2021-11

Episode 93
In part 4 of our mental health miniseries, we talk about psychosis in general and schizophrenia in particular. Why does Hollywood continually misrepresent schizophrenia, and what does it actually mean to experience a psychotic break? Is it always a bad thing to hear voices or see visions? Did many of our hallowed religious heroes live with schizophrenia? If so, does that change how we should think about their words? Let's talk about it! 
 
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produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
 
Zack Jackson  00:00
Hey there, Zack here. Just a heads up. In this episode we're going to be talking about psychosis, schizophrenia, hallucinations, and how we've encountered them in the media, in our religious traditions and in our own lives. As Kendra says in this episode, being a human is weird and complicated, and I want to acknowledge upfront that even though we are trying our best to be sensitive to all experiences of humanity, we will likely fall short. So if you'd like to head over to the down the wormhole conversations Facebook group, we'd love to hear about how you have experienced schizophrenia psychotic breaks hallucinations, or have interacted with those who have. Are there people in our scriptures who can help us to see these disorders in a new light? Let's talk about it. Well, let's talk about it in about an hour or so. You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Redding, Pennsylvania, and if my life were a movie, I would hire Paul rent to play me.
 
Ian Binns  01:08
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. And if anyone could play me, I'd probably pick Ed Helms,
 
Rachael Jackson  01:18
Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina and if I have someone play me in a movie, I'm gonna ask Sir Patrick Stewart, because he's just the best.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  01:33
Kendra Holt-Moore, assistant professor of religion at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas, and if I had to get someone to play me in a movie, it would be Kathryn Hahn. I'm trying to remember who that is. She plays Jen Barkley in parks and rec She most recently what I saw her she's a witch Agatha. Oh, yeah, Vision Agassi's it was
 
Zack Jackson  02:01
also a young a young Laura Dern. I think what would be great as Kendra
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  02:07
Oh, yeah, people have said that to me, too. Yes. Young, large earner like Lauren's daughter something.
 
Adam Pryor  02:14
Prior, I work at Bethany College in Lindsborg Kansas. If someone were to play me in a movie. I think it would be Statler of Statler and Waldorf.
 
Zack Jackson  02:25
Having a muppet play You bet.
 
Rachael Jackson  02:29
That's perfect. Actually.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  02:36
Oh, sorry. I don't really know who the specific Muppets are. I know who the Muppets are, but I don't know
 
Adam Pryor  02:43
that there is one
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  02:46
who heckles besides like Miss Peggy? Yeah, no.
 
Adam Pryor  02:49
Guys who hackles
 
Zack Jackson  02:51
Statler and Waldorf. Yeah,
 
Ian Binns  02:53
yeah, I can see that. I could definitely see that. Yeah, that's totally you, Adam.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  03:00
Yeah, so today, we're continuing in our series on mental health and we are talking about psychosis today. Pardon? So, we're talking about psychosis, but we're actually talking like more specifically about schizophrenia. And, and so, psychosis, like more generally speaking, is there a lot of different ways for someone to experience a psychotic break, have a an episode of psychosis, and that can look a lot of different ways. But it it like the main, the primary characteristic of psychosis is like a major break from reality. And so it is, you know, understandably, very disturbing, and very destabilizing of the individual who experiences psychosis and psychosis. Different disorders of psychosis are are often like, not very well miss. Not very well understood. And, and so that makes them both kind of, like frustrating and also intriguing to clinicians and like to the popular imagination, there's just like something about, you know, psychotic disorders that are, you know, the way that they get represented in, in film, and in TV. They are usually portrayed to be, you know, a little a little scary, like, not scary from the inside of like the person who has experienced a psychotic break because obviously, that's frightening, but also frightening to people on the outside watching what's happening. because it's hard to understand or like, connect with someone who has a break from reality and in how do you how do you care for a person or include a person who is just seemingly in like a totally different dimension of time and space in a lot of ways, then then what you are experiencing in your more like grounded reality. So that's generally like, what psychosis is. But to talk more specifically about schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is, again, like we, we understand more about it, like we're learning more and more. But it's, there's still a lot that we don't know. For example, we don't, we don't really understand, like, what causes schizophrenia. And we can make some observations about schizophrenia. Such as, like, if you have someone in your family with schizophrenia, like if you have a parent who has schizophrenia, you have a higher risk for developing it. But that's not necessarily indicative of it. Like it's not, it's not a fact that you will have schizophrenia at some point in time. And we, we know, you know, we've observed that schizophrenia tends to happen, roughly equally, between women and men. We, you know, we know that like, kind of stereotypes of schizophrenics are that they're dangerous and violent. But, you know, we have observed that that's actually not true. Short, like, anyone can can be violent or aggressive. But that is not, that's not a general or fair characteristic of schizophrenic people. And schizophrenia, there's also different types. So like, I guess I should, you know, maybe say, like, what exactly this is, because, you know, we have, again, I think people probably have associations of, of what it is from, like media representations, but it's a brain disorder, again, not entirely sure, like what's going on in the brain, but a brain disorder that can create a lot of really disturbing symptoms, such as hallucinations, which can be visual hallucinations, or auditory, like sound hallucinations. And it can make people delusional. And so you know, believing in something very adamantly, that is just not true. So, you know, some delusions might might look something like, like, someone who's delusional might think that they are like a savior of some kind, and they have to, like, save the world. And they might think that, like, the FBI is sending the messages that are about information that only they would know, because they are destined to, like, save the universe. Like, really, you know, some of these delusions can be very grand, delusional thinking. And other symptoms could be like trouble just thinking concentrating or communicating. There are a lot of, you know, especially people who work with schizophrenics, in a clinical capacity will tell stories about, you know, speaking to someone who's schizophrenic who has symptoms that disturb communication, they might just like string a bunch of words together, but those words don't actually make any sense whatsoever. Like, there's not a comprehensible sentence there. But something is happening in in the in the brain, like the communication pathways where whatever that person may or may not want to say, it just doesn't come out. And likewise, someone who's schizophrenic, who is listening to another person talk, they may hear different words than the words that are actually coming out of that person's mouth. And so that's another again, just like disturbance, that is a break with reality that they don't have control over and is it's it just makes it very difficult to navigate, like what should otherwise be pretty mundane, normal experiences for people. Other Other symptoms are just like a General, General flat effect, or, you know, a lack of expression, a sluggishness that just, you know, is is pretty severe. And so there are like, there, as you can see, there's like this constellation of symptoms that can appear. And, you know, usually people will have like more than one of these symptoms. But the ones that are especially disturbing are typically the ones that are the hallucination or delusional thinking type of symptoms, and hallucinations, you know, whether they're visual or auditory. Those are hard, obviously, because it's, it's, it's difficult to distinguish what is real and what is not real. And so those are, especially, you know, a lot of researchers are intrigued, by the way that people who are schizophrenic sort of interpret their hallucinations. And it's just kind of this really distinct, like qualitatively different kind of symptom then the like, flat effect, which is still troubling and disturbing in its own way. But so there's just something to note there about like, these, this constellation of symptoms that schizophrenics Can, can experience collectively, like, why this is disturbing. Like, it's clear why that's disturbing the break from reality. But what we're talking about mostly today are hallucinations. And, and, you know, maybe some delusions too, but especially auditory hallucinations in the sound of hearing voices. And so to say something just about, like hearing voices, that can, that can happen in a couple of ways. So, for example, you may hear a voice, maybe one person is saying something, but in like your schizophrenic mindset, you may hear that voice sounds like it's coming from multiple people, like there's kind of a lesion of something talking at you, but maybe you're having a conversation with one person. I mentioned already that, you know, another example is hearing words that are not actually coming out of the person's mouth, and they're saying something totally different. Another, another way of hearing voices is just noises in the environment that kind of morph into what sound like voices. And so that can lead to a lot of experiences of whispering and, you know, kind of chatter in the distance that can't quite make out what the voices are. But it sounds like voices. And so I there's, you know, an example of like a car sort of washing by down the street in the sound of the car wishing by that kind of like car wash transforms into a what sounds like a voice. So voices, wherever, whatever stimuli in the environment, or like in that person's head, that's creating the voice. You know, it may or may not be clear, like, there are ways that schizophrenic people learn to manage those symptoms. And, you know, I think my understanding is that some people can identify like, certain things as being real or not real, but sometimes it's hard, especially, I would imagine, if you were like just discovering that you are schizophrenic. It, there's no, there's no complete cure for schizophrenia, you can manage symptoms with anti psychotic medication, but it's, it's, it's disturbing. So this is, this is this kind of brain disorder is, again, it, there's something that's just, it's so severe, and it's transformation of a person's everyday experience that a lot of researchers and people have this interest in this the intersection between something like schizophrenia, and a person's, like, experiences of religion and spirituality. And that's not always relevant for like particular people. But, but it is something that comes up and there is there are a lot of, you know, social scientists, especially like psychologist anthropologists, and, you know, other other clinicians who are like asking these kinds of questions about like, what, what this intersection could be, and, and to say, Oh, one more thing, also that, like schizophrenia sometimes is mistaken for like multiple personality disorder, which is also known, I think, maybe more accurate accurately now as dissociative dissociative identity disorder. So, you know, those They're also like, their own kind of like disturbing, you know, experience of the world break from reality. But that's their distinct from schizophrenia, what we're talking about. So what is the intersection between something like schizophrenia, psychosis with religious or spiritual experiences? So, there? For one, there's a lot of people who asked this really interesting question about the history of shamanism, and people in in various cultures. Just just just code, like what we would call diseases or disorders, it's important to realize that, you know, that the the way that people experience not just schizophrenia, but a number of different conditions, there, there's a cultural element in the way we like code, others and our own experiences with these disorders and diseases and schizophrenia is no different. So, in in, in Western countries, like in the United States, in particular, it is a lot more common for people to experience schizophrenia in themselves as like madness, their people are much more willing and immediate in their response to say, like, this is bad, these voices that I'm hearing, if they have auditory hallucinations, they are disturbing me, they are frightening me, they are torturing me. And there's a generally speaking, a negative experience with auditory hallucinations. And, and people also typically, you know, just the, the way that we talk about something like schizophrenia, people are more likely to use the term schizophrenia as like a category like a word that describes this collection of symptoms that we see as disordered. And they're, you know, the solution is antis, psychotic medications are like being put in a mental mental institution, and, you know, various other clinical ways of managing something like schizophrenia. And so, people in the US, when, when researchers have like interviewed people, with schizophrenia, there's this language around it, that's much there's just much more negative experiences with voices. And, and, and what people find in other countries and other like cultural settings, is, it's not that people don't ever talk about schizophrenia, or that they don't ever feel afraid of their hallucinations. But, um, there's something pretty distinct about the contexts of other other cultures from the US context in which there's more flexibility in how other cultures sort of manage something like schizophrenia. And so there's an example of a group of researchers who kind of compared three different groups of schizophrenics in, in the US, in India and in Ghana. And what they found was, the US kind of fit that characteristic of people describing a negative relationship with their hallucinations. But when they looked at the, the samples in Ghana, and in India, they found that people were much more likely to describe the voices they were hearing as providing guidance. And sometimes people would say, you know, some like in India, there were a couple of people who had hallucinations of like, a particular Hindu God, or, you know, maybe have like a family member or like a famous person they'd read about in a magazine, like different manifestations of visual and auditory hallucinations, that they instead of, you know, it may be more frightening at first, but over time, they started to almost rely on them, like these voices actually helped me understand and remind me what I should do to be a good person. And in other instances, you know, they're, like, in the, in the India in Ghana samples in particular, people might feel like a kinship with those voices, that maybe there's like family members appearing in those hallucinations that are, again giving guidance and providing a sense of I mean, I don't know if like comfort is the right word here, but there was less fear and Like revulsion at those voices, and there was a place kind of created in the mind of these people. And so, you know, they, they realize that what they're experiencing was unusual compared to others, but there was still a coating of those experiences as something that was either instructive or, or supernatural. Definitely a relationship between voices, and supernatural deities or, or demons, that's not uncommon. And you know, that, again, it's not that people in the US, like, would never code their experiences as supernatural or demonic are from God in some way. But this was, the seemed to be a little more acceptable and common in, in the samples from India and Ghana. And, and so this is just an interesting, like, comparison, and I think is relevant to this broader question that other researchers are looking into, like, is shamanism is there a connection between shamanism and something like psychotic conditions like schizophrenia, where you learn how to manage voices and, and symptoms that you're experiencing that are different from everyone else, and instead of being in a mental institution, you are now sort of elevated into a, into this particular role in a society where you can still interact and function in a community by sharing what you have that no one else has. And it's a way there's, you know, it's a, it's, it's a way of thinking about something like schizophrenia, that's, that kind of normalizes it, or like, maybe not normalizes it, but it provides a place. So that's a person doesn't need to necessarily be like, isolated or feel like they are like, totally insane. And it's just really different and interesting that this is like, this is the interesting link between something like schizophrenia, these like psychotic disorders, and, you know, religious or spiritual interpretations of those disorders to be sort of functional for a community. And so that's, that's the, that's what I, you know, just when, when introduced here, so, like, how does that how does that land for any of any of y'all, and what do you? What other thoughts do you have? Like, what do you have any experience? Do you know, anyone with schizophrenia? Like, what do you what do you think?
 
