From Poker to Purpose: Dr. Jaclynn Moskow's Journey in Holistic Mental Health

hello there fearfully and wonderfully made humans welcome to another episode of the holistic counselor podcast it's me Diana from through the valley therapy and today I have the pleasure of introducing a very interesting guest who Journey embodies resilience and transformation I was captivated by an episode called Rogue doctor turn poker Pro overcomes chronic depression of the radically genuine podcast with Dr Roger mcfillin who I had on my show episode 18 I think it was um where

he engaged in a profound conversation with Dr Jacqueline Moscow her compelling Narrative of transitioning from the medical field to professional poker while overcoming chronic depression deeply resonated with me discovering that Dr Moscow is based here in Florida I felt compelled to invite her to share her inspiring story with all of you Dr Jacqueline Moscow am I saying that right okay just want to make sure is a trained physician scientist writer health care business consultant and former

professional poker player she began her career in molecular biology Labs has served as Medical School faculty and currently operates her own business Moscow medical writing LLC which provides strategic guidance and digital marketing services to ethical medical companies and healers please join me in welcoming Dr Jacqueline Moscow to the show hi thank you hello all right so you went I know we were talking before we Rec started recording and we're right next to each other which is

really cool and we both went to Nova Southeast and University so that's where you you're MD or do doctor of Osteopathic Medicine yeah I go to yeah oh you do awesome yeah yeah the the Doo um philosophy is supposed to Encompass the mind body and spirit although I found going through my osteopathic medical training that there was a lot of body not so much on the Mind and Spirit but at least it's mentioned um yeah I

went to University of Pittsburgh um for undergrad studied molecular biology and chemistry and actually the history of medicine there's a department up there for that which doesn't exist maybe one other school I'm not even sure these days really yeah um yeah this notion that I like in order to go to med school I had to like one have a really solid foundation on like the smallest aspects of things like biology biochemistry microbiology all that sort of

that that group of the hard sciences and that I needed to kind of like know where we came from so I was studying the history of medicine in undergrad um and I was working in Labs I worked in molecular biolabs for like over 10 years and then I got to medical school and I had this very naive and I'm endeared by I'm endeared by my past self and not even endearing like misconception that in medical school

we were going to also be covering like the history of medicine like cuz how could we not and um delving really far into the hard Sciences maybe even deeper than I had in under God and neither of those things for true at all wow so that was kind of like a shocking Discovery so to speak yeah and I get it because for me studying you know I have a masters in mental health and I thought we

were going to study the whole B you know like your how the mind and the body are all connected but it was basically just this diagnostical statistical manual and that was it and theories and theories you know Freud's theory and other cognitive behavioral and other theories but then I'm going okay but how how is culture playing into this because my family's not from this country right and so I'm like and I'm like this doesn't make sense

but anyway that's I dig Ross because I bet you I could really talk it's really interesting I wonder how many people go through whatever sort of Health Care any kind of training really um uh in Academia with like this notion that it would be quote one way probably most people because we all kind of have these preconceived ideas about how things are going to be and then when you go through it and discover that maybe it's

not that way like what percentage of people then uh attempt to create change or do you Gaslight yourself and go we don't need that stuff like I mean it's just an interesting question I kind of have conversations often with people about what what they think is perhaps lacking or how we could improve things and yeah there's a lot of talk and there's some action and I'm not saying that I'm like the Queen of action like there's

things I'd love to be helping to advance that I you know we only have so many hours in the day but I think that having the discourse is an important piece of it for sure everything starts with discourse in a way yeah so okay I mean so let's talk a little bit about how you you were working in Labs right yeah what were you studying in the labs or what were you trying to do or create

in the because I think Labs I don't know I'm think oh someone with a you know a teles not a telescope a microscope microscope yeah totally yeah I think when I was like real young I had this idea that if I could understand the smallest like pieces of the universe so to speak like at the molecular level Atomic level that there like would be answers right yeah exact um and there are some there's a degree of

answers there probably more questions than answers but um I thought for a fair portion of my life that I was going to just be a mad scientist and I mean back in middle school I had like augur plates on our back porch and I was wow doing wild things I'm glad you know my parents were encouraging of it but I mean it's funny like looking back on it and I was you know growing out bacteria and

testing out different antiseptics from the store and trying to like figure out you know what kind of bacteria was it based on the shape that it grew and was it resistant to anything and asking questions and then I went and competed in some like science fairs and eventually through the grap fine um found that I could go down in boaron actually the fish Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission they had in the 90s like one of

the only labs in the state where you could clone DNA using PCR Plummer Chain Reaction so in high school I thought it was the coolest thing because after school that's what I was going to do and I then went to pit because they had a really strong um molecular biology program and medical system medical program up there and for four years I studied something called the sv40 virus the Simian virus 40 which some people have heard

of because it was a contaminant in the polio vaccine um and studied how does this virus cause a cell to become C tumorogenic to C how is it tumorogenic how does it cause a cell to turn into a cancerous cell okay essentially and then after that I worked in another lab studying uh the like neurophysiology the vestibular system um I learned more about histology in that lab so like making tissue samples versus in the previous lab

