The Gaslit Truth
Welcome to The Gaslit Truth Podcast – the mental health wake-up call you didn’t know you needed. Dr. Teralyn and Therapist Jenn are here to rip the bandaid off and drag you into the messy, uncomfortable, and brutally misunderstood world of the mind.
Think you’ve got it all figured out? Think again. Everything you thought you knew about mental health is about to be flipped on its head. From outdated diagnoses to the shady underbelly of Big Pharma, these truth-telling therapists are here to tear down the myths, expose the industry’s dirty secrets, and unpack the uncomfortable realities most people are too afraid to touch.
In a world drowning in misinformation, The Gaslit Truth Podcast cuts through the noise with raw, unfiltered conversations that break down walls and challenge the so-called experts. This isn’t your grandma’s therapy session – it's a relentless, no-holds-barred exploration of what’s really going on in the world of mental health.
Warning: This podcast isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for those who are ready to question everything, confront the lies head-on, and dive deep into the truth you were never meant to find. Because real healing starts with facing the ugly, uncomfortable truths nobody wants to admit.
Welcome to The Gaslit Truth Podcast – where mental health gets real, the revelations are explosive, and nothing is off-limits. Tune in, open your mind, and prepare to unlearn everything you thought you knew.
The Gaslit Truth
Eyes Wide Open: From Psych Rx Researcher to Holistic Psychotherapist a conversation with Kelli Foulkrod
Unlock the transformative power of holistic mental health as we sit down with Kelly Foulkrod, a licensed holistic psychotherapist from Austin, Texas. Kelly takes us through her innovative therapeutic approach that marries internal family systems, somatic experiencing, and psychodynamic methods with the healing essence of nature and organic farming. Discover her trailblazing project to develop an intensive outpatient program on a farm, designed to reconnect individuals with the earth as a path to mental well-being.
Peek behind the curtain of the pharmaceutical industry with us as Kelly exposes the unsettling practices that often remain hidden from the public eye. Through gripping personal anecdotes and professional insights, we reveal how ethical compromises in pharmaceutical research can impact mental health treatment. The discussion sheds light on the long-term consequences of dependency-inducing medications and underscores the urgency of seeking transparent, alternative healing practices.
Venture into the historical context and current challenges of psychiatry, particularly its roots in America and the pervasive influence of mainstream medicine on perinatal mental health. Kelly’s personal journey, from battling medical misinformation to advocating for holistic care, serves as an inspiring narrative on the importance of a mother’s intuition and the need for support groups among therapists. Engage with a wealth of actionable insights and heartfelt stories that promise to enrich your understanding of mental health care.
Are you tired of being gaslit and want to DEEP THROAT some more truth? We want to hear from you! Message us your gaslit stories at thegaslittruthpodcast@gmail.com
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Dr. Teralyn:
Therapist Jenn:
Hey everybody, Welcome to the Gaslit Truth Podcast. I am your host, J-Dog, here with my co-host.
Speaker 2:Hey J-Dog.
Speaker 1:This is what happens when technology decides what your name is going to show up in a streaming studio, and so I just left it, because we had nothing but shit issues this morning with this program, so we're just going to go with it. So, welcome to the show. I'm Jay Dogg. I'm here with my co-host.
Speaker 3:Dr Tara Lynn. I don't have a fun name today. Do you need a fun name?
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, I can come up with fun names. I'm pretty good at this. All right, I'll shout one out halfway through the show. You'll have a new name, don't?
Speaker 3:worry.
Speaker 1:Thank you, yeah, you're. Today we have a very special guest that we're going to be introducing very shortly. Before we do, I just want to remind everybody that you can find us on all of the socials, so we want to know what you think of this podcast. So please go ahead and get on the Facebook, get on the Instagram, get on the YouTube, like, subscribe, comment, challenge us. We love a good challenge, I mean, that's what we do. So let us know what you think. And if you just want to give us some fan feedback, if you've got stories to share, if you've got something that you feel is important that maybe we haven't talked about yet on this podcast, reach out, let us know. We also have a good old email, which is thegaslitruthpodcast at gmailcom. We will check that as well. So please find us on our socials. You can rate us, you can give us little stars and you can even text us, which is pretty cool because we're getting text messages that are coming from all over the place which I personally love.
Speaker 3:I can't believe the amount of fan feedback we're getting in text messages. It's awesome. It's pretty cool yeah.
Speaker 1:It's great, yeah, so without further ado, I am going to pass this over to Terri so she can introduce our guest.
Speaker 3:We'll call her K-Dog today.
Speaker 1:K-Dog. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3:All right, we have Kelly Folkrod. I did not mangle that, I got it, I think the first time around. Kelly I love Kelly because she's an MS. So an LPC, an LPA which I don't even know what an LPA LPA or, I'm sorry, lpc is licensed professional counselor, lpa what's an LPA? It's a licensed psychological associate which is that's weird, because we had that when we were working for the state. That's what our titles were there. That's weird, okay.
Speaker 2:It gives clinicians the ability to do psychoeducational assessments in the state of Texas.
Speaker 1:Oh, cool Sure.
Speaker 3:Every state is so different, with their acronyms and their licensures.
Speaker 1:We have an assessment add-on right that we can a? Psychometric testing add-on that our LPCs can add on here. So it's kind of equivalent. Yeah, that's cool, except it's got to do things bigger in Texas, you know.
