.

And it’s nice to just Yeah. I have a I have a fellow warrior. It’s like it’s it’s pretty close to trading war stories. We we’ve been there done that. There’s an emotion in it, but like we see it from a a different way.

It’s it’s you know what it’s like it’s like when the movie 300 came out with the with the with the the spartans I was I was still in touch with all my close friends in the marines, and we were savages. We thrived on savagery.

And here it is decades later, and we’re comparing notes on 300. And we all said the same thing. We were the only ones in the theater last finger hysterically through 300 because it was like it was like watching us. It’s just fantastic.

Everyone else has this blood and murder and gore and and trauma and I scared some people when I went because I was screaming my head off and and some of my friends like, yeah, guys I work with didn’t even know where I was coming from.

I think we have something like that. We lived it.

We got the we came out. We got the t shirt. We can talk about it in a way that’s a little a little lighter and we’re still respecting the pain and everything, but it means a little something different once you’ve come out of it.

Exactly. So, is there anything you do for people other than the book, is there anything you’re designing off the back of the book, or maybe you got some future plans to take this a little bigger?

Yeah. I’m writing writing another book called Aff Year Bipolar, a way to succeed. It’s like a 4 by 6 trim size paper back you put in your pocket, and it’s got a lot of what’s in breaking bipolar but condensed down into a checklist.

And so I’m working on that. My psychiatrist is going to write a foreword for it. Oh, cool. The other thing that the engineering part when COVID hit, I’ve been a contractor engineer.

So at the end of March, I guess it was 20 20 when COVID hit. I got laid off, and so I started a book publishing company. Oh. And I’ve so far, I’ve published 39 books of, you know, other authors.

That’s fantastic. Yeah. It’s awesome. It’s fun. I didn’t see that anywhere on your website. I tore it to your website weeks ago. I was I was looking at everything. What a fun little secret you kept just for the show.

Thanks, Joy. Yeah. My website is breaking bipolar dot life, LIFE. Brakes bipolar dot life. I think anyone wants to check it out. And I wanted to know Oh, the book publishing company, is there any public link for that, or any any Yeah.

That’s a great question. My my publishing company is battle press, and the website is battlepress dot media, MEDIA, battlepress dot media.

And they show all the books that I published are on there. Oh, that excites me. Now I’m gonna yeah. That I’m gonna look into after the fact. This is so cool. This is why I like us. We’re up to things that people just don’t do.

Now go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say maybe sometime in the future we can meet each other talk. Oh, I’m up for anything because that’s Like, you didn’t mention your book publishing on your your other website.

I have a secondary aim to everything I’m doing, which is just nurturing, relationships like this to see what might come of it.

I got some pretty interesting people. I’ll be interviewing soon that knew me back when I first took a run at all of this in a business sense. And then it’s changed it’s changed faces a few times.

And these people have we didn’t talk for years and then I found them again and and they’re up to some really cool stuff. So now there’s like there’s me, helping people, like I said, build whatever.

And then There’s joint ventures, and I don’t even know what, that I wanna do with with people like you where we’re we’re peers, I don’t have a direct plan, but I was I was part of something just a few years after I got out of bipolar.

There was some wiggly leftover stuff, but nothing that you could label bipolar.

And I was in a good place, and I worked in a a building for a while, where every member of the 3 floor building was a media company, an artist web designers, something like that, making movies, commercials, a radio show broadcasted from there.

And 1 of the rules to rent space in the building was you had to agree to do a certain amount of work for any of the other member companies at a reduced rate or free like a commune just so we could all win.

The energy inside that building was like nothing I felt before or since. And I’m trying to create something like that digitally through what I’m doing, like, separate from my coaching.

And it’s already been happening. That’s cool. It is. I just I wanna play with people like us and do stuff. It’s all for, you know, it’s all to help people. Exactly. It’s we do our job right.

We get to live the way we want. And people benefit from it in all kinds of ways directly from each of our own our own portion of the whatever we give. And then together, you know, anything can happen, 1 plus 1 equals 3.

That’s my that’s my little secret in this. I like meeting people like you that are thinking and growing and up to something, never you just never know, and now we know each other.

I got 1 last question for you. How has what are the positives you see with bipolar and you’re being a aerospace engineer or to connections.

Good question. Like you said, the creative part, you know, I do a lot of writing so that you know, test procedures, test reports, have to submit them to the army or Boeing or Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky helicopter.

I worked at I think the positive parts for me about being an engineer in my career was I I started contracting And I worked at some very cool companies.

I worked for lowered aerospace who make active vibration control systems or helicopters. I work for Eton who make a switchgear and an inter uninterval power supplies. Sikorsky helicopters. I worked there for 2 years in Connecticut.

I work for Parker Aerospace in Utah. So it was it’s, you know, learning all this new technology and with my mind frame and being an engineer and able to hone in, I could come up to speed real real quickly at new jobs.

I mean, I love my mind and how great it is when it’s functioning properly and how we can put it to use, but the bipolar part has always been a challenge. It’ll probably continue to be a challenge, but stuff I’ve learned along the way.

Is helping. I’m enjoying life. So I I don’t know if that answered your question, but Well, do you feel Do you feel being bipolar is directly responsible in any way for your creativity and your ability to think the way you do?

Yeah. Absolutely. Like we talked at the beginning with creativity and all these different people who are bipolar that have excelled in life — Mhmm.

— you know, Ted Turner, John Right. Right. I forgot about that, Ted. Called man damn, Catherine, Teta Jones. That’s That’s part of the bipolar part, the good part of the bipolar part. Yes. And it makes for such an interesting life.

I know it gets tricky, At least early on, it’s a different set of parameters. When you are creative like us, Wherever you’re at, whether you’re aware of it or not, you’ll draw people to you that are seeking an energy like yours.

And in the beginning when you’re creative but You haven’t learned enough hard lessons about life. You can get taken advantage of because of of your excitability And I know I could never say no to a very interesting complex project.

And I love networking and connecting people together and building a team to get a project off the ground. And I ended up martering myself because I could always outwork absolutely everybody.

I could always see the bigger picture clearer than everybody, and nobody could keep up nor did they have the desire to help as much as I did even though we started as a team.

And that was something I had That was a habit I had a break. Just stop wanting to volunteer for these things that my mind found delicious, but were gonna otherwise bleed me dry in every other tangible sense.

It took me years to stop doing that to myself because I found it so enjoyable. Absolutely.

You know, I think a big thing huge thing in my journey with bipolar is once I accepted I was bipolar, then I that, you know, I was I knew I had to fight and just accepting that you have an illness, a mental illness is huge because you can then start taking steps, you know, you’re not fighting it.

You’re you’re going with it.

Doing what you did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like busting a Bronco. Don’t want it all come. You wanna ride it, but you don’t want it to be like a show pony. You want that thing to go. How do you ride it without killing yourself?

Yeah. Good analogy. Good analogy. I like what you said too about support teams because along the lines of being taken advantage of or or just making it so I could be taken advantage of because I couldn’t stop myself.

I learned to listen to those around me who could see me in a way I could not. And once I once I let go, Kind like what you just said and trusted those who knew me best.

At least listen to them whether I believe in the beginning even if I didn’t believe them. I had to learn to at least hear what they were saying because they could always see in me what I could not.

And over time, I grew to trust that. And they figured out how to tell me in a way that wouldn’t irritate me and just with time, everything mellowed and flowed.

My wife in particular, we joke about different things. Call her my executive assistant. That’s the ultimate goal. We want her to literally be that, but right now there’s different things I need to be, like, kept an eye on.

And and not with bipolar just just weird things. I’ll slack off or I’ll lose track of a lot because I get really interested in reading things, and she’ll bark at me to do something.

And I used to joke about it. Yes, dear. And then I realized, like, no. She keeps me she keeps my show running tight. She knows where I where I’m where I’m I’m weak or not as efficient as I could be. And I learned a long time ago.

She says do something. It’s because she sees the bigger picture that she’s part of and wants me to stay on track with it. And it became a part of our marriage I didn’t see coming. It’s its own sweet little reward.

Just trusting her to keep me out of my own way or keep me moving when I’m slacking off. It’s nice. Yeah. That’s a huge point to me is like like the contingency plan where you have people that Right. Talk to when things are going on.

And it’s, you know, a lot of people who are bipolar they have problems with their family or wife or children when they’re having episodes and the more that the the children and the wife and everybody learns about bipolar, then they can understand you better and give you advice.

They do have us support groups for families that for wives and like they have support groups for spouses that aren’t bipolar.

And that helps meld them at relationships. Yeah. That was something I found even 20 plus years ago, I was a security guard for a while in an emergency room, in an inner city.

So the stuff that used to come into the emergency room, I never even saw on a TV show. I I couldn’t believe the adventure, the violence, the wildness of it. It was it was 1 of the most fun jobs ever had in my life. I did it for 2 years.

And then I worked I when I was only gotta stay in the emergency room because that that that was enough. Somebody had always be there. But if no nothing was happening, I could I could go help out on the psych lockdown ward.

And that was violence on a level I never witnessed even in the Marine Corps to include war. It it was I I couldn’t believe what I used to get in the middle of up there.

But over time, I learned to talk to people more, which would make it Fighting was less. And I grew fascinated with their stories, and that’s how I I sorta without knowing it at the time, I kinda morphed into a patient advocate.

And I’d only have to do the bouncer work when it was just there was just no way around it, but that was becoming rare.

And 1 of the things I I noticed the families. I would tell people then, I got I got I got I got something like what your family member has there that I’m keeping an eye on.

So I get it. And then the pain that they would they would drop in my lap and the questions they’d ask and I never had anything for that because I was the sufferer.

And causing the pain. That was 1 of the things when I made the first iterations of my my company after I wrote the book, I had more people dealing with bipolar people coming to me for help than bipolar people.

And I had no idea what to do about that. I never did anything about it. I realized it wasn’t my lane. I had to get out of it, but it is very hard on the families. It’s a lot like living with a drug addict. What do you do? They’re in it.

