Critiques on Psychiatry; Jungism and Spirituality (feat Olive)

This is examination of consciousness. Alright, so our first episode is going to cover a lot of things about mental health, psychiatry, so just a trigger warning, we are going to discuss not at length, but we're going to mention some triggering topics such as lobotomies, depression, and suicide, so be warned. Okay, sweet. I'm going to start off. Okay, so basically, I was doing this podcast, like, about two years ago, since then, a lot's happened with my mental health, and I'm looking to kind of restart that as I'm like stepping back into myself, and so I thought, now that I'm going to go super into my whole break, I've talked to you personally about that, but I think a good kind of starting like episode to get back into it would be mental health. You and I have had numerous conversations about mental health at different periods of my life, so that what better guests to have than all of, so all of, if you wouldn't mind sitting your name in your pronouns, and a short little brief thing about yourself. My name is Olive, she/her. Yeah, I met Alice during college, she was my neighbor. We went to UC Davis. I have a bachelor's in sociology with an emphasis in social work. Since graduation, I've done a lot of research on my point of interest. I am a yoga teacher, actually certified. I just got my teacher training, and I did a lot of research on specifically Chinese masculinity. From now, it's kind of like researching social work and potentially getting a master's in social work very soon, so it'll be good. I also work with kids on the spectrum. I'm at the moment, and I volunteer with a hospice. Yeah. Two very different types of jobs, and I feel like you have such an interesting like so many different research interests, and a lot of different experience in like sociology, especially in just like working and helping people at very intense stages of their life. So I feel like you could like a very interesting perspective. All right, to get us started, I thought I'd do like a brief little, just kind of touch on some of like the intro into psychology, or kind of like the history of psychology. And feel free to stop me whenever when you have thoughts, or you want to kind of expand upon some of this. So I'll just get started. I have normal psychology can be traced back as far as the prehistoric times, examining prehistoric schools, or real the holes in the skull, queuing us in in the process of trepidation. A very early hit prehistoric treatment, which holes were grilled into the skull, with a stone instrument called a truffin in order to allow evil spirits to escape a person's mind. This was 6,500 BC. And then traditional Chinese medicine attributed mental affliction to the imbalance of positive and negative forces, getting in yang. So this is a concept that everything exists in balance. There's no light day without night. There's no life without death, no good without bad. This was around the 2,700 BC. And the concept of bodily imbalance drives Chinese medicine today, the concept of heat. Hey, which is a buildup of too much heat, and it's counterpart length. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Leng, like lung, it's called this lung. Sorry, that was like lung. No, no, no, no, lung. Okay, lung, a buildup of too much cold, Egyptian and Mesopotamian culture. They had the belief that, or the belief originated, that mental affliction of women was attributed to a wandering uterus. This is hysteria. Apparently, the uterus could become dislodged and reattached to, or wrong parts of women's bodies. So the Egyptians would use odor substances to guide the uterus back to its correct location. This was around 1,900 BC. And then Hippocrates from 460 to 377 BC, he developed the idea of the four humors. This was developed further by Galen, a Greek physician. So he didn't attribute mental affliction to evil spirits, so rather, again, an imbalance of the four humors, bodily fluids that determined a person's temperament. So blood was hot and wet, yellow bile was hot and dry, black bile was cold and dry, and flamm was cold and wet. Each humor was associated with a season and when producing excess, a temperament. Melancholic people, who were overly gloomy or self-critical, had too much black bile, choleric people, who were bad tempered, had too much yellow bile, sanguine people who were optimistic and maybe manic, had too much blood and flammatic people who were stoic and unemotional, had too much, you guessed it, flamm. The way to treat these mental afflictions was to balance out these humors. For example, an overly temperamental person was considered to have too much blood. And so the treatment for this was bloodletting or draining a person with blood with leeches. This treatment bloodletting remained popular until the 1800s and may have claimed the life of George Washington. The theory of bloodletting was also adapted by Islamic physicians, the Persian scholar Avisena associated the four humors, hot, cold, moist dry, with a morbid state functional power, sensation, physiological symptom and treatment. So my first question to you is, although we've moved away from humorism, the concept of bodily imbalance still drives Chinese medicines today. This concept involved balancing hot foods, which are fried, oily, spicy, and then animals with high mobility, like chicken, beef, or lamp, and fruits like durian, mango, leechy, and peach with cold foods, foods grown in water, animals with low mobility, like pigs, and fruits like watermelon, megastine, and orange. What do you think about the concept of imbalance causing mental or even physical ailment? And how much validity do you think this concept holds? Well, thanks for putting out together for what. Oh, I was fine. I actually didn't really know much about Mesopotamian culture and the wandering uterus, but actually growing up, my mom would always talk about eat hay and, yeah, it's kind of crazy, because, you know, it's actually, because eat hay is actually Cantonese. Oh, yeah, her, my grandpa, or her, my mom's grandpa, was actually a Chinese medicine doctor, so she, and so she learned a lot about this, the concept of, like, there's like the heat and the cool, right? And then you essentially have, like, these bounces in your body, and like, you use food, or herbs, or medicine to try and, like, bounce the body. So growing up, I did, I did, honestly, hear a lot about that, and I think that's honestly what really informs my perspective, like, traditional Chinese medicine. Yeah, so it's kind of, I was like, dang, that's so funny that you are talking about that, because, yeah, I, I have not heard of it, like, I've had anyone else talking about that. I don't know about it, because, Ren, Karen, she brought it up to us, like, a couple of years ago, I've never heard about it before, it was such an interesting idea, like, runs with foods. