Transcript

Introduction and Excitement for Brain Talk

[0:04] Welcome back to Between the Before and After, a podcast about the stories that shape us.
I'm your host, Coach Jon McLernon. Each episode, I bring you an inspiring guest with a moving story that shines a light on the power of the human spirit. I'm excited to share this story with you. So let's dive in.
I am excited for any conversation that gets me talk about brains and trauma and how we we can make our brains function better.
And as a father of two young children, I'm also keen to see them have healthy brains as well.
So I'm excited to bring on Dr. Christopher today. Welcome to the show.
Thank you, I'm glad to be here, John. Very much, very much, yes.
Yeah, fantastic. So before we dive into kind of your story and how it led into the work that you're doing right now, what is it that you do right now?
Right now, I am completing my next book, Brain Talk, and it's a synopsis of what I've been doing over the last two years, which is I've been like in a reflection of my experience in the field, working with educators, parents, teachers, and children.
So it's a very reflective experience because I finally had the time to just sit down and, dissect those experiences and move beyond just reflection to coming back to pragmatism.

[1:26] Yeah, fantastic. So you have a doctorate in education, and you have a passion for brains and a passion for for children's brains as well, in particular. And I'm, I'm absolutely curious to learn about how you got to this place where this this is your life's work and passion. And so I want to kind of dive into your story a little bit. So if you could just give me a little bit a background on kind of what it was like for you, where you grew up, what that was like for you, and that'll help to shape our understanding of how this got to the work that you're doing today.
Absolutely. So I grew up in Oakland, California, joined the 50s and 60s eras where activism was very, very high. And I was a student of the community trying to figure out things because.

[2:13] It was difficult coming up at that time as a kid. My mother and father separated when I was about six or seven.
I went from middle class to poverty, and then I was around children I had never experienced before.
I had to fight every day, had to do things differently, had to figure things out.
And it took me a while to begin to try to understand and defend myself and still continue to evolve as a person.
So I went through a lot of transitional phases, but I survived because of brain talk.
I mean, what I'm saying is that you have this innocence of feel for self as a child that you need to understand.
And when things happen to you, something inside you responds or allows you to respond.
And you can feel that response moving through you. I call that talking to the brain, the brain talking back.
So that's aspects of why I'm so involved in the brain and then children, because at the breath of life.

[3:15] That's where the crisis begins for many children.
So when you look at my experience, if you work with children who have been exposed to drugs while in utero, before or after, you really have to get back to, OK, now how did you experience that breath of life?
Who was it that was supposed to hold and care for you and bring you in contact to calm yourself down.
Those are the things that led me to understand or to study the brain.

Understanding the Brain, Body, and System

[3:42] I'm talking about the brain, body, and system. So when I talk about the brain, I'm not talking about neuroscience.
I ain't talking about the social cognitive event, but from a sense of feel for self, which means it's the physical neural self.
So I got the neurology in there, but that's because you and I are chemical processors.
Once we have contact, our brain will take over, and everything then is communicated, like virtual, like we're doing right now.
It's invisible, but it takes place.

[4:13] So you did this kind of as a child without fully understanding what it was that you were doing.
I'd actually be curious to know a little bit more about Oakland.
You grew up in Oakland, and I know it's across the bay from San Francisco.
And sometimes, I think maybe back then, I'm wondering if it felt like it was two worlds apart.
And you mentioned, you know, at six years old, going from being middle class to being in poverty in that landing unit in a very different neighborhood. What can you tell me about sort of the dynamic between San Francisco and Oakland when you were growing up?
Oh, night and day, night and day. But you got to remember, Oakland is not far from Berkeley.

[4:53] So Berkeley was an incubator for liberalism. So I may have came up around difficult circumstances, but because the University of Berkeley was so active in my community, the Black Panthers and other organizations were able to thrive and deliver services to where I was in the ghetto.
So it changed everything to die now. But when you go to San Francisco, you're in a different world because San Francisco back then was like going to New York.
Okay, I'm talking about in terms of all the events and activities that are available to you.
Oakland may have been live from, you know, but when you go to San Francisco, your whole world is opened up on a whole new level.
So yeah, they were different.
Yeah, that was like, when I was in school, the school would take us on field trips and the field trip was to San Francisco. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, the two of the courts, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. And of course, growing up in the 50s and the 60s.

[5:57] And you mentioned the Black Panthers, and I'm a child of the 80s, so I'm a couple decades behind you here. So you grew up in an era where civil rights conversations were starting to explode onto the forefront and this racial divide was starting to, I don't want to say it was starting to maybe get mended, but it was certainly starting to explode in the public consciousness that we we need to do something about this.

Impact of Civil Rights Movement on Dr. Christopher

[6:22] How did that affect you as a child growing up and sort of what was your understanding maybe of the divide and what black people were fighting for in that time?