They’re in it. Nothing you say is gonna work. Well, I think we covered pretty much a lot of stuff there. I think we covered everything important. I would like for you to please say your 2 web your websites. 1 more time, Joy?

The my website for my book is breakingbipolar dot life, LIFE, and the website for my publishing company is battle press dot media, MEDIA. And again, I find that so cool that you had a secret publishing empire and didn’t tell me.

Alright, Troy. I’ll wrap it up there and I’ll leave with this. Whatever your next major development is, if you’d wanna come back on my show and share it, that would be absolutely phenomenal.

Whatever. I don’t even care if it’s a little thing and you just wanna jam so the public can hear us. I really enjoy talking to you today, and I I’ve never related so well to another bipolar person as you and that’s been enjoyable.

Well, I applaud you for your your podcast and what you’re doing in your life to help others. That’s awesome. You know? Thanks, Troy. Alright. I’ll sign off with that. Thanks for listening everybody. So there you go, Troy Stephen.

It was really fun talk for us both. The squadcast software that I use to record these things now also has video, but I can’t afford to slap it in just yet. I will in about a minute. Plus, I had to just experiment with the audio.

But I’m being sorta pressured by life and those around me in my own inner voice to put these things on YouTube. This is another fear point for me. YouTube is full of trolls, and I learned way back when I first wrote my book.

It takes guts to be me, how an ex marine beat bipolar disorder, that I did not do well with the kind of attacks that you get from people online that feel the need to level such attacks.

Honestly, I I still am not comfortable with that because in part, 1 of the parameters I’ve spoken about with bipolar is just something like that.

I I wouldn’t set myself in a position where trolls could attack me and then I could then ruminate on what they said.

The trolls are bullshit. Sometimes they point out something valuable in in in in their negative fashion. If you can remain emotionless and and and rational enough to process the truth inside the vitriol and the immaturity.

But I’ve never had that kind of patience. I can do it when I’m looking at your stuff and and telling you how to deal with trolls. I can do that quite easily, but for myself, hard to take my own medicine.

But I think it’s unavoidable. I need to be on YouTube, it’s the number 2 search engine. Gotta be there to be found to get the message out. And I’ll go and I’ll figure out, you know, whatever. I just grow a thick hide, I guess.

I found with discussing the topic of bipolar, you can’t win with everybody. There’s a lot of emotion attached to it for a lot of reasons. And a lot of people feel the need to lash out if they don’t agree with whatever you just said.

And then I have a unique way of seeing things that really Even in the unique world of bipolar tree, I can be unique enough still and it rankles people.

I don’t give a shit. And I’m not saying that as a way of fighting or something. I just don’t give a shit. I think what I think. I’m glad with what I think.

And if you can talk to me about something in a way that changes opinion and do so in a reasonable fashion. I’ll consider it. Maybe I’ll change my opinion in some fashion, but that does happen, but it’s only here and there.

And I learned a long time ago, I’m the older I get, the harder it is to Well, shit, what am I saying? I’ve never been good at changing me to fit in with something else. Sometimes there’s reasons to do so.

Sometimes you have to do that because you are wrong or you’re just operating at a lower mind state. You gotta elevate yourself a little. I’ve done that many times over the years and I feel the need to do it less often now.

I’m pretty comfortable with where I’m at. There will be more there will be more humbling moments. There will be more clarifying moments where I’m gonna be like, oh, shit.

I can’t be doing that anymore. I can’t be saying that. But right now, I’ve been in a groove that I’m I’m comfortable with, and I’m sticking on my guns, and I will have to then just put up on whatever the fuck YouTube throws at me.

But anyway, just including that because if you’re gonna run a show or anything if you gotta get the word out about your bipolar passion project. At some point, you’re gonna need to put yourself on YouTube.

Some people thrive on it. Some people are natural entertainers. I am through the spoken word, not through the visual at least not to the public. The way I am works just fine in person.

Just the trolls. Got a face on my guess. Everybody else does. There’s little kids doing stuff online that get attacked and are doing quite well for them. Else, I guess as some little little kid can do it.

I have no excuse. It’s a big scary hairy backed ex marine or vet. What? Fuck an excuse do I have? Still a little trepidation. Alright, guys. Go check out Troy’s publishing empire. Check out that link if you’re gonna publish a book.

Please call him reach out to him whatever way he’s got on his website and start the process with him and see what you can do. He’s an aerospace engineer people. Let that sink in with your decision making process.

He knows what the hell he’s doing in certain areas and the way that makes the rest of us look like chattering monkeys. Just Gonna publish your book, go say hi to Troy. Alright. See you guys.

EPI 45: Bipolar Author Lynn Rae: You’ll Never Work Full Time Again!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38:03 — 134.7MB)

May 30, 2022

Show Notes:

Lynn Rae of MyJourneyBackToMyself.ca found me through LinkedIn. My replying to her kickstarted the whole “Interview” section of my podcasting life!

This was something I’d been planning on doing for many months.

I was hesitant, in part, due to the time and frustration involved in the transcription process for each episode.

Our talk was an hour and a half. I knew it would take me forever to finish the transcription for this episode.

So I worked on the transcription for two hours today and only reached the 17 minute mark in the audio.

This is how it’s been for me with these transcriptions. Drudgery, tedium, frustration, months of my life.

No more.

I’ve made a command decision to put transcriptions on hold, until I can pay for pros to do it.

The stress I’m enduring and the time I’m losing from creating more work, has made transcription cost prohibitive.

I’m already breathing better for this decision.

Funny thing, I talk a bit abut the importance of transcriptions in the intro to this episode. All true still.

But I think I was trying to motivate myself through an impossible event.

On to Lynn.

Very sweet woman who’s had her battles with bipolar but came out on top.

I enjoyed talking with her. I’ve already learned some things to improve my style. And I’ve figured out the answer to a tech issue that became obvious only after the interview.

Always improving. Never stopping.
This time with Lynn’s help.
Thanks Lynn!

Lynn’s Bio:

Lynn Rae was diagnosed with depression at age 30 and bipolar disorder at age 35. She has been living with these illnesses since 1991 and has had numerous hospitalizations.

Two psychiatrists told her at age 39 she would never work full time again. She has proven them wrong.

She has written two books. The “The F Book” aka “7 F’s to Creating Your Fantastic Future” teaches you how by incorporating these F’s will lead to a happier, healthier, more joy-filled life.

The other one is called “My Journey Back To Myself” which depicts her struggles and recovery from bipolar disorder.

As an Inspirational Speaker she shares with others her coping strategies in living with bipolar disorder and how she learned to be a productive member of society again and thrive despite the label she was given.

Lynn’s website MyJourneyBackToMyself.ca explains more of her story and provides a way to work professionally with her to achieve more and greater success in your life!

Lynn Rae makes her home in Newmarket, Ontario. In the summer she loves taking care of her vegetable garden and eating fresh from it every day.

Transcript

Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence podcast. I’m your host Ken Jensen. I’m someone who overcame Bipolar disorder in an organic fashion back in 2004.

That process taught me a couple things about bipolar. I was living life so incorrectly in relation to what The better part of me wanted and needed me to do, that it took bipolar disorder to shock me into seeing I should go another way.

The fact that it was bipolar that was to change agent and meant I’m more creative than most.

I have a certain slightly higher amount of intel than the average bear, and I have a way of seeing life and expressing myself that most around me do not in such a way that I can have great impact on those who need me most.

You might be the same.

I wanna help you understand this about yourself and I wanna help unlock your greatness, and then unleash it on the world in the best and coolest way possible. Hey, this is Ken. Welcome to the show. I’m gonna kinda wing this.

I’m I’m a little scrambled because I was doing all those training episodes prior that those of you gracious enough to follow along at home had heard I just was complaining and I got sucked into this this seemingly beautiful plan I had that then became like an albatross flying around my head and just so happy that the the life of an outsider series is done.

Now what we’re gonna do, I just decide it on the spot, this is gonna be part of the author series.

And this is an interview. I interviewed Lynn Ray. And she wrote a couple of books that I didn’t pull up immediately in front of me. Here we go. Kids, there is so much to learn about putting a show together properly.

Learn for my mistakes and improve faster than I did. She wrote a book called my journey back to myself, which depicts her struggles and recovery from bipolar disorder.

And she wrote a book called The F Book, AKA, 7 F’s to creating your fantastic future. Which teaches you how by incorporating these f’s you’ll lead a happier, healthier, more joy filled life.

Lynn has some videos on YouTube. I’ll put the links on the episode 45 page. Of her show inside bipolarexcellence dot com. So look up the author series, which will be in the footer of the website.

And then look up episode 45. And you’ll find my first, my first blessed interviewee who agreed to come on and let me take the show in a new direction. You’ll find Lynn.

I’m still gonna do training training episodes. I almost said videos because I’ve been starting a research going on YouTube as well. That’s that’s gonna become in YouTube and possibly some talking might happen, some some tick talking.

I don’t know. I’m I’m I don’t wanna overwhelm myself because that’s almost a constant state I exist in as I put all this machine together and talk to people.

But I’ll tell you what, where it’s all head and sure beats the prospect of going to some job I can’t stand for the rest of my life, which is a big part of why I do this.

I’m doing this to help people with what it is I know and love best. But it’s also to fuel my bright and shiny career path, my future, I want more and to have more, I need to help more people better than I can at any job.

I’ll ever be qualified to get hired for. So on along those lines, Lynn makes the point of saying how couple of psychiatrists told her when she was 39 that she would never hold a full time job ever again, Lynn, wanted to hold a job.

As it as did I, at 1 point, I was out of action for almost 8 years, holding a job in itself meant You got your shit together again.

You got your mind back. You’re acceptable in society once again. You’re not in my case, terrifying people are just freaking them to hell out with your weird vibes.

Lynn said 1 of the biggest goals that she accomplished was to blend in to society and without having anybody even perceive a hint of bipolar.

That’s 1 of our greatest successes, and I agree. It was so happy to have humans welcome me into their presence again once I learned how to people again because I I had forgotten.