Speaker 3:All right. So she is a licensed holistic psychotherapist, based in Austin, texas. She has worked in the mental health matrix I love that For 23 years and managed her private practice, which is the Organic Mental Health Center, for 14 years. She blends internal family systems, somatic experiencing, psychodynamic and lifestyle education for a truly holistic approach to clearing trauma out of the nervous system. For the past six years, kelly has been involved with the psychiatric drug withdrawal movement and there's a movement I need to be involved in, a movement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, part of this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, join me into the movement. Yeah, join me into the movement. Anne is an advocate for those who have been harmed by iatrogenic injuries, which Jen and I have talked about on the show here and medical traumas from the mainstream system. She is currently building an IOP, which is an intensive outpatient program on a farm to offer alternatives to traditional mental health treatments, as well as tapering groups. Welcome, kelly, to the show, yay, thank you so much?
Speaker 3:Yes, I yeah, she and I we had a phone conversation a while ago and I'm like you're building a farm, like what?
Speaker 1:So, first of all, it's so, it's fantastic, it is, it's just so cool. Let's get out of the conventional, traditional box. Here people Come on.
Speaker 3:Well, actually, let's get back to roots, because when we go back into history, they had gardens and quasi farms and things like that and they had people in mental health facilities out there working on them and getting better without medical intervention at all. So, yeah, I want to learn about you, kelly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, to just kind of segue into that, care farms have been around for a really long time. The United States is not aware of them. They're really big in the UK and they originally started with people with developmental disabilities, but then the model kind of shifted to mental health and yeah, it's not alternative, it's the original way. It is yes and so, bringing again, all the research shows that two to three really the maximum six hours a day spent out in nature is equivalent to an SSRI in terms of depression, and so the industrial revolution severed us from our connection to nature, which is a really big part of healing the nervous system. So it just makes sense and we are starting an organic slash, regenerative farm. So not only are we healing humans, we're also healing the soil which has been ravaged by conventional farming practices.
Speaker 3:So I want to add in here, not to be political, but RFK Jr talks about doing this exact thing for addiction care, right, and so this isn't a completely out there situation at all. And I think we use the word alternative because we forget about history Exactly. So suddenly, when history is erased now, this seems alternative to what we know right now, and really this is the, this is the, this is the root.
Speaker 2:It's the OG.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. It's the OG.
Speaker 3:It's the OG, yes, so how did you get to a place where, because you started maybe I'm wrong, you can tell me I'm wrong you started kind of traditionally because going through traditional education and the systems to get licensed and all that is very traditional Did you have? Was your non-traditional idea? Was that before you went traditional in your education, or did that come later? For?
Speaker 2:you. My nontraditional approach came from well being indoctrinated and brainwashed by my graduate program and and then getting in.
Speaker 3:I didn't even know I was getting that, I didn't even know that that was happening. That's how slick it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't have a clue.
Speaker 2:No, none of us did. None of us realized that the universities have been infiltrated by the industry and they're dictating what we learn. And the real eye-opening experience is when I got out into the field and started working. I originally started working in inpatient psychiatric hospitals and what I saw there was astounding. That was before the research eye-opening there. What I saw there was astounding, that was before the research eye opening. There was levels of my red pill awakening. It was a series of things where I'm like what Extreme forms of abuse and oppression in a locked psych ward. That happens especially to people of color who are forced medicated against their will. You cannot say no in this system. So that was, you know. That was step one is working in the inpatient and realizing what actually happens behind closed doors and then trying to advocate for people. And it's there, you.
Speaker 2:there's nothing in a state-based system that can be done to to offer compassionate care to these people and then seeing the revolving door that was happening in psych hospitals, where people you know have these crazy you know symptoms or behaviors, get locked up, medicate them, polypharmacy, right Four to five drugs, stabilize them, and then a month later they're back again. And I'm like what, talking to the psychiatrist, what is this Like? This isn't. We're obviously not healing people and none of the psychiatrists like really wanted to have conversations about that. So that was level one.
Speaker 3:It's like playing a video game. Level one it is.
Speaker 1:And during this podcast too. Kelly, if it makes sense for you to share anything more about that experience um, because what I'm finding with people that listen to us or that reach out to us, or people that, um have alternate views, that don't like the way that we present things Um, it's because I think that they actually are pretty green to the idea that that shit happens. It's actually real, right, and I'm sure you've got it. If something makes sense to share in terms of sticking points for you where it was either a patient you were working with or in an intervention that you were asked to be a part of doing, that was like, yeah, I got to step away.
Speaker 1:This can't be right. I got to get more curious about this, right? If there's something in there that makes sense to share, please do, because a lot of people don't. I mean, terry and I have worked in inpatient psychiatric facilities as well with the most mentally ill incarcerated in the state we live in. That was what we did for many years, right, and it's like, well, they're inmates and so this, there's this barrier, right, and so when we talk about it.
Speaker 3:Well, they're, they're inmates right.
Speaker 1:So it is this idea of of asylum living lock them up, polypharmacy them, right, but they're inmates, right, they've done things wrong. So you bring a lot of judgment in the facilities that you have been in, I think um are are different in that way, and that there there isn't as much of that, or people you weren't working in incarcerated facilities. So if there's something you want to share, please do, because I think people need to hear the truth about those experiences in a way that wasn't from our lens. So I just want to throw that in there.
Speaker 2:I will do it briefly because there's many, many examples. I mean, I think if you come in at state funded Medicare or Medicaid, you are treated differently, obviously and again like ECT, I guess was we did a whole episode on that I just I, black people were more likely to receive ECT than white people.
Speaker 3:I'm going to use the word against their will, but meaning like they had to get a court order or things like that Right. Hold on, this is new to me. I didn't and maybe I'm just naive. I did not realize that people were getting court ordered to ECT. This was years ago, 15 years ago, Right, but still, I guess I'd never really. You know, I.
Speaker 1:I knew medication.
Speaker 3:That's not that. That's not that long ago.
Speaker 2:I mean.
Speaker 3:I knew that it happens with medication, but I guess I just never even, probably because my experience we didn't do that, you know, but I guess I'd never realized that that was a thing, yeah.
