Episode 485 Fred Moss Healing PTSD Through Communication Transcript

This transcript is from episode 485 with guest Fred Moss.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Before we dive in, make sure you’re subscribed at Drive On Podcast dot com slash subscribe. You’ll get my five favorite episodes sent straight to your inbox. No fluff, just the best insights to help you drive on. Are you struggling to find real connection? You’re not alone. Too many veterans feel isolated, misunderstood, and trapped in a cycle of anxiety PTSD, and feeling outta sync with the world around them.

But. What if the key to healing wasn’t in a pill or a diagnosis, but in your own voice? Dr. Fred Moss is here to break down how true healing happens through communication, human connection, and rediscovering your authentic self. Let’s get into it.

Dr.

Fred really glad to have you here. Looking [00:01:00] forward to this conversation. Welcome to the show. Thank

Fred Moss: Thank you so much. It’s really just an honor and a pleasure, a true privilege to be on the show. I look forward to our interview and thank you for having me as a guest.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. So, before we get into you know, all that, can you maybe take us back a bit share with us your journey into what you’re doing now, mental health advocacy and you know, kind what this, this journey looked like for you? I’d like to kind of paint the picture of who, who the guest is before we, we start getting into the, the topic.

Fred Moss: All right, so I’m gonna take you back right to the very beginning. You know, I arrived right here on this planet as a born healer. And how do I know that? Well, I was called on to bring love and peace and understanding to a family that was in chaos and disarray. I had two older brothers, 10 and 14 years older than me and my parents, and from what I understand, as they’ve told me later, there was a lot of chaos, a lot of conflict in the home, and they were hoping for little freight to come in and be the, you know, bundle of joy that apparently I succeeded in being for a couple years.

I’m not sure my brothers, by the way, [00:02:00] would, would agree that it’s.

Scott DeLuzio: No brother. Even if they did agree, no brother would admit that.

Fred Moss: That’s exactly right. For sure. And so there was a, you know, there was an opportunity for me to learn how to be, you know, how to be the center of attention. How to, how to, you know, win a crowd with a smile, how to be funny, and all those things that I was you know, to bring this a sense of entertainment and joy into my family.

Now, I fast forward a little bit. I remember being in my playpen and watching my brothers and my parents speak with each other and thinking that someday if I was lucky, I would also know how to speak like that. I just wanted to learn how to speak and how to communicate. It was very clear to me that that’s what people were passionate about, and I thought that I would probably get that in school.

You know, my again, with my family I was pretty precocious and they had taught me many things that my kindergarten friends didn’t know when I arrived. You know, I had a sort of already an established at least semi. I won’t say young [00:03:00] adult, but old kid. A, a viewpoint of what life was about, having been taught a little bit about sex and drugs and rock and roll and, you know, war protests and all those kind of things that were going on as a young child and I knew how to read, I knew how to do math.

I knew how to write and, you know, and so I had all these skill sets that were sort of ahead of my expected learning. So this made me kind of a terror in elementary school because I was bored all the time and and I was a class clown and precocious. And so, I talked a lot. I really just wanted to talk.

And I, there’s no teacher that I’ve ever, that, you know, had Fred as a student in elementary school who’s forgot who I was, that’s for sure. And it, you know, I was, I, I, I was kind of like, I, you know, I would get really good grades in the academics and then, you know, self-control and my. Talking outta turn and stuff.

’cause I just really was just leaking, like, just dripping with the wood desire to learn how to communicate. And I thought communication was in our [00:04:00] speaking. I have since later learned that it’s really a, you know, it’s a, it’s a reciprocation. It’s in listening primarily, which is even more powerful than speaking.

But I didn’t know that till I got to be some, maybe even like last year. I don’t know. It’s been a while. You know, most people think that when you say share or communicate, you’re talking about what you say and we forget how important it is to actually be present and listen to who you’re with, listening for the spoken and un unknown unspoken aspects of any communication.

So I learned, you know, in a crash course that school was not gonna be the place I learned how to communicate and I can’t, you know, went all the way through school and it got worse and worse in junior high. It was even more crippling and more constraining than it was in elementary school and then worse again in high school.

And so I figured it was, well these people learned how to communicate somewhere. Maybe it was college. So I decided to go to college and you know, 40 miles down the road and they had some cool helmets. And I you know, everyone who grew up in [00:05:00] Detroit, at least it seemed like, you know, was super interested in going to University of Michigan.

That’s where I went. And I was there for a little while expecting to learn how to communicate, although I loved Ann Arbor and learned how to communicate in Ann Arbor. I didn’t love college that much, and I, I dropped out and I came to California and I was like, looking for what my life was about. I lasted here for, I’m, I’m actually not in California today, but anyways, I now live in California.

I lasted in California for a little bit and then realized, you know, I had to, there was this new industry coming out that my family had told me about, and they thought I would have a good aptitude for it. It’s called computers. You may have heard of it. They thought that, you know, that would be a good thing for me, like Fortran, cobol.

Batch jobs, punch cards. So, I took a bus all the way back and because the only computer in all of Michigan that was worth a while was the one at the University of Michigan. So back to Michigan, I went re-enrolled, got myself in there one more time, and I was in computer science and I’m not doing, I’m, you know, I’m not gonna do [00:06:00] batch drop and punch cards the rest of my life.

And that’s what it was all night long. You know, it was kind of fun, but it wasn’t not a lifestyle. It was like crazy, you know? So I dropped out again and this time again, I was just thought I’d bum around. I didn’t know what I’d do, but I, I told my family I wouldn’t go to back to college ever again under any conditions.

And so my mom, you know, agreed and got me, said, you gotta get a job, you know, I was like, okay, whatever. So she got me some applications for civil service inside of Michigan. There was a couple different jobs available, one at the unemployment office and won it. As a childcare worker on a mental health clinic, at a mental health I’m sorry, at a mental health facility for adolescent boys, a state mental health facility.

And I took the second one because, you know, I, they had an orientation, and the orientation, I wouldn’t have to go to the floors just for three solid full-time weeks. They’d pay me at full-time rate to sit at a conference table and learn what I was gonna do. And I just thought, well, I’ll last [00:07:00] for three weeks and then I’ll take those three paychecks, buy myself a car and get figuring out what my life was about.

And on the fourth week, my friend Paul convinced me to go up to the floors and you know, like, I don’t know, actually become a childcare worker. And that Monday I went up there and I started realizing that this is going to be the place where communication is really important and we’re in the, you know, where I’m gonna learn how to communicate if I want.

Like I, you know, communicating with these so-called kids six or seven years younger than me, I. And just doing so with the respect of just having another human there who’s bumbling and stumbling through life just like me and, you know, landed where they landed. Not because they’re worse or less than, or defective or afflicted, but because that’s just where they are.

And it was just that it was beautiful to finally be able to practice the skills that I knew were required in order to be a well-rounded human being. And healing really did take place. And I actually learned to you know, before too long was doing a lot of three weeks stints back to back. Like, I’ll quit in three weeks.

I’ll quit in three weeks. I’ll quit in three weeks. [00:08:00] You know, it was so funny about I’ll quit in three weeks. I’ve recently noticed it for four. I’ve been in the field for 45 years. Right? And because that was January of 1980 and I’ll quit in three weeks has been true for the entire 45 years.

Scott DeLuzio: That’s a lot of three week periods

Fred Moss: It’s a lot.