Rachael Jackson  22:58
Yeah, so thank you for
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  23:00
sorry, no,
 
Rachael Jackson  23:03
you're good. You're good. Oh, good. Thank you for giving us this perspective. And I really like the interdisciplinary overview. I obviously am in the culture of America. So those that I know that have schizophrenia have definitely experienced it in that aggressive and fear based place. And it was lovely to read about these places in India, I was really fond of the one from India, where they were saying that this is really, I interpreted it as protective, and guiding, very almost nurturing and parental, which is very different than people that I that I know, with schizophrenia here, that it's very fear based. And it's, it's daunting, it's not just the break from reality, that's scary, which I think would be across cultures. But it's the how they're experiencing the the auditory. I'm not gonna say just voices, but the auditory sounds right. Well, that's redundant. What they are experiencing from sound is scary. And we don't we tend to our society tends to, to shun that to shun the differences. Our society tends to think that if you if you have this break, you're broken. And that was something that that has really stuck with me and trying to figure out how to encourage people to to acknowledge that they're not broken, um, has been something that we as a as a society and culture can fix, I think, even if the disease itself you know, we can't
 
Zack Jackson  25:01
So, my my first experience with this, even with schizophrenia at all, came from the movie, beautiful mind about the mathematician John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, who has a roommate that he lives with that assumes that everyone knows this roommate for years until he discovers that this is not a real person. And he's in his mind, and there's this whole world, and then they discovers he's got all these conspiracy theories. And it's, it becomes this sort of thriller. And that is how I imagined schizophrenia to be that there are people out there who just imagine that there are people with them at all times, and how terrifying that was. And they kind of, there was a, I think there's a scene in there where he does hurt someone. And it's kind of like, this guy is a danger. But I more, just lived for years terrified that this was actually happening to me. And that the people that I knew, like, I would be like, is this person real? Or am I imagining them? Am I having a psychotic break? Or is this person real? Can you see this person, and it made me really paranoid. And now that I'm, I'm a bit older, and I realized that that's not actually how it works. And that's just how it works in Hollywood. And that it's more like, a lot of these voices are internal. And people kind of understand that. I, I've seen it everywhere. In in my religious world, we tend to attract people who hear voices. And I get that all the time. Now. It's like, I heard a voice from God saying this. And it's usually something about how this person is uniquely qualified to save something or do something really important or dramatic. And then that is left up to me to decide if that is the voice of God or the voice of a psychosis or both, or neither. And I feel woefully unqualified to do that. And for the most part,
 
Rachael Jackson  27:14
I would second I would second that you are woefully unqualified.
 
Zack Jackson  27:19
Thanks, Rachel.
 
Rachael Jackson  27:20
You're welcome. You're welcome. I think I think clergy are often the first people to to recognize that there could be something amiss, and that's our job. And then to pass it along to the people that can go Oh, no, you're just having a faith experience? Or, oh, wow, you're really having a psychotic break. Right? And that we're the first persons to acknowledge that, yes, you can hear these voices. And sometimes it's a natural faith thing. And sometimes it's a natural brain disorder thing. But just just just just reaffirming that you are willfully unqualified as am I, as our most clergy. Sorry. No offense. Yeah.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  28:05
I think that's a good point, though, about an in Yeah, it makes sense that clergy are in many cases, like the the first people to encounter people in which it's hard to tell what's happening, because there's some there's the shared language of people who are experiencing hallucinations, whether they're like, specifically schizophrenic or, or something else, saying, like, God said this to me, and how to distinguish that from other people who, you know, it might be unclear if they have something going on in terms of a brain disorder, but that's also just like common parlance to talk about, like, Faith experiences, or, you know, like, there's, there's a whole book actually one of the researchers who have participated in interviews with schizophrenic people. She also wrote a book about evangelical faith and the language of like, talking to God. And so that, you know, just like the recognition that there's shared language there, and you know, typically, I think it's, it's straightforward to tell when, like, what the difference is, but not always. And I think that Rachel and Decker, you know, right, that it's clergy who have to kind of make that first call sometimes.
 
Zack Jackson  29:35
Well, so here's an example. There's an elder at the church, who one day showed up to a worship service, stark naked, and ran around the parking lot, yelling about how this church had become corrupt, and how the pastor was in in league with the devil and was and with that Elder board was siphoning money. And we used to run around every day, every Sunday morning, when people showed up would show up naked streak through the parking lot and yell about how this church was going to hell did it for three years. Okay, so that didn't actually happen. But it happened in Isaiah chapter 20. And when Isaiah does it in Isaiah chapter 20, it's like wow, with this prophetic image, that God told him to remove thy sackcloth, and thy shoes and to even expose the buttocks for under three years to shame the Egyptians, as he went through the towns, prophesying to the people. And that sounds holy and righteous. But if somebody did that now, we'd be like, This man has a psychotic break, and he needs to be hospitalized. And should we have hospitalized? Isaiah? Yes. Yeah.
 
Rachael Jackson  30:58
Yes, no, I am. I'm being totally serious. I mean, I think that the hospitalization of people that have mental disorders or challenges, we need to fix that system. But the concept that Isaiah probably had some sort of mental illness, absolutely, I think our the Hebrew Bible at least I can't really speak to the Christian bible as thoroughly, really examples of the human conditions. And Isaiah is one of those that examples, schizophrenia. I just like when we talked about depression, and we can see it and anxiety like, I believe that the Hebrew Bible absolutely gives us reference to most of the brain diseases that we are uncomfortable with to this day. So yes, I think he should have been, but somehow positively. So then,
 
Zack Jackson  31:57
is Isaiah hearing the voice of God, or the voice of Isaiah? And if by hospitalizing him and treating his condition? Are we then stopping prophecy?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  32:13
asking those tough questions,
 
Zack Jackson  32:15
that's what we're here for.
 