Speaker 2:And nobody was being offered informed consent about the risks and benefits of CT or anything Right, and saw a literal shift in people's spirit, not only like, look what look to me like brain damage on the outside, but something about that internal light was gone and, look, it makes people more easy to manage, like you can manage people easier, and so that was pretty disturbing. But, um, yeah, just the lack of, um, I guess, insight and awareness to the psychiatrists that were on staff there in terms of, like, what the whole system was doing to people. And so once I completed my internship and the hours I was like I'm out.
Speaker 3:This is insanity. You work with somatic therapies and things like that. What did working in an environment like that do to your spirit and to your body and the psychology of you? What do you think it did to you? Because I mean, jen and I have stories about that too that I now understand as being that, like when you're going against your own moral, ethical compass, and I guess you know. So what? What do you recall it doing to you as a person?
Speaker 2:Uh, depression, hopelessness, right, because at that juncture I didn't have mentors or colleagues that could see that the holes in the system I. You know the thing about being in this system. You start to question your own sanity because I'm like, but I learned all this stuff about neurotransmitters and graduate school and pharmacology and like, but this is not right, right. And so having nobody else around me that could see this made me feel like I was crazy, like why can't I just go along with?
Speaker 2:this and I really didn't want to get into this. But, like, I just go along with this and I really didn't want to get into this, but, like, inpatient hospitals have a lot of dark energy. There's a lot of darkness in those places and I don't think it's just coming from the people that are staying there. And I'm a highly sensitive person. I highly empathic, absorb energy that's around my energy field and that was also a liability to me. I didn't know what I know now in terms of how to cleanse the energy system after energy comes towards you and sticks like. I didn't have any of those skills. Obviously, they don't teach you that in graduate school that some people are holding energy that's not theirs and it can be a transfer of energy. So lots and lots of dark energy.
Speaker 3:So I want to throw in this is not related, but yet related with the whole energy thing. Shout out to Nikki. I used to work with a person named Nikki and she would come into my office this is when I had a clinic and she would do the cleansing stuff for the whole office, Right, and she'd be like man, basically this shit's dark in here and I'm like, well, there's a lot of problems in here. Then she would go outside and she would hug this one particular tree outside in our parking lot and you want to know what happened to that tree. Half of it was alive, but the part that she hugged died and I'm not kidding you, I have pictures of it. I sent it to her and I said, oh, this was an overtime situation. I'm like, why is half of the tree that you hugged dead? And she goes. I think you already know why, and I was like holy crap.
Speaker 3:That was insane to me and anyway, so I just wanted to throw that in there because it felt right to me at the moment when you talk, I got to circle back to a quick question, because Jen and I get the pushback all the time about why are you talking about psychiatric medication? You don't know anything about psychopharmacology or meds or whatever, and you just mentioned psychopharmacology in your graduate studies. I heard you say that and also mentioned many other clinicians that you worked with didn't seem to have the same knowledge base. Is that what I heard you say?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yes, and so you do have some insight into psychopharmacology and also working insight into it, seeing it, living it, knowing it every day working there, which is very similar to Jen and I. In our state the only way that you needed to have that was under certain licensure. So regular LPC licensure didn't need to have that in our state. But when you did substance abuse, therapist stuff, we were required at one point to have psychopharmacology education along with that. I don't know if that's the same in your state or is it just a program? You know differences in programs, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was a difference in programs, but for whatever reason, my program offered like yay, courses of that, yeah, which was always intriguing to me. So, back up when I was, I started working when I was 16 years old, in high school, and my very first job was at a pharmacy. And so I worked there for until I graduated high school, so two years and I got to see just that part of the pharmaceutical industry. This was way before my eyes were open. And then I never, my, I never intended to become a therapist. That was not my career path. I, I, but I started studying psychology at right when I was 18. That was.
Speaker 2:I knew I wanted to study this but my plan was always research and so, again, to put myself through college, I worked at the university of Texas. I worked in a neuroscience lab and we were studying, through animal models, depression drugs in rats. So we would slice up their brains and inject them with the dye and right and I was studying the brain. Neuroscience was kind of the track I was in. I always thought therapists were crazy and we are, yeah, we are.
Speaker 2:It's fantastic, and the only reason I became a therapist was so that I could offer holistic alternatives to people.
Speaker 2:That's why I'm still here, because I think therapy sets up codependency and blah, blah, blah that's another conversation, but. But neuroscience was always my passion, and research, and so at the University of Texas it's a very well-funded institution in terms of clinical research and so that's what I did at the undergraduate level. To you know, eat, I published journal articles. Many right went through the peer review process. I know how research studies work. That was my passion. And then I went to graduate school and was still kind of involved in different research projects. And then my first job after graduate school was I moved back to Austin and it was in a inpatient facility with a psychiatrist that had different contracts with pharmaceutical industry, bringing depression and schizophrenia drugs to market.
Speaker 1:So is this? This was the research coordinator position that you had shared with us.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I was managing different projects, right, and which involve recruitment of the people, and you know all all of the things conversing with the FDA about the data, everything Right, and probably two months in I started realizing that they basically wanted me to cherry pick people, exclude people that that you know shouldn't be excluded in the exclusion criteria, that you know shouldn't be excluded in the exclusion criteria, and then basically throw out data that didn't support their product. And I was astounded because I'm like this isn't how we did it at the university. Like what's happening?
Speaker 1:Kelly, who's they when you say they wanted me to cherry pick and exclude who's? Who is they?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say the psychiatrist who is, you know, running the whole hospital. I mean right, but but there was also, like you know, I would get sent to different I wouldn't even call them conferences like educational seminars, right when I'd have to travel right to another state to learn the industry sponsored way of doing research.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a new way of doing research then.
Speaker 1:That is a fantastic way to say it too.
Speaker 2:And they would put me up in hotels and it was really nice.