[6:32] It was a strategic balance, I would say. Again, I say because I lived in one place, and then I separated from that place and went to a place where I had to experience the essence of the crises, how Black people really felt.
And then James Brown, his music, said, loud, you're Black and you're proud.
That really took it to a new height.
And you're trying to experience all this, and then you have Malcolm dying, Martin dying, and you have all this stuff coming at you as a kid.
And you can see the volatility, because Greenfield was our primary in the hearse situation.
Greenfield was used to hand out food and things like that.
So it was learning through the crises of self-awareness, of what was happening, what was taking place.
So it was an incubator of brain talk. The way I perceive it as I got older was my brain led me through the chaos, Because I stay balanced.
I never allowed myself to enter those negative doors where I could be criminalized or allow myself to become a mental crisis because I disconnected from my sense of fear for self.
So when I look back, I'm saying that's why I deal with the brain, because my brain has always dealt with me.
That's fascinating that you mentioned also avoiding falling into criminality, because I.

[7:59] I think understanding like poverty breeds criminality kind of out of desperation, you know, among other things, just literally trying to survive.
Was there, growing up, was there an allure to sort of going down that route as a sort of a path of escape or what stopped you from doing that?

[8:18] Well, I was a leader. I was never a follower. And I have three brothers. I have three brothers and three sisters. I'm the youngest boy. So I had a lot of people to learn from and understand the things around me. They brought the information to me. I'm a sibling. I'm in a sponge because I get to see them out there experiencing things that I didn't have to experience because it led me to to understand, no, no, I don't want that.
So no, it is, no, but the most important part about the discussion is this, is it's a discussion I have to have every time I have an opportunity to talk about it.

The Importance of Understanding the Brain

[9:02] The brain, because the brain is the key. People get confused about how their brains respond inside their bodies.
I'm of the understanding that the brain moved the brain moves through my sense of feel for self.
So when I'm in crises, I can feel myself drifting into that area and then I can respond because the reflection's already moving through me.
It's like when you have a sense of feel, you're always aware or trying to become more aware of the environment because you're constantly processing that information, and you want that contact interaction to move through you so you don't want to get caught up in it.
So you don't get caught up in it when you believe that there is more to you than just what you see.
And that's the physicality of getting away from behaviorism and move it into the cognitive side.

[9:55] In education, I learned how to read and interpret things. And my teachers used to tell me.

[10:03] You have a way of comprehending things.
You have a special way of, I understood that because I was getting older.
You want to watch the...
To the military, there was something inside me that allowed me to do the things that I was doing.
And those explanations we're talking about, and people talk about the mind, but I've learned that the mind is part of the reflection of the experience. And it's a storage base, but the, brain is what you're trying to change because that would change the state of mind. So my state of mind was never allowed to be static, but changing because of the way that I practice living each they would come on for. That's what I'm talking to you about right now.
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we're thinking about, you know, kind of like where you were born and raised and the seeds that were kind of planted in you and those experiences that help you to grow into who it is you are today and kind of the passion that you do. Now, you mentioned going into the military and that's another interesting experience because I think for many people, the military might be an escape from your life circumstances. Would that have been around the the time that the Vietnam War was taking place that you were going in the military or had that completed already?

[11:15] The Vietnam War had just completed. No, I served with Vietnam vets. Yeah.
That's a big part of my experience because those were interactions where they're constantly trying to tell you the difference between being in the military, and being in the community and what you have to do in order to make it in the military and successfully exit the military honorably.
So those were the conversations we were having too.

Exploring the Impact of PTSD on Vietnam War Veterans

[11:44] Right, and you know what I think about the Vietnam vets and again, kind of the work that you do, like are you familiar with the work of Bas van der Kolk who wrote the book, The Body Keeps the Score?
No, no, no, no. Oh, okay, that would be, I think you'd find it a very, very fascinating work, but one of his primary areas of study was for, with PTSD with Vietnam War veterans because he was trying to understand, how did they get so traumatized and discarded and how could it be that an experience from 20, 30, 40 years ago would be affecting somebody as though it was real today?
And so that was like the sort of the essence of the work that he, I'm paraphrasing rather terribly.
Sorry, Bes Van Der Kolk, if you're listening, but he's the foremost, I would say, expert on PTSD and its manifestations in the body.
And the subjects he studied the most at that time were Vietnam War vets, which was pretty immense.

[12:40] Yeah, I can understand that. Clearly, I can. I mean, just the service component and having to live every day to prepare to battle, give your life, take a life in and of itself. But then when you're in that situation, I served in Korea during the Iranian crisis, and I served with a unit and we were ready to give our lives. Then when you're in that atmosphere and you're around older, military people that have been there and done that, it's soon for you to realize.

