Overcoming Psychosis to Inspire Change: Dale's Journey in Supporting Caregivers of Schizophrenia

When life throws unprecedented challenges your way, how do you transform adversity into a guiding light for others? Dale's riveting journey from coping with the turmoil of a psychotic episode during his college years to becoming a beacon of hope for caregivers of individuals with schizophrenia is nothing short of extraordinary. After overcoming his initial struggles with self-awareness and mental health, Dale graduated magna cum laude and launched into a career as a private tutor. Tune in as Dale shares insights from his transformation, underscoring the importance of humility, self-awareness, and gratitude.

This episode offers a unique exploration into the world of caregiving through Dale's compelling narrative. We discuss his journey from delusions of grandeur to achieving harmony and a sense of belonging. Topics such as agnosognosia and the struggles of those unaware of their own mental illness are candidly addressed, as Dale shares how enlightenment, without self-awareness, can spiral into psychosis. Through philosophical reflections and personal growth, Dale illustrates his metamorphosis from isolation to a life of service. His story is a touching reminder of the often-overlooked role of caregivers, and a passionate call to support those who support others.

TLDR:

Dale Walsh’s transformational journey from mental illness to recovery showcases the often-overlooked challenges faced by family caregivers. By sharing his insights and personal experiences, he emphasizes the importance of understanding, empathy, and the ongoing effort required in the healing process.

• Introduction to Dale's story of mental illness
• Impact of agnosognosia on understanding mental health
• The transformative journey from delusion to clarity
• Importance of caregivers in mental health support
• Overview of Dale's "Do Live Love" program
• Key insights for anyone facing mental illness
• The role of hope, faith, love, and patience in caregiving
• Dale's commitment to empowering family caregivers

Stay in touch with Dale:

www.dewlivelove.net
www.calendly.com/dalecoach55 
IG: dale.walsh.14
IG: cmdr_dew
FB: Dale Walsh ( DeweyDew)
Amazon: Poetry by DEWalsh

Transcript

Transforming Schizophrenia

Nicole Tuxbury 0:13

Hello there and welcome back to the latest episode of Overcome Yourself , the podcast . As you know , my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with Dale . Now , dale has one incredible story . I am not , I'm not going to try . I want you to take it away , dale , and tell us all about your story and how you've come to do what you do today your story and how you've come to do what you do today .

Dale Walsh 0:37

Sure , well , thank you very much . First off , I'd just like to thank you for having me on , nicole . It's a great pleasure and it's an honor . And so basically what I usually do is I just have a poem that I recite that basically tells a story and it goes like this . It's called Dale Review , reviewing what actually happened . It goes like this hi , I'm god was a joke I made after killer dartmanteau of some primo ivy league spoke , which apparently caused me to choke , because in hospital I awoke with roommate gabriel , the main bloke , who did my delusions , angelically stroked , even while clayton doctor Clay and my brain broke the moment divine gag . I spoke testifying . I was only a bit quack , with clinician-signosis psychotic attack preventing me from getting sanity back , until I came to TNEC Hackensack to pursue resident therapy program track and deal with my evident lack of reason among psychiatric patient facts who never gave me any slack Under interrogation . The story didn't crack . So that's basically what happened .

Dale Walsh 2:06

I had a it was the summer after my freshman year . My freshman year I had a very successful academic year , but I was also doing drugs , marijuana every day and a lot of drugs and everything , and finally caught up with me in the summer after my freshman year . So what happened was I was in my friend's room and the campus cops came in and said are you Dale ? And I said sure , because I figured out I was God . Are you Dale ? And I said sure , because I figured out I was God . So , but I really meant this as a joke , nicole , because the punchline being how could God be five foot eight ? You know , I thought this was like the best joke I'd ever come up with .

Dale Walsh 2:46

So , you know , the campus cops came in and said are you Dale ? And I said yes , and they said would you come with us ? So I said sure , I figured they were going to take me to see , to meet the president of the university , uh , but instead they took me on a three-minute ride to the infirmary where , for the next four hours , I was interrogated by three sets of ivy league psychiatrists . They put me in a room , shot me , gave me a shot of something uh , probably an antipsychotic and uh , you know , three days later I was in a mental hospital in new york city with a roommate named gabriel and uh , so this , uh began my .