I was like pipetting uh cell cultures and purifying proteins and was all like really fun yeah interesting and during it I kind of realized that it was fun to play scientist but I did not feel that I was having like a tremendous impact on the lives of others and I kind of future paced myself and thought if I just get a PhD what is my life going to look like if I work in bench research and

Academia I hadn't even really considered like what if I go work at Farmer or something like that but I had considered like what would it look like to just be like a professor and I thought well I'm watching my laboratory like mentors battle red tape they're trying to compete for NIH grants they're trying to make sure they have tenure they're trying to like uh get things published so they're designing experiments based on what's likely to be

accepted for publication versus what's maybe the most important or interesting thing to study they're not always the same they EV diagram of overlap there so I felt like I could have a more tangible or at least immediate impact if I went and became a physician because then I could use my scientific knowledge right and actually talk to and help human beings and just like hide in a lab uh with Stell lines so so then I went

to medical school yeah and then there was like just a whole other series of sort of disillusioned realizations um surrounding the blocks like the blocks in actually providing great patient care this is not to say that nobody of course we need doctors we we need people working in healthcare we need we need that um but kind of ties in into my mental health Journey was during this during all of this I would say my mental health

from the time I was like in high school down to college and med school and the working years just was doing this okay linearly yeah going downwards um and so by the time I finished medical school I was well over 100 pounds overweight I was extremely depressed I was actually having like quite a bit of suicidal audiation and I was kind of like in a spiritual crisis in every sort of Crisis right Mind Body Spirit mental

health physical health spiritual it's all the same thing um and so my decision to then pause which ended up being me playing poker for a living for seven years that decision was rooted yeah in part in part not just in the disillusionment of the healthcare system which when you're in when you're in a negative State you're going to more easily like grasp onto the the problems as opposed to how can I create a solution but also

in realizing that if I continue and I went into residency where I would be expected to work like 60 80 hour weeks maybe more depending um that I probably like wouldn't honestly just to be like blunt wouldn't survive it like that if one way or another my health yeah was going to get me or I was gonna get myself so I stopped yeah good yeah yeah right it was a good thing and honestly let me let

me just stop you right there because what you're talking like my listeners some of them are my clients and I do help them through this because some of them have G gone through their schooling and they're in their first year of their work right so say right say for example a nurse who now has gone through their first year and they're realizing so much stuff now they're overwhelmed but they have that because they spent the money

that n you know and they are trying to do the right thing to help the humans that that's the you know that was their passion that's why we're that's why we going into it and now they're in crisis right so so there's people that are listening right now that has gone the same exact thing Dr go same exact thing you now you're giving me goosebumps hearing that I just like I just the way the universe but

you made it through you made it through so right now for that person that's going no no I know what you're talking about now I'm in a crisis now I have parents I don't know if this is what happened with you but I have like people or parents or the bill of the school oh yeah I mean I walked I had 300K of student loans there's no question to many people when they're in that amount of

dead and they've gone through that amount of years that the only thing they're allowed to do is continue the path right I'm not going to tell people like don't ever continue the path we're all different so many factors everyone's situation is different but I will say in my case making the Bold decision to go against all expectation yeah and trust my intuition um like it saved my life it changed my life it bettered my life like

there's this there's another side to it all right like I'm constantly waking up thinking oh just how lucky am I to be alive how lucky am I for this and this and this and this and this and how higher things compared to the low which gave me context the low um but yeah there is like always the possibility to live a much happier healthier life than you ever imagined like no matter where we're at always yeah

right so how' you do it like can I bring you back to when you were that younger self and just for a minute and just like you know you're in that crisis you're everything's about to shut down because this is when people decide to call me like honestly I'm like like if people listen I'm so glad that they are calling you thank god well yeah no and I'm grateful too I'm grateful that I'm able to help

but it's also when you have that person in crisis there's ways or things or red flags that have been ignored and to me like looking back I bet you have some aha moments like oh if if you know you can't change it because this is who's who how you became so resilient right it it it led you to to the poker plane which we're going to get to because that to me I'm like what is unusual