[13:16] But not understanding where you're coming from when it comes to post-traumatic stress disorder, because that's the other side. That's the after effect that you experienced and that you couldn't have knew how you were going to experience that event and activity. I'm talking about the preparation process to prepare you for that event and activity. During that period, we were allowed to have negative conflicts in and between other people in Korea, other service people coming across, coming into Korea, because we were the first unit to get there. So they gave us privileges. I'm talking about interactively, because we communications were serving with grunt units. We had to hold our own. Yeah, yeah. So now I understand that in the military, you have to realize, like they told me before I even came back home and got out, they said, He said, you know, life is changed.
When you go back home, you can't be that person you were because you won't live very long.
Because when you're in the military, there are things that you're trained to do.
That if you do them outside, you're going to get a reaction because you're serious.
Whereas before, you may have been less inhibited to do things, certain things, but you've been prepared to do those things.
And so you may do them. Like a lot of my ex-friends got in trouble when they got out robbing banks and so forth and so on.
That's their return on.
You are primed for people to take advantage of you because your expertise.

[14:43] You see, so that's what I'm talking about. But again, I'm saying to you, my...

The Power of Self-Awareness and Discernment

[14:49] Thinking has always been that that sense of feel for self allows me to discern, Negative and positive energy and move through the craze of me long enough to experience the other side Which is what we're talking about and allow those teachings those teachings that you left behind to kick in.

Childhood Survival and Unique Perspective on Life

[15:08] Yeah, yeah, so you mentioned and I can totally see this now I'm a teacher I don't know if it was an elementary school or if it was in high school mentioned, And you have a way of seeing and processing things differently than maybe the average person.
So your perspective on life, you have a depth of perspective that maybe the average person could have, but doesn't have.
And part of that might've been shaped by your experiences that caused you to sort of move into these states of mind.
So I'm curious, as you were going through school, maybe even in elementary school, moving into like junior high, things like that, what did you picture you were going to do with your life?
What did you imagine you were going to be? What, you know, when you have this young mind that has like this unique way of seeing the world, back then, what were you thinking was the possibility for you?
So I never reached that point because I was just trying to survive my childhood.
I mean, I was surrounded by chaos, you know, not the level of chaos.
I'm talking about, there were so many things, drugs was coming into my community.
All these things were happening when I was growing up. You're talking about the 80s.
That's the crack epidemic. I'm talking about where the drugs, LSD, and all that stuff was coming in the community.
Reds, all those drugs, all these different things that could destroy your life. And then the people.

[16:33] Evolving. I lived around the hills, angels as another informative experience. I mean, I lived around a lot of events that were current in today's culture as major life events.

[16:48] And trying to get through all that and survive because I'm hurt by the breakup between my mother and father. And I'm just trying to figure out where do I fit in? How do I survive? Because I'm I'm not like that, I'm not like this.
And I was spoiled as a kid, as the youngest boy, by my siblings.
And I had to figure these things out and not get caught up at the same time.
When it comes to talk, I played athletics. I was very good at it.
Now, I didn't ever dream about becoming a professional athlete because whatever I became, it was going to be part of that experience, the drive. Now, I listened to my teachers.
I'm telling my teachers at that stage.
They put information in me, but I never thought about being a doctor and lawyer.
I just wanted to grow up and survive.
You know, and not be as devastated to other people that I was watching.
I had watched a lot of people beaten in the streets and dying, you know, as I was growing up.
So no, it was about surviving.
Oakland and my mom, she was a tomb. She moved us East Oakland and North Oakland where I was able to thrive.
And then I began to, you can say I evolved into a state where, yeah, what am I really gonna do with my life?

[18:05] But I never did focus on.

[18:08] I was in the experience, just moving through it, evolving, and then I was a leader. So, you know.

[18:15] That's a tough question. You know, I look at it, in my experiences, I can attribute that to why I spent so much time with my children, moving them to visit universities, fire departments, that was part of my program was that they had to go experience these places and get an idea of what what they want to do with their lives.
Maybe that's where it came from.
Yeah, yeah, and thank you for sharing that. I think you highlighted something really, really important.
Many kids have the opportunity to imagine their future. In your situation growing up, you were thinking, I just want to make it to be an adult. I just want to survive.
This is a hard life. And I think that perspective is immensely valuable.

Role Models and Evolution Through Challenging Circumstances

[19:00] So then I'm wondering, growing up, You're trying to survive this.
You're going through those challenging circumstances and your mom's doing the best she can, just getting to places. Who was a role model for you or who did you look to to kind of guide you to maybe even just help you get through these experiences, help you to survive, help you to get to adulthood?
Who did you look up to?
So I just reviewed an article for Warren Buffett and I can tell you that that's what saved me was when my mom and my father broke up, I was around smart kids.
I mean, kids who were smart, they were smarter than me.