Speaker 2:I mean it's just like when the doctor, you know the pharmaceutical reps, come to the doctor's office. It was like that. But they would send me to places to learn how to do their form of the scientific method, to places to learn how to do their form of the scientific method, which wasn't the scientific method. And I didn't last a year there because that was really my eye-opening experience, because not only was the drug harmful because it was experimental I'm not allowed to say the name of the manufacturer or the drug but it was causing harm to people and they only studied it for three months there it is.
Speaker 2:That's typical though, isn't it? And then they would rubber stamp it through the FDA.
Speaker 1:You can affirm, kelly, you can affirm that because we talk a lot about that on this episode, on this show too, about this whole like 90 day thing when research is being done, and it's nice to have somebody on here who is in it and who can actually affirm and say that, yes, I mean what you see when you see these studies right, is typically about three months three months and then if, by some magical chance, the the person was actually getting some benefit, by some magical chance, the person was actually getting some benefit, after three months, the drug is removed from you.
Speaker 2:You have no access to it.
Speaker 3:I was just wondering that actually, because I'm like did they just let them stand?
Speaker 2:Because after three months.
Speaker 3:You are dependent or addicted or whatever you got.
Speaker 2:And so then they threw those people into psychiatric drug withdrawal and did nothing for them, and I forget how much money they got right. They're paying these people as well, which is also a conflict of interest.
Speaker 3:Huge Wait. They're paying the participants. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's what she said. I mean, I just know how. Do you know, my mind is a little extra blown here today.
Speaker 2:Astounding, and so after that was eyes wide open, and at that juncture I started seeking out other people who could see this Right, and at that time Dr Kelly Brogan was just starting out. She was.
Speaker 3:Do you know her? Get her on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know, like she was one of the only people I could find. And then Dr Bregan obviously started reading all the renegade psychiatrist books and was like what I've been lied about, everything Um and. But it was a lonely, like crisis in my career because I was like I want no part of this. I'm still paying my graduate student loans. I don't want to do this. This is dirty, what do I do?
Speaker 2:And at that point I had found there was a psychologist in Austin who was helping teen boys or young boys really in general safely taper off of Ritalin and ADHD medications. So he got it. He was old school. People thought he was totally insane, but he started mentoring me and he was kind of my biggest ally and mentor in this process. And he cause I was like I'm getting out, I don't want to participate in this, I can't do this. And he was like why do you think I'm still in this? Like why do you think I still have my license? It's because the, the, the movement or the, the field needs you. Right Cause at that point I was teaching yoga.
Speaker 2:I was like I'm just going to be a yoga teacher. He's like you'll have no influence, there's no way you're going to change this system. If you're a yoga teacher, you have to be in the system if you want to create change in the system. And so he really encouraged me to stay, and I'm glad he did, and just so much like love and respect for him coming into my world and like showing me and teaching me, because what a what a gift, at least to our community, to find somebody that is well-educated, influential and is like you know what?
Speaker 3:It's not you, right, it's not you, it's, it's the system. And when you are stuck in the system for all the various reasons, like you said, like I'm still paying my student loans, I've done all of this work just to abandon it. And then I think, why is there not space in mental health for deprescribing? Why is there not space to help people on that end of things? There should be. Well, there is, because the three of us are sitting here right now, but you know, but I think, but we forget about the lifespan of people, the lifespan of medication, um, or or just the, the harm that it can bring to some people, um, which, by the way, is more people than I ever imagined.
Speaker 3:You know, I had no idea when I was doing all of this and eating it up, like oh yeah, oh yeah, this is so exciting and interesting and research, and all of this stuff. And then you wake up one day and your body hurts, you know, and you've got anxiety or depression, and it's only because you're not living in the same lane. You know, like you're not, you wake, you wake up to it. But it's funny because during COVID, when all that happened, I became a yoga instructor and I was like I'm just going to stop and I'm going to teach yoga Same thing I never did. And I was like I'm just going to stop and I'm going to teach yoga Same thing I never did. I'm like because I was about at my wits end at this point of you know, mental health, mental health, mental health. It was just so dark all the time and I'm like I'm just going to teach yoga. And then I was like what good is that going to do?
Speaker 1:That's a damn good thing. You didn't do that, like we would be sitting here doing this if you would have went off and did all your, your, your woo, woo, mental health stuff you do. You know, um, I have to, I have to say, uh, kelly. So you sent us an email and in that email, um, you had listed out and answered some of the questions. You know that we want, like all of our guests, to ponder right, some people send it back and write some very specific things, like you did, some people they don't, and they're just things to get your brain going. I want to read something that you wrote because it kind of just ties into what you were just saying. Okay, about having people understand more.
Speaker 1:We asked the question what the truth is that you really want people to know, and I think it just fits with what we're talking about here. I'm jumping around a little bit, but you talk about the idea of humanity really knowing how deep in evil the industry is, right industry and to understand this idea for people that, like the control part, is very real. You say. You state it's no accident that these drugs are dependency causing, with horrific and deadly withdrawal side effects, and that you want the general public to understand these invisible injuries like that happened to hundreds of thousands of people, and and so I find that very, really reigning true for what you're talking about right and how you were getting to your truths. You say something about Project Paperclip in this email to us. What is that?
Speaker 1:Tell our listeners what Project Paperclip is and you're going to tell me, because I will say I don't know.
Speaker 2:Oh, really, okay. And look, this isn't a conspiracy, this is facts. You can look this up on the internet. This is history. When the Nazis disbanded in Germany, they brought a group of scientists and doctors to America to continue their experiments on humans, and that is how the roots of psychiatry originated in America. It's dark. People don't want to look at that. They were doing all sorts of horrific experiments in Nazi Germany. Obviously we know about that. Well, they continued it by bringing psychiatry to America. That's what Project Paperclip is.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. So, I'm kind of surprised I didn't read that Like you said. Now you're saying it. I'm like gosh. I wonder if that was in the Mad in America book. Right, because they really go to the roots of some of it. But I don't recall that at all.
