The Psychology Of Dark Tourism

What happens when a seasoned therapist loses his footing and chooses to walk straight into the world’s darkest rooms? We sit down with Dr Chad Scott, a psychologist, prison therapist, and author, to trace a journey from illness and anxiety to a practice he calls reflective dark tourism—visiting sites of profound suffering with reverence to learn how to live.

Chad takes us through the steps into an Auschwitz gas chamber, the mirror-stillness of Hiroshima’s museum, and the bone-lined halls of the Paris Catacombs. He explains why these places aren’t morbid attractions but moral classrooms, where memento mori becomes a practical guide: remember you must die to remember to live. Along the way, he connects the dots between exposure in therapy and walking through history’s hardest truths, showing how facing what we fear can expand emotional intelligence, cultivate resilience, and shrink the grip of anxiety.

We also explore the ethics of dark tourism, the criminalisation of mental illness he witnessed as a prison therapist, and the stories told at sites like Whitney Plantation and Little Bighorn. Chad shares honest advice for aspiring counsellors, the craft of leaving work at work, and how these journeys helped him through end-stage liver disease and the uncertainty of a transplant call. His message is simple and challenging: avoidance narrows your world; reckoning restores it.

If this conversation resonates, tap follow, share it with someone who needs courage today, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. Then tell us: which place changed the way you see life?

Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/chadscottauthor/

Chad’s books: 

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Chad-Scott/author/B0DDDGVCPB

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Transcript

Rock Bottom And A Radical Choice

unknown 0:01

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Chad Scott had spent years as a therapist, sitting with trauma, anxiety, addiction, and the criminal mind, helping other people climb out of difficult places. But nothing prepared him for the moment that his world collapsed.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

I was absolutely rock bottom in my life. I was diagnosed with um ed end stage liver disease, severe cirrhosis, and you know, really was struggling.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

But the therapist in him did something unexpected. He didn't shy away from the darkness, he walked towards it, visiting Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the catacombs of Paris, places marked by immense, immense suffering.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

It just felt like a gut punch over and over and over and over. And when you when you face darkness head-on, that is the quickest way to getting through it. It helps you to become much more emotionally intelligent, I think, when you go through these things with reverence and empathy.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

He realized that the same revelations that he found in these sites of suffering were the same ones that his patients needed as well.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

It kind of just came to my awareness like, oh my god, these places really helped me, and I and I needed to tell people about that.

unknown 1:06

One, two, three, four.

Chad’s Unlikely Path Into Psychology

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of No Ordinary Monday. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm your host, Chris Barron, and each week I sit down with a guest whose stories are anything but ordinary. We're going to explore their path into the job, what it's really like behind the scenes, and then they're going to relive the wildest, most unforgettable experience of their career. Alright, so before we dive in, uh just a very quick reminder, don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show. If you do, you'll be getting the most extraordinary stories delivered to you for free each week. So far, we've had everything from cave explorers to parapsychologists, secret service agents, and we've got a ton of exciting guests already lining up for the coming months. Now, if you have a story or there's a particular career or profession that you want to be featured, you can drop me an email, hello H E L L O at NoOOrdinarymonday.com. And finally, for links and info to the guests, check out the website at NoOrdinarymonday.com, or you can check out the show notes as well for each episode. Now, today's guest is Dr. Chad Scott, a psychologist, therapist, and author who spent 25 years working with people at the lowest moments. But when Tad's own life collapsed through illness, anxiety, and loss, he found himself searching for answers in places that most of us would avoid. And what he discovered there transformed him. In this conversation, Chad explains why walking through the world's darkest sites with respect and reverence helped him understand suffering in a completely new way. And in his feature story, he relives how a moment inside one of the most haunting historical sites on Earth reshaped the way that he teaches his patients to face their own darkness. You're listening to No Ordinary Monday? Let's get into the show. Uh bro. Chad, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today, man? Hey, Chris, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. No worries at all. Pleasure. Where where in the world do you dial in from today?

SPEAKER_02 3:18

I am in the United States. I'm in northern Minnesota, a little north of Duluth and a little south of the Canadian border.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Honestly. Is it Canadian?

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Listen, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I I really was interested to have you on just because you a lot of my guests have got all kinds of career backgrounds. But you've had such a fascinating meandering journey to get where you are today with through like you know like touching on like being a minor and getting in education and criminal psychology and now being a therapist and now in dark tourism. And I mean I I just want to start things off like with you know trying to think back to 18-year-old Chad and if he if he was looking at what you got up to now, what would he be thinking?

