EP 69: When Labels Replace Lives: Reclaiming Choice, Curiosity, and Consent with Jenn Schmitz, MS, LPC

We challenge the reflex to medicate and the vacuum around de-prescribing by tracing Jen’s 25-year story with SSRIs, from teenage labels and muted emotions to neonatal withdrawal, metabolic fallout, and a hard-won hyperbolic taper. We share tools for safer tapering, building a support tribe, and reclaiming informed consent and agency.

• prescribers trained to start meds, not de-prescribe
• teen SSRIs without context of eating disorder or stress
• labels and DSM coding shaping identity and care
• pregnancy decisions without full informed consent
• neonatal withdrawal and long-term family impact
• seasonal dose hikes vs nutrition and light therapy
• metabolic dysfunction and dismissal by clinicians
• withdrawal misread as relapse or new disorder
• addiction vs dependence language and why it matters
• hyperbolic tapering and liquid formulations
• micronutrients, amino acids, and restorative movement
• mindfulness to rebuild sensitivity and agency
• research literacy, conflicts of interest, and bias
• how to choose your tribe and educate supporters
• Jen’s consulting, therapy work, and advocacy

Links: 

Website: www.jennschmitz.com

TikTok: @jenn.schmitz

Instagram: @therapistjen

Podcast IG: @thegaslittruthpodcast

YouTube: @thegaslittruthpodcast

Bio:

Meet Jenn Schmitz, a woman redefining the field of psychology with a unique blend of expertise and lived experience. Holding a Master of Science in Clinical Psychology and having spent over a decade as a traditional therapist, Jenn took a bold step beyond the conventional boundaries of Western medicine. Her personal struggle, marked by the dark process of tapering off psychiatric medication, revealed insights that reshaped her approach to mental health. Today, as a Nationally Certified Neuro-Health Coach specializing in Mental Health and Addiction Nutrition, she empowers others as a Holistic Deprescribing Consultant. By integrating physical wellness, nutrition, and mindfulness, Jenn guides clients safely through the intricate process of tapering off psychiatric medication. Driven by a mission to expose the hidden harm of psychiatric treatments and ignite curiosity, she hosts the internationally acclaimed The Gaslit Truth Podcast. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Problem With De-prescribing
• 1:42 Jen’s Backstory And Early SSRIs
• 5:40 Labels, Diagnosis, And Missing Context
• 10:45 Pregnancy, Risk, And Absent Informed Consent
• 16:20 Seasonal Symptoms Or Side Effects
• 20:48 Industry Influence And Informed Consent
• 26:30 Rethinking Diagnosis And The DSM
• 31:40 Plateaus, Increases, And Long-Term Harm
• 37:00 Neonatal Withdrawal And Hard Truths
• 42:10 Metabolic Dysfunction And Medical Dismissal
• 46:50 Fighting For A Liquid Dose And Hyperbolic Tapers
• 51:20 Withdrawal Misdiagnosed As Relapse
• 56:00 Addiction, Dependence, And Language
• 1:00:50 Building A Support Tribe For Tapering
• 1:05:40 Preparing The Body: Testing And Micronutrients
• 1:10:30 Mindfulness, Agency, And Reading Your Signals
• 1:16:00 Emotional Blunting, Loss, And Grief
• 1:21:30 Hope, Neuroplasticity, And Repair

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 0:00

Prescribers know how to prescribe. They have no idea how to de-prescribe. And I will take that battle on with any psychiatrist, any family medicine doctor. I'll take it on with anybody because you weren't taught that. The curriculums today do not teach that. It's not in there. You're taught how to give this medication to people, but you're not taught when is it that we start to question, okay, well, when is it time to maybe come off? You are smarter than your prescriber. You know more than the person that is handing you those medications because the person handing you those medications is not taking into account subjectively what's going on with you and your whole story, nor is there science behind that prescription. There is not.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42

Holding a master's of science in clinical psychology and having spent over a decade as a traditional therapist, Jen took a bold step beyond the conventional boundaries of Western medicine. Her personal struggle, marked by the dark process of tapering off psychiatric medication, revealed insights that reshaped her approach to mental health. Today, as a nationally acclaimed certified neurohealth coach specializing in mental health and addiction nutrition, she empowers others as a holistic de-prescribing consultant. By integrating physical wellness, nutrition, and mindfulness, Jen guides clients safely through the intricate process of tapering off psychiatric medication. Driven by a mission to expose the hidden harm of psychiatric treatments and ignite curiosity, she hosts the internationally acclaimed The Gaslit Truth podcast. I am so excited you're here. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_04: 2:33

And you were on the show, and that was great. My goodness. Yeah, and that's how we connected, right? Yes, absolutely. This is how what it's about.

SPEAKER_00: 2:42

I know, I know. So we need to hear your story. You have such an incredible story to tell. So let's start there.

SPEAKER_05: 2:48

Yeah, I I do have one hell of a story. So I guess it makes sense to start from the beginning and talk about something that I think happens to a lot of people. And they go into a prescriber when they're younger. I was a teenager. I thought, Michelle, I thought I was about 18 years old when I started having um SSRIs in the picture for me. I had broken up with my boyfriend in college and was having a very, very hard time. And so went into the doctor, was telling them about the symptoms that I was having. I was having going through depression. I was having grief. All you know, all the things that you should have when you're uh, you know, going through a breakup as a teenager. Yeah, he's the love of my life, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff, right? Well, turns out that um about a year or so ago, I got a hold of all of my medical records. And it turns out that that was not the beginning of my story as I thought it had been for the last 24, 25 years of my life. I actually had started on SSRIs even younger than that. I was 16 years old. I didn't know that because one, I have no memory of it. Uh, and two, it was medical records that cleared that up for me. And I went, shit, I was 16. Oh, I don't know if I can swear on this podcast. I'm sorry, I better I keep my P's and Q's together here. Um, like I was 16 years old. And so I recently discovered that. Um, that that was actually the start of my story. Why I went on psychiatric medications at 16, I cannot tell you. The um dictation that is in those notes from the prescriber who was my pediatrician at the time, I could not tell you. Um, it's it's very vague, doesn't give a lot of information. So um, so that was the start, I guess.

SPEAKER_04: 4:28

I guess when I was 16.

SPEAKER_05: 4:30

Yeah. Yeah. So um the the pieces that were missing that I wasn't asked more so about, I think, that could have changed some of this was asking me some more questions about, well, what's going on in your life as a teenager in high school? I really struggled with self-esteem issues on the inside, even though on the outside it wouldn't appear like that at all. Um, I actually had an eating disorder that probably between 16 and 18 years old was ramping up that nobody knew about. It was very super squirrel secret. Um, that was absolutely contributing to my mood and how I handled a life stressor that happened here when I was later in college. So by 18, I had already been on that medication. And so broke up with my boyfriend. Do recall having several meetings with my prescriber. I was switched between uh Selexa and Lexapro a couple times. And per the notes, it was because of finances and cost. Um, I'm assuming uh maybe insurance for my parents, not really sure. Yeah, so went through a couple of different SSRIs in that time. Um, and broke up with uh my boyfriend, came back home from college, and fast forward 25 years later, and I'm still on this medication. Okay. And I have a dear colleague and friend who said to me, Well, are you are you still brokenhearted? And I went, no, it's 25 years. I'm married, have a family, like I don't even know where that guy is. Well, then why are you still taking this medication? I'm like, well, I don't I don't know. Nobody has ever asked me that question. Um, and so part of my story includes many, many, many years of um seeing prescribers. I was always prescribed uh my SSRI from a OBGYN or a family practice doctor. So just a little information for people, it's always like, well, what did your psychiatrist say? Which I've never seen a psychiatrist a day in my life. Uh I I transferred from seeing um my pediatrician, who right around 16, 17, was like, it's time for you to um to see a different physician. Um, I went and saw an OB. The OB continued that prescription. Um, and now it is continued by a primary care doctor, uh family, family medicine doctor that I have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:00

That was so crazy.

SPEAKER_05: 7:02

Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like gotta see a psychiatrist. What's the psychiatrist? Like anybody can prescribe, guys, right? You've got NPs, APs, family docs, p my pediatrician started, right? Um, OBGYNs, it it's the gamut, the psychiatrists.

