Zak Sandler: The Composer Who Turned Bipolar Into a Creative Superpower.

For many families around the world, conversations around mental health happen quietly — or not at all. 

In this At the Podium episode, Broadway composer Zak Sandler reflects on growing up unaware that a bipolar condition ran through his family, and how shame and silence can sometimes delay understanding, healing, and acceptance. 

This conversation is not simply the discussion around mental health, but the reminder that many of us carry things we were never taught how to talk about openly. And when finally have those tough conversations, healing and reconciliation can happen. 

Listen. Reflect. Become.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Do you ever fear that you won't come back from either a mania or depression? I don't.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

That said, I I do I used to play more with fire, as you might say, in terms of indulging hypomania. And now, having had that third episode, I am not gonna go down that road again. So as soon as I feel it coming on, I just take the medicine, disengage.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

And yeah, not too hello and welcome to At the Podium with me, Patrick Huey. At the Podium holds a space for everyone to share their stories, to be heard, and to bring us inspiration. Today, I'm thrilled to share the podium with Zack Sandler. Zach Sandler is a writer, composer, and lyricist, specializing in musical theater and screenplays. At age 26, he began playing piano on Broadway for Wicked and went on to play for Mean Girls, Motown, and The Color Purple. His autobiographical solo musical about his experience with bipolar called Inside My Head was developed at the Kennedy Center and has been performed in part on the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage. He doesn't use the phrases mental illness or bipolar disorder because he feels it implies there's something wrong with him that needs fixing. Instead, he uses the phrase mental condition and simply bipolar. Zach is a proud graduate of Yale University with a BA in music. Zach, welcome to at the podium.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Thanks so much for having me, Patrick.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

I'm so glad that we're sitting down today to talk.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, I'm so happy we're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

I wanted to talk to you because I think your story is gonna be very helpful for people because right now the entire world, I feel like, either is suffering from mental conditions or they know someone who is. And I think people's mental health is top of mind right now for many people.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, I'm glad you said condition rather than illness or disorder. I for her myself, I feel like illness and disorder can be more stigmatizing negative words, like there's something wrong with me that needs to be fixed. Whereas uh condition is more like that's just a part of who I am.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

So we're using that term. And I think it's interesting because I think I think people are trying to really understand what causes it, what it is, how do we manage it, how do we make space for people in our society whose minds may work differently than what we perceive to be the normal functioning of someone's brain. Absolutely. So I want to get into your story. Um and in your in your journey, you talk about your journey really beginning with a late-night call that you had with your parents when you were studying at Yale. And the call that you had with them, it so concerned them that they got in their car and they drove to New Haven, Connecticut to check on you to make sure that you were okay. And they ended up taking you to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. And then you ended up voluntarily committing yourself into that hospital. Was that when your life changed?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Definitely one of the major turning points for me. I had already spent two and a half nights staying up till about 6 a.m. every night, and I wrote 39 pages in those three nights, uh, a manifesto called My Religion, where I talked about philosophy and psychology and society, and had these great ideas, and they were also very disorganized. And so I called my parents, yeah, in the middle of the night, as you said, I had an apple in my hand, and I was describing to them how profound the shape of this apple is. It's the circle of life, and it's the Adam and Eve story, and my dad is a psychiatrist, my mom's a social worker, and my brother was with them too, and he's an anesthesiologist. And so they were concerned, as you mentioned. They drove up through the night. They took me to actually it was the Department of Undergraduate Health, and it was there that a psychiatrist recommended I go to the hospital. And I was totally shocked because I thought that I was doing great. I felt ecstatic and happy. I was so creative. I was reducing the universe to a single point, uh, the triumvirate being self, other, and God, and then realizing that self and other are the same, because to me I'm a self, to you I'm another, to you, yourself, to me, I'm another. So those go together, and then man just being a projection of God as himself or herself or itself, so it reduces to one. And I just finished that proof when I got called into the doctor, so I was totally shocked, and I said, Okay, well, give me a few hours, I'll take a walk with my family, and I'll calm down and I'll show you I'm fine. And the doctor would not let me do that. He took my parents into another room to because my mom was very uh against me going to the hospital, and he wanted to discuss the options with them. I was left in the room with my brother, and I remember completely breaking down. I started weeping and telling him I didn't want to go to the hospital. I mean, I really didn't want to go. I I did technically voluntarily admit myself because as I later found out from personal experience, involuntary hospitalization is much worse. So um I was able to go pretty smoothly to Yale, New Haven. And the the next morning there I got my diagnosis of bipolar. And I think that was that was a turning point in terms of realizing that that is an experience that I went through. I didn't think I would write about it at that point. I didn't think it was necessarily even a part of who I was. Uh, so I was still figuring it out at that point.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

