Dave Mowry: How Comedy Saved My Life After 14 Lost Years

Dave Mowry on healing through comedy, Give A Heck Podcast with Dwight Heck

🎧 Listen and Watch Give A Heck Podcast

 

Dave Mowry built a successful business before bipolar disorder dismantled nearly all of it, leading to fourteen years he calls his lost years, including hospitalization and homelessness. A stand up comedy class built for people living with mental illness changed everything. Today he teaches that same class, performs on stages, and is a bestselling author working to shatter the stigma around mental illness one joke at a time.

 

Content note: this episode includes an open discussion of mental illness, including bipolar disorder, severe anxiety, and thoughts of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available: in the United States and Canada, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, anytime, day or night.

🎤 Give A Heck Podcast

Real conversations and solo episodes about purpose, financial stewardship, mindset, leadership, and intentional living.

🔍 Episode Overview

Dave Mowry lived with undiagnosed anxiety and depression from childhood, then bipolar disorder as an adult, eventually losing his business and his home across fourteen years he calls his lost years. He has been open about surviving both hospitalization and homelessness during that time.

The turning point came through an unlikely door: a stand up comedy class built specifically for people living with a mental illness. Where his illness had been running the show, Dave began finding material in his own life instead, and that shift is what got his recovery moving. Today he teaches that same class to others, performs on stages himself, and uses comedy to push back against the shame that so often surrounds mental illness.

Dave is the bestselling author of OMG That’s Me!, which has sold over 22,000 copies and has been named one of the best bipolar disorder books ever written, and his newest book, Healing with Humor, which tells the story of five people who took his comedy class and transformed their lives through it. He also blogs for bphope.com, where his writing has been read more than a million times.

 

📚 What You Will Learn in This Episode

  • What it was actually like living with undiagnosed anxiety and depression as a child and teenager
  • How Dave’s bipolar disorder cost him his business and his home over fourteen lost years
  • Why a stand up comedy class became the unlikely turning point in his recovery
  • How rewriting painful memories as jokes actually changed the pathways in his brain
  • Why Dave believes you are never alone, even when it feels that way
  • What he wants anyone in their own darkest place to hear before they give up

 

📵 Chapter Summaries

[00:03:47] Dave Welcomed and the Origin Story Opens

Dwight sets up the origin story format the show always opens with, and Dave is welcomed.

[00:05:15] Earliest Memories: A Full House and Undiagnosed Anxiety

Dave describes a childhood memory of a crowded family home, and the anxiety that set in once his family moved and he changed schools.

[00:11:52] The Turning Point Question: When Did Awareness Finally Come

Dwight asks when Dave first got support, and Dave explains that understanding did not come until well into adulthood.

[00:16:33] Finding “That’s Me” in a Book

Dave describes reading William Styron’s account of his own depression and realizing for the first time that he was not alone.

[00:25:31] Quiet Desperation: Living Behind a Mask

Dwight and Dave compare notes on the exhaustion of pretending to be okay, and what it costs to keep up that mask.

[00:45:26] Teaching Comedy, Healing With Humor

Dave explains how he now teaches stand up comedy to people living with a mental illness, and what changes in his students.

[00:51:30] How Comedy Rewired His Brain’s Response to Trauma

Dave describes how learning to find humor in his own painful memories actually changed how his brain responded to them.

[00:57:05] The Park Bench, and His Most Requested Joke

Dave shares a difficult moment from his own history, and how he came to write one of his most well known jokes from it.

[01:46:50] What Years of Teaching Comedy Taught Him About Giving a Heck

Dave reflects on what teaching others has shown him about showing up for each other.

[01:49:20] His Final Message to Anyone in Their Own Lost Years

Dave’s closing message to anyone listening who feels like they are in their own darkest place.

[01:50:46] Where to Find Dave’s Books and How to Connect

Dave points listeners to his website and both books.

 

🎯 Key Takeaway

You do not have to find humor in everything, and some things are simply too raw for that. But finding the humor in what you can changes more than your mood, it can change the pathways in your brain. You are never as alone in your darkest moments as they make you feel.

