Season 2 Episode 3 "Leaving Psychosis"

So what is the true meaning of love?
 
 Is this something you have ever really considered or is love just love to you?
 
 Of course it is "just love",  why would it be anything different?
 
 The difference is many people don't love themselves. Especially people from there LBGTQI+ community who have some of the largest statistics relating to addiction, suicide and hatred amongst the heterosexual community. 
 
 It's the question I posed to you at the beginning of my journey discovering I'm intersex.
 
 Discovering ones sexuality or how you choose to identify requires love. Otherwise it's a game of avoidance involving  drugs, alcohol and all other forms of addiction and self-destruction.
 
 I should know, that's been my whole adult life, until recently.
 
 Sex is so much more than physical. It's about connection to soul and to that of another's soul, if we so choose. If we do choose, we have the right to decide, well unfortunately that's not the case in all countries, it is however, here in Australia where I live. 
 
 If one thing the last 18 months has taught us all is change is necessary. 
 
 How have you changed?
 
 In this, the final season of Titanium the intersex podcast and the final episode "Leaving Psychosis" there has been a big delay.
 
 Life is all about timing, and the time wasn't right.
 
 You don't need to know why.
 
 You just need to answer the question for yourself "What is the true meaning of love?" as you listen to "Leaving Psychosis".
 
 Special thanks to my Executive Producer, Jared Aviet for his tireless effort working with me, no easy feat, especially during the initial stages of this podcast to advance his already amazing knowledgevinto podcasting, a world we have both got to know better, with Jared's guidance and strategic direction. Jared can be contacted at jjrushmore1@gmail.com
 
 Voiceover by Nathan Gardiner, an amazing soul who's voice may be familiar to you as Commercial Traffic Reporter and Journalist.
 
 Written and narrated by Mike Carroll from MC Counselling, Addiction and Mental Health Counselling for the globe, www.mccounselling.com 
 
 Live your best life, you only have one, make it amazing.
 
 Copyright Mike Carroll 1st October 2021

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Transcript

“Welcome to “Titanium” the Intersex podcast.
This is Series 2 -  “Living and Leaving Psychosis” thanks to MC Counselling, Addiction Counselling for the globe.

Now, Episode 3 - “Leaving Psychosis”.
Sometimes, when you try to do better yourself,  you fall harder.

For Mike, it wasn’t about partying, well this time, it was attempting to work around the clock.

He was setting up an online business during the time Mike became addicted to Methyl Dioxy Meth Amphetamine (MDMA).

This is the final of the three part special to series 2 of Titanium - the intersex podcast Living and Leaving Psychosis.

Here’s Mike Carroll”.

Hey there, it’s been 6 months since I said to you “talk to you next week” it was the 18th March and it was my birthday and the 1st birthday for MC Counselling.

A lot has happened for me and also for you, I’m sure.

I had every intention of recording the next and final episode that next week. That never happened. I have thought about it briefly and then put the idea to the side, concentrating my emotional energy on mc counselling.

Until yesterday when a dream and a nightmare came together simultaneously.

An old school friend, one that didn’t meet me at primary or even early high school, but one I spent my final two  years of high school with @newtownhighschooloftheperformingarts, in Newtown Sydney.

In all my disinterest in learning, I loved this school, you might have guessed I loved drama.

There was real love at that school and I connected - from day one. 

See NHSPA, had previously been the site of Newtown Boys, with the culmination of Petersham Girls and a concept from the NSW Department of Education to develop a selective High school for Performing Arts, encompassing dance, drama and music. 

I was attending an anything but selective high school in Crows Nest, Sydney an all boys school that brought together most of the ethnicities of the world. 

The socio-economics being, let’s say worlds apart, which was also worlds apart from the middle class upbringing, I was accustomed too, however not surviving the pressures and struggles of the school I was supposed to succeed in, that being SCECGS Redlands, in Sydney’s Cremorne, to which I hated with a passion.

To be honest the messages and comments have not come from friends which initially really saddened me. Especially when asking them too.

Then I believed the reason this was the case was they didn't know what to say. 

Which right now I'm completely content with. 