I don’t know how that part went for Lynn. We didn’t cover that, I don’t think. But I had actually forgotten how to handle myself with people and it was quite evident in how they responded to me.

Back in the beginning when I was first walking out of bipolar. So anyway, Lynn was a fantastic guest I got to try out some new softwares.

I got to play with squadcast, which is going to integrate with Descript, which is the transcription service I use, and I I gotta tell you I cannot stand the transcription part. It’s it’s it’s a lot of grunt labor.

But it helps because Google Google needs something to find and that’s words on the page. Now that’s why I did it mostly. And then some people, myself included, I can read a post That is verbatim of what the podcast episode is.

I can read the post faster than people speak. All these podcast players mine included have a thing you can speed them up and listen faster, but I do that with certain certain podcasts that I wanna learn something from.

But if I’m listening to a story that has to be either red at my own pace, which is gonna be faster than the guy can talk or a girl can talk on a podcast, or I gotta listen to it at regular speed on a podcast.

So I like to have the written words on my page, on my site, for people to just read along. Now interesting turn of events. I don’t even know if that’s the correct phrase. Development.

Let’s just run with development. There are people who because of various disabilities, they can’t they can’t access. They don’t have all all 5 of their senses. So they can’t read or hear or see the things we put out on the internet.

And what’s happening is by putting a transcript on, now people that can’t listen, like can’t listen, they can still read along and get some value out of it and maybe 1 day can help them. There’s the human side.

There’s also for those of you getting ready to to create a podcast or anything online That isn’t it’s it that isn’t already written. I don’t know what the agency is, but it’s some national level disability agency they came at Netflix.

I I read a whole article on this. They came at Netflix years ago and said you gotta put closed captioning on your videos, so people that can’t hear can at least enjoy the the movie.

I think Netflix did that here and there. But after that talk, that legal talk, they put it on all their videos. Then this agency went after I can’t remember, but something else huge.

And I mean huge something unassailable, something that has billions of dollars to fight back with. I can’t remember what it was. They lost in court to this agency as well, and then now they had to make their stuff accessible.

What’s gonna happen next is it’s gonna get applied to the entire Internet. So you’re you’re not only helping people that wouldn’t be able to consume your material in any other way to finally consume it.

It’s gonna become mandatory. Now I know transcription, even with something like Descript, it it has to be corrected enough that there’s still a ton of work I gotta to do.

And I have this bizarre New York accent, and sometimes I talk fast and stumble over my words when I get excited. All of that gets lost. Inside the transcript software.

It it thinks I’m saying all kinds of things. I didn’t. And it’s been getting better because they they say it has an AI that drives it into script, and it gets better at catching all my or some of my words, but not all.

And transcription to have somebody transcribe something is is prohibitively expensive for most of us.

It’s like it’s like 65 cents a spoken minute. The interview I just did with Lynn was an hour and a half. I I can’t pay for that. I want to 1 day but I’m not there yet.

So For those of you that are listening to these episodes to build something similar to what I’m building or or anything at all, to get the word out about anything at all, this is something to consider.

We’re gonna have to have our websites accessible.

And then I wish because I did not know I was gonna say that. I would have had to link out for there’s a company. I’m not gonna bother looking it up now. It’ll trip up how I speak. There’s a company that will they’ll do this for you.

I think they might have a plug in if you have a WordPress site. And I think in a bunch of cool things they do and like, you know, you’re being a good person to those that need you to be a good person.

And then as a business from the business standpoint, you’re gonna have to do this at some point. And I’d rather get out ahead of it and do it before, you know, do it and get good at it.

Before I’m forced to do it. That’s the kind of pressure I don’t want. So just keep that in mind. And that’s that’s all I’m gonna do there with that intro.

Bear with me since III haven’t never done a format like this. And my head loosely, tragically loosely. I’m kind of following Mark Maren’s format from what the fuck pod dot com, WTF.

So that’s that’s like the only podcast I really listen to just to listen to. Everything else I listen to is I need to know something. I listen to Mark because I like how he digs into people’s heads.

Go look up WTF pod dot com. That’s the website and and figure out how to get the the podcast from there. That’s an incredible that’s an incredible podcast, and I love Mark to death.

Anyway, That’s enough rambling and bouncing around, I think. I’m going to now figure out how to blend this seamlessly with a little bit of music into my interview with Lynn Ray.

And joy. Welcome to the Viper Excellence podcast. This is Ken. I’m with Author Lynn Ray. Lynn Ray was diagnosed with depression at age 30 and bipolar disorder at age 35.

She’s been living with these illnesses since 19 91, and has had numerous hospitalizations, 2 psychiatrists told her, at age 39, she would never work full time again, she has proven them wrong.

She has written 2 books, the f book, aka 7 f’s to creating your fantastic future, which teaches you how by incorporating these thefts.

Well, it teaches you how by incorporating success will lead to a happier, healthier, more joy filled life. The other 1 is called my journey back to myself, which depicts her struggles and recovery from bipolar disorder.

As an inspirational speaker, she shares with others her coping strategies and living with bipolar disorder and how she learned to be a productive member of society again and thrive despite the label she was given, her talk, 7 f’s to creating your fantastic future, outlines 7 words all starting with the letter f that led to her recovery.

Lynn makes her home in New Market, Ontario, In the summer, she loves taking care of her vegetable garden and eating fresh from it every day.

And welcome, Lynn. Thanks for the kind introduction, Ken. Yes. It’s been a really long journey for me. I’ve been living with this illness for almost 30 years now. Well, I guess the initial diagnosis of depression, it is 30 years.

For the first 4 years, I took antidepressants. Within 6 weeks, I fell out alive again. But they’re just masking the underlying issue that led to depression, but I needed a quick fix.

My kids were young. You know, I couldn’t afford to get sick at that point. And 1 of the things I did when I started taking them as I asked God to hold myself and my family together until my daughter was in grade 1.

And when she started grade 1, I had stopped taking the antidepressants in 6 weeks. Into grade 1, I had my first official breakdown and was hospitalized for over 3 weeks.

And then a year later, I had another breakdown, and that’s when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And it’s been a very very long journey. I know now that 1 of the causes of my depression was my unhealthy marriage.

You know, my husband’s a good person, we were just like oil and water. We didn’t mix. You know? Nothing against him personally. But I had to leave my marriage be but where I could start working on myself.

So I did that And, you know, I was working full time. I was very, very happy. But then as most people with bipolar, we think, oh, maybe I don’t really have this illness. Went off my meds.

And that’s when I had not 1 but 2 psychiatrists just tell me I would never work full time again. I was only 39 and that was a very scary prospect. To think I couldn’t be a normal functioning member of society. That really hit me hard.

I went home in tears. I was just very, very upset. And I think that’s when the real work began for me. That was in the year 2000. And I have read like 200 self help motivational of books. Books about mental illness.

I used to look for role models with bipolar. And back then, the only 2 that I could find were Patty Duke. The actress, and k Redsfield Jamison, the psychiatrist who’d written a couple books about her struggles with bipolar.

And I thought, okay, if these people can have a good life, so can I? I just have to figure this out somehow. So for me, bipolar, it’s an exaggeration of emotions.

You’re on this high and then you’re on this low up and down up and down. And the medication they give you can help keep you stable and I still take medication for bipolar to this day.

1 of the things that helped me a lot was motivational sayings. I would post them around my apartment and it would say this too shall pass or there’s no problem so great it can’t be solved.

And I have to admit, I watched a lot of Oprah and Dr. Phil back then. Believe me, they had guests on their shows who had written really interesting books that helped me in my recovery.

2 of the books that stand out early on for me was when I say no I feel guilty, I realized I’d been a people pleaser and I had to start pleasing myself instead of everybody else. And another book I read was called Boundaries.

It’s about how only letting people into your life that want the best for you. And, you know, we’re all we’re all made up made up of energy. And some people’s energy isn’t compatible with our own.

And we just have to stay away from those people like you know, there’s nothing wrong with them per se, but they just aren’t looking out for my best interests. So I had to get out of unhealthy relationships in order to get a lot better.

That’s for sure. I had this roller coaster of going on and off meds for about 5 years. Partly, I didn’t like the side effects. Partly, I was still trying to prove I didn’t have bipolar.

But then when I finally found a medication that really really worked for me with minimal side effects, I would say that’s when the recovery happened. Plus, I got out of another bad relationship, someone I was dating.

But I remember in 2005, I called my doctor in tears 1 day. I said I’ve got 3 strikes against me. I’m deeply in debt. I can’t work, and I don’t have a boyfriend. That was very important to me at the time.

Those 3 things. So his solution is he just wanted me to take some lorazepam to calm down an anti anxiety pill. And I thought, yeah, that’s the quick fix, but there’s got to be another solution. There has to be.

And this man, his name is Eric Rhodes. He’s very famous in the radio industry and art industry in the States, he became a mentor of mine. We never have talked on this phone only by email, It was just by chance that we met.

And I would send him emails, and he would give me encouragement. So that day, After calling my psychiatrist, I sent this man an email telling him I had the 3 strikes against me.

Deeply in debt, no job, no boyfriend. And he gave me a very gentle kick in the butt, let’s say. Along with a bit of religion thrown in, he said, Lynn, stop feeling sorry for yourself.

You need to get out and talk to people. Volunteer, do anything, just get out of the house every single day. And I I guess I kind of knew that in a way.

I I think it was Carl Menanger. He said to peep he’s a psychiatrist. He said to people who are in a crisis, go across the railway tracks and find somebody in need. When you need help help somebody else instead.

So like I said, after this man told me to get out of the house and do something. I went to a mental health drop in center and I realized I was much further along in my recovery than a lot of the people there.

So I asked if I could do a talk about how I was recovering from bipolar and they said, yeah, come on in, you know, next week, the week after.

So I wrote up this little 15 or 20 minute speech. I gave my talk about how I use motivational sayings to help me.

Reading books, taking medication, going to support for depression groups, to talk to other people, And after that talk, 1 of the social workers there gave me a list of 10 or 20 places I could contact to do other talks, and it just started snowballing from 2006 to 2008.