It’s like right now, I still have it in my mind. Okay, I’m only gonna do this for about three more weeks. And that’s it, you know. But here I am, you know, 45 years plus later and I’m still kicking along. So, you know, I, I went into psychiatry, but, you know, people are like, how did that happen? It wasn’t really natural.

I went into psychiatry because I really just had a major dis distaste for psychiatry. See, we would call the psychiatrist when Timmy and Tony were in a tussle, or Jimmy was up too late, and he’d come down and talk to the kid for just a few seconds and then, you know, talk to us for maybe seven seconds and then go into the nursing station and write something in the chart.

And we’d have to go retrieve the child and hold ’em down and give them, you know, let the [00:09:00] nurse give them this injectable cocktail of an anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, you know, sedative of some sort. And if they were stuporous for the next 24 hours. We would call that a success story, and that just was unacceptable to me.

You know, what’s really important to get here is that this wasn’t back then, this has happened already hundreds of times today,

Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.

Fred Moss: right now, like today as we speak at, what is it? It’s 8:14 AM Pacific. It’s, it happened many, many, many times today in the United States, that exact scenario. So let’s not, you know, let’s not pretend that this was the old days.

You know, this was the ancient times when we used to mishandle patients. Not at all. That’s just how it is. So I had to fight back from that, and I decided that, you know, I knew now that communication was where healing took place. And then could I go into psychiatry and bring in the healing modality of communication?

Now, the truth is, it was already there. Back in the day before [00:10:00] 1987, psychiatry was really a conversational field. It was a field where you really sat down and got to know each other. But in 1987, there was this massive paradigm shift, and that was the advent, and then the introduction of Prozac and Prozac really sh shifted everything.

Prozac created biological psychiatry. It created the whole weird notion of a chemical imbalance where if you’re uncomfortable, it’s your deal. Like it gave us the whole complex that if there’s, if you’re uncomfortable, that means there’s something wrong with you, which is really just very odd. Of course, we don’t blame a log for burning in a fire.

It’s a fire out here. And if you’re anxious, if you’re, you know, afraid, if you’re depressed, if you’re terrified, if you’re distracted, if you’re awkward, that’s called humanity. You know, that’s what, that’s what we got here. That’s what’s happening. If you haven’t, if you haven’t found yourself to any of those corners, you’re not really living a full life at this point.

Like, that’s what’s really here. And I kind of knew that. And, but that was being [00:11:00] shoved down our throat and we were on the front edge as psychiatrists too. Pathologized not feeling well. When we don’t feel well, we go to a doctor and think that they should help us by no, no longer feeling uncomfortable.

But there’s nothing wrong with being uncomfortable in an uncomfortable situation. And this is, this world is an uncomfortable situation to say the least. There’s a, there’s a tremendous amount of confusion and just, you know, disjoint you know, people are, are you know, they’re searching for a purpose or searching for a reason, or searching for a capacity to interrelate.

Ultimately, I think what we’re all looking for is to, yeah, have a human connection.

Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.

Fred Moss: That’s really what we want. That’s why we’re on this podcast. After all, we’re hoping we can create a connection and the people who are listening to this are hoping that they can connect to the connection that we created.

And that’s really what was us humans universally are interested in. I went into psychiatry after a few years as a childcare worker because it was like, okay, this is where I get to actually utilize my [00:12:00] skills. My brother was already a psychiatrist, so I followed his big footsteps in, got eventually accepted to medical school and became a psychiatrist and then, you know, got through the school and during the time when Prozac was introduced and off to residency, I went and did my residency down in Cincinnati and.

You know, all of a sudden I’m building a practice and I’m building a very large practice inside Cincinnati and you know, inpatient, outpatient. Over the next several years, I’ve been in every single I, every single modality that Western Psychiatry has to offer. I’ve had a leadership role in, and I’ve seen well over 30,000 people who would call me their doctor, at least for one second during that time.

And you know, and I also had the opportunity to work all over the US and all over the world. Then with the advent of telepsychiatry in early 2010, I was able to pipe into you know, rural California or Illinois when I was traveling in, in countries like Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal and Israel you know, [00:13:00] Italy, France, England, and really pipe in and continue to do psychiatry.

And while I’m exploring what does it mean to be a human being. And this is where I really got to, you know, the humanity theme, the Welcome to Humanity, the idea that we’re really all interested in human connection. And not only that, that’s where all the healing always takes place, is inside of the human connection.

Scott DeLuzio: would. Right. And you know, one of the things that you mentioned about communication, I don’t think you explicitly said it this way, but communication really is a two-way street, right there, there’s, there’s me speaking right now and I’m, I’m communicating to you in, in my words, but also through my body language and, and everything else that I’m, I’m producing here.

But the other side of the equation is you have to be able to receive that. If you’re not listening to me and, and you’re, you’re distracted, and it’s like, yeah, okay, that guy’s mumbling about something and let me go do something else, well, then the communication isn’t actually taking place. Right. Because it is a two-way [00:14:00] street and.

Well, it, I guess in a way, maybe communication is happening because you’d be sending a signal to me because you’re distracted and you’re doing something else. And I would say, well, this guy really just doesn’t care. And so maybe I’m, maybe I’m done with this guy. And I, I don’t, that’s not the case here, but this is just an example.

Right. But you know, and that’s when I started this podcast. I started off, it was audio only and we did a recording. There was no video involved or anything like that. I couldn’t see the guest on the other side. And I felt very inauthentic when I was doing that because I like to be able to see the person, see their facial expressions.

Maybe I’m saying something that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and they’re making a confused look on their face. And then that, that sends a signal to me that maybe I’m way off track and maybe I need to. Pause for a second and see what the other person has to say that, that maybe I’m going down the wrong road here.

And I didn’t have that before. And so I introduced a video aspect of it, honestly, more for [00:15:00] the communication style to be able to have a better sense of communication because, you know, for the listeners who are listening and can’t see right now, we’re not in the same room. We’re not even in the same city or state or whatever.

We’re, we’re in different areas. And it’s fine because like you said, the technology allows you from wherever you are in the world to be able to pipe into a conversation like this. And it’s, I, I think it’s wonderful that we’re able to do that. I wouldn’t be able to have this podcast if it wasn’t for this type of technology, but it, it, it, honestly, it’s really great and.

You came to discover that at the, in the early days when this whole video conferencing thing was still relatively new or, you know, we had it in the, in the movies, right? That was, that was big. But you know, people weren’t using it as often as they do now, but but it gives you that sense of connection and continuity anyways, you know, with your, your [00:16:00] patients that you might see in person, but you can’t because of that geographic distance.

So now you’re able to continue that. And I think that right there speaks volumes to say that, Hey, I actually care enough to try to figure out another way. I can’t be there in person, so let’s figure out a way to make this happen. And you know, I, I don’t think your, your mom was totally off when she said you’d get into the, this whole computer thing.

And you know, you’re using them, you know, for, for that type of purpose,

Fred Moss: No, my mom knew me pretty well. She was right. And you know, and you know, that’s what moms are for. And that was a pretty good pointer. And in fact, yeah, I have learned how to effectively use this media. A couple things come to mind. You know, you talked about this idea of yes, we would be communicating even if we chose not to not to listen to each other or, or perhaps even not to speak with each other.

There’s an NLP tenant that in the neurolinguistic programming that says you can not communicate. And that’s like, that’s really a cool thing to [00:17:00] realize. There’s no such thing as not communicating. And, you know, that’s, and the other, the piece that I think I wanna just put overlay to the other area about telepsychiatry, it’s kind of true.