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

Well, and it there's there's like this idea that if you're seeing a psychiatrist, you're getting better advice, you know, that they know better, that they know the science, that they're the, you know, and so I I think, you know, I think that they're all in the same bag, honestly. Because the the psychiatric medication, like the stuff that you're getting, one of the things that I found interesting in your story was was the advice you received when you decided to get off the medication. So can you talk a little bit about that? Because that's very common. People that are listening, I'm sure, will have had a similar experience or have heard of somebody having a similar experience. So, what did they say when you decided to get off of this stuff? What did they tell you?

SPEAKER_05: 7:55

I've had a couple times in the history where I decided to get curious about what it could be to not have this in my life. The first time came when I was ready to have children. I had been on uh psychiatric medication, right, since I was about 16 years old, um, stayed in the SSRI category. So for me, that's the category of medications, classification of medications that I was always taking. Okay. I was ready to have kids and I wanted to have kids. And um, the conversation then went naturally to my OB. And my OB, remind you, was also my prescriber, right, since I was younger. And there was not a conversation about risks and benefits and alternatives. Um, the informed consent idea was not something that had been given to me, nor had it been given to me for, you know, the 10 years, 15 years almost I was on it before I decided that I wanted to start to have kids. And the conversation was very much so around my mental health and what kind of mom would I be once I started to have children. And we need to, you know, whether or not the risks and the benefits were, I don't think that conversation happened verbally. That conversation was had in the head of the prescriber. It wasn't something that was an open conversation with me. It was more so it is a risk for you to go off of these medications because there is this lengthy history of depression, Jen, which mind you, was not the case. Yeah, yeah. Over the years of prescribing, I would have symptoms that would pop that would that would, you know, ebb and flow. I'd have times where I'd go in and I'd say I'm doing really great. I'd have times where I would go in and say, things are actually worse, we need to up it. Yeah. I don't want to discount seasonal affective disorder, everybody, but I'm gonna tell you right now, the second you tell a prescriber, like I really, really do bad in the winter months, which many of us do. Instead of us looking at nutrition and vitamin D and light therapies and all these things, yeah, the seasons, Jen. So all these years, it's okay. When we get to those seasons, you up that. So what did I do? I would always up my medication every single fall and winter because that's when I would struggle. Okay. So, so these conversations that I was having were more so not about let's really look at the symptoms you're having now. It was you were diagnosed with depression when you were, you know, 18 years old, and we got to make sure that as a mom, those symptoms don't come back. Yeah. It's arbitrary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:32

Well, and I think it's driven by fear. Like it's a very fear, like, you know, I one of the things I noticed, uh, Dr. Terralin was posting about this the other day. You know, people are like, well, it's better to be on the medication than you know to risk the mom dying from you know, analyzing herself. And yes, and I that kind of stuff infuriates me because there is zero acknowledgement about the the impact of the medication or the the withdrawals or you know, any of it. Yes. People, people feel, you know, have these feelings, people will come into these medications without ever having those kinds of thoughts and start having them on the medications. Like it's there is no, there's no guarantee that you taking these medications is actually going to prevent those things, but they but there's a lot of, and I honestly I don't blame I want to get your your insights on this because you're you're professional, you've been in mental health your entire career. I don't necessarily blame the practitioners because they are giving the information that they've been provided with. And so I think that there's unless you get a unique practitioner who starts to get curious and question what they're being told, they're just parroting back all of the information that they have been given about these medications. And that medication or that information is coming from sources that are have a monetary motivation.

SPEAKER_05: 11:50

They're fraught, fraught with conflicts of interest, right? Yes, like just filled with them. And I my thought on this, um, I have changed my thought on this over time. And I I have to give a shout out um to Dr. Kendra Campbell. Yeah. Uh, she's a holistic psychiatrist. She was on the Gaslet Truth Podcast. She was one of the earlier guests we had on, and she said something to me that really I had such a hard time hearing it. Like I was so mad for a while. And she she said to me uh the this idea that in and of a nutshell, informed consent, all right, is gonna be coming from Western medicine providers that are in a very uninformed state. And the information that they are given is going to be, as you say, parroted back from the research that they have have built their careers within the academia and what's given in that respect. And that's what they know. I can align with that. I think the reason why I was able to get through the statement she said to me, which was informed consent is also your responsibility, Jen. It is not fully the responsibility of that prescriber. And always I was so mad when she said that. I was so, so mad because I'm like, never once did someone sit down and go, risks, benefits, alternatives a year later. Risks, benefits, alternatives a year later. Right. And when I thought a little bit about this, right, I was like, okay, you're not wrong though, because as a therapist who has been in the mental health field and working in the field for, you know, 15 years now, I can tell you that I was trained in that same way. And until I finally got curious about how medications could be causing harm, I've been preaching the gold standard of treatment, which is psychmeds and therapy. They are your gold standard. People are gonna get better. This is and because that's what I was taught. I was taught about the theory of chemical imbalance in the brain and that you know, there that the how serotonin is formed in the brain. It's actually you don't have enough of it. I'm sure I was told that throughout my medical records as well. Um, I read all of them and I was looking for that line somewhere, and I was looking for the line that says Jen has an imbalance in serotonin, right? Because I I know I was told that at one point, right? Yeah, I was taught that. So I believed that. I preached that as a as a therapist. I perpetuated so many evil things unknowingly, and I will own them now. I will talk openly about them now. Um, whether it was from diagnosing people and how much stock I used to put in a stupid label, which that's something we could talk about too, and like all the way down to preaching this idea to clients, like, yeah, you should go back to see a psychiatrist. Yeah, you should go back and see your psychiatrist. I didn't get curious about it either. So here Kendra says this to me, and I'm so upset. And then I stand back and I go, but part of my power where I was powerless is I did have an option to read more, to not take what was saying to me at face value, to get curious, get inquisitive. But I never, I never did that. I never took the chance to go, okay, how is this impacting people around me? My husband, my kids, my parents when I was struggling from the mental health aspect of this and taking ownership for mental health. Michelle, you said this when you came on my podcast. It was like there's a certain point where we have to stop using that mental health as the excuse because look what's happening to people around us. I know.

SPEAKER_00: 15:21

I know. My kids saved my life for sure.

SPEAKER_05: 15:24

Yeah. You know, and so I I think I think that the idea of prescribers being solely responsible for this, I think it's inaccurate. Um, I think that what they are taught is what they're taught, and that's all they know. And just like me, until we got curious to look at something in a different way, you you only know what you know. And our Western academia is going to only teach it one way.

SPEAKER_00: 15:50

It's still being taught that way, you know. Well, and I have the the issue I have when the this informed consent thing comes up over and over again, because I'll see people who are very well-intentioned, who are in the right space, I think, moving in the right direction, talking about how we need to have informed consent. And my argument with that is that people who are in, so people I work with are you know suffering from bipolar symptoms and they're in crisis, you know, so they are sometimes ending up in the hospital before they get diagnosed, you know, because they've gone, you know, they're developed mania or, you know, so they're they're very scary symptoms that they experience. Yes. So they're going in, and even if, even if, and I was thinking back on this myself, on my experience, even if I'd gone into the doctor and they had told me all of the risks of the medication, if that was all that was presented to me, I would have taken it because I was in crisis and I needed help. Correct. Right? Yes. So we are not, I don't think that the conversation can be complete with just informed consent. I think we need to stop labeling people, first of all. And let's talk about that right now because you were told that you had been, you've been struggling with depression. And I've actually started taking issue with the buckets that we put things in. You know, we we put all of these symptoms into depression or all these symptoms into the anxiety bucket, or all these symptoms into the, you know, the manic bucket. We don't call out the symptoms separately. We don't identify like what are you actually experiencing when you're a manic? What do we actually experience when you're depressed? And why are you experiencing those feelings or those experiences or those, you know, why are you having this kind of stuff happening? There's no conversation about any of that because we have pathologized the human suffering. We've pathologized.

