When You Look Fine But Don’t Feel Fine: Finding Your Voice, Authenticity & True Wellbeing with Dr. Fred Moss

What if feeling disconnected, exhausted, or “off” is not a sign that you are broken — but a message inviting you to reconnect with yourself?

In this deeply meaningful episode of Up Your Total Glow, I am joined by Dr. Fred Moss — psychiatrist, author, and someone who has spent more than 36 years exploring the human experience of emotional and psychological suffering.

After supporting over 30,000 people, Fred has developed a unique perspective that challenges traditional ideas around diagnosis and encourages a return to something deeply human: connection, expression, authenticity, and finding your true voice.

Together, we explore why so many people can appear successful, capable, and “fine” on the outside while privately feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, or unlike themselves.

We discuss:

✨ The hidden experience of functioning while feeling emotionally disconnected
 ✨ Why labels and diagnoses may not always capture the full human experience
 ✨ What happens when we suppress our emotions and authentic expression
 ✨ How the body communicates when something is out of alignment
 ✨ Why creativity and self-expression are essential for wellbeing
 ✨ What true healing looks like beyond simply managing symptoms

This conversation is an invitation to look inward, listen more deeply, and reconnect with the wisdom that has always been within you.

Because wellbeing is not just about looking healthy or functioning in everyday life.

It is about feeling connected to who you truly are.

Connect with Dr. Fred Moss:
 http://welcometohumanity.net/

Explore your unique Ayurvedic mind-body constitution:
 https://www.ithriveforhealth.com/ayurvedic-dosha-quiz/

Or if you feel called to reconnect more deeply with your body, energy, and vitality:
 https://tidycal.com/ithrive/vitality-reconnection-session

Thank you for being here and for being part of the Up Your Total Glow community.

Remember:
 You are love.
 You are light.
 You are already whole.

Much love,
 Ruth

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hello and welcome to my podcast. I am so excited to be here with you today and to bring you a conversation that explores what it truly means to be well, not just on the surface level, but at the deepest level of who we are. So today I'm joined by Dr. Fred Moss. And Dr. Fred is a psychiatrist with over 36 years of experience. He's also an author. And he is someone who has worked with more than 30,000 people navigating mental and emotional distress. His work challenges many of the traditional ideas around diagnosis and instead focuses on reconnection, expression, and finding your true voice. And together today, we'll explore what it really means when someone feels off, even though from the outside everything looks just fine. And maybe even more importantly, how we begin to return to ourselves in a more honest and embodied way. I'm so excited to jump into this conversation with Dr. Fred Mus. Welcome. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

I'm good, Ruth. It's great to see you. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

So am I. So to hit it off, I'd love to know is there anything in your personal story that was the driver the answer is yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

The answer is yes, but let's hear what you got.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

That was the driver of what you're doing right now. And you're doing it with so much passion. So help us to understand who you are truly and why are you doing what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