I you know, taught a course called Mastering Telehealth. I. In 2013, long before it was a so-called gold standard, but it was very, very clear to me as if, you know, chocolate and peanut butter, at least as I look back at it now, that this was a great combination, that psychiatry and you know, video conferencing were a match made in heaven because that’s all we really do in our offices anyways.

We’re not, there’s no other senate, you know, this, the importance of hearing and seeing were being emphasized inside a video conference. And that’s all psychiatry was supposed to need in order to get through a conversation. So could see that the technologies and that the, you know, people thought they needed help all over the world all the time.

And if they could just click and be with the doctor of their choice or the therapist of their choice living anywhere in the world, it seemed like it was very, you know, like an obvious [00:18:00] marriage that was coming down the road. So that’s why I taught it. And in fact, you know, it wasn’t because I couldn’t see them.

It’s really interesting. There is a, there’s a phase. Where it was preferable, you know, not because it was the best second choice, but because it was the best first choice. In other words, these conversations that we have with video and audio online go deeper than the conversations that we have when we meet in person.

See, if we were already meeting in person, we’d have to figure out whether we wanted sugar in our coffee or which seat we wanna take, or, you know, we’d have to position ourselves. We’d ask each other about our families. You know, we would’ve like built a much broader launching pad and inside of these phone calls, which then turn into video phone calls, which now we call, you know, squad, you know, what is

Scott DeLuzio: Zoom and you know, teams or, you know, whatever the, the medium that you’re using, right? Yeah, exactly.

Fred Moss: Right? We, we, we call it that there was a [00:19:00] point when, um. People used to say, you know, do you lose anything online? When you’re talking to someone, I suppose you do, you know, you lo you know, it’s nice to be able to shake their hand and but it goes deep fast. And I, I felt like I could make much deeper cuts inside of one video session than I could ever make inside of one session in my office and I began to be, and that you can see somebody and they don’t even know they’re being seen.

That’s the other thing. So there’s that Hulk that you know, that you don’t realize that all the wrinkles and crevices and moles and pimples that you have, I can actually see or see when, in fact, when your pupil’s dilate or when you, like you said your forehead, wrinkles or something, you can see stuff that without being intrusive, you can get details from the other person in a different way.

And there was a point when people would say, well, which is better? And I’d say, well, if I had my choice and someone came to my office and I could put them in the room next door to me. On a computer. That’s how I would do it.[00:20:00]

Scott DeLuzio: interesting. Okay.

Fred Moss: Yeah. That because you can, you can really take a deep dive without the, all the fluff and, and, you know, and surface level int in in, you know, intrusions that we have naturally.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, sure. And I’ve been the on, on, on the other side of the couch if, if you will, from where you, you sit in both ways. I’ve, I’ve done video, I’ve done in person, and I, I can see pros and cons to both, and I, I can definitely see what you’re talking about because a lot of times with the video.

You, you start off, Hey, how’s it going? How, how you doing? Good. Okay, cool. Let’s dive in. And, and that’s, that’s the extent of the, the fluff, if you will, before getting into the the, the deep conversation versus the in person. Hey, how’s it going? And, and, oh, okay. Oh, you’re gonna sit here this time. Okay, fine.

I’ll sit over here. And then there’s a whole dance that goes on in the beginning and, and it’s Sure, [00:21:00] maybe that is part of the human connection in the way that humans inter interact with each other. But I think a lot of that is unnecessary for the purpose of, and especially when you only have an hour session that you’re working with someone, let’s, let’s get cut to the chase and let’s get to it.

Right.

Fred Moss: Yeah, it’s interesting that this media actually encourages that, you know, more than when we’re with each other. I think we have a natural caution. We’re afraid that the other person might get up and hurt us or might get up and leave, or might be spit on, or you know, who knows? Whatever we’re afraid of when we’re in the same.

When we’re in the same physical space together, there’s, there’s a defensiveness that can grow that isn’t here so much online. And that, you know, that’s like a variant of the fact that there’s so many people who think that they’re publishable orator on social media, for instance. It’s, you know, people just open that door and just spit out whatever’s coming from out of their mouth or out of their fingers and think that it’s worthwhile.

[00:22:00] And that’s because it’s an online media. If they were in a room with people, they would be much less likely to speak their truth out loud in that situation. Because they’re behind the veil of a computer of a pixelated screen, they feel much more comfortable just sharing what’s coming from their, i, I guess, their gut or whatever.

I’m not sure what organ it’s coming from

Scott DeLuzio: Sure.

Fred Moss: Yeah.

Scott DeLuzio: Where wherever it comes from, it, it’s whatever you could do to make it more comfortable and more you know, approachable. To get that out there I think is a great thing. And especially through this show, I’ve dealt with a lot of veterans who oftentimes suffer from things like PTSD and other issues that sometimes just kind of naturally force them into a sense of isolation where they don’t go out, they don’t want to go to somebody’s office or to meet in person with other people.

And doing that is a huge step for [00:23:00] some people. And if you could say, okay, well let’s, let’s meet you where you are and you’re not, you’re not willing to get out and go meet somebody someplace. Okay, fine. Do you have a computer with an internet connection? Even your phone, if you can get on that, we can make this work And okay, good.

Now that’s a good first step and that, that at least allows that person to get the help that they need when they need it, where, where they are, versus just saying, well, I got, I have nothing for you. I can’t help you because you, you’re not willing to come out to this office. I, I think this is a, a way better solution than just writing that person off entirely.

Fred Moss: Yeah. You know, if you look at the evolution of the model and the, and what you’re really saying and I, you know, I’m just picturing these vets who, some of them, you know, may be a little bit you know, tech technology challenged or whatever, and early on, especially in early 2020 when my practice needed to shift instantly. So we ran [00:24:00] into a lot of people who didn’t know anything about, you know, zoom or how to connect their, the camera and how to connect their their sound and, you know, and we had to walk them through. And it, it was normally people in their, you know, in their older years, most people younger than 60 or 50, they’d already been introduced to the process.

But and it would interfere a little bit with the notion. And then people would get nervous. They don’t wanna really speak when they’re online. They’re wondering who’s recording it. And that’s actually a completely legitimate concern, a million percent legitimate concern. And as you’re speaking, a couple things come to mind.

I remember when I was in residency in the late eighties, if someone was talking to a tb, they would be hospitalized.

Scott DeLuzio: yeah, I could see that exactly.

Fred Moss: That would be, in fact, that would be criteria to give ’em the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. It’s either that or they’re, they’re yelling at their football team or

Fred Moss: No, no, no. I’m not talking about that guy. I’m actually talking about talking to the [00:25:00] TV

Scott DeLuzio: yeah. Right, right,

Fred Moss: and that these days, that’s all we all do.

Scott DeLuzio: right.

Fred Moss: Totally. What we’re doing right, this very moment, we’re talking to a, we’re not, I’m not even talking to you, I’m talking to a tv. There’s no, you here, there’s a facsimile of your, it’s not the real sound.

It’s not your, it’s, I’m not hearing your voice. I’m hearing an electronic version of your voice not seeing you. I’m seeing a two dimensional picture of you that I’m actually doing all the gymnastics to have it be like, I’m with you. ’cause the other thing was, I remember when earbuds, when earbuds first came out and I had my Bluetooth earbuds, my jabra and stuff like that, I I was on the front edge of that technology as well.