Being intersex, hasn't changed my life, it's made me understand my life differently and pose deeper questions.

Which we will get too soon…

I asked you in episode one…

“What is the true meaning of love?”

Have you thought about that question since I posed it almost a year ago, in the lead-up to International Intersex awareness day, that’s coming up Tuesday, 26 October 2021…

Let’s do this…

Season 2, episode 3 

"Leaving Psychosis”

I spent 4weeks in bed coming down from my now many years of using MDMA non-stop.

I was on anti-psychotic medication which destroyed any feelings I had, allowing my mind to rest and for me to sleep.

Just as I had felt at the psychiatric ward all could do was eat and go to the bathroom. Doing anything else was not an option. 

Then I made the decision I was going to get back into counselling, like I had been planning to do.

 I applied for a few jobs, with no luck, and with that again loosing any sense of self or self esteem I had.  

Until an employment agency called me and offered me a role with a telco on the phones selling.

I was so excited. I was back and I also decided to do something about

my weight and started lite n easy.

The role was difficult to say the least, however a game changer that I was now selling technology that during my psychosis, had scared me almost to death.

I really did feel I had come a long way, talking about this technology and selling it. 

I would also start the same day that a friend from a previous sales role started. He knew my past and I didn’t want this telco knowing. 

I, for there first time wasn’t paranoid and felt rather content.

There was no way I could sell $1500 worth of products per day, but I was cool with that, I’d never, in my 10 years in sales made commission.

What I did do however was learn the most I ever had about people and connection, over the phone from my previous life as a radio announcer, where my callers on the radio was my biggest asset. 

I felt very comfortable and I was back employed. I was slowly getting my life back on track.

I even started working on a drop shipping business with this friend, which didn’t make any money, however I felt important to have a project outside of work to keep my mind active as to not get sidetracked and go back into old ways.

I would spend my time at work or at this friends house, meaning I was spending less time at my mothers, which was a good thing.

It was pretty obvious the time had come to move out, but I still liked and wanted the comfort of no bills and no responsibility.

I was just getting comfortable and this would be short lived as this particular workplace was to close and I would have to find another job.

I did, for the same telco at a different location.

This time round, the crew were a tight knit group who were all 20 years younger than me. 

It was challenging, to deal with new systems that locked me out every 10 minutes due to security. Also dealing with customers face to face, opposed to on the phone and irate customers at that. 

I felt hopeless, useless and came to the realisation that parts of my memory had gone, which was really scary.

or was it the way that millenials don’t explain, but do things you’ve asked them to show you, so you are never left understanding what you asked for help with in the first place? 

I think it’s a bit of both. I mean it does, even for me get frustrating when I’m trying to do something and I can’t do it.
  
Working with a whole team who were 20 years younger than me taught me a lot about myself.

It turned out to be one of the biggest learnings of my life, in amongst the insecurities I’d feel about myself everyday. 

It’s my best example of making the uncomfortable, comfortable. One of the biggest teachings in MC Counselling.

It’s like saying to every good thing that will happen, there is going to be something negative.

I wish I had learned that many years ago.

However the space wasn’t there to allow that. 

That requires an enormous amount of self-love and self-worth - two elements of life that are hard to achieve when I had never liked, let alone loved myself. 

Earlier in my time at this telco, I had a photo taken, that was then changed me from a man to female.

It was so real. Like really real. 

I still don’t know, even to this day if that was the time, something clicked.

It would take until November 2019 for me to visit a place that my mother used to visit as a kid with her family. In fact a place that many people would visit during school holidays as kids. 

It was known for mosquitos and a place mum had never fondly spoke about, so I’d never really taken much interest.

How wrong can a person be?

I remember driving down this road that had the most stunning amount of natural vegetation and this complete calmness about it. I kept driving and arrived in Seaspray. 

This was paradise. I instantly felt a connection. I parked at the end of the road - which was the entrance to merriment creek, that depending on the weather would run into the 90 mile beach, one of only three uninterrupted beaches in the world. 

To add to it, there was no one there. It was empty.

How could such a beautiful part of nature be empty?