[19:39] And that's what he was saying. You find people that are smarter than you.
And those kids put it in me, the information in me that helped me evolve.
We were all from different houses, but the things, the skills they brought to the table was social and academic.
And again, I'm saying I've always had this capacity to comprehend the experience of other people through my sense of feel for self.
So yeah, I'm saying the kids that I grew up with.
At that time, and then I advanced beyond them, you know? And so then I'm open-spun to just learning how to live.

[20:19] And become more informed to survive.
To survive what?
Me, I was a gang leader. Survive me, my state of mind. I had to keep me under control.
And now Jesus Christ was teaching me. How do you survive you?
Because you part of the price. You gotta remember when a mother and father break up and you're a young kid and no one talks to you, you have anger, you have feelings of anger in you, you're gonna do some things that you regret.
But because I'm saying I had a sense of feel for self in my brain, I cared.
I cared about hurting people. Yeah, yeah. So if you were to meet, let's say maybe third maybe third or fourth grade you, you know, maybe nine, 10 years old kind of thing.

[21:11] How would you explain what it is that you do now to a level or at a level that third or fourth grade or fifth grade you might be able to understand?

Explaining Life's Transformative Journey to a Younger Self

[21:22] Well, see, that's a transformative issue. I'm changing, and I don't realize that I'm changing.
Because as a kid, you're doing things.
You don't know how it's going to be, because you have no sense of that question you asked. You have no sense.
You see a dream, but if you're surrounded by things that are happening that are not good for your sense of receipt, Pat, because of what you're actually seeing, then the other side is not so clear for me.
That's exactly what I'm saying. It's a formative state that is happening as long as you continue to make the right choice decisions.
Now, that's the problem being a kid, because that's what you're trying to learn how to do.
Make the appropriate choice and decision that allow you to become more experienced.

[22:10] At becoming more informed.
Yeah.
Stop there, because that's a heck of a question for me to go all the way back.
But I tell you this, like I said, the life, the breath of life experience.
When I work with my children, I'm constantly looking at what you just now said, because I got to reflect back as I reflect on them. I call that human systems research, which is a study of self-relation to other people.
So when I deal with you or anyone else, I look at myself first, like you're doing with me, the experience of self-relation to you.
Now I got to go back to wherever you send me, because I want to assume nothing.
I want to experience what you're trying to say to me and then go to the environmental effect.
And then I have the knowledge base to really comprehend the experience.
And that's what you're asking me. So it's a formative thing.
Absolutely. So if we shift back into your your young adulthood, you spent some time in the military. How many how many years did you serve before exiting the military?
Four. Four years. OK. Well, yeah.
And then from there, did you transition into because you have doctorate of education, did you transition to the university or did you already start university while you were in the military? No, I started going back to school while I was in the military.

Mentoring and Anger Management in the Marine Corps

[23:28] That's one of the fascinating things about the journey is that I went in the Marine Corps, and I was angry, and I was difficult to handle.
But when you talk about mentoring, I got mentored. I got mentored by white people, Black people, Samoans.
I got mentored, oh, because they cared.
I mean, because I was aggressive. I was, yeah.
And they just talked to my brain. They just kept talking to me, saying, hey, I was there, man. But hey, because when you're military, it's acceptable for you to be angry. But can you control that anger? Because that's what they taught you. How to control that anger, how to focus that anger, how to harness it. Yeah. To channel it so that you don't make, a foolish mistake, but you're in the most, let's say, alert state to deal with whatever might come your way. If you're responsive. If you're responsive to the flow of information, and if you can connect it and not be offended by it.
Yeah, absolutely. Because by the time I exited the Marine Corps, they had me back in school.
So I dropped out. They brought me back and encouraged me, no, you got to go and you got to get that high school diploma. I got the high school diploma before I even exited it.
And again, you're talking about experiencing military men and women who were encouraged.

[24:53] You because they knew the physicality of you and they saw you Evolving I didn't see it but they were seeing the changes in me from where we first began and what they heard about me and what they're experiencing in the now I.

[25:09] Recall what an honorable discharge and I Other people who who have who try to stay in connect contact with me, but I'm the type of person, when I leave, I leave.
I don't, that's one of the things my mom and dad's experience taught me.
I couldn't bring those children from East Oakland with me because I would have brought an effect, of that character I'm trying to leave behind. And my mom was saying, you can't, no, you got to stop that.
If we do this, you got to come here and you got to leave that behind.
So that's my experience, I leave it behind.
I don't go back unless it's a true friend, a true spirit.
I don't look back because I don't want to carry it back and contaminate my future.
Yeah. And so somewhere along the way, you mentioned you yourself have children, so your father.
And so somewhere along the way you met someone and you're this transformed person.