right right yes and and honestly I had a little I had a crisis too not with me but with my child and after that I ended up in the film industry in South Florida for about really before I ended up going back to being a therapist oh good that's good I mean these experiences will just right uh give you so much enrichment in a sense and perspective now like you look back and now that you are

able to breathe and now that you're have become a better version of yourself but what about the person that is listening and don't and they feel stuck you know because I felt stuck before and you and obviously you felt stuck what was the what was the thing or what was it that all of a sudden made you realize like I got to do something and what was your first steps to do that yeah there were I

mean it was a there was a I don't know if evolution is the right word but there was sort of an evolution it a process it was not any one singular moment although there were plenty of moments that St out where I like really had to just like pause and think is this the path how do I get out of this path but um yeah one component of it was that I was in intending to become

a psychiatrist and so I had done these exter ships where I went to psych hospitals for like a month here or two months there to learn and I had gone up to some good psych Hospital University of Pittsburgh Western Psy to Yale to uh University of Rochester Strong Memorial um and in having chosen that Psychiatry specifically was the thing that I was interested in and it kind of gave me in a way an easier out because

when I really really thought about it and I really looked at the way that psychiatric patients were treated in these facilities and the medical decision making and the lack of concern for aspects outside of how do we pathologize this and pick the right drug I felt like I would in many cases be doing more harm than good by getting involved in these people's lives in the way that current the psychiatric model currently operates now at the

same time I myself was a psych patient so I was going on um I don't know if you know Dr Kendrick Campbell she calls it the medication Mar ground she's one of my friends so the holistic psychiatrist right free range she says it's the medication marry go around so this medication Mar go around of try this drug try this dose try this drug add this dose it was like I was a patient at the same time

that I was uh becoming a doctor to treat that type of patient and it was the perfect display in front of me of um all of the how do I word this all of all it's like the culmination of all the different types of issues in healthcare it it really comes through in Psychiatry for a variety of reasons um because that that that one piece of it all I think made it a little bit easier for

me to leave because even if I had felt good is what I'm getting at I couldn't in good conscious conscience go through traditional training because there is no way when you're a resident when you're becoming a specialist to diverge too far from what they call the standard of care and so if I had believed hey I think with some of these patients we should first try this thing this dietary intervention this um why don't we like

just talk to them in today and not start them at any of that I did not would not have had the flexibility within medical training to do any of that you have to kind of follow the guidelines and you have to do what you're attending like the doctors above you want once you get out you have more freedom but um because I knew that I was going to have to follow these like really rigid protocols that

I didn't believe in it made it a little easier to leave but again even if I had not felt that way and even if um I did wholeheartedly believe in everything about uh the current psychiatric care model I still would have needed to and hopefully would have in theory in this like alternate universe scenario uh deferred to taking care of myself first and taking care of myself first meant I had to walk away from that there

is no way when you're in like a crisis of mental health and like I said physical and spiritual health to then go spend you know 68 hours a week working in a program that is putting extreme pressure on you um in like a toxic environment um you know a lot of times I think when when we really like you're telling me people reach out to you when it's like kind of like the final straw situation like

in crisis yes a lot of times in crisis not always a lot of times in crisis the you know is such a extreme part of the human experience that you're going to need to often take sometimes I'm very careful not to speak in absolutes an extreme roote or extreme solution in order to pull yourself out of it and that could look like leaving a job it could look like changing career directories it could look like you

know walking away from a toxic relationship it could sometimes that's what it takes not yes no you're right it is it is something to to have that understanding like because I what I tell some of my clients that are come to me and they're just they're having a breakdown I'm I tell them they're having a breakthrough yeah it's not a breakdown it's a breakthrough and they're like wait what but I'm feeling this a b c and

d I'm like yeah that Darko night of the soul that you're having right now it is something that you're either going to choose it for it to overcome and master you or you're going to learn to master it because this is part of life yeah these ups and downs right and what are we going to do and how are we going you know how are we going to get in tune and go into your intuition right

and how are we going to settle our system like there's so much out because that's the the psychiatric like I've been I've been very vocal about it for a long long time because was working at alternative high schools in Brower County oh wow okay so most of my career yes so working with teenagers in in high schools you're seeing where I'm going now right and then I'm also a woman of color as you can see and

so I'm seeing certain things happening more towards a certain group of people going wait what why are we just all of a sudden medicating and why why do you care more about the medication than actually what's happening at home they're so infuriating yes right right okay so like you get that so but because you were in the medical field right you were you know you're a doctor and you had to see I I have to ask