And so I’d have these like flashing things in my ears. And people thought I was like a, a cyborg, you know, people would be really, really concerned about it. And I might have a conversation with somebody without having even a phone in front of me. So now I’m walking through the streets talking to people.

And many people at the time, early in the technology didn’t even know that there was such thing that would allow for that. So [00:26:00] I, there was another way to look entirely like psycho and that was talking to nobody. So either talking to a screen or talking to nobody. Both of those things have now been normalized.

That’s such a high degree because we’re all doing it. And when in fact there was a point where if that’s what you were doing, it was an instant psychiatric hospitalization. Why is this really important? Because psychiatry is totally variable. It’s totally nebulous. It’s, look, it’s totally artificial. Like the edges of this are, because if it was a symptom, then it should be a symptom now, but it never was a symptom. It’s arbitrary on the edges. And when we really, really get that, we can see that there’s a reason to be very suspect about what these diagnoses are really saying about whether there’s something wrong with us or not. Because once the mass population [00:27:00] took on speaking to TVs like we’re all doing all day long now, or speaking to our earbuds, talking to nobody, or in fact talking to ourselves like you get, oh no.

Now if someone’s walking through the street, they don’t have an earbuds and they’re talking to themselves, they’re crazy. But if they do have earbuds and they’re talking to themselves, then they’re not crazy.

Scott DeLuzio: Right.

Fred Moss: It’s like if they’re watching TV and they don’t have their camera on and they’re talking to the tv.

Then they’re crazy. But if they’re talking to their TV and they do, it’s like the, it’s it,

Scott DeLuzio: It, it’s

Fred Moss: are arbitrary edges of nothing,

Scott DeLuzio: Just the presence of that technology is the difference between crazy and not crazy. And supposedly, you know, that’s, that’s the, the public perception really. Right.

Fred Moss: Yeah. If we could start getting that, maybe there’s no difference between crazy and not crazy z

Scott DeLuzio: That, that, that could make yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what the implications of that would be.[00:28:00]

Fred Moss: The implications of that would be that we’re all human and none of us know what the hell we’re doing

Scott DeLuzio: That’s true.

Fred Moss: if we don’t know what they’re doing and what we’re doing, and there’s never, ever been a compelling definition of what normal is. Never Tell me what normal is. You, you don’t have one. You don’t, you don’t have an answer for this

Scott DeLuzio: Right,

Fred Moss: If we don’t know what normal is and what kind of audacity you know, audacity has us actually declaring out loud that that is abnormal.

Scott DeLuzio: right. And, and to that point, I think normal. Is an evolving creature in and of itself because normal for one person who might be a happy, friendly, caring, outgoing type of person, that’s their normal, right? But then you have another person who’s a little bit more reserved. They’re not, they’re not quite as energetic.

They’re maybe a little bit de depressed. Well, that’s normal for [00:29:00] them. They’re both normal. These, both of these people are normal. It normal being kind of like, what is that person’s baseline? What can you expect from that person?

Fred Moss: so if it’s, if that, if that baseline is more like the you know, the majority, then we call them normal.

Scott DeLuzio: Right. And, and that’s I think the public perception to your point is that’s, that’s what we consider normal, and

Fred Moss: Because most people do it.

Scott DeLuzio: most people do it exactly

Fred Moss: It’s not other re, there’s no other reason you get that. It’s castle made and sand. You get, this is not, this is not what normal is. It’s what, it’s what’s been established over time by an agreement reality of a population in a prevailing, prevailing conversation.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Fred Moss: When we really get that, we start seeing that the edge between normal and abnormal kind of fades. None of us know what the hell we’re doing.

Scott DeLuzio: Right.

Fred Moss: That’s okay. That’s where welcome to humanity steps in.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:30:00] Okay. Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit more about Welcome to Humanity and, and let’s kind of dive into that a little bit and see you know, where, where that is gonna take us.

Fred Moss: All right. Sure. So, you know, welcome to Humanity is a kind of a you know, more recent in the greater scheme of things with my career. It’s sort of a more recent development, and it’s about, I don’t know, it’s like six or eight years old now and in officially. But the whole idea is there’s almost nothing in life, any experience in life and any experience in ourselves for which the response, welcome to humanity, isn’t appropriate.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay,

Fred Moss: Whatever you got going on, whatever that is, your body’s churning or you’re afraid, or you’re, or you’re tired, or you’re depressed, or you’re anxious, or you’re terrified, or you’re awkward, you’re distracted, you’re angry, whatever it is, welcome to humanity is one way to look at that.

Scott DeLuzio: sure.

Fred Moss: I really, you know, when I was looking for like a brand name what, there [00:31:00] was some others ones that I con that I considered.

I considered one called Global Madness because it just seemed like, you know, I really like Global Madness. It’s a cool name. And there was a documentary that got initiated with that name where I was going to be like the Anthony Bourdain of Mental Health and go see, go see how mental health is delivered around the world.

Which of course I did, but I didn’t televise it. But welcome to Humanity was like an overarching umbrella that seemed like it worked very well. And so, yeah, again, that, that what we really have here is I the power gradient that gets established when I, as a psychiatrist get to decide whether or not they’re you or them have anything wrong with them. And then when I say, this is what’s wrong with you, you say, okay, thank you doctor. And you walk away thinking that that’s what’s wrong with you. It is a completely funky, completely arbitrary, and in most cases, completely damaging interaction in my opinion.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay.

Fred Moss: So when I give you, [00:32:00] from the top of the hill a diagnosis that says you have this alphabet soup, you know, and I realize by the way, you know, the, especially speaking to the population that’s in your listening audience, you know, that like post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder, substance abuse disorder, all the disorders and deficiencies and afflictions that have been tossed around with psychiatry are very present in some people.

The idea is that it can be recontextualized so that one sees that there’s a route out of this, that a true healing can take place. You know, psychiatry is not based on healing. Psychiatry is based on maintaining and containing symptoms and slowing down the, the deterioration of conditions. But that’s not an honest way to look at how to help somebody, because that the best way to realize about how to help somebody is maybe there was nothing wrong with them in the first place. If there’s nothing wrong with them and you can look across the table at [00:33:00] these people or you know, whatever, right? And you’re not always a table. You can be walking with them or be on the phone or a Zoom and actually get that. There’s nothing wrong with this person. Even if they’re certain that there is, you know, some people, they think, oh no, there’s something wrong with me.

You’re not me. You should know I’m, there’s something wrong with me. Well, first of all, that’s not entirely clear at all. Even if you know there’s something wrong with you, there’s nothing wrong with you. Because one of the very important features of being human that seems to be almost universal as well, is that when we look at ourselves, we think there’s something wrong with us.

So it’s almost a sign of normal to know in your heart of hearts that there’s something wrong with you. And when we start realizing that, that’s just a trait, we’re back to WTH, which is the essence of welcome to humanity.

Scott DeLuzio: Well, and when we look at ourselves and we, we say, Hey, there’s something wrong with me. I think that’s [00:34:00] going back to what we were saying before, where we’re looking at what does normal look like in society today? What am I different from everybody else? Am I from the people that I see, that I interact with?

Okay, well, if I’m not like them, then I must be abnormal. There must be something wrong with me. And that’s not, to your point, that’s not necessarily true. That that is a indication that, hey, you’re human and you’re, you’re going to have a different perspective, different outlook, different reaction to certain circumstances than other people might because, well, hell, you’re human.