So when you were up writing that manifesto for three days, did you have an awareness that that was not quote unquote normal, that it was somehow indicating something was different happening within you, or did it feel like it was the right thing to do at the right time?

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Both. I think it was something I'd never done. I mean, I'd stayed up, I'd pulled one All-Niger before, more like studying for an exam. So this felt much more fun and natural. And it also did feel different.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

It it didn't feel bad, but it felt exciting and new. So when the doctor comes back and they say that you have something going on, were they able to say right away that it was bipolar, or were they still trying to understand what was happening for you when you were in the the hospital in the DL in New Haven?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

They pretty much went straight into bipolar. And it's interesting because even today I'm still figuring it out because bipolar is traditionally more of a mood condition. So it's alternating rapidly from depression to mania and back, and behavioral conditions like impulsivity, impulsive spending, sex, all sorts of drug use. They never had any of that. For me, it was these bigger thoughts and racing thoughts and writing, not being able to stop. Uh so that's more of the what we call psychosis part of it. And schizophrenia is more towards that, with what you might call delusions and hallucinations. And we could talk more about that, about whether that's real or not. But so now I'm like, am I bipolar? Am I schizoaffective, which is more a combination of bipolar and schizophrenic. But at the time, it was a bipolar diagnosis, and and I had no idea what that meant, or that it ran in my family, or anything. I just I just knew it was something that was I didn't want to be that, and it it might negatively impact how people saw me, friends, family, teachers, employers.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

What was that journey for you to accept the diagnosis? I mean, was it an immediate thing, or did you have to take time to work through it, understand it? Were you even open to the idea that that was something that was happening to you?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

It took me nine years to accept it as a part of who I am. In that nine-year period, I went without any major episodes. So I was able to put it at the back of my mind. And then in 2015, I had a second manic episode that sent me to the hospital, and that was another turning point was the night I got to the hospital, I immediately accepted it. I went in without any resistance. I said, I'm hungry, give me some food, and I'll be here for a few days. That's fine. Because the first time I thought, oh, I'll get out the next day. No, it was five days. And this time I was okay, I'll be here five days or a week, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

So in in that nine-year period were you were you having minor episodes, what was happening during those nine years before you went back?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

I had a few minor flips. I remember one was after I moved to New York, and so maybe three to five years in. And I remember going for a run and thinking that I was Jesus, which is a common theme for me, and I know a lot of people who have psychotic episodes. So I felt that the racing thoughts coming back, those bigger feelings of some people would say grandiosity and depression. I had definitely some dips here and there. I've been very lucky that my depression does not tend to last very long, usually a matter of hours or a day. It really sucks when it happens, but uh but it doesn't disable me for too long.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

And you say that when you were going on this run that your mind was racing and that you were ideating that you were Jesus or believed that you were Jesus. Is that you telling yourself that, or did you hear someone else telling you that, that you are Jesus Christ?

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Such a great question. The one time I heard another voice, the only time I actually have heard an audible voice in my head was the day before my second hospitalization. And I was standing in our living room on Roosevelt Island, and I heard this voice say, Zach, do you know who you are?