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, definitely, I mean, but I think, like, that kind of conception of, I think it's like the understanding of the body and the mind is as one, because granted, that we know significantly more, and also we don't know much, also we don't know much about the brain in the grand scheme of things, but I think it's like, there was this idea that you treat, you treat the whole, like, you don't treat the part, and like I said, granted, we know a lot more, and I'm not, and I think science has its place, of course, in terms of, like, psychology and isolating the brain. I think that's what modern psychology kind of gets to, and I also think, like, modern psychiatry, right, more common than not. It's, we kind of treat, oh, when you're, when you're depressed, right, like, most likely you have like a serotonin imbalance, you know, if I'm pretty sure a lot of developmental disorders are rooted in parts of your brain evolving, I can't be quite sure. I don't really, I honestly don't really study, like, biocyc. Honestly, that's not really my, like, cup of tea. I'm definitely more interested in social factors and social determinants of health, and I mean, I think like, you know, a lot of these, like, examining prehistoric schools, what are the socially acceptable, the socially normative ways in which we decide to treat these ailments? It'd be also interesting to think about, like, how do we describe what is abnormal and normal, right? Especially about then, or, or now, you know, and, you know, I definitely think, I mean, now, right? Like, there's psychiatry, there's the talking here, there's therapy. I think psychology is, and I think there's a new frontier of treatments that goes kind of into the realm of the original sort of thought. I mean, for, whether or not safe, like, you know, I think that's case-by-case, but yeah, I think, I think, like, people are kind of starting to realize that your body, I don't know if you've, like, seen on Instagram, like, oh, you have to start balancing your nervous system, you know, like, somatic work. Yeah, essentially, in very niche fields, it used to be, like, a very small amount of people, and they were considered woo-woo, essentially saying that a lot of, there are physical ailments, and they really affect your nervous system, and you're, yeah, a lot of mental afflictions are, are directly related to that, like, either, like, informing it or being informed. So I think there's a push to that, and, you know, it's also just, like, thinking about, like, the system that we live in now, is it, I think, the real question is, like, is it profitable to, to tell people about this? Like, in America, I think, specifically, you know, is it profitable to tell people to start eating more simple foods, balanced foods, like, healthy fresh foods, like, who has access to that, you know? So I think it's like more, I mean, honestly, in my opinion, it's more of, like, societal problem, you know, it's like, who's telling us this information? Where are we getting it? You know, where are we getting the foods? Like, who's delivering it to these people? Why can't they actually get it? So I think that's, I mean, I just think, like, you know, these methods, you know, like, the bio, and then the food, and then the school drilling, like, they're just like, they're also, like, you know, products of its time too. You know, and now we have, like, resources, we have, like, science, money, our conception is just, like, very much shaped by these, like, our, our place in history. You just touched on so many things that I wanted to talk to you about over the course of this episode, but yes, I completely agree. I think I don't really have much of a biocyte background, like one biocyte class, and it was like, the, like, it was cool, but it was like the worst ever at the same time. Yeah, it tends, yeah, it's interesting to think, oh, the cave people did the whole whole drilling, the treffining, and it cut the prefrontal cortex for the breast of the brain. But more interesting than that is, why did they think to do this? Why was this a treatment for what disorders? And why, what kind of societal circumstances lay the foundation for that sort of concept to come back and to be popularized? And then the same thing you were talking about before, which I'm going to touch on with you later, is I was discussing my sister in preparation of this. We were, like, both agreeing that, like, I think the whole field of psychiatry, I think we've come a long way, but it's so binary, and it, that's really hard for a lot of mental afflictions that exist very much on a spectrum. Like, it's not like, she said that someone had told her, like, everyone's like a little OCD. At what point are you diagnosing and prescribing medicine for to treat an or disorder or not? Because it really isn't a binary. And I think that is a fundamental problem that we're going to get into with the field of psychiatry is like, and I think that has to kind of do with that podcast you recommended me last year as well. Like, like, we're really diagnosis forward. We're very labeling forward. And so I think, yeah, it's like many, many points that are really interesting to be back there. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd say that, like, with the, in terms of the sort of, like, things in imbalance sort of situation with you, I think it's so interesting that view and how it's, well, it makes sense that you have heard about this so much. And that was a big part. When you were taught about, hey, did it, was it restrained to kind of like, my tummy hurts? Or like, those sort of problems, or was it like, physiological, mental, like depression was related to you as well. I'm wondering, like, what the extent of this is. Oh, it was definitely like psychological too, or really, I mean, gosh, it would be like, you know, if I told her I was depressed, she'd be like, you just like, have too much heat in your body, or like, you have, you know, I mean, it, you know, it's very much tied to like your mental state, like how angry you are is another one. Like she, like, yeah, she, she, she definitely embodied it, which, I mean, I just looking back, I'm like, that's really interesting. And also, it's more than just that, you know, yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. I mean, I've been, I've had the PMO this weekend, I've been so frustrated, maybe I'm just gonna drink from water. Or one thing I was interested in, that friend brought up was Coca-Cola is on the cold side or, or one of the other. And I didn't, it was someone where I didn't expect it to be. Yeah, I, I think it's very, like, I think there are definitely some staple, like, that we've agreed upon for many generations, like, oh, you know, this is this, and this is this, but, you know, like, who gets, like, who gets this decide? Yeah, who's the authority? Yeah, I mean, I think it is like, in a lot of ways, it probably is like folk medicine, you know, and it's like that folk medicine, I think, is, can be subjective at sometimes and, like, up to, up to, like, the family, right? Or, like, the person. And I mean, I actually do think there's a lot of traditional Chinese medicine schools in China. And I actually, I haven't really looked into it. I think, I think they are blending these, the, the traditional, more esoteric elements with, like, studies, essentially. So I, so they're, like, using, like, a acupuncture and, like, moxia, which is, like, I, like, smoke, I think, to treat, like, certain conditions, and then they, like, run, they run studies on them, you know, it's like, what's the effectiveness of this? But, yeah. And are those also, are those also, like, psychological afflictions as well? Or is it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. I mean, I think it's, I think it's also different, right? Like, the conception of psychology and, like, the brain is just so different in, like, different countries, you know? So who know? I mean, I don't exactly know how much, like, how much of it goes into psychology. But I think the general consensus is, like, you know, you take care of your body, like, first, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Kind of, like, a holistic approach. Not just, like, yeah. Oh, my, I don't know. STEM makes been hurting really bad. Like, I'm just gonna focus on what to eat. It's kind of like a whole system sort of that. Yeah. And I feel like that definitely has a merit. Yeah. I mean, when you go to a Chinese medicine doctor, they, like, first thing they do is they take your, like, they read your tongue. It's a really big part. Like, like, they look at, like, lines and coloring of your tongue. And then they'll, they'll see how that relates to the rest of your body, like, like, the other parts, like, the kidney, a heart. And then, you know, it's, you, I mean, like, if you go to, like, you know, if you go to just, like, some random Chinese medicine, like, medicine person, like, if you go to, like, like, Ranch 99 or like, they have them out here or in the bay, you know, like, just randomly, you can just go in and get, like, they'll just read your blood. They have a pharmacist at Ranch 99. Some of them, yeah, they do. Really? I did not know that. That's crazy. Yeah. It's chill. It's chill. It's chill. Time to, um, that's so funny. Okay. Jumping forward in time. Portuguese neurologists, uh, I hope I'm pronouncing this right. Agas Manez. Uh, he popularized lobotomies as a treatment for obsessive behavior. So the lobotomy involved, essentially, pushing a sharp instrument called a lucetone into the brain to cut connections between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain. He noticed immediate dramatic improvements. So in the 30s and 40s, many lobotomies were performed to treat a whole host of illnesses like schizophrenia and depression and mental hospital patients. Uh, Moniz even won the Nobel Peace Prize for his invention and his collaborated Dr. Walter Freeman continued to popularize the treatment, performing more than 4,000 lobotomies. Interestingly enough, although most institutionalized patients were men, it was mostly women who were treated with lobotomies. When we consider the time period, it makes sense why this was such a popular treatment for women. In the 50s, women were expected to be demeanor, obedient, and domestic, generally adhering to a strict gender image. Emotional or physical deviation from this gender image like ambition or a general unkemptness was enough for a woman to be recommended to lobotomy. Through investigation of long-term effects, we're not cited in validating this treatment and instead quotes report from these women's husbands to support its effectiveness. When asked if his wife's lobotomy was helpful, one man said she has acceptable skills making meals and packing the children's lunches. This tells us about the dangers of a misogyny and implicit bias when promoting any medical treatment. And this was pretty common for that time. A list of reasons for admissions to West Virginia's hospital for the insane and the 1800s included laziness, masturbation, mental excitement, and novel reading. Historical disorders, which were again associated with the reuterous have roots in the ancient Egyptian times, but they persisted into the modern era. Historia, a now defunct medical term in the 1800s or early 1900s, referred to any mental ailment to a woman experience from headaches to depression to mood swings. Treatment for this illness involved a doctor simply getting in there and essentially pleasuring a woman to climax, which was referred to a hysterical proxiesum. Many believe that vibrators were popularized as a treatment for hysteria. So this research made me think about how implicit bias, especially with regards to perception of women, influences treatment. If my last year occurred in the 50s, I might be lobotomized by now. We've made some huge strides since then, but the field of psychiatry isn't perfect. This reminds me of the podcast you recommended me last year back from the borderline. How the episode specifically, how psychiatry became the fast food of mental health treatments, exposing systemic failures and hidden agendas with doctor Roger McPhillin. In the podcast, the host Molly and McPhillin discuss the oversimplification of psychological suffering, which is used to market