SPEAKER_05: 17:33

Regular human experience is pathologized completely. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't disagree with that uh at all. What's so interesting about the story, and as we go through it here, this this idea of the labels, because I had, of course, I had several labels put on me, right? Diagnoses, going through diagnostically looking at everything. And they were really arbitrary. And uh for those of you who maybe don't have a ton of knowledge on this, right, as a therapist uh and as a per as a prescriber, somebody who um is gonna be prescribing or a doctor, we have these, these, these codes that we have to put on people in the field of uh counseling. For me, I use the DSM, which is the diagnostic statistical manual mental disorders. That's what I use to diagnose. Insurance is going to use the ICD 10, and physicians are gonna code through that way. They're very similar in coding. Um, and essentially we have to put these labels on people so that they can receive prescriptions, so that they can use insurance. Um, people come to me and I give informed consent on the idea that you're seeing a therapist, and did you know that I'm gonna label you as something? And there are risks to that, there's benefits, but I'm telling you, and there's alternatives as well, uh, believe it or not. And so I have that conversation with people. I was I had so many labels put on me, and they're they're actually really arbitrary. And these, these books that we use, these coding systems we use, are are fraught with conflicts of interest. The DSM book that uh clinicians use for diagnosing people with mental disorders, the third version that came out in the 80s, the individual who led the crusade on putting it together, honestly did a public statement indicating that when that book came out that had hundreds of diagnoses in it, there were less than 15 that were actually founded in research. And he felt so pressured to put this book out that it led to publishing something that now there's two more versions of it that wasn't even rooted in research. Most of it was not. And fast forward to today, myself as a as a counselor in my counseling business that I have, uh, anyone who prescribes, anyone who sees a patient, we are labeling them and those labels stay with you. Most of them are quite arbitrary because we focus on that so we can get to the treatment versus where did it come from? And what are the what are the symptoms? What's the story behind that label? The story behind my labels has been squashed and gone for many, many, many, many, many years. And yet that carried through all these years where I was being diagnosed. I'm a mom getting ready to have kids and told we have to weigh these, like to weigh this. Like, you're what if that depression comes back? How could that depression come back when the issue that caused it is 20 years old, right? But it stayed with me forever and it became part of my picture. It became part of the why behind, you know what, you know, your mood tanks, your depression gets worse in the fall. Um, actually, the reason my depression probably got worse in the fall was from several other things, including sunlight, low vitamin D, uh, and that my nutrition and the fact that my nutrition was pretty crappy for many, many years. There's so many reasons that could have caused my mood to tank in the fall. It probably had nothing to do with the depression. It could have been an iatrogenic effect from an SSRI. Because as we know, when you are on SSRIs for long term, they will hit a plateau, which if my records beautifully show increase. Months and months go by, another increase, months and months go by, another increase. You could see it laid out because the medications itself continue to plateau until you're put on a max dose. Yeah. Um, because that is what happens. They lose that effectiveness over time as the brain continues to recalibrate. And so you could see that spelled out right now in hindsight. I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh my goodness, right? So, so to get back to your question earlier, it that was one of the first times where I was like, I gotta get off this stuff. And that was the conversation that was had with my OB. I was told that the medications do not break the placental barrier. Uh, I remember asking that for both of my children, um, which is grossly inaccurate. Now, I had my children, guys, in the last uh 13 years. Research goes back to the 80s already, showing that that is disproven and is inaccurate. So that was out there at the time. Did I get curious about it? No. I took what my physician was saying as a truth. And I went through, I followed that. So I had two children taking Lexapro through both of the pregnancies. Both of those children um suffered withdrawal, neonatal withdrawal. Just finished signing a petition for the FDA about all of the other complications that I had: birth complications, neonatal withdrawal complications, mental health, early mental health complications, learning disabilities that have now occurred, that all are could very well be from such a long-term use of a medication that has completely changed how my whole body communicates with itself. My one child I know was in significant withdrawal, lots of latching issues, feeding issues. Um, the child was unable to, you know, holding them would do nothing. The colicy lasts forever. Um, 15 months of not sleeping, couldn't connect with my child, couldn't breastfeed my kids because they couldn't latch on. But the the list goes on and on and on. Um and so that was the first time I think I got really curious um and asked about the medications, but didn't didn't go, all right, Jen, take what the doctor's saying, now go look this up. Yes. Yeah, go go just go look it up, right? So I'm in my 20s, and that was probably the first time. Then we fast forward to about three years ago or so, where the second level of like, I'm gonna ask about this again came into play. At this point, I was with my um had transitioned from my OB as my prescriber to my family medicine doctor. And it was following someone asking me, Jen, like, why are you still on this? It was following me starting to really dive down the rabbit hole of the impacts of SSRIs. It was following me actually looking at all of the medical issues that I've had that have popped throughout my life, you know, from everything from major digestive problems to horrific acne and everything in between to infertility. Um, there were two years where I was told that I was infertile, uh, did all the drugs, did all the things, um, was able to end up having children, but spent about two years in the mindset that I couldn't. So all of these tiny little things, you know, precancerous stuff that has popped along the way, all the all these, you know, medical things, um, significant amounts of sinus issues, you know, and you just kind of look at it, multiple rounds of Accutane for horrific acne, prescription deodorants because I'm sweating. I cannot stop sweating. And here a lot of these are all correlated and side effects to this medication, right? So a few years ago, I'm like, all right, it's time to dive into this. So I went down the rabbit hole, did all the research, went into my prescriber, and it was all dismissed. There is there is no way that this can be causing this. No, Jen, my most recent adventure was Jen, your blood sugar is high. And we're gonna start some pre-diabetic protocols with you. And I'm sitting here going, I am the poster child of lifestyle being dialed in. Like, talk about sleep, exercise, nutrition to the gill, like it doesn't make sense at all. Yeah, mindfulness, wellness practices, and I'm like, this doesn't add up. So of course I present the research on metabolic dysfunction after long-term SSRI use. And I'm told, no, no, no, that's not possible. It's your liver, and the liver is causing these blood sugar elevations, and we still we need to start looking at that. So I stopped taking what was given to me at face value, and I made a decision that I don't really care what you're saying, I'm going to start to titrate off of this medication. And so that's when the second problem came into play. Prescribers know how to prescribe, they have no idea how to de-prescribe. And I will take that battle on with any psychiatrist, any family medicine doctor. I'll take it on with anybody. Because you weren't taught that. The curriculums today do not teach that. It's not in there. You're taught how to give this medication to people, but you're not taught when is it that we start to question, okay, well, when is it time to maybe come off? How do you know when maybe we should look at coming off? Maybe we should look at the symptoms that you keep having, and perhaps it's actually being exacerbated by the medications. Maybe this is there is this iatogenic effect that's occurring. Um and so I started to get super curious about that. And for me, what it led to is going back into that same prescriber. I brought the Moudsley's deep prescribing guidelines with me, and I sat it in front of her and I tapped on it. This, like, I was like such a mother thing. I'm like, oh my gosh, she's never gonna talk to me again, right? I'm tapping on this book, right? And I said, I don't want to listen to what you're gonna say. I want you to look at this and read this for a minute. And what I was tapping on is a hyperbolic tapering chart that was in there, and she looked at it, and then I turned to the page that talks about um cert occupancy and what that really is and the mechanism of action within Lexapro and showing this, and that was probably one of the most empowering days I had. I walked out of there, still not um getting any further because my demand was it's time you give me a liquid. Yeah. Because at that point I had started to taper. And it didn't still happen. It took another appointment for me to do something very similar. And my prescriber was like, I just can't get on board with this. In the 20 years I've been in medicine, I've never given someone a liquid. And I said, I don't care, but then I'm gonna be the first person that you do that to. And I showed her everything I had. Created, I built a case for why I'm an expert in this, and I I will do this and how it works. And hesitantly, finally, I was given a liquid.

SPEAKER_02: 28:56

But it took a huge fight, a big fight.

SPEAKER_05: 29:01

So that was kind of the start of um my deprescribing journey, which was um three years ago, and also led me to opening a consultation practice to help people get off psychiatric medications.

SPEAKER_00: 29:14

And you're not all the way off, are you?