I did over a hundred talks in those 2 years, but I wasn’t making a living at it.

You know, I was just getting an honorarium everywhere I went. And I still wasn’t working full time. I was working either part time or not at all. But I was doing these talks and that’s so I wrote out 2 different speeches, my 7 f speech.

And the other one’s called my journey back to myself, how I found myself again, basically. And out of those talks, I wrote my 2 books. I was putting in a 6 to 8 hour day every day for 2 years.

Working on these things. And I was that was probably the happiest time of my life for me. I just felt I was helping other people. Like, I always told myself that my first breakdown. When I get better, I’m gonna help other people.

I didn’t know how or when, but I knew I was gonna help people. And I also received an award from a mental health center in our community for the contribution I was making. In the mental health field through my talks.

And I’m like, wow, people really are listening to me. You know, I wasn’t really getting feedback from people, except I was being invited to talk at places. I’ve spoken at universities, CamH, Center for Addiction and Mental Health.

That’s the big place in Canada in Toronto. We’re People go for help with mental health issues. A lot of mental health drop in centers I spoke at, I spoke at rotary clubs, libraries, Those were the main places, I guess I spoke at.

My talk ended up being 40 minutes long. And like I said, I was just Not delirious isn’t the right word. I was just so happy when I was doing this.

But then the talks were kind of dwindling. Like I said, I wasn’t making a living at it. So I decided, okay, it’s time to see if I can work full time and prove these guys wrong and prove it to myself.

So I started out with a part time job. And then a year later, I got a full time job that was 2009. And I’ve pretty much been working full time since Zen to support myself. I worked very, very hard to get out of debt.

I racked up a lot of debt when I was on my mania highs. We all go through those crazy spending sprees. Awful exciting stuff. Yeah. But I just went once I started working full time, every ex dollar I had went to pay off debt.

And then in 2012, I was debt free. And I thought, okay, I wonder if I can buy a house. My daughter had been renting. It wasn’t the best place for her, and I wanted her to live with me, and she wouldn’t rent an apartment with me.

So I thought, okay, I’m just gonna see if I can buy a house. And oh my goodness, it was pure luck that I got into the housing market. Because a week later, they changed the rules for down payments and all these things in Canada.

And a week later, I would not have been able to buy my home. And I I feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world right now because I have a home.

My daughter lived with me for 2 and a half years. I’ve got a little backyard with my vegetable garden. Like, I’m the type of person. I’m not a complicated person.

It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy. You know, you just give me a bit of freedom to do what I would want in my own home, see my kids. I have a grandson who’s 4. You know, those are the things that bring me joy.

It’s my close friends and my immediate family. I guess I believe the cure for any illness, physical or mental, is 25 percent medication and 75 percent working on yourself and your issues.

To me without doing the work on myself. Like, when I was a teenager, I was happy, care free out with my friends all the time, and then that changed. Okay? So I had to find that person I was again as a teenager.

And that’s what I mean by working on yourself. You have to figure out what makes you happy, what brings you joy, And I spent a few years after my divorce, hanging around other single people my own age, going dancing.

I used to love going dancing. I had to find the things that brought me joy again. I used to enjoy playing pool, you know, swimming a holiday by the ocean.

It took money, and I have no regrets going into debt for it. Yeah. Because it took money for me to find things I love to do again. And like I said, that was key, and I think that’s key for anybody.

And that’s when I came up with my 7 s speech. I believe we all need these f’s in our life. They are family, friends, Fun, fitness, fulfillment, finances, and faith. And when I say fitness, I mean physical and mental fitness.

If I’m not mentally in a good place, it doesn’t matter how physically fit I am. I’m not gonna have a good life. To me, mental fitness is more important. Actually, the physical fitness is the hardest for me to achieve.

I really don’t like exercising. Yeah. But like I said, you know, we’re we’re all a work in progress. We’re all on a journey. And I believe everybody needs those f’s in their lives.

On some level, you know, when your kids are young, your family going to be more important than friends. And and each f will have a different priority at a different time in our lives. Yeah. And when I say faith, I mean very generic.

Like, I use the word God, I use the word universe, I believe in reincarnation, I I don’t know what that makes me. But, you know, I just well, there’s this force out there listening to our every thought.

And I have had prayers answered for me. I’ll tell you 1 really interest student 1. Yeah, please. I was working full time. It was, I don’t know, 19 99 or 2000.

And I’d been waking up every morning at 04:30 and I was getting so angry because I didn’t have to be up till 07:30. Right? And every morning, I would wake up, toss and turn, so finally 1 day I got angry, and I wrote in my journal.

Okay, god. I’m getting really sick and tired of waking up at 04:30. If there’s something you want me to do at that time of day, please make it abundantly clear.

And I just tossed and turned till 07:30, And when I awoke, I realized 5 words were going around in my head, and they were my journey back to myself.

So that’s how I came up with the name for my book. So that very day I went out and I bought paper pens, pencils.

This was 19 99. I didn’t have a very up to date computer, you know, computer weren’t good like they are now. I wrote my book all out in Longhand from my journals, So that’s when I initially wrote the book.

Yes. Journey is another key thing for me. I guess, at my first hospitalization, the nurses encouraged me to start journaling because I realized I really couldn’t verbalize what was going on in my head.

So I started journaling, and then that became very therapeutic for me over the years. I don’t journal a lot anymore, but for 5 or 10 years, I was journaling almost every day.

Sometimes it would just be about things that happened. Or when I was depressed, I would try to write down 5 things I was grateful I couldn’t even come up with 5 things when I was depressed.

Yeah. But I have not had a major depression since 2004. And that’s because I I think I’ve resolved the major issues in my life. To the best of my ability. And I I can’t see me getting severely depressed again.

I guess life circumstances might cause it if something traumatic happened to a family member or something, but I believe the key to getting out of depression is to resolve your problem by looking within, you you know, you you look at your childhood, you look at all kinds of things that could be causing it.

And like I said, I I don’t get depressed anymore.

I just have normal ups and downs like everyone else. Yeah, me too. I did, unfortunately, I was reduced seeing my medication over a 2 year period because I really thought I had conquered this.

Yeah. And in January, I no. In November of 20 21. And just this past year, I got hypomanic for a couple months. But by mid January, I was back on my meds again. So I realize I still need them in a very big way.

You so much of our stories are similar. And I got a lot of comments and questions to to share with you on that line. Okay. So, but before we do that, I think I see 1 obvious way, but I’d like to hear hear you say it.

What do you feel were any positives that came out of being by polar. Like the good things in life that never would have happened had bipolar not been part of your life.

I would say just helping other people for the 2 years that I would doing my speaking, which I’m getting back into now. I’m working on a couple speeches again, and I’m gonna start doing them again in September.

I I was a kid in school. I was terrified to do a speech in high school. I would shake. I would cry. And it forced me to dupe something that I was uncomfortable with.

I also joined toastmasters to get better at public speaking. How have I thrived? Like I said, in terms of thriving, Just 1 thing I really liked is I’ve been able to blend into society and nobody knows I have bipolar.

When I stopped speaking in 2008, I shut down my website and everything I could about it so I could get a full time job. And I remember about 4 years ago telling somebody I had bipolar.

And the look on his face was pure shock. He’d known me about 5 years. Just as an acquaintance. Not a good friend, just an acquaintance. But he would have never believed I had bipolar.

And That’s was 1 of my goals to just blend into society and have a normal life like everybody else. And not all these crazy ups and downs during the year. I guess it gave me the confidence that I could help people.

I’m working on a worksheets right now to go with my 7 f’s book, the f book, So as a success coach, what I’m going to do is give people the f book and they’ll get the work sheets to go along with each chapter.

And, you know, a lot of people couldn’t do things like that. You know? No, it’s hard for anybody. Yeah. And it’s still hard for me.

I’m getting the f book professionally edited and self published again because I did it and it was I I don’t have the skills to do the formatting and a fancy cover and all those nice things. That stuff’s very hard.

I went through the same issues. So that’s over the summer, that’s getting done, so I can launch my success coach training in September. I I have the ability to be very focused when I’m on a task, I can just block everything out.

And I don’t believe in multitasking. People say they’re multitasking. Asking. They’re not doing anything well. Not me neither. I don’t I can have 10 projects on the go at once. That’s fine. But I can’t work on 2 simultaneously.

You know? Oh. You work on 1 for an hour, then you might work on another 1 for an hour. But that, you know, like I said, I’m very focused on whatever I’m doing, and I think that’s 1 of the things many people with bipolar have.

So it seems well, it seems like for the most part, in your case, having bipolar it it it seems like it hasn’t pointed out a lot of particular bipolar flavored strengths But by dealing with it, you’ve developed a much larger sense of self and you found your personal strength and a calling, to help other people in need.

It it kinda set you on a new path that you seem to enjoy very much. And you’re quite clear on how much this this sucks and would like to help people get out of it.

Oh, yeah. So bipolar kind of set the path? Yes, it did. You know? And I always knew I would get back to public speaking. For the last 6 years, I’ve been working as a virtual assistant because I got downsized for my full time job.

Mhmm. After a couple jobs from hell, I thought, okay, if I’m gonna keep my house, I gotta do something different because I’m over 50.

I’m 60 now. I thought if I’m gonna keep my house, and equate and acquaintance asked me to do some virtual work for him.

And then I just started advertising on social media, and the Internet that I was a virtual assistant, I’ve done marketing calls, I’ve done bookkeeping for people, those are the 2 main things I’ve done.

And, you know, it’s enabled of me to keep my home. I rented out my bed room master my daughter left to Like, I’ll do whatever I can to make ends meet and be happy.

Like, I I don’t put myself in a box and say, well, I’m only gonna do this and nothing else, you know? Right. I I do whatever I have to to just, like I said, be happy. Which I wrote so many comments.

What’s the point of even looking at them all? I know when I started figuring out I I My story is all throughout my podcast, so I don’t wanna I don’t wanna go into that terribly deep here and eat into your time.