Rachael Jackson  32:16
Right? I think it's who's listening? Right? I think that if a person like Isaiah, minus the modesty issues, because let's remember that they had a very different understanding of being closed or not closed than we do in our semi Puritan American culture. You know, barring that piece, if someone's listening, and it makes sense, then yeah, that that person can still be a prophet. And whether or not that is the voice of God that Isaiah is hearing, in actuality, or the presumption of Isaiah that it is the voice of God, who Isaiah is speaking to his hearing as a as a prophet. And they're the ones that are listening or not listening. And I think we can absolutely have people that are prophetic nowadays. And it's really the difference of, you know, where is it God? Or is it an understanding of God? And does that even matter? So, yeah, I, I think, yes. It's that we have gone deaf, to people that are trying to show us show us things about our society that we don't want to.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  33:31
I was gonna echo something similar that you said, Rachel was like, the question of a god or as an internal voice, that, yeah, like, does that matter? For one, the person who is hearing the voice, but also does that matter for people who are listening to the person, and for some people, that will matter, and for some people that won't. And so I think, with like, the authority of the or the origin of the voice, may affect the like, interpretation of the importance of what is being said. And that just kind of, kind of depends what's happening. I think, as to whether it's, you know, whether one, it depends on the context, in the content of what is being said as to whether I, for example, would think that person needs to be institutionalized. Or, you know, if I would maybe be likely to call them something like a prophet or a guide of in like a cultural moment. I think they're, it's just like the kinds of voices people hear or claim to hear are so varied. think there are absolutely some voices that I do not want to listen to and that I do not want you to have to listen to You know? So it's like, are you telling me to like, go jump off a bridge? Or are you telling me that like, society is corrupt? Because those are both examples of things that people can hear when they're hearing voices and claiming that it's coming from God or, you know, the devil or whatever. But, you know, it's, it has the interpretation of what to do with that information is contingent upon the community, cultural norms, a bunch of things. And so it makes it very tricky to kind of, I think, generalized about like, how to respond to those voices from the outside. And also like recognizing, I watched a, an interview one time with a person who's schizophrenic, and the interviewer was asking her questions, and started asking her questions about, like, the hallucinations, and she had visual hallucinations. And so the interviewer started to say, like, do you see the hallucinations right now? And where are they in the room? And she said, I'm actually not going to answer those questions, because I don't like to tell people where the hallucinations are in the room. Because when real people start interacting with my hallucinations, it makes it difficult for me to tell what is real and not real. Found. And so I thought that was really, really interesting to just like from, from that, like, another perspective of how to deal with what is happening.
 
Ian Binns  36:42
Yeah, so, you know, to echo what Zack said, the beginning, one of my first experiences with schizophrenia was the movie, A Beautiful Mind. And, you know, I'd loved that movie. And I, as we were kindred, as you're talking, I'd looked it up and was, I did not realize that when the movie came out that it was actually celebrated by some in the mental health community that had a somewhat accurate portrayal of schizophrenia, not that they didn't take liberties, but that it actually did somewhat of a decent job. But I also remember when that movie came out, it was a time when I was struggling with medication for my depression. And when I saw that movie, and saw that the, you know, John Nash, according to the movie, was able to overcome some of his, you know, issues with schizophrenia, by sheer will, that I remember thinking to myself, Well, if that's possible, why couldn't I and so I remember actually having those conversations with my counselor at the time, and she was saying that, even though the movie did a somewhat decent job, that there was a lot of pushback on that part of the film. And that's what the thing I read too, was that that's not accurate at all. Like it, that's not how it works. And so, so that was one thing. But the other thing too, when we're talking about voices, it just kept making me think about, like, who is it that determines that whatever voice someone's listening to is, right or wrong, right? Like, do you know what I mean? Like, how is it that that's determined that okay, this, this person clearly has a mental health disease, they need to be hospitalized versus not? So because if you know, there are a lot of people who say that I, that they speak to God. Right, but they're not coming back. Right, but then also to if they say that they believe this, that God is speaking to them. Is that an example of schizophrenia or not?
 
Rachael Jackson  38:50
So, if I may jump in here. I'm one of the I'm going to give a quick anecdote. There's a person that I knew that was taking a psychological test. And part of the psychological test was on a on a form, like on an actual piece of paper, this was before before computers, so on an actual piece of paper. And this person was smart enough to fool the test, and gave all of the answers to indicate that this person had a psychotic schizophrenia. And then the people that were evaluating this test, looked at it and went, Well, it's true. You showed us this, your paper is pristine. There were no erasers there were no, it didn't get torn up. The paper itself was perfectly fine. So this person was able to trick the system. But the challenge is it's not just a checkbox. So when we're talking about people that have hallucinations visual or auditory? I see things I can imagine something or someone sitting right here in my office, I can see them in my mind's eye right here. Right, I can vision. Am I hallucinating that am I hearing that one of the things that I think is challenging that we forget, his people that have not had this break in reality is in conversation with a person that is either currently going through or has had or is off medication, or whatever the situation might be. The flow of conversation is not the way that we understand it. So when I read Isaiah, or I read some of these other people that go, Hmm, there's something amiss here, they're still understandable of people that I have interacted with which at this point, you know, given that I'm a small town clergy, you know, I were numbering a couple of dozen people that I've I've interacted with that have this particular diagnosis, you cannot follow their thoughts. It is a thought here a thought there it is all over the board. And they think that they are making perfect sense. And that's the break, where there's a major disconnect, not just in the delusions of grandeur, like I, one of the articles that will link in, in today's show notes, has this idea of John hood, I believe his last name was who's who's talking about this, and then he thinks that he's a shaman. And he then he thinks that he's going to that he's married to two African princesses, and he's going to go live with them. And it's one sentence to another sentence. And the listener has no ability to follow these trains of thought. And we forget that. So A Beautiful Mind doesn't necessarily example that the other movie the soloist about I think his name was Nathaniel Ayers, a white ers, that has a little bit better understanding of the challenges of from the the person who is who's has this illness, about them what they really go through. So I just want to add that, but yes, we hear God and if someone says, oh, you know, God talked to me, but God made perfect sense to the listener. And they're saying, here's what God told me to do. And how was, you know, have a great day. And I hope you have, and it's cohesive. I think these are clues. So
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  42:43
I just want to follow up on what Rachel said also, that just real quick that, like hallucinations, it that like having a hallucination is not an automatic indicator that like you're schizophrenic, that some of the other like conditions in which you might have hallucinations, or things like Parkinson's disease, which I didn't realize, like hallucinations were part of that until recently, brain tumors, you know, sometimes like Alzheimer's, like there are different, like epilepsy stuff, stuff, stuff happens in the brain. And so there's other other like, you know, we talked in the beginning about the constellation of symptoms. And so that's just like, something to keep in mind too.
 
Adam Pryor  43:26
But I was gonna say, it seems like that idea of an integrated epistemic frame is really important, right? So like, if the pieces are integrated into a singular or cohesive worldview, then you have one sort of set of things. It's this moment where they no longer can be held together, but they have to be attended to simultaneously that that's this, like this break that occurs. So I can talk to God, but if it but if it integrates with the way in which that I experienced the world, you know, totally good.
 
Zack Jackson  44:16
So then religion offers that sort of scaffolding for these sorts of experiences, then on break pretty regularly. I'm thinking of like Joan of Arc, if she were in a different sort of situation. Would her her visions her voices have said different things if she were in South India instead of in France? Or is God speaking directly to Joan of Arc? And we are trying to diagnose the work of the Holy Spirit and trying to medicate away modern day prophecy and the presence of a living and terrifying and powerful God.
 
Adam Pryor  44:59
Like that Academy at all.
 
Zack Jackson  45:01
I know you don't you don't love dichotomies at all.
 
Adam Pryor  45:07
It feels like if I asked this feels like a full trichotomy,
 
Zack Jackson  45:10
this is. So this is the the tension that goes on inside of my head. Because I was, in my developmental years, I was told that, that a lot of these anti psychotic medications are there to suppress actual experiences with the supernatural, because there are some people in the world who are more sensitive to the presence of the supernatural, both good and evil. And the anti psychotics then suppress those natural abilities. Think like the first half of Captain Marvel, right? That that kind of limiting factor because we can't handle the spiritual world and the modern, modern world, because we have to be able to explain it, and domesticate it, and understand it in order to, for it to exist. And so that I still have that in there. And and now I think I'm thinking more about like, positive mental health, and how would you like to live? And we're understanding more about how the brain works. And we don't quite understand how this works. And I want to just have space open for that as a possibility. But I don't quite know what to do with it.
 
Adam Pryor  46:30
Don't don't want that space open. Oh, but
 
Zack Jackson  46:33
Adam, so many of our religious traditions are based on Revelation are based on divine revelations, in stories and in histories that have been passed down to us. If those divine revelations happened today, we would label them as psychotic breaks. I mean, if you just started talking to a bush, don't you think that we would say you're having a psychotic break?
 
Adam Pryor  46:57
No, they'd say, I'm walking around campus, but
 
Ian Binns  46:59
like, fight moment
 
Adam Pryor  47:03
point out, right. It's not actually the scientific side of this that bothers me. Right? It's actually the theological side where I want to go that bad theology, it is a bad understanding of the supernatural.
 
Zack Jackson  47:16
Okay, hit me with it.
 
Ian Binns  47:18
So yeah, you got to unravel that one.
 
Adam Pryor  47:20
I would argue that all revelation is contextual, insofar as it is a mode of communication. So it is, of course, going to change depending on where and when and how that revelation occurs, because the supernatural isn't something separate from the natural, as if it is in other realm that has its own structure of things from which it originates. It is something layered over the natural, you know, what super natural actually means on top of the natural. So it's just a deficient theological understanding as far as I'm concerned.
 