SPEAKER_05: 29:16

No. So um people will ask me this a lot. So I started at 20 milligrams of Lexapro. Um, as of today, I'm down to 3.25. I have been tapering, guys, for two years and two months. It has been quite quite the the hell, truly. I had to really learn a lot about what tapering was and the different ways in which you could do this. I started to have some pretty scary symptoms when I started tapering that I've never had in my life. Suicidal thoughts, really lots of lots of out of body experiences, a little bit of tart of dystonia that started. Lots of anxiety. I had depression, not anxiety. Now I have anxiety and I have it, you know, big time. Lots of questioning reality, perceptual issues, histamine issues. The list goes on and on and on. A lot of things I never had until I started to taper. Lots of paranoia, you know, like husband's been gone at the gym for two hours. That's too long. He's doing something. Never, never had that in my life, right? So lots and lots of symptoms that started to pop, not as a function of my original disorder, guys, as a function of withdrawal and what happens when you change the brain.

SPEAKER_00: 30:50

And that's one of the things that drives me crazy, too, is that because we've put everything in these buckets, you know, we've got the depression bucket, the anxiety bucket, the, you know, manic bucket. Anything that happens when you're withdrawing from the medication gets dumped in that bucket and it's identified as, oh, your disorder is coming back, or oh, now you have a new disorder, or you know, it's your illness. And there is no there, you know, I it drives me crazy that they call it discontinuation syndrome instead of acknowledging this is withdrawal. Your brain adjusted to the medication. It has changed the function of your brain, and when you take it away, your brain goes through withdrawal. It is no different than going through like withdrawals from from illicit drugs. It is no different.

SPEAKER_05: 31:33

It isn't. And there's there's I really get into social media like this topic with people, and there are a lot of well-respected people out there. The Nicole Lambersons of the world, the Mark Horritzes of the world that that I don't, we don't see eye to eye on the semantics behind what we call this. Yeah. And that's okay. And I just want to throw that out there because, you know, like these are all people, they're colleagues, they're people that I have so much respect for. But as a consumer who's going through this, my definition of this is it is withdrawal. I did a I put a uh a thing out at one point um on my podcast, I did an episode where I went through all of the symptoms of what tolerance and withdrawal are in relation to um an addiction and going through the addictive disorders. I hit every marker. I met all the criteria. My body is physiologically dependent on this drug. And when I remove this drug, my world falls apart. I'm seeking it out in places that I that, I mean, because you can't go without it. I mean, you, you know, you've got a certain half-life for all these drugs, and you know what happened. I know what happens if I hit for the 48-hour mark of not taking this. Things go real south real bad. And if I don't have it, I'm seeking it out. I'm finding ways to get it. I'm I'm calling the girlfriends I have that are prescribed LexPro going, my my my medication's not coming in. I need to use some of yours because you are trying to find it. No different than someone who's struggling and battling with any kind of other addiction is seeking it out. Because once you put it back in the body, the withdrawal symptoms go away.

SPEAKER_01: 33:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_05: 33:16

They are gone, they subside. And so I refer to this as addiction. I refer to it myself as being chemically addicted and I'm physiologically dependent on this. I am addicted to this. I can't go without it. And if I'm not extremely careful with how I remove it from my body, the withdrawal is so significant uh that I cannot function. Uh, I am so blessed. I have never been put inpatient anywhere. I could have been several times. Okay. Um, the fact I haven't been diagnosed with mania also blows my mind because within states of withdrawal, I would have I tick every box. I tick every single box. Um, and I've been there. And I think part of the beauty of this is I had enough knowledge of this before I started because otherwise I would have gone in to my prescriber and I I would have said, hey, like this is what's happening. I can't function, I can't live, I can't, and I would have gotten, well, this is why you need it and you need to go back on it. And it's a manifestation of your original symptomology, Jen. You do have depression, like, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 34:23

Yep. Well, and and so I went through the cross tapering. So I took, I took, you know, used micronutrients to help me heal my brain. And then when I would get over medicated, then we would taper down a little bit, and then we would wait, things would level out, and then you'd start to get over medicated again because my brain was healing. And but then when you're done, one of the things that I also learned is that this stuff was saying your soft tissues for up to 10 years. There's research about this. And so I started like I was an athlete and I would go through like training sessions. You know, I would, I would get into really intense training, and I didn't realize I was pushing the medication out of my soft tissues into my body, and then I would get depressed. So I had one time when I thought I would outsmart the system and I was going to do a cleanse. And I was warned not to do this, but I didn't listen because I was just sick of the, I was sick of the med releases. I didn't want to deal with that anymore. And I was so depressed and suicidal that I, if I hadn't known better, I would have gone into the hospital. But I had to like beg my husband to, I'm like, I'm not doing well. I was like telling him everything. I was crying and stuff, but I said I can't go to the hospital because they'll put me on medication. And I I I've come so far. I was off medication at that point.

unknown: 35:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 35:37

And it was scary. It was a really rough thing. And that's one of the things that's hard when somebody is going through this, there's no support system for it. Like we have to create support systems, you know, through like you're you're a support system. Our my group is a support system. But that's one of the things that's challenging when people decide that they want to take, you know, take this on and they do want to get healthy and they want to help their brain heal, that they have to, you know, they have to seek out help. But we can't go in the hospital because they're just gonna put you back on drugs, right?

SPEAKER_05: 36:07

You've got to seek the help out in a different kind of way. Yes. When I work with people on deprescribing, one of the first things that we well earlier on, what we get to is we talk about dial, I talk to people, I'm like, you gotta dial in your tribe. And this is really important. And you've got to know who the right people are. Because if the people in your tribe who support you and love you, but are gonna say to you, listen, Michelle, like you're gonna have to go back on that. Yes. Like, this is because your bipolar is back. Yes. This is because that ADHD has come back. Those are not the people that you're going to need in your tribe while you are going through this. Now, I empower people to teach them. Yes. Here's what you're gonna teach those people because they are in the dark a little bit. So here's what you're gonna, you're gonna teach them a little bit. If you want them in your circle, then give them the information so that they can better understand the difference between the fact that there actually is no genetic marker for major depression, everybody, and uh FYI, most most of these, uh, most of the mental health diagnoses. There's there's no there's no uh genetic biomarkers, guys. I hate to tell you that. Um, as much as the research shows there is, the DSM gives me all the beautiful stats on first degree relatives. I hate to tell you, but it's not there, okay? Teach the people in your tribe that these are falsehoods. Teach them that there is no such thing as your neurochemicals being imbalanced. Did you have your spinal fluid tapped? No, I don't I don't think so. Did you go seek out the amen clinics and have them do some scans of your brain and really look at, oh, look at that brain, and it's changed over the years. No, you didn't do any of that because there wasn't science behind prescribing in the first place. And the science that is out there is is is rooted in in benefit um and cost benefit. And so the point of, I guess, this rant is kind of to teach your tribe some of those truths. And those are the people you surround yourself with, and you're gonna need them. In fact, you're gonna need to teach your prescriber some of this too. I taught my prescriber many things. She's not very happy about it, and I don't know if she ever, ever will get any farther in life to actually take that copy of the deprescribing manual I left there for her to read. Ever. Who knows, right? Does it doesn't matter? Put the people in your group though that understand this and know this. I also think the other thing that you had said is is is important, Michelle. Now, this is not everybody's path and journey. One of the things I talk with people about when it comes to deprescribing is um we talk about micronutrients. If you notice, I said I started this journey three years ago, but I've only been deprescribing for two years and two months for myself because I spent over six months preparing my brain and my body for what I needed to do. Um, I did a neuroadrenal profile. I went and had my levels of serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, GABA, all of my um, you know, my cortisol levels tested. My norepinephrine was not converting over. And it's there, it's because it takes cortisol. And I that hormone was tanked for me. I had very little of it. So I went and did some of that stuff ahead of time, went and got real smart on supplements, amino acids, micronutrients, and I started doing that stuff for myself prior to starting. I changed my lifestyle. I went from being a marathon runner and a crossfitter to biking, yoga, yeah, light running. Yes, because I did the same thing you did, Michelle. I did the same thing. One of the hardest truths is when I had someone say to me, You are going to have to put down those barbells.