So I want you know, I want people to know more about you, but I got handed a literal death sentence. My meds never worked for me. They only made me worse. That was the only result other than what do you call it the candies?

Gummy bears. No. No. I’m being I’m being metaphorical. Oh. Clonipin. What’s the brand name for klonopin? Phenazepam? I I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s yeah. It’s it’s 1 it’s it’s I think they’re the same thing.

But anyway, they’re I’m for I’m blanking on the class of chemical, benzos. They’re a Benzo. And Benzo’s can make you they can make you high. At the very least, they can calm you down.

I had reached a point where the only pill that did anything at all for the good was Benzos, and all they did was take the house fire like If the flames were shooting through the roof, this would keep them just underneath the shingles.

That was about the best I could hope for. Wow. The illness just ravaged me.

I really don’t know how I survived it. And my prescription for Benzels was take them. I got huge bottles, of a really high dose, and the last doctor I had was he’s like, just take them. At least you’ll have some sort of relief.

He goes, I was like, what about the health? They’re Benzos. They have a bad, you know, they they they start hurting you over time. And he said, what’s the difference? And he’s like, this this illness is gonna take you out.

You’re you’re gonna die by cop in 6 months. Right. I said I said why my cop? And he said, I would go into rages. And he said, every time you blow up, it’s taking more cops to shut you down.

And he said, at a certain point, they’re gonna just stop trying to shut you down and they’re gonna shut you all the way down because I gotta protect themselves.

So that that’s what it became for me. It was — Wow. — it was like the worst version of it, and I suffered from every variety of bipolar that they cared to put a name to.

I clearly had each each 1 mixed being the worst, And the thing I hated most about mixed, from what I remember, the mania from bipolar would power the blackest of depressions.

So normally depression was like a that was always somewhere in the picture. But depression would bring me down. But when I was mixed, it somehow had an energy to it. I I can’t describe it better than that.

Somehow, it drove up the downness. And what would happen in my mind trying to handle a ferocious depression. I never got suicidal but I don’t know why because living was point It was just pure pain.

But after that was the worst case, and then after I got my death sentence, At that point in my life, my bipolar life, I wasn’t always sure exactly what was real, Time had lost all meaning.

I didn’t know if something just happened 5 seconds ago or 30 years ago. I I could not tell. Wow.

I remember once standing on the floor in my living room and looking at the floor and I knew it was the floor, and that’s all I had. I couldn’t go into any kind of depth on what the purpose floor was or why we even called it the floor.

And I had lost I had lost contact with the energy that flows back and forth between people. We take it for granted until it’s gone. And when it’s gone, you feel it.

Did you ever experience that? Were you just weren’t part of the going on of it all anymore? Just curious. Well, you see, I I believe when we’re hypomanic or manic, we’re vibrating on a different frequency than the Earth plane.

Okay. I very strongly believe that. And oh, yeah. I’ve lost touch with reality many, many times. I’ve had rapid cycling, but actually that was easier for me than the mania. I think. Yeah.

What I found is for every week of mania, I would be depressed for a month. So if I had 4 weeks of mania, I would be depressed for at least 4 months afterwards. Okay. Yeah. And then people are always on well, it varies for everybody.

And When I was doing my talks, I remember I was taking the maximum of the medication I was allowed to take I was so deliriously happy that I was, like, really up, you know, like, you are ever when you’re doing something with your best friend at having a fantastic time.

I was like that every day for almost 2 years. Wow. That’s a long run. But I I kept it together the whole time because I was doing what I loved.

And at the end of that time, my psychiatrist said to me, Lynn, Even if you do get sick again, you’ll never lose all the confidence you’ve gained in the last 2 years.

You know, he saw me at my lowest low, and then he saw me what I can actually do when I was feeling good. And feeling myself again. You know, at first, he he gave me no hope for recovery.

But what I tell people, those psychiatrists didn’t know me as a teenager and in my twenties. They only saw this sick helpless woman in tears in their office. Mhmm. And they had no idea how strong I really was before bipolar took hold.

I I I’ve read notes my husband gave me years and years ago about how strong I was. I didn’t consider myself a strong person at that point, but I realize now I’ve always been strong with my convictions, I know what’s important to me.

I’m not a wishy washy kind of person. Don’t ask for my my opinion if you don’t want the truth. You know, I I can be tactful. Definitely, I can be tactful.

But, you know, I know what’s important to me, and I’ve never wavered from those things. So like I said, I know I was strong when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, but I think my marriage just took the life out of me. You know?

He was an extreme introvert. I used to be an extrovert. And I gave up doing all the things I used to love doing. And I firmly believe that depression is what causes the chemical imbalance in our brains, not the other way around.

You know, you don’t just wake up 1 day with a chemical imbalance. For most people, depression happens slowly over a long period of time.

Like for you, did you get depressed? And then it moves to bipolar? Or do you know? No. Well, I used to routinely face depression at work. My whole life, I’m I’m I’ll be 54 in a minute.

My whole life, I have had a personal loathing for employee ship. I cannot stand anything about having a job just in of having a job and never gives me the money I need to have the kind of life I want.

There’s there’s other than the connections with friends at work and whatever interesting stories my develop on the job.

The act of holding a job has always been anathema to me. It’s it’s I can’t stand it. But I have, you know, you have to work until you don’t have to work till you figure out a way around it.

And I used to get very depressed at work. When I got out of the marines, I had quit drinking first because I was a big alcoholic in in the marines. Did drugs too, but they never it was the eighties.

Drugs were everywhere. And I I was stationed on the West Coast, Los by Los Angeles, so drugs were laying around like potato chips. So that I got into the mix, but they never grabbed ahold of me. But drinking had a hold of me big time.

I quit almost immediately after getting out. I had a year where I couldn’t feel naturally happy because drinking or Any chemical abuse will it you can’t reproduce the or you can’t produce the dopamine and the serotonin naturally.

You shut that down through the intake of the chemicals. And I knew from research, they might not come back on. If you damage whatever that system is well enough, you might just die miserable.

And Luckily for me, after about a year of doing nothing in particular, just lifting weights and eating well, my happiness came back. But then I I spent 5 years in a factory versus an operator of various machines.

And then I, you know, I know how to fix things. They eventually made me a mechanic. I fixed all kinds of bizarre equipment, stuff you only find in in in factories, and I was good at it.

I wasn’t the best, but I was like top high intermediate on really complicated stuff, and I hated all of it. So I started feeling depression, just going to work was the greatest depressant for me through my twenties.

And then my wife at the time and I, we moved out west to start to start a new life and look for better opportunities. And then that’s when bipolar started raising its head.

Inside of 3 years in Denver, I had 20 jobs in part because Denver was booming. If you showed up with smile and a willingness to work, you were already hired before your car engine cooled off.

That’s how badly they needed everybody for everything. So I got to sample all kinds of jobs, because I kept thinking if I find the right job, I’ll be happy.

Right. There is no such thing for me even to this day. I I do much better now with work, but by doing this, I’m fighting for all I’m worth to become self employed and and not not have to answer anyone, and it’s it’s slowly taking root.

But in Denver, what I noticed was happening was I started getting stressed out about smaller and smaller things more frequently, and my rage was building and it got to a point where just about everything in life was pissing me off.

And what I wanted to do about it was, you know, like aggressive why aggression wise was growing bigger and bigger.

And I finally went to a doctor and I was like, look man, I I can’t stand anything. I think I’m going crazy from it. And he tested me out and he said, you’re absolutely the physical physically the healthiest patient I have.

He said, I think it’s I think it’s between your ears, whatever this is. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re healthy as a bull. I went to a psychiatrist, and he immediately diagnosed me as classic bipolar.

That was probably 98. And from that point, I did a rapid down slide where I experienced my first panic attack which was That was my numbingly bizarre. It felt like I had a black hole in the center of my chest and I was falling into it.

Like my body had had unencore paraded and I was some abstract thing. I I lost all sense of myself and I was falling into whatever I now represent and it was absolutely terrifying.

Took a lot of drugs to stop my heart from beating as hard as it was that night. And then I moved into having these huge panic attacks that would last hours.

1 of my panic attacks could last 3 or 4 hours at full force. Wow. And so that so You were asking about depression. Depression was just 1 tiny chunk of the overall picture that came at me, and it kept morphing.

I went through every version of it. And then years later, I was in my thirties when my doctor gave me my death sentence, and he said, he was like, at this point, if you think drinking paint will help, drink a lot of paint.

He goes, what does it matter? You’ve gotta find something, but he said as a scientist and a doctor, I have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to myself. There is no help for you in psychiatry.

You’re what’s called meds resistant, hundred percent. And he said, I feel the worst for you compared to all my hundreds of clients at the VA. Because he said, you’re the only 1 that ever asks me why anything.

You take the pill, you’re in just as much pain as everyone else, but You’re the only 1 who asks why that pill. What’s it doing with the other pills? What’s the game plan?

The long range goal here? And I said nobody else asked why they’re eating this stuff. He’s like, nope, not 1. I said that’s insane. How are you not curious about what’s going on? He goes, I don’t know, but you’re the only 1 who is.

And he said, because of that, you are the only client I have who’s 100 percent aware of just how screwed you are. He said, I wish you knew nothing so you could die in peace because that’s that’s right around the corner.

So that that was what I was up against. And when I went home from that final visit with him, at that time, the only thing I felt was fear, despair, and loneliness. That’s the only thing that was in my head and heart.

I couldn’t feel anything else. And rage. Raid are loneliness loneliness. I guess. Yeah. And from that place, I heard a little whisper in my head. I almost couldn’t hear it. I’m a marine, and it was the marine part of me.

And all he said was, This is not the way a fucking marine goes out, do something fight. That voice was that big. I barely know that. That’s God, the universe — Yes. — whatever you wanna call that — Yes.

— energy out there. You know, I believe we’re all here to learn lessons. And I also believe when I’ve been hypomanic, before mania sets in, I’m experienced something that I call accelerated learning.

I 1 time when I was hypomanic, I was still married. I all of these thoughts were coming to my head, and I was writing them down as fast as I could. And when I looked at them later, there were things I needed to learn.