Meeting His Wife and Dealing with His Son's Mental Illness

[26:10] Who did you meet and how did you meet? Well, I met my wife through my brother.
This was actually after I got in the Marine Corps, actually.
Again, you're confused. When you're a young person, you're confused.
I mean, we're talking about, how do you be a parent?
You know? Yeah. How do you be a parent when you didn't have?
Have that type of childhood, I'm telling you, no, it's a responsibility, you know? And so the breath of life, again, we go back to the breath of life, because you see, if you're not feeling the breath of life and you can't get into that child the way that child needs you to get into them, then that child falls behind. And you got to catch up and the kids got to catch up. So now there's a disconnect, because this kid is experiencing things the kids shouldn't experience.
So when we go to that level, we're talking about my son, who, who developed schizophrenia. And I, As a doctor of education, I'm saying that you should have knew, you should have caught it, you should have found it, you should have already knew how to address it. And I'm saying, that's part of the experience of understanding. That's how I developed human systems research, human systems science, and all those things that I'm talking about. Because I had to work with my son, I had to figure out, because my wife came to me, she said, look, what you gonna do? You know, our son's in crisis, what you gonna do? It's like, you talk, stop talking, start listening.
And start learning how to help your son.

[27:37] So I did that. I went back and I went from the beginning. I went from his breath of life.
I studied him from there and I continued to talk to his brain, not his body because his sense of fear for self was disconnected.
So I'm saying to you, the pain and the hurt of experiencing him then and realizing, man, you should have caught this a long time ago, and moving through that and then work with other children and seeing mental illness as a stage process cycle where it evolves from one place to another. But there are always early signs.

[28:16] Of the injury, illness or the effect that you're not attuned to, that you may not be attuned to.
So, I get understanding that most parents miss it because it's so prevalent in our society, so prevalent in our community. But if I listen to what you're asking me, that is my greatest challenge in my life, was moving and learning how to understand my son's crises and getting him to a point where he felt comfortable with who he was.

The Importance of Communication and Contracts in Relationships

[28:53] Yeah. So I want to take one step back because I'm because I think there's there's a really important dynamic here that I want to draw out.
But when you first met the woman who would become your wife, what stood out to you where you said, hmm, like I'm attracted to this woman.
I think that she could be a potential mate.
Well, it was.
First, it was the fact that we had a long discussion. And the discussion involved who I was, who I thought I was, who she was, who she thought she was, and the contract.
The contract was, this is how I am, this is how you are. And if we can come together, because my philosophy has always been that a family is a business.
It has to be developed as one.
And so we agreed to these parameters, And then we decided to get married.
But we had a contract, not a written contract, but a contract, and that allowed me to hold her response for her behaviors and me response my.

[29:53] And it allowed me to control my behavior, my physicality, because the bottom line with her was you better never put your hands on me.
Right. Yeah, no more. So I already know you have to have that up front so that no, when you got a sense of feel for self, you want that person to say that so that you understand you can defend yourself by saying, I don't do that.
I'm not going to allow myself to do that. And that's a defense mechanism built into whatever state of mind you're living through.
And that helps you move that relationship because when you cross that line, it's over.
And so that's a contract between me and her because she knew if you do these things, I'm out.
Right, right.
OK. And so, along the way, you had your son. How many children did you have?
I only have two, a boy and a girl.
Okay. And is the son older or younger? My son passed in 2013.
I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, childhood schizophrenia and then the complications with the effects of the disorder, the eating disorder and other things that happened to him.
Yeah, that self-inflicted, because when you have schizophrenia, you're trying to, you're delusional.
So you do things, and it's hard to recover that sense of feel where you can make sense of what's happening or what happened.

[31:18] That's where the parenting comes in, because that's why you talk to the kid's brain.
And that's what we were very successful at, is developing a practice where he could live with us, because we constantly talked to his brain and read his feedback cycle.
So the way he would respond, we don't look at the brain. We don't look at the body.
We look at his brain. And we look at the body only to read the messages coming from his brain to see how confused he is in the situation we're working through.
Most often, it allowed him to look at us. We taught him to look at us and study us to get a real sense of what we're trying to explain to him.
So that allowed him to use our physics to help him understand what we were saying.
So when he gets in trouble, he only need to look in our eyes, and see and feel or act like he could feel.
That's what we're teaching. We talk to the brain. You're trying to teach that person, what they can't do through you.