Speaker 3:I don't remember that, I don't remember any of that.
Speaker 1:So the roots of psychiatry are eugenics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know that, and the original asylums were for people who were undesirable, right, and so these experimentations were. How can we make a population that's desirable?
Speaker 1:Yeah, human change, human stock Right, let's make human stock what we want it to be. Yes, yeah, project paperclip you just taught me something Never heard of that, so that's really cool.
Speaker 3:You heard of that, Dr T, I have not. I didn't know All the rest of it. Yes, we've talked about. Yes, I know the rest. So now I'm going to get curious about that.
Speaker 1:So I just wanted to ask about that, kelly, because you tie that into the very end about what do you want people to know and what you were sharing with us about this idea of the true horrific things that have happened and how the history has brought us to being here, and so I thought that was important because I'd never heard of it.
Speaker 3:So after you did your time in-.
Speaker 1:Phase one. I think you called it phase one, right, phase one. I totally derailed that shit, by the way, I'm sorry. All right, let's get to phase two.
Speaker 3:No, no, no. What was your ep? No, no. Phase two no, no, no. What was your? Um, what was your? Your epiphany phase two moment then, after you were, because I'm guessing you were there to licensure, like, right many of us like, when I worked in the state I, my original intention was to get licensed and get out. That didn't happen. I stayed longer, um than I intended, um, but then eventually I did get out. But uh, so your phase two, like you, were like licensure, I'm out of this right.
Speaker 2:Right, and then I went into private practice um because I was like oh, maybe I can do something different here.
Speaker 3:Which is really interesting because, um, there's there's a lot of pushback from other colleagues going into private practice period. And secondly, when you are a young therapist young meaning I'm going to say inexperienced, but you had extreme experience though, like you're I feel like when people work in inpatient centers or prisons or whatever, like our training is so extreme. When you come into the real world, or the wild, as I call it, it is nothing like that. You know, like that extreme training. So I think people get that wrong all the time, that even though you haven't been in the field for a very long time, that you still have a lot of extreme training. But did you experience any type of pushback or any type of from colleagues? Or you're like I just don't give a shit and I'm going to do this thing.
Speaker 2:Well, I am a recovering people pleaser, so in the beginning I'm not anymore because of this whole experience. But in the beginning there was a tremendous amount of pushback. I was accused of med shaming and being dangerous and you know misinformation and I can't tell you how many you know and conversing with psychiatrists which I've given up on at this point about withdrawal and then saying you can't use that word. That's not okay, it's discontinuation syndrome. So the thought police attacking my language that I use.
Speaker 3:Oh boy, do you know the first amendment right exists for a reason I can call it. Whatever the fuck I want to, I get stuck in that too.
Speaker 1:I can sit with you in that Semantics, semantics, semantics, like stop, stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just not having colleagues who could see this. It was a very lonely thing, minus that one psychologist right. And so now in Austin there are more holistic practitioners who get it. We're still few and far between, but in the beginning again I almost gave up. Again it was very dark. Why am I doing this? I want to get an office job. I just want to like be behind a computer and not interact with the population.
Speaker 3:Yep, I still vacillate with that idea sometimes.
Speaker 2:I would say that you know my work okay. So I had a baby in the process of private practice and I didn't know it. But I also had postpartum thyroiditis, which took me probably nine months to get to the root cause. But every doctor kept telling me it was postpartum depression and that I needed an SSRI. Here you go, right, and I was resistant to it because I wanted to breastfeed and it didn't feel right and um and I, I, it took me an acupuncturist. I went to so many doctors and an acupuncturist was like hey, I think your blood sugar's off. Has anybody tested your thyroid? I think your blood sugar is off. Has anybody tested your thyroid? And I was like what? So that kind of sparked this. One of my specialties became perinatal mental health, which I've been in service for 14 years. So did training and everything on pregnancy, postpartum depression right and trying to get to the root cause of it?
Speaker 3:which spoiler alert? It's not a chemical imbalance or low serotonin. What Stop it? It keeps happening. Stop spreading misinformation.
Speaker 2:But the fact that it took an acupuncturist to kind of get to the root, and I went to all these different doctors and nobody, every solution was antidepressants and no conversation around what that could do to the baby or me or any of that or that. Hey, maybe you also have a hormone imbalance in addition to a thyroid imbalance, and so, um, and maybe you haven't slept for 12 months, right, all the things?
Speaker 3:Yeah, all the things yeah, but did you experience any type of or I suppose this seems kind of obvious actually the shaming stuff Like, well, you know, if you want to be a better mom, you know, just take this pill, you won't regret it, you know, would you? I mean, honestly, when Jen and I did an episode on this very topic about pregnancy and SSRIs, a lot of the information that people get is you know, if you, okay, you have to weigh the risk and the benefit. You know, of taking an SSRI, but yet you're not sharing me the risks of my unborn child. Like you're not sharing any of that. You're actually just saying it'll be okay, nothing's going to happen, you know which is false.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, that's false information.
Speaker 2:The standard. Oh, it's more dangerous for you to have a depressive episode while you're there, which is a straight up lie. That's what I got. We do have empirical evidence now showing the connection between SSRI use in utero, adhd, learning disabilities and autism. That's established in the literature now.
Speaker 3:Oh, you're going to get pushed back on that one. I'm telling you.
