Bret Warshawsky and Rob, both with bipolar disorder and psychosis, argue that living through severe mental illness gives them expertise psychiatrists lack. Rob distinguishes empathy from compassion and says most psychiatrists don't take the medications they prescribe, while he does, giving him an insider view of conditions like bipolar that can resemble OCD, autism, and schizophrenia.
Perhaps similar to you with what happened in your 20s. Like when I look back at it, I'm like, wow, this was quite a— I got to get a perspective on something that few people get to really understand. And I feel like I have like an empathetic bridge I can form just because, you know, you go deeper than what the general population does with stuff like this.
That's exactly how I describe bipolar. Number one, it's, it's, If you look at the word, we get to experience every state from between the highest and lows, from, you know, to suicidal depression, which is near death. You have the similar— can have the similar experiences that you're talking about, just in altered states in a way. And then it's manic and hypomanic and psychotic, you know. And bipolar also, as an interesting side note, I actually temporarily experienced like OCD, autism, schizophrenia. It's almost a catch-all for every perceived mental illness because of the nature of consciousness going, expanding and contracting around the spectrum of consciousness. That's the way I would frame it as a narrative. And I spent so much time doing it, like you're saying, I'm an expert in psychosis and suicidal depression, which doesn't make me special, but it makes me an expert.
Yeah.
And I'm able to actually have empathy in the truest form of the word, which is putting yourself in another person's shoes. Yes, where compassion is different. I'm working on compassion. That's a different thing. But empathy, which people don't relate to and find scary about me, is that I can put myself in the shoes of a psychopath or like some nasty, perceived nasty things or, or sad things because I've actually been there.
Yes.
Temporarily. So I can identify almost in a way with someone who might be— I mean, it's hard to say, like a pedophile or a murderer. It's not that I do that or have those thoughts, but I was controlled by my thoughts and my impulses and got messages from the TV and like impulsive things. So I can easily see when you're in shadow or if you have a wound from your childhood or hate and anger about things. And then you mix that with psychosis and not sleeping and all that, that you will— The signals you get from the environment is what you act on. So people don't usually question when they wake up and brush their teeth, like, am I in reality? That's just, you accept it, you know. But when you're psychotic and you've experienced like I do, you start to think about like things like that and question everything, like in a way, and your own sanity. So it is very similar really to what you're talking about.
Wow, brother.
And it's true that it doesn't make you special, but I have insight into something that— because a lot of people like me don't come back from that, number one, you know. And number two, not many people go through it and have the, thank God, great, you know, grace of God, the actual intelligence and like life paths who have actually been studying it while it was happening to me. So unlike any—
Yeah.
Unlike any psychiatrist in the world who doesn't take their own medicines that they give, which is a major issue. Like if you don't take the medicines you give to other people and you're able to, which is the odd thing, because obviously you can't work on your heart if you don't have a bad valve. The interesting thing with psychiatrics, just as a note for you, is that like Seroquel, antidepressants, all the antipsychotics, Thorazine, they actually are something you can take For a month or two without destroying yourself if you really wanted to know how it affected people. And no psychiatrist does that. Um, so I'm in a very unique position.
Ah, that's it exactly. Oh, I'm so, I'm so grateful to, to see you, see that you've come full circle and you have that bridge because yeah, it's almost like a shorthand for understanding a reality, right? It's just like you can pick a little symptom of someone else And you have a whole map of like their pain body and like what they're going to be going through that they're not going to be able to articulate the specifics of. So yeah, yeah, I understand. Excellent.