SPEAKER_01: 40:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 40:01

Do you know what you are doing to your soft tissues and to your adrenaline levels, which by the way, you need those because they are tank gen. Do you know what you're doing by getting up at 4 a.m. every morning and doing CrossFit? And I'm like, I'm helping my mental health. Stupid question. They're like, no, and walked me through the whole thing. And I'm like, shoot. None of it's restorative. Yeah. I was depleting my body of what it needed. I was activating cellular level processes that were screwing me over. And you need that stuff when you're tapering, you know. So I talk about that with my clients. I did it myself. Um, it's not for everybody, but I found it very powerful. And even in my taper now, you best bet there's a regimen of supplements and amino acids that I will go through and shift and change nutrients that are all the nutrients that have been depleted by Lexapro, look that one up, guys, and find out why it is that like you have all these other things going on in your life because you've depleted, I don't know, folic acid, which is huge. Yes. Like, so I think it can be very helpful. Um, not everybody I work with does that, but I do. And it's been very, very helpful for me. I know when I need a little bit more 5 HTP. I know when I'm struggling and I've got to bring some more GABA in. I know when certain micronutrients, it's time to dial some of those in and focus more heavy on that than other things. I know what happens when I go more than five hours and I don't stick protein in my mouth. I know these things because you get such a really great relationship. You learn to read yourself and listen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 41:46

Well, and I think I think that's one of the things that's so we kind of get robbed of that when we when we get labeled with these labels because we stop looking with curiosity about what's going on in us, and we we let that we let somebody else tell us that you have an illness and you need medication, and then we don't know that the medication is is interrupting normal brain or you know, physical processes and that. And we and we start to see ourselves with the lens of illness, right? So the human experience is now illness, and we become insensitive to our to ourselves. And over the healing process, it what you're talking about is becoming sensitive to those things again and learning how to feel them. That's why mindfulness, I love that that's one of your four, you know, your four pillars here, is because mindfulness helps you to learn how to stay present with emotions that were suppressed and and and learn how to process them, like allow your body to feel the emotion and process it in a healthy way rather than trying to shove it under with medication and treating it like it's there's something wrong with it, right?

SPEAKER_05: 42:55

Exactly. You become there's there's two different things here you're saying in here, you become your label, essentially. Uh and that becomes part of who you are and it defines you. And that is one of something that irks me so I feel so bad when I am on social media or I've got I I have somebody that's, you know, because I'm constantly having people argue with me, right? Because I'm throwing out the most controversial stuff in the world, right? Like, so controversial. And um, I will have people that will jump in from um you know the the neurodivergent community and they will say, nope, like I when the the best day of my life is when I was diagnosed formally with ADHD and that I finally knew what was going on with me, right? The best in it, you know, and that be their even their their handle, their name is you know, ADHD survivor or uh SSR IN SSR INS forever. Yeah, meaning, you know, gotta take the SSRIs forever, right? Uh, which that's spoiler alert, that's usually who I tag in all my posts about SSRIs because I'm like, you're the audience that that I was you, I was you for so long. Like maybe you should just I know you're getting irritable. Good, get irritable. Like, great. Yeah, like maybe there's something to what I have to say. Yeah, but those labels define you, they become part of who you are, they become part of your story. Uh Michelle, when you came on our show, you talked so much about like there was so much stock that got put in the bipolar. Yes. And when we only look at that, we stop considering everything else that could be contributing to our state of being. Yeah. Everything, whether it's the biggest stressors in life, unresolved trauma, toxins in our environment, the fact that that we eat nothing but processed foods and our body is not functioning well, right? Like the idea that the medications could be causing issues, right? There's there's a a laundry list from the like alternative world, and I'm air quoting that right because I think it's just the world that we should sit in. But all the things we don't consider because it's no bipolar to this is what we've got. And so everything revolves around that label. All of my care plan for all those years revolved around major depression. Yeah. Because I had that major depressive episode. I did have an episode. Heck yes. Um, I did have depression, anxiety, whatever you want to label it. And when I was 16, because let's see, I was in high school. I had no idea who I was. I was going through everyday 16-year-old stressors. I was comparing myself to everybody in my world. I was an athlete who felt she had to have so much pressure on her. Academically, I am quite slow and I struggled so badly to keep up. So I put all my time into that. These are everyday social stressors, these are all the things that are happening in a 16-year-old's world. But the label followed me and followed me up until I'm I'm you know in my 40s now, followed me up until three years ago when I decided that doesn't get to dictate what's happening in my plan of care anymore.

SPEAKER_02: 46:13

But it was all gen suppression. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 46:17

Well, and it and it also robs us of agency. I feel like it really prevents people from being responsible. And that's where our feelings of value and self-worth come from, is our is our personal accountability and responsibility. And so it robs people of their feelings of value and self-worth. And I think that's one of the reasons why people cling to those labels so desperately is because that is the permission structure for why you're struggling so much in your life, right? Why you're damaging relationships, why, you know, and we want, we want to bring awareness and we want to, you know, normalize and and that. And whenever I see those things, I understand where it's coming from, but it drives me crazy because it they always people always want to compare these things like like bring a make a correlation between for bipolar, between bipolar and diabetes, right? And I'm like, okay, so I don't like that comparison because there's no basis in reality with that. However, if we're going to use that comparison, let's talk about normalizing. We don't top a lot, you know, we don't normalize a diabetic coma. Like we don't normalize somebody passing out because their blood sugar's off. Let's not normalize these symptoms. If you're having the symptoms, your brain and your body are screaming for help. They're telling you. We need to listen to them. I one of the best things that I saw, Dr. Joseph the other day, or Joseph, I think it's Joseph, he put on, he posted on X, he said, um, taking an SSRI when you're depressed is like turning off the fire alarm. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that's such a great description. Because you're asking your brain and your body are asking for help and you're just like, be quiet, be quiet.

unknown: 47:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 47:53

We'll feel better if you just be quiet.

SPEAKER_05: 47:55

You stop, you stop listening to yourself and you give the power to the white coat. And this is something you'll see on a lot of my socials. In fact, like a lot of my business stuff I have is me wearing a doctor's coat and it says Jen Schmidt's not an MD. And I'm like dumping out a bottle of pills. I gave my agency to somebody else for a very, very, very long time. And I didn't listen to myself. Now the warning signs were there. The red flags were there. In fact, I I had somebody who did this a comparison and they called it feather brick uh Mac truck, I think is what they had said to me. They said, first it tickles you like a feather. You notice things are wrong with you, and you're like, nah, I'm just gonna, I'm not really gonna listen to it, right? Like, I've got a symptom going on. I'm gonna chalk it up to, I don't know, my crappy job. We'll chalk it up to that. I'm stressed at my job. Then something else happens and it hits you like a brick, right? And it you pause longer and you go, I wonder if this could be due to something else going on. But I dismiss it again, right? Like medically something comes up and you're just like, okay, so I have acne and I need to start on Accutane, one of the most dangerous drugs in the world that you sign your life away for because if you have a child on it, they're gonna have 14 toes. It's dangerous. Meh, I okay, sure. It must be coming from somewhere. I don't know, right? And then it hits you like a Mac truck. And the Mac truck comes when the medical diagnoses and problems you have, the mental health issues you have are so exacerbated that you can't look away from it anymore. And there you are sitting in a space of your marriage is failing, you're you can't connect with your children, you're in a job that it's gonna kill you if you stay in it, which was this is all my story here as I'm talking. Um it's gonna kill you if you stay in it. You've you've been in corrections now for a long time. You're not gonna make it. And you and it hits you so hard that you pause and go, okay, this isn't cool. So the Mac truck comes. And usually by the time the Mac truck comes, guys, sometimes it's too late. There are lots of things for me that were too late because I didn't listen to the feather. I didn't listen to the brick, I didn't listen to the agency inside of me. I gave it to the white coat repeatedly for many years. I missed out on my children's births. I can't remember any of it. I missed out on all the firsts with them. I can see it in pictures, but I couldn't tell you anything about it. I missed out on the first vehicle I had and how the remembering the excitement of being 16 years old and getting that for the first time. I missed out on what a sexual experience should be like for the very first time and what that feels like and the emotions that go along with what that is because I was medicated. I missed out on connecting with my spouse for the last 16 years that we've been married. I can't do that. I can't actually get to a deeper level of emotion. It's not there for me. The centers of the brain that these drugs impact to allow for natural human emotion and experience, I can't get there. I'm the person that was always put in charge of all of the um really horrific things that were kind of going down in the prison. Um, I worked there for many, many years throughout many prisons in the state of Wisconsin. Um I believe I chose that career because Lexapro helped me choose that. Um, I could be very emotionless. Almost one could say callous. I could go into a circumstance that could be gruesome, scary, there's death, uh, and people would go, bring Jen in because she can handle this. I'd be the person in the family systems when there would be someone sick or or um someone was dying, and I'd be the one that would be there helping them because I'm not connected to my emotion. I can walk you through the end of this. That's the person I became and who I was. Um, it served me very well in terms of growing throughout my career. And yet, I mean, this is I think why I chose the career that I did, because it's not like you're super connected to your clients when you're in a prison system. You do a lot of maintenance therapy. Crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis. That felt fine for me to do that because I could handle all that. But I can't get to those emotion states, guys. Like I, for your listeners that are out there, I I can't feel like genuine remorse. Um, I I can't feel um I'm starting to be able to feel guilt. So I can give you that one because I can kind of start to feel guilt a little bit. I can't feel pride. Um I'm very emotionally cold in many ways. Um, I was sitting with my husband the other night and he is just in it and going through some things, and I caught myself just feeling meh apathetic, so apathetic. Instead of sitting with the human who I care about more than almost anything in the world and being able to connect on that level, I can't I can't do it. Now I'm getting little glimpses of it as if I started to titrate a bit, but I can't I can't go there.