this question how much nutrition did they teach you we did not have a nutrition course in my Med at my medical school we didn't have a nutrition course we had um a day or two where we talked about the biochemistry of vitamins and particularly with vitamins we talked about which vitamins can you take too much of like which vitamins can you OD on and what would happen if that happened medically and then which vitamins could you

become deficient and what are the clinical manifestations of a deficiency of a vitamin so in medical school everything's always about it's not really about health it's you know it's not Healthcare it's sickcare everything in medical school is about disease so it's not about what is like a homeostasis Health happy whatever situation look like it's like what's the extreme thing that could happen we find it and how do we treat it um so yeah there's there's not

a lot of and I know some medical schools are moving towards uh including more preventative functional integrative right all these terms like I I I love them and like most of my friends that are in healthcare identify with those sorts of labels in their practice but I also have to laugh because it's like why do we need to have these specific words to indicate that a doctor is going to look for the root cause like why

do we need to clarify that like this is about avoiding medication if at all possible like why isn't that the Baseline heal care is practice it's wild yeah well it's kind of like going into a grocery store and and there's a health food section well what's the rest of the flipping grocery store right you know it's like there's a heal I'm like wait a minute so what is the rest of it but anyway I want to

know because you said something that you studied the history of medicine and I've I haven't studied it completely because I'm a therapist but I've i' I've heard here and there the Rockefeller thing and and just how things change back in the early something I don't know if that's the history you were taught or yeah oh yeah I mean that FL I think you're referring to the flexner report which was a report that I believe was funded

by the Rockell I haven't thought about this in a bit but it kind of like set shut down any school that was not essentially adhering to this idea that uh Pharmaceuticals are the only way to address a disease this was over 100 years ago at this point um that is an a point at which things changed in a sense I remember actually it's ironic that you asking about history of medicine in that context and that because

I remember having the history of medicine Professor who was like so adamant that we understand that every school that got shut down by that report was what he called filled with quacks he always use that word and I just see remember back then before I'd gone through all this you know when I was like 20 half my life ago I remember thinking like guys seems really really really committed to this idea that like we had to

stop exploring any alternative means of uh addressing health issues and I even remember I guess I've always been me a little bit I don't want to say conspiratorial I just like question everything I even remember thinking like why is he so committed to this idea and who told him to be committed to idea and where did that person hear the information like because it's just like you hear people defend Notions and you see it in healthcare

so often especially amongst Physicians and scientists no more so Physicians where they sound like they're defending like their religion like they have to believe in it I mean and I I kind of I mean I get it I have people you know like I understand like if you don't and I was just talking to a friend of mine who's not in healthcare at all but she you know it was about another friend who is in healthcare

and it's like you go to them and they're like oh here I'll write you something or here's an antibiotic it's because that's that's the way they have to pay their bills they got to believe in it's and I said it's kind of like a prosecut or a lawyer who's defending a serial killer he's gotta kind of like believe right believe in what at least some kind of something to be able to get that person off even

though we all know that all the evidence is there still but it's like and I have to say like I do know medicine that has helped people I I do oh yeah there are great Pharmaceuticals out there yeah right it's like I don't want to be I'm not that like we're not conspirac toal like you said like both of us it's just more of like having this understanding that why is that coming first instead of trying

to find other Alterna or understanding like like what's really going on with you why do you why did you have chronic depression did you figure that out now like now that you look back do you understand why everything was happening and now you were feeling a certain way me personally um oh yeah uh my brain's racing like explain to you why okay we'll get back to the concept of why Pharmaceuticals are so uh have so much

pull okay in terms of my journey um why why okay so this is an interesting point I guess brings me to an interesting point um we as clinicians are sort of taught to look for the why in a very with a very narrow lens like a very funnel visioned like what is the why now when I was working in molecular biology Labs you know uh I very much understood that cells are like infinitely complex and and

you can have a protein that upregulates a protein turns it up and it also down regulates a different protein turns it down but it depends on the concentration and it depends on the ph and it depends on the temperature and it depends like there's an infinite number of factors in a way and when I was playing poker for a living I also constantly was aware of the fact that complex decision making must include consideration to many

factors and then weighing each like piece uh probabilistically in medicine however we often want to believe there's a Magic Bullet for everything um because it's a lot of reasons why but um you know when you're in medical school and you take a test there's an ABCD answer right it's like uh which drug do you pick right um or whatever what is the most likely side effect of the one that you picked um and so the current

