772 - The Dangers of Mental Illness Diagnoses
===
[00:00:00] hey, what's up, my man? It's Sathya Sam here. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Thank you so much for listening. I'm so glad you're here. Hope you're having a fantastic day. Look, before I jump into today's content, which is going to be really good. I know you're going to love it. I want to make sure that I tell you about my book, The Last Relapse.
This book was launched about two years ago and it's gone on to help tens of thousands of guys. Successfully and those numbers are not exaggerated. We actually have trackers on this kind of stuff. A lot of people have been impacted by it. I just spoke at a conference of about 500 guys we [00:01:00] sold out of this book.
I should have brought more copies. That was one of one of my big mistakes I made on this trip. It is basically my blueprint for recovery from A to Z, whether you're just getting started, whether you've tried a thousand things and nothing has worked this book is sure to give you some new tools some new perspectives.
It even comes with a free workbook and the book itself is free. If you go to the last relapse book. com, that's my gift to you as a listener of this podcast. I'd love for you to go check it out. And look, maybe you're not the one struggling. Maybe you just know somebody who needs help. Go get that book, send them the PDF, or you can send them to the site, however you want to do it.
But really this is like the best resource I could possibly give away for free. And and it's all available to you at the last relapse book. com. Enjoy, today's content today. We are talking about the dangers of mental illness diagnoses. And this is a subject that's become really near and dear to my heart.
The last little bit, I've, I've been really thinking about this a lot. And a huge part of it is. You know, my, my [00:02:00] wife got sick a few years ago, I guess, about five years ago, six years ago. And it was a combination of both mental and physical issues. She's gotten help in both areas and she's, you know, really doing a lot better than she was, you know, certainly six years ago when we were engaged and she was bedridden.
But one of the interesting things that we realize in this experience is that Western medicine doesn't have all the answers. And I, you know, I, I studied biological sciences. I kind of went through the system that would naturally train you and prepare you for well, in my case, it was premed. So I was getting ready to become a doctor and, and be in the Western medical system.
I'm still a big proponent of Western medicine, but it was interesting learning about kind of naturopathic medicine. And this, this is just a bit of a setup. Okay. This is not like a, a really a conversation about naturopathic medicine or Western medicine. But it is to say. That the, the interesting thing that I really appreciated about naturopathic medicine is they didn't have as much diagnostic [00:03:00] language.
They still did diagnostics, at least the good ones do diagnostics, but there wasn't as much of like, Oh, you have this condition and here's what you need to do. It was more like you have this going on in your. endocrine system or in your gut system, get your gut health. And here's, here's what we're going to do to remedy this particular issue.
And it was really interesting because I remember when, when my wife first went and saw some mental health practitioners that were more of a wetter Western medicine philosophy a lot of them said, Oh, you know, you have this and this, okay. That sounds like X, Y, Z, you know, they, they had a label. And I remember my wife feeling so relieved after those appointments, just saying like, Oh my gosh, we finally have.
Some language that we can put to this. And that didn't happen in every appointment. In fact, many appointments, the doctors just said, we have no idea what's going on and the test would come back clear and whatever, but anytime there was a term put to it my wife found it really helpful at first and then what happened a couple of weeks, couple of months later is suddenly this.
This [00:04:00] diagnosis became an identity and I started to observe that there were certain things that she was very capable of doing that she wouldn't do because of her condition, you know, it was in the name of the disease or the diagnosis, whatever it might have been now again, this was just a season we went through.
But it sort of had got me thinking a little bit about the whole mental illness spectrum, you know, because we have so many new conditions. It feels like every year there's more conditions that get diagnosed and that that are emerging. And you know, I was talking to a friend today about geez, what is it called?
The personality disorder. You know, I think is it there's a specific term. I don't know. I'm drawing a total blank, but you know, you have like your standards, like depression and anxiety and bipolar and schizophrenia and OCD. But then now you have like, you know, there's kids can get diagnosed with ADHD and ADD and oppositional defiance disorder.
And there's the autism spectrum. And, you know, there's, there's, I'll get a myriad of mental illnesses. And then, you know, for the scope of this show, we're going to talk about We talked about addiction a [00:05:00] lot and porn addiction is not really a recognized diagnosis, but people can be diagnosed with compulsive porn consumption.
There's porn induced erectile dysfunction, which isn't a diagnosable condition. Medically, very interesting, kind of how that works. Lots of layers lots of different conditions. And it's just got me wondering how valuable are these. Diagnosis. Like, are they really doing us a favor? The other interesting thing to understand about a diagnosis is that a diagnosis is rarely describing the cause of the issue.
Instead, it is describing a set of factors. Symptoms that commonly appear and the course of action sometimes, you know, presents itself very obviously. And an example would probably be something more physical. Like if you have diabetes, you have to get insulin under control and diabetes is really, there's a, there's a category or a conglomerate rather of symptoms that need to be present and prevalent in someone for it to be diabetes.
And then, of [00:06:00] course, the course of action is relatively straightforward for type two and very straightforward for type one. But then if somebody's depressed which again is very interesting how to diagnose depression, the course of action for depression is very different. Right. So, what I mean by that is some people might suggest an SSRI, which is a specific type of medication.
It's actually a little bit more common for anxiety, but it's also prescribed for depression. Another person might say, Hey, how active are you? Do you need to be exercising and walking more? Someone else might say, well, what about the foods you're eating? You know, have you explored spirituality? Do you have a faith life?
You know, there's, there's lots of different solutions because the, The actual causal elements of depression. Are really poorly understood. So is it helpful for someone to know that they, they have depression? Well, maybe but what's actually generally more helpful is for people to understand the causal elements, which is why on this show, we talk a lot about getting to the root.
So I don't care if you watch porn [00:07:00] seven times a day, or you watch porn seven times a year. If you have a problem, there's a root element. And if we can get to the roots, Then we can take care of the behavior, plain and simple. So it's really much more about the root issues. And one of the things that I worry about in our particular day and age is that too many people are establishing identities or intertwining their identities with their diagnosis.
And that can be really limiting. It can be very debilitating and it can actually keep people stuck in their disease state simply because their sense of self worth is wrapped up in the disease. It's wrapped up in the diagnosis diagnosis and if they were to lose the disease or lose the diagnosis, they would actually lose themselves in the process.
That's why we are not fans of the, you know, I'm Cynthia, I'm a porn addict. We don't want to, again, we don't want to deny the realities of someone's situation. However we want to really personally, I, I avoid all the IM statements [00:08:00] that would lead you down that path of being confined to a diagnosis label, whatever it might be. My, my real goal is to actually see your identity shift into something that's completely separate. from any of the symptoms, any of the issues that you're experiencing in your life. And even porn addiction itself is really more symptomatic of deeper causal elements.
And so what I want to encourage you today is number one, be careful of the I am language. And number two, if you've been given a diagnosis, whether it's, you know, mental mental illness or physical illness or something else, Be careful, be careful how you use it, let it inform you, but make sure it doesn't define you.
Those are two very different things, and if we can let, you know, some of these labels and stuff inform us, I think that's fantastic, but we just want to make sure they don't define us. That's when we run into issues, and that's when I think often people, people's diagnosis becomes a real limiting factor for their ability to step into their potential, and everything that God has called them to be.
So look, that's everything for today. If [00:09:00] you want some more help specifically creating porn addiction, make sure you go check out my book, the last relapse. It's available for free at the last relapse book. com. In the meantime, God bless you guys. Thanks for listening. We'll talk soon. [00:10:00]