 

💬 Continue the Conversation

 

🔑 Key Themes Discussed

  • Living undiagnosed with anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder
  • Quiet desperation and the exhaustion of pretending to be okay
  • Comedy as the unexpected door back to himself
  • Awareness and self-understanding over needing to be fixed
  • Never being as alone as mental illness makes you feel

 

👤 About Dave Mowry

Dave Mowry is a comic who tells his story of living with severe mental illness one joke at a time. He also teaches stand up comedy to people living with a mental illness, helping them find humor in their dark days and lost years. He is the bestselling author of OMG That’s Me!: Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and More, which has sold over 22,000 copies and was named one of the best bipolar disorder books of all time by BookAuthority, and Healing with Humor, a Next Generation Indie Book Award winner telling the story of five people transformed by his comedy class. He blogs for bphope.com, where his writing has been read more than a million times, and today works at NAMI as a mental health advocate. Dave lives in the Portland, Oregon area with his wife, Heather.

 

🌐 Connect with Dave Mowry

 

🤝 Connect with Dwight Heck

 

🎧 Listen and Watch This Episode

 

💭 Final Thoughts

Dave’s story is a reminder that healing rarely looks like a straight line. It looks like fourteen years of pretending to be okay, and then one unlikely comedy class that changed how his brain responded to its own worst memories. It looks like writing hundreds of jokes for other people so they can find their own way to say it’s okay to laugh about this too. If anything in this episode hit close to home, you are not alone, and help is available: in the United States and Canada, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, anytime, day or night.

 

📣 Call to Action

🎧 Enjoyed this episode?

✅ Subscribe to the Give A Heck Podcast on your favourite platform

🎤 Think you have a story worth sharing?

 

📝 Full Episode Transcript

[Proper noun / misheard word sweep completed against the final export, 5 corrections made, speech itself left untouched: “Dave Maori” to “Dave Mowry” (3x); “be hope.com” to “bphope.com” (1x); “Give a Hack” to “Give a Heck” (1x); “healings with Humour” to “Healing with Humor” (1x, book title); “Thanks, Dora” to “Thanks, Dwight” (1x).]

 

[00:00:00] **Dave:** Realising that it’s okay to ask for help because there is help and the new medications are, are, you know, for me, I take medication and I still have highs, but the highs aren’t so high. I still have slide into depression, but, but it’s mild and the lows aren’t so low. And when I’m there, I’m okay. I could be with it, you know, spend time with it knowing that it’s temporary, it’s not gonna last, and I’m gonna come out it.

[00:00:30] Welcome to Give a Heck. I am your host, Dwight Heck, and for much of my life, lived my life in quiet, desperation wondering how I was going to pay the bills, take vacations, save for retirement, and one day wondering if I would get off the hamster wheel of life and have purpose, a life that most of society lives, which takes us to work, then home, then repeat, and pays us hopefully enough.

[00:00:54] Just to survive the harsh truth that most live with more months than money and have no idea how to live life on purpose, not by accident. This ensures the mass majority are living not just financially broke, however, emotionally and mentally as well. Due to financial pressures and each episode, I will introduce you to thoughts, ideas, and guests that can help you to learn how you too can live life on purpose, not by accident.

[00:01:26] **Dwight:** Before we get into today’s conversation, I want to give you a heads up. This episode includes an open discussion of mental illness, including bipolar disorder, severe anxiety and thoughts of suicide. If that’s not something you’re in place to hear today, that’s okay. Feel free to sit this one out and join us again next episode.

[00:01:46] If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available right now in the United States and Canada, you can call or text nine eight eight to reach the suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Anytime dear night. Okay, let’s get into it. What does it take to build a life you’re proud of? Lose nearly all of it to an illness you never chose, and then find your way back using something as unlikely as standup comedy and what happens when you take that same unlikely tool and hand it to other people who are standing exactly where you once stood.

[00:02:22] Welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast. I’m your host, Dwight Heck, here to help you live life on purpose and not by accident. My guest today built a successful business and bipolar disorder, dismantled nearly all of it. What followed were 14 years. He calls his lost years, years that cost him his business, his home, and he’s been open about surviving both hospitalisation and homelessness along the way.

[00:02:51] The turning point came through an unlikely door, a standup comedy class built for people living with mental illness, where his illness has been running this show. He started finding material in his own life instead, and that shift is what got his recovery moving these days. He teaches that same class to others, performs on stages himself, and uses comedy to push back against the shame that so often surrounds mental illness.

[00:03:21] He’s a bestselling author. His book OMG, that’s me, has sold over 22,000 copies. He’s been named one of the best bipolar disorder books ever written. His newest book, Healing with Humor tells the story of five people who took his comedy class and transformed their lives through it. He’s also blogs for bphope.com, where his writing has been read more than 1 million times.