Firmness and Communication with a Loved One's Schizophrenia

[32:13] Instead of showing fear. I show firmness, but I don't curse I just stand firm and I talk firm to his brain not his body, And I'm telling you what his body is doing, He can look at that and see that and laugh at you But what you want to do is to act like he can actually reflect on experience itself, That's no that it takes time to build a relationship. That's what you really talk about, That's really health issue. Right, right. So your son and your daughter, your son who passed in 2013, and your daughter, was your daughter old? Is your daughter older or was she younger? She was two years older than him. Okay, and did your daughter happen to struggle with any of this or just your son?
Just my son. Okay, and that sets up a really interesting family dynamic here that you're trying to experience and balance because you're trying to be a father, you're trying to be a provider, you're trying to be a husband, and you You have these two beautiful children, and one of them is struggling with this schizophrenia.
How old was your son when you first came to understand that what he was struggling with was schizophrenia? Wow, I think it was his 13th birthday. 13th, 13th. He was 13. Yes. Okay.

[33:30] But we had warning signs, we just didn't pay attention to them.
Right, right. When you look back, what would some of those warning signs have been?
Delusional. You know, we called it his imagination, but it was more than just his imagination. He was disconnected.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so you had learned there's a way to reach him because, you know, I can't claim to understand schizophrenia all that well, but the brain is seeing and hearing things that are not there. But because it's happening in the brain to the individual experiencing it, it feels as though it's very, very real.
And so part of your work with your son was to try to be an anchor for him. Like, this is real.

Creating a Safe Environment for Self-Experience

[34:17] Provide a safe place for him to experience himself. That meant he made sure that we had rules in place that he accepted, but to give him freedom so that he would not escape and go live in the streets. So there was another contract, but the contract was created through the experiences of bringing him under self-control where he would control himself because of what was happening to to him out in the community, police, other types of interventions, and us continuously working with his brain, not his body, and him experiencing people and realizing, even though he was not feeling us, he understood he needed protection.
He needed protection.
So you can't recreate what isn't. You have to go from where it is.
That's why you let him have his free space because he's gonna tell you how to care for him.
And what I'm mostly concerned about is that he doesn't hurt himself or others.

[35:28] Absolutely. And so the challenge with that, so, is others, like he doesn't walk out of the sign, saying I have schizophrenia.
So others might see a pattern of behavior. They might see an interaction or things and it doesn't make sense to them because they don't have the necessary context.
And so that might shape the interactions that he experiences because they don't know what to do with this.
Did that lead to your son struggling with, I mean, I imagine to some degree, struggling with some social interactions to potential interactions with the law.
How did he learn to navigate that and communicate his struggles with you?

[36:08] Number one, as a parent, I was very, very focused on discipline.
I'm not talking about physical discipline.
I'm talking about mental discipline.
So my son focused. He understood community because I had him in community.
I raised him playing baseball, football.
I was constantly teaching him how to control himself, how to sit still, how to listen.
And so when this happened, he didn't lose those skillsets.
Those skill sets were still there.
You had to reconnect it to the situation that he was in. He already had it.
Like, he graduated from high school with a 3.8, but that was because he was a student and he knew how to interact with people. That's what I'm saying.
You have to put that work in as a parent.
And the work you put in is like that question you asked me about my future.
If I'd have had the dismal self-control that I was delivering to him, I would have gone much, much further in my experience.

[37:14] And that's what we're talking about now, because when, as he began to develop the disconnect, and then the psychosis and the breaks, he still was able to go into these environments and control himself. And now, yeah, because he's a thinker. No, that's what I, this is what we're talking about. You teach your child to think through a sense of feel for self, even though schizophrenia takes away that feel, because you can't feel things, okay? When you disconnect psychologically, your sense of feel for self and others is broken. And that's the time you try to help them reconnect methodically through your levels of talking to the brain. You talk to the to the brain because you want them to feel your words and experience them, okay?
No, because that is, that's why you study neuroscience or you study the social cognitivity.

[38:14] The social, I'm external, I'm social. He's internal, we want him in neural systems to kick in and recognize me as his father, trying to give him information.
So you talk to his brain, not his body. Because if you talk to his body, you're talking about his behavior. You're talking to his behavior.
And that's what everybody else is doing.
Talking about his behavior and not talking about thinking things through.
It's not talking about what he is experiencing in his brain in that moment.
And was he able to express to you in like moments of clarity like this is what I'm seeing, this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm experiencing.
And did he demonstrate an awareness in some of those instances where he recognized it wasn't real, but it was real to him because his brain was experiencing it.

Understanding and Communicating the Experience of Schizophrenia

[38:59] See, that's schizophrenia, that's brain talk. He talks all the time.
And inside the context is meat on the bone because he's talking to you.
And you have to be concerned and not be afraid of what he's saying.
Because I kept notes. For example, he drew, he did all the things that gave us a ton of stuff to look at to know that we were safe.

[39:26] That's what you're talking about. But that's the crises.
See, most people, it's such an arduous task and journey, that I can understand why parents give up.