And we all have different reactions to things. I mean, two people could have. The same exact experience. It could be standing side by side, experiencing the same exact thing, smelling the same smell, seeing the same sights you know, all, all of hearing the same sounds. All those senses, they’re, they’re processing the same way.

Or sorry, they’re receiving the same way. But they [00:35:00] process ’em different because maybe they had an earlier experience in life that taught them that, Hey, this situation is not all that scary. And so I am okay with this. But then that other person who’s standing right next to ’em never had that experience, that prior experience.

And they’re terrified. They’re pissing in their pants because they’re they’re just so afraid of whatever the situation is. Right. And both, both reactions are normal or, or they’re not a,

Fred Moss: They’re human.

Scott DeLuzio: bad a Yeah, they’re, they’re not bad. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those reactions. You’re teaching me not to use the word normal and I think that’s a good thing.

Fred Moss: Only because you dunno what it means. It’s okay. You could use it. If you could define it, that would be, I won’t mind at all. If you, if you gimme a firm definition of that word, then feel free to banter that word around all day long.

Scott DeLuzio: No. And you’re a hundred percent right, because the best definition I could come up with is something that is evolving and constantly changing. And so how that’s a moving target in and of itself. And so, that how could you really come up with that [00:36:00] definition?

But you, you know, so you’re right. So yeah, you have two people experiencing the same thing, but having completely different reactions. I, I think things like PTSD and other disorders like you were talking about, are completely acceptable human reactions to completely crazy abnormal situations that are, that you’re, you’re thrust into.

There’s, there’s nothing normal about war, you know, there, there, it’s, it’s not a a thing that you expect on a day, day-to-day basis. And when you go into war and you have to see death and destruction in, in all of those things that go along with it

Fred Moss: Or cause, cause death and destruction.

Scott DeLuzio: even cause it. Yeah, absolutely. Those, those things are not your typical thing that your average person is going to have to experience on a day-to-day basis.

And when you do [00:37:00] experience it your reaction is going to be, like you said, a human reaction

Fred Moss: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Scott DeLuzio: whatever that reaction may be. Right, right.

Fred Moss: Right. And yeah. And you know, we, we another fallacy is that we compare our insides. With everyone else’s outside. So we don’t ever really get what it’s like to be you. I don’t ever, you know, I, and I’m just watching you through this communication train in whatever train I’m on, in this case, online.

You know, and we already get that. I’m not even with you. I’m with a two, two dimensional pixelated image that reminds me of something that might look like you. And then I’m listening to that. So, you know, and then, so there’s so much limitations between us really getting what another person’s experience is, including the fact that we don’t even know how to communicate experience.

We don’t even, I, we don’t even know how to communicate experience because our language is two dimensional and thread like and experience is multi-dimensional and. And vast and [00:38:00] diverse all at the same time. So we’re experiencing multidimensional diversity at any given moment, and we, and when we speak the la the best we can do is send a laser light through that multidimensionality picking on a particular topic that we chose for ourselves to communicate.

And, and thereby, you know, in some ways, setting aside all the rest of the experience that’s going on at any given moment that we have you know, chosen not to speak to. So there’s no really, there’s no real great way to it, it doesn’t seem like in our present, at least in the present format, in the present contextualization of communication to reconcile that problem.

But except to realize that we’re not effective communicators either, because we’re, we’re counting on this two dimensional thread like voice to. You know, put together ideas on the fly without any kind of rehearsal. Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t expect, you know, say it on [00:39:00] time. Let it flow out of you when it shows up.

And hopefully it doesn’t need a bunch of editing by the time it spits out of your mouth. Because we spend so much time correcting ourselves, I didn’t really mean to say, Ooh, I said this. I didn’t mean to say that. As if we’re, you know, as if we’re able to edit ourselves at the pace that the listener would want us to, because the listener, we’re counting on the listener to actually get something close to the, in to the words that I have put into place.

That somehow I’m hoping that I say what I say and that it resonates over there that you’re present enough, or that you agree with the definitions of certain words or phrases enough that we are saying the same thing when I say what I say and that it lands over there. How do I know it’s landing over there?

Well, I’m kind of measuring your head nodding, you know, which is, that’s pretty arbitrary too.

Scott DeLuzio: sure.

Fred Moss: That’s just a, that’s just a piece of nonsense. You’re not heads nodding. You could head, your head could be nodding and you could be thinking about, you know, the Philadelphia Eagles for God’s sake. I don’t know.[00:40:00]

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, and yeah, you’re right because that, that could definitely be ar arbitrary. And when you have an experience that you’re trying to communicate in a way you’re, you’re trying to paint the picture in the mind of the listener or maybe in the reader if you’re writing it down or whoever, whatever the medium is that you’re using to communicate this, you’re trying to paint that picture in a way that very accurately portrays what your experience was.

But anyone who’s an artist knows that painting a picture, like what I have in my head and what comes out on the, the canvas may be two different things. I. But I want you to see it the way I am thinking of it. And that may not happen because that the wrong brushstroke or the wrong, you know, whatever the medium is that you’re using, it may not be a hundred percent perfect.

And so, [00:41:00] just, just like painting with a brush on a canvas, the words that you use, that you speak are very much a, an art form to try to get that out in a creative way, to paint that picture for someone especially in a therapist kind of setting where say I’m coming to you and saying, Hey, I have a problem with X, Y, or Z and I am trying to communicate it to you.

You ask me some questions to try to figure out what, what’s going on, and I try to explain it, but am I explaining it effectively and am I getting that. Across to you, and in your mind, you’re painting this picture and you’re painting a picture that may be, oh, well, he, he must have PTSD because while he was in combat and he experienced this, that and the other, and maybe it’s depression from something else, and some of the symptoms may just overlap.

Just like, I may use the same color to paint a tree as I do the grass, but [00:42:00] it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the same thing. Right. So that’s kind of how I’m picturing what it is that you’re saying. I’m trying to paint that picture myself and communicate it back, right?

Fred Moss: there’s an, there’s some deeply inherent obstacles and hurdles and challenges in our capacity to communicate with each other.

Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.

Fred Moss: And, you know, the, the fine communicators are able to not only get their I ideas across, but to listen effectively to others and have a broad landing pad for what somebody else is trying to experience and or someone else is trying to communicate.

And so communication is that skill. And I’m, you know, I’m really happy with little Freddy and his playpen, realizing that at three years old that, that someday, this is what, this is where all the magic is. So I’m very, I feel very grateful that I saw that early on and that it’s now such a critical piece of what we do every day as a human.

And, you know, we’re swamped with [00:43:00] the now the, you know, I don’t know about you, but my time is just utilize surviving and getting myself online and, you know, managing my threads or managing my emails or managing my. You know, texts or managing my responsibilities or my calendar or my conversations in such a way, whether that’s in the written word or in the typed word, or in the reading wr red, in the red wor word, or in the conversational word.

There’s just so many challenges each and every moment to get through all these things. Now, you know, life is hard and, and life is hard and, you know, are there a hundred reasons to be nervous? Yeah. How long, how long would it take us to come up with a hundred reasons

Scott DeLuzio: I, I’m, I’m sure we could, you know, there’s, there’s tons of things and

Fred Moss: five minutes?

Scott DeLuzio: yeah, I, I’m, I’m sure that wouldn’t take much time at all to, to come up with that, but the, I think to your point. a lot of reasons for a lot of the things, you know, [00:44:00] nervous or depressed or whatever. And again, to your back to your point, welcome to Humanity.