psychiatric medicine. Hashtag Big Pharma. And so my question is, I know you have your own problems about DSM-5 and a general diagnosis. The disorder focused view of mental health. Can you speak more on that? Yeah. Well, first of all, I just want to say, I I would definitely also be, I would be admitted for like so many. Yeah, that's right. Honestly, deranged masturbation is crazy. That's crazy. What does what does it even mean? What is the range masturbation? Not eating or two years. Wait, tobacco. I like that masturbation and syphilis is different from masturbation for three years. And then also tobacco and masturbation. Perhaps over action of the mind, oversteady religion. God, it's yeah, fell from horse in war is really great too. Shooting of daughter. God. Okay, maybe that person should have been admitted. There's like reasons, though. I mean, I don't, I feel like these were like people, these were like real people. And then they just ended up listening the reasons why, you know, like it wasn't like a pre-made list, I think. It wasn't like a like, if you ever fought fire, you must be admitted. This is just like why they. Yeah, I think so. Honestly, now that I'm reading it. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think I definitely do have qualms with the DSM 5 and I think most, I think a lot, like I think a lot of people that have kind of a newer like understanding of mental health. I mean, think, think that as well. I mean, I also like, I also hesitate to take it too far because I mean, I also think like they're there probably has been some good that has come out of it. You know, and also like, I hesitate to say, I mean, I think it like, I think diagnoses really bring people comfort. And if they want that, you know, they should, they should feel entitled to have that, you know, but essentially, like, I told you before, which I think my friend a long time ago, my friend, like we were talking about this and he brought this up to me and I kind of changed my view on this, you know, labels and, you know, are essentially, I think one of their function is to help other people understand you, you know, it's to help other people digest what's happening, to have clarity, to like feel like, you know, some sort of control about your, about their perception of you. And I think that's something that we, you know, we all think of. I mean, I think like, you know, one common way of thinking about things like you have, like a parent who's kind of mean or like, I mean, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to like say that you shouldn't, like there's obviously like abuse abuse, but, you know, you have like a parenting style that are very different. And now we kind of call that like narcissism, right? We, like, like, but also it's like, like, that's like a mental disorder, right? Like for whatever reason, like, but also it's like very cultural. What are, like, who, like, and like societal and interpersonal, right? Like, is there, you know, like, who's telling you, you know, like, that these things are okay? Like, what are this, what are like these sources in your life, you know? And it's like important to take those in account. And like the DSM 5 is like, oh, very much like Western culture, right? Like, oh, like there's, there is a correct way to live. Like in anything beyond that is like, seen as wrong. And I mean, I think like the purpose of the DSM 5 now is a lot of people just use it for insurance. I mean, that's what I'm, I'm, I'm my therapist who I'm, I'm actually very, I'm very close with. And she's a social worker and she's like really inspired me to, like, inspired my path. She, we always talk about how like using the DSM 5 is very sometimes degrading and can be dehumanizing. But also like you, essentially, you know, you need to have a diagnosis from the DSM 5 to put into insurance in order to get money from insurance, you know? So real, real. Like, so I mean, in that sense, it's like what, like what the purpose of the DSM 5 is because of our system, which is the, I mean, the medical model, right? And you were saying something that I was like thinking about psychiatry. Yeah, I mean, it's like the thing is the, the medical model is very like, it's very interesting, you know, these psychiatrists and doctors are trained in a certain way. Like, I mean, that's just like fact, they, they come from like this Western model, which is very much like about diagnosis and treatments and inevitable like recovery or like there's an ending, you know? And they, they, you know, they go off of research, essentially, right? Like, and they're training. And which I, you know, I think, I mean, I think there's a lot of great things about, you know, modern medicine and but also like, you know, our psychiatrists like are like they look at mental issues through the lens of psychiatry, which, which in also like drugs, right? Which is like, I would never, you know, demonize life saving chemicals and at all. And I think it's very necessary for a lot of people, you know, and also there is a history of like over prescribing, right? And like, this, this come, this, and overall, I mean, it just comes from this like, from a, I actually, I think I come from a very material approach, right? Where it's like, we don't have access to like clean water, food, we have to work these oppressive jobs, right? Most people I know have mental, mental afflictions, right? I don't know anyone who doesn't have a generalized anxiety disorder, you know, like everyone has it. And I think, you know, in order to keep the system going, like, you got to like keep the people like at least some sort of like, at some sort of baseline, you know? Yeah. So do them somehow pass it by, I mean, yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's not in a way that's like reptilian overlords, but just more like capitalism. Many would argue that some of our capitalist leaders are reptilian overlords, just kidding, just kidding, just kidding, just kidding, just kidding, just, they're just like, you got to go, you got to do that 40 hour work week, you know? You got to like, and before then, right? It's like, oh, you got to have a nuclear family, like your wife's got to go and cook and like, you know, got to go clean the house and like hang out with the kids, you know? But now it's like, you have to be like alert and well enough to like get your ass up and go to work. It's, yeah, I mean, I