traditional model of Psychiatry is very reductionistic right and it it forces in a way those that play along to uh pick a drug or pick two drugs or pick three drugs in combination play with the doses um and it is it's like in other aspects of Health in the body um things are a bit more a bit more straightforward the heart is a pump and you can kind of turn it down if you have to use

a beta blocker um but with the brain it like what does that mean is it the brain the mind the soul the being like we can't reduce it down to molecules we just can't however in most cases in most cases however in order for Psychiatry to exist in medicine we have to have medicines we have in order to give someone a medicine you have to have a DI diagnostic code for the insurance to pay you back

for that medicine um the medicine must be approved for a certain condition so now we're getting into why things in a way are as narrow as they are if we are going to give someone a pill because they're depressed then we need to look at depression as something that can be addressed uh pharmaceutically if we're going to do that we need to like the eyes about why it is this way right they they really pushed this

idea of depression anxiety being because of a serotonin deficiency it's not true there's no evidence of that whatsoever um and so we tried to like medicalize The Human Experience and it's just caused a Cascade of problems right it's caused a Cascade of problems for some people for many people um so in terms of your actual question which was what was causing me to feel the way that I did while there were many psychiatrists involved in my

story that would tell you that I had a chemical imbalance I don't know what that particularly even means what was really going on like sure were chemicals in my body at suboptimal levels yes because I wasn't eating while I wasn't exercising I wasn't getting sunlight I wasn't sleeping enough um and no doctor brought that up ever no no no no no say like down the the road I ended up getting ketamine infusions which you can talk

about later if you want but basically at that point I did actually have a psychiatrist tell me like why don't you also do these other things at the same time but back when I was on you know all of these different psych meds I've tried I tried a lot of psych meds over those years um it was always you have this disease and in the very beginning I bought into it for a bit you have this

disease I thought oh no I have a disease right so I'm that means that something is different about my body than other people's and it's this idea like that you genetically maybe were predisposed which I mean yeah genetics play a factor epigenetics play a factor the environment plays a factor your diet plays a factor right um that you're that I was like just it gives a lot of patients this idea that they're just like doomed that

they like something about them personally and it's their yeah and that like they that they're like cursed and they have this like sentence that they have this disease these labels it's important I think for people to understand the a lot many of these labels exist because of what I spoke about earlier which is the need to assign a word in order for a drug to go through the need to assign a word in order for a

like biller to hit the right code for the insurance to pay it what I think has happened is that we have labeled everyone their mom as they say that expression right with uh these disorders and it's caused a lot of harm because it becomes self-fulfilling and you be start to believe I am this word and these things about me are broken and it's something that I just am gonna always have to battle and think about and

it's going to affect my life forever in one way or another and it just becomes a part of people's identity right and it it's just like I don't know it's just very sad it's very sad but uh while it can be useful to have um Herms to speak about things right like we like to have and the English language helps us out right right can like and there are you know there are people that are you

know paranoid and hallucinating that bit what we call schizophrenia like that's like I think the part like most precise example with these mental health words maybe where there's like accuracy also with personality disorders there are people that have these common symptoms or presentations um but when we start talking about some of these other terms right it's all Spectrum it's all Spectrum so this depression and the anxiety and the bipolar and for you know bipolar 2 became

like the most popular diagnosis right when certain medications were approved to treat that right you can see that when certain medications were put out suddenly a lot of people were called that particular thing I just it's just it's happened time again time again it's same with ADHD it's the same now with the new one because every time that DSM comes out I'm like oh what's the new thing that's going to be like really pushed goodness and

and to me I mean they started doing it with us women with a pmdd or oh right yeah something dysphoric disorder Prem menstrual dysphoric disorder and I'm like this is something that us women go through and you guys don't like it no I'm just kiding you know it's like and I yeah in a sense yeah it's like we're not supposed to feel the same day every same way every day of the month as females yeah and

because yeah hormones are wildly different every day of the month if you're cycling if you're between you know yeah teenage years to menopause then your hormones are quite different every day of the month yeah every month I mean and this is what I talk to with my women clients I'm like so what season are you and what do you mean Diana I'm like a you know are you in winter spring summer or fall of your month

yeah yeah right and so when it's time for winter it's okay that you're gonna feel sad I I try to normalize okay there's sad and then there is clinical depression where it is depression where you just cannot no matter what you do no matter how you eat no matter how you drink no matter what's happening and you're just there okay there's something going on that's when I think all right let's really go to a psychiatrist that