Like, stop pacing around the house. I can’t even remember what they were now. But but there were lessons I needed to learn And for some reason, when I’m hypomanic, like I said, we’re vibrating on another frequency.

We’re able to learn those very quickly. And I’ve been in touch with the psychic in the last year a few times. And when I told her about this, she said, oh, yeah.

We call it downloading from the universe when that happens in psychic circles. I’ve heard of that. And You know? But then when you hit mania, that’s when your world comes crashing down.

You get psychotic. You’re hallucinating. You’re paranoid. Basically, fear sets in. Right. I’ve become a big fan of Gary Zukov. He says, we either do things out of love or fear, and I, a hundred percent believe that?

If what we’re doing is out of love, good things will happen. If what we’re doing out of fear, we’ll attract bad things and bad people in well, not bad people.

People on the same wavelength as you. You know, like if you’re the type of person, you’re always going to intimidate people, and try to be better than them, you’ll attract those same kind of people.

Right. But if you’re the kind of person that likes to help people and be nice.

You’ll attract those kinds of people in your life. I agree. And I’m just right now, I’m doing a lot of reading about the astral plane trying to figure out where I am exactly when I’m hypomanic.

And how I can be there without going over the edge — Right. — so to speak. Because you and I both know hypomania is a wonderful place to be used for me.

It really is. It is. That’s why we reduce our meds because we wanna go there again without the mania. Yep. Yeah. That’s interesting you bring that up because again, and and I fully understand everybody.

I learned recently through some training. It’s called multiple pathways to recovery. Different people There’s all different ways to to live a good life with these conditions.

Some people are a lot of meds some are a little, some are none. Like me, I’m none. But I only got to none when it was clearly proven they’re actually making everything worse. But I don’t suggest I tell everyone whatever works.

Please stick with it and and you can I feel you should investigate other things, but do it carefully, do it with professional guidance? Don’t make too many big decisions on your own because you might you might pay.

Particularly, what going on and off meds. And I I have people attached to me that are connected to me that can help with this stuff. But It’s been very a lot of what you said, like the energy.

I’m big on energy because everything’s energy. The more I learned about quantum physics, this caught me by surprise. And this happens to me. This type of learning style happens to me a lot.

When I got deep into quantum physics recently, last few years or so, I started seeing all kinds of connections to personal development material I’d read, how life works, spirituality, I saw correlations in quantum physics with everything.

And I was like, well, holy crap. This is there’s something to this. And and it helped me make better sense of where I’m going and why, how to talk to people and help them.

And III found that you said the downloading from the universe. My chiropractor talks about that all the time. He does a type of chiropractic that involves energy work. He barely touches me, and my body moves into place.

On its own. And that, you know, and he’s all in his spirituality and I’m like you. I think I’m closer to what you’re saying. I I believe the universe is this all it’s just it’s everything.

And everything according to quantum physics on smallest level is not there’s nothing actually but energy and in our case directed by thought. That’s like the only 2 things that exist. Energy and thought thought it’s self being energy.

So we can create our own reality, which is kind of what you were saying I think with who to who the people you are, who the people are that you draw in your life and why you’re creating it.

And 1 That’s great. 1 of the best coaches I I still have, Jason Leister.

He talks about this stuff all the time. He’s a business, He’s a business coach who never talks about business. He’s always about personal development and how you have to be in the world. Not even what you do.

He goes, that doesn’t matter. How you be will dictate everything else. And you wanna be you want to be well. And Well, I found him many many years ago and he had on a website at the time that said client sucked dot com.

And at that point in my life, I was doing all these projects, building websites for people, doing a lot of online stuff that I was capable of doing.

And I was getting very mad at my clients. I wasn’t getting paid well. They were bringing more and more problems in my life that I was trying to keep up with. And and then I find Jason’s website, clients suck.

I’m like, yes, they do. So I get deeper into his world. Time goes by, and he grew up as he put it. And he was like, clients don’t suck. Whatever your world is, you drew it to you. That’s right.

It’s not that you suck. He’s like, don’t I’m not saying everybody’s like, your thinking drew these things to you. The clients, the whole world. Your whole world is just a symptom of what’s going on in your head, how you’re thinking.

So learn to think differently, learn to think along the lines of what is you’d like to do, find out where some rough spots need to be ground down, stay open.

We’ll learn to relax your views some and you’re gonna find your life gets a lot better. Yeah. We need to set intentions every day of what we want in our lives.

It is so important. Yes. At the beginning of every day to do some meditation or prayer, whatever you wanna call it, mindfulness. Yep. It can be just 5 minutes. I do before I get out of bed every morning now.

And talk to that energy that’s out there about what I want in my life and thanking that energy for for what I have in my life. Too. Like, you’ve got to talk in the present terms as if you’ve already received — Yes.

— what you’re wanting. Yes. I’m just looking at another quote here from a book. I don’t know which book it was, but it said no matter how hard you try to outrun the past?

It will eventually take you down. That’s the gist of the quote. Right. And years ago, like I said, I was still just trying to figure out why all this happened.

And when I I did this kind of I was trying to regress myself to a past life. But I ended up regressing myself, I guess, just to childhood, and my whole body froze. And I saw this vision.

I can’t share with you what it was. Mhmm. But after that day, like, I used to drive Oh, what’s the equivalent miles per hour? Hundred and 60 kilometers per hour on the highway, which was like 01:20 miles an hour, I think.

Okay? Okay. Which was way too fast. It’s pretty fast. Way too fast. And I didn’t even know I was driving that fast, but I was trying to outrun the pain from my past.

Mhmm. After that incident happened that day, I had a talk with somebody who it was concerning. My driving slowed down without any conscious effort on my part, and that’s how I knew I had resolved the last issue in my life.

The last big issue was we’re all gonna have have issues our entire lives. Right. But I don’t even think about going that fast anymore.

But I was doing it unconsciously. I was trying to outrun I was running for myself is what I was doing. Yeah. And when I stopped running for myself, my driving just completely slowed right down.

I gotta tell you on a on a smaller note because I’ve been I’ve been symptom free since 2006 with the only lingering the only lingering issue was anxiety.

It’s anxiety, occasional panic, and that they all they spread out. They were happening less and less. They were not lasting as long.

They were getting weaker and weaker till I could measure it in years. And then you would said something something related to this earlier but oh, just once you reach a certain point you’re just living life like everyone else.

So every now and then, if 1 of these things would rise up out of nowhere through my chiropractor’s help, I learned how to feel it without getting emotionally embroiled in it.

It’s a skill you can learn. And he goes, him and some other teachers I had, they’ve said different things that are happening in our body Need to finish.

There are an unresolved issue that needs to be allowed to do whatever it’s trying to do energetically. And the more you cover it up with meds or any other thing that could be considered an avoidance issue, it can’t finish happening.

So it will already sit there waiting to come back at you looking for its window opportunity. That’s right. So when when these very rare panicky anxiety things would hit, On 1 hand, it were nothing like the bad old days.

Those were colossal. These were just local local kids playing in the park side size. And I could just sit at, like, oh, 0, crap.

It’s back again. I know I was not expecting this and I’d sit there for 1 couple seconds the emotion would hit, like, as it all about to unwind right here on this couch for no particular reason, which it it never has a reason.

And then I was like, no. No. We’ve done this before. Relax.

Just let it ride, and I couldn’t. I’d calm right down. I’d feel uncomfortable. But the fear the fear part would go away. And my body would be doing the energetic things an anxiety attack can produce. The breathing would get tight.

Which I I learned how to focus my breathing. Eventually, I’d slow it back down. But I wouldn’t fight whatever it was. I’m like, just let me know when you’re done and And of those things that got quicker and quicker.

And it was almost like talking someone out of a bad ass to trip. It just like, you’re alright, man. You just You said, it was kinda had that kind of feel to it.

And then I calmed down and it was gone. I’m like, are we good? We’re all back? Alright. We’re back. And then I wouldn’t even worry about it. And they, like I said, they all happen less and less.

And then something else you just said, oh, why did this all happen? 1 of the things that I realized about myself, I was living life wrong in almost every possible way you could think of.

I had old views that were of no use to me anymore. I was very immature in a lot of ways. I was I hadn’t even finished growing. I was unevolved in a lot of ways.

And between the Marine Corps and different things that happened to me growing up in ways that I ways that I had to survive in a lot of cruder environments. I was this tough thing that didn’t work anymore.

I and I had strength that had no use, which was so frustrating to me. I always relied on my body. I was very strong and yet I hadn’t that didn’t add up to anything to make up my life work.

And what I realized was after bipolar, It took bipolar to obliterate the old version of me. So the better part that had been trying to come out could come out.

And I’m still there’s a lot of me that’s still me. I kept the part I say I kept the parts I liked. And not everybody’s even gonna like those parts and I don’t care because I’m good with but the illness disappeared.

And in the process, I started figuring out how to help a lot of people same as you. I’ve I’ve helped a lot of people with a lot of things and and got to understand.

I was pretty good at it. I never knew that about myself till after the illness. Yeah. I would have to agree with you. The illness Well, it makes us face ourselves. Yeah. And I hope I kept the good parts of me because I’m happy go lucky.

I live in the moment. I truly live in the moment now. I don’t worry about yesterday or tomorrow. That’ll take care of itself. And that’s a big thing living in the moment. But I congratulate you on not meeting meds.

I’m a little envious. How did you do it? Did you do it with exercise? Diet, natural supplements. Okay. Well, I have a I have a system on my website, bipolar Excellence. Dot com. That explains all of that.

But in in general, I found I’ll I’ll tell you the biggest part, it was nutrition. And through a of a fluke. Remember when I got my death sentence and I I heard the marine telling me to fight back. Yeah. There was no triumphant music.

Like in a movie, nothing changed. Nothing. You know, there was no moment where the where the audience would cheer. Now, he’s got a hold of it. No. I was still an absolutely disaster. I just made a commitment.