just think it's like a product of just the times, you know, and like, yeah. Yeah, dude, hit on so many great points. First of all, like the, I think that was a really good point you've said that, you know, these labels and these categories are, they can be really helpful for a person to understand themselves and to feel maybe a sense of community, but they're also a way for this outgroup or whatever to maybe other you to maybe like understand you or have a way of identifying you, which can be harmful. I think about like, I mean, on a last year's scale, I think like, or maybe a greatest, I don't know, I feel like sexuality or like queerness in general or gender expression. I feel like those labels can sometimes be used to like help to understand yourself and to help, you know, see that there's like a community around you that feels similarly, but there's a lot of people who like don't eff with those labels, who don't like, like don't, who feel like those are harmful to them. And I think that very much exists within, like there's so, I think we've, we're working, especially in the last five, 10 years, I think we're working to really like normalize a lot of like mental illness and even personality disorders, but to some degree, we've come like a full way, maybe too far with that too, where we're kind of those labels are becoming maybe a little bit like desensitized. And so we're throwing around terms like DID, we're throwing around terms like narcissism when they're very strict set of criteria for that. And I feel like that is no longer useful at that point, but you're saying about the fact that psychiatry and psychology is very like, or at least like the, the lens that we are kind of referring to, the pretty dominant one is very like Western focus. When we think about something like child abuse or trauma, those terms are very different. I know like for like Asian cultures, and I think like other people of color, other like cultures, like abuse or discipline is a lot more normalized in the way that parents parent. So someone who maybe like grew up in those cultures who experienced that and not just discipline, but abuse might not be able to identify that as abuse until later in life. And so it's just an interesting experience kind of growing up from a non-white culture with those like non-white experiences that might inform your psyche now kind of using these Western terms that weren't always like curated to your experience. So there's interesting, there was another point, yeah, just basically what you're saying, like this over diagnosis that podcast I was listening to was very fast food kind of focused where yeah, it's helpful. I think I agree with your therapist where the DSM-5 though it's like imperfect, it's what we need in order to like get insurance, like to use that insurance money because we do live in a capitalist system. And like, big pharma really kind of is puppeteering so much of the health field and that kind of leaks into psychiatry as well where there's just like so much diagnosis. And I know like my experience with that sort of medication, like I know like my psychiatrist, I've like had my best interest in heart, but it was a 45 minute video session every 45 months. Like psychiatry is so much more complex, and I you broke your ankle, put the sprain on, and then take this aspirin I guess, or even more complicated like health issues, like it's very, it makes sense to have more of that binary and more of the diagnosis has been something like a mental illness. That's like so much more difficult. So I feel like yeah, those medications that I was put on and maybe those diagnoses, or those labels she gave me could have been helpful at the moment. And like we're kind of given based on her understanding of me, but it's so hard to get your psychiatrist so fully understand the complexity of your psyche. They're so, so backed up and I do feel it's some to some degree the medication that we're on. I was on for so long, like lobotomyzed me temporarily. So I definitely have my qualms with medication. I think they definitely have their place and I agree, like I think there's some people who get so much joy from realizing like, oh, this whole time, I like felt so insecure about myself and it felt so different. I thought so other than then I realized I was autistic and like that is a beautiful thing. And I think that like these labels have they have their place within society, but I hope we can, one day in the future, kind of have more of a nuanced approach to psychiatry in general. Like maybe that involves more of like a spectrum than like a binary. Yeah, I mean, I have a few things to say about that. One is I forgot, I was like, oh, I remember the homosexuality was yes, I'm five, like four, the longings. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. I think it was taken off until like somewhat recently. Like, yeah, I think after the 50s, I don't know. 1973, the APA or American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973. Yeah. So I mean, like, you know, I think we're going to look back on this, like, I mean, you know, like any science is unchanging, right? Like changing, not changing. Science always change, like is always moving and like changing. And I think that's like a really great thing and really beautiful, you know, and I think we're going to look back on these times and be like, damn, we did overprescribed. We have kind of like everything. And also I wanted to, because you kind of mentioned trauma, and I had a professor in college who talked about like, it was, it was collective trauma, like collective events, essentially, he mentioned that when the US US did international aid to some sort of southeast Asian, like country, like after a tsunami, I think, or like an earthquake, they actually introduced this word, like trauma to these, to the population. And sorry, diagnosing people with PTSD, like, they, you know, they there wasn't a word for that before. You know, so it's just like a lot of these like words and like concepts are like, who gets to decide? Like, who, like, who, I mean, it's just like, I mean, it's just interesting. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's just like, who need about like, who gets to decide what is traumatic? Like, who gets to decide, like, how someone should be treated? Like, who gets to decide, like, if someone should be treated? And that's true. Yeah. And, you know, historically, right, like, it's usually like, minorities or like, women to, like, kind of get the, kind of get the shred and the stick, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah. Okay, sweet, definitely. And your point about the US providing international aid to that one southeast country, I'll look into it and I'll kind of insert a word if I find out something about it. Unfortunately, I could not find any information about this specific case of a southeast Asian country not having the word for a trauma until the US introduced it. And it is too early in the morning for me to bother all of it about this right now. But this did make me think about the superior wharf hypothesis, which is in a hypothesis advanced by Edward's appear in 1929, developed by Benjamin Worff, but the structure of language determines a native speaker's perception and categorization of that experience. It's also known as a theory of linguistic relativity. So basically, every language you learn is a new lens or which you see the world. That kind of does, it begs the question of like, did this, like, I wonder why there weren't any terms for trauma? Is it like, is the society structure to handle more hardship because of the way? That's one thing that's really interesting, but I didn't like write anything about in preparation for this, but I forgot the world view. It was like some world view hypothesis something, superior wharf girl, the way every language is its own sort of lens for which we see the world. So I think like, if you have a culture about it, it's like very, very expressive, has words for every emotion, so many different emotions, maybe that kind of results in a more emotional, and like, it's more normalized to be very expressive and very honest about your feelings in that culture. If you have another culture that has fewer, like that kind of influences the experience of the world. So I wonder, look into that and see, like, I wonder if there's no sort of analogous word for trauma, like, I wonder what, how the society is structured around that. Yeah, definitely. No, it's interesting. Yeah, thanks for doing the research. Dude, it was, I mean, no problem at all. Love doing it. Thank you for coming on. Okay, so the podcast hopes that I talked about from back to the borderline. She was also really in his own Carl Jung. So I kind of looked into him a little bit. So Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who was a collaborator of Sigmund Freud. So they collaborated. The Freud series actually heavily influenced Young's, but they eventually went through separate ways due to differences about theory in personal visions. Freud eventually developed psychoanalysis and Young developed analytical psychology. So Freud emphasized the importance of sexual development. So his lens was very like sexual focused, and both were interested in the unconscious mind, but Young focused on the collective unconscious. He later connected the psychologist, William James, also known as the father of American psychology, as both were interested in mysticism and spiritualism. Young's model of the psyche consisted of the ego or the conscious mind, the personal unconscious or suppressor forgotten experiences and feelings that can still influence your behavior and the collective unconscious, which was the deepest layer of the psyche, a giant pool of knowledge, which we collectively have access to. Young believed that this is where deeply internal beliefs like spirituality, sexual behavior, and instinct lie. Related to this concept are the four main, young, and archetypes, general categories that exist in myth and art, which determine principles of thinking and behavior and are inherited from our ancestors. Freud sought to make the unconscious conscious by bringing up repressed feelings, and Young sought to facilitate individuation, which is a process of integrating the unconscious with the conscious self to feel whole. Young was raised Christian and even at one point wanted to become a Christian minister. He saw religion as a powerful expression of the human psyche and searched for meaning. In contrast, DSM greed portrayed religion negatively, religion and spiritual experiences were examples of psychopathology. As a result, some people believed that Young was a mystic, leading many of his theories to be dismissed by traditional psychology. So when we first met my senior year of undergrad, I was pretty depressed, and I felt like I was drowning in my emotions. You were my new neighbor, and I felt like you're entering my life with such perfect timing, as this is when I started investigating, fronting my own trauma. You gave me my very first terror reading, and started off by telling me to take what I want from the reading and leave what I don't want, inviting me to listen to the reading with respect. This marked a turning point for me. I was previously quite skeptical of so-called woo-woo new age practices, like terror and astrology, probably partially due to my own negative experiences with religion. Now I've opened my heart to it more. So what place do you think spirituality has in your within mental health? How has it helped you? I know you also want to just fast political movements corresponding with Youngism. Yeah. Well, I love how you always bring up the terror reading, because yeah, especially so young, like just going through that, like it sucks. In moments of deep distress, psychological distress, especially when it comes to something like a romantic relationship ending, it's just like, there's only so much you can do. Yeah, so I definitely, I definitely feel that. Right before that, I went through this major change, before I met you. I went through this major change in my life, this major breakup, and it was during COVID. That really kind of with my dad's passing, like it just was kind of a lot on my psyche and kind of felt like I was breaking, you know? And it's just like a journey, right? It's a journey to try to find, to try to be in a place that you feel content in or feel like trying to continue on with your life. But so I'm happy that terror terror reading made me feel better. And you know, spirituality I think has been an important part of my life. And I think I think people with spirituality, like my spiritual life, like my inner life, has been very important to me, like my conception of it. I think like to others, they might honestly classify it as new age, you know? Like