Speaker 1:I know, I know, and it's crazy. It's crazy to me that, even when it is well-established within literature, there isn't a shit ton of conflicts of interest within that literature that produced these results. Right, it's there. It can't be there. There's no way that could happen, because I was guaranteed that there would be nothing that would happen to my child from a physician. But yeah, it's like what more just shy of you actually going through this with a child and then, okay, which Terry has talked about, I have talked about right, like just shy. It's like people can't believe until it actually happens to them. And then you start to actually look at research and actually believe it a little bit more because it happened to you and your child and you can't seem to find something else that explains it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:I've had clients that take a stack of literature about this in pregnancy to their OB and get completely dismissed and then they get put on it and they're like, well, they said it would still be okay. And I'm like, did you read the literature yourself? Did you read that? I mean, part of my story is I was prescribed an antidepressant to prevent postpartum depression. I wasn't even depressed, you're right, and this is my second kid, because after my first one I did have a little postpartum depression. And this stupid me. I shared it because they asked like, how did it go? I'm like, well, I had some postpartum depression. And you know this stupid me.
Speaker 3:I shared it because they asked like, how did how did it go? I'm like, well, I had some postpartum stuff and immediately prescription zero talk about um outcomes with child, like any of it. None, you know. And I wasn't even depressed, but I can tell you damn sure I was after. Like the chemical imbalance that it created within me was way worse than the little bit of postpartum depression I experienced with my first pregnancy, you know, and difficulty getting off and all of those things and the shame and everything you know. I really wish we would stop the manipulative language when it comes to meds, because it assumes that people are too stupid to read things and understand and make informed decisions.
Speaker 1:Or it assumes that they're in too much of a frail state to be able to have the truth stated to them right Like here's. The risks here's the benefits.
Speaker 2:Here's some other alternatives. Right, you can't handle the truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you're Jack Nicholson. You can't handle the truth. Oh my gosh, that's one of the first socials we ever put out for the Gaslit Truth podcast, because it embodied what is just like. Why can't we have these conversations?
Speaker 3:Because if you have the conversation, then people won't take the med, and that would be the worst situation ever for that person. It'd be terrible, it'd be the most terrible thing.
Speaker 1:What do you tell us about that, kelly? What kind of stuff do you see coming with within, within your practice, with that? I mean, do you I know that you've experienced some of that in your own life, but even for your, your clients, I mean, is it something that you hear a lot as well when they're coming to you for, for services now, that this, this just manipulative language or things being stated to them in a way that's actually goes against what is the empirical evidence that's out there?
Speaker 2:Absolutely every day, and especially in the perinatal population. I mean, I've seen it with my own eyes. I've seen these babies. The mothers can bring their babies into session with me. I mean, I've hundreds of different cases right of the pregnancy, ssris in utero and the long-term consequences. I've seen it with my own eyes, right.
Speaker 2:But what I think we bump up against is the cult of mainstream medicine. It's a cult, it's a religion, where people give their authority over to somebody in a white coat and discount their own intuition Because the expert said it. They must be right, they must know more than me, right? And this is a program that starts from day one when we're born onto this planet. It's in the books, it's in the TV, it's in the movies, it's in the culture, it's obviously in social media that there are these gods who wear white coats and they're so much smarter than you and they have so much more wisdom than you. You better bow down to their authority at the expense of your own, and that's what that that's. The paradigm shift we were trying to break through is that mother's intuition knows how to protect its offspring, hands down. But when you're being manipulated and lied to and you, you're a first time mom, you're going to cower right and you're a first-time mom, you're going to cower right.
Speaker 3:Which is so it's so strange to me because, well, you're so scared, you get to a place of big fear, right, like, yeah, I want to be the best mom I can be. You know all these things, I mention this a lot but you don't drink dark soda, don't eat deli meat, don't? You know all these lists but SSRIs and go ahead, take all of those you know. You need this, you need that, whatever you know. And then the other piece of this that I just want to quickly mention is a lot of moms are breastfeeding, moms are pumping and storing um their breast milk, pumping and storing their breast milk. And so I think about the withdrawal of the infant, right. And so if you are, if you are, even if you're tapering right, if you're tapering down, tapering down slowly, you still have a stash, you know, of breast milk. That is, whatever full strength, you know, ssri or whatever it is your, your child is also going to be tapering with you, and so to watch out for those withdrawal symptoms in your infant.
Speaker 3:but then then you grab an old stash and now suddenly they have full strength again for a while you know, because you may be long off of your SSRI and then, but you still have a stash of breast milk and I'm like. That blows my mind actually when I think about it like that, because it just kind of dawned on me last week actually.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, I mean, the other thing is that there was this study that came out that said Zoloft is the only SSRI that doesn't come through breast milk. All the others, how can that be? How? No logical sense y'all so so, but they do a. It's like a, a very brief, a one page checklist, right that all mainstream OBGYNs offer postpartum women on their six week visit, and if you score in depression, which look, no new mom feels good at the six week mark, nobody does, nobody feels like themselves, and so, but if you score high enough on that, the standard of care is 50 milligrams of Zoloft period. Uh, and so it's just. It's alarming to me that they would this one study, that they would say, oh yeah, but Zoloft is the safe one and all the other ones aren't?
Speaker 3:they're all the same classification no logical sense.
Speaker 2:Wow, you know I've given up trying to to talk to mainstream clinicians about it.
Speaker 3:It just it doesn't work do you get pushback from moms too, when you talk about it or like what's the I?
Speaker 2:don't. I don't. I'm not here to evangelize people. If people are waking up and they have questions, then I'll talk, but I don't. I'm not going to push my views on somebody if they're not ready for them.
Speaker 3:It doesn't work yeah, it's interesting because jen and I talk about this, or I'm sorry, jay dog and I talk about this, or I'm sorry, j-dog and I talk about this.
Speaker 3:And if we don't start asking questions like how do you feel about being on your medications or whatever, they won't, people don't talk about it, right, they won't bring it up.