SPEAKER_02: 53:31

And it's it's so disgusting.

SPEAKER_05: 53:36

I'm so angry about it. That's what I've been robbed of, um, those experiences. Uh and that's where the mindfulness work comes in because I have to intentionally create this for myself, even if it feels kind of forced. So that's the part of psychmed that we don't know about. Guess what? In in 15 years, you're gonna be on the antidepressants have ruined my marriage Facebook group, going, Yep, here I am, here I am, right? Like because you you lose the ability, you lose that human ability and the agency, you l you lose that. Um the areas of your brain that are impacted by these drugs, they do they they do remove that and slowly over time, um, they they they don't open up. You you can't have higher order thinking. The emotional centers are are are dulled down so much. Um you have no sex drive, it's gone. It's gone. Like completely. PSSD is a very, very real thing. Um and and so I I think it's important for people to have awareness of this. Everything I've said today are things that I've gone through and that I am I'm still going through. Um it's a hard reality to look at your kids and your family and and know that you you really missed out on so many years of what could have been joy or true happiness. Because you you can't you can't feel it.

SPEAKER_00: 55:15

Yeah. I spent a lot of time mourning. You know, it was there was a lot of regret and a lot of mourning. And then I kind of came to a point one day when I thought, okay, I can't go backwards, I can't do anything about the past. So what are we gonna do moving forward? And and I one of the things I'm really grateful for is that there are so many resources now developing because of all of this that there are brilliant minds. There's somebody that I had on my podcast a little while back, and for some reason that the name's going out of my head, but she has been working for decades in neuroscience where she has found ways to help the brain heal itself, like trigger healing in the brain. And they she started working with you know people who had autism, but it's transferable. And so I started working with them because I had I could not feel connected to my oldest daughter. Like I had a there was, and I thought there was something wrong with me. Like I was doing therapy, I was doing all kinds of stuff. I didn't know for years that this was a result of the medication that I had been on for years that had like blunted my emotions, and working with them started rejuvenating my brain, and like you know, all of this stuff started coming back. And we had, I'm just I want to say this to you so that there's hope because she got married in May, and it was one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life. The whole day was perfect, and I felt so emotionally connected to my daughter, and it was such a gift. And so I want people to hear this is real, the trauma is real, the sadness was real, the regret is real, but there is hope because now that people understand this, there are brilliant minds at work trying to help people heal and trying to help repair the damage and give people hope to be, you know, to be able to recover and live full, productive, happy lives, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 57:05

Yeah, oh, oh, for sure. And the the we uh I say this all the time to people like your your brain, it's not it's not broken. Okay. It the brain is one of the only organs in the body that can fully do exactly those things that you were just saying, Michelle. Um, and so the the idea that we're stuck where we are and that it is hopeless. I have a lot of people that reach out to me and people that I see that are, I just don't know if I should move forward with trying to get off of these medications, Jen, because I it's hopeless for me. And I talk a lot about some of these concepts with them. And and it it's it's a that's where the psychology behind this is, I think, really important too, which I think I'm really blessed as being able to be a deprescriber and walk people through like the logistical part of Thai trading and all the different ways we could do this, right? And whether we're gonna, you know, hyperbolically taper, whether we're gonna do some micro tapering, right? Like we're gonna cross-tape, however, it looks for people, right? Like that part I love, but then I love the ability to have the expertise, not only academically in psychology, but subjectively and personally going through this too, because I can offer all of that because there's so much psychology behind this. Yes. Like when you get to a space where you realize that all those years of you thinking it was a you issue, like with your daughter, right? Like all the therapy, the treatment interventions, the what is wrong with me, right? Yeah. When you get to a space where you're like, oh my gosh, this wasn't me. Yes, but yet now there's all this damage, right? Like there's synthetic brain injury damage that's happened now because you you do, you have a synthetic brain injury, guys, and people don't like to hear that, but you started with nothing, there is a synthetic synthetic injury there. So you've got that going on, and then you're you've got the ability to go, but if this isn't a me issue, there's a hard truth of going, okay, but then if I spent a lot of time trying to address this in the wrong way, there's different ways that you can view that. But in the end of it, no, actually, everything you've done, you needed to do. Like this had to be part of this process. It had to be. Yeah. And so there's so much psychology behind deprescribing and like trying to get off of medication as well. I got people I see that are just talking to me to just figure out whether or not they even want to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 59:35

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_05: 59:36

Because you've got to walk your way through all the mind trickery and the fear. Yeah. Every narrative you've been told, you have to unlearn. Yes. Yes. You know, like this idea like your power coming in to come from internally and not from somebody else. That is a foreign concept. Like, you gotta work your way through that. You gotta work your way through this idea that like there's nothing Probably wrong with your libido. It's not because you're not skinny enough. It's not because your partner doesn't desire you. You're taking a medication that is actually taking that from you. And then you work through the years of the dieting and all the crap that you tried to do, or the doctor's telling you it's your weight. This is why you're having issues with libido. It's like I was told by my prescriber, and I again I was trying to find this in my notes so I could blast it out on social media. I very distinctively remember my prescriber saying to me, because I went to her and I said, I have no sex drive. I talked with my mom about this. I talked with my aunt about it, and I got very kind of in their own way, kind of funny, dismissive answers. Well, everybody goes through this, you know, like, well, my aunt, she's like, just take my oh my gosh, my grandmother, rest her soul. She'd say, just take a shot of brandy and just go do what you know you gotta do. All women go through this, right? Oh my gosh, my grandmother. And I I would get things like that, right? And I'm like, I'm just not buying it. So I asked my prescriber and she said, you know, Jen, what you need, if this is really happening, you need a sex therapist, Jen. And here, this whole time it was from these SSRIs, right? And and of course it was not written in the notes in the dictation. Shocker, shocker. That's fine. But these narratives, then you have to undo the psychology behind like all these belief systems you had about yourself in your world. Yeah. And so sometimes that's you start with that, right? So it's just stuff you would never consider. These these are the things that you would never think that you'd have to do, right? Yeah. But you you gotta work your way through the cognitive part of that because going off of medication, the e uh and this is this is I my judgment, the dose decrease and playing around with the science behind that, that part is actually pretty easy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:01:54

If we know the mechanism of action, if we know the half-life of the drugs, if we can understand, like if it's an SSRI, if we can understand cert occupancy, if we can understand withdrawal symptoms and pay attention to them, and that it only means we went a little too fast and we need to alter our method. That part I think is a little bit more black and white than also having to undo all of the belief structures that you've had, uh feeling like lied to, yeah, um, very much so as a patient. Um you know, having to undo all of that I think can be quite a different process as well. Uh because there's so much psychology behind it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:38

Yeah. And I I want to, I think that's a great segue into what you do. I I think I would love for you to tell my audience what it is you do now. So you started years ago, you were for many years, you were working in the prison system within traditional, traditional like therapy and and you moved into it's very obvious from your story why you moved out of that space. But could you talk about that a little bit and talk about what it is you do now and how you serve your clients?

