But let's go ahead and watch it.

PSSD is not just a loss of sexual function, but a loss for some people of emotional function as well.

That has been the case for me.

Um, before this, I was a super emotional, uh, empathetic, loving, caring, like, Sylvia Plath reading and resonating girl.

And the day I woke up with this injury, I quite literally felt my soul leave my body.

Like, I'm so serious.

It was the most unbelievable, inorganic thing I've ever experienced, and it's a common symptom of people who have this condition.

We're just saying that there's been an overabundance, even if you look at the numbers, there's been an overabundance of things that are normal human feelings that have now been, um, medicinalized.

I think that's what gets someone to that state is just hopelessness.

That gaping black hole of no way through, of no options.

I mean, I can viscerally remember what it feels like to be there.

And so that story that I'd been taught by the mental health industry that I had this, you know, progressively worsening illness led me to choose to kill myself.

And then it was two years after that to get to your question about, you know... finding the research on long-term med use, finding the halls of AA.

So I was 27.

This was in 2010.

Like, should I try an antidepressant? Should I try an anxiety medicine? And if they believe that they should, what would you recommend to someone who's potentially being prescribed these meds?

I think that's what gets someone to that state is just hopelessness.

That gaping black hole of no way through, of no options.

I mean, I can viscerally remember what it feels like to be there.

And so that story that I'd been taught by the mental health industry that I had this, you know, progressively worsening illness led me to choose to kill myself.

And then it was two years after that to get to your question about, you know... finding the research on long-term med use, finding the halls of AA.

So I was 27.

This was in 2010.

Like, should I try an antidepressant? Should I try an anxiety medicine? And if they believe that they should, what would you recommend to someone who's potentially being prescribed these meds?

Um, where do you go from there?

Yeah, well, once I, you know, as I was saying, like after I had that total collapse, like around that time, then I went back willingly to the mental health system and I was basically just tell me what's wrong with me and give me whatever you think I need to fix it.

And so that was when I clicked into this, like I said, this new sense of purpose and meaning.

Like this is what my life is about, just getting treatment so that I can finally one day fix feel okay in my skin.

And so I really internalized this medicalized sense of myself, by which I mean this idea that I had a medical problem in my brain that had a medical solution, these prescriptions.

And that just became like the kind of organizing principle of my life.

Like I have a medical condition that I'm treating and that's my number one priority.

What, uh, what suggestions do you offer to them?

We're just saying that there's been an overabundance, even if you look at the numbers, there's been an overabundance of things that are normal human feelings that have now been, uh, medicinalized.

I wanna, uh, to what you just said, though, I w- even in those cases that you think of as the most extreme, like the guy who was talking to himself on the subway with his pants falling off.

Like, I'm, I'm thinking about a guy I knew.

He lived in a group home that I used to work in years ago.

Um, you know, he'd been living in group homes for decades.

He was on tons of psych meds.

He talked to himself all the time.

What, uh, what suggestions do you offer to them?

Like how did life start? Like how did you end up getting into this realm?

Well, and before I do, I just wanna thank both of you guys for having me on.

It's such an honor to be here.

Um, and I'm really excited for this conversation.

Yeah, I mean, so, so I, I-- the way I like to describe it is that I, I grew up psychiatrized, by which I mean, you know, I was an angry, sensitive, um, intense, uh, you know, heartfelt little girl who, you know, God, God bless my parents.

They were afraid by, you know, my kind of concerning behaviors in, in adolescence with self-injury and just my emotional outbursts, and they didn't know what to do.

And, uh, they sent me to a mental health professional because that's what you as a loving parent in American culture are taught to do when your kid is having a hard time.

This is so dangerous trying to tell people that they don't need medication." So how-- what would you say to that if you were sitting down with that psychiatrist right now?

What do you think happens to a generation of girls where every single intense emotion they experience gets framed as pathology?

I was the beginning of this phenomenon that is now...

You know, I'm an elder millennial, so I was in therapy as a teen in the '90s, and this was just taking off, you know, what is now just everywhere, where your diagnosis is your identity.

It's how you feel seen, and heard, and understood.

It's how you, you feel like your pain can be validated.

I remember what that felt like.

I remember I was just, I was so desperate to feel like I belonged somewhere, and like I understood myself, and other people around me understood me, and eventually that, that diagnostic framework came, became the kind of single meaning-making apparatus that I had for myself, and it helped me feel like I was understood.

"You don't get to tell me that, like, y- with you doing the XYZ." So I would have not-- I would've been so resistant, you know?

I had, um, a doctor reach out, and they said, "Okay, if there's a overlap in symptoms between the original mental illness and the rela- and the, um, protracted withdrawal, how do you differentiate?"

I personally don't think you really can.

I mean, i- if it's someone, if it's been long-term exposure to the medication, how can you? I know that, I know that, you know, they are cl- like, clinical, you know, they're, I think Mark Horowitz's, um, work has some kind of methodology for distinct- you know, distinguishing.

Like, an obvious thing is if it's, if it's a symptom that you've never had before, yeah, like, you can probably assume it's withdrawal.

But like you said, if it mimics the struggles you were having previous to the medication-You know, to me, time is the best indicator, and, and not just a few weeks or months, like, potentially years.

It- when I think about how many years it took for my body to kind of reestablish any sense of baseline, especially because I'd been medicated as a kid like you, so I never had a baseline, um, it isn't the kind of thing you can figure out quickly.

Like, what's me versus what's med effects versus what's withdrawal effects? Like, can you ever even? I'm not sure.