[00:03:47] Dave Mowry, welcome to the Give a Heck podcast. Thanks for agreeing to come on and share with us some of your life journey.

[00:03:54] **Dave:** Thanks, Dwight. Happy to be here. Looking forward to it.

[00:03:57] **Dwight:** Yeah, me too. So, you know, listeners or viewers of the podcast. Um, not very many of my guests over five years have actually listened to my shows.

[00:04:09] Uh, Dave has listened to a few, so I really appreciate that. Um, because it, it makes it even more special. There’s more of a connection because he was willing to put in the time and effort, um, to ensure that this was something that fit him. It’s not just about fitting us, it’s fitting him because he’s gonna put his, you know, his emotions, his heart on his sleeve, and share with you some information that can change your life if you’re so ready for it to change your life.

[00:04:37] So, buckle up. We’re gonna get started with the way I always get started with my show, Dave. I always start at the beginning because our orange origins absolutely shape everything and not enough people take it seriously. I don’t start from when did you get successful in business or what did you do after high school?

[00:04:56] I want to know the down and dirty of what happened in your life. And some people will tell me, well, I had a great childhood. But there’s always something, there’s always a key in our past. So it’s not indicative of our future. There’s always something that causes us to be different as young adults and helps us or holds us back.

[00:05:15] So if you could do me a favour with the people listening right now, take me back all the way to your earliest memories that you’re comfortable sharing.

[00:05:25] **Dave:** Um, I remember being eight, um, living in a tiny house with my brother, sister, and mother, father. Um, my brother and I slept in the attic, and, uh, my sister, one bedroom downstairs, my brother or my parents, the other, uh, I remember standing up at the dinner table because we only had four chairs, um, and my parents telling me that if I stood up to eat, I’d grow taller.

[00:06:03] So it worked. I grew taller, but I played baseball. I had friends, had neighbours. Things were good. Um, yeah, I had had, had a, had, things were good through about sixth grade. And then seventh grade we moved, we got into a new school, new neighbourhood. I didn’t know anybody. And, um, I, I had a really hard time. I had a hard time getting to know people.

[00:06:33] Um, I was anxious. I was, I was really anxious. And, um, and, and that’s kind of the first point. I, I remember kinda standing against a wall and kind of hiding in the shadows, you know, trying, um, I’d, I’d look at other people and I’d see them having a good time and talking and whatnot. And I’d wonder, you know, how they did it when I was so anxious and uncomfortable and couldn’t talk to people.

[00:07:02] And, um, that carried through for most of high school. And in high school I had my ups and downs, you know, like I said, I, I live with bipolar disorders, severe anxiety. And so the anxiety came up when I was, I was in school. I remember being called on in class to come up front in front of the class and solve a simple math problem, which was easy and whatever.

[00:07:30] But I stood up. And when I got up there, I just froze. My brain froze. And, um, the anxiety just overwhelmed me. And I, I just, I just, my mind went blank. I just couldn’t do it. And I embarrassed, uh, totally embarrassed and went and sat down. Um, and then, um, the only time I played baseball and the only time I was really at peace, really calm, was when I was on the baseball field playing baseball.

[00:08:01] That was the only time I was really, really at peace, um, and calm. Um, and. Baseball was great. Uh, played through there, played a bit in college. Uh, but as I got older, the anxiety got worse. Um, and I would come and go. Uh, started in high school. I had started with depression, having depression, uh, bouts of depression.

[00:08:30] Um, and I had no idea what was going on. Like I said, I just saw other people, uh, interacting, having a good time, getting to know people, being open, easy to meet people. And I, I wondered what was wrong with me, uh, with the anxiety. I remember laying in bed on, uh, Sunday nights, just breathing, just holding it together because of the, uh, anxiety of having to go to school the next day and to interact with people.

[00:09:05] Um, and then, um, Friday and Saturdays were great. I was comfortable that, but Sunday through Thursday was school at nighttime. I, I, I remember being there and being so anxious that I just, just prayed that I could go to sleep. And, um, a lot of wondering what was wrong with me. So, uh, and that carried over to college and then adulthood, and the anxiety got worse, the depression got worse, uh, would come and go, but it got worse.

[00:09:41] Uh, bipolar disorder kicked in, so I had my manic episodes. Um, starting out, the mania wasn’t too high, the depression wasn’t too low, uh, but as I got older, the highs got higher, the lows got lower. And, um, you know, in between, I, when I, I, it seemed like I had three good years and three bad years. So during those three good years, I would do really well.