Zack Jackson  48:00
So there's,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  48:02
it's I think that like Adams talking about a naturalist interpretation of Revelation, and Zach is talking about a supernatural right, but in
 
Adam Pryor  48:10
his supernatural, this version is bad. It's a bad understanding of supernatural.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  48:15
Oh, I mean, I, I'm with Adam here, but just to like, describe what the different.
 
Zack Jackson  48:22
So there's two different types of revelation that we often talk about natural revelation, special revelation, natural revelation being the things that you can deduce on your own from the laws of the universe, in your experience of being a human on this planet. special revelation are those times that God speaks to a person and tells them a specific thing, right? Like, go set my set my people free, like that's, that's a special revelation. Jesus coming and and saying, Hey, God told me this thing. And I want you to know it. That's special revelation. And I'm talking about the special revelation, not the natural. Yeah, I'm still
 
Adam Pryor  49:03
on board. But special education is still contextually located. Absolutely, period. So it's gonna change no matter where it is that it's spoken to. It's only if you treat special revelation as though the supernatural othering world from which it comes, is so overwhelming, that it completely mutes the expectation of the receptive hearer, in such a way that that context no longer matters, that it creates a break with the actual place in which it is received and I want to go, that's not communication anymore. That's not even revelation anymore. Right, insofar as revealing is supposed to be a form of communicating. So, to my mind, like there's no sort of like articulation from a theological tradition that can defend that notion of special revelation on its own terms.
 
Zack Jackson  49:59
So, Paul, On his donkey horse, I don't remember his going to go do some some good old fashioned persecuting, and gets a blinding light falls off his horse, or donkey or whatever it was, and sees a vision of Jesus standing before him that says,
 
Adam Pryor  50:16
Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? That's what Paul told us. Right? But actually, that's his failure that all he saw was a blinding light. There's no God, and he's not actually an apostle. So shouldn't we just throw stuff out? I mean,
 
Zack Jackson  50:32
should we ever go in there today, Adam? I'm just talking about Paul, in Paul's words, Paul, in Paul's words,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  50:39
great episode, I'm so glad that you had
 
Zack Jackson  50:41
a vision, he had a light, he saw light, he fell off his his quadruped head and hit his head. And then he couldn't see for a while until he was healed by this guy, this fella. And then he could see again, and he had this special revelation that feels a lot like he had a seizure. It fits a lot of the categories of that. And so when you explain it like that, like naturally, then you might just say, Wow, he had this break, he had this, this seizure, he maybe had some epileptic stroke. And he then attributed it to, I must have been doing something wrong when it happened, because God was punishing me. And then after the fact, put in his theology, and that's what's happening.
 
Adam Pryor  51:30
Kinder, you raising your hand?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  51:33
Yes. I just wanted to jump in and say, Zack, you you've said a couple times, like, what I think like referring to the, what Adam called the dichotomy here between like, is a revelation or psychotic break. I don't think that calling like, I don't think that rejecting revelation leads immediately to describing something like the examples that you're giving as psychotic breaks, I think, like another way of, of naming that without going straight to like, psychotic mental disorder, would be to say, like, I think the way I would describe that, coming from, like, a more like social science II type framework would, would be to say, there's selective attention. Like, whenever you experience different kinds of, like auditory visual stimuli, especially in cases where there's like a religious or spiritual experience going on, there's selective attention happening where people, you know, the selective attention you give to light to sound to images, it affects the way that you code and remember those experiences, which sometimes are things like, you know, prophetic visions, or, like, whatever it is, it's not. And I think that this is, like, I think this is getting at some of like, what your concern is, is that it like, and I understand the concern also being about like reductionism, I think of, of like, spiritual and religious experiences. But I think that selective attention to our just daily experiences is just something that everyone does. But especially in, you know, these cases where it's like, extraordinary circumstances or experiences of certain kinds of stimuli. Our like, we each have selective attention that is informed by cultural, you know, biases and cognitive biases, you know, the way that we understand kinship, family, friends, spirits, minds, all of those, you know, cultural pieces affect the way that we attend to our experiences and, and that's not necessarily good or bad. It's just a fact of like being human and so that that's like a third option I want to throw in there as like, maybe revelation, maybe psychotic break, maybe selective attention, and all of those things, all three of those options can have meaning. And so I think, yeah, like, meaning is not mutually exclusive to any of these. Yeah,
 
Zack Jackson  54:35
yeah. In the, in the fear of reductionism, I think is where the, my soul wants to push back. Because if I am going to accept that an angel appeared to marry and told her something very specific, but then immediately dismiss that an angel showed up to John Smith in my congregation because of all he says a lot of training things that I need to second either second guess how I'm treating him today? Or how I am Reading my own religious tradition? And I think I need to be honest with that. I can't have it both ways.
 
Adam Pryor  55:13
Yeah, this this is where I think reductionism becomes a boogeyman, though. Like, it doesn't have to do the things that in some theological and religious circles people say it will do.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  55:27
I mean, that's what I'm, I'm on board with that I like, reductionism is is the name of the Boogeyman. But the boogeyman is not really looking man
 
Adam Pryor  55:38
is just a nation sack.
 
Zack Jackson  55:40
Oh, man, you academics trying to trying to dismantle the argument instead of instead of coming straight at it?
 
Ian Binns  55:52
I'm just enjoying listening. So no, I really wish I had popcorn in this conversation.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  55:59
No, but like reductionism. It is, I think, the primary concern that people have when when we talk about this, like religion and science intersection, and people who don't, who aren't coming at these conversations out of an academic context, like, like, it makes sense to me why that's a concern. But I like Adam, I I don't think that that. I think that the fear that people have about reductionism, my experience of that was only like an initial fear. And then, like, over time, a realization for me that, like, I just, I still Yes, I've like changed over time, in some significant ways. But I still think that there's a lot of meaning in experiences. And just because we like understand the way that the brain works, or, you know, like, the way the body works, I don't think that that means we can't also have this like layer of experience in human life, that is profound. And not just meaningful, but also really profound and spiritual. And, you know, all the other ways that we talk about those kinds of experiences. It's just also true that it probably like the way that I interpret that situation, that experience is going to be different than, you know, the way someone else interprets it in their own framework. But I'm comfortable with that. And I realized that that just inherently will make some people uncomfortable, the difference in our like, understanding of, I guess, like the ontological nature of those experiences. So yeah, I don't know.
 
Zack Jackson  57:50
Yeah, I think there's a, I'm there with you. I'm there with you, intellectually, I either I don't disagree with anything, I'll say that. I think my where I'm coming from as a kind of practical place in which I am on the regular in contact with people who have visions, and who have experiences and who are asking me to help interpret the Word of God that has come to them in a vision or in a moment of rapture, or in this data, the other. And I think, Paul says that we should discern every spirit that comes. And, you know, it's not so easy to tell if this is the spirit of light or of darkness. But that every vision, whether it comes from while you're Reading some textbook, or having some ecstatic moment of otherness, and experience, that all of those visions need to be tested against what your community holds as true, and what is good for human flourishing. And so I'm, I feel the fear of people, when, when I suggest I'm having this experience, actually right now, not like in this moment, I'm not having an experience. I'm, I'm with somebody now, who is having some a lot of these kinds of experiences. And she is extremely frustrated at every other pastor that she's talked to, because they all say, Wow, it sounds like you're having some mental distress. Have you seen a therapist? Are you on your medication, instead of meeting her in that space in that common parlance of like, Yeah, okay. I might personally think that she is having a psychotic break, but I need to communicate with her in this realm of of the spirits, as both as a common language so that we can actually get somewhere productive and also as a way of kind of intellectual honesty that I don't entirely understand the workings of the supernatural and the natural and ease I don't understand how magnets work. So I don't I don't know, maybe you are experiencing something that I'm I don't know. So I try to stay intellectually, spiritually humble in those situations. I mean, I do understand intellectually how magnets work, but I don't know how they work. Kendra, do you have any final thoughts first, as we wrap up?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  1:00:26
Well, I just wanted to say in the sharing of intellectual honesty, I, I just I want to say that, like, my academic explanation of like, someone saying, God told them to do whatever it is, like I can talk about, like, selective attention and all of that. But if I'm talking about like, oh, energy healing, yeah, that I sure, um, oh, no selective attention. That's just that's just real. I like it. That's not to say that. Like, it's a different category of experience. Of course, like, you know, that. I don't even know that some people would feel comfortable, like comparing those two things. But just to say that it's not. People are complicated and have different kinds of experiences that they understand in different ways. And it's not that people who I don't I don't think it's fair to say that people who, who use academic jargon and and do maybe, like lean on, like reductionistic ways of thinking, which I actually I do not group, me and Adam into that category. Maybe y'all group us into that category. But I think that those people always have something that they don't talk about that's like personal and that is, it is like the bottom level foundation of like, their what, what is real for them? And it's just also like a SEP, like a separation issue of like, the academic and the personal when you're in like different settings. And I imagine that feels really different when you're like a clergy person. So yeah, people are weird, you know, people are weird. That's my final word.
 
Rachael Jackson  1:02:17
People are weird. People are weird. That's today's title. Oh, but Adam, Adam has
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  1:02:23
a big,
 
Zack Jackson  1:02:24
yeah, tagline
 
Adam Pryor  1:02:26
got a bit. I'm super excited about it, share it with,
 
Zack Jackson  1:02:29
you have a jingle.
 
Adam Pryor  1:02:30
We're working on that. So until then, I've decided to title my bit under the apple tree. In deference to the apocryphal phrase from one of the persons of my tradition, Martin Luther, who was said to have said, Even if I knew that tomorrow, the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. I mean, in all likelihood, he didn't actually say this, the earliest you can trace it back as about 1944. It's by a phrase from the Confessing Church, trying to ensure that it continued to do things in resistance to Nazi dictatorship. But you know, it feels better when it comes from the person who's ostensibly the founder of your tradition. And this gets interpreted a lot of ways. But generally, what you know, the sentiment was, was that even if things look like they're going to go terribly, if the world might end, you move one step at a time, so I thought, what better way to end podcasts than to rehearse the ways the world might end? So for today,
 
Ian Binns  1:03:32
tapping into your superpower.
 