All right. Very good. Thank you. Good question. And you know, I think the event that really I would poke to for that question is the day that I was born. I was born to a family uh who is in chaos and disarray. I had these two brothers. They were 10 and 14 years old, they were causing all sorts of havoc in home. And, you know, they were uh con they were they were you know in conflict with my parents pretty regularly, from what I understand from the four of them. And uh my job, I mean, the whole point of having me 10 years after my brother was to have me bring some sort of peace and unity and freedom into that family, some sort of um expression, some sort of calm, uh, some sort of reconciliation. And indeed, that's what I did. I read that, you know, as soon as I came out, it's almost like I hit the punch card and I'm gone. Like that's what I'm doing. I have these four adults I have to deal with. And I remember watching them talk to each other or scream at each other or whisper to each other or carry on with each other. And I literally remember vividly with my playpen in the in the middle of the living room, uh, with my little stuffed dog and my Indian hat, I remember that uh I was just longing to the day that I could be a big boy too, that I could actually communicate. Because I could really feel that being communicative, actually self-expressing, whether I cried or laughed or uh smiled or made a joke or was cute or was smart, whatever I did had a really big impact on these big people. And I wanted to learn what is it that's going on here? How can I, you know, best direct this idea of communication, completely enchanted with communication from the very beginning. I was very precocious, as you might expect. I had these people just feeding me all this stuff before I started school. So I came to kindergarten with a little bit of math and a little bit of uh reading and a little bit of writing, and I knew about some things like sex and drugs and rock and roll from my brothers. And you know, I knew things that my peers didn't know. And so most of them were picking their nose or throwing blocks or napping or whatever they're doing. I also was doing those things, but I also knew all this other stuff, and so I was bored in school a lot. Uh that's how I would qualify it now. And so I talked, I talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked, and you know, and teachers act like they want you to ask questions until you start asking them questions, and then they don't like it so much. And that's what happened. I was told to sit down, be quiet, mind my own business, do what they say, not what I want to do. And, you know, eventually got pretty snuffed and was like, okay, we'll do this for elementary school. But somewhere along the line, these big people learned how to how to communicate. So maybe it'll be in the later ages. So it got worse in junior high, and then even worse in high school. And frankly, it got even worse in college. And I muscled my way into college, by the way, because I started skipping school a lot in high school because it was stupid. It was just like a complete waste of time for me to spend time sitting in the classroom. And I'd hitchhike. I would just go to wherever I was taken and I would learn about that culture. I'd put my thumb out on the corner of 11 and Evergreen, and I'd just walk out of school, put my thumb out, or I guess from high school, it was more on the corner of um 12 and Southfield. And uh, and I would just just wherever they took me, I'd be good. I, you know, back in the day, that's how it was. I would be like, you know, what the yeah, wherever you're going, that's where I want to go. And now find a way home tonight. And so that's how I did it, you know. And I was, it wasn't I did that every day, but it was the kind of the essence of what I do is I go to where I'm not invited and try to figure out why I wasn't invited here. Like what is it's it's so special about you that I can't be here? And so, and I would just do that, I just explore. And I think that also, you know, really tended to make me into a into some, I suppose it's a good precursor for being a psychiatrist. I I went to college, I hated psychiatrists, I hated psych uh uh college. And so I left after a year and a half and took a bus all the way to Berkeley, California. Uh, stayed in a youth hostel for the summer. And so the idea was that I would uh you know figure out what my life was about and uh and did. I had a good summer in Berkeley, and um, but it wasn't sustainable. So I heard about this new industry my parents and brothers told me about that they thought I had a good aptitude for, and that was called computers. I was like, yeah, I I maybe I don't know what a computer is, but maybe I don't know if you guys say so. And before too long, I was on a bus back to Detroit and back to Michigan and going to computers one more time at the University of Michigan, where the only computer was in all of Michigan was in Ann Arbor. And sure enough, I'm there playing, playing around on the computer, but hating it. And I dropped out again. Now, you could say that this might have really started my career too. This is another important piece. When I drop out again and I call my parents, I'm like, uh, yo, I'm not going to school ever again. This is stupid. I'm this is not the place to learn. I want to learn in the real world. And my mom was like, you know, you can do that, but we got to get you a job. I'm like, what? What? What? I had worked during high school, but now I had to get a job for real. And so she got me an application for a couple things. And one of them was to uh state hospital for adolescent boys. I was a child care worker. And so I took that job because it was coming sooner than the other application, which was from the unemployment office of all places. And um I took the job because there were three weeks of orientation, and I knew that I didn't have to go to the floors, I didn't even have to work, I just sit down at a table and just twiddle my thumbs and throw spitballs and just get three paychecks and buy myself a car and then drive around the country and figure out what my life is about. That was my plan. Three weeks. I'm not going to the floors, I'm not going, I'm not going to see these kids. I'm not, I'm not going to equip to be a childcare worker. I've got to go. I got stuff to do. So on that fourth week, on that fourth Monday, my friend Paul, who later became a really good friend of mine, uh, also a childcare worker, he convinced me to let's just try it once. You don't have to quit today. It's like, okay, okay, okay. So we tried it. We went up to MetaView 5 and we saw these 17-year-old boys, and it was like, whoa, they're pretty tough and it was pretty scary. And I made it through the first day, and then I made it through the second day. And I was like, you know what? I can do this for