From Mines To Mental Health And Prisons

SPEAKER_02 4:09

You know, I never in a million in a million years when I was 18 would have thought I would get a doctorate and taught university psychology and have been a therapist for however many, you know, I've been in the mental health field for 25 years now. No way on earth. I I went to college because I, you know, I didn't really have a plan after high school. So I'm like, well, I might as well just go to college where my girlfriend's going to college. So I I uh followed her to college and I thought, like, well, what could be something I'd be interested in? Well, maybe I'll be a gym teacher, play floor hockey all day, shoot basketballs, you know, like that'd be great. I was a complete sports nut. I played hockey, football, baseball year-round. Nice and played some college sports. And while I was in college, like I I did terrible in in you know regular primary school. Yeah, I I I had no interest in school. I had, you know, my my parents really push sports more than school, really. And um, you know, they they probably thought the same as me. It's like, well, I'm not very that's school's not my thing. But anyway, when I was in college, you're you're you kind of have a fresh start, and um and you're and you're forced to take classes that you otherwise wouldn't take. So I was taking some social science, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and I just fell in love with the field. So um, and at that time I wanted to be, you know, I I started taking flying lessons because I've always wanted to be a pilot. And I wanted to be an airline pilot. So I got my pilot's license, and during that process, I ended up getting my the same girlfriend, I ended up getting her pregnant. So um bought a house in right next to my hometown, which is now my my hometown is White Lakes, Minnesota. And uh actually my son is the mayor now, the same child that was born when I was in college. Congratulations, yeah. One of the youngest, one of the youngest mayors in Minnesota history, so that's really awesome. That's pretty sweet. But um I I took a job working in our local mine, and it shut down um almost as soon as I started. So that so we have a town of 2,000 people that had 2,000 people working in that mine, plus you know, thousands of spin-off jobs, too. So it's a just a devastating thing for our economy here. And but anyway, I I was actually one of the last people ever hired at this mine near my hometown. And it's actually both my grandpa grandparents' uh fathers retired from there. And um, it went on a hiring freeze just uh the day before, a couple days before I was to start in the actual mine. So I actually ended up working in the guard gate, and that's how I uh I worked as a security guard there for about a year, and then when it when I left, I would I uh got some dislocated worker money and I and I went and got a master's degree. Um and that and that's actually how I I I like I could only take so much, you know, and so I picked counseling. It's like oh, I really like the social sciences, and and I took a job working in mental health at that same time while I was getting my master's degree, and um just fell in love with the field. I'm like, this is this is my home. And about as soon as I got my master's degree, um, I got a job teaching at a at a community college or junior college, um, teaching psychology classes, and and um, and I decided I wasn't done with school. So um working in mental, I was working in mental health at that same time, and I I saw a lot of people that were in the mental health system also had criminal records, but they weren't criminals, you know, they were they were getting in trouble for you know quality of life types of crimes, um, you know, trespassing, you know, stealing food, you know, drugs, those types of things. Um so I decided to get my doctorate in criminal justice, and I wanted to help those people, so I ended up you know becoming a licensed uh therapist. So and that's where I'm doing a lot of these criminal justice things as a as a licensed therapist. I I got a little ahead of myself, but um, yeah, I worked as a prison therapist for a while. Um, and then I I taught I taught for psychology for I think 16 years, and then the last two years I um taught with a criminal justice department at a university. So I've been all over the place with with criminal criminal justice, and a lot of it had to do with you know, I I initially got into it too. It was I I had a strong interest in like kind of the criminal mind type of stuff, like a lot of people do. It's like, oh, I want to be a forensic uh, you know, uh like uh forensic psychologist or uh criminal profiler, you know, profiler. You know, yeah, there's really no jobs, and I mean there are jobs, but not not many. I mean, you're moving and you're you gotta be real lucky to get those jobs. But um, but then that's kind of when I found like, oh, the people with mental illnesses really, you know, are are struggling and they're way overrepresented in them in the criminal justice system, and and I really saw that as a a disservice because these people are being you know basically punished for their mental illness, and and that's not right. So that's really how I my career started.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

It's crazy. I mean, I I love the fact that I mean I don't love it, but like in terms of it's it's such a good message for kids who maybe are not like super academic in like you know their elementary school or primary school into their high school even. And you know, not to say that you didn't have the ability, it's just maybe the interest wasn't there, you're into sports and stuff. But to translate that into you know a career that you have now where you have like PhD and done all the things that you've done. And it it's an amazing sort of like um I it's an unusual case. You know, you think if you're not academic at school, that's the way it's gonna translate the rest of your life, but it's not not the case.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

You know, and it's really helped in counseling because I I you know things happen for a reason. I feel like I've gone through a lot of hardships in my life, and um, and that was definitely one of them is I really struggled in school. I didn't even try in school, but when it came to classes such as um history class or social uh civics or you know, those types of classes, I really excelled. Um actually I was thinking about this today, because preparing for coming on this podcast, and I remember being in um, I was in high school, and I um I had to take a a class because my schedule didn't match up, so I ended up taking this extra class uh where about 10 of us were in this class, and and basically all we did was write papers. And that was the first time I ever really had to write any lengthy papers. So I did a paper on Vietnam the Vietnam War, and I did a paper on um the old west, like cowboys back in the old west uh in America here. And my teacher, and this is like a compliment, this uh my teacher accused me of cheating. So I was a pretty good I was a pretty good writer and I had a strong interest in that type of stuff back then, as I do now. But you know, they because of you know most of my grades were really bad, they just figured I cheated. And I and I didn't. So I'm like, well, thanks for the compliment.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Wow, that's crazy. It's just it basically this they just there was something that needed to hit upon within you to like spark that interest, and then it would just you know explode and blossom and groom that that sort of writing um aspect of your of your ability. That that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Um actually not not too many years ago. So I've been out of school for I mean since 1996, uh out of high school, and I ran into uh one of my teachers. Um he he actually recognized me and he said, Hey Scott! You know, my last name's Scott. Scott, that's you're sc you used to like Indians, didn't you? You know, because I he remembered how much of an interest I had in Native American culture back then. Well, fast forward now, the last six years I've been working part-time as a therapist for a Native American reservation. So wow. You know, I mean, yeah, it's kind of weird how your early interests, you know, still um through impact you later on life, yeah.

Defining Dark Tourism With Purpose

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Yeah. And and we will definitely go into, I guess, uh your interest in the in dark tourism and stuff. And before we jump into that, I I love that there's an aspect of things with you know dark tourism. I I guess to define that for people, it's kind of um places in the world that have you know a dark history, there's a real heaviness, there's tragedy or war or other aspects of things that are not not usually people would go on holiday to go and see. You've obviously got an interest in these darker places, whether it's the dark tourism side or the criminal criminal mind side of things that got in get you interested in in your um academic um career. What is it about the darker side of humanity that really sort of like fascinates you?