SPEAKER_02 11:25

And I said, No. And the voice said, You are the middle teller.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

And I thought to myself, middle teller? What does that mean? That sounds profound. What does it mean? And then and then I figured out that there were three tellers. One first teller is Jesus, second teller is me, and there will be a third teller in the future. And the role of the tellers is to bring ancient wisdom to light to help humanity realize the potential heal and this this idea of being a very special person, which is definitely related to these thoughts about being Jesus. And it it's evolved. I would say that since those first thoughts came on in my first episode, they have persisted even when I'm not in a manic episode. And at the same time, I now believe that we all live in our own parallel realities, and in those realities, we are each the messiah. So I am the messiah. And in your plane of reality, you are the messiah, and so on.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Are you meaning that literally, or are you meaning that metaphorically that within the universe of my life, my world, my mind, I am I am the center of that universe, I am the light of that universe? Or do you believe that within each of us there is a form of the deity?

SPEAKER_02 12:59

It's like each person's reality is the whole universe. It's just our own journey through it.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

And so there's whatever, eight billion messiahs and eight billion parallel realities that are all the whole universe.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Why Jesus, though, and not Buddha or Gandhi or I don't know, Isaac Newton. Why does it go to Jesus?

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Possibly because I was raised in a Judeo-Christian context. I'm Jewish and went to Hebrew school, had a brahmitzvah, and so even though I'm not Christian, Jesus was the figure that appeared the most in terms of that history. I'm really curious if people in other societies, if it is like you said, Mohammed or Buddha, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

You said earlier that it was genetic. So when you were being diagnosed and your family, I'm sure, was going through their own coming to terms with the situation that you were in. Is it on both sides of your family? Was it something that they were familiar with? So it wasn't a surprise to them, or was this news for them also?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

My dad, he had one major manic episode in med school and has had depression for a lot of his life. My one of my great aunts was bipolar, my aunt is bipolar. So it definitely runs in the family. That said, I didn't know any of that until after my first episode. And I really wish I had because I think I could have recognized it and stopped it from going so far.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Was it a secret, or was it just they didn't tell you, therefore you weren't prepared for what could happen, or did they not just did not know?

SPEAKER_01 14:48

I hadn't showed any signs or symptoms of that up until I was 20. And what my dad told me is that he I think it was partly he didn't want to make me worry. And more than that, it was this feeling of shame of what happened and not wanting to unnecessarily share information that's not relevant because I hadn't had any problems. And looking back, he said that's one of the biggest regrets of his life, and that he wished he had told me on my way to college.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Does it usually manifest in people around the late teens, early twenties when they have some sort of condition that they have to address? Absolutely. And is it chemical because of puberty and the development, or is it usually triggered by an incident?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

It is I would say environmental in a lot of people, which was true for me. I What do you mean by that in environmental? Like an external activator. I won't say trigger, because I find that word to be violent, though commonly used. Uh but for me, it was I had wanted to be the pitch pipe of my accountability for a while. That's the spizwinks. And at the same time, musical theater is my biggest passion. And I knew that if I was music director of the group, I couldn't do any theater, so it's very intense. And I chose to be music director, and I regretted that choice pretty quickly and ended up auditioning for the mainstage musical. Uh, I got offered a role, I had to turn it down, and there was one night when the Spiswingis and I were rehearsing, and the cast of the musical came in. That was their turn to use the room. We left and I stayed behind, and I stayed there while the rest of the group left, and I put my ear on the door and started to cry because I realized that I really wished I had been on the other side of that door. And that immediately sent me into a depression where I felt I felt a feeling I'd never had before, which was there's this heaviness in my chest, and it's this feeling of sadness or crying behind my eyes. When I'm sad, it's more here, but when I'm depressed, it's somehow more here. And like I can't move as much, I have no motivation, and even though I had a girlfriend, I had friends and classes, I felt really alone. And then actually, I think for some people, including me, that depression can be the activator for mania. It's basically my brain's way of saying, This depression sucks. Try something else. It's like, okay, let's try mania. It sounds a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

But let me ask you, so I'm sure before you were 20, you had moments when you were sad or depressed. What was it about this depression that was different?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