about three more weeks. Because by then I'll have enough money for a later model car. And I can actually still drive around, but I can get a cooler car, maybe a convertible. Who knows? I can actually ride around the country with a better car. So three weeks came and then they went, and now I was on for another three weeks. I was like, okay. And then they transferred me to the younger kids, 12 to 14 boys. And I was like, okay, and they worked with me on um afternoon shift, and I started loving afternoon shift. I already knew that I had worked in pizzerio and stuff. I had already known afternoon shift was my gig. Um, but I loved afternoon shift with these kids. I loved hanging out with them, and I learned that I was communicating. I was finally communicating and getting paid for it because that's all I had to do was treat these kids like humans. Because that's all they are. They're just humans. I mean, they're just like me and you, and for real. It doesn't even matter that they live somewhere or have a bunch of diagnoses or take a bunch of meds. It doesn't matter. They're just humans, and I got to really practice that. Got very good at that job on the he on the shoulders of that. The thing I didn't like is the way psychiatry was going. Psychiatry was running that place, and I hated the future I could see, the vision I could see for psychiatry, that they were giving up on communication. They were treating everything as pathology. You know, Jimmy and Johnny get in a fight, we'd have to call the psychiatrist, and he'd come down, and he or she would come down and talk to Jimmy and Johnny for like four seconds, and talk to us for like seven seconds, and go into the nursing station and write an order, and then we'd have to go retrieve Jimmy or Johnny, and then we'd have to hold them down on the ground, and they'd give him a big injection of some sedative hypnotic. And if he was stuporous the next day, we would write that it was a success. And you know, the thing I want you to know about this, Ruth, is that's not yesterday's news. That happened hundreds of times every single day since that day, including today. So I don't want you to think, oh, yeah, those were the old days when it was barbarism. No, dude, this is this is still every day. This is still happening in all those hospitals in the country. And I didn't like it. I didn't like I love these kids. I I didn't like though that just seemed like it was mean, it was wrong, it was inappropriate, it was misdirected, it was misaligned. So I my brother, the one 14 years older than me, um, he was already a psychiatrist. So I knew that there was such a thing as being a good psychiatrist. So I was like, back to school a third time, let's go. While I was finishing off at Fairlong Center, I was going halftime or a little bit more than halftime at Wayne State down in Detroit. And sure enough, finished off my degree, then applied to medical school and got accepted at a couple medical schools. And the one I got accepted to that I chose was the one in Chicago, Illinois, called Northwestern University. And I was downtown, North, downtown Chicago, and I learned a lot. I learned a lot of things in medical school, not in medical school. While I was enrolled in medical school, I learned a lot of things. And I learned it down in the streets of Chicago. I love Chicago. I always have loved Chicago. And I just really, that's where I kind of grew up. That's where it was like, okay, let's play. Let's let's go east, let's go south, let's go west, let's go north, let's go. Um, and you know, before too long, I was graduating. Then I went to Cincinnati for uh my residency and a fellowship, and I got married, and uh, then we had a son, and then a couple years later we had a daughter. And I had this huge practice in Cincinnati. And now, having now been like expelled or you know, like uh let free from my uh child and adolescent fellowship, the world had changed in the direction I was feared. And you know, what uh communication was not considered very important to but the psychiatric field, actually, uh in general. Now, my brother, he's an analyst and he still does communication even to this day. Um, but most of the psychiatrists are just like medicating and diagnosing it. That's it. I hate both those things. I've always hated both those things, they just make no sense to me. They're mean, they're wrong. They they I don't think that they help anyone. And I'll get back to a disclaimer on that in just a minute. But um so I had to kind of go between trees or something, you know, like that to bring connection and human con human communication to this crowd. It was almost against the rules. It was almost like you should try communicating. It was almost like that. Because the field didn't allow for it. The field asked me to be something different than that. The field asked me to be a medicator and a diagnoser, which I was really good at. I mean, 30,000 patients later, you get really good at doing what the field asked you to do. So I was living a duplicitous life. And that went on until 2006 when I had lots of challenges, uh, you know, you know, that took kind of a kind of a a year, what do they call it? Almost like a um like a breakthrough year or breakdown year, a lot of things happened in the same year. And I decided that I was gonna do something that maybe seemed radical, but to me it just seemed obvious and normal, which was I'm gonna take a bunch of my clients. I had several thousand clients uh in my outpatient practice, I'm gonna take a bunch of them off their medicines. I know it sounds radical, but you know, when you think about how weird that is, no coming off a toxin should not be that radical. Choosing to eat a toxin, I can see that being radical. But actually encouraging people to come off medicine and having them get scared about it, it's because the medicines aren't working very well, so let's see what happens. So I took them off and they like all got better, way better, profoundly better, like predictably better, reliably better. And in most cases, they lost the diagnosis that they thought they had that they were taking the medicine for. I was like, wow, these medicines are truly causing problems. What am I gonna do about this nonsense? And I felt like he'd be violent. And I was like, you know, like screaming from the top of the mountain, shaking people, especially like moms and colleagues, like, stop, don't do this anymore. But that doesn't work, you know. Just as we're learning a lot these days, just screaming from the mountaintops doesn't get you hurt. So I had to figure out a way to get hurt. How am I gonna calm this down? How am I gonna make it so that it's listenable? And how am I gonna get the point across? So I kind of hovered over the top of it. Where's the issue here? And I started realizing I can't be mad at medicines. Medicines are not, they're they're they're