Dale Walsh 3:27

This obviously had transformative effect on my life and I came , uh , after getting out of the hospital I came to a private psychiatric residence in Hackensack , new Jersey , under the direction of one doctor where I was given intensive therapy three individual sessions a week and two group sessions a week and after that I so I was in there for five years and I graduated from there , got out , got my own apartment , went back to college at Fairleigh Dickinson University , graduated magna cum laude in English five years later , and then I started an entrepreneurial journey as a private tutor and that's and basically I've been going since then . But so that's the basic outline of the story .

Nicole Tuxbury 4:28

That is incredible . And so what are you doing now ? You said you're a coach , right ?

Dale Walsh 4:34

I am . I'm using my life experience with the illness to mentor the family caregivers of those with schizophrenia . Because one thing I had a couple of revelations about this when I came up with this idea . One was that I realized how much how I put my own family through my illness . But , more importantly , I realized that family members , family caregivers , are often what I call the forgotten victims of mental illness and that if someone is diagnosed and they usually have at least a doctor or a psychiatrist or psychologist or some sort of team to administer to them , but the caregivers are often like totally lost . I mean , they have like absolutely no idea about what schizophrenia is . You know , and then you know , and they're they're dealing with the loved one 24 hours a day , seven days a week , 365, . You know , even when he's , even when he or she is going psychotic and everything .

Dale Walsh 5:40

So my goal with my business , which is called Do Live Love my initials D-E-W Live Love , which is a method that basically God downloaded to me , it's an 8 step program . Live Love is an anagram for learn , integrate , validate , explore and then listen , observe , value and express . So those are the eight steps I take people through . And another thing that I came to realize is that , you know , not only do family caregivers need help , like coping with the very symptomology and just understanding the illness , but also because of the intensity of the care they have to give , they often become codependent , and so I helped them break codependency and get back and reclaim their own integrity of self , which ultimately helps them become a better caregiver .

Nicole Tuxbury 6:45

That is amazing . Talk about using a weakness and turning it into your superpower . Like you are a superhero , you're helping families who might not know what else to do and I commend you for that deal . I think that is so . It's breathtaking and it is . It's amazing , like I'm just I'm honored .

Dale Walsh 7:06

Well , I appreciate that . You know , you know this is . I said I might go off script . You know I do it , I'll go off

Navigating Delusion in Mental Illness

Dale Walsh 7:14

script . But you know , my basic delusion , or my basic belief , was you know , hi , I'm God , and you know I really meant it as a joke . But as time went on , you know I'm in the hospital . My roommate's name was Gabriel this is like a little shtick I have . My roommate's name was Gabriel , who was very deferential towards my mother , mary Alma , whose second husband's name was Joseph and who ultimately married the judge . So you know , I know there's this thing called confirmation bias , that the bind will find evidence for beliefs and do everything to build up those beliefs . But you know , as time went on , the beliefs that I was God became less and less of a delusion . Well , it might not have been less of a delusion , but became more and more of a belief . Not been less of a delusion , but became more and more of a belief .

Dale Walsh 8:13

And uh , this is uh , there there's something in a serious mental illness , uh , called agnosognosia . Have you ever heard of that ? I have not . Okay , agnosognosia is a term taken from neurology for stroke victims who can't comprehend that there's something wrong with their brain . So it's been uh , transferred to , uh , you know , to psychiatric conditions . And uh , there's actually a book by this doctor , dr javier amador , called I'm not sick and , uh , I don't need help , and so the story of his inner reactions with his uh , schizophrenicic brother as a psychiatric doctor . So , but basically , agnosognosia means that it's said to affect up to 60% , be a symptom in up to 60% of serious mental illness cases . So , uh , basically , it means the person cannot conceive that there's anything wrong with them . It's , it's much deeper than just denial , it's just like . Then , you know , it's like , it's like telling , uh I , the analogy I I I heard was uh , you know , if you hold up a piece of paper to a blind person and say , read this , then obviously he's not going to be able to do it . And Agnes Sinotius , where the same thing was mental illness .

Dale Walsh 9:41

So , you know , so , basically , for the first 10 years of my therapy , I was also very fortunate and basically I was forced into therapy , you know . So , even though I had agnosynalgia , I still had to go through therapy and everything . And actually , when I was in the program , I experienced what I called the death of Dale , which was that God , like basically knocked , dale knocked the whole personality structure of Dale , killed it , but he left the body , for which I'm very grateful . So I'm still here and you know I've evolved from there . But you know , this is also made me think about to what degree was Dale actually Satan ? Because the son of Satan is to call yourself God . So I've had 50 years to ponder these things and basically I just feel that after Dale died I became Dewey for 30 , my alter ego , dewey . If Dale thought he was God , then Dewey thought he was an android and last April , at the solar eclipse , I became .