Well, do you have, um, let's do, do you have advice for people, not for people who are thinking about taking them, because they can just listen to the podcast and then come to their own conclusions, but, um, what about these people, I'm worried for all the people who have been on them for more than, like, two, five years, and are like, "Oh my gosh," you know, "I'm having some of these side effects," or, "I've tried coming off and then they told me I was relapsing." Like, what do you tell people who are in that position?

Don't you think there's a mental health crisis in the United States right now?

Well, we do talk about that.

There is a mental health crisis.

And the argument that I make in my work and I'm speaking out about my book is that the crisis is not what we think it is.

The common way of talking about this in our culture is we have this mental health crisis.

And the reason we're here is because people aren't getting enough treatment.

They aren't getting the treatment they need.

What did you find, though, that helped you learn to navigate these emotions, these scary emotions that when you were no longer medicated?

So first of all, I mean, Laura, how would you define what you see as therapy culture actually being?

I think therapy culture arises from a deeper phenomenon of medicalization, which, you know, I might describe as the, the process by which we take ordinary human experiences and struggles and we redefine them as medical problems, as clinical problems, which then opens up a framework that is largely limited to professionals, diagnoses, treatments.

And so I think therapy culture was almost an inevitable byproduct of this rise in medicalizing what it means to be human that I think really began to take off in the mid-20th century as the psychiatric profession and its kind of efforts to, to bring psychopharmaceutical medications to market really took on a louder and larger presence in our culture.

And so I think inevitably, what that leads to is the, the shrinking down of non-medical spaces, of non-medicalized frameworks for understanding-

When did you first sort of feel that something was, was a little off in you that maybe couldn't easily be explained by, you know, w- the foibles of just being human?

Well, my crisis really began at age 13, and on paper I had everything together.

I was a good student.

I was an accomplished athlete.

So first of all, I mean, Laura, how would you define what you see as therapy culture actually being?

I think therapy culture arises from a deeper phenomenon of medicalization, which, you know, I might describe as the, the process by which we take ordinary human experiences and struggles and variations and we redefine them as medical problems, as clinical problems, which then, you know, opens up a framework that is largely limited to professionals, diagnoses, treatments.

And so I think therapy culture was almost an inevitable byproduct of this rise in medicalizing what it means to be human that I think really began to take off in the mid, the mid 20th century as the psychiatric profession and, and its kind of efforts to, to bring psychopharmaceutical medications to market really took on a louder and larger presence in our culture.

And I think it really escalated beginning in the '90s with, you know, George Bush I declaring it the Decade of the Brain, kicking off, uh, a very concerted effort to kind of conquer this territory of the brain, which, which we've all kind of come to now see as the, the locus of, of emotions and thought.

And so I think inevitably within a few decades, we're gonna be in a place like this where as a medicalized framework of understanding ourselves takes on more visibility in our culture, what that leads, what that leads to is the, the shrinking down of non-medical spaces, of non-medicalized frameworks for understanding-

Um, when did you first sort of feel that something was, was a little off in you that maybe couldn't easily be explained by, you know, w- the foibles of just being human?

Well, my, my crisis really began at age 13.

And on paper I had everything together.

And he was like..."Look, kids have not become less depressed and they've become more violent since we've been giving them all these medications." He said, "I forced the FDA to say, these ads had to say, 'You might be considering suicide or harming someone else.'" He was like, "I guarantee you, if you look at every school shooter, they have one of these medications in their system." Why don't we talk about that?

It's such an important question and I think the, uh, whether it's, you know, because this, the story is about most mass shooters, "Oh, this was someone with untreated mental illness," quote unquote.

And then, you know, that's why they, they, they did this.

But as you said, if you look at the stories of many, if not most, if not all of them, they were already interfacing with the mental health system in some way.

And so whether, whether they were on these drugs when they, you, you know committed these horrific acts, or maybe in some cases had stopped these drugs abruptly, which itself can cause withdrawal symptoms that literally are suicidal or homi- homicidal ideation.

I mean, I wouldn't be...

Because they've made it so hard to look at these shooters' medical records, I have a friend who's a professor who tried to FOIA them and couldn't get them.

What a horrible thing to think, too.

Well, this progressed quickly, didn't it?

Oh my gosh.

In a matter of, you know, 15 minutes.

And never in my wildest dreams had I ever considered that I might once be faced with this kind of situation, because I had been this good, little mental patient for so many years, doing everything my doctor said, always saying yes, taking my meds as prescribed.

Just, like, so diligent and good at what I was doing (clears throat) as a patient, and now here I was, non-compliant.

And- and that recognition that my psychiatrist had the power to strip me of my civil liberties and incarcerate me on a unit, stripping me of my right to fresh air and freedom, dislodged this, like, deep, deep faith that I had always had.

Not al- I mean, not at the very beginning, but from age 18 on, that I had had in this system, and I had two more experiences like that where I was, you know, made to take a drug that I didn't wanna take, um, and then after I had been discharged from that (clears throat) what would be my last hospitalization, um, I slept through a therapy appointment because I was so tranquilized by that drug, and my therapist called the cops to do a wellness check on me, which I talk about in the book.

Yep.

Listen to Hello Monday with me, Jessi Hempel, on the LinkedIn Podcast Network, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, my name is Laura Delano.

I'm an author, speaker, and consultant.

Today, I'm going to share five of the key insights from my book, Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.

Insight number one.

Personal struggle doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with you.

In fact, it may well be the very opposite.