inert substance. It's like being mad at an ink pen for writing a bad article. I what? It's not it's not the pills, it's also not big pharma. I tried calling Big Pharma the other day, there's no phone number. I can't be mad at the insurance company, same thing. I tried to call them last week. There's no phone number. Or the medical association, no phone number. So where's the issue? How does this thing get started? And as I backed off and backed off and backed off, it became very clear that it's one thing that's the issue. And the only thing that's the issue is that people think there's something wrong with it. Because the only reason you go to a doctor is you think there's something might be wrong with you. What if there was nothing wrong with you? What if this world is freaking impossible to negotiate adequately, like totally impossible to actually navigate, and all the pain and suffering and discomfort that we have is just part of the human condition, expected from being alive in this dimension. And there's nothing wrong with any of us, like, not even him and not even her, and not even them. Like, nothing wrong with we're all doing whatever we're doing that we think is the next best thing, given who we've been and where we're going. That's it. That's all that's happening. Now, you could go, yeah, what about Charles Manson? Or what about Adolph Hitler? Well, I get it, I know what you're saying, I got it. They're not that good of people. I'm not saying everyone's good, I'm saying there's nothing wrong with that. And being bad doesn't even mean there's anything wrong with you, it just means that you're choosing decisions that are hurting other folks. So when I started from there, all sorts of magic started happening. All sorts of magic. All of a sudden, I was able to see people I disagreed with by looking them straight in the eye. I was able to like consider that just because someone is entirely different than me and diametrically opposed on very important issues doesn't mean that I get to dismiss them. Like they're just another human. And we're all just, and by the way, if we don't get our stuff together to actually start interacting and respecting and dealing with and communicating together, that'll be the end of the world. It's not going to be some virus that kills us, it's not going to be some racism that well, racism is a function of this. And you could also make a case if you wanted to that the virus is also a function of this. But you know, global warning, you could do, you could make all sorts of cases. It people aren't communicating, they're not communicating effectively, they're not connecting effectively. And I started to really put my foot down like this is the only thing that matters in life. Like maybe there's other things that matter, but in the end, isn't love what we need? And doesn't love require communication? And doesn't love only happen when you connect with somebody? It's like, oh yeah, that's what it is. That's it's about connecting. So welcome to Man Humanity Got Born as a uh really, I think, a fantastic brand name. I didn't know it was so fantastic. There were a couple runner-ups that were going on at the time, like Global Madness was one of them. I really love global, I love global madness. I truly appreciate global madness, but that would have created a different brand than what I became. And Global Madness was a project I had where I was going to be the Anthony Bourdain of mental health and just go around the world and see how certain conditions are dealt with in different areas. And then 2020 hit and put an end to that nonsense. Um, but global madness sits still in the back. Like, yeah, that's I I wrote a great article, I wrote an award-winning article that was the best article at the conference for global transformation, uh, called Global Madness, What We Must Do to Unite. And it's I really am proud of that article. Um, and anyways, then just kept going. And you know it was like Find Your True Voice became my book, and then the Creative Eight, Healing Through Creativity and Self-Expression became my book. I recently wrote my third book. It's in a second proofing, it should be out in uh late July. Um, and it's called Welcome to Humanity, a Psychiatrist Case Against the Mental Health System. And uh very excited about that book, too. Certainly the best thing I ever wrote. It's just fantastic memoirs and so much fun to go over all the things that I've told you is are in that book. Everything's and much more. Um, and uh, you know, I I still had to deal with my main breadwinning occupation with something that I was not aligned with. And how am I gonna do that? So I've had like 500 jobs, maybe more, but contracts that I've that I've actually signed uh since I graduated. Because what I'm really looking for is a place I can be me. Is there a place that I can be aligned with what I know to be true that you will hire me for that purpose and then keep me on, even though I don't retain patience because I don't. Yeah, I give people the tools and I let them go. It's like you're you don't need to be seeing me anymore. And most corporations are not down with that. They're like they're measuring, they're they're measuring me by my retention rate. And it was like, well, so sometimes I had to leave a job, you know, or they would let me go. Um, and I started doing some coaching, restorative coaching, um, you know, coaching that helped people see that maybe there was nothing wrong with them, and coaching that helped them see what was a good way to be right, a good way to be, a good way to find stability and genuine, authentic core values, a good, you know, what are some techniques? So the Moss method got created. And the Moss method is a compilation of 20 activities that you probably know all of them. And, you know, no one does all 20 of them every day, but they're all work that, you know, like hydration and meditation and gratitude and movement and nature and creativity and service and you know, um uh uh uh spirituality and pets and uh pampering yourself and eating good foods and not eating bad foods and journaling and reading and you know, all those things. That if you do all of them, you're just gonna have a better life. Yeah, I I didn't make that up. I didn't make up any of that. You're gonna if you do any of them, you're gonna have a better life. If you do a lot of them, you're gonna have an even better life. If you do all of them, you're a freak of nature, you're gonna have an amazing life. So the Moss method got created, and then um, you know, uh started looking at different different ways, like the undoctor got created, and the undoctor is a natural progression. And the undoctor is uh by what I did in 2006, which was undiagnosing. Unmedicating and then undoctrinating people using unconditional love and unconventional style.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