I don't know if I'd been depressed. If I had, I didn't acknowledge or see it that way. But whatever we call it, definitely was a different feeling. With sadness, it had been about specific things. Like, oh, I'm sad we didn't win this baseball game, or I'm sad I didn't get an A plus on this exam. But with this, it was it was more general. It was a feeling. My whole body, my whole spirit, my whole soul. And even though it was activated by that one thing, it it became pervasive.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

And when you're in an episode now, when you're activated either in depression or mania, are you cognizant that that's what's happening and that you're able to say, oh, this is what this is? Or does it catch you unawares?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Aaron Ross Powell At this point, I'm very aware. The depression, I'm often able to handle it by taking really small steps. Sitting up in bed is the first step. Once I accomplish that, I feel great. Then I move on to the next step, standing up once I accomplish that, and so on. And also sometimes listening to music, listening to comedy will help. Telling people that I feel depressed can help a lot. And in terms of mania or or hypomania, which is a less severe version, I I will know the most recent or one of the most recent was I was I think I was going for a run again.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

And you and the running. You and the running back. Maybe you should rollerblade or hike. I don't know. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah. Yeah. So I I ran around the neighborhood and I saw three different Saturn cars parked on the side of the road. And as you know, Saturn is not made anymore. They're very rare these days. And I saw three of them. And then I remembered that I had written a piece of music a few months earlier called Saturn. And I started having all these thoughts about different levels of the game of life. That like cats, I have nine existences, and I have to win the game before we get to number nine, or the universe ends. We lose the game. And seven's my lucky number, so I was thinking, well, maybe this is the seventh one. Is Jupiter the I mean Saturn the seventh planet? Turns out it's the sixth, but in any case, I was having all these thoughts about planetary gaming, you could call it. And that's when I felt the thoughts. Racing, it's it's like a sense of the picture of a mountain and hiking up it in a circle. So the further I get up the mountain, the thinner it gets and the faster it goes up. I felt that. And so I said, okay, um, I wanted to bike ride. I said, this is not a good time to bike ride. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna take my Zyprexa, which is what I take for that, and knocked it out.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

How long did it take for the doctors to get your medication right? Or does that have to be recalibrated as you grow? Or as the condition shifts or morphs?

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, it's a great question. I've been so it's been 16 years since my first episode, and I have been on 14 different medications. It took at first, it took a while. I started actually with Cyphrexa on a pretty high dose, and that really flattened my emotional life, it really flattened my creativity. I absolutely hated it. But I was on that, I was on lithium, a mood stabilizer, which I just stopped a few years ago. Uh I was then put later on a actually it's called an anti-convulsant uh called lamydol, which is great for bipolar depression, because typical SSRIs or antidepressants can actually activate mania in bipolar people. So lamydol is great because it doesn't do that, and that is a drug that I think is really good for me. Uh and then Then it's just been trial and error, and I think as my body has changed, it does change. The dosages also are very important. I was on an antipsychotic called Rispritone right after my second episode, which worked great. I loved it. It had basically no side effects. I had all my creativity. The only problem was that it was raising my prolactin levels. It causes, like it if I had it for too long, I would develop breasts or start lactating. And yeah, there might be other consequences from it. So basically the doctor said I should stop it. And nowadays I'm on cerequels, an antipsychotic, limictal, and I switched from the lithium to uh a mood stabilizer called Valproate, which is a more modern treatment, and so far seems to be working pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

You just said something very interesting, and you've said it a couple of times in the conversation that when you are in this state of mania, that there is a creative force that you feel when you're in that space and you are a creative person, you're a gifted musician. Is that part of your brain part of what makes your gift activate?