SPEAKER_02 12:40

You know, I I think how people got to act in deviant ways really is fascinating because some people it is. It's truly, you know, they're I I don't really believe in people are born evil. I think everyone's made evil, but some people have just more the brain structure. Um so when they have early childhood trauma or you know, or later in life they might have an assault that happens, or or you know, they get into booze or addictions, and you know, I mean, so there's many pathways into criminal behavior. And and it really that type of stuff really fascinates me. And and actually within um dark tourism, uh prison, prison tourism is considered dark tourism. So going to Elcatraz or over there in in England, they have the Clink Prison, uh, we have the Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. Um, so those are all dark tourism spots. Yeah, so there's a lot of criminal justice you can do within dark tourism.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Nice. Well, um, on this uh podcast, I always love people to come on and share a significant story, you know, the most standout story of their career. And what I love about your story is that you know, we've been talking about dark tourism you know for a minute, and people are probably wondering, like, well, that that's a that's a tourist thing. That's not a career that's not a probably your career thing. But I'd love you just tell us, because I know that the dark tourism has fed into your career, and just tell us a story how about how all of that came to be.

Illness, Anxiety, And Turning To Dark Sites

Pilgrimage, Faith, And Memento Mori

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Yeah, so ever since I was a kid, one of the one of the great things my parents did is traveled a lot. So we traveled all over the United States. Um, they had an interest in history, so that's partially probably where my interest came. So we stopped at a lot of museums and and historical markers and things like that. So as I got older, um ended up getting married, and we traveled a lot, and you know, we'd start going, you know, we we actually, my very first um time I got involved, maybe what I would consider dark tourism, would be when I was in Key West at Sloppy Joe's bar, which is where Hemingway's favorite bar was. Yeah, that was Sloppy Joe's. So we were sitting there and and it was our first day in Key West, and we were talking to a local, and he said, You should check out the local cemetery. It's really quirky. You wouldn't think of a cemetery as a tourist spot, but um, but you should check it out. So we we did check it out, and and uh the epitaph said you know a lot of funny things like you know, devoted fan of Julio Iglacies, and um, you know, I told you I was sick, and you know, things like that, where you know it it was quirky, and there's they're above ground, and there's chickens roaming around, and it was just a really interesting cemetery. So we actually ended up going every time we went somewhere, we would go to cemeteries. So, you know, Paris, we spent a lot of time in the cemeteries, and uh the Pierre Lachaise, especially where Jim Morrison and Frederick Chopin are, and then um the the Paris Catacombs, been down there a couple of times, and yeah, and and those are amazing experiences. And and what I found is that these you know, I I kind of went there as more of a tourist to some of these places, but what I found is the more I went to these places, the more I wanted to go to these places, and the more I got out of these places, and I think kind of on a subconscious level, I started taking it really serious. And I think when I really started doing that is so I ended up having a disease called vasculitis, which um Harold Ramis from the Ghostbusters died of vasculitis. Um and and I had you know just a series of autoimmune issues, and and then in the middle of that my wife left me, you know, and and I could go on and on about all the crap I went through during that time, but I was absolutely rock bottom in my life. I you know, I started drinking too much, I you know really was struggling. And what I found is I I did a lot of tourism. I I seems like when times have gotten hard for me, I have gotten an airplane and just went, or or got in my own plane because I'm a pilot and I I like to fly places, but um, but I found myself in a lot of dark tourist places. So um, and then fast forward a couple years later, I ended up getting liver disease. And um I I probably have had it for many years, but I was finally diagnosed, and when I was diagnosed, I was diagnosed with um ed end stage liver disease, severe cirrhosis, and I I might, you know, they weren't sure how long I would live or if I would need a transplant. And I ended up in the hospital because I my brain got poisoned with uh ammonia because of my butt, you know, wasn't filtering and but anyway, so I I started recovering from that. I started getting really healthy. I did quit drinking a long time before that, and um, but I had it was an autoimmune liver disease and just like the drinking amplified it. And so anyway, I started going to again a lot of dark tourism places. So I did a a lot of uh tourism within about a year and a half's time when I was when I was healthy enough but still sick. So I had gone to um gosh, where had where did I go? I I had gone to um you know Germany, you know, there's tons of dark tourism in Berlin, Auschwitz, Poland, um, you know, Egypt, and then I went to Jerusalem and actually wrote a big uh about a half a chapter in my book is about Jerusalem and how you know there's a lot of darkness in Jerusalem, and you know, and you're going there to reflect on on the suffering of Christ and the death of Christ, and you go into his tomb. I mean, there's a lot of you know dark things, you know, uh and obviously the fighting that goes on over there, and so um what's also interesting is dark tourism, um there's a strong overlap, and what I found, and this is kind of where the the psychology of it comes in, is what I found is that um and I've gone to a couple religious places like the Vatican and um and then and I've gone to all these dark tourism places, and there's such a strong overlap in the in the reflections a person gets. So when you're going to especially the darker types of places, you're you're standing on hallowed ground, you know, where where you know blood is spilled and people have suffered, people survive through horrible things. I mean, and and when you're going to religious places, you're you're you're you know, you're um looking at the big picture too, is like, you know, what's the meaning of life, you know, what's the purpose of things, what you know, what happens after you die, even, you know, and you get those reflections at both those places. So what I found is when I was going through my liver disease, so I when I was actually when I was before my liver's disease, when I was sick with the vasculitis and still married, I had profound anxiety, and I had anxiety probably my whole life, but it really came to a a peak. So I'm a therapist and I really suffered. I didn't want to get help, I didn't want to lose my pilot's license, I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to uh, you know, kind of admit that I had a problem. Um and that you know, and that's really why my wife left. It was because my anxiety, it wasn't probably because of I was physically sick, it was more my anxiety. Yeah. So I just kind of pushed her out the door with that. And what I found though is going to these dark tourism places when I was going through what should have been objectively the hardest time of my life is when I was dying of liver disease. If people are familiar with stoic philosophy, where it's you know, you you control what you can, but if you can't control something, you have to accept it. And um going to dark tourism spots really helps you to become a true stoic. And I think that's what really Help me because some people might be familiar with the term memento mori. So memento mori is uh a Latin phrase meaning remember you must die. It came from Roman generals where they had a parade and and people would follow the generals around and they would whisper into their ear when the general gets too cocky, memento mori, remember you must die, you know, kind of to humble the general. But during the the Victorian era and the Elizabethan era, Christians used it as a as a call to remember to live. So it's it's remember you must die as a call to remember to live and to remember to live with purpose. So when you go to you know religious pilmer pilgrimages or dark tourism spots, they both do that same type of thing. So that's really where I went through the liver disease, yeah. I it it kind of just came to my awareness like, oh my god, these places really help me, and I and I needed to tell people about that.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