I made an agreement with that part of myself. Marines don’t quit. I’ll I’ll do something. No idea what that be. I just agreed not to quit, which I think in my I think in my mind probably was to agree not to suicide.

Because it was that bad. And I never felt suicidal, but I don’t know why. It was really bad. So Very, remember you said intention. So I agreed not to quit and that I’d look for something. And that was that was the entire plan.

And my head was scrambled. Yeah. And within days, a copy of Discover magazine, it’s a science magazine. Came in the mail and on the cover was I don’t I’m just paraphrasing, Ken Nutrients Curmental Health.

It said something different, but that was the gist of it. So immediately, I was I was struck with well, number 1, this is very interesting and I know medstone helps.

So I gotta find something. And 2, I knew Discover magazine to put a cover story like that. They had to fully vet this situation because they cannot risk their reputation.

On snake oil. Right. So that gave me confidence. I’m like, alright, let’s read the article. Let the this company called True Hope and they have they’re in Canada. Oh, that’s another thing. And this is so Apropos.

You’re my first interview guest. You’re from Canada. I’m not trying to, like, do, like like like, Jedi mind thing you or nothing, but most of the really good life changing things that have happened to me, came from Canada.

I have no idea why and I’m and I got a I got a felony in DWI and according to Canadian law. Never go to Canada to go thank all of you personally.

Oh, dear. That’s very frustrating. But most of the really impactful things in my life have been based in Canada, and I never look for it to be that way. And now you’re my first guest, you’re Canadian.

How cool. So true hope, they were created because 1 of the co owners families had the whole family had bipolar disorder. Everybody was dying from it. And he shared a story. He shared his story with a friend in church.

Who was a pig farmer? And when he explained how his family was behaving, the farmer said. That sounds like nail or ear and tail biting syndrome. We get that in the pigs. They just start nipping at each other.

And he’s like, well, what do you do with them? We increase their minerals and their feed and it calms them right down. Wow. So that’s the very crude beginning to what is now a multimillion dollar nonprofit.

They help people all around the world, and they are the most research studied company of their kind, probably better than 50 percent of of which is a tax made on their science that once tested by official scientific entities, they’re only ever proven true.

And Well, think about it. There’s a lot of salt and lithium, isn’t there?

I don’t know about that. I just know lithium’s a heavy metal, and heavy metals are toxic they’re very poisonous. Lithium has a very narrow window of whatever they call that, where where it works well. It is a help.

Definitely, it is a help. But it’s such a narrow window to where it’s either doing nothing or it’s taut, you’re killing you. So Yeah. Well that’s the drug. I couldn’t tolerate. I had to be on it for a few years. I was on it too.

Yeah. But the 1 I take now, I just take 1 kind of prescription. I don’t want to get into what it’s called really. But, you know, I started taking vitamins and supplements 3 years ago. I went to a man that does integrative medicine.

He’s a pharmacist, and he understands drug interactions much better than the doctors. Yep. He said the prescription I was taking for bipolar was depleting vitamins and minerals from my body.

And now that it’s in balance, I I didn’t figure this out until a couple years ago. I used to get these really bad most soars. I called them canker soars, but they were 50 times worse.

They would last 2 to 3 weeks. They’d be on my tongue, my cheek, all over. I even had a biopsy. They were so bad. And now, since taking these natural vitamins and supplements, I only get 2 or 3 a year instead of 2 or 3 a month.

It’s an arrest thing. I had that happen in 88. I was stationed in South Korea. We were living in a field. We ate just short of garbage for 5 months. And then we’re all young and and just to put it simply, it was a party.

It was a nonstop party situation that happens a lot overseas. It’s like Vegas. It’s it’s it’s wild. And all we did was drink. And my mouth was full of sores all the time and our and our food was low quality.

The only time we ate well was when we bought it out in town. And That’s that’s it’s very interesting that I’m I’m glad you found that person. With true hope, they weren’t the only part.

They just had the greatest impact of fast there’s more things I did. Most of which is stuff I think anybody’s figured out about about how to live you gotta live well so that you’ve got a chance in this thing.

Like, it it’s 10 different things that you can’t do. And that’s why I came up with my 7 f’s, because I found they were some of the most important things. I needed to find friends and have fun again.

You know? But like you said, there are just vitamins and minerals I should have been taking all along and wasn’t taking. They found True All found, the last time I ever looked, they don’t know why. They just know it’s a thing.

Bipolar people compared to non bipolar people, we have a a vastly higher demand need for various nutrients than a non bipolar person. Like I said, the last I ever knew, they still did not know why that is, they just know it is.

So in in America they call it the RDA, the recommended daily allowance, which in its if you if you know anything about nutrition, the RDA is so off the mark across the board.

It’s healthier if you ignore it. But it sets some minimums at least that a lot of people don’t even reach the minimums.

And True Hope found out that we need a vastly larger amount of certain nutrients, but they need to be of a particular type and they need to be in a particular ratio.

Which they’re constantly testing and improving upon going back, I don’t know, 20, 30 years.

So I’m not They can’t cure everybody, but they have a a vastly higher success rate than psychiatry. Just put it that way. And I I implore people to at least go to truehold dot com and just look.

Just look. They have a section on the research that’s been done on them. It’s it’s mind blowing. They can prove everything they say. I have a lot of wonderful stories.

I worked with the company for years. And interestingly, I went to a period where I ran out of money. I couldn’t even afford the supplements, and I got very scared because I’d been under stuff nonstop for years, and I was, like, okay.

And I called them. I was like, what’s gonna happen to me? I’m like, well we don’t really know but call us if you get into a jam, you can always call and they have a wonderful support line that you can just you can be on it hours a day.

They just wind up my pole. Yeah. You can live on the phone with them, and they’ll help you get through anything you’re up against. They’re incredible what they do. And it turned out it was fine.

So I was like, what does that even mean? Because I know nutrition’s important and everything but I I as best I can tell, that was many years ago. I I do other supplements now, but and I don’t always eat the best now.

And I’m still good mentally. I I realized, I think they got me back up to a baseline and fortified me to where my body could start doing a better job of taking care of itself on its own.

I still take a bunch of nutrients and stuff, but I haven’t taken their main product in years. And I’m good. So I take them and like I said, I I hope people at investigate them.

It like I said, they can’t fix everybody and some people. From what I’ve been finding, there’s a certain amount of people, even with the best of everything across the board, still need a certain amount of meds.

And on that note, I found doctor Eamon. I don’t know if you ever heard of the Eamon clinic. Oh, yeah. So I found him years after I rebuilt myself my way. I found him. And he does this thing where he takes scans of people’s brains.

He’s been doing it for 30 years with some kind of technology that’s existed forever. He just uses it in a different fashion. It measures electrical activity and blood flow in the brain and it makes A3D picture.

Yep. And in a brain that’s missing blood flow or or electrical activity will have a black looks like a black like a piece of the brain’s been scooped out and it’s a hole. That’s how it looks in the picture.

He’s done over 200000 of these scans to wear a certain image automatically represents certain nutrients and and problems, and he can then prescribe what he likes do is everything non medicinal first, and that frequently is all it takes.

You never even get to meds.

And in in in the the harder cases, that he prescribes meds. But what he’s found through testing is when he does the non meds first, when it gets to the meds, it’s a much lower dose than you’d get at the psychiatrist.

I’ve never used doctor Eamon, but there’s some people in my life that I know could use as help.

And I my own brain scan because if I could do better, I wanna do better. That’s 1 of my dream goals. Go down to New York City. He’s just I’m just north of New York City.

That’s where he has a clinic. And I would I would highly suggest that people just go look at doctor Eamon before you just assume It’s me and meds and that’s my life and and you don’t try anything else.

I get that you or might need them a particular for your crisis or just really bad.

Yeah. Do whatever it takes to just survive and be okay. When you reach the point where you have some sort of capacity to think outside the box, looking at these things I’m talking about and just see.

I don’t know, but just see. Yeah. I actually I sent an email to the Eamon clinic about 6 months ago just to see how much it would cost and things. Because I would love to have that brain scan done as well.

I first saw him on on doctor Phil a couple years ago, So I’ve read 2 of his books. They were really, really interesting. And I just hope something like that comes to Canada soon.

Yeah. I’m sure it will because you’ve you’ve spoken a lot about energy and and the universe and spirituality. As as grim because I know this as grim as the world is, that’s what gets all the airtime on the news.

And 1 of the biggest health tips I could give you particularly if you’re suffering with bipolar, just turn the news off. That’s right. You can’t affect anything.

You’re informed and you’re full of terror and anger and opinions, and you can’t actually do anything with it, and most of us won’t even attempt to we’ll just complain and have our thoughts and feelings, and none of it’s good.

In comparison, equally incredibly good things are happening.

They just don’t get airtime. And I feel there is a paradigm shift happening globally that depending on where you’re at and why, it might get far more uglier yet, but it’s gonna equally get better.

And I believe we’re gonna crack through to some some other kind of understanding about how to be people in a civilization and make the earth work better because now we have to.

Everything’s dying, everything’s disintegrated, and everybody’s going crazy, and there are various ways of getting violent and aggressive, and blah blah blah.

I believe this is all a precursor. It’s birth. It’s a precursor to something really awesome, but people like us, you and I and people that like and follow us and care about us, it’s up to us to push the issue a little bit.

To believe that we can become something better, And I think people like you and I that have faced what we’ve faced, we’re the catalyst for the right people. 1 of the 1 of the things I I offer with what I do.

I can’t I draw people to me that are doing really incredible things that are way outside my pay grade or comprehension. I just wanna help them pull it off. Right. I don’t know anything about what they’re doing.

A lot of them are doing far better in life than I am. But they need someone that’s walked a walk to help them. They need a coach. Yeah. Because they’re in tricky waters with some new thing they’re doing up on their stellar level.

But they still need a the human touch and somebody didn’t just keep them stable and be and have their back with that support so they can achieve these things.

And I think you’re building something similar. I think when more and more and more people live in love instead of fear, that’s when the world will change. Yes. Wars are caused by fear. Fear they’re not gonna have their land.