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:05

Yeah, absolutely. I I would put it into like three pockets of hustling right now that I got going on. So the first pocket is um the therapy pocket of this. Um, I'm a licensed professional counselor. That is what I did most of the time when I was working in corrections. The last, well, I should say third, I shouldn't say most of the time. The last third of that career, I was actually a supervisor and I was overseeing um the most seriously mentally ill individuals that uh were in the prison system in the state that I reside in. So my job was to oversee that mental health unit. Um, so I had gone from being the therapist and I worked in multiple correctional facilities, male and female. Um, my areas of expertise, my my niche areas were working with psychopathology, uh working with borderline personality disorder, um, and working with like really antisocial personality disorder. Those were the areas of expertise that I kind of landed in. So I was working with those that were pretty severely ill and were trying to and and their lives each day. That was my population. It was very, very, very acute. Worked within that field and then moved into supervising. So then I would oversee the units, the staff, the social workers, rec therapists, the officers, all of the above, worked hand in hand with all the psychiatrists, the doctors, the teachers. My job was to run a multidisciplinary team of all of those. And so I did that for many years, wanted to work my way up into being the deputy warden and was in the process of starting to go to that next rung and that next level when I decided something I don't really know what it was. Um, finally, maybe freaking listened to my agency and went, uh, if you keep doing this, you're not gonna make it. It's gonna take you down. I was medicating a stressful lifestyle at that point in many ways. I was medicating with alcohol, medicating with SSRIs. The alcohol was obvious. The SSRI thing was not. I that was just part of everyday life for me. So I decided to make it, make it, make a, make a leap. And I left state service, I left the sure thing, left all the things, and went into private practice as a therapist. Pretty quickly from starting that jump, I started to dive into some of the more holistic or alternative viewpoints of things, if you want to look at it that way, because traditional uh Western education didn't teach me any of that stuff. Um, it didn't teach me about the true research behind antidepressants or other psychiatric medications. Uh, it didn't teach me the importance of holistic alternatives and really looking at nutrition and how that is a huge driver. Uh, and so I started down that rabbit hole and ended up getting a certified in some neural health coaching stuff for specifically for addiction, uh, because I was fascinated by it. So before I knew it, the stack of books started growing and the articles I start reading, right? And I'm like, okay, there's something to this. As I started to work on deprescribing myself, I realized that I could offer this to the world too. And so I opened a consulting practice, uh, which is separate from my therapy practice, which is very specific to helping people titrate off of the psychiatric medications. Um and then within all of that, started um hours and hours of me sitting with uh Dr. Tara Lyncel, who is one of my colleagues, and us just spending just so much time going, why isn't this more out there? Why isn't there more stuff on this? Like, and we just we just went crazy. And she had already been in this realm a lot longer than I had. She was my very first mentor, actually, in Corrections, uh, 15 years ago. And we only worked together for a very short time and then we separated past. And she was the one that I reached out to, and I was like, okay, you left and opened a private practice. How'd you do it? And so one thing led to another. And so her and I grew a relationship again, and we talked all the time, and we're like, that's it. We got to start a podcast. So, you know, so then right? So the two business ventures turn into a third essentially, which also fills the advocacy bucket because we were like, this is how we can give back really truly. And so that was last February that that started. So a year and four or five months ago, um, and the Gaslit Truth podcast was born out of the idea that we need to be more curious. Big food, big pharma, big psychology, everything in between is gas, is gaslighting us. The educational systems are, the medical systems are, and before we know it, it's started to spiral now into um an international show, which is so very cool. And how we got, you know, this is how we connected. Um, so I have a few different pockets, I guess, of hustles of things that I'm I'm working on. So those are my kind of three three areas. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:12

That's amazing. And I I just I it's so interesting because so many people could be in your shoes and never never question. Like, I I think that's one of the things that I love that you've talked about on here that I am a huge advocate of is X, you know, taking back responsibility for yourself, accepting personal accountability, responsibility, like ownership. I can't, you know, I I had the same thing. Like over the years when I was being told, you know, I had a chemical imbalance and you know the medication was like insulin and you know my bipolar was like diabetes, like my brain would like accept that on a certain level. Then I'm like, okay, but wait a minute, why do you have to keep changing the medications? Or, you know, if this is, you know, or or when they were trying to, you know, within within the mental health system, there is a lot of permission for bad behavior because you have an illness and you can't control it. And so everybody just has to learn to, you know, support you and live with you and you know, and all this. And and so I, you know, I mentioned earlier, like I my children save my life. I literally, the react the real realization that maybe it's not my fault, but it's absolutely not their fault. Like they don't deserve this. There's gotta be a better way. I just I my my soul was rejecting what I was being told, but it took a long time for me to get to the point where I started thinking, wait a minute, maybe what I'm being told is not true. And even after I got to that point, that's one of the things I actually would like to ask you. So I it's taken five years of research to really unwind everything to get to the point where I'm like, this is all like the entire foundation of this of psychiatry is wrong. Like that, you can't. I I put a post on X one time where I'm like, trying to fix the current psychiatric system is trying to is like trying to remodel a house on a cracked foundation. Like the foundation itself is flawed, and we need to, we need to like rip it out and start over again because the the entire system is you know is based on faulty assumptions. Yes. What how long did it take you to like uh did you go through that process yourself? I'm assuming you must have because you were trained in traditional, you know, psychology. You worked in that for so long, you were steeped in it. How did that what did that process look like for you? And how did you like pull that out of your? Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I'm asking? This is not very simple.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:29

No, I do know what you're asking. Yeah, I um so so when I started to the the the pointed question that was asked to me is why are you still on this medication? That I think for me, at least with my crappy memory I have going on here, like that question sparked something for me. The spark led to a really simple like Google search. I remember just kind of, all right, Google Scholar, here we go, Jen. What's the impact of SSRIs on fill in the blank? Right. Like, and so I started there and I remember I got I started to read a few articles, and I'm like, okay, well, this one still is showing that it's fine, you know. And so I started asking some more colleagues. I'm like, you know, I need you to remind me about back in the day when we learned about how to read research, because this was a big part, right, of of our degrees. And I said, tell me all the things, right, that I I'm forgetting that I need to look at within research. And so the discussion started about, well, look at the sample size, look at whether or not it's a you know, placebo-controlled double blind study. Look, look at like who the control group is and how the control group is formed. And I kind of went back into my academia like brain and went, oh yeah, I've learned all this before. Like I had to, I had to do some of this. Okay, got it. And so I started Googling a little bit more. I'm like, okay, what are the things I want to look for? Because it again, my memory is so, so shot. I mean, it's amazing. I I I have a couple degrees and a license. Truly. I mean, I don't think I've ever read a whole book in my entire life and I couldn't tell you a lot of what I learned in school because it's that arbitrary. Anyways. So I started down that little rabbit hole, and it didn't take long for me to go, okay. And I started to just read a few research articles. And I started to see within them, like, well, huh. This talks a lot about like sexual side effects being one of the number one things that happens. And then I start, I grab my little leaflet, my little insert. Yeah, I even have one right here, right? All the little things that came with my prescription, and I'm reading through all of it. I'm like, I'm gonna look the side effects up. Looked up all the side effects and like throw. I start reading them and I'm like, huh. That one's actually buried in there on page three. So yeah. And so I started with that. As I started, my algorithm naturally started spitting out all of this stuff for me when I'm start when I'm looking things up. One of the first things that popped for me, damn it, Robert Whitaker is his books.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:03

And I feel like I have to say, I have to say that word in front of Bob's name.

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:08

He's such a great guy. He's been on my show. I I have so much respect for the mad, but I'm like, just so you know every time I say your name, I'm gonna say damn it in front of it. Um and I read, there you go. I read Madden America first. Oh, that's and then I read Anatomy of an Epidemic.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:23

I just want to warn anybody listening that you need to read them if you want to like really understand how messed up everything is, but they are really hard to read. It's so hard to read them.