It's amazing you just mentioned pilgrimages there, and I'd never thought about going to somewhere like you know Auschwitz or you know the the the Paris Catacombs as a as a I guess a religious pilgrimage, but it's almost like a psychological pilgrimage and and and a journey that helps you go on a mental journey, you know, of sorts. And um I I can only um you know I I've I I've done the the Paris Catacombs, for example, and and that has a real aura to it, you know, in terms of, you know, I mean especially when you're surrounded by tens, hundreds of thousands of things. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Six million.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Six million six million people are buried in the catacombs, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

And you're press it's probably visually one of the darkest places you can go, you know, because you're just literally seeing death. You're surrounded by dead people. But I've also been Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

What's really interesting though is uh I don't think it's that scary. I mean I suppose for some people it might be a little scary, but you know, it it's really just it's like every person in there had a name, somebody loved them, you know, they had a job, they had, you know, and they had pets, they had, you know, and it's just like when you get on the other side, you're like, wow, that you know, that's gonna be me in not too many years. It's like I gotta live, you know? And you really it is really a call to live. It is a momentum aura. Yeah, sorry to cut you off.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

No, it's all right. I and I do agree, like I I wasn't necessarily scared, but I was fascinated by it, you know, because you don't all you're not often exposed to that level of, you know, confronted by that level of like reality. Um as you say it's Momentum Ora. You're surrounded by six million dead people, and um and you're you you're forced to think about it. But I mean one of the other places I've been very fortunate to visit um is uh Chernobyl and Pripriat, the town next to Chernobyl. Um and going there and you've got an entire town, you know, 50,000 people lived there and were evacuated within like you know less than two days. And they just dropped everything. And you the the fascinating thing about that place is that it is a it is a location frozen in time. You know, it's sort of like it's a snapshot with people's like breakfast dishes still on the tables, but at the same time you've got a tree trunk growing up the through the middle of the kitchen floor because it's been there for 30 years and hasn't changed. And um it's it is a it is a it's a humbling thing. I and I do love I love the things that make you feel small, you know, in that sense and um in that rinse.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

So you know there's an interesting thing where I I've tried to compare dark tourism to other things, so I would compare it maybe to psychedelics. So you know I talk about how I walk through the gas chamber. There's one gas chamber at Auschwitz that's still standing. So you walk down the same steps that thousands, men, women, children walk down, and and I remember my tour group walked into the next room, and I'm standing in this gas chamber by myself, and and just thinking of where I was, and and you can just picture people falling one by one, and you know, you see the places where they had to throw the canister, the the the the cycl B down and um scratches on the walls and things like that, and then and then you walk into the next room and and then there's rail tracks going to the to the furnaces, um they call them ovens, and you know, and then the you think of the Sonda Commando, which is the the Jewish people that were forced to throw their own kind into the for into the furnaces after they died. And and then you walk out the other roof side, you know, and you're thinking like this is like the industrial scale. It's like we all will we all have heard of the Holocaust, and we've you know, and we we kind of get a picture of it, but until you're standing in there, and I mean you feel the Holocaust, you know, when you go through any of these dark tourism spots, especially the ones that have, you know, that are more profound, you feel those places. It, you know, whether it's a a psychic energy or you know, coming from your own mind and your own brain because you know of where you're at, you know, or is it a is it a truly a mystical type of energy? I don't know, but you come out that other side and you realize you're a changed person. And some of those places that you know when I went through Hiroshima, it took days before the dust really settled, and I could really understand kind of the meaning behind my visit there, and um because it was so emotional going through there, just the guilt of as being an American going through there.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

I mean, we nuked to civilian cities, you know. Take us take us through that that experience when you went to Hiroshima Hiroshima.

Catacombs, Chernobyl, And Perspective

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yeah, so the very first room you go into once you get into the museum, there's this long mural, and it's a beautiful ancient city. You know, you see all that beautiful ancient Japanese architecture and and all these buildings, and then when you get to the end of the mural, there's a life-size picture of a class where you know it was taken, you know, right around the time where the bomb dropped. Um so it was maybe 10, 11-year-old kids in this picture and they're in uniforms. As I'm walking through, I'm walking through with kids that are probably in that same age group, and then they're walk they're standing in front of that mural looking at the mural, and it just looked like a a mirror image. And and then on the wall right next to them, the clock is stopped at 8 15, which is the time the the bomb dropped, you know, when the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. And then you walk into that next room, it's the same exact mural, except nothing, you know, it's all complete destruction. And you know, uh and what a experience walking through there with those school children, and you know, there there wasn't too many, you know, Caucasian white people, probably Americans, I mean, it was mostly Japanese people in in that museum, and you just you know, you it's story after story after story of just heartbreak and devastation, and you're like, is this ever gonna freaking end? You know, and and is this ever gonna get better? Is it and it never does. It really it just it does end, but it it just keeps going on and on. It just felt like a gut punch over and over and over and over. You know, it talks about how they drank the black rain because they were so thirsty, and and they were and then that was nuclear follow. They were dying of in the and most of them died of cancer within weeks of the bomb.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Radiation sickness, yeah.