[00:10:09] Um, I would, my work would go well. I’d have success at work. Um, I, I’d get promotions and, uh, I’d get raises and all that, but after a certain amount of time and I’d start sliding into the depression and, uh, the depression would make the anxiety worse. And, um. I, I’d just slide down and oftentimes for the job or whatever, I’d just have to escape.

[00:10:40] I just, I, it would just be too much and I’d just have to escape.

[00:10:45] **Dwight:** Yeah. You mentioned, I’m gonna back up a little bit, but first I just wanna bring up a point, you know, you, you talked about one triggering the other, depression triggering anxiety. I think so many people today that I talk to with emotional or mental health, um, challenges, disorders or whatever the case, um, don’t realise that one, one is tied directly to the other.

[00:11:10] Uh, I know from myself, I have suffered from depression and anxiety, um, always listening and watching. There’s nothing wrong with seeking out help, right. Somebody to communicate with outside of your circle of influence. Um, just because sometimes that person that you’re talking to can see the forest for the trees.

[00:11:31] And throughout my life, I’ve had children that have, as I mentioned, she, outside of the recording, a daughter that went through diagnosis of bipolar and learning all about that. And kids with a DHD, severe, A DHD, um, anxiety, depression, challenges, going and counselling with some group counselling to try to help them when they were younger.

[00:11:52] And, you know, leading to so many different challenges that our, that our school systems aren’t prepared to not teach about, but acknowledge or recognise. So my question to you would be, you know, you talked about your sixth grade, you had moved, you were very anxious. When did you realise, or, or who realised where you, like, what was the turning point between that age as those younger ages where you got into college?

[00:12:23] Where was the awareness? Was it somebody outside that brought that to your attention? Or were you able to speak up enough to get people to, to take you serious so that you could start with some sort of, uh, resolution, not necessarily resolution, but you know, with some support?

[00:12:38] **Dave:** Yeah. Um, that, that didn’t happen until, um, well into adulthood.

[00:12:45] I had the anxiety, I just thought something was wrong with me, you know? Um, but it’s not something that I talked about. It wasn’t something that I didn’t understand it, you know, I didn’t know what was happening. So it, it was hard. I, I, I couldn’t talk about it. Not because I didn’t wanna necessarily, but I didn’t know what was going on.

[00:13:09] Um, and, and. You know, the depression when you slide into depression, at least for me, if you, if you’ve got serious clinical depression, you know, you slide into depression and, and it’s, it’s just awful. But your, your, your mind slows down and your dull and, um, you know, you, it’s like you can’t talk to anybody.

[00:13:43] Um, I didn’t wanna go anywhere. I didn’t wanna do anything. I’d go sit in the backyard or lay in the backyard and, um, that was, that was all I could do. That was all I could do. If I had to go do anything, meet friends, have a function or whatever, uh, it was everything I could do just to gather myself and the strength inside to, to, to go and, and, and do something like that.

[00:14:09] **Dwight:** Well, and the reason I bring it up, Dave, is there’s so many different people, including myself. I never realised until I was in, into my early forties the effects of what I had gone through because, you know, uh, just like you, I didn’t recognise these, these things that were going on in my life, I was judged because of it, bullied because of it.

[00:14:31] On top of that, I had severe asthma and allergies. So there was, there was, you know, a one two punch. There was different things going on, but the adults, because of lacked education, labelled me different ways. They didn’t really have support, um, for me, even when they did, you know, kind of acknowledge stuff.

[00:14:50] And it was, for me, it was really, um, a counsellor I seen when I started going to college, right. That really, it wasn’t really that they give me, you know, like a light bulb moment. They, but they give me a, an ember a spark. They give me something that I could go, Hmm, really? I never thought about that. And that was for those listening, watching.

[00:15:12] That’s what it can be. It can be one thing. Maybe listening to this episode and listening to what Dave’s gonna share as we continue on will make a difference for you to have what I finally got with some hope to understand what’s going on with you. So you’re not broken, you’re, you, you’re, it’s not like you need to be necessarily fixed.

[00:15:32] You need to be understood, right? You need to understand yourself. Awareness is so powerful when you have mental, ch health challenges. Wouldn’t you agree?

[00:15:42] **Dave:** Oh yeah, for sure. And, uh, for me, you know, I felt alone, all alone. Um, you know, I’d see other people, like I said, and I think, um, I think I was the only one that felt the way I did.