That's what I do. Yeah. That's why I'm an award.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

I absolutely love it. Thank you so much. So there's so much in what you said. So, first of all, what an incredibly strong soul that straight away, right from the beginning, knew what it was here for. Helping yourself and others to really communicate well and in doing so, empowering instead of disempowering. So this is truly your core message and your core belief and what you've followed through all along. And I think it's absolutely amazing and so aligned with Ayurveda and with how I practice and with what I believe in. And I also really love that, you know, your measure of how powerful your work truly is, is in not retaining any patience. This is exactly what we say in Ayurveda. You actually are an amazing Ayurvedic doctor. I am not an Ayurvedic doctor, I'm an Ayurvedic coach. But if I was an Ayurvedic doctor, it was all about making sure I have the least amounts of patience that I could possibly have. So I really love that approach, and I heard you saying something very similar. I would love to go into okay, how do we undoctor, how do we really change um our beliefs, I guess, so that we can become free of that. Or let me ask differently. So I really love the idea of there's nothing wrong with you, you are whole. And then you can empower yourself by making choices, choices that make you feel better or that make you feel great and even better than that. Yeah. So how do you help your clients to be aligned with those choices? Or to yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

It's a good question. And I think uh you'll appreciate the answer. I I think that I'll probably generate I don't know what I'm gonna say, but we'll see the answer that I'm about to generate. Um the conversation is contagious. The idea that you might not have anything wrong with you is really attractive to some people and extremely challenging to other people. So, you know, psychiatry has a special space in the subspecialties of medicine, for instance. It I think it's the only field that if you go to a psychiatrist doctor and he tells he or she tells you that you're okay, you actually get pissed. It's the only field where that's the case. You're actually like, dude, why did I come see you? If I'm okay, I you you don't get it. I'm not okay. I didn't come see you to find out that I'm okay. I came to see you so that I could find out what's wrong with me.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

I feel dismissed.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

When if that's what if you are okay? What am I supposed to say? I'm supposed to give you some sort of alphabet soup diagnosis and then some sort of treatment plan and some sort of medications that are geared towards making that worse. I I don't like being dragged down that road. I really, really don't. And I never have. And oftentimes, you know, 30,000 again, way more than 25,000 times, I wouldn't get dragged down that road. That's I just do what they asked. You know, who am I to tell you what to put in your body? If you don't, if if I can't stop you, you're just gonna go next door and get somebody to give it to you, anyways. You might as well be in my presence where we someday can have a discussion about what it means to be okay. Yeah, so I would keep patients and I quit the quit this field about four times. I was asked to do things that were, you know, monstrosities, and I'd be like, No, I'm not I actually can't do that. And here's your keys. I did that a few times. Um and oh, the disclaimer that I mentioned earlier is important now, and that is, you know, there's a group of people who are watching this podcast, and it might be a large group, I don't know, but it sounds like people who are attracted to you probably think more like you than most. And there are people out there who are very, very happy with their diagnosis, extremely happy with their therapist or doctor, couldn't want a better diagnosis than the one they have, and they love their medicines and they think that it just saved their lives and that's the way it is, and they're not even considering an upgrade, even if one was available. Yeah, to those people, I just say more power to you. Please continue doing what you're doing. And I'm not lying, it's not talking through my teeth. I'm really serious. If you've reached a point in your life where you're doing something so good that you wouldn't even consider an upgrade, I man, that's amazing. Yeah, I don't even have anywhere in my life where that's true. And if that's true for you, then keep doing it. That's something that's goal, you know, bottle that thing and keep it forever. No, this conversation is more for the tens or maybe the hundreds of millions of people who already know that the system is not serving them up well, who know they're over-medicated, overdiagnosed, undermedicated, underdiagnosed, mistreated, over-treated, undertreated, whatever. They already know that. And so this conversation, yeah, yeah, indeed you are. You're being misy're being, we'll say, mistreated or misdiagnosed or misdealt with. And just confirming that can be really helpful. So, how do we get people to get there? People come in, you know, people come into my office. I don't do any conventional work anymore. I stopped doing it about four months ago after the last time I was fired. I was fired for the exact reason that I just told you. We love your work, my boss said, but you fly against corporate. So we gotta let you go. I'm like, all right. Thanks for being so blunt. I gotta go. And he fired me on the spot unceremoniously, like with you know, like that. So it's like, okay. Um people come in, and if they're already on medicine, they're already sure that they're sick, they're already sure that they have the alphabet suit diagnosis that they think they have. It's a different bird than somebody who's coming in truly who hasn't started down that lane yet. When someone has already had the bell rung and have already, because a diagnosis doesn't start until you agree to take it on. Yeah, let's make that very clear. Just because someone calls you something, you are not that until you say you are that, and then you are that.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