Auschwitz, Hiroshima, And Emotional Shock

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Yeah, yeah, and it's yeah, it's just a profound experience. And leaving there, I just I I think I was in in such shock and and just horror. Um, and it took several days for that experience to like, okay, I'm I feel okay now. But the thing is, is and and and the same thing goes with therapy, and this is where I I use you know dark tourism therapy a little bit, is in therapy, uh, a lot of people avoid coming to therapy because they don't want to face the darkness, they don't want to face their trauma, they don't want to talk about their stressors because it makes them real, you know. And and that's exactly how you get to the other side of it is is by confronting it. And I think as society, going to dark tourism spots helps us confront, you know, these horrors in the world. And when you do that, you're basically you're living the, you know, we have the saying, you know, uh never forget. You know, I think a lot of countries have that same saying. And uh in America, we really try to to believe that. And um going to these places, you're living the never forget, you know, you're embodying it. And you know, what's kind of cool about that, if there's, you know, I mean, there are there are good things that come out of dark tourism. I mean, that's I guess that's why I wrote my book. Um, and you get these, so when you go in with a lot of reverence, and and that's what I I advocate for what I call reflective dark tourism. So you go in there with the intention to reflect on the people that went through there, their suffering, their, you know, their accomplishments. They're you know, you you just try to really go in with a lot of reverence and a lot of empathy. And when you do that, little, you know, especially when you're empathize, little a mirror emerges, and little pieces of yourself you can see within those places. Um, and you're not doing it to compare your life against theirs. You're doing it, you know, just it's impossible to, if you really truly try to empathize, you're it's impossible to not. I mean, that's why we watch documentaries so we can empathize with the stories. Um, you know, and same thing going through dark tourism spots. You see you see little pieces of yourself in there. And what kind of is cool is when you are going through your own hard time, and this is where what I wasn't expecting. So when I was going through the darkest times, you know, when I was getting the calls to go down for my liver transplant, and one of them was a um a false alarm where I didn't get the liver and I had to go home after staying in the hospital for a couple days, and you know, and and my dark tourism experiences really came back to help me through those hard times. You just don't feel so alone in your suffering because you've seen suffering, you know, not you know, firsthand seeing it, but you know, you're at those places where there was suffering. And if you go in with that empathy, you do kind of see it, and and it really, you know, absorbs into your it it actually goes into a different place of your brain than just regular memories. So emotional memories are more in your limbic system in your in your uh hippocampus, where other memories may just kind of randomly go wherever they go. But um, so you can think of you know the most emotional times in your life, you remember them pretty well, you know. And we have we've a lot of us experienced, you know, when the challenger crashed or 9-11, um, you know, those types of things. When Kennedy, you know, Kennedy died, that was before my time, but you know, a lot of people that were around then they know exactly where they were when they heard the announcement that Kennedy died. So we all have these times in our life, and dark tourism sort of does that same thing.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

It's really interesting. Like I I'm uh I'm a scientist, sort of molecular biologist, sort of by education, but um there's almost like a a sort of psychological equivalent of like inoculation to some degree. And let me explain what what I'm thinking here, because there was a study with uh during COVID, I think, that basically said that people who loved watching horror films had essentially, long story short, coped better with the fact of lockdown and all of this difficulty and all that kind of stuff. And you know, it's sort of similar to what you're saying there, with like, you know, the more that you go to these darker places and you're confronted with it, it's almost like you're you have this slight protection or inoculation against the darkness that you may experience in your own life. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02 31:34

100%. 100%. Um, you know, I I talk a lot about how I was never tested in my life. I mean, I had I had ups and downs and went through, you know, I I might have had PTSD when I was younger from I mean, whatever. But, you know, I really never faced anything that was hard until I ended up getting really sick and my wife left, and you know, and um and then I went to these dark places. And yeah, until you really have, and that's where I'm kind of feel fortunate as a therapist that I've gone through a lot of darkness in my own life is because it helps me to help other people. And um, yeah, I think when you have gone through your own darkness and you've actually done the reckoning, because when people can go through their own darkness or you know, watch films or or go through museums, and if they just kind of stay within their comfort zone, so maybe it's not you know, people might go through Auschwitz and they don't really try to empathize, they just read the plaques and try not to feel emotional as they go through there, you know, you they don't get a whole lot of it out of it. So um, but if you go in and really try to step in their shoes as much as you can as being a tourist, you know, you come out with profoundly changed. And, you know, then the same thing was uh, you know, there's oh, what I was getting at earlier is there's things such that are similar to dark tourism. And I think you know, psychedelics might be one way of changing yourself really quickly. Um the ass, you know, astronauts talk about the overview effect where they're up and they look down on Earth and they see how small they are in the universe, and they're just this like speck of sand on a giant beach, you know, basically, and uh and it just changes their whole life, just that perspective. Um, having a loved one die, having a illness like I had, you know, can be life-changing. And you know, so there's certain life-changing things, but I also think that a spiritual pilgrimage as well as a dark tourism pilgrimage, you know, can be very life-changing if you go in with that right intention.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Interesting. And in terms of your um your your practice dealing with patients and stuff, like does it you're working with someone who's dealing with anxiety or depression or whatever you would you write write them a prescription for hey, go to Auschwitz or go to the catacombs. How does it translate into your into your therapy work?