[00:15:57] And, uh, it’s interesting in, in school, um, when I was young in school, I, I think I thought that I was a bad person. I must be a bad person and be doing bad things or having bad thoughts because, um, uh, otherwise God wouldn’t be punishing me with this. These, these, this overwhelming anxiety and sense of dread that just filled up my stomach and my chest.

[00:16:33] Um, so I, I thought I must be a bad person and God was punishing me. And so I, I, you know, I felt like everybody else was normal and I was all alone. I was the only one going through this. But what I found, just like what you said, you know, finding somebody in the ember, um, for me it was reading a book. I read a book and, um.

[00:17:00] It was by William Styron. He wrote Sophie’s Choice, and he was in Paris accepting an award, and he was severely depressed. And he wrote about it, uh, and he wrote about it, um, in a, in an essay. And, and then he wrote, you know, expanded it into a book. But he described what he was going through and what he felt and how it was.

[00:17:29] And when I read that, I thought, you know, that’s me. That’s, you know, that’s what I’m going through. And I finally realised that I wasn’t alone, and I finally had something to, to, to something that I could say, this is depression. You know, this is anxiety, this is depression, and I’m not a bad person. And, uh, other people are going through this.

[00:18:01] **Dwight:** Now. That’s, that’s one of the key things though, is understanding that there’s others going through their own challenges. Were not alone. I felt that loneliness, um, growing up in school, it was tremendous and I’d hide it. So I, you know, I, as I got older, I became somebody that was into, in some regards being the class clown, right?

[00:18:25] Because I was hiding and masking what I was going through. Um, I don’t think anybody knew throughout my whole life, like I said, until I was in my forties, how how it had affected my life and held me back, affected my marriage, um, which we eventually got divorced, affected all aspects of my life. And, and, and when I think about it, I tell people, you know, like, think about how a spider starts, a spider web.

[00:18:54] Does a spider web go everywhere? That’s how I felt in my thoughts all the time. I was felt feeling completely confused. Um, I suffering the same, you know, not to the same level of intensity as bipolar, but, um, it was a, it in my fifties when I got medicated, and you talked earlier about how bipolar, you just feel, you know, certain moments where you’re feeling just numb and you’re just, you’re just you, you’re literally level.

[00:19:22] Well, that’s what I felt like when I was medicated. It may have stopped the, the voices or the noise in my head one moment. And, and you know, people, they don’t have to be exclusively separate. You can in one moment suffer both depression and anxiety. At least I have. Yeah. Oh yeah. They together many, many times.

[00:19:39] Many, many times they’re, they’re married with one another. Yeah. The medication made me mentally just shut right off. I couldn’t get upset about anything, right? It was just it, and I’m not saying medication isn’t something people should try or look at. Obviously talk to your professional. It helped me get over a hump, but eventually I had to learn how to heal and grow past it, and enough counselling and stuff just to help me.

[00:20:06] Um, so I tell, I tell this to people so that you can genuinely understand that it’s okay to seek help. It’s okay to not understand, or, or even now, today, depending on your age, you may think you have it all under control or understand it, but there’s still something that’s pulling at you. Keep on keeping on, keep on researching, keep on listening to, uh, great people such as Dave.

[00:20:31] Check out their information. Never understand. Pardon me? Never believe though, and understand that you’re never alone. Right? Are we, Dave?

[00:20:40] **Dave:** No, that’s exactly right. Um, and that’s one of the messages that I share when I’m, you know, talking to people. I’m talking to groups and, you know, um, speaking with, with, with you is, you know, you’re not alone and you feel like it, but you’re not.

[00:20:59] You’re not alone. Other people are going through this. Other people, um, experience it. Um, and not, not to, not to plug my book necessarily, but omg, that’s me is, uh, I, the blog post I wrote for bb hope.com, uh, the response to those was really, uh, huge because the most common response was, oh gee, that’s me.

[00:21:23] You’re telling my story. I don’t feel so alone now. And so I took the best of those and I put them in the book. And, and when I wrote those, wrote the book, wrote the blog posts, I went back to the, I was, sometimes I was living in the darkness, you know, and suffering in silence. And I’d write about that and how that felt and how that manifested itself.

[00:21:52] And, uh, but other times I’d go back to my dark places and my challenges, and I’d write about the experiences that I had and how I felt. And so most mental health, um, like in the blogosphere, most things are like three things you can do to beat depression or, you know, um, you know, two steps to feeling better or whatever.