Dale Walsh 11:21

I reached my third stage . I have five personalities Dale , dewey , dewey , duck and Genius . So basically I reached my third personality , which is Dewe , is due , which is sort of like the father , the grandfather of my personalities , and I'm much more secure , much more secure in my humanity and also much less delusional , and every day I get less delusional and I feel that . But I couldn't really start my uh , life of service before I got over my delusion Because one thing that sort of like was triggered by Anjali , I think her name was , was , you know , talking about enlightenment and everything . And what happened with me is I really feel that enlightenment without self-awareness is psychosis , and that's why I've been hospitalized 15 times , because I was always enlightened but my self-awareness had to catch up and you know you ask about overcoming yourself . The fact is that , being hospitalized 15 times , I had to overcome myself seriously , because if I didn't overcome myself , I would have been put away 30 years ago .

Nicole Tuxbury 12:43

That is .

Dale Walsh 12:44

That's so powerful , so so powerful Now let me ask you this Do you do you feel like gratitude has played a part in your journey to getting to this point where you are able to help others ? With what you went through ? Gratitude played a big part . And also , you know humility .

Dale Walsh 13:02

I think humility is just as important as gratitude because , you know , even even at Dartmouth , when I was walking around campus saying everybody hi , everybody , hi , I'm God , you know , I really had like a different conception of God . I didn't want to be worshipped . You know , it was involved with my ego , but my ego was saying God needs a vacation . You know , I'm going to give God a vacation . He's been working for 13 billion years . So I'm going to give god a vacation . He's been working for 13 billion years .

Dale Walsh 13:31

So I'm going to , like , put myself in god's place and uh , you know what the the primary uh revelation that I had was god just wants to be one of the guys , you know and uh , so , even though my whole life has been sort of like isolated in Hackensack I have been in Hackensack for 49 years , but basically I've been in isolated in Hackensack but from that viewpoint and from that perspective , I've been able to really become one of the guys and that's allowed me to get over my delusion , become one of the guys , and that's allowed me to get over my delusion .

Dale Walsh 14:14

And another thing not only did I want to give God a vacation , but I also wanted to put to rest this whole debate about whether God exists because , uh , my freshman year at Dartmouth , I my , my most important course , uh , for me , was a course on Nietzsche , you know , and Nietzsche's famous for saying God is dead . So you know , basically , I wanted to like put to rest the does God exist argument by saying well , you know , you can argue till you're blue in the face whether God exists , but here I am . Here I am on earth , and my presence is that of God .

Nicole Tuxbury 14:51

Wow , yeah , wow , wow , wow . Now tell me what are one to three tips that you have for our audience . What are the most powerful tips that help you , help your , your clients , your clients and their families ?

Dale Walsh 15:10

Well , first off , be you know , if you do , is do some research in diagnostic nausea , because that's , like , probably the primary obstacle to people actually accepting help for their mental illness . Because if you don't think there's anything wrong , why should you put yourself through taking medication or seeing doctors that don't make you feel well ? So you know and I would recommend Dr Amador's book I'm Not Sick and I Don't Need Help because he gives like a whole , you know , strategy for communicating through agnosygnosia . So that's one thing . Secondly is realize this isn't a two-week cold .

Dale Walsh 16:01

You know , when someone gets a serious mental illness it's going to be a lifetime journey . I've had 50 years to like grow out of this or grow into this , but you know a lot of people with schizophrenia and even bipolar . You know , if they make it to 50 years , you know in actual age , not just 50 years of recovery you know they're very lucky because you know , I think 10% of schizophrenics commit suicide . So you know . So the next part is you know , realize that you're going to have to be in for the long run . And the third thing is I say there are four things that are essential to being a successful caregiver . One is hope , faith , love and patience . Those four things are absolutely necessary . The street with a serious mental illness , just because they , their family , you know , they , whatever , uh roof over their head , they couldn't , they couldn't like handle it , you know . And uh , one thing , uh , one , one thing that I was thinking of just before we was , we were coming on , was , uh , insanity is imposed by society and you know , I , I think , one think , one of the things I meant barring violence if you aren't violent , you know , I've never been violent for people who are diagnosed , but also for the caregivers is you have to be aware of yourself and sure , and at least like , have a belief that you know you're right , no matter how many people are telling you you're wrong . I , I think about that movie heaven can wait , with warren , beattie and julie christie , and at the beginning beattie is supposed to be dead , you know , but he's like a quarterback for the LA Rams and he was riding his bike through a tunnel and he got hit . But he wasn't dead . So you know he's art . As they're loading everybody up for the plane to heaven , he's arguing . So they have like the supervisor come and supervisor says , uh , the more people tell you you're wrong , the more likely you are , you're right .