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Well, you know, it it it all yeah, I I I dark tourism as a therapy method is not a researched thing. You know, there there are studies, there are studies of people that have had psychological difficulties who have gone to dark tourism places, um, actually ended up getting more out of it than a person who who wasn't having difficulties. So, I mean there there are studies that show that, yeah, dark tourism can give you these, you know, like a lot of things that I'm talking about. But as a therapy method, no. Um, it's not something that I that I would prescribe per se, but it is something I talk about where if there's parallels, I I'll bring it up um depending on the situation. I'm not talking to a 10-year-old about Auschwitz necessarily, but you know But I might about Anne Frank, you know. I mean, uh who you know so it depends on the situation and in the person, and but yeah, there it gives a lot of stories you can you know relate to to some of their situations.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Absolutely, yeah. Um I guess when it comes to seeing and and thinking about and people dealing with the criminal minds you've dealt with and and people with mental illness and your day-to-day therapy stuff, and confronting with the the darkest things that humans have done, how has it changed just your overall view of humanity or or maybe not at all?

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Yeah, you know, uh you you go to those places and you you know you're not only walking in the footsteps of evil and how you know and every situation is a little bit different. Um you know, but you know, going to a place like the the Whitney plantation in in uh by New Orleans in in uh Louisiana in the United States here. Um so that's a plantation where they they talk about slavery from um the the slave's point of view, but when you look at it through the slave's eyes, um you can really see how just how awful not you know the people were, and and that's the point of it. It it helps you to become much more emotionally intelligent, I think, if you if you when you go through these things with reverence and empathy.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Absolutely. And and you'd mentioned earlier, and this is kind of I guess kind of getting a little bit to the light you just mentioned to some degree the lighter side of things, but um well, maybe not. Um we'll see the mystic and the psychic side of things. Like, you know, you've been to all these places, and a lot of people would say, Oh, this place is haunted, and like you know, where where do you sit on that spectrum?

Therapy Parallels: Confronting The Dark

SPEAKER_02 36:15

You know, it's interesting because I I love I've gone to many haunted, haunted places. Uh I like I said, I just went on this haunted tour around Mesa recently. Um back in May, I uh Lizzie Borden was a famous case here in the United States in the 1800s where the Lizzie Borden house she allegedly murdered her father and stepmother with a with a hatchet, and it became kind of the O.J. Simpson case of the 1800s, where did she do it, did she not? And she ended up being found not guilty. Um, but this place is called the Lizzie Borden House, and you know, a lot of people think she did it. And so anyway, I I went there and I went on the tour, and then after the tour was over, I I got to stay in the house, and I was in the house by myself for a few hours, and I ended up staying, I spent the night at the at the Lizzie Borden house, and I I spent I slept in Lizzie Borden's bed, you know, and I really I've and I've never experienced anything that I can say for sure this is paranormal. Um but you feel an energy in those places, and again, is that my own psychic within my own brain type of energy? Um, I will say though, I did have one um I don't know, I would, I don't consider it a paranormal experience, but I but it's definitely makes you wonder. Um, but I was at the Vatican, and it's you know they have this thing where it's like, hey, if you go to the Vatican, you're blessed by the Pope, which I was, you know, you're covered for three months once you go back home. It's like, okay, whatever. Didn't really believe it, didn't think about it. But but anyway, within a a couple of months, I was driving to work and it was really, really foggy out. And you couldn't see, and I and I I leave for work around the same time, so I I was you know, I was driving too fast for the conditions. And I had never heard a voice in my life, you know, out, you know, in my own head. Um, you know, a lot of people that I work with, you know, with schizophrenia or or serious depression or so, you know, they might hear voices, and and but anyway, I heard a voice in my head. It said, Chad, slow down, there's a car coming at you. And that freaked me out, and and it felt really um it felt spiritual in nature, and I and the first thing I thought was of was the Vatican and God and Jesus and things like that. And I'm not even all that religious, and and but that was my thought, like, oh my god, that was not my own thought, that was a voice in my head, and I and I did, I I slowed down to about half the speed. I was scared because after hearing that, it's like, oh my god, that that was crazy. What like and within 20 seconds, sure enough, there was a car flying at me in my lane. Um had I been going that same speed, I guarantee there would have been you know several fatalities because the other car it ended up pulling over after we after I swerved off, and and it pulled over, and the car behind that pulled over, and we just look at each other, and you'd usually I'd be like yelling out the window, uh, you know, cussing them out, and and I just felt this like peace, like, oh my god, that was profound, you know. So that's that's the closest thing to anything paranormal I've ever experienced.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Yeah, that that is that is a weird one, absolutely. I mean you you say there like about the voice in your head, and as you say, in in your in your practice you might deal with people that say, I hear voices in my head. And how did you think maybe I feel like what a schizophrenic feels like, or do you maybe have more empathy to for sch towards schizophrenics who have voices in their head, or how has that changed your if you're working with patients like that?