Adam Pryor  1:03:38
I decided, well, it's one let's be clear, there are a whole lot of people writing about the ways this would occur. So I had a lot to choose from, but I decided I would go with supervolcanoes today. And the idea is that, you know, because we don't actually live on a nice, stable planet. In fact, we live on, like, rafts of rock floating over molten lava all of the time. At various points in the history of the planet. Those ruptures occur such that molten rock flows all over the surface of the planet, and four of the largest last 11 extinction events are all tied to when volcanoes erupt at the same time. Usually, it eliminates somewhere between 95 and 98% of species on the planet. Wow, on average, that happens every you know, 17 to 30,000 years, and it's been over 36,000 years since the last one. So we're overdue. overdue. So that should be occurring anytime now. And essentially what will happen is there will be so much carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere that it'll create a runaway greenhouse effect. And you can expect that all Plants will die, including plankton in the waters. And that spells real trouble for the rest of us. So, if you see volcanoes going off in chain sequences around the world, plant your apple tree,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  1:05:19
don't bother running.
 
Zack Jackson  1:05:21
Don't bother planting an apple tree
 
Adam Pryor  1:05:22
know, the apple tree anyway, it's gonna die. It doesn't matter. You keep doing the thing, plant the apple tree,
 
Zack Jackson  1:05:30
throw the starfish back in the water. That's right,
 
Adam Pryor  1:05:33
it won't make a difference.
 
Ian Binns  1:05:37
So just carry on the way you're, you're going back.
 
Zack Jackson  1:05:40
Who cares about recycling your wind? Where are the super volcanoes?
 
Adam Pryor  1:05:43
So this is the interesting thing. They're actually like chained together, right? You can find these various volcanoes at major junction points between tectonic plates. There are 19 tectonic tectonic plates that we sort of move around on. So they shift a little bit, right. But we're familiar with these areas like so like the ring of fire in the Pacific, Pacific chains of islands. And if you want like an example of like where this has occurred, and history, India, like the entire subcontinent of Asia is just one large lava flow in terms of how it was produced, so that's the scale and size of which we're talking. All of these volcanoes erupting simultaneously. But yes, Yellowstone is a potential one. Although people don't think that that's actually there's some debated scientific evidence over whether or not it would be overdue for erupting so date. Yeah,
 
Rachael Jackson  1:06:42
I don't like when Adam goes.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  1:06:47
The earth is weird. People are weird. Everything is
 
Zack Jackson  1:06:52
awesome. And at the end of the day, the horseshoe crab and the Nautilus will keep going.
 
Adam Pryor  1:06:58
I'm just saying like, I feel like Kendra and I can really lean into the jingle bit here. It's gonna be gonna be good.
 
Rachael Jackson  1:07:06
Yeah. Stay tuned for that.
 
Ian Binns  1:07:10
Yeah.

Episode 92
When is non-neurotypical behavior something to be 'cured', and when is it something to be celebrated? Is ASD a problem to be solved, or is society itself simply too inflexible to respond to that which does not easily conform? Have our religious institutions provided outlets for neurodiversity or are they a part of the problem? Let's talk about it! 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Adam Pryor 00:05
My name is Adam Pryor, I work at Bethany college. My favorite Halloween decoration is a giant, hairy spider that my wife got pretty early on when we were married. And it's motion censored so that when someone walks up to the door it goes. But oh, no, it's gonna do that. And it also shakes and it terrifies small children. Because it's like the size of the small child
 
Ian Binns 00:47
and is in the bay?
 
Adam Pryor 00:50
Yeah. Yeah, we we usually put it in a big web. And then it makes the whole web vibrate too. And it's made toddlers cry at our door, which I think is the goal of Halloween.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 01:07
So, Kendra Holt-Moore, assistant professor of religion at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas, and my favorite Halloween decoration is probably anything skeleton, but especially those skeletons to like sit in the rocking chairs on the front porch and just kind of like look out over the street watching people walk by they may or may not have motion sensors in them, but they still have life in them.
 
Ian Binns 01:38
Ian Binns social professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. My favorite Halloween decoration and we don't really decorate in our house, but I love walking through the neighborhood and just just seeing which house goes the most crazy, right? And how impressive it is almost like you know from home improvement that show when they would always go bonkers. It's like the TV shows always do the best Halloween things I love to see of houses come up with something like that. So it just varies every year on what my favorite would be. Which is not really answering the question. But as I said, I'm a little tired today, Punchy.
 
Adam Pryor 02:22
And I couldn't break the rule of
 
Ian Binns 02:25
Alright, right, Adam? So. Okay, so to segue into,
 
Adam Pryor 02:30
there's no, there's no good segue. So as we've been like, as we've been talking about religion, mental health and issues of mental wellness. And, in particular, sort of focusing on different aspects of that the area that I was most interested in, when we started talking about taking this up were areas of mental health, mental wellness, where we, we really look at ways in which the world gets sees seen differently. And so the one that comes to mind for me, always sort of right out of the gate is thinking about the autism Asperger's spectrum. And a big part of that was in the summers, my wife wisely requires me to read some things that are not theology, especially when I was doing my PhD because I was a little mana maniacal. And so occasionally, she would go to the library and just bring something back and be like, just read this and stop for a while.
 
Ian Binns 03:45
And she still does that, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Because
 
Adam Pryor 03:51
there's yeah, there's a there's a rule of how many workbooks I am allowed to take on vacation. Good. Um,
 
Ian Binns 04:00
yeah, Kendra, listen. Yeah, it
 
Adam Pryor 04:03
continues to get smaller and more irritating. But that's a difference. So So anyway, this this, this one year we were we were there. And she was like, You should read this book. I just finished it looks really, really good. And it was The Curious Incident of the Dog and the nighttime by Mark Haddon, which has now become a play as well, but I kind of encountered encountered it as the book. And the idea is that it's it's a mystery novel about the death of a dog, unsurprisingly. But the the central narrator is Christopher, who is a 15 year old boy. And Christopher, you learn as the book goes on, is sort of dealing with a nonspecific version of Asperger's. There's autism spectrum. And the author is just deeply clever about the ways of revealing these different experiences of the world that he has. Right. So the like, I remember sitting and being both, like irritated and sort of in awe of when the chapters suddenly skipped. So there was 123. And then it went to five, and there was no four. And I was like, bamboozled. And I kept flipping through the book and trying to figure out what's going on. And all of the chapters are prime numbers. Right. So there's the little, little details, right, that are intentionally put into the book to sort of create this, this sort of effect. What struck me about this as that may be a little different than some of the other disorders we've spoken about, but in some ways that are resonant as well. Autism Asperger's spectrum has a, I would argue, a generally more positive place in public discourse. Then some other mental health issues that we've that we've discussed. But also, there's this sort of interesting overlap with how it is that we raise up or minimize the voices of folks who have these experiences. Part of what struck me the very first time I was Reading this book, as being so important was that it did two things that I think are really impactful and important for thinking about in terms of religion, and mental health. One was that it humanized. The experience of living with Asperger's autism, in a way that as you were Reading the book, the book wasn't about someone with Asperger's, it was about Christopher Wright. And I thought that was really important and effective to remember, right. The second piece that I thought was really, really, really interesting out of that, was that it I found it at least sort of strangely affecting my teaching. And the ways in which I thought about engaging other students in the classroom. And this is the part that I don't, you know, that totally worked out. But one of the pieces that I thought was really interesting, and that is really important for me, as I started thinking about religion and mental health is that we, we make intentional choices about how, how to lift up, or how to cast to the side, non normative experiences. And religion, science, and I would argue, higher education, have a lot of roles in the ways we choose to or don't choose to do that. And so I found this book really meaningful, amusing to me, because it forced me to look at the ways in which I was treating non neurotypical students in ways that treated them as a disease vector in the classroom, not a human being. So, what's attracted me to sort of like thinking about autism, why I wanted to sort of pick this particular topic is that I think there have been so many really interesting accountings of trying to help people understand what experiencing the world, from this perspective is, like, in a way, this may be a little different than other mental health pieces, right? So like, yeah, I read The Curious Incident of the Dog of the night, but there are things like the good doctor, there have been blogs from Autism Speaks, that really, really work on helping people understand the variety of ways that this this experience occurs. And also, which I think is interesting, whether or not it should be cured. And what that even means is really really difficult when you talk about this topic. So I'm a little sad that that can rage on here cuz I wanted to like really poke at like, boy, but that's different in a religious community setting than it is where I am. But I'm curious. Just to sort of like start with like, what has been your experiences with Working with folks who would, quote unquote, be non neurotypical?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 10:09
Yeah, I could say, just, you know, what I was thinking of when you were talking are not necessarily the people that I know personally who were not neurotypical, but like people I know, people I know who I'm close to who are close to people with autism. And listening to the way that they have spoken about autism, like in my presence over the last, I don't know, five or so years, and how that has just been really interesting and eye opening. For me, and some of the ways that you're talking about Adam, of just like, you know, asking these bigger questions about what autistic people, like how autistic people see the world and how that, like there are aspects of that, like way of being in the world that it doesn't quite make sense for us to, like, pathologize, in the ways that we have, and, and so, you know, I don't, I don't know that I am aware of anyone that I'm close to who has autism. But yeah, it's just, it has been really enlightening, I guess, to hear people talk about the ways in which autistic people have like, sometimes a very hyper logical way of seeing the world and how that could, you know, be like, useful in different like problem solving settings that is just like a different kind of, like mental proclivity that like not everyone has even, even if you're just talking about like neurotypical people. And so, you know, they're, like, the neuro diversity of people. There are there, there are other like forms of neurodiversity that we just have decided, she's like, not categorize for whatever reason. And so, autism is something that we've like noticed as a pattern and have categorized it as autism. But if you think about what it means to be neurotypical, and this, like much broader sense, and like what neurodiversity is, in this broader sense, then it just makes sense. Like, it's just intuitive to, to think that like, Okay, we talked about people being like, right brained or left brained, and it would be probably odd for a lot of us to be like, Oh, the right brained people are, you know, they have a disease or something. And we, you know, it's like not, not to diminish the, like, difficult aspects of someone living with autism, because there's, like, you know, definitely, it's just true that, like, the system's not really built to accommodate them. And so that leads to a lot of problems for them, and in the classroom, and at work and in relationships. And so there's definitely, like, that's definitely there. But it's just interesting to think about how, like, maybe, maybe we could have systems in education and at work that actually did accommodate neurodiversity. You know, autism being an example of that. And, you know, maybe we could have systems that accommodate these people, and how would that how would that make the world different? How would that how would that change, like our social structures if we were including people who see the world really differently as people that were like in charge or had power in various ways to, to make us who we are? And and so that, I just think is like an endlessly fascinating question, especially listening to people. You know, try to like answer that question when they are living in like very close proximity to people who are very neurotic, neuro diverse and in different ways.
 