[39:40] Because you have to be on. You have to be on 24-7.
Because a break can happen, or a psychological event can happen while he's sleeping, and he's gone.
And you've got to be aware that he's in that context all the time.
And so everything you do has to be to help.
Like I said at the beginning, I wanted to talk to him. So I always talk to him about his brain, his brain, not his mind, his brain.
Right. Because when you're talking to a kid about the brain, no one talks about the brain going to psychology, psychologists talking on a psychotic talk, but they don't talk about the brain.
They talk about the body, talk about behavior, but they never talk about the brain, which is what you're trying to get contact with so the kid understands there's something inside me beside the voices. Right.
But you're praying for understanding, but on the outside, you know what you're trying to accomplish.
But remember what I said, you're looking at his behavior response for attraction and feedback, as to whether your information went through him or not.
Now, when he's sitting at the table talking like he's talking, he's giving me that feedback, because he's saying like, yeah, dad, you think you know everything, but you know what?

[41:00] But then he's doing it. So that's your intention to meet on the bounce. So you listen.
You listen. You let him stay calm because he's not hurting anybody.
He's working it out. That's a sense of fear for self that you talked about.
That he's lost, but he's showing you that I felt what you're saying, man.
I'm OK with you.
But then look, he never was a threat to self and others because we kept talking to his brain.
He stayed away from allowing people to anger him, he'd walk away.
He would exit. Now, if it was somebody that he knew or someone who was a direct threat to him, his upbringing was, no, you don't let people do things to you.
But again, we talk about decision making, he never allowed himself to get caught up in a violent situation because he understood, I don't want to go back to SMIC, which is a mental health facility.
I don't want that experience anymore." That's what you're working from. You're working from understanding when that contract is designed from the actual experience that he goes through, you have to maintain your side because when you're talking to him, he's not stupid. You do a contract because he's saying, I will try to live up to this contract and that's how we work. And And this is this is not no written contract.

[42:26] That's part of the test. That's part of the test.
Can you adhere to what you said you was going to hear to?
Right. Yeah.
But he never left the border of the country. Right. So, yeah.
So I'm curious in all of this, how did your daughter experience this and how was she able to interact with your your son while he was alive?
My daughter thought there was nothing wrong with him and that it was normal.
But I'm saying again, that's the community effect. They don't understand mental illness.
They don't understand what mental illness is. They think that it's okay when someone loses control.
I'm talking about losing psychological control and it's out of their head, talking.
You know, you listen to rap music, you listen to it, and they think it's normal, but it's not normal.
It's not normal. That's why you go back and you say, well, how did you miss it?
A lot of people miss it because they think it's normal. That's not normal behavior. First of all, that it's not. Yeah.

Navigating the Loss of a Loved One

[43:29] And so about 10 years ago, it was your son passed. And I mean, that's got to be an incredibly difficult experience to go through as a father and for your wife to go through as well. And even for your daughter to go through the loss of a brother. How did you as a family navigate that loss?
Wow.

[43:48] It's a coming together, it's an understanding, you know? Or no, because you see, again, I'm saying to you, the sadness, the sadness, but his pain is gone.
The hurt that he was experiencing is gone. I'm talking about the side effects of schizophrenia, the eating disorder, the diabetes, heart failure, all those things that contributed.
Because you see, I had another neighbor down the street, and her kid came up with schizophrenia too.
He committed suicide. What I'm saying is, what his doctor explained to me is, he doesn't feel pain the way you feel pain.
So we're looking at his body, and they're explaining to us, but he doesn't feel that.
He doesn't feel that deterioration. So I'm talking to him, and we had fights.
It was fights trying to get him to eat right, trying to get him to do things that would curb, the effect of the diabetes on his organs, his nervous system functions, and things like that.
He was supposed to have died in 2000, let's say we got the notice from his primary care physician because of the damage that had already been done, in around 2002, 2003.

[45:09] And we got him to manage and control himself and expanded that window, never actually getting control over the diabetes.
But the changes in his diet and all those things allowed him to live with us, through 2013, where he finally died just before his birthday. Yes.
And so and you would say at that point in time, to some degree, because of the challenges you experienced, that you were, in a sense, kind of mentally prepared as much as you could be for that experience, because you had kind of, you had already experienced that he, you know, he probably wouldn't live a long life into his seventies and eighties.

[45:50] He was much smarter than I am. No, I'm going to say it. No, it's because he was much smarter than me.
No, because see, you have a lot of people that are really ill that do things that everybody's in awe about.
And some people say, well, you know, he is really, really different.
He is really, really on the other side. But no, you don't lose that.
You don't lose that. You have a disability.