gets the whole body Mind Body Spirit functional doctor and really work on this and okay but nowadays I just see everybody wanting you know it's the no sibo effect too if the doctor just comes in after 20 minutes being with you and says okay well you have clinical depression here's your meds and you only got to know them one time there's something wrong with the system yeah and um absolutely and it's not possible to like uh

really convey very much to a doctor right about your entire life and past and history and current experiences and lifestyle habits and what like uh maybe an introductory appointment might be an hour half an hour I I don't know in most practices what they're doing but um it's like you may find yourself that day talking more about your anxiety but it might be that your anxiety was higher that day because you're in a doctor's office whereas

the thing that you actually came to that office for was something else maybe you came because you wen't focusing well but then all of a sudden you've left with a you know these doctors often ask very leading questions and you can kind of take people down a tunnel um where they're going to I'm the other side with the diagnosis right and I want to say that you know like it's it's the insurance model too because it's

like you have to have a certain amount of of clients because now you have to pay you have to pay the bills you have to and it you know you have to be able to do this to make it affordable living for yourself or whatever like so let's just shift a little and and I want to understand what were the effective treatments for you what were the effective strategies or mindset that helped you shift and regain

control of your life yeah okay it was a process and there were a lot of pieces to it so I as I mentioned uh started or I alluded to it I I started exercising I changed my diet I started sleeping and I started getting sunlight all of those things were important now mindset wise at some point I realized that I was playing a much bigger role in my mood and situation than I had wanted to acknowledge

that I was in a way very attached to the idea that I had these mental health conditions labels that I was attached to the idea that I'd been through trauma and that it was shaping me and like it was kind of always going to shape me in a way that made it such that I couldn't have a normal whatever that means life that I was hung up on stories from the past and that I was kind

of addicted in a way to the idea of suffering and to the idea that I suffered and that I also at times was like you know not really uh I don't know I wouldn't have wanted to be around me during this period of time God bless anyone that like tried or you know was because I mean you know I was so aggressively pushing people away that were trying to help because I was really attached to the

idea that I couldn't be help and so if you you know so you know what you believe becomes what is in a sense so I I at some point really saw that holding on to like this victim mentality was only going to harm me like it I wasn't going to like win a victim award I wasn't going to like solve my life's Problems by uh by wallowing and I kind of just had to yeah deeply examine

the ways in which I was perpetuating aspects of it all not to say that there wasn't like a real yeah thing going on I really was suffering but I was also kind of attached to the fact that I suffered right like I would go lie in bed and kind of throw a pity party and think about how awful everything is and while there is an aspect of that that could be outside of one's control when they're

in a very dark place and sometimes you do need to just like lie in bed and hide I guess but maybe but it also can become like a unhealthy coping strategy like you can um kind of stand in your own way so I was standing in my own way a lot and so once I realized that and I was okay with like accepting that like nasty feeling in your stomach that like you're part of the problem

right where you're like I don't want it to be me right or or that you have a choice to do something about it like you finally realize right like you're going it created more of a path out like once I was like okay like I'm part of the problem I don't really want to be part of the problem what if I like try to help myself right right um it made it easier like I mean we

over complicate things as humans and um I think that as a I think that statement I just made we over complicate things in humans may even resonate more so with people that maybe find themselves caught up in the mental health system because we are uh complex beings but those of us that have now at any point felt as if our own minds were were attacking us in a way yes we probably think at a like you

know maybe a little a large I want to say a larger quantity of thoughts a deeper amount of thoughts we're just like thinkers we just think and we think we think we think we overthink just common like you know like rumination overthinking and and it's creativity that's how I see it because even you know I say the word creative people automatically think artists oil painter or musician and they're very I work with quite a few creatives

but for those that are like science-minded it's that you know and question why and like right you know and you're thinking you're thinking like how why how why because I have you know I the thing is I grew up with parents or a family that didn't trust any health care system like honestly my mom a couple years ago got hit by a truck and broke two of her vertebres and she was like I'm not going to

the doctor I'm like they you know they the emergency room sometimes you got to go to the doctor guys yes right but that's that's the kind of mentality of like isn't religion or anything like that it's just the the I came here I'm strong nothing's gonna let me down and I'm not going to ask the government for anything like that that's what I was but for you like would it sounded like especially at a young age

if if somebody was diagnosed at a young age or you saw it in your own family lineage of a behavior okay yeah right and it's whatever fires together in your brain wires together and and so if you don't know any other way out you just don't at that moment and so something must have just you know you you realize it was either life or death for you right it was either like if I keep going on

this road I'm gonna just end up really in a bad place so maybe I need to take a step back and listen and go all right let me learn about my body let me let me why I'm I thinking these things and challenging them because I get it I grew up you know with some complex PTSD and yeah and I could go in my story and and and I did wallow and I did self-medicate yeah right

like we try to figure this stuff out and then the thing is like when you go to a professional you're trusting you know you're giving money and you're also trusting the degree because they're the ones who did the work to find the information to help you yeah right but I try to definitely right but so let's let's see how how would you balance that like you know because it is you know you've gone through it Dr