SPEAKER_01 23:12

I think it's related. Having, I guess I'll call it a bipolar brain, I do think is directly connected to my creativity. I'm giving a TED talk in February about this called Could Mental Disorder be a superpower? And one thing I discovered is something called conceptual over-inclusiveness, which happens during hypomania and mania. And it's basically where I see connection between lots of ideas and thoughts that others might not see. And that is a big boon to creativity. That said, when I've actually been in the middle of a manic episode, I've tried to write music and it's pretty terrible. But I will say that it it also happens the other direction. There was a time I was working on Inside My Head, which was my musical about my bipolar, and I was trying to come up with music that would evoke mania. So I was sitting at my keyboard fooling around, and I finally found something I really liked. So I played it over and over to refine it. And as I did that, I started to feel manic. So then I had to stop and reset. And of course, that's when I knew that was the right music for it. Right. You're like, I got it.

SPEAKER_03 24:37

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

You said earlier that your your dad had a regret about not letting you know what was in your your biological history, and you are in a situation now where you're about to get married. And I wonder if you have well, I have two questions about that. I wonder if you have that concern about passing that on to your own children. And then I wonder how does a person who is in relationship, a close relationship with a person who is having who has this condition, how do they support you through that?

SPEAKER_01 25:12

I'll answer second one first. Okay. Lena, who's my fiance, we've we've known each other since high school. And so she's known about this bipolar well before we got engaged. And in fact, during my third episode, which is 2019, right before we got together again, she was very much involved. That was here in DC, and she was amazing at a person in a way in charge of taking care of me in a certain way. And in terms of day-to-day, I will tell her if I feel off, if I feel depressed or manic. And sometimes she'll even pick it up before I do. Oh wow. Yeah. She's not afraid to tell me or advise me. In terms of your first question, I haven't thought about it a lot, but I I think if I knew genetically, and we did actually do some genetic testing, I probably would not filter it out because I think that it's a superpower in a lot of ways. Uh I know there's a danger to it because I'm very high-functioning, and a lot of people have more struggles with bipolar than I do. But that said, I do think it's it's so much a part of who I am that that cutting it off would feel wrong.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

It's an interesting question because I think as as science develops and we can start saying, oh, you you're you are prone for this, or you you have a predilection for that in your DNA and your genes, you know, it begs the question of well, what do we do with that now? This is where the ethicists need to start coming in because I think as we start to learn and understand more about what could go wrong, or what time bombs are in all of us that we may not have known 40 years ago, what does that mean about how do we live our lives today? And what does that mean about procreation for the future?

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Yeah, it's a very interesting and important topic.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

What don't people understand about having bipolar or having a mental condition?

SPEAKER_01 27:24

One thing is that it's often the the episodes are often situations that I can't control or that I I don't want to be happening. And perhaps I I want help. And so if there's someone on the outside, it might be hard to understand that. And another thing is that when I'm manic and I have big ideas, it's really very helpful if people will meet me where I'm at and they will ask me about these ideas, they'll show interest, they'll engage with me. Because in situations where the opposite has been true, it's been it's made me angry, it's made me irritable, and made things worse.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Do you ever fear that you won't come back from either a mania or depression?

SPEAKER_02 28:19

I don't.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

That said, I I do I used to play more with fire, as you might say, in terms of indulging hypomania. And now, having had that third episode, I am not gonna go down that road again. So as soon as I feel it coming on, I just take the medicine, disengage.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

And yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

So in all of this, you are a musically gifted person. In your career, you have been in the pit for Wicked, which we know is a phenomenon. And I when I saw that you had played for The Color Purple, I remember going to see The Color Purple when it reopened on Broadway with Cynthia Arivo. You were probably playing the night I was in the audience. And I remember the last big song that she sings, and I'm here, I think is the name of the song. Is that the name of the song? Yeah. And the way she just took the audience in the palm of her hand and just like said, I'm gonna just make you be right here with me. What is it like when you're in the pit and you're that close to greatness happening? How does that impact you as the artist? Because you have feelings, emotions, reactions, and yet you still have to play. You can't stop and break down with the audience.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

When I played that song and we got to the end, pretty much invariably I would cry. And similar with Wicked, I played key one for that, and I had this big monitor of the stage in front of me. And in the middle of Defying Gravity, when she flies up on the broom, I would often start crying then as well. And then I had to play a lot more. But uh I just channeled that into the playing. And the wonderful thing to me about shows that you're that run for a long time is you might think they get boring, and in a way they do. In another way, there's always different because the audience is different every night.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