Adam Pryor 14:36
No, so, what I was like what I was thinking about, Kendra, it's, it's that question of pathologizing. That I think is really, really interesting, right? And how we choose to how we choose to pathologize and what the consequence of pathologizing various mental health orders or disorders is is I think, really, really interesting. And, at least so far as we've been talking about this, right, when we've talked about depression, when we talked about anxiety, the way in which those get pathologized feels a little different than something like autism Asperger's spectrum.
 
Ian Binns 15:18
Can you unpack that? What makes it feel different?
 
Adam Pryor 15:22
So well, and that's like part of what I can't, I can't quite put my finger on it. Because but he like each week, we've been talking about it, I'm going like this is there. There's something here that's not quite the same, right? So like, there's an element with like, Ian, when both you and Zack have talked about anxiety and depression, right? There's a social stigma that this is inherently unacceptable, right? And there's sort of this element of like, I'll put it crassly like, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you'll be fine. Get over it, get over it, right. Whereas with like autism, Asperger's spectrum disorder, there's a little bit less of the like, get over it. Element. Right. But also, right, there's this like, very clear element that like, people would be comfortable with me talking about someone with Asperger autism spectrum as non neurotypical. And I don't know if somebody would be comfortable with me saying like, Oh, you suffer from depression, you're not neurotypical. Right? Like, there's even this like disjuncture, in the language of how it gets pathologized. That I think is really is really fascinating. And makes me wonder, are the the ways that we talk about those, the ways that we talked about the impact of religion and science on that intersection with these mental health issues? Does that just look really different? In terms of how to how to move forward?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 16:59
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. And I like do you think out on that, because I also have that sense of, like, there's something different here. But as you're asking the question, I'm wondering, like, is it in part wrapped up with the fact that things like depression and anxiety, they're more centralized in like, the emotional aspect of a person's being, whereas something like autism or, you know, various other conditions are more, I'm not sure how to say it, but like, mental is not quite the right word. But like, they're, they're more integrated into, like, every aspect of a person's being. And it's not necessarily just about like, an emotional like, disorder, disordered experience. But it's like the way that you think the way that you feel the way that you take social cues the way that you you know, like, other behaviors that are not necessarily emotional, you know, at their core, but things like depression and anxiety, I see those as much more emotional in nature. And and I think this like, piece of how, like religious, I mean, not even just like religious people and traditions would maybe talk about them is that it maybe feels more acceptable to be like, Oh, someone with depression and anxiety like this is, this is not actually like a part of who you are, we, we, you know, can like help you, we can pray for you, we can, you know, get you counseling, do all these things to help restore you to like your person, whereas, I think not that people wouldn't also say that about other things like autism or other other conditions, but I think the approach in general would, would feel a little different. It's like, oh, this is who you are. So let's just accept you and love you and try to find a way to integrate you into our community in a way that is like loving and compassionate is like the kind of language difference that I would anticipate.
 
Ian Binns 19:23
Well, I also wonder to the idea that when we think about anxiety and depression, it at least the the thought is from from some people is that like, so for me, where I want to talk about me, I have not had to deal with anxiety my entire life. It has not always been part of my life. Right? I still also deal with depression and that has not been part of my my entire existence. Whereas someone who either his, you know, either has Asperger's or autism that, you know, the and you know, to my special friends out there may want to beat me up later, I'm sorry for lack of a better understanding of the language to use and everything but you know, that it's almost like, well, it's something you're born with, or that's just part of who you are from the very beginning or, or something along those lines. Right. And so that there's a distinction there that people may view it as I'm not saying that's accurate. But I'm just wondering if that's part of the thing of as you as we were talking about, you know, toughen up when it comes to anxiety or depression is the mentality that some have, whereas with Asperger's, or autism or something like that, it's, you don't approach it that way. Right? Because it's part of your identity of who you are.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 20:51
Yeah, that was those basically what I was saying it, but I also want to add that, like, I, I think that there, it would be, this is something I think that Zach, especially would have something to say. But I think people who have like, severe chronic depression, and have like, had it since their early life would maybe resist the idea that like that's not inherently like part of who they are. That's, that's not the way that I tend to think about it or have, like, tended to talk about it. But I wonder if that's the case for someone like that, and with anxiety too, but I think like what I've tended to experience and notice in most of the people that I know, who deal with those things is that even in chronic cases, they're like, their highs and lows. And, you know, it's, it's yeah, it's just usually spoken about in these different ways.
 
Ian Binns 22:02
Yeah. And just as a caveat, or a disclaimer, to anyone listening, please understand that, you know, I personally have been on some form of an antidepressant most of my life. So I do not, you know, my perspective minute ago is not something I necessarily hold to. I just wanted to say that that, you know, that is not how I view, anxiety or depression, you know, and we have had conversations before about when it comes to like, antidepressant medication and stuff like that, is that when I'm on that, does that is that the real me? Right, we've had those types of conversations in the past and how I am adamant that yes, that is the real me. Because that's the me that I want to be with. Right? So anyway,
 
Adam Pryor 22:48
I think there's this like, question of identity that is wrapped up in all of the versions of like, how we've talked about the intersection of religion and science with mental health that I think is really important and interesting. And so like, you know, coming back to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night, right? Like, despite my wife's best efforts, immediately after that, like I was deeply, deeply curious about, like disability studies and disability theology. And like, I just spent a lot of time immediately diving into this. So doesn't work. But
 
Ian Binns 23:26
then what was the name of the book? Again,
 
Adam Pryor 23:27
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime.
 
Ian Binns 23:31
Okay, thanks.
 
Adam Pryor 23:33
So, in what strikes me about that, and, and to me, the resources that religious traditions have been producing in disability theology over the past 25, or 30 years in particular, are so important, are just so important for it, for helping folks start to tease out how it is that we, we talk about this intersection of identity, and disability and pathology in ways that can be really effective, but also really challenging, right? Like, to my mind, the fact that we're having this conversation, and it's really hard to figure out like, Well, where do I categorize this? Like, you know, as human beings, we like nice, neat boxes that we can put these things into, right. And I think one of the really important things that disability studies has done and disability theology in particular has done has said, hey, look, those narratives that we've had in our traditions about healing and wellness, and in provement, and salvation, even can have really detrimental effects on the way that we think about and pathologize those who don't fit into the norm both in terms of physical health, but also mental health. in ways that can be either really helpful or really destructive. So, like, early on, Kendra, you mentioned this, like, it made me think of like doing like a thought experiment, right? Like, what? What would it start to look like if your social structures around you were designed for and put in place to facilitate engagement with folks who are non neurotypical? Right. Like, and I guess this is sort of like a, this is both, uh, something I think about a lot. Now that I do, I don't know, administrative II things. But also, like, I think a lot about in terms of like religious communities, right. Like, what are the things that we do that accidentally exclude people? Even though that's not what we mean to do? Oh, I
 
Ian Binns 25:54
think that happens all the time. Yeah, I mean, I think so. The reflective process is what makes it challenging, because you have to really be willing to look at yourself to see how do you do that? Which I think takes a level of vulnerability. Because you're, at least to yourself admitting that, oh, I put people in boxes, by others, I other people, right.
 
Adam Pryor 26:25
And, um, I guess there's like, part of me, that starts to wonder then, like, what's the role of religious communities in facilitating changes in that regard? Like, what are the steps that we would want? None of us are, you know, clergy, but I look at it sort of to go, you know, maybe into our own context to like, what are the things that we would look at around us and go like, that would really need to change?
 