So if I call you PTSD or I call you narcissistic, or I call you spectrum disorder, or I call you anxiety disorder, I call you schizoaffective disorder, and you agree that you're those, now you have a diagnosis. But if someone calls you a giraffe, you're not a giraffe until you agree that you're a giraffe. Then you are a giraffe. Yeah, great point. So it's funny, it's a funny policy that way. So, you know, people come in and if they're already on medicine, they've had the bell rung. It's uh not easy to let them know. They already, in most cases, they already know their medicines are not doing them very well. I need an up, I need an increase, I need uh a change, I need more medicine, uh something like that. It's very, very common. Because they already know they're not doing as well as they could, you know. And these medicines are very powerful, but they're not powerful in healing, they're powerful in cutting off our capacity to be human. So when we come in and we feel depressed or we feel anxious, and we take a medicine that's actually going to make us more depressed. And like in other words, if I gave you an antidepressant and you weren't depressed, you would be within a month or two because that's what the medicine does. We get our horses and carts mixed up, and so the medicines are actually causing the symptoms they're marketed to treat in frequent cases. So when people come in, either they are they're at least curious about the idea that maybe there's nothing wrong with they might say I'm crazy, but then they hear themselves arguing for their own limitation. Like when I say you're okay and you tell me I'm not, who's arguing on your behalf here?

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

So you end up saying, I'm sick, I'm wrong, I'm I'm terrible, I'm bad, I'm I'm missing, I'm defective, I'm deficient. I don't know if you're any of those things. I kind of think you're not any of those things. We're all going through this human condition together. So, how do I get people to do it? Is like just the same conversation. So the people who are listening now who are on the edge or are thinking, you know, this stuff doesn't work. He's right. I'd like to get my own self back when I used to enjoy life, when I used to be able to smile and play, when I used to be able to have sex, when I used to be able to enjoy food and um drink, when I used to be able to walk in nature or take vacations or move my body. And I can't do that anymore. And I think it might be related in some ways to the medicine. Those people are very easy to get this new fresh air to. But the people who are pretty embedded in their diagnoses, they're a little bit harder sometimes to convince, even if they're miserable, because they've now maybe they've tried at various times, and maybe not even intentionally, to come off their medicines like alone. Like they maybe they ran out of their monthly allotment and they didn't go to the pharmacy fast enough, and now they're missing two, three days, and they start feeling lousy. That doesn't mean that the medicines were helping. That means that when you come off medicines, you feel worse. That's all it means. Yeah.

unknown 32:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

It doesn't mean you're better on medicine.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

I absolutely agree with you. And for me, it is really the concept of outsourcing your inner capacity to actually heal and feel good and be well. Like in Ayurveda, it's all about are you in balance, which then creates really being on that stream of feeling amazing, or is there anything out of balance, maybe in your life or even in your body? And this doesn't mean that you're not as a person or as a human being whole, um, which I absolutely believe you always are, but it means that sometimes you can, for example, if you are someone who has a lot of heat inside of you, and then you eat lots of heating foods, that creates a little bit of imbalance. It still means you are a whole person, like it's not that you are wrong or that you are broken, but there could be a little bit more alignment for you to feel even better. So, this is how I like um to view things. And I see the problem really in our crazy modern lives where we put everything on the outside, like everything knows better than your body, you yourself actually does. And that's a really crazy concept, and obviously can't be true. But I see this is what most people truly believe in. They have lost this inner connection and also this trust and belief in themselves. And it's crazy to me, but I see it every day. And my work involves convincing them to come back to that trust in themselves, which really is crazy. Or convincing is the wrong word, showing them that this can actually be so much easier and it's so much more empowering than putting your trust on all of the experts outside of you who can't ever know as much as you know. So, this is what I heard you saying, and it's incredibly powerful. And yet, I have close people in in my family, and I also see it all the time in my clients. They maybe know all of this, yeah. And embodying it is still really hard in this crazy world that we are living. There is so much where we get again distracted and are not quite able to live in that trust. Do you see that as well in your clients?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Oh, yeah. Um, the there look, there it's pretty convenient to think there's something wrong with you. Now, here's the other piece of it. You know something eight billion people in the world, almost everyone, if not, I've never met anybody who doesn't meet this criteria, thinks there's something wrong with them. Yeah. There's no one walking around who thinks there's nothing wrong with them.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Every one of us, like, I'm so different. I got this, I'm I'm I'm weird. I'm wrong. I'm think odd. I do weird things. So you can make a case that thinking there's something wrong with you is actually a condition of being a normal human. That's you could make that case very easily.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Because everybody thinks there's something wrong with them. So the the convenience that comes with having an alphabet soup diagnosis, um, a mental a mental health or we'll call it a mental illness diagnosis, is that if I call you schizophrenia, if I call you narcissistic personality, if I call you antisocial, if I call you uh generalized anxiety or depression or bipolar type two or whatever I want to call you, all of a sudden this is available, which is that you can relinquish responsibility for the parts of your life that you're not happy with.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