You've gone through so much in your life. I wonder what part of your life, what step, what journey has been your biggest leap of faith.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Oof, leap of faith.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

The mental health journey seems to have been pretty gradual in some ways, and it's also felt easy in a lot of ways. The episodes were not easy, but the journey to writing about it and how my musical has developed that has felt quite natural. One big thing that changed is I was married before this. It was a five-year relationship, and we were monogamous, and I'd always known that something was different about me, that I was able to love multiple people at the same time and have that interest in that. And there was uh a moment when it really hit me that that wasn't gonna work for me. Uh was driving through the Southwest with my wife, and it just I had this vision, vision of uh at the time I had a crush at work, and I had this vision of the three of us being together and getting along and having a life that not necessarily all three equal. I didn't want to be married to the other person, but to have that three people and being able to see that, and then a few months later, I remember being on the phone with my best friend, walking home from Wicked, and it was like so clear, this is it. And that night I told her, and within a week or two we were separated. And so my life changed very quickly for the better. And that was a big leap of faith because it was something I'd wanted for a long time, but hadn't tried, and obviously, divorce is a big thing, and it it did open my life quite a bit.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

So, Zach, we're talking to people who are in the process of finding their voice. And I wonder if you have found your voice, what you want to say with that.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

I think finding my voice is an ongoing process and always will be, because I'm changing every day, growing, learning. And at the same time, I do think I've found my voice for today at least, which is to I mean, how do you describe it? I I think a lot of it is taking ownership of my story and feeling comfortable and safe to share that and write about it and to express it in all sorts of ways, whether it's journaling or writing a show or a TED talk or talking to people at a party, being able to be authentic and open and lead with my what I call my intuition. My Blake is what I call him. He's the the part of me that knows what I need to be hap to do to be happy and to not lose feed with my inner jerk, who I call Charlie. Uh Charlie's trying to throw me off in every possible way. I'm sure every Charlie is now like I'm not a jerk. Yeah, I mean, I I believe that the mania and depression and and many other mental conditions are Charlie's method of throwing us up. And and I fell for it. I mean, the mania is so tempting that it it felt like Blake, but getting Blake. And uh I want to mention that there's this book I'm reading, amazing. It's called uh Finding Your Own North Star. And she talks about the essential self, which is basically the Blake, and the social self, which is this part we develop as to what's appropriate in the adult world. And it hit me the other day, I think that depression is actually an overactivation of the social self, which is so inhibitory. It's like, can't do this, can't do that, can't do the other, I'm stuck. That's stuckness is a feeling of depression. And on the other side of things, that an overactive essential self is mania. It's this only this creative and exuberant and unstoppable feeling. And and so it hit me also this this term to circle back to the beginning, that psychosis, which is often written off as unrealistic or fake or or uh even what's the word, uh pathological. But what if psychosis is actually just uh unbridled imagination?

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Can you explain more, take us deeper into Blake and Charlie and and why you created these characters almost, these other people, other other entities to personify these different parts of your condition?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

I'm doing a lot of work with creating characters inside of my head that I can talk to. For example, emotions like my anger is a character, my worry is a character, my self-critic is a character. And I'm able to work with them as people in order to improve my life, in order to balance what's going on inside. It's so important to recognize what's what feels right and what feels wrong. And it's become really physical to me, actually. When Blake is active, I have this sensation rising in my chest, a warmth, uh open an opening. And on the other hand, if it's Charlie, or rather, if it's the opposite of what Blake is telling me, it's the opposite, it's this tightening, this closing off, this burning in uh a negative way. And I will, as characters, I will ask yes or no questions. Usually I'll talk to Blake because he's the he's the head coach, is like on he's the nicer one too, right? That Charlie is basically Metallica for this this rock concert. Whereas uh Blit Lake is this little piccolo far in the distance and hard to pick out, but it's there. So so I'll ask yes or no questions, um such as I'll wake up, feel kind of tired, but also supposed to get up, so I'll say, should I get up? And then if it's a yes, I'll feel that opening up feeling. If it's a no, I'll feel the opposite, and it's that easy. Uh sometimes, if it's not as clear, I will reverse the question and say, Is it not time to get up? And it's actually interesting because the negative reaction to the not is often much clearer than the positive reaction to the yes.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

But do you do you get up though?