SPEAKER_02 39:48

You know, I I don't think that actually that right there changed it at all because um I don't know, because that was the only time I ever experienced it. It was just that short little blurb. And sure enough, there was a car coming at me, and I had I haven't heard it since. And it's like, but had I heard something like that all the time, and and there's things we do as therapists that sort of um empathize with people with schizophrenia or hear that, hear voices. So you can roll up a piece of paper and and just kind of say things really quietly in in somebody's ear, and and and it gives the sensation of hearing voices, and and then there's things where you can put it a whole um VR type of thing where you go through these VR scenarios when you're hearing voices and trying to you know get your medication from a pharmacy and you're you know, and you have this VR thing and you're hearing voices. And so yeah, those things have probably been more significant when I've um tried to empathize with people that hear voices.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Yeah, brilliant. Um I mean for anyone that's uh listening that kind of has an interest in psychology, maybe wants to become a therapist, just generally I always love guests to sort of give some advice for people that want to follow in their footsteps. I mean even the dark tourism aspect of things.

Haunted Places And A Vatican Coincidence

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Yeah, you know, so one of an interesting thing is when I my very first year of college, I had to take something called career explorations, and they had us do a career inventory test. And at that time, again, I was gonna be a gym teacher, and maybe if I did good enough good enough grades, I'd be a pilot, and you know, okay, so that those are the things I was looking at. So I came up the two things that came up highest was um a therapist or a counselor and and a college professor. And I'm thinking, like, there is no way I would be either one of those things. This thing is couldn't be farther from the truth, you know. And those are the two things I became. And I it's like in those care those careers really chose me. I didn't even choose those careers necessarily. I just you know it seemed to just fall into place. And um, so for people that want to possibly get into psychology, you know, talk to people that work in in the field. Um, you know, there's and there's many avenues, you don't have to get a PhD, you can work in in the field, you know, with a high school degree. In some cases, it you know, working in a group home, as long as you you know have a good criminal record, and you know, don't don't have a criminal record, I should say. Uh, you know, you can work in places like that. Um you know, you get a four-year degree, you can work as you know, what I call bachelor's level counselors, um, yeah. So, you know, where they're case managers or outreach workers, things like that. You know, and then you can get a master's degree and then start looking at being a therapist. Um, and then if you want to go on, you can get a doctorate. Um, you know, uh, and you can and there's many different fields. It can be marriage and family therapy, which is also gets you into the world, you know, you can go into psychology, you can go into counseling, you can go into social work. Uh, if you go on the medication medic medicine side, you can become a psychiatrist or a nurse practitioner or things like that. So there's many avenues to to get into the realm of mental health.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

And and what's it like as a I mean, from your perspective in your particular um, you know, uh job at the moment, what's it like as a pro I mean, it must be incredibly rewarding, but it must also be, you know, tough at times as well, dealing with you know, having to hear basically people's problems every day.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

Yeah, yeah. You know, I I think early in the career that most people that's when they struggle the most. Um, you know, it once you get past your first maybe five years, you just you know, at least for me anyway, and a and a lot of the people that I've supervised, I've supervised a lot of therapists over the years now. And you know, once they get past that like almost almost like a culture shock, you know, it's like, oh my god, the way people live and the way they have these symptoms, and you know, like I couldn't imagine, you know, once you know, these horrible things that they had gone through, you know, you hear about you know, hear about sexual traumas and you know, I mean, like uh you just hear everything. Uh I've worked with several murderers, and you know, it it's and you know, you try to go home and and and to not think about those things, but um you know, it's impossible to not at times. And I I think the farther I've gotten into the field, you know, the more years of experience I I have gotten. I think I've just learned to leave work at work a lot easier. And I I I I don't know. I I I wish I could tell you exactly how I do that, but it it I've just it's just I've just learned how to do that. I think most therapists do that, you know. I mean a lot of us try to engage in our own healthy coping skills. Um and and I I guess that's really about all you can do. You know, and talk to people, you know, a lot of therapists have therapists.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

I was I was about to say exactly the same thing. I know a lot of therapists tend to have also a therapist there.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or a clinical supervisor where you can, you know, uh when I especially when I've worked with the young people um coming into the field, we call them pre-licensed therapists, um they or clinical trainees, they you know, they oftentimes struggle with that kind of stuff, and and so that's part just part of our supervision is is announcer counseling ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, carrying on from the advice side of things, if there was one in terms of the dark tourism side of things, um if there was one place if one if someone could go to one or people can go to one place in particular that had the biggest impact, what what would you say that is for you?

Advice For Aspiring Therapists

SPEAKER_02 45:24

You know, for for me personally, I would say, you know, I don't know that I have a you know, I certainly don't have a favorite. I you know, there's places that have been more meaningful. Um so some of the places that have been, I think, really meaningful was Hiroshima and Auschwitz, you know, and I think partially is because like my grandfather fought in the war. Uh I had an of a pretty big interest in World War II aviation, and and so world war two is just more interesting to me um than a lot of things. And so I think that had more reverence to me when I stepped in into those places, but also um places closer to home too, like the like the Whitney plantation where or or um uh where the uh gosh uh Little Bighorn Um so where it was Custer fought, you know, the the Native Americans and and and you know going there and and reflecting on you know how horrible, you know, because America we think about like, oh yay, it's fire fireworks and revolutionary war, and you know, but we also enslaved a lot of people and we tried to commit at least cultural genocide against Native Americans, and and really knowing that you know, and and I think this makes us more American to not bury those things, which I think some people want to just bury those and like never talk about them, and and there's people actively doing that within government right now. So um, you know, those stories are just as important as the stories of how we you know we beat the the British you know during the Revolutionary War, because you know it's it's it's what makes us human. It's you know, it's like kind of the the the the chimpanzees and apes and things like uh Jane Goodall, you know, she said, you know, you would you would think Jane Goodall's favorite animal was chimpanzees, but she says, no, it's dogs because chimpanzees are too much like humans. They're they're some are evil, some are great, you know.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

That that burying that past thing is is fascinating because uh there there's literally mountains of evidence. I'm sure you're more than well aware as a psychologist, a therapist, of burying your trauma, whether that's personal trauma or like civilizational trauma and history, never ends well. Right?