Ian Binns 26:53
Well, so. So for me, and this will actually tie into the book I want to talk about, at the end of the show, is, over the past year, and especially throughout the pandemic, you know, I've really struggled with how people, you know, aspects of society have approached the pandemic, with lack of empathy for others. Right, and like, what I perceive as a lack of caring, and it has led, especially me with it coinciding with such a toxic political timeframe in our country, for me to have very judgmental views of others, not necessarily other people that I disagree with politically, like someone who identifies as Republican versus Democrat, that's, that's not it, it's more of the extremes. Right. And so, I have found that I'm in a place where I struggle with that a lot. And so I've purposely been selecting different books and different resources to read as a way to get back to the point where, while I may disagree completely with someone and what it is they believe and stand for that I can still see them as a person. Right, not less than not inherently evil, or something like that, that I you know, but I'm aware of that, as I said, you have to be aware of those things happening.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:47
Yeah, I mean, I guess, when I think about like a religious context, again, not a clergy person, but it you know, if we're talking about, like autistic people in particular, I did attend a church. This was when I was in undergrad at church. And there was, there was a young man who started coming really regularly to the college ministry stuff. Who was on the autism spectrum. And I think that, you know, kind of reflecting on that experience, and just what it felt like on a Sunday morning to, you know, to speak with him and to like, watch them interact with other people. I think that like using the autism spectrum, as an example, the greeting time in the morning, in like religious spaces, and again, you could apply this to other organizations in which there's like this kind of loose social time of interaction where people are expected to greet each other or, you know, in like a conference context to like network with each other? Like, what is that? What does that look like? And how do you be accommodating or like welcoming to someone who might like, say something unexpected too. And if you're like, expecting a neurotypical person to be in those interactions, you might respond differently or be like, feel something like off putting or, you know, I don't know, feel awkward in a way that, like, shuts down this possibility for relationship. And I, I think I noticed, in general, like years ago, attending this church, that people, I think, for the most part really leaned into it, it was like, Oh, good morning, let's talk about the 20 pages of like, song lyrics that you wrote last night, and, like, let's like, do a deep dive. And that was just like this kind of particular interaction that you would have with this person. And, you know, maybe the next person you spoke to is just a brief handshake and like, a good morning. But it's just, I don't even know, like, how to speak about that in terms of like a system change. But it's just, I think, kind of a letting go of like expectations of what someone should, like offer you or like, bring to you. And I don't think that's always very easy to do. And it's also like, kind of exhausting to do that, if you are in a space where you're talking to, like, hundreds of people. So, you know, like, it's, I think it's a hard question to figure out what that would mean, to make a shift or like a transformation on a structural level. So I don't know, like, that's what I think of, when I'm thinking of like, the religious context, just like that particular example. But then I think in the academic context, like in my teaching, which, you know, there's like, a lot of things about being like a, in my first year as a professor that I, like, I'm learning a lot about, like my own pedagogy, and what's working and not working. And one of the things that I always feel very sensitive to, because of my own experience, as an undergrad and graduate student, are just people who are like, a little bit either, like a little bit are definitely diagnosed, or somewhere in between, really struggle with like, a DD ADHD type symptoms. And I think, like, that's, that's, it just changes the way like, you have students who are going to, like, read every single word of the page, and always do the Reading, like three weeks early, and, like, come to class and like, know exactly what they want to say. And then there are people who are just like, perpetual, like strategic skimmers, and our, you know, like, they have questions, but they kind of come in the moment, and it's not, it's kind of hard to, like, prepare how to, like engage in the classroom. And then, you know, they're like students who are just like, disengaged, they don't care. There's like, you know, a lot of things going on, or maybe they're just lazy. Like, there's a, there's a bunch of different student experiences. But I, I feel that, like, I have always sort of struggled with the, like, I don't have a diagnosis of ADHD, but I have struggled enough with like symptoms of that, that I have been tested, and have like, tried different, like medication and stuff for it. It's also the case that like, women are, in general, like less likely to have a diagnosis for that kind of thing. But it's been an inflamed part of my experience as a student during my PhD work, especially. And so I just feel like when I'm in the classroom, I try to figure out a way to, like, reward the students who are doing all the things like clearly excellent students, and then reward the students who are really trying, but they just like, there's just something about the process of like being a student, that's really difficult, but they're putting in the effort and they're showing up and they're trying to participate and so to like, do things in class that are engaging and that allow you to enter into the conversation, even if you didn't read and like remember every single person's name and every date and like, you know, all the like super specific details that some students that feels natural to them. And, and so I don't know, like I feel like that's the example that comes to mind because it's like in this, I think conversation of like neurodiversity, but you know, a different kind than what we've been talking about, but just figuring out how to like, have something for everyone to the extent that they feel that they belong either in the conversation, or in the religious community, or whatever it is. And that's really not easy to do. But I think it's worth it. If the goal is community, if the goal is inclusion, if those are really central goals to your organization, or religious tradition or whatever, then you have to do those things. And you have to figure out, I think, like how to reasonably pursue those goals. Always. So yeah, I don't know, those are, those are things that come to mind.
 
Adam Pryor 36:07
Yeah, I mean, I, to me, it's interesting that the, like, the the two things that that stand out to me, or like the conversation can kind of broaden or narrow, right, because there are certain elements that I think overlap. Anytime you're trying to figure out how to discuss engaging neurodiversity, right, even if it's different types of neurodiversity, but also, right, there's this element of being really aware that the that the specific dimensions of that neurodiversity matter for what any, like whatever practical steps you would take. Lest I don't answer my own question. Yeah.
 
Ian Binns 36:54
I mean, you've ever done that? No,
 
Adam Pryor 36:57
it's not like I it's not like I make a habit of doing that. So I, the the piece that has come to mind for me, the more that I've thought about this, and I think just by sheer happenstance, I have ended up almost every semester that I have been teaching, like on a regular basis, I have had a small, not a majority, by any stretch of the imagination, but a small cadre of students who are not neurotypical. In fact, this may be the, like, the first semester where I don't. And it felt kind of weird. But I think one of the things that I've noticed about myself in those contexts is trying to ask over and over what are the expectations that I have of this situation, that privileged people like me? That if you are just a little bit more like me, you do better here? And how is it that I, what then is my responsibility to try and create a situation where I minimize that as much as possible? So the two instances that have come to mind for me are like, and I noticed, I just try really hard not to do any more. But in religious communities where I've been a participant, and I know there are folks, in this case, generally around Asperger's, Autism Spectrum Disorder, that are non neurotypical. The question that keeps coming up for me is, why do we preach every week? That seems really silly. And not a great way of interacting with those folks as part of the community. And I don't know, at least for me, having a week off from somebody giving a sermon feels like a good idea. Because that that's not my jam. And in a similar way, right, like when I think about, like, my time in the classroom, I think about in real instances, right? Like, where are the places that my my expectations about? Well, you would just do a little bit better if you could read the text more like me, or if you could sit still long enough, Ian, to actually just engage the way that I want you to engage. Right? Like I I find myself doing that. And like, for me, the step that comes out of this is to say like how do I how do I prevent myself from asshole mansplaining?
 
Ian Binns 39:58
Yeah, before We can do that. Yeah, I just wanna say I don't mind. I still love you, buddy. It's okay even though you call me out, you know, and everyone can hear it. It's okay.
 
Adam Pryor 40:16
Yeah, it's good. People don't see that he just wanders around while we're doing this.
 
Ian Binns 40:21
Yeah. I'm still listening, though. But if I get hungry, I got a.
 
Adam Pryor 40:25
Just I know. Yeah, I think I think wireless headphones were designed just for you.
 
Ian Binns 40:32
This is probably true. Yeah. If the wired ones I had word noise canceling, I think I would probably pay attention a whole lot better to life. Right. So, yeah, anyway.
 
Adam Pryor 40:46
No, but so these are the things that like I think about when I when I when I think about this piece, and it in terms of the religion and science conversation, I think the question that comes to mind are like, one, how do religious traditions decide whether or not they're responsible to folks in their communities? Who are not neurotypical? Like? What does it really mean to take responsibility for that? So that's one side. And then the other is, which we didn't talk a lot about today. But that's okay. Because there are always ways to talk about this, like, how much does science give us an out? I kind of wonder if science is giving us a Get Out of Jail Free card, right? Insofar as it lets us pathologize things. Right, like, I can only call out even if I pathologize the behavior that he's doing in a certain way, which science lets me do a lot better than I could previously. And in like that tension is something that like, as we talk about, like other elements of mental health, and religion and science, like I'm really interested in, in trying to tease that out. In large part, because I don't think it's really hard to do. And it's not something that's like intuitive to us, like, I can't rely on my common sense to find a way out of that. And also, like, they're not my stories, I am like a remarkably weirdly neurotypical, white cisgendered reader of tax who the system was designed for, like, if anybody should be able to be successful on it, it would be, you know, the guy given all of the privileges that the system was designed to foster and develop. So how it is and what then My responsibility is, as I hear narratives that don't fit that neurotypical neurotypical schema is, is, I think, really, really important. Because it can't, it can't just be the job of folks who aren't neurotypical to advocate for themselves.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 43:12
Right. And that question is such a, you know, like, to what extent is science give us an out? It's, it's just so hard because that that feels like a question that is like, this universal question. When in fact, like, there's so much about the context in which you're in, that I think changes the way that you might pathologize this behavior in one setting, but in another, maybe not so much. And that, you know, like, I think that's why there's, there's something really valuable about you know, the, the like, quizzes, I mean, some of them are not that good, but like quizzes or just like databases that try to connect people to different vocational goals based on personality characteristics is one thing but you know, like tendencies towards certain behaviors. And I don't know like I sort of see that as this like soft way of trying to address this issue of like where you fit like if you're someone who is high energy and easily distracted and you like love to talk to people. Maybe you shouldn't be like doing super mundane tasks and a dark office in the corner never having to speak to a human for like 16 hours of your you know, day. Like things like that that are really simple. And I think kind of taken for granted sometimes is this like, fun little self reflective task, but I actually think there's like maybe Maybe it's things like that, that are just resources available for people and to get people to self reflect in a more serious way about what your own strengths and weaknesses are and to not pathologize something that is a weakness and to not like, overvalue something that is like labeled a strength. But just to understand that, like, these are your strengths and weaknesses in this role. And to just I don't know, like, change the way that we value different behaviors and skills. Because there are so many different ways to apply those behaviors and skills in different like vocational organizational, like family, social contexts. And so I think, to some extent, like that will never be this simple question, it will entirely depend on how much time we're willing to invest in helping people develop self reflective skills to put themselves or like, you know, attempt to put themselves in situations that benefit their own, like proclivities, intellectually, and emotionally and physically and all of those, all of those things. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's a lot of work and people like that, it's, it's so easy to not want to do that work, because you have to kind of give attention to like, every person, and you can't rely on these generalizations. But like, it's just the nature of being human. And using language, we do generalize, we do other people, because it's convenient. And that sometimes is like, easy, unnecessary to do in certain situations. So it's like this constant tension of, you know, meeting the needs of the particular versus the, you know, General.
 