Moscow you've gone through it and you and and you came now you're somewhere like I the second I saw you I'm like you have this light about you there's this shine about you yeah there's no you know but now that we're we both have gone through some stuff we have a younger generation and I mean I know it because I work with it a lot and I'm sure you're see that that are suffering quarter life crisis

is what I call a lot of my 25-year olds are coming to me and they're in a quarter life crisis not a midlife crisis so how would you Dr Moscow you still there uh oh hello okay I think I got you back second there I heard you ask you said how you know we have a younger generation that's suffering um so what would you say to them how would you how would you encourage them someone like

you know I can I can encourage my younger like if if there's 20 year old or you know with the things I went through because it was anxiety for me like for you it was depression but anxiety like whoa oh no I had I had anxiety too I mean honestly no I I was given all kinds of labels I was given OCD first and then generalized anxiety disorder panic disorder Ty hold disorder major depressive disorder CTP

tpd D um ADHD and autism I literally was labeled with every single thing I just listed at one point or another um so yeah oh my goodness yeah maybe maybe the autism one I don't know but maybe doesn't matter doesn't matter like I I don't feel the need to label everything oh that that is one thing I would say actually to anyone that's suffering he's like right now there's this environment I see it on social media

I see people people talking about their diagnosis and putting like their hashtags in their profile and really like believing that the diagnosis is a integral part of their life and it's not to downplay the fact that we all have V to varying degrees of suffering and that there are diagnoses and there are conditions and that they can interfere with your life all of that is true like we can definitely have mental health and physical health conditions

that are interfering with their life however I think at this exact moment in time there's like uh it's a little little bit out of balance the degree to which we are almost celebrating them um and I again it's it's not celebrating in a way like hey I have this thing and I'm going to go crush the world anyway it's more like uh celebrating maybe that wasn't the best term to pick but I I see a lot

of people grasp on to these labels and almost like introduce people introduce themselves to people with the label like like it's like I you know it ties in a little bit to like uh this trend of like just identity in general being something where we have to like uber Define ourselves in all kinds of ways and someone might say like you know I'm this race I'm this religion I have this sexual uh preference I'm this whatever

and it's like and I have these diagnoses I would say one is to be like very cautious of taking any of that diagnosis wise and then like uh kind of holding on to it and hugging it and believing that uh that is your being I think that uh we are boxing ourselves in when we do that and that we are uh also kind of giving it too much power that's really the best way to put it

right giving this this condition and this term which as I spoke of earlier a lot of these terms exist in part because of Pharma and because of health insurance and because of this and because of that um and then holding ourselves in by by using that label um so that is just one aspect of it and I say this because also during the time that I suffered really deeply I found that I was talking to a

lot of other people that suffered really deeply that I was befriending people that kind of shared my diagnosis that I was you know commiserating um via text message like with people although in the very beginning of my story we weren't even texter like right I'm I'm in my 40s but um with people like oh yeah depression is awful because of this and people don't get it because of that and like that feeding into it will harm

you and it really will like misery loves company and a lot of times we will magnetize the people into our life that uh it's not to say that it's wrong to have people in your life that are also going through something it's just that if you find yourself in a situation where everyone that you talk to in on a daily basis is also like really really really struggling to get by it's going to be really hard

to break out of that yeah because people don't want to feel feel like they're alone I get it Community is very important you know I get like why people need Community it is though yes what is the community doing for you fine if you're 10 people that are depressed wonderful but what are you doing to get out of it that that's what it is yes it's not to say don't have friends that are sad like be

friends with people that are sad like we need everyone we should need all care each other but there has to be sometimes it's like you know you you can't give from an empty cup so if you are kind of like at your rock bottom and someone else near you is at the rock bottom and someone else near you is at your rock bottom like who's giving in that situation like when like you know like you said