[46:14] But what type of disability do you have? What functions can you not access?
Okay, we're talking about a young person who had a future, who had to understand that future is no longer available because now you can't function in those ways you were able to function yesterday.
And how do you catch up to your peers who are now disassociating themselves from you, because of the things that you are exhibiting and going through, okay?
No, you have to deal with the reality of that child who is now regressing from this mental frame, to a lesser degree, a lesser degree and diminishing capacity simultaneously.
No, it is the psychological effect of the crises that that child has to move through.
And that requires growth, but you don't have growth without self understanding.
To have personal growth. And so, no, I'm saying to you is because he was very intelligent that he was able to overcome the demons as long as he was able to overcome them, along with his parents working diligently with him.
I understood my son to be intelligent.
That's why it all worked. I always talked to his brain.

[47:33] I always talk to his brain, not his body. Right. Yeah. And as we come to a close here, fascinating conversation. It's really, it's quite something to think about how you, from your childhood experiences to your experiences as a father, how it really shapes the work that you do. And you mentioned many times just the importance of being able to speak to the brain, not to the behavior. And I know you've authored, Is it four books or five books now?
It's five, yeah, it's five. Five books, yeah. And so, and you're working on a sixth book. Yes.

Sharing Insights and Resources for Mental Health Support

[48:11] And so people are interested in the books that you write and they wanna learn more about the work that it is you do.
Where would they find those books?
Amazon, I have an Amazon page.
Yeah, Amazon bookstore. I have an Amazon page there. I have a website, drchristopherkslayton.com.
I have another website, brainsbody.net.
Yeah, they can access my material. And then I also have a podcast, Brains Body Podcast.
Okay, fantastic. And so they can find that podcast on Apple, Spotify, iTunes, that kind of thing? Yes, yes.

[48:56] Fantastic. And so, last question to close out. So we had a really interesting conversation today.
You've got a very different way of seeing the world and I think it's a way that's worth sharing.
Everybody has, let's say, a perception of you and who they see, you know, how you live life, who they see you to be.
What is your perception of you?
I'm the most difficult person to deal with because I'm constantly requiring that you do more because I do more.
If you interact with me, it's not gonna stop. We gotta work.
We gotta get this done. What is it? No, because there's something burning inside me, that I'm challenged by every single day.
And so when we make contact and we do what we do, like my wife and I, it's about evolving into the higher level of successful engagement, to create that environment that isn't. And we're talking about children, parents in crisis having safe places. Like I said about my son, having a safe place to be mentally upset.

[50:07] But safe, right? And giving them the ability to recover as much as they possibly can because to have your support. So you become the eyes and ears. So that's a lot of work. Because, when you're dealing with children in crises, they need not only support, but they need safe places to evolve. Like my early childhood, I'm saying to you, I could have went to any one of my friends' homes because it was a safe place. And their parents allowed me to be there, although I was... Because as a gang leader, I protected them in that environment.
And the parent realized that, most of the parents realized that.
I'm saying to you, no.
Trying to understand the child in crisis, trying to come to terms with the fact that you want to know if there's more to them than just the physicality.
So you look at the brain, not the body.
You look at the brain, you look at the responses.
Because you can realize the communication coming back at you.
He cares. He don't care.
There's something wrong. Oh, that's not appropriate, especially when they see you talking to their kid, and you're making sense to their kid, and you're not telling their kid, you know, your dad is, your mom is, you know, and it's not destructive negative energy moving, through that environment where you're saying he's a disruptive force. Still, you look at the body.

[51:34] And that tells you the brain is not working right because this kid should not be making those kind of statements inside your home, causing friction. I mean, that tells you he's got to go. No, that's brain talk. No, you got to recognize that. Why? Because that's why God gave us this inner sense of feel for self and other people. That's how you move through me, whether you like me or not.
You have a feel for me right now. Either you like me, you don't. But most people, I'm telling you, when you get off, you got to go to another level if you're going to dissect at this interview. That's me. I'm a lot of work.
Yeah. I'm a lot of work. So there's your answer. No, because I am a lot of work because it takes a lot of work for me to live and learn how to continue to evolve inside my human system.
There it is. Well, Dr. Christopher Slayton, thank you so much for being on today.
It's been a very intriguing conversation and I look forward to when we have another conversation.
I look forward to it too. I'm gonna tell you, You caught me off guard with many of your questions.
I hope that when I review them, that they look and feel the way that I feel having responded to them.
And then this is our first level of engagement. I look forward to the future.
Yeah. All right. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you so much for tuning in to Between the Before and After.
If you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review because that helps this podcast to reach.

[52:55] And inspire more people.
I love exploring the stories that take place between the before and after, powerful experiences that shape who we become. And I love human potential. I love the possibilities that lie within us. So whatever you may be up against, I hope these stories inspire you because, if you're still here, your story's not done yet. So keep moving forward.