I’ve always loved the beach, but been so self conscious of my overweight body, never wanted to swim,  let alone surf and take my shirt off in front of the beautiful people with the beautiful bodies.

I walked along that beach and was speechless. 

This was paradise….

I then walked up to the SSLSC and there was a newish building and a restaurant. 

The thing I couldn’t understand was, why every second property was for sale and had apparently been for many years. Today, everything is sold, with little to no properties available.

I was told then, nothing ever goes up or rarely sells in Seaspray….

I’d also be told that the owners of 16 Ellen Ave. Seaspray were very picky with tenants, due to what I would discover later be a young woman with medium to severe mental health conditions, which looking back to the reports, appeared to be psychosis and had caused dramas to this sleepy town with AVO’s out against her from a number of residents. 

However this was aligning with my purpose, only I didn’t know this then.

I’d been a home owner with an investment property for six years, until I sold Warragul and moved in with mum. I’ve got no recent rental history, I’ll never get this place.

I had a look and fell in love with it straight away.

It wasn’t the beachside mansion or the balmoral, or Balmain middle class suburbs I was brought up in Sydney, in fact completely the opposite. 

It wasn’t making the uncomfortable, comfortable, this was comfortable. 

I put the application in and was excepted and moved in on Australia Day 2020, the final weekend of what is the final weekend of peak activity in Seaspray, a bit like the peak snow periods. 

I showed the “kids”, that’s what I would call my telco workmates the place and they were definitely not impressed. Why would they be, they were young, with dreams much bigger than Seaspray. 

I moved in and found it hard to organise the space. I again felt my mind had been greatly effected from my previous drug use.

I’d deal with work for the day and then go to the beach and go for a swim. This was paradise.

This was the second and third part of alignment. A pisces in the water, healing body and soul. With healing comes growth. With growth, comes love.

Comparison goes out the window. 

I learnt to like me and do things, activities, that fed my soul. 

I lost 24kg, without trying. 

I felt amazing, exercising every day and basically cut out eating. 

I began to understand how skinny people felt. Watching everything they ate and drank. It caused anxiety to a degree I had never experienced anxiety before.

I took the MOST amount of selfies I had ever taken in my life on the beach. I was “living my best life”. A quote I stole from a manager at a previous job.

I walked for hours on that beach. I talked to myself, like I hadn’t done in years and I made a decision to start a counselling service on the beach.

So I started to organise this, while still working a the telco.

My birthday was coming up and I thought, let’s have a housewarming party, celebrate my birthday and launch what you know today as MC Counselling. - See there is my number appearing again, 3 - 3 events in one night.

Only that night would be Wednesday 18th March, 5 days before Victoria went into lockdown.

I was lucky to begin with, my telco would be classed as essential service and job keeper would come in, with only a few customers actually coming in with my hours reduced. 

How could covid19 be aligning again with my purpose? I now had more time to spend setting up MCC, with not an idea in the world what I was doing, however keeping really focused and away from the anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions the world would begin to experience.

It was like, I had been given another chance to start again, with many previously successful people now experiencing the beginnings of what we see today in the world. 

It was air this time I decided to tackle the issues that had plagued me with addiction for over 20 years. I decided to make an appointment with my doctor and bring out into the open my darkest, most embarrassing part of me. The part that I would get sooo very wasted with every partner I’d had in my life in an attempt to avoid sex. 

I went to the doctor and the rest well, I spoke about in a previous episode. 

MC Counselling’s foundation building blocks are love -  communication, connection and community. 

It’s easier said than done, especially the love we have for ourselves and when we allow negative influences such as drugs, alcohol and social media for example, get in the way.

“Personal Development” or Personal growth, commercially grew from “The Secret” with Rhonda Byrne among others. 

This began the concept of affirmations that took the world by storm, with people looking for positive affirmations or quotes in an effort to love themselves.

They kinda worked, however the best ones are affirmations or mantras created by ourselves.

These are mine and I have shared before on social media. They have since changed as I have changed. 

Change is something I love. 

I believe, the sooner as a world we can accomodate and like change the best versions of ourselves are constantly created, a bit like being a “life learner”.