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Right? Right. You know, I so I think it a lot of it is comfort zones. So I talk about comfort zones a lot in in therapy, and this is where I do make an overlap between this and dark tourism. So people want to stay in their comfort zones. So um, you know, it's what feels safe, it's what's familiar, you know, and people when they go through a traumatic event, they tend to want to stay in that comfort zone. That's just human nature. Um, some people, it's alcohol is their comfort zone. Some, you know, so I mean that's your comfort zone. But what happens is in a comfort zone, over time, that comfort zone gets smaller and smaller, and that person's world gets smaller and smaller. And then when it gets smaller and smaller, the only thing that really grows in a comfort zone is anxiety, depression, and suffering. So on the opposite side of a comfort zone is what I call reckoning. And reckoning is hard work, it's it's going to therapy, it's going through dark places that maybe you're avoiding, such as that Whitney plantation or going to um, you know, to the massacre at Wounded Knee or Little Bighorn and places like that where you know these awful things happened. But you're honoring the suffering of people and and you're going through the reckoning, and when you go through a reckoning, whether it's your own personal reckoning or or the reckoning of more of the societal types of places that are you know significant in a in a nation or even in a world, um that helps you to become more emotionally intelligent and to recover and to be more resilient and stronger, and you know, and and that's why you know both therapy and dark tourism help you to face darkness head on. And when you when you face darkness head on, that is the quickest way to to getting through it.

SPEAKER_00 49:29

Amazing, amazing. I I think that's a perfect place to uh to leave things off here, uh Chad. Thank you so much. It's a lovely, lovely final thought. I mean, just uh I always love at the end just to sort of give you know guests to say what you got going on, where people can find you, what you've kind of got put out in the world.

Sites That Changed His View Of History

SPEAKER_02 49:46

Yeah, so um you can find me at drchadscott.com and you have my contact information. I'm on Facebook at Chad Scott Author. Uh my book is Beyond the Darkness. It's had these great critical reviews, and I, you know, I it's uh audiobook, you can get paperback or or Kindle. Um you can get it at all the usual types of bookstores, especially the online ones, kind of hit or miss whether it's in your local bookstore. But um yeah, those are those are the main places, and and I'm you know, I'm doing a lot of talking and podcasts and things, but um yeah, I'll be at the Whitney Plantation, I think, in January, which is a um one of the places I write about in my book, which is a psychiatric um museum. It's it was on lunatic asylum state lunatic asylum number one or something like that, uh, or two. And that was yeah, and it that's a great play, it's but probably one of my favorite museums because it tells the whole history of of mental health treatment for how it became so cruel, and then talks about the criminalization of mental illness and Dorothea Dix, who's a hero of mine, who's a nurse that was in Boston, who um, you know, she was kind of the the main reason why we have institutions because she saw that a lot of people in jails and prisons were suffering with mental illness, and that's why they started incarcerating people. And then in the 50s, they had the de-incarceration, you know. So then they go back into the jail again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

And and just on your book, just give us a very quick sense of like, you know, because we talked a lot about stuff that you've written in your book, but the book itself is a it's sort of like an exploration of your personal experiences as you visit these various places, and uh yeah, it gives us a sense of it.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Yeah, so so I'd say it has some layers to it. So the first layer is a memoir. It's it's my story of of how I got into dark tourism and how it really impacted my life and how when I went through my own really dark times, how dark tourism helped me get through those hard times. Um so but it's also I talk about 70 different places around the world that I've been, and I and I talk about I really try to write in a way where I'm kind of like your tour guide in your your eyes and ears and telling my story going through them, but you're you know, you're vicariously living through me walking through them. So it's sort of like you're getting a tour of all these places, but I'm also talking about my own reflections going through them, and then you you'll see in the book on how those reflections come back to really, you know, really benefit me. And how I feel like, you know, and one of the main things of going through these places too is you feel like you're carrying the torch for people that suffered so they didn't die in vain, so that so that their story lives on. And when you do that, I think they they gift you by giving you those reflections to where it helps you get through your own hard times. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

Chad, listen, it's been absolutely fantastic speaking with you, man. And um thanks, Chris. Yeah, I love the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

Yeah, thanks. I've I've enjoyed it too, Chris. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

And that is a wrap on this week's episode. A huge thanks again to Chad for sharing his stories and experiences with us, and of course, a big thanks to you all for listening and watching as well. If you'd like to dive deeper into Chad's work or check out his book, Beyond the Darkness, you'll find all the links in the show notes or on our website, noordinarymonday.com. And as always, you can find extra clips and visuals from this episode across our socials. We're on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and there's also the No Ordinary Monday community page on Facebook, where you can join the conversation and share your own thoughts about the show. Next week's guest is Dr. Peter Neff, an Antarctic scientist, ice core expert, and TikTok science communicator with over 225,000 followers. His work takes he and his team into some of the harshest conditions on Earth, from wiped out to tents being buried by storms to hunting for clues about Earth's past in tiny bubbles of air trapped in ancient ice, some of it dating back millions of years. And those bubbles may hold the key to understanding our climate's future. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss out on the episode. If you enjoyed today's show and feel like doing your nice deed for the day, take a few seconds and leave a 5-star rating review or tell a family member or friend about the show. You have no idea how much it helps us. With your support, we can grow the podcast, attract more extraordinary guests, and inspire new listeners. And that's it for this week. This show is independently produced, hosted, and edited by me, Chris Barron. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great Monday, everyone, and we will see you next week.