Dale Walsh 18:42

And that really affected me in my whole journey because you know , when I was in my first hospital I'd say to my doctor , why am I here ? There's nothing wrong with me , which is classic agnosynosia and everything . But he would say well , dale , if you broke your leg , you come to the hospital , right ? I said yes , and he said , well , you broke your brain . And you know this was not only the cruelest thing anybody could say , but this is back in the 70s , when psychiatry was basically in the dark ages and you know people , once you got a serious mental illness , people figured you know , just write your life off and there's nothing you're ever going to be able to do . But you know , but not only did that affect me negatively in the degree that I always I felt for like 30 years a certain hopelessness of dealing with the illness , but also it gave me a determination and a fight within to say you know , screw you , doc , I , you know you might think my brain's broken , but I'm going to overcome it anyway .

Nicole Tuxbury 19:57

Wow , wow , wow , wow . You have such an amazing story , dale . I'm just humbled and overwhelmed . I'm just proud of you . I'm proud of you because that is amazing . All right , so I want you to tell the audience how can they get in touch with you , how can they follow you , how can they access your books ? Talk to me .

Dale Walsh 20:23

Someone else tried it too , and they said it was working . So it's wwwdewlivenet .

Dale Walsh 20:49

That's my website , and if people want to get in touch with me , I would suggest that you go to Cally uh , because I I I've had it set up that you can have a free 45 minutes uh consultation or discussion with me . So that's at uh . Wwwcalendly c-a-l-e-n-d-l-y dot com . Slash dalecoach55 .

Dale Walsh 21:31

And then my Instagram is dalywalsh.14 or cmdr__dw , so it's Commander Do . I have two accounts there . I also have a Facebook account which is Dale Walsh and then , in parentheses , dewey Do , and I also have we didn't go into this , nicole , but I also have an archive of 5,000 poems that I have done since I graduated from college , and that includes five collections on Amazon which you can find through going to Amazon and putting in the search bar poetry collections by DE Walsh , and you'll probably have to scroll , but they all have distinctive covers , so I think you should be able to find them , and that's about it , and all of those links are going to be available in the show notes down below , so make sure that you check out down below to get access to all of Dale's amazing things .

Nicole Tuxbury 22:34

Thank you so much , dale , for being here with us . Do you have any words to send us off ?

Dale Walsh 22:40

here . The motto of Do Live Love is that recovery is always an option and I , you know , I still stand by that . But the fact is the operative word in that is option , because if you get a mental illness it's not going to just go away if you're sitting on your butt doing nothing and feeling sorry for yourself for letting it get worse , because ultimately it's a lot of work . It's sort of like you're in a pit and you don't have a ladder and you have to find the ladder to be able to get out of the pit . But you know it's a lot of work . But I just feel I like to think of myself as a model of what the potential is for someone who has been schizophrenia and I didn't let it get him down .

Nicole Tuxbury 23:38

I love it . That is amazing . Thank you so much for joining us and make sure that you check out all of Dale's amazing offers . He even has , like you said , a free 45-minute call for you guys , and be sure to check out his poems .

Dale Walsh 23:52

Oh sorry , go ahead . Let me say one last thing . Yes , please . So one thing this isn't a formal book , but I wrote a memoir about what happened in Dartmouth . It's about a 50-page book and it's called Escape from the Ivy League , or how Becoming God Changed my Life . And so actually I don't have any real lead magnet or anything . But if you write me at Dale D-A-L-E Coach C-O-A-C-H 55 at Outlookcom and request it , I can send you a copy of the book .

Nicole Tuxbury 24:37

Awesome . I'll make sure that that's included in the show notes as well . Thank you so much . You've given so much , like you have so many gifts that you've offered um with all those links , so I really appreciate it , dale , thank you and we all see you guys . Oh sorry go ahead .

Dale Walsh 24:52

I'm just going to say thank you very much for having me on .

Nicole Tuxbury 24:54

It's been a pleasure likewise and we'll see you guys next time here on overcome yourself . The podcast . Bye .