Speaker 3:But as soon as you start asking some questions not how I feel about you being on it, but how do you feel on this stuff We've talked and we're like you know what the majority of people that we work with feel not good and they don't want to be on it, but they think that they have to and there's no way off because they've tried a million different times in a million different ways and while I guess I just have to stay on because I had withdrawal, but they don't call it withdrawal, I call it return of symptoms, yeah, a relapse of symptoms and um, so they're, they're stuck. So, unless you open the conversation, but not to convince, but just to get curious like how are you, how are you actually doing on these medications and what are your real thoughts and feelings about it? You know I would I would guess the majority of people are like I don't want to be on this anymore, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they're too afraid to they're too afraid.
Speaker 3:And and also friends and family do a really great job of saying you know, but you've tried before and you know things went off the rails, so maybe you shouldn't do that again. And so friends and family because they're I'm sorry, I don't mean to you know, they're not educated because they've been indoctrinated into the idea that, you know, meds are going to solve this problem and they want the best for you, right? So when we talk about this stuff, I don't think we're talking about it in a way that's like somebody is out there attempting to hurt you. I think most people and care providers are really trying to help you. I don't think that there's evil intention behind it in the care provider or in the family member that's saying take this. However, they don't know how it feels to take this. You know, they don't know. They don't know that there's always going to be this weird trade off between um, well, what do you feel like now versus what do you feel like when you're on a medication and which one do you want to choose? You know, is there, is the risk and benefit worth it for you? Like, that is a real balancing act for you to figure out Totally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's just it's such a weird conversation because I mean I know I go to the doctor, you know, and get talked to about various things, or people go I've never, I've never had the cholesterol conversation. But people go in for their high cholesterol. Thankfully I don't have to worry about that yet. Hopefully never. Anyway, they go into there and they talk about cholesterol, but I do know that they do. A lot of people will say, well, is there something I could do with my diet first? You know a lot of people will say that I have yet to have someone come into my office and say, is there something I can do with my diet first? Yeah, I'm waiting.
Speaker 1:I'm waiting for the day that I get that too, or? My lifestyle, or, you know, tell me how I could just change my sleep or just but the nutrition like.
Speaker 3:I or or, by the way, digging into you know, having alcohol every night probably isn't in your best interest if you want to start changing how you feel. But nobody's asking these questions. They're just saying, oh, here's your symptoms, get this med. That that's it.
Speaker 3:They're not asking deeper lifestyle questions or, you know, even relationship questions, or the relationship that you have with your work, you know yes, yeah or the idea that a six-week postpartum mom I'm sorry is supposed to feel like crap, and if you don't, that's a good thing, you know? Yes, completely normal. Um, yeah, I would. It's an expected response to being in postpartum is that you would feel a little bit like garbage, you know?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, what are we medicating at that point, like? That's the part that I'm kind of trying to understand. Like I know what your viewpoint is on this, kelly, but when you talk to clients about this, like at six weeks, what I mean are we, is this, this, kelly?
Speaker 1:But when you talk to clients about this, like at six weeks, what I mean are we? Is this a? Is this cosmetic psychopharmacology that's happening right here? Is this like a? Your normal feeling, right? Um is just altered, right, and so we're, we're going to fix this, because this, these are these checklist of symptoms, right, which, as you were talking, I'm pulling this up on my other screen going holy shit, um, it is out there. You know, like I was a victim of this a couple of times, not even knowing it, right, but this idea of like you're normal, we're just going to make it a little bit better for you so that you can keep functioning and you're more tolerable and you can eat, not only for you but you fit the bill for those around you, because you're struggling. You know it's like it's like it's cosmetic. We're enhancing something that's natural.
Speaker 2:Well, and just educating women um again on the thyroid, because that is so key.
Speaker 3:And the poster child over here for thyroid.
Speaker 2:I healed my postpartum thyroiditis by diet and nutrition. The Synthroid didn't work for me, it made me not feel well but educating people about the culture. So in tribal cultures, one baby has four grownups surrounding that and then a whole village until that baby is 18 years old. That's the model for humanity. It takes a village and america is the opposite. We are rugged individualists. We're supposed to do everything by ourselves. We're supposed to bounce back and be in our old body, you know, six weeks later and like the cultural piece of it, obviously. And then the education around.
Speaker 2:And this is something I don't tell pregnant women. But if you have a cesarean, if you have an epidural, you're in you. You you have already catapulted your risk for postpartum depression. Um, birth in America is setting. It goes hand in hand with the pharmaceutical industry. That's on purpose, in my opinion, and we just educating women on nutrition, right. But again, what I what was this was phase three of my awakening is that what I would see? I would work with a woman postpartum. She would feel better. She, the psychiatrist, would have prescribed an SSRI and she might be on it and we would in therapy. She would call me a year or two later and say, hey, I want to have a second baby. I can't get off this Zoloft. What's wrong? I don't know what's happening, Right?
Speaker 3:And you'd say, well, it's because you need it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely not. That's the doorway for talking about deprescribing and safety.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, yeah. Isn't that true, though you got-.
Speaker 3:But traditionally you would go in and the response from therapists and prescribers because when we talk about this, the three of us are therapists and so this language comes in therapist offices. Yeah, absolutely Okay. It doesn't just come in a prescriber and it doesn't just come in a psychiatrist office. Most women aren't prescribed by psychiatrists. They're prescribed by their OB or their family doctors you know Right. So these conversations and the perpetuating of well, if you feel bad, it's probably because you need it comes from therapist offices too. Therapists are the worst.
