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

Chapters

• 0:02 Transforming Schizophrenia
• 7:03 Navigating Delusion in Mental Illness

Transcript

Nicole Tuxbury: 0:02

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: 0:26

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: 1:55

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: 2:35

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: 3:16

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: 4:17

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

Dale Walsh: 4:22

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: 5:29

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: 6:34

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: 6:54

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 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: 8:02

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: 9:30

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: 11:10

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: 12:32

That is.

Dale Walsh: 12:33

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: 12:51

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: 13:20

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: 14:03

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: 14:40

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: 14:59

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: 15:50

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: 18:31

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: 19:46

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: 20:12

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

Dale Walsh: 20:38

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: 21:20

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: 22:23

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

Dale Walsh: 22:29

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: 23:27

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: 23:41

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: 24:26

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: 24:41

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

Nicole Tuxbury: 24:43

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