Falling Upward: Neuro-Behcet's, Remission, and the Myth of Going Back

In Episode XII of The Art of Clarity, I share, for the first time, my personal journey through Neuro-Behçet's disease, remission, and the unexpected challenge of returning to  a life that no longer existed. I explore identity, perspective, and why healing isn't always about returning to who we were, but learning to see ourselves and our lives in an entirely new way.

What if healing isn't about going back at all? 

Co-written by Doug Quigley.

Written and narrated by Gary Naccarato.

For more, visit theartofclarity.studio

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Topics include attention, focus, mindfulness, digital distraction, creativity, memory, and the impact of technology on the nervous system.

Transcript

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We spend so much of our lives trying not to fall, avoiding mistakes, avoiding failure, avoiding loss. But what if some of the most important moments of our lives begin exactly there? What if what feels like falling is really our old way of seeing giving way to something deeper? Over the last eleven episodes, I've mentioned that I'm in remission from a rare autoimmune disease. But I've never really told you what happened. For a long time I wasn't sure it was a story I wanted to tell. I've also mentioned that before becoming a hypnotherapist I spent ten years as a creative director before having to retire for medical reasons. A friend and I have been talking a lot lately about perspective, about the possibility that what we call reality is only one way of seeing, and about the idea that falling isn't always movement toward danger. Sometimes it's movement toward depth. The closer we look at almost anything, the less certain it becomes. From a distance, a forest looks like one thing, move closer, and it's thousands of trees. Closer still, every tree is made of branches, then leaves, then cells, then molecules, then atoms, then particles we can barely describe. Nothing becomes simpler simply because we looked more closely. It becomes infinitely more complex. I've begun wondering if life works the same way. Maybe certainty isn't the result of seeing clearly. Maybe certainty is simply where we stop looking. The more I thought about those conversations, the more I realized they described my own life better than I ever had. So today, for the first time, I'd like to tell you what happened. Welcome to the Art of Clarity, a podcast about creativity, the nervous system, and the strange ways the modern world competes for our minds. Before I became a hypnotherapist, I spent ten years as an in-house creative director at Biscuit Filmworks here in Los Angeles. I absolutely loved it. From the outside my life looked exactly the way I imagined it would. I had a career I was proud of, creative work I loved, people I respected. Everything appeared to be moving in the right direction. But behind the scenes something had already begun to change. Around two thousand eight I started developing symptoms that made absolutely no sense. Painful sores, crushing fatigue, brain fog. I knew something wasn't right. No one could tell me what it was. For months, doctor after doctor, test after test, until eventually I received an answer. Basetz disease. A rare autoimmune disease. Mine eventually spread to my brain and nervous system, and when that happens, it's called neurobeschetz. In the Western Hemisphere we're talking roughly one to two people per million. At first, I did what I think most people would do. I convinced myself I could simply push through it. I kept working. I kept pretending. I kept believing I could somehow outwork or outrun whatever was happening inside my body. Eventually I couldn't. There came a point where I could no longer trust my own brain. I struggled to remember conversations, finding the right words became difficult. Walking sometimes felt unfamiliar. I would get lost. My vision often looked like I was seeing the world through layers of bright white gauze. The headaches became relentless, and the fatigue it's difficult to explain unless you've lived it. Everything required effort, even thinking. The career I'd spent years building, the identity I'd spent decades creating began slipping through my fingers. And that's where today's conversation really begins. Because looking back, I don't think I was simply falling apart. I think I was falling into an entirely different understanding of who I was. Eventually my doctors told me something I'd never imagined hearing. They didn't believe I'd be able to take care of myself anymore. They believed I'd need full time care. And they were right, my life as I had known it ended. I left Los Angeles, the career I loved, the home I built, my relationship, the life I'd spent decades creating. At forty eight, I moved back in with my family. Not because I wanted to, because there was no other option. For the next three years I existed in a kind of limbo. I depended on my family for almost everything doctor's appointments, disability paperwork, medication, food, even just getting out of the house, sometimes going to Walmart with my sister, or simply going for a drive felt like proof that life was still happening, even if it no longer felt like it was happening to me. Most days were spent moving between a bed and a couch. I smoked a pack of cigarettes every day, hoping, if I'm honest, for an early death. I vaped marijuana from morning until night. I used ketamine, I ate terribly, and underneath all of it was rage. Not toward one person, toward life itself. There were days when I couldn't imagine a future. There was a suicide attempt. More than one seventy two hour psychiatric hold. I existed without purpose until something began changing. I slowly entered remission. And here's the strange part. Remission didn't feel anything like I'd imagine. I thought I'd simply get my old life back. I thought healing meant returning, returning to who I'd been before. But while I was simply trying to survive, the world kept moving. Technology changed. Hollywood changed. The way people connected changed. The way people found work changed. By the time I was ready to return, the world I remembered no longer existed. And neither did I. I kept thinking I was returning to the life I'd left. But there was no old life to return to. I also realized something far more uncomfortable. For years I'd confused what I did with who I was. I thought I missed the office. I thought I missed the creative work. I thought I missed the first class flights, the Christmas bonuses, the respect. But looking back, those weren't the things I actually missed. I missed certainty. I missed knowing who I was. I missed being someone at least who I thought I was. Foolishly I imagined people would be waiting, that they'd celebrate my return, that surviving somehow entitled me to reclaim the life I'd left behind. There was no parade, no grand welcome back. And honestly, why would there have been? Everyone else's lives had continued. Mine had simply paused. I don't blame anyone, if anything, I blame the story I'd been telling myself. The more distance I get from those years, the more I realize I misunderstood what was happening. I thought I was falling downward. What I didn't realize was that I was falling inward. When you're falling, it doesn't feel as though the world stays still while you move. Everything seems to move together. Your relationships, your career, your identity, even time itself. Maybe that's why profound loss feels so disorienting. It doesn't simply remove something, it changes the perspective from which everything else is seen. Maybe that's true of suffering too. For years I believed I knew exactly what had happened to me. I got sick, I lost everything. End of story. But every year I looked more closely, the story became less simple. The disease wasn't just a disease, it became grief, identity, fear, worth, attachment, perspective. Every answer uncovered another question. Every certainty gave way to something more nuanced. The closer I looked, the less interested I became in having one perfect explanation, and the more interested I became in understanding. Maybe clarity isn't finding the final answer. Maybe clarity is becoming willing to keep looking, to resist stopping at the first explanation, to recognize that beneath every certainty another layer is waiting. Perhaps wisdom isn't knowing more. Perhaps wisdom is appreciating how much there is left to understand. Years later, after becoming a hypnotherapist, I began noticing something. Almost every client who sat across from me believed they were trapped inside a story. A story about failure, about anxiety, about illness, about not being enough, just as I had. And I slowly began realizing perhaps healing isn't about becoming someone new, or even becoming who we used to be. Perhaps healing is learning to see ourselves and our lives from an entirely different perspective. Looking back now, I don't believe Nero Bachetz gave me a better life. I would never wish it on anyone. But I no longer spend my days wishing it hadn't happened because somewhere inside that long fall, I discovered something I couldn't have found any other way. Falling didn't change reality. It changed where I was looking from. Maybe the thing you're calling the worst chapter of your life isn't the end of your story. Maybe it's simply the place where your old way of seeing finally stopped working. Life doesn't become clearer because it becomes simpler. It becomes clearer because we're finally willing to see its complexity. This is Gary Naccarado, and this has been The Art of Clarity. Thanks for listening. If any of this resonated, feel free to share it or pass it along. To learn more about my work or to get in touch, you can find me on my website. I'll see you next time.