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:33

I I know. So I started with those, and then I started into Peter Breggan's work, and then I started reading Joanna Moncrieve's work, and so it started with this, right? And it started to spill into like, you know, better brain for nutrition and all these, all these publications, salt, sugar, fat, that are all out there. And I just started going down these, these, these rabbit holes, essentially. So for me, that was the start of it. I emailed Dr. Yosef. I'm like, what else can I read? I remember like a year ago reaching out to him. I'm like, do you have anything? Right. I'm like, where's the research? Where's the and he's like, Jen, it's not all put out there pretty with a bow on. So it's and it's not, right? So I started to dive into the research that's from the 80s about SSRIs and it breaking the placental barrier. And so I slowly just started creeping into all of this. And it really got me set up into a space then where I could better understand um how to look at research in in a very different way. Because spoiler alert, everybody, when you're in college and you're going to be a PhD, a psyche, uh a licensed professional, a counselor, a social worker, whatever it is, you're not taught like, here's the way to navigate research. You're given the research and you are taught that it is the research. Okay. Um, they spend more time trying to get you to write APA double space format style, 20-page blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, than they do. Going, you might want to look at this study and the idea that when Prozac was in was was on the market, the control group was made up of people who were on it. They washed the drug out of them really quickly, put them back on the drug, and look how great they did. And that became your control group. And and so, you know, I I I started to just dive in that way, and I I I hit all the websites, like all of a sudden, it shows up in your feed, antidepressantinfo.org. All of a sudden, all the PSSD network, they all start popping in, you know, and I antidepressant coalition, and then you start to and I start to pull articles off that and I start reading that. And it really became a lot of self-study. And so people will ask, you know, they'll ask me, how did you, where did you get your at formal education on how to deprescribe? This girl found it all. Yes. And I'm still finding it all. You know, I I'm finding it all the time. I open open up the Mousley manual. You know how many articles are cited in there, people? Great. Pick one, look it up.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:15

Very slowly, right? And I'm just like, so I'm also kind of going out of tangent here, but to answer your question, that's how I got to the space where I am. I also started to get to that space within my counseling practice. Um, personally, I have a very, very difficult time with um diagnosing. I have a very, very difficult time with labeling people. I have a very honest informed consent conversation with my clients about that before they they seek out services if they want to use insurance. I'm very open with people about this. Um, I'm very transparent as a clinician because I want people to know I do have biases and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna keep them in check. But here's what they are because you need to know that. Um, my website shows people who I am. Um, my psychology today profile shows people who I am. So I think it's important that people you look at that before you go see somebody because I am going to bring these types of things in. Yes. And if I'm not your cup of tea, then I'm not your cup of tea. But it's very far from the traditional counseling realm, right? Um, I'm gonna talk to you about nutrition a lot. I'm gonna talk to you about hyperbaric oxygen chambers and what this is going to do for the restorative pieces of the brain. I'm gonna talk about cellular function. I'm gonna talk about all of this stuff. Yes. I'm actually gonna talk about this label that you have, and let's actually go through the whole thing. Let's go through the etiology of it. People's story in their narrative, their whole story is what matters to me the most, whether I'm I'm deprescribing or I've got a therapy client. It tells the whole truth. And when you put the whole thing together, you can really see people have these aha moments where they're like, oh my goodness. There it is. Uh-huh. So I understand that you've been diagnosed with bipolar one and biar two, uh, bipolar two and ADHD and major depression, and um, that you've been uh malingering. Okay, I'm telling you right now, at the start, I'm not giving you all those labels because my job is also to look at what came first. Okay, yeah, you had a trauma when you were nine years old and you started getting medicated at nine. Let's start there. Yeah. And so for me, that's what I bring to the game. So I know your question was about like how did I get through the research brain and how did you find these things? But um, that's kind of how I operate. Because I think it's worth just getting just getting curious and having inquisition and agency is what it's really all about. And self-study, guys, is going to be your best friend. It's gonna be your best friend anytime somebody on social media is like well, research shows, I don't even reply. Listen, I don't, I don't even want I'm not even I'm not even gonna entertain it. Okay. If you look up my stuff, you're gonna find me being tied to things like the FDA petition that's going out, where Kelly does Folk Road has done a great job of putting 20 articles out about this and the impact of SSRIs on a pregnancy that are not fraught with conflicts of interest. Like, go find my stuff and look at that stuff. Yeah, stop taking what your prescriber says as like face value. Yes.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:24

Don't take what I say as fast value, face value. Like, go look it up, guys.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:28

Like, don't believe me either. People get so mad in my practice when they're like, so I'm paying you a very substantial fee to offer consultation on research, and you're telling it on what's going on with me, and you're telling me to go do my own research. And I'm like, Yep. Yes. Because you have got to be empowered to figure it out yourself, too. I don't believe everything I say. I'm gonna tell you to go look this up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:55

Um, because that's what got you in this problem in the first place.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:00

Yep. Yep. Oh my gosh. I could talk to you all day long. This has been so amazing. It's even better than I hoped it would be. Well, thank you. So I always put people on the spot at the end, but I want to, what is the one thing that you want somebody to take away from this conversation today? What's the one thing you'll hope that they'll remember and they will incorporate for themselves?

SPEAKER_05: 1:20:22

Yeah. The one thing I'm gonna say, and this is just rooted in very subjective personal experience, is when a prescriber or anyone in that medical field, even yeah, I mean you could be with a counselor, right? Um, a therapist, a psychiatrist, you know, when anybody says something to you that doesn't sit quite right, and you're uh believing what they're saying and that's the truth versus taking what they said and thinking about it and internalizing it and seeing if it makes sense for you. Okay. If you get done with that process, because that's all you gotta do, Dr. Michelle gives me some information, I'm gonna take it in and I'm gonna let it sit within me. I'm gonna try to figure out if what they just gave me makes sense for me. If it doesn't, stop pause. You don't have to do anything and just take a moment to go, all right, I'm gonna get curious about what this means for me because I understand you're saying this, but it doesn't add up. Stop. Look it up, research it. Spend, spend an hour of your life to try to stop what could be years of things that you can't undo once you get into it. Don't lose inquisition. And so I think that's my biggest message for everybody. Um, I was a sheep, a quiet sheep, just following the herd um from age 16 to 40. Yeah. And so I I didn't, and I knew it was there. There were times when it was there. It was there with my prescriber when I was trying to have kids. It was there, but I didn't listen to it. So don't take what's being said to you at face value. And I think the other thing is, is you are smarter than your prescriber. You know more than the person that is handing you those medications because the person handing you those medications is not taking into account subjectively what's going on with you and your whole story, nor is there science behind that prescription. There is not. My spinal tap was not, fluid was not taken, my brain was not scanned. I was not given a significant amount of objective assessments either. It's the quick four question uh questionnaire that goes out um that hits the four big areas of depression. Yes, that's what you're given. So there isn't a lot of science behind this, guys, at all. So if that doesn't feel right, stop. Yeah don't give them your power. You're actually more powerful and you are actually knowing smarter and know yourself better than the person on the other side of the table. Oh my gosh, I love that so much.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:11

You are amazing. Where can people connect with you?

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:14

Yeah, yeah. People can find me at gensmitz.com, J-E-N-N, Jen with two n schmidz.com. All my stuff is on there. Uh the podcast, the gaslight podcast is on there, my deprescribing stuff is on there, my therapy practice is on there, all the above.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:29

I'll make sure everything is linked and then show notes. Uh, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation. I'm so grateful to you.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:37

Thanks for having me, Michelle. It feels feels good to be able to tell the world a little bit more about this. And hopefully there are people listening that go, okay, I'm gonna just get a little more curious.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:46

Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. All right, until next time, upsiders. Thanks for joining me on the Upside of Bipolar. Your journey to recovery matters, and I'm grateful you're here. For more resources, visit www.theupsideofbipolar.com. If you're ready to dive deeper, grab my book, The Upside of Bipolar, seven steps to heal your disorder. If you're ready to heal your symptoms, join my monthly membership, The Upsiders Tribe, to transform chaos into hope. Until next time, Upsiders.