"Living My Best Life" Daily Mantra

I love me.

I am me.

I am unstoppable.

I create my life.

I am my own boss.

I am amazing.

I am enough.

I do things everyday that stretch my confidence.

I’ve got this life.

I am intersex and this has ended my feelings of not feeling enough and has brought an end to the want and need for addictive substances.

I give short answers and summarise where I can.

When I’m struggling, I seek guidance from Clinical Supervision and my tribe.

I ask better questions, making this part of my ongoing Personal and Professional Development.

The key to my amazing communication is in my questions.

I am a unique human, unlike anyone I have ever met and I love that.
I am non-judgmental. 

I search my soul in times I can be judgemental for the root cause of this judgement and take stock of the exact situation and act accordingly.

"MC Counselling shifts people away from addiction and removes mental health issues successfully through holistic Counselling, Therapy, Personal Development, Life Coaching, empathy and love".

I make a choice everyday to succeed.

I take time out for myself.

I am the master of my own destiny.

I am met with resistance with people who feel they are not enough and have low self-esteem. 

For them, they feel intimidated, overwhelmed, scared, challenged and uncomfortable by me. 

These are the souls that need the most help and I can develop myself further by searching for ways to change this feeling for them. 

I have always been met with resistance by being me. 

Understanding this, I am confident in me and make the best decisions for me.

My life is about me.

Their life is about them. 

I'm not responsible for anybody else's  life. 

I have unlimited potential and results are a demonstration of this.

I think before I act.

I am a power machine.

I choose what I allow in.

I choose who I spend time with and not have others dictate how I will spend my time.

I love the success that hard work and dedication produces.

My life today represents this.

I believe that EVERYBODY has the potential to change, even if they don't see it in themselves and I can help these people develop the courage to believe in themselves in order to change.

I believe love is different for everybody and understanding this is one of life's paradigm shifts.

I will always be on the path towards self-actualisation and I enjoy discovering other souls who are on this journey also.

This is my biggest connection point with another person.

For me, being intersex is not about being straight, gay, bi. 

It's about a connection to the soul. It's not about looks, (yes it is), it's mostly about how a human can talk from their soul. It's so vulnerable, it's one of the most beautiful parts of being human. 

It's also a demonstration of a human doing work on themselves to live their best life. 

I choose everyday to live my best life and that's what I'm doing today.

I love you Mikey 

I love you Mikey

I love you Mikey

So, what is the true meaning of love? 

The true meaning of love is when you don't want to, but still do.

The true meaning of life is when a person puts their life on hold for another.

The true meaning of love is when you've never experienced love before and you still emulate love. 

The true meaning of love is a fairytale.

It's a fairytale we have developed in our own minds from movies, from our parents, from our friends.

The true meaning of love is not a Connection to another person but a Connection to self.

The true meaning of love is spirit, it's an atom. 

The true meaning of love is how you define your world.

The true meaning of love is how you interact with the world and how the world responds to you.

The true meaning of love is to watch someone you care for or have cared for develop, change, make mistakes and still be present. 

The true  meaning of love is inside of you, it is you. 

For me, the best example of true love is my mum who during her life wasn't shown the  love many of our parents were shown, especially if trauma was present, but she loved in the way she believed it to be.

That true meaning of love is what we, as children experience until we develop our own sense of love that redefines the definition that was given to us as children. 

This is the love that we then pass on.

True love is what you share it to be with the people closest to you. 

True love is you. There's no reason to not love you. 

Sexuality, how you identify,  is no one else business but yours unless you choose to share it on a podcast like I’ve done here.

Love you because you are you and no-one can ever take that away from you.

To my mum, Jill, you demonstrate true love to me in all that you do for me and although you don't say it, that's your identity of love. I do say it, so mum I love you and It's an honour to dedicate my podcast titanium the intersex podcast to you. 

I’m Mike Carroll, thanks for listening.

This has been Season 2, Episode 3 of Titanium - The Intersex podcast Leaving Psychosis” proudly presented by MC Counselling with production from Jared Aviet and voice over Nathan Gardiner.