SPEAKER_01 37:28

It's hard. I mean, Charlie's trick, one of Charlie's tricks is saying, oh, you need to sleep more, stay in bed. So today I did a decent job. It was later than I wanted to, but not as late as it could have been. I said, Oh, I gotta be on the phone with Patrick soon.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Well I'm glad Blake won today.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

I had this amazing revelation. Was it well, I think it may have been while I was running as well. That uh that Blake actually created Charlotte. Because when it was just Blake, too easy.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

It was always Blake, it was no choice.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

This idea of these characters inside my head, I expand a lot. I expand it to emotions. Another example, my anxiety or my worry is a guy called Walter, Wally, Walter, Walter, worry. And when I feel worried, I'm able to see and hold his hand and say, hey, I'm here for you, it's okay. And uh and then one other example is with a self-critic. So, of course, we all have our self-critic. And I have discovered it's based somewhat on there's a psychological model called internal family systems, which is the same idea that we have all these parts inside that are people essentially, and that some of them actually don't really want to be there in the form that they're in. And I believe the self-critic is one of those. So I had a conversation with my self-critic.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

He was facing away from me, and I said, Hey, how old do you think I am? And he said, Six. I said, Oh, you think I'm six? Okay. Well, turn around, look at me.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

I'm 36. I don't need you to tell me what I need to do. Like maybe in the past I did, maybe when I was really little. I needed to do certain things to please my parents, so I would have their attention and their love. But I don't need that anymore. And so he said, Oh, you don't need that anymore? Wow, awesome. I said, Okay, cool. So, what do you want to be if you're not the self-critic? And he said, I want to be the tutor. So I'll give you advice, but in a gentle and a positive way. So, oh, that sounds great. So that so now we have these conversations. And I will admit it's hard sometimes, it does slip back sometimes. So these conversations are really helpful in terms of understanding and getting in touch with what's happening inside. And it's it's a big shortcut for me instead of having to carry around a feeling all day. It's originally took me about 15 minutes to see the character, to have a conversation. Now I can do it in 10 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

You're really making me think differently about all of this in terms of where is that line of normal and where is that line of brilliance, and then where is the condition? And I wonder if those lines blur.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

Definitely. I think it's uh actually all mental conditions are on a spectrum in my mind. We're all on a spectrum of these different different things, even if the part of the spectrum we're on is right in the middle, obviously zero. I think we're all on some spectrum that's a little bit off from center.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

You have to wonder if in a hundred years they'll look very differently at these various conditions and what is normal. And, you know, I think I think I think you're dad in a way, and the idea of shame has probably hampered a lot of understanding that everyone that people have, the shame that people have around things like this, it's probably hampered the understanding of it and the acceptance of it, and finding a way to to to integrate it into some people just have different minds that work differently.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

I definitely felt a lot of shame that first nine years, and that it's a shame of losing control of my mind and and a fear of losing control again, and and really being able to accept it is a way to move forward from that shame. And not just accepting it, but then also taking the step to share it. I've been very lucky that uh I don't remember a single time that I've told somebody about being bipolar and I've gotten a negative reaction.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Thank you so much for your time today. I so appreciate you telling your story. I think I think a lot of people will empathize with where you are and learn from where you are. So thank you for making time today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

Oh, you're so welcome. This is uh a lot of fun. You ask great questions, and you're uh an excellent host.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Thank you. Thank you. Well, after your TED talk, you'll have to come back and we'll we'll we'll learn some more from you. All right. So those of you who are watching or listening, remember we all have a voice. Use yours wisely for everyone. Thank you.

unknown 42:42

Zach