And by the way, yo, every one of us has lots of parts of our life that we're not happy with, and that we continue to do. Like we continue to do stuff that we like have already determined is stupid or wrong or damaging.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

So at the moment that you get your diagnosis, that you buy your diagnosis, you have this thing you can say. You can say, that wasn't me, that was my ADD. That wasn't me. Yeah, the reason I didn't finish that work on time, ADD.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

The reason I got impulsively angry at my partner, I got bipolar, dude. The reason why I um uh didn't make it to work, I'm depressed. So you get to say stuff like that. That wasn't me, that was my condition. You come somehow separate yourself from the condition enough that you call it you. So you got a condition, it has grabbed you when you weren't looking, it came out of the sky, it latched onto you, and now you have it. You you can hope never to lose it. It's here to stay, and even if you get free of it, you can count on it being temporary because you are going to fall back to the condition that you thought you had in the first place, because that's how you're programmed to believe. So even when you get released from feeling lousy, let's say you do something creative, let's say you play some music or you do some dancing or you make some art and you're free, like all of a sudden, you know, you're you've done it for a few minutes, and now you don't feel lousy anymore. You're like, wow, cool. Yeah, we have an opportunity at that place now that we're free to just keep walking in that direction, but instead we snap back to our familiar, uncomfortable self because it does serve some kind of purpose. Now, I'm not calling anybody who does that anything wrong with you. This is human nature. Yeah, we are we are skeptical, we are cynics, we are self-loathing is so easy for us. I have lots of theories about that, but you know, one theory is you can't fall very far off the first rung of a ladder.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Yeah, yeah. It comes back to the fear.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Exactly. So if you go high up the ladder and you start really counting on yourself being vulnerable, being sensitive, being delicate, being real, you know, being unhappy, being angry. That's top of the ladder stuff. And when you fall from there, you know, um uh what is Jimmy Cliff said? Uh uh. Let's see. Uh the harder they come, the harder they fall.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, thank you so much for breaking this down. It makes so much sense to me.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Isn't it amazing that it makes sense? I uh here's the thing. I love when people say this makes sense, but here's the thing. You know, you know what I say to that? It's not like I'm enlightening you. Yeah, I'm not. All I'm doing is reminding and resonating with something you already knew. Absolutely. How do I know? How do I knew you? I I I'm not coming up with all sorts of new science here. Yeah, I didn't get any of this from the journals, not one piece of it came from the journals. So all that's really happening is you're resonating with with Ruth in the in the um playpen. Yeah. You knew this when you were two. Yeah, it's been true the whole time. We just covered ourselves with so much nonsense. There's so much, you know, cobwebs and rust and dust and dirt and mold that we can barely see the tuning fork that's underneath that whole thing that's resonating at the human frequency.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with that. So I this is why I speak about remembering and uncovering the layers that have already been there, always been there. And I feel that the faster our word gets, actually, the more of these layers we add on. And I feel this has to do with safety and stability. I feel um, yes, in a weird sense, you know, we've got more, we've got health at our fingertips, it's more available than ever, theoretically. Doesn't mean that we all go around and feeling really, really vital, full of vitality and radiance. It's quite the opposite, as you know. And I do think that this has to do with we are losing the connection with ourselves. You know, this is at the base of who we are, and which really helps us to um thrive. And this is exactly what you're doing with your work, and which is absolutely amazing. And I could talk forever with you. I fear we almost have to have another conversation.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Of course, that sounds great.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

So, is there something that I haven't really touched upon today that is really important for you for today to still say and mention? So, obviously, I want everyone to grab your books. Can't wait for your new book to come out. Um, but is there anything in the whole conversation that is really important and needs to still be said today?