[00:22:18] It’s, and, and I didn’t do that. I, I wrote what it was truly like to live with a mental illness. And so that’s why the response was, omg, that’s me. You’re telling my story. I don’t feel so alone now. And, um, realising that you’re not alone, it’s huge. I mean, it’s absolutely huge. Realising that other people are going through it, realising that you’re not a bad person, realising that, um, it’s okay to talk about it.

[00:22:45] Realising that it’s okay to ask for help because there is help and the new medications are, are, you know, for me, I take medication and I still have highs, but the highs aren’t so high. I still have slide into depression, but, but it’s mild and the lows aren’t so low. And when I’m there, I’m okay. I could be with it, you know, spend time with it knowing that it’s temporary, it’s not gonna last, and I’m gonna come out it.

[00:23:17] I think that’s

[00:23:18] **Dwight:** with awareness that’s gonna happen, right? Oh, yeah. You’re gonna be more aware as we, as we get older. It helps too, obviously.

[00:23:24] **Dave:** Yeah, exactly. Knowing that, you know, um, I’m gonna come out of it and, but the thing is what you’re saying about you in school and whatnot, and being a class clown for me, uh, especially in my, um, you know, in 1996, I had a, i, I had a breakdown, serious breakdown.

[00:23:46] I, me, um, my mind snapped. I could feel it. I, I, it was like an electric shock to my brain. I I could actually feel it, almost hear it. And, um, muscles in my face went slack, my voice went monotone, my vision went blurry. Um, it was everything I could do to get home and climb into bed and just hold it together and, um, and, and just be, and, and, um, that was.

[00:24:23] That, that was the beginning of those 14, last years and dark days. And during that time, I’d pretend when I had to be around people, I, I’d pretend to be okay. And it was exhausting. It was truly exhausting. You know, I was scared to death because of the anxiety. Overwhelmed with a sense of dread, depressed.

[00:24:48] So my mind was, was sluggish, and my voice was monotone. And still, I was trying to, I was pretending to be okay, but I knew that people really looked into my eyes. They’d, they’d see that I wasn’t, they’d see that I was broken. Uh, because, because, uh, because I was truly, I was truly broken. And for 14 years I couldn’t interact socially.

[00:25:15] Um, I couldn’t work. I tried, I kept trying. I tried over and over and over. Um, and, and, and failed. And failed and failed. Um. By pretending to be okay. It was exhausting.

[00:25:31] **Dwight:** You were stuck in, I talk about this a lot, um, and get, well, I’m a guest on shows too, and they always ask me about one of the questions I, uh, put as a, as a, something they can ask obviously is about quiet desperation, going to bed and quiet desperation, living the day during quiet desperation, you know, getting up and quiet, desperation, putting on that mask.

[00:25:54] Having to live a facade is exhausting. I could never figure out why I was so tired all the time. It wasn’t until I got custody of my kids, um, long time ago, right. We’re we’re talking nearly 20 years ago when they were still younger that I realised how bad it was. I used to escape and I’d tell ’em I was using a washroom and I’d go up to my room.

[00:26:19] **Dave:** Yeah.

[00:26:20] **Dwight:** And, and I’d go into the bathroom and I wasn’t even going to the bathroom, Dave. I was sit on the ground and I grab my head and I’d just be like, why God? You know, like, why am I feeling like this? And I’m so exhausted I can’t hold it in. Right? And I’d break down and then, you know, 20 minutes, half hour later, I’d put myself back together, put the mask back on, go down, help kids with homework, do laundry, do whatever, right?

[00:26:47] This was in the evenings where I get up earlier in the morning so that I could go through that before I had to be present in a different way for them at a different light. And those listeners are watching if you feel that way, like that you’re living life as a facade that you’re presenting to everybody.

[00:27:05] And you know what? People will notice it, but guess what? They have their own stuff going on. And a lot of times I find you have to go outside your circle. You have to go outside your family to actually be understood, to be recognised. Not that your family doesn’t love you, but guess what? They have their own challenges.

[00:27:26] Or maybe you have made it so that they are on pins as ne pins and needles. Right? That they don’t know how to respond to you and you’re not aware of how you react. Right? So it’s okay to go through this stuff. Um, quiet desperation was something I lived all the time, so I, I, I feel what you’re saying, right?

[00:27:46] It hits me right here in, in that south centre of mine, it’s screaming, you know? Wow. You found another soul that has gone through and you have a lot of commonalities. So thank you so much for being vulnerable. I really appreciate it. Um, before we go onto the next section about your comedy, is there anything else