Speaker 1:We're the worst.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we are, yeah, we, we are, and I will also say that therapists are so far behind in research and in getting research when it comes to this big pillar of people's mental health, because it's like an avoided conversation, right Like I can't have these conversations, even though your clients might feel worse and worse and worse. That's what I noticed when I first was like my first light bulb. Clients were coming in on med stack, especially women med stacked, feeling like shit, and my response to that was maybe you should go back to your prescriber and, you know, adjust your dose or find something new or whatever. And then at one point I was like why am I saying all of that? This doesn't even make sense, because if these things were supposed to help them, they'd be feeling great right now. Depression would be eradicated, Anxiety would be eradicated, if these things actually worked. But instead our mental health in this country is getting worse and worse and worse and prescription is getting higher and higher and higher.
Speaker 2:But therapists are part of this colossal problem addressing trauma, and so, instead, they resort to medication, because they have the skill set to appropriately address the issue that is presenting in their office.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if in their programs of study or in their post-program licensure hours they didn't have a lot of access to, or information about, psychiatric medication, you're just going to sit there not worrying about that part and I'm like but all of your patients, or a vast majority, are coming to you on these medications. Even more like, even cholesterol medications can cause someone to have depressive symptoms and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yep Blood pressure meds.
Speaker 2:Yes, blood pressure, meds, all of these things.
Speaker 3:And therapists are not getting curious enough about this to be like wait, maybe that is a contributing factor that I need to get educated on myself. Nope, it's just. Whatever happened to my master's program is all I'm going to get. You know, I feel lucky that I was forced by the state to take some of these courseworks for my license. Now I feel really lucky. At the time I was kind of pissed off. I'm like really another pro, another class that I have to take for this. But now I'm like, you know, if I go back and look at that coursework I think I would have a whole different you know eye to it. Yeah, because really it was just about classifications and you know, blah, blah, blah. But now that has been like this jumping board for Jen and I and it sounds like for you, kelly, to really get involved with this information and just jump ahead and, I don't know, get curious enough about it to change the narrative in our offices.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, yeah, yeah, that was a good tangent there. Look at her go, sorry, it gets me, it gets me all going here Sometimes you just gotta let Dr T go, even though you know it's like literally almost time for us to wrap up here.
Speaker 3:We just let you go, Hold on, but before we go um cause it is time for us to wrap, wrap up. I want you to talk about your farm real quick for the next couple of minutes, if you can wrap that up I want people to know what this is, because I think it's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Thank you. So I inherited 75 acres of farmland outside of Austin. It's been in my family for over a hundred years. My great grandparents used it to farm through the great depression. So it feels pretty timely to pick up the torch and start the work, and so my husband and I are start.
Speaker 2:We've already started the infrastructure of the organic farm, part Um, and the next phase is starting to bring people onto the land too. So there's going to be complex PTSD groups and then tapering groups and teaching people lifestyle management on how to safely taper and different protocols for that, and then also teaching them organic and regenerative farming practices so that they can actually have their hands in the soil, be working with animals, learn how to regenerate soil as they're regenerating internally. And I'm going to be offering some like really educational webinars not necessarily support groups online this fall. To start to cause. I really we need more education around not just the tapering protocols but all the lifestyle issues and ways to support the nervous system and the brain as it's healing from the traumatic brain injury. So starting to kind of create different modules of that body, mind, soul and spirit of how you can approach a taper or, if you're already in post-acute withdrawal. What can we do now in terms of trying to get you to stabilization, and so rest on my website for those.
Speaker 3:What is your website? Go ahead and say what is this.
Speaker 2:Organicmentalhealthcentercom Nice.
Speaker 1:I kind of want to go.
Speaker 3:Well, I was just going to say when you're Can.
Speaker 1:I sign up now Because I'm in the middle of this shit, as you know, kelly, so I might just like sign up here and show up on your front porch here.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean there is. I mean my vision is also hosting retreats for clinicians.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just going to say that.
Speaker 2:Oh for clinicians. Yeah, lecture therapists coming out of graduate programs and show them hey, there's a different paradigm at here. The medical model is not the only way. Come learn here it is right and that the earth is our pharmacy. The earth provides every nutrient and mineral and anything that the brain needs. It's on the earth, and that's a threat to the pharmaceutical industry and that's why we're here having this conversation yes, no, I couldn't love this anymore.
Speaker 3:And uh, when you're, when you're up and running, jenna and I'll come and do our podcast remote, can we?
Speaker 1:just do a remote show and then I'll probably take advantage of some of the resources you're offering, because I will still be a good solid year or two having to taper off this shit yet. So I'm, I'm, I think, I think what you are doing, I want to say it's, it's revolutionary, but it's not because that word sounds fantastic, even though this idea is something, as we started with, right Like that. That has been, it's been around, but you're going against the grain, you are going completely the grain, you are going completely. You are, you are uphill backwards in a snowstorm yeah, completely, and in many ways, and so, and that's how it feels. Even so, I just I want to just validate that, because Terry and I feel that way a lot too, and we can sit in that right Like and this idea of of trying to go against what is so large but is so wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you can't stop, you can't stop once you know what you know.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, you can't unlearn what you know, you can't unlearn it.
Speaker 3:So in that snowstorm, let Jen and I be your snowsuits.
Speaker 1:Oh, look at that how corny and perfect. I know right.
Speaker 3:We are so grateful to have met you and I think, as we continue like hooking up, I think we just need a support group for therapists that are like trying to do something different, trying to make a change in a different way and not just trying to, you know, throw the blanket of mental health onto everybody you know in that way. So, anyway, thank you so much for being on the show today and we will keep in touch with you. For sure I can't wait for our first remote session on your farm, for sure, yes, and if you are have tuned into this far, please like, comment and share and send us your gaslit truth stories at the gaslit truth podcast at gmailcom, and reach out to us and make sure you head on over to the is it the or just organic mental health centercom.
Speaker 2:No, the in front of it.
Speaker 3:No, the just organic organic mental health centercom. Keep. Keep in touch with Kelly and watch what she's doing next. Thank you for being here.
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