They can’t control their people. You know? And 1 newscast that I watch most nights, it will have 5 minutes at the end of a really nice good news story of somebody doing something really good in the world.

Yeah. And I think we’re slowly teaching our kids it’s better to be kind than a bully, you know? Yeah. Yes. You see kids raising money for nonprofits by having lemonade stands or different things.

And, you know, I didn’t see those things when I was growing up. You know? There were more bullies around, I think, the nice kids’ and school it seemed.

And I just think when we live in love instead of fear, that’s when the world will change. Like Gary Zukov says to change the world you have to change yourself. Right. And and then that’s a take off on Gandhi.

Be to be the change you wish to see. Yeah. Wish to see in others. Yeah. I’d heard that for years and then there was no moment that I remember, but there was a point where I realized I’m really starting to believe that like never for.

Yeah. And then it it causes you to look even harder in the mirror because I’ll go hard at something and it’s not effective.

And at some point it’s like, I don’t know that you and I looking in the mirror, I don’t know that you and I are doing this.

Right? Do we we made me a little wrong about something. Like, let’s just humbly look and see if there’s a better plan of attacking this because this ain’t working.

That’s hard to do but really healthy if you can get a handle on it. I know your point about turning the TV off is so true. I thought The less TV I watch, the more inspiration I get from the universe, God, my so.

The energy that’s out there. Yes. Yeah. You’re open. You’re not distracted. Yeah. Like, now from Monday to Friday, my TV does not come on until at least noon.

No radio in the morning. I used to turn the radio on. I don’t even turn that on. So I have 4 hours of just me doing my thing. I still have a couple clients. I’m a virtual assistant for us, so I have to work for them.

But at least I have that 4 hours where I’m not distracted by TV or radio. It’s just my thoughts and whatever I’m doing that day. And I’m gonna slowly extend it on Some days, I can go till 02:00 without turning on the TV.

But some days, I need a distraction by noon. And Yeah. Yeah. The more time you spend in silence, the more inspiration you’re going to get, But what on what you’re on this earth to do? Yeah. Yeah.

Most of us are too distracted and and and to deal with that and even dealing with limiting the news or anything else that could negatively impact your your mental well-being I also tell people I’m like, just baby steps and chunk it out.

Don’t attack absolutely everything all at once. It’s like going to the gym, putting on all the weight you think can handle and then doing 40 reps of it.

Now you’re in the hospital because you blew everything to the ribbons with your enthusiasm to be physically fit. Don’t do that. Pick 1 a pick 1 tiny thing, particularly if you’re struggling to get anything done.

Pick the smallest thing that would would result in a win. Absolute smallest, and don’t don’t look down on it when you’ve achieved it. If all you did was clean off your desk.

Or just subtly arrange it in a more organized fashion, and that’s all you can pull off for today. You’re just 1. That’s right. Yeah. It was a mess a minute ago, and and and celebrate that because it builds.

Yeah. It does. For sure it builds momentum. But, yeah, doing 1 small think task a day, if that’s all you can handle, congratulate yourself. Yes. There are many times. If I just went for a 20 minute walk, that was all that.

The extra effort I could do that day when I was depressed. Yeah, I agree, just any any achievement is an achievement. And and when you stack them up before you know it, you got a lot of achievements.

And after a bit, without you even really seeing it, it becomes a way of living and thinking and seeing things. And you’ll start noticing improvements elsewhere that you weren’t even focused on.

Because a feed it’s it spreads out and it feeds other things for the better. And you just gotta take my word for it and lens word for it. This is how it works. It just happens. If you stick with this ridiculous little simple plan.

That’s for sure. Well, Lynn, we’re coming up on an hour and a half Mark. So I want I had 2 questions for you. 1 is to help my listeners who are building out a passion project or a big vision of any sort.

And so I’m gonna I’m gonna ask you as far as networking how so they understand. How did you find me and why did you feel like reaching out to me? I believe I Googled Podcast Mental Health.

And I believe that’s how I found your podcast. I just started emailing everybody that did podcasts for mental health. I did 2 podcasts in May with different people. Now they weren’t They’re life coaches, basically.

Yeah. They don’t really specifically talk about mental health, but because it was mental health month. It was perfect timing. Sure. So, yes, I just Google podcasts mental health or bipolar disorder.

I think I messaged you on LinkedIn. I don’t Yes. I must have found your website. Why wouldn’t I have messaged you on your website? You might have found the old website. Okay. You might have found outsiders’ journey, which I retired.

It’s still there with a holder, with a placeholder And that now, if you click on the image here, you just go to my new site, bipolar Excellence, but I got a feeling you found me while I was in transit.

I was in transition And I was idling for about 2 years. I I got stuck. And I wasn’t sure where I was taking all of this. And and I hired some coaches and just pondered and it just took 2 years and then it became you and you and I today.

Well, that’s kinda what I’m doing this year. Taking the time to figure out where I’m moving forward in my life. And like I said, I just hired somebody to self publish the f book again.

Professionally, so it’ll be on sale on Amazon and a couple other sites soon in September. And I’m working on my success coaching I’m not gonna call them workshops. It’s gonna be 1 on 1 on Zoom or in person.

However, the person is comfortable. It’ll be 9 sessions, and we’ll cover each of us during the session. And what I say about my 7 f’s is just take 1 of those f’s and do whichever 1 is the easiest for you to do to start with.

You know, it might be just praying every day, or it could be talking to a family member, you know, take the f that’s the easiest to start with and do it first.

You know, most people are gonna have a couple of them in place already their lives.

But — Right. — baby steps. That’s for sure. That’s what got me healthy. Well, and then this segues us nicely into the second question. What is it you’d like to share with with the world?

Where websites or anything you’d like people to know to go and learn more about you. I don’t have a website at the moment. They can contact me at my email. It’s lynn LYNN at my journey back to myself dot ca or dot com.

It doesn’t matter. I will be getting a website going at some point in the next few months, but Because 1 of my topics is finances, I’m always very careful to stay in budget now.

Right. And I’m not gonna spend 10 or 15000 dollars on something until I’m a hundred percent clear that, yes, this is where I’m going and there’s no turning back. Like, I’m a hundred percent clear on the success coach and the f book.

But like I said, I can’t do everything at once? No. So it’s baby steps for me. I’m putting out YouTube every week. Right? Now I’m talking about a different f every week.

They’re all between 1 and 1 and a half minutes. They’re not very long. So I do have a YouTube channel people can go to. What what is the name of that channel? What’s what’s the website? I’ve been on it.

III just don’t even know for sure what the name of it is. I’ll tell you what I’ll do because when this is all done, you’ll get a page on my website for this podcast episode and in it, I put links to whatever needs I’ll link.

And I I have your channel. I don’t remember the name either. So I can definitely Well, it says youtube dot com slash channel, and then there’s a whole bunch of letters and numbers after it.

It doesn’t even have my name on there. Okay. So Maybe there’s a way I can put my name on. There is. There is. Okay. I’ll figure that out. I’m not tech savvy. This is my problem.

Baby steps. Baby steps. Well Now the the tech stuff just goes wild. I mean, it’s it’s almost like a rabbit hole. It can go as far as you feel like taking it. It’s Okay. I’m just gonna make a note here. YouTube changed to my name.

Somebody else is using my name as well, like they have the name Lynn Ray. So I have to figure out how to differentiate it. Well, since I would I would suggest since bipolar is your is that that’s your main topic still or no?

Well, Yes and no, like the 7 f’s can apply to anybody that wants to make changes in their life. Well, I would suggest just think of a keyword that applies to everybody that might be a client of yours and put that before your name.

My journey, Lynn Ray. That’s easy. That’s the obvious 1 for me because I have a book by Yeah. That’s cool ties into your book.

Yeah. Alright. Alright. It was That went well. It was really nice talking to you, Ken. Thank you very much for having me on today. Thanks for finding me in the first place because you you kickstarted the machine.

And let’s keep in touch. Yeah definitely. I’d I’d like to have Yanna and we just cover some new things with maybe more specificity, whatever new things you’re up to.

That that I Yeah. In the fall. When I’ve got some more things in place. Whenever you’re ready. And I’m gonna check out how you managed to stay off application on your website.

I’ll read that thoroughly over the weekend. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. And I’ll be adding to the website this weekend and now you’re gonna get put in there probably within the next week.

So Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. You’re welcome, Lynn. Well, thanks, Ken. Be well. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Take care, Lynn. Bye. So that was me interviewing Lynn Ray.

She was very nice. I thought the podcast went well. I’ll get better with this as I go. I I thought that was great. There’s things that I’m I’m looking to achieve that I haven’t yet learned how to do within an interview.

This was my first 1. Essentially, I want it to be as conversational as possible. I think what Lynn and I did in here was fantastic. We each she got to tell her whole story and make make all her most powerful points.

And I was able to back those up with my comparable stories, anything that related, give a con give different things context. And what I’m what I’m working on now for those of you who are show builders and and training.

Now I’m trying to figure out how to gracefully end Gas with the little bit of post after interview bit. And I really got nothing. I just wanted to something there. I I couldn’t even think this out in my head as much as I needed to.

I just said fuck it. I’m just gonna wing it. And winging is now happening your ears. So forgive me for not being more professional with that, and I don’t really care because as I’m always telling you guys, Perfection will kill you.

Just go. Go. Go. Just keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving. If you worry and fret and freak out over every little thing trying to make it perfect.

You’ll never get anything done. Years of experience speaking to you right now. Once again, go to bipolarexcellence dot com, look in the footer of the website for the author series to get directly to Lynn.

And it is episode 45, if you’re looking for it in some other fashion on the site. Guys, thanks for tuning in. My numbers are growing.

I’m about to crack a thousand downloads, and I really only kicked this thing off a couple months ago. I don’t know who you all are, but I’m glad you’re hanging in there. Most of you are listening to full episodes, most of you.

That’s incredible. I’ll get better at this and hopefully even as I trip and stumble and flub things, it’s some kind of entertaining. Besides being helpful. Alright. Little doctor Phil on the end or something. Ramlin, see you later.