Ian Binns 46:57
Well, that can be exhausting. Right? to I mean, it's, it takes a lot of effort, but then can be tiring, when you're trying to put forth that effort. For others, right, especially if you if you go all in, and you're always trying to be that way. Yeah, it can be tiring, and some people, you know, and there are times where I've just been, you fall back on the generalizations of type of different people just because it's easier. But then you realize, too, that if they're if it's a particular topic of something that you're focusing on as a way to instill some sort of change in people's behaviors, including your own, then you realize you need to take that step back momentarily, but then get get back to, to the work to the hard work. So you know, so it goes away from that whole notion of other people who are different?
 
Adam Pryor 47:54
Well, we should probably move on to the ending part of the episode. Do that, edit that into? No, I don't want to say anything. Why would I want to say something, I don't want to make it easy for him. I want him I want him to really struggle with how it is that he's gonna try and wrap that up. Not here to defend himself. I'm not gonna give him anything easy. By which by which to do that. In good fashion, you probably should just leave this as my closing remarks so that everybody knows that it was my fault I've done as much cheery, happy as I could do today. And so I need some suffering to come out of this episode and that are really
 
Ian Binns 48:50
proud. Well, yes, I am proud of you, buddy. Are you gonna go throw up after this?
 
Adam Pryor 48:54
Probably. It's probably going to be like rainbows and sparkles.
 
Ian Binns 49:03
That's how you got to end it and back back and be part of the title, rainbows. So okay, so for my little tidbit, at the end, my little thing I want to focus on, and I'll try it once or twice just to see how it works is I want to do a kind of talk about and reflect on a book that I either am currently Reading or have recently finished Reading. And yeah, so the book that I chose today actually, is called hold it up for the two of you but you belong. A call for connection by seven is a lossy, she is her description down here on the bottom. I love this nerdy black immigrant, Tomboy Buddhist weirdo. She describes herself but I learned of seven philosophy from 10% happier she's one of she's actually the most popular coach on 10% happier. And I've one of the many meditations in the beginning that I really liked that she did. But it was actually one of her, she's very much in to social justice work, and has a fascinating background. And one of the things that I, one of the meditations I do at 10%, happier that made me shift away from other meditation resources was one that she did about racism. And it was a very, a 20 minute guided meditation, that was a very deep dive into racism, and and trying to, you had to be willing to deal with your own level of vulnerability. Because it was not a deep dive necessarily into societal racism, or where it comes from, but looking within and reflecting on yourself. And so it was raw. And it was incredible, because I just loved how she approached it. And then I learned of the book that she was working on this book book called you belong. And instead of kind of start taking with different notes last night, that I had written throughout the book, but I just want to kind of give the general idea of what her whole argument is. And what she's trying to point out, is that she talks about in here, when she says you belong, is recognizing what the whole point of belongingness. And so she says early on belongingness truth, and it is the fundamental nature of reality right here now, whether we feel it or not. And so what she's trying to argue throughout this entire texts, is that belonging is everywhere, it is natural, that happens, everything is connected. And she very nicely kind of throughout, the entire text does a very good job of talking about how more things like ancient ways of knowing ancient wisdom. That, you know, the more scientifically minded individuals would say, is not real solely based on either, you know, something from different religious perspectives, or indigenous perspectives, and how modern science is starting to show, you know, the notion of connection, that everything is connected. And we've known that for a while now based on science, but that how that's been an argument or a part of the belief that people would call it based system within different as I said, you know, religious traditions or cultural traditions that have been going on for centuries, if not millennia, about this connection to everything. And that now science has shown it that that makes that real, right. And so how we kind of limit ourselves with our ways of knowing. And so throughout this, one of the things I really love about it, that she kind of really helps us understand. And this is one of the quotes, I love that she talks about. That she says. So I'll just read this, when you don't like the joke, you belong. When you're the only one of your race, disability or sexuality, you belong. When you're terrified to speak in public you belong, when you feel hurt, or when you hurt, have hurt someone else you belong. When you're down to your last dollars, and the rent is due you belong. When you feel overwhelmed by the horrors of human beings you belong. When you have a debilitating illness, you belong. When everyone else is getting married, you belong. When you don't know what you're doing with your life, you belong. When the world feels like it's falling apart, you belong, when you feel like you don't belong, you belong. And then she helps us kind of delve through helping us see how it is we belong. And so I just wanted to point out a couple other things and then I'll stop rambling, but she nicely sets sets us up sets up the reader as pointing out, you know, the importance of grounding yourself, especially when it comes to like things like meditation, knowing yourself loving yourself. So this is stuff that Adam you would totally love. Right? And there's a whole chapter about self love.
 
Adam Pryor 54:15
I can go I feel I can feel ready to engage this text.
 
Ian Binns 54:20
You should because it's something that will contrary Yes, this is Oh, I'm going to tell Rachel This is the book that she should recommend to you for the summer. Oh
 
Adam Pryor 54:29
my god, you
 
Ian Binns 54:31
Yes, I'm gonna I'm gonna fact I'll even buy it. Right. I'll buy it and connect yourself as another one. And then finally learning to be yourself. And so some of the things that really helped me along through this and it took me a very long time to read it because I just kept getting really interested in everything that was she was talking about is that she really does a nice job of helping us see the ways that we are connected. And as I said, one of the things that I'm starting Dealing with personally, is two people that I who, so individuals who identify, maybe they don't claim themselves as white supremacists, but their arguments indicate that they more long, you know, Lie with that mindset of white supremacy, that they are still a person, right, we may disagree completely on that perspective of things, but that they still do matter, they still are a person, we are still connected in some way. And learning that, that doesn't mean I have to agree with them, it just is recognizing that they are still a human, you know, and that they still do matter in some way. There's a great time where she talks about putting yourself in an ad in this kind of talks about what you said, if you do not have, if only you could do things the way I do things, you know, then this right, and then he joked about with me walking around and moving all the time. And seeing things and how that's something that I do a lot too. But what she did, she didn't talk about her own personal story without of learning on this journey of hers that she went through learning that we are, we are all connected in some way. And we all belong, is that she there was during the time of George W. Bush presidency, and how she completely disagreed with everything that he stood for. But that she started thinking, and she would always put herself in the I don't understand how you could come to that conclusion on these things. That doesn't make any sense, right. And we always do that. And I would argue I do that a lot now, especially with with the last presidency, and then you know, the situation on January 6, and all those things of how do you not see these things like it doesn't make any sense to me. That one thing it's important for us to understand is that we did not grow up in that person's life, that even if you know, we like to say that I like to think that if I were in that mindset that I wouldn't do those things. But that's not truly possible, because we don't have that person's life experiences. And so part of her process was recognizing that, while she may have disagreed completely, with what Georgia decisions made by George Bush, that they were still connected, and that she'll never truly be in that in his shoes, because she was not raised the same way. Right. And so trying to better herself and better understand where people come from. And so the last thing I know, I'm all over the place, and I apologize as usual. But one of the things I really like about this, because she kind of goes through, as I said, this whole notion of learning to look past or to recognize the role of your inner critic, and what the inner critic does for you, but not letting the inner critic takeover, the comparing mind of comparing ourselves to different aspects of society. And the dangers with that is that she says near the end, if you want a different world, we must imagine it, to imagine it, we must become intimate with our deepest wishes, we cannot imagine without a desire for creation, without longing for something different. We cannot connect our deepest desire without simply being we cannot long if we cannot, if we can't feel what it is we long for. And then she goes into meditation, I'm not gonna make you guys do that. But anyway, but what it did for me was is and it's still a work in progress is still trying to recognize that the role my inner critic place, as I talked about, in the last episode, the role that my anxiety plays. And and recognize instead of, because when I start going down that spiral with my anxiety, you know, one of the first things I'll happen is I'll fight the feeling of anxiety. And so then I'm now fighting two things. And so it's trying to remind myself that, while I don't like that feeling, I get during a very anxious moment that there is a reason it's happening. And so to, you know, treat it as, as I said, Last on our persona of saying, I know you're there, you're there to take care of me, but I'm in charge, right. So welcome to the party, but I'm in charge. And so that's that was really nice for me in this book. And so something I definitely recommend, again, it's called you belong by seven is a lossy. And it's just a beautiful book about learning about who you are and where you come from. So
 
Adam Pryor 59:26
that's all it was. It was so nice. I felt like it would go very well
 
Ian Binns 59:31
with one that Adam was leading to end with that. And as I said, Rachel prior, I will shout out to you that I will make sure that I get a copy of this book to you sometime before next summer. So that you can have it ready to go when you recommend a new book for Adam. And then he can give us his his view of it
 
Adam Pryor 59:54
might be a fun point counterpoint version of what to do at the end of episodes. You could read a book and I could read one and We'll see what we both find.
 
Ian Binns 1:00:01
Yeah. And then I'll have seven is the lossy they're ready to roll and she can come in. Just take us
 
Adam Pryor 1:00:10
straight through
 
1:00:11
yeah