Fred Moss: Welcome to Humanity. And there’s, you know, what’s so cool about this is that there are a series of practices and tools and exercises that we can put into place that mitigate some of those natural default concerns that life is impossible to deal with. You see, when we meditate, for instance, or we come mindful and we start really watching our gratitude and we start watching what we put into our mouth and drinking and nutrition or what we do with our activities, whether that’s art and music and dancing, what kind of nature walks we take?

What time, you know, what do we do with other people? Who do we hang out with? What kind of reading? What kind of pampering are we doing? What kind of, you know, do, are we keeping ourselves as our own? As our own king or queen that we can get, we get to take care of. Do we treat it ourselves as well as we would want to be treated by others?

Most people would say no to that. By the way. If, if anyone talked to me as nasty as I talked to myself, I would [00:45:00] immediately unfriend them forever. And, you know, and, and you know, that we start really looking at like, what does it really take to be an effective human being? And part of it is to steady ourselves and to realize as often as we can, that we don’t have to be driven down the rabbit holes that are, that we’re seduced to go down.

That we don’t have to become our experiences, that we can be right here. And, you know, although we have thoughts and they can be disempowering thoughts, and we have, I, you know, feelings and ideas and emotions and physical sensations. We have all those things. But we don’t have to become those things.

We can actually experience those things and then be like, thank you for sharing. Welcome to Humanity back to the center. And we start really realizing that, wow, everybody’s going through this and maybe there’s nothing inherently wrong with me. And you know, it’s funny, psychiatry is a funny field this way because I, there’s some opposition to this that I run [00:46:00] into with many clients, for instance, they don’t come to me for their initial visit because they wanna see if there’s something wrong with them.

They come to me to get confirmation that there is something wrong with them. And what’s really interesting about that, like the corollary to that is I think psychiatry is the only subspecialty in all of medicine that if you tell that pees people that there’s nothing wrong with them, they get pissed.

Scott DeLuzio: Right. I can see that. Because, well, let’s, let’s take it back a step here. So somebody is gonna come to you or some other psychologist and, and. They have something that they’re perceiving is wrong. I, I never used to be this depressed. I never used to be this, whatever. And so something has, has changed and I don’t like it, and I want help with that.

And so that’s why they’re coming to you. And, and so I can totally see where you’re coming from, where they get pissed when they, when you say, Hey, there’s nothing wrong with you. Like this is, this is welcome [00:47:00] to humanity. You know, this is a human reaction. Now I think where the, the issue comes in is someone is, is coming to you and saying, Hey, I, I don’t like how this makes me feel, or, or whatever.

And they want to know, okay, what do I do about it?

Fred Moss: Yeah.

Scott DeLuzio: And that’s, I think where the, the issue comes in. Where, where they’re maybe perhaps not satisfied with the, there’s nothing wrong with you diagnosis because. In their mind, something is wrong and that’s, that’s why they’re there in the first place. Right.

Fred Moss: Well, it’s funny, you know, one of the things, and it might not be might be counterintuitive. One of the ways to really get to the bottom of this is to connect with that person and get exactly what their experience is in life. Like, actually listen carefully and have that human connection. Because once I look, I’ve worked in prisons and jails.

I’ve already told you, I’ve worked in many different modalities over the years. Orphanages and homeless shelters and nursing [00:48:00] homes, and, you know, inpatient units and outpatient units and residential treatment programs, methadone clinics, rehab clinics, you know, I don’t know, goes on and on.

Scott DeLuzio: sure.

Fred Moss: The, the, the way that someone heals when they think something’s wrong with them.

Is to have one other person get it. That’s the cure

Scott DeLuzio: okay.

Fred Moss: when someone really gets it. Have you ever noticed that when someone really gets you, wow, it’s just like, oh yeah, that person actually gets it

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Fred Moss: and there’s a immense relief at that moment. So it’s not really like there’s something wrong with you. It’s like there’s some, there’s a loneliness aspect of it.

In other words, something wrong with me, it’s uniquely me. I can’t communicate it effectively. No one can understand. That’s really where the pain emanates from, is from the idea. That simple idea that no one can understand how bad I feel. But when I am able to share that or be shared with that, you know, like, like my lifers in the prisons, in the maximum security prison, when I would connect with them and actually get their [00:49:00] world, sometimes I would be the first guy who had ever, who had done that for, I don’t know, decades.

Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.

Fred Moss: And the level of healing that takes place instantaneously far exceeds the potency of any therapy or any medication that’s ever been invented by a human being when you connect with another human. So the most powerful way to help someone mitigate the pain associated with there’s something wrong with me, is to actually connect with them and realize that we all think there’s something wrong with us.

Scott DeLuzio: Sure.

Fred Moss: I get it. I get that you’re highly uncomfortable with what your experience is. I really do. I get that you think that you weren’t this depressed before and now you’re more depressed than ever and you so-called can’t control it. When we apply these mindfulness and grateful gratitude and nutrition, all that big long list affectionately called the Moss Method that I have compiled, there’s 20 things.

And we start applying those things to our life. We become disconnected from anything in the outside world, creating who we are in the inside. That’s really [00:50:00] fantastic when we can decouple those things.

Scott DeLuzio: yeah, absolutely. And. You were talking about that, that connection and getting that understanding of what, what that other person is, is going through. And it made me think about conversations I’ve had with other veterans who won’t go to a therapist who is not also a veteran or a combat veteran or, and because I think that just makes it that much easier to get that level of understanding.

Fred Moss: It’s all it is.

Scott DeLuzio: You know? I’ve, I’ve been there, I’ve been in combat. I’ve had, I’ve had bullets going both ways, you know, and, and that’s something that your average person may not be able to understand quite as much that that fear, that, you know, all the, all of those emotions that, how do you describe fear or the, the panic or the, the rage or whatever, the emotions.

How do you describe that to someone who’s never been there? You [00:51:00] know? Yeah.

Fred Moss: Yeah, it’s really interesting. So, yeah, you know, first of all, no one’s ever been where you were

Scott DeLuzio: sure.

Fred Moss: as you’ve, we’ve already established

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Fred Moss: no one, even that guy next to you in the foxhole, he is not, he wasn’t with you.

Scott DeLuzio: right? Yeah. He was with himself in that

Fred Moss: with himself near you. That’s right. So no one has ever been in your shoes. No one has ever been in your shoes.

And like, so there is a fair amount of imagination and this idea of a broad brush stroke of what’s really here. And not only in how you say it, but who you be. Like if, if all of a sudden you, we started to create the rage or the anger or the despair or the hopelessness or helplessness that you experienced in combat, and we start talking about that it’s sort of like, can I talk to a woman about pregnancy?

Well, I can. I’ve just never been pregnant. You know? And that’s, I get that. And can I talk to, a combat veteran about his experience. The answer is yes, I can, but I can’t pretend or think that I know what that [00:52:00] experience is through my own experience. However, what we do share is this thing called humanity. And this idea that overwhelming thoughts have been managed by each and every one of us is really important to get an overwhelming, like incomprehensible unmanageable o you know, unexpected traumatic thought process or experience. Most of us can relate to experiences like that, and then they say, well, except mine was bigger, or mine was more, mine was louder.

Mine’s more dramatic, or mine’s more terrible. Not only did I watch that person, I, I caused that person,

Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.

