Welcome back to vox sua non this is part three of a four part series where i'm talking about my recovery from hearing voices
If you have not yet seen parts one and two I highly recommend you watch those
It'll give you some chronological context for some of the things i'll be talking about in this video. I
Had talked in part two about a six month period after my recovery where I was not sure I wanted to live or die
now I will say something about those six months
they were not without some very useful yields insofar as insight into life and what it means to be a human being I
Don't think that it's healthy to be obsessed about death and to be fair I was a bit obsessed at that time
But I don't think there's anything inherently wrong or even morbid
about
Contemplating on meditating upon the manner in which you would like to die
Death is after all a natural part of life. It's as natural to life as eating or sleeping and
Thinking upon the manner in which you would like to die is in many ways the best instruction for how to live
It's almost as if the future you who is dying who is on your deathbed
Is talking to you in the here and now in the present moment
telling you that if you want to die in this manner, then this is how you must live from now until then and
For me. I know how I want to go out. I
Want to die gracefully
so that when I'm on my deathbed, I know the emotional state that I want to be in I
want to feel satisfied and
During my last moments on earth. I want to overflow with love and
I want to make my transition
Without regret without fear and without resentment
Why am I here on YouTube? I
Don't think that it can be reduced to a single reason. I mean, why does someone start a youtube channel? I
Think it's a complex of reasons linked to someone's character to someone's personality
I
Think more to the point the question we should be asking is how does my being here on YouTube
Benefit you. How does it serve you? and
in order to answer that I
can't forget the pain that I felt during the 20 years that I heard voices and
At a basic level if I can spare someone else from feeling that pain, I will
It's that simple it's a very simple concept and it is my purpose
It's my purpose for being here on YouTube, it's also my purpose in a much broader sense. I
Declared it to myself as a matter of fact back in the day. This is my purpose
It's the reason that I decide to live five years ago instead of killing myself and
It's been the one motivating drive in my life ever since
Now I'm very fortunate that these days for work I happen to have a job working in the mental health field
I'll elaborate a bit more on that in a little while
With my job I have committed myself up to this point at least partially to my purpose
With this YouTube channel
This is me committing myself all the way
Going hardcore, going all-in. I'm all-in
Meaning mental health is not just a part-time thing for me anymore. Mental health is Who I am as a person
It's what I'm all about
My goal is to create content that I myself would have liked to have seen back when I was hearing voices I
Remember back in the day. I
wanted answers and
I searched for these answers everywhere
books media anything I could get my hands on and
The most frustrating thing to my recollection from that time was that so much of what I found was bullshit
It was useless
sanitized bullshit
With people talking all sorts of vague ambiguous platitudes like well instead of being angry you have to love
Yeah, great. Tell me how how do you do that?
Look
If you are hurting right now hearing voices
Struggling with mental illness then you've come to the right place
Because here is someone who believes in you
Here is someone who believes in your recovery, no matter how you picture that recovery in your mind
Maybe you feel downtrodden and defeated
Not just by the pain go through everyday, but because someone in your past
Perhaps tried to convince you that recovery is impossible, that you are a malfunction of nature
that you're some sort of biological mistake and
That you're basically fucked for life
Do you need proof that recovery is possible?
Well, here I am. I am your proof! and
I think just having someone say that to me to have someone talk to me like that
Would have helped me out enormously when I was hearing voices
it would have helped me out to no end because it's exactly what I needed to hear and
I tell you this
When I was hearing voices had I been watching YouTube watching this channel
At right about this point in the video my voices
Would have been shitting themselves
They would've been scared shitless
You know
The fact that I'm new to this whole social media thing has an advantage. I'll tell you what that advantage is. I'm not jaded
If you leave me a comment on one of my videos, I don't see a comment I see a real person write to me
Tell me the direction you would like this channel to go
tell me the things you'd like me to explore tell me what you want me to talk about and
Don't think twice that what you have to say might make me uncomfortable
I
Want to be made uncomfortable as a matter of fact if you leave a comment of one of my videos that makes me uncomfortable
I will thank you, and I'll tell you the reason why
If we think of recovery as a process whereby through introspection
we gain insight in order to elevate our
emotional vibration
to attain a higher state of mind
to heighten our equilibrium
to become more
better than our former selves
Then this process of recovery will never be over for me
You see I've been set on a course for nearly half my life where it's become second nature to me now
And there is no turning back. It's become habit for me now
For about the past year I have been working in earnest on my shadow
This is the Jungian concept as in integrating the shadow
Bringing up all the dark matter from my unconscious out into the light into my conscious awareness
If you leave me a comment on one of my videos that makes me uncomfortable
On a topic that is uneasy for me to think about
Then you've just done me a huge favor. You've done me a great service
Because essentially what you've done is exposed to me a part of my shadow
That I was not aware of before and for which now I need to go explore
Now should this happen should you leave me a comment like this
you don't have to worry that I'm gonna judge you or project all sorts of negative qualities onto you because I
Know that so long as I feel uncomfortable
That means that I have this thing within me also
Whatever this thing is that I share this thing. Also within me
This is regardless of whether or not I've ever been consciously aware of it or that I've never ever acted on it before
Or that I've ever betrayed it in my outward behavior doesn't matter
So long as I feel something
That is proof positive to me
That at least the potentiality of it
exists within me also as a fellow human being
now
working on my shadow is where I'm at precisely at this moment in my recovery journey and
I started this work for a very selfish reason I
Got rid of my voices
Which by the way is not a requirement for recovery
I'll go so far as to say that most people who hear voices that recover
Still hear voices after their recovery
They just learn to deal with them and to accept them as a part of who they are
But in my recovery, the way things happened my voices just happened to go away altogether, but it's not a requirement
Irregardless of this fact I
Always had this nagging sense that given the wrong circumstances
I could always relapse back into my mental illness and
I wanted to make doubly sure that this never happened and the only way for me to do that was to explore my shadow
Jung put forth that for people with mental illness the shadow is a seat of mental illness
So in essence by exploring my shadow, what I'm doing is exploring those aspects of myself that made me ill in the first place
Now I can't in good conscience recommend that you work on your shadow
Unless you're at an advanced point in your recovery or are fully recovered even
Then it's going to require all your resilience all your self care all your coping skills to
Deal with some of the dark things that you're gonna dredge up from the hidden parts of your unconscious mind
All these disclaimers aside, I
Wanted to ascertain once and for all where my mental illness came from
So as to not be afraid of it anymore
This was much more important to me than some precarious happiness predicated upon
Avoiding a part of myself
by placing a limit on
Where I could let thoughts wander due to fear that if I let my thoughts go there. I might get triggered
You see I had enough of that limitation and this
Stifling confinement on my thoughts, which I imposed on myself
during the 20 years that I heard voices and
I didn't want it anymore. I wanted no part of it. I
Wanted a mind that was so broad so vast that
I could let my thoughts roam and wander wherever they wanted to
Without any topics being off-limits. I
Wanted a mind that was so broad and expansive
That it contained both my mental illness and my recovery in their entirety
So that even if I got mentally ill again, I wouldn't be afraid because I knew that I could quickly recover
Because my mind was broad enough to contain both
So I suppose in the end
that it was more important for me to be whole rather than happy and
With that I'm gonna conclude this video
But I want to continue this narrative and talk more about my vision for my youtube channel
Which for that you'll have to follow me into
part four of this series