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Yeah, a couple things come up. Thanks for that question. Number one, you should be at my retreat um in September. So they we're looking for people exactly like you. We're looking for leaders who believe that they belong in the front of the room, and that's going to be the participant body as we talk about giving, giving, giving. And what about us? And what does it take to have the grace to receive? So, very high-powered people from around the world who are, you know, giving their very best, is uh is what the retreat's about. And of course, it's called the Welcome to Humanity Retreat, and it's in Charlotte, North Carolina in late September. So I'd love to talk to you about that offline. If that's even close to interesting, at least you can join the community. The next thing is um, you know, I normally answer this question the same way, but I've already said this so many times here, and you've actually said it too, so it's no longer the winning thing, which is that there really, you know, maybe just maybe there really might be nothing wrong with you. That's the answer to this question. You know, that's the thing I want everyone to walk away with for sure. That's the essence of the whole conversation. But the third thing, and I only rarely speak to this, that I think is really important, is the cats. Cats are freaking awesome. Cats, cats know what's up at a level that no other animal, no other little creature has. Cats, we have three cats here, Desposito, Winston, and Valentino, and they are our homeschool of teachers. Like, you know, they know how to play, they know how to rest, they know how to eat, they know how to poop, they know how to clean their poop, they know how to keep themselves clean, they know how to how to have fun, they know how to chill, they know how to forgive. They're so So much fun to hold. There's so much fun to watch. They know geometry. They can leap, like you know, eight times their size and do it accurately. The other day, Winston was down on the ground, and there's this little ledge on the porch. It's about probably four feet up, and just a just a two by four ledge, so a four-inch ledge. And it was a trellis uh that's holding up some vines that my wife um uh planted. So there's there is like a trellis with squares about this big. And it was nighttime already. We're out there enjoying half a beer, and Winston walks up to that thing from the ground and without effort leaps through the trellis without touching the trellis, landing on the four inches and then walking with mightiness. Yeah, and so that doesn't even surprise you. It's I get it, you know, it's like no animals can do that. Maybe a mosquito can do it in its own way, but you know, it they're so cute. And so I I think I've had 15 cats in my life. Um, usually I have them in bunches, that's how I got to 15. Um, and so these three are the 13, 14, and 15. And uh I think that they've colored my life. I think that the whole I think from when I was a kid and we had four my sister and I had four kids. I had a sister after uh after I was born. Or they had a sister two and a half years younger than me, and we were both running buddies. Um you know, boo boo boby and bobo were the first four that we had. And uh, you know, they just taught us everything. Like they was they was just you know, including we have to do their cat litter, you know. We have the I have the cat litter down here, and when I'm lazy on the cat litter, I hear about it. I no, I don't hear about it, I see it, I smell it, I get it, you know. So I think cats cats are at the center.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

I absolutely agree with you. So we've got a wild one here as well, and she is a giant spirit anima. We've got someone on on the roof. Indy, leave it. Leave it. And we've got a dog, as you can hear. Maybe you can hear it.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

Okay, beautiful. So, where can my listeners find you and all of your amazing work?

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Yeah, so uh I have a cool couple websites. Dr.fred360.com is a pretty slick site. You can see everything that I've done. It gets loaded every week with new stuff that I did this week. And so it's up to date and it has all my podcasts. I've been on a few hundred podcasts, it has all my writings, it has global madness waiting there, it has um uh some courses. It's cool. I like that site, drfred360.com. I my main mother mothership website is welcome to humanity.net, and that's a pretty cool site too. Not quite as slick, but definitely complete. And then um uh the uh both of them have access to me as a discovery call. And a discovery call does not mean that I'm gonna pitch you. I'm not gonna pitch you actually, um unless you want to work with me, in which case we could talk about that. But it's not my job to pitch you. But I'm more than willing to listen and help and be of assistance as someone who can connect with you. And both places have access to that discovery site, uh discovery call. And then unfortunately, I troll around on uh on social media a little bit and uh I spend uh too many hours checking in on Facebook and um I mean I'm there. What can I say? I'm there. I I'll answer your DM there, I'll I'll respond to you comments commenting to my post there. I get it, but I don't like being there. Um, and then the one I do like, at least more than most of them, is LinkedIn. So I hang on on LinkedIn as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

Beautiful, and of course, I put all of this in the show notes. Yeah. Fred, thank you so much for being here for all the work that you're doing, for your incredibly strong, powerful, and amazing soul that has decided to come down here in this life and empower all of us. I absolutely love it. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. I truly, truly appreciate you and your work.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Thank you, Ruth. I hear it loud and clear. It moves me and I feel you, and thank you so much for recognizing all that.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Thank you so much for being here today and sharing your time and wisdom with us. And I truly, truly, truly appreciate you, Dr. Fred Moss. And to you, my awesome listeners, if today's interview has left you feeling inspired or reflective and empowered, then I really, really hope that you will check out Dr. Fred Moss. And as I said, all of his details are in the show notes. And we would also love if you shared your thoughts with us. I'm sure you would love that, Dr. Fred. I definitely love to be in conversation with my audience. And if this episode resonated, please like, subscribe, and follow, or maybe send it to someone who you know would really benefit from it. And as always, please never forget you are love, you are light, and you are already whole. Much love. Keep glowing.