Fred Moss: therefore you don’t understand, like sometimes I, you know, I’m. I am not very happy with most of the time I’m not very happy with medicating people. I don’t really like doing that. And I’ve written, nevertheless, I’ve written over a hundred thousand prescriptions in my life.

So, [00:53:00] you know, I, each one of those prescriptions have hurt me, every one of ’em. I feel like the ZA little bit of a zing. It’s almost like snap the rubber band at the very least, you know? And you know, my, I have some you know, significant, um, you know, some significant problems with, with my experience with the field. So how do I explain, you know, what it’s like to, you know, to some people it’s like, well, yeah, how do you manage that? How do you manage listening to people all day? How do you manage, you know, watching all the chaos and disarray inside of the psychiatric industrial complex. And I start wanna tell them, I don’t just watch it.

I order it.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Fred Moss: There is a difference I that I want people to know. It’s not like I was just immersed in the system. I was calling all the shots for the system because the system would have it no other way. And some of those shots I were causing were [00:54:00] not in the best interest of either me or my clients. And that’s what psychiatrists are frequently asked to do.

And most psychiatrists just wash away their own pain about that and realize they wouldn’t take the medicine or the treatment that they prescribe to others on a bet. They would never take the medicine that they prescribed, that they would prescribe for others when, and we start looking at, well, there must be something wrong with that whole theory.

Right? If I would openly prescribe that for you and your child, then I wouldn’t take it from under any conditions. That must suggest that there’s a problem somewhere and maybe there is a problem somewhere. And, and, and you know, psychiatry is a very broken industry for sure.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. It, you know, I, I, I do think there are some, certainly some issues like what you were just describing and. In the industry altogether may, maybe in the entire medical industry. There, there may be some other similar issues with that. I won’t, I won’t go down that rabbit hole right now. But you know, [00:55:00] there, there certainly could be some issues, but when you have someone coming to you and you’re able to connect with them on that human level and whether, again, whether you’ve had a similar experience or not again, to your point, no one has been in my shoes.

No one’s been in your shoes or anybody else’s shoes, so we don’t know exactly what those experiences are, but we, I I think we get a little maybe creative liberties when it comes to that picture that gets painted when you’ve been in a similar situation where you now. Can realistically picture what that person is describing a little bit easier than if you’ve never experienced that situation ever and you have no idea what that person’s even talking about.

I

Fred Moss: I think you’re really just speaking, speaking to the desperation of the illusion of being connected with,

Scott DeLuzio: yeah.[00:56:00]

Fred Moss: again, the the whole point here, the whole point that why those vets, for instance, would not be interested in talking to somebody who wasn’t in a battlefield is ’cause they’ve presum that I won’t be able to connect with them.

Scott DeLuzio: that’s right.

Fred Moss: ’cause what we all already know inherently. Is that the only way to heal is to connect with another human. We already know that. And that’s really at the bottom of this whole thing, is a human connection. At the heart of all healing is a human connection. And that’s where welcome to humanity. That’s where my books, you know, find Your True Voice and my other book to creative aid healing through creativity and self-expression.

As well, the courses that I’ve taught and the, the, you know, transformational restorative coaching that I do, and the indoctor, which, you know, undiagnosis on medicates and indoctrinates people, that’s where it all comes. It’s all from this idea that ultimately it’s all about communication.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, and that makes [00:57:00] a a lot of sense as, as you’re talking it, the communication piece of it. I feel like I’ve been in certain therapy sessions where I’ve said something, I thought I was describing things very well, and I was, I was getting my point across effectively. And then on the other side. The response that I’m getting is, so what I’m hearing is, and it they fill in something completely different from what I was trying to say, and it’s like, I, I’m pretty sure the words I used were accurate.

I’m pretty sure. Like I, I painted this picture as, as well as I can, but I, I’m having trouble with that. And, and so, you get somebody who understands the, the communication piece of it, and, and you get that connection. Yeah. Then, then you can start healing and, and

Fred Moss: It’s an ex exhalation of, of relief. Right? When something, when you feel like, oh yeah, this guy gets it.

Scott DeLuzio: yeah. Yeah.

Fred Moss: Maybe even in this conversation, there’s been [00:58:00] moments where you’re like, oh yeah, he talks a lot, but he gets it, or something like that. And then when that happens, you’re like, you can get charged up.

You can get fired up about continuing communication

Scott DeLuzio: That’s right.

Fred Moss: you know, staying on track with another person who actually is able to resonate harmonically with your experience and that experience, that resonating frequency. I only have one word for it, man. It’s humanity.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, that’s, that’s a beautiful way to think of it. Yeah,

Fred Moss: just truth.

Scott DeLuzio: it is

Fred Moss: Why can I relate to anything you’re saying?

There’s only one resonating frequency that we truly share air.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Fred Moss: And that’s

Scott DeLuzio: That’s our humanity, right? Yeah. Yeah. ’cause all of our experiences that, and I said this before on this show, I, I, I really do believe that we are the sum of our experiences, good and bad. Everything that’s happened to us throughout our life gets us to be the type of person that we are right now. And my experiences and your experiences and somebody else’s experiences are all gonna be different.

And we’re, we’re gonna be [00:59:00] who we are because of what we’ve experienced and

Fred Moss: That’s fascinating. You know, and another piece to that maybe that we can, I’m sure this aligned with what you’re saying is we are not a prisoner of the habits that got us to now. In other words, our next move is not in any way connected to all the moves that we’ve made up until now. We have a choice to make any of hundreds or thousands, or even millions of decisions right this very second.

And they do not have to be sourced or dictated by the past that got us to the present.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, a hundred percent. And just to kind of paint, this is my attempt at painting that picture of what you just said for the listeners who maybe, maybe need a little, little guidance on that, but you know, for somebody who maybe has a, a weight problem, they’re, they’re overweight and they, they, they don’t exercise, they don’t eat well, all those types of things.

So to tomorrow they wake up and their typical routine is they, they get outta bed, they go, they make breakfast. [01:00:00] And it’s this big huge breakfast with, with foods that aren’t good for you, sugary, you know, bad foods, all these kind of things. And they don’t exercise and they don’t do, you know, anything like that.

They could choose to keep doing that because that’s what they’ve always done. Or they can choose to have something a little bit leaner and then they can choose to, Hey, let’s go for a walk in instead of sitting here and scrolling on social media for, you know, the next hour or so, lemme go for a walk and, and get some exercise.

And is that going to immediately, are the next day, are they gonna be dropping weight? No. But they’re moving on that path to making those those better decisions. And the more they do it, the easier it becomes and the more of a habit it becomes, I should say. And then that just becomes kind

Fred Moss: new normal.

Scott DeLuzio: new them.

Yeah. Yeah. Not to use the word normal, but you know, that becomes the, the new

Fred Moss: New pattern.

Scott DeLuzio: pattern and new who they [01:01:00] are. And that’s. I think a, you know, a great way to look at it is you don’t have to be a prisoner to what has happened to you in the past.

Fred Moss: Not at all. You really don’t. And look there, there’s this thing called neural pathways that people talk about, or habits or

Scott DeLuzio: yeah.

Fred Moss: or impulsiveness. That has us leaning back on previous experiences whether or not they were effective when we did them the first

Scott DeLuzio: Mm-hmm.

Fred Moss: So, you know, familiarity has a certain strength.