I mean, that's the thing. I mean, spirituality is, it's like this realm of art. Okay, so that's okay. We all have a spiritual life. Like we all have like some sort of aspect of our lives that we feel is mystical or like we can transcend, you know? And I think I've yet to meet a person who doesn't have like pretty like rich spiritual life, you know? Like kind of like interesting to access that. I mean, everyone has their own views on God, on like what what happens after you die. I mean, now we're all like, you know, agnostics, right? Like we're all like, yeah, we're all just like science, like rules and we're just like, you know, we all do whatever. And a lot of us like, I mean, religion is like certain areas of the country too, like, are less likely to be religious. So I mean, I grew up in the Bay, which I actually, I feel like is is not that religious. I think there are pockets, but yeah, I mean, it's also yeah. So I definitely think it's like about culture, right? Like your relationship to your spirituality. And growing up, I was, I was never super, I was, I was never really, I was, I didn't have to go to church or anything, but I remember kind of like always having these like questions, right? These, these intellectual questions about my relation, myself in relation to like the world or the universe or God. And a lot of like, obviously as a kid, like, or as a teenager, as adult, right? You're trying to like, reckon me with these things. And I think, so I think spiritualities, in terms of like thinking about things holistically, like, spirituality is a very important part of your well-being, you know? And I'm trying, I really wish I could pull up the statistic because I was taking a health and policy class and they, we were kind of like discussing why certain groups who were like certain ethnicity, I think it was black women, they commit suicide, the like, they're the, they have the lowest rate of suicide versus like white males, right? I think that's the highest and like Asian men maybe. I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean, I think that's, I think that's a good, you know, good. I don't know. I just think it's like interesting to think about, why is it that? It's also like religious. Like, if you're religious, are you more likely to commit suicide, you know? And usually you are less likely to commit suicide. I think if you are religious, I mean, I don't know how many statistics on that. You know, I mean, it's also like, you know, people who like, getting to near, you ever meet someone who's like, getting to near death accident or like, died and came back and they're like, I found God, you know? Like, yeah, like, you know, every day we kind of go through these like mundane aspects of our life. Like, we wake up and we brush our teeth and we go to work and, you know, and then you experience like a, like a rapture, right? Like, you experience like a very traumatic event and you're just kind of like, well, actually everything I have been doing kind of feels worthless, you know? And so you just kind of have to reckon with that part of yourself, why do I do these things? You know, like, what is the purpose for my, what is like, why am I here on earth? You know, like, and I think it's like, you know, you have to have some sort of sense in like, for your mental well-being, like, you have to have some sort of like, either like felt sense or, I mean, felt sense and like logical sense of, oh, this is why I'm here on earth and this is why I'm continuing. Otherwise, you're just like, man, like, why am I here, you know? And what am I doing here? The fuck am I doing here? Yeah, literally. Yeah. So I think it's, I think that's very, very, very important. And I think, you know, that's why people really love to do tarot and yoga and new agey stuff, astrology, right? It's just like a way to try to like make sense of the world. So I think people who have, who are more in touch with that inner, you know, in inner world that they actually resonate with, right? Because there's also people who don't resonate with their spiritual life. And so you have to like, reckon with that, right? Like, how do you reckon with the fact that you're like, gay and also Mormon? You know, like, those things are incompatible. And so I mean, I'm not saying everyone who's really just has these, like, positive mental health markers, but it's just like in your relation to like your identity, your psyche, in addition, in like relation to your spiritual world or like the world of spirituality, the systems and the groups. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's such a well-put-out answer. I'm hoping I remember everything I want to respond to. But yeah, no, that moment was really special. Are you giving me my first tour of reading the thing? That's why it stuck out so much in my mind, not just because it was like one of our first times, like actually talking for a while, but also because of like the period I was in, I think, like I was really needing something to snap me out of that moment, especially because I was like, you know, dealing with my own kind of perceived lack of independence, like I felt like I was in something codependent. I came out of it. I met like, you know, I was using this other person to console myself and to like, you know, mitigate my own anxiety. And that wasn't fair, of course, but like now I had to deal with it. And so I think that was a really helpful moment because I was raised cap like I never really delved into any of the astrology, any of the whatever woo-woo shit or the tarot. And so that was kind of a nice moment of, I forget what lens this was taught me in, whether one was good or one wasn't, but I remember in my psych class in high school, we only had about internal versus external locus of control, internal, like, oh, it's my fault. The problems within me, like I made the mistake versus external. It's out of my hands. And maybe they have merit in different cases, like when you, for example, this case, I think kind of astrology and tarot sort of for a brief period of my time, especially when I was living in humble. It was really good for me mental health because one thing I loved so much about Catholicism, even though Catholicism had some negative effects on me was kind of giving myself up or devotion. Yeah, yeah, devotion and like kind of abandoning my life and kind of getting it up to this higher part. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I talked about this on a previous podcast, always goes back to God, but I think like, you know, when you lose something, you pay the same Anthony, and when you need like extra help, pray to Mother Mary, just so we feel like there's someone at least watching out for us. And I think your point about, so I think like astrology and tarot sort of like to a lesser degree was kind of like, oh, like I'm just, I'm manifesting this. Like, oh, I had like a shitty week, but Mercury's in retrograde. There's not as much like I tend to sort of like any sort of frustration with the world, anything. I kind of like divert back into myself. And I like face out more to myself, but instead kind of abandoning that control and kind of attributing it to a higher power. It's kind of nice. It's kind of nice. And I think that what you said about hope and religion and suicide rates was really beautiful. It makes you think of that one study about the rat where like they put the rat in water. And without any intervention, it rounds off your 40 minutes, it'll try to water for 40 minutes. But if you take it out once in the process and put it back in, it will like, it was like days or something or like, at least 12 hours like that it was treading water. So the experiment I'm referring to is an experiment by Herbert graduate and scientist Kurt Richter. He was a scientist with John Hopkins University who did this experiment on rats to demonstrate the power of hope. So he placed a bunch of rats in buckets of water. And without any intervention, they swam between two and 15 minutes before grounding. But the rats that he would hold out for a little bit before putting back in would swim for nearly 60 hours before grounding. I think like not here to kind of like everybody should be religious. And believing in God is how you cure any of your mental illnesses. But there is something to say about that hope, especially coming with the higher power. And, um, and like, you know, mental well-being in general. So I'm surprised we have had any conversations about religion. Were you raised Christian or Buddhist or were you not religious right now? Um, I went to church like a couple of times, but I was actually never, my siblings were baptized, but I was never baptized. So I honestly thought I was always going to hell. You know what I was saying? God was so wrong for that. Like you can literally, like literally for being a baby, you would go to hell if you're not baptized. Like what, what did the baby do? The baby didn't do anything. Yeah. I, you know, I appreciate you. I, I, you know, I love you a lot and I love you. Yeah. It's a, it's a good time where we're here. And you know, you know, I think like another aspect of like youngian psychology is, you know, it's very much like, I mean, I think like there's a lot of levels of self-realization, you know, and we're always trying to kind of get to it like a, like a, you know, some sort of pillar or like, like peak moment, I think is, I mean, you know, like in any sort of religion or spiritual experience, right? Like you're always trying to hit that peak, you know, you're always trying to pray, you're all, you're trying to see God, you know, you're trying to like, you're trying to like get to like a Zen state, like meditate into, to escape samsara, you know, like surrender your body, you know, do all these rituals. And I think what makes like youngian psychology kind of interesting is is the idea that, you know, you could have these sort of self-realization moments and like self-actualization moments in, in a mystical sense, but it doesn't have to be like, it doesn't, I mean, I think it's also like not in the context of religion. It can meet, I think that's the thing. It's like meaningful to people, right? It's, that's why like youngian psychology is like, interesting is because it's not like, oh, the reason why you're like this is because you want to fuck your mom, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah, we're all trying to derive meaning out of something. You can derive meaning off of self-analysis and like turning inwards, you know? And you know, I think, you know, what you're saying about like the external validation, which I think is really important. And like, those are the moments of awe and like the moments that you look out for, right? Like in those signs, right? These are just moments in which like reaffirm your sort of like power or like your path or your realization. So like the tarot cards are really just like a reflection of what you need to see, you know, or like, yeah, yeah, or like astrology, you know, I think it's just like interesting and, you know, point of reflection rather than like a way to like escape anything, you know? No, real. And I think that's something that I really helped my sort of like new understanding of, you know, astrology and tarot is like, it's not in manifesting in general. I got really intimately manifesting that year itself. Oh, if I kind of think something or if I see that I am a freaking Mars and Venus or something, like that defines me in whatever, but it's like we already have these kind of aspirations of who we want to be. We already have these things that we want to like introduce and emphasize more in our lives. And we meet the same concept of manifesting like when you see kind of signs of this, like you pay more attention to it because our brains get so much information, we're like overloaded with information. So we can only attend to so much. So when we kind of like switch up those parameters a little bit based on something that we think is arbitrary, but we are kind of like attaching meaning to based on what we already want, then we're going to be more likely to like meet those aspirations or have our lives look the way we want. It's not like literally every Leo is a, you know, big personality loves attention, whatever, but like there is kind of a push and pull of like maybe there is some truth in it, but maybe there is also a lot more like we are kind of responding to these, these meanings or whatever. Yeah, no, yeah, that's great. Yeah. Okay, so I think this is a good place to close off part one of our incredible episode with Olive. Tune in next week, we're part two in which we will discuss Eric Erickson stages of psychosocial development, the concept of neurodiversity, and a little bit of yoga and make America healthy again. See you then.