I'm sort of like in a really good place in this chapter of my life I can give like I can I can have if someone's suffering I I could talk to them and I I'm overflowing I could give but I I would hope that people that are you know uh struggling would reach out to someone that's in where they can give however a lot of times when you're struggling it's like a catch 22 because you don't

want to talk to the person that's like obnoxious and wearing a flowery shirt and bubbly and happy because like they don't get it like what do they get it they don't understand suffering they don't understand like how things are like I pushed so many people away that were like a well adjusted and happy years back right because I wasn't those things right and then later I like felt better and told them like hey that was obnoxious

to me I'm sorry thank you for trying like I should have like I should have like called you more often or written you back but I just wasn't in a place to hear the positivity right yeah but I guess I wish I mean I don't wish anything was different I think everything's exactly as it needs to be but yeah in theory if I had been a little bit more receptive to the people in my life that

were doing better than me better mentally I maybe would have snapped out of it a bit faster but I was talking to a lot of people who also were just in the pits of hell so to speak and also were just like in a very dark place and it was uh it was no good yeah yeah I mean it sounds like you realized that you had a choice and you were not stuck basically like you realize

sitting in that dark time or that darkness and that heaviness and I mean I get it it is like you you found some kind of glimmer of hope because to me or faith I have no idea but there's something that shifted right it's something that shifts inside I know when I was going through these times as well it had to be something where it's like you know this is why I love you know faith hope and

love like I I ended up having faith that gave me hope that made me able to love better myself and others right and so I mean I I think I could sit and talk I still have like 10,000 more questions but time is up and I don't I know like I with the listeners I'm not I'm not Joe Rogan so I can't sit here for four hours straight okay but um if you can leave The Listener

with just one piece of advice for their mental health Journey what would it be yeah um just one okay let me think about this for a second okay you're under no obligation to be the person you were five minutes ago that's like a famous quote I believe or there's some variation of it that I've heard before it's true we tend to hold on to all of these stories like we're hoarding and collecting stories from our life

some those stories are like projected on to you from other people they're stories of trauma the past is like this funny collection of memories and it's all like oddly weighted and like some things stand out as like so important and some things like we don't even remember happening but maybe were they important I don't know and some things like we know the feeling that went along with that part of our life but we couldn't tell you

the details like a lot of people that are suffering are holding on this like package of distorted stories and other people's stories it we don't have to honor it essentially I used to think that like all pieces and chapter and parts of my life were so critically important that it was almost like disrespectful to them to like not think about them or not remember that I went there or not think like it doesn't matter like it

does like doesn't matter if you think that you like I don't know uh did this thing wrong or whatever 10 years ago and that this other person is thinking this about you they're probably not thinking about that you they're not even thinking about you like you just let it go like I guess that's the thing like uh it's kind of like like with the I went to medical school but I don't um practice medicine I have

a business whatever like who cares like it doesn't matter like it doesn't like right it doesn't matter that uh any of it I don't know like you can kind of just whatever brings you Joy that that what matters love matters um I think a lot of mental health suffering comes from in a sense like holding on to the Past in pain and Trauma and a lot of times it's coming from a place of but those things

are important but if you don't want them to be important then they're not important like it's kind of meaning is where you assign it so if uh if you want to decide in this exact moment that you're reclaiming your power then just do it just do it and take action and move forward and Don't Look Backwards like that's it I think no that's wonderful that's a great that's a great piece of advice so listener I hope

that you have listened to this and thank you thanks everyone for listening thank you all for being here yeah for sure and so don't ever forget to trust in the Lord guard your heart and renew your mind bye and now for the disclaimer to make sure you understand that that you are responsible for you the content provided on the holistic counselor podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for

professional medical advice diagnosis or treatment always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or mental condition never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast the views expressed on this podcast are my personal opinion and do not represent the views of any professional organizations with which I am Affiliated call your doctor 911 or 988

immediately if you have a medical emergency the holistic counselor podcast does not recommend or endorse any specific tests Physicians products procedures opinions or other information that may be mentioned on the podcast Reliance on any information provided by the holistic counselor podcast guests appearing on the podcast at the invitation of the holistic counselor podcast or other listeners to the podcast is solely at your own risk confidentiality notice if you engage with the holistic counselor podcast by commenting

or posting and are a client Please be aware that you may be revealing information that could compromise your confidentiality please remember that disclosing your identity or personal details can be linked to your clinical material as a therapist I am Bound by confidentiality and will not respond to any disclosures of this type on this podcast I am committed to upholding the ethics and confidentiality of the therapeutic relationship which extends to all forms of communication in accordance with

the laws and professional guidelines that govern mental health professionals I want you to know that your privacy is of utmost importance and you are responsible for protecting it when interacting on this platform or any other public forum thank you