Like, you know, like if I’m gonna, if I’ve already smoked every day up until now, I might as well smoke. Now, if I’ve already done this addiction up every day up until now, then I might as well do it again. ’cause I’m an addict and I, and I can, so I get the search or, or I get the itch, you know, I wanna steal, I’m gonna steal something, or I’m gonna watch some porn, or I’m gonna you know, like, spend some money or I’m gonna take some drugs or smoke some weed or put something up my nose or, you know, that whatever, drink this, and I get it.

That, [01:02:00] that experience, like, it might be a, like, it might show up again. Like, oh, there’s a lot of pleasure every time I take a, you know, shot of tequila. Okay. I get that, that tequila does it. I, I. I’m not one to put down tequila. I get, I get, I, I appreciate the power of tequila immensely, and that doesn’t mean that, you know, it’s right this moment, it’s time for me to just take a shot at tequila.

I have, I do have a choice to some degree, either over managing the impulse to give myself the scratch of the itch or the dopamine bump that these things can sometimes cause. And that’s the good news. That’s not just bad. That’s like not bad news. That’s like,

Scott DeLuzio: I

Fred Moss: dude, I don’t have better news for you. I,

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Fred Moss: like, seriously, good news

Scott DeLuzio: because you do have the choice, the power is all yours. Whether or not that thing that has possibly been causing whatever the, the problems are that you’re experiencing, you have a choice to do something different. Whether, [01:03:00] whether it’s drugs or overeating or doing whatever negative vice that you might wanna put it put out there, you have a choice to just not do it.

And it’s, it comes out maybe to willpower and you know, what you’re, you’re willing to, to do, to put in that work. But you know that that’s really up to you. And I think that is a kind of a beautiful thing.

Fred Moss: It is, it really is a great thing. And you know, how do we give people access to being who they know they sell to be at the core, it’s cleansing away all the mud and all the cobwebs, all the rust, all the you know, excess baggage that we have put on this core person of ourselves. Over time, you know, the crack in the cement, it’s got larger and larger.

We never turned around and repaired it. And now we’re finding ourselves in habit filled lives doing what we do. And in fact, you know, some of them are more, seem like they’re more gripping than others, you know, have to do something. And why not? You know, why not scroll Facebook? I, [01:04:00] I’m, that Facebook is a nemesis for me.

I’m, you know, I, it’s a nemesis. I am like, I hate this shit. And I, you know, and before too long, like probably within the next hour I’ll be checking Facebook and like, I can’t. And so they win. You know, there’s a, there’s a race out there for our most precious commodity, which of course is our attention.

And the technology that has gone into creating that that race is extremely effective in, you know, controlling or in offering something that’s compulsive and easy enough. Like with a little click of my thumb, I can see, I don’t know, two or three or four more reels. And I, I don’t give a shit about any of those reels really.

They’re, they’re not, they don’t affect my life at all. Some of ’em are a little ticklish. They’re fun or funny or interesting or amusing. But there, there what a total waste of time and money and, and energy. And I certainly could be doing something more effective and I’m, and I choose not [01:05:00] to. And it’s like I feel at the mercy of those things when in fact, what you’re saying, and maybe what I said earlier is I’m not really at the mercy of those things.

I really, there really is a sovereign self here, you know, who has agency and capacity to choreograph and CEO my whole life and I could choose to do something different for

Scott DeLuzio: percent. Yeah. And just, just like, you know, look back 50, 60, 70 years ago, if somebody wanted just to be alone in peace and quiet, turn off the television, take the phone off the ringer. You know, like you didn’t have to have all those distractions. You just, you just turn things off and it’s done.

Now you have your phone, it’s in your pocket, and every time you know, somebody comments on something or, or whatever, you get a little buzz on your, on your phone. And now, oh, well, you know, I gotta go check that. And that’s how they conditioned you, right? We could turn off her phone, but God forbid you might miss something, you know, and so that’s the, the mindset.

[01:06:00] But again, you have the choice. And I, I think that maybe is the, the takeaway here is we, we do have a choice and it’s just what, what are we choosing to do? And, and how is that? How’s that worked out for you? You know, that, that, I think that’s the question we all have to ask for ourselves. So, before we wrap up though I know you mentioned, you know, some of your books and some of the, the virtual training and, and other things that you have going on.

Where can people go to find out more information about who you are, what you do, and, and where they can find this information?

Fred Moss: Yeah, so, you know, there’s a couple things. Number one I, I certainly have a well established web website at welcome to humanity.net and another entry website at dr Fred three sixty.com. But important pieces here that I think are really critical is I think I’ve been looking to help people in whatever ways I can a non medicating, non-diagnostic way.

As you can imagine, I find diagnoses to be traumatic in and of them own selves as well. I get that people are looking for a label ’cause they can explain the [01:07:00] parts of their life that they’re not proud of, and that’s really how that goes. I give you an alphabet soup of a label. You walk away like, Hey, doctor was right.

I have. Bipolar disorder. I have PTSD, I have social phobia, I have narcissistic. I’m on the autistic spectrum. Yay. It’s like, dude,

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah,

Fred Moss: welcome to humanities. Just it, I just get that. And so one of the things I’ve discovered in the last six months is that when I help people with financial literacy of all things, when I help people actually get their money, right, when I help people actually, you know, have a have an understanding of like, you know, where their money is coming in, what, how they’re spending it, how they’re saving it, how they’re investing it, and really helping people get a solid ground under their feet about how finances work.

There’s a, it’s, it’s more healing than anything I’ve ever seen in psychiatry. So most people don’t even realize that they’re missing the security that’s available inside of their financial system. So I am now part of [01:08:00] a group that actually is helping people get that free educational model out there.

And I’ve been in that group for a number of months. I get that, you know, whenever this episode airs, this will we’ll have expanded considerably. And I ask people to, if you’re interested in learning more about this free educational system, the free educational platform about how money works it can be life changing.

I mean, we really learn like what’s really here? What is our financial, what is the amount of money I need to be financially independent, or what does it really mean to own a business? Or what does it really mean to invest in a a particular vehicle knowing that it’s going to bring a handsome return and has no chance of losing?

Like, what would, you know, what would that be like if you, if you knew that you know, that the ve that the investing you’re making is bringing. A substantial return with no chance of losing and in a tax exempt status so that you’re not ever gonna be taxed when you get the money out. It’s like that could change people’s lives drastically, [01:09:00] even if they’re at minimum wage.

So I’m really been I’m really excited about that in my next career. And so if I do quit psychiatry in the next three weeks that’s where I’m going

Scott DeLuzio: That’s where we could find you.

Fred Moss: That’s where you can find me a million percent Exactly.

Scott DeLuzio: Excellent. Excellent. Well, Dr. Fred, I do appreciate you coming on the show and sharing some of these insights. It’s been for me anyways, it’s been eye-opening and, and helping me to understand really some of the, the issues that, that people are dealing with and, and I think it’s incredibly helpful, hopefully for the listeners as well.

I, I think it will be. So, thank you again for, for sharing your insights and coming on the show. Appreciate it.

Fred Moss: my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, you know, let’s build a community. That’s what My Mighty Networks is about. It’s like, let’s build a community of people who are curious and interested. Even if you disagree, it’s okay to respect somebody who says something entirely different than what you think is real.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely.

Fred Moss: the way, you don’t know what’s real either.

Scott DeLuzio: That’s true. Yeah, none of us do, and it’s, [01:10:00] I guess, part of being human, so thank you. Appreciate it.

Fred Moss: Kennedy. You’re welcome.