In this spoken commentary, psychologist Tom Guarriello, Ph.D., reflects on his extensive experience working in institutional and community mental health settings with severely mentally ill individuals. He describes how watching SilentMeow’s YouTube videos—particularly the “In My Language” response—evoked powerful, wordless connections reminiscent of his early career moments with patients, highlighting the transformative nature of such encounters. Guarriello emphasizes the importance of recognizing the personhood and dignity of those who differ from neurological norms, urging viewers to watch SilentMeow’s channel to confront ingrained social prejudices and gain insight into lives otherwise inaccessible. He concludes with heartfelt gratitude to SilentMeow for her courageous sharing, framing the videos as a vital educational and empathetic resource.
Chapters
Well, good morning, it's Tom Guarriello. You know, we all see a lot of remarkable videos here on YouTube. I think remarkable in all kinds of senses of the word. But I've just finished watching a series of videos that truly are remarkable, to me anyway. And they're SilentMeows videos. Thanks to Perry for pointing me to Silent Meow, and her— the video on "In My Language" that Perry made a video response for is really one of the most remarkable pieces I've seen, certainly on YouTube, or maybe anywhere. Some of you know that I'm a psychologist by training and I worked in institutions. I worked in institutions for about 6 years and then for about an additional 14 years worked in community mental health. The institutions that I worked in were institutions for the severely mentally ill. And so we had responsibilities for treatment of thousands of people who were in the most extreme situations that human beings can be in. Their intellectual and emotional and behavioral capacities were extraordinarily different than what Silent Meow calls the neurological norm. And I was a young man when I started working in those institutions. I was 21. And listening to— and listening and watching— listening to and watching Silent Meow's videos took me back to those first days of being in the midst of a large number of people who were as dramatically different from the everyday people that we come in contact with as we experience Silent Now to be. And that's quite an experience to go through as a young person. It was, you know, it's transformative. You can't ever if you allow the experience to really have an impact on you, you can't really ever be the same after that because you've been with people, in relationships with people, relationships that are characterized by moments that you don't have anywhere else in the world. Moments of just sitting silently with someone and experiencing a connection that you can't really explain to somebody else because you can't really put it into words. It's just sort of something that, you know, would happen. Relationships that were, you know, just remarkable. Remarkable in every sense. And listening to Silent Meow and watching Silent Meow articulate her experience of her personhood and herself. It was just moving, just deeply moving. And I guess the point that I wanted to make was that it's, it's so simple. To make judgments and to exclude others on the basis of judgments, to deny others, you know, the very simple kinds of rights and basic human dignity that we expect for ourselves, to deny those things to others on all kinds of bases. And, you know, here's a woman who's remarkably telling her story of herself in ways that, you know, we're unlikely to ever see or hear elsewhere. So I just think if you have a couple of minutes and want to go watch some of the most remarkable videos that you've ever seen, please go over and take a look at Silent Meow's channel and let the very complex messages that she's— the very complex things that she's saying about herself, about us, about our ingrained, deeply ingrained beliefs, the things that are, you know, in our ears and in our eyes, like the Beatles said, about Penny Lane. You know, experience what she's saying and think about what it means, because I think it's a very important message that she's sending to us here. So take care and see you again soon. Bye-bye. Oh, and in the immortal words of Chairman Steve Jobs, one more thing. Silent Meow. I don't know how to thank you for making these videos and putting your experience out there so clearly for us all to see and to present an opportunity for us to understand what it's like to live the life that you live. It's a courageous and very generous thing of you to do this. So thank you very, very much from me, and I'm sure from many others who are just getting an insight that we couldn't get any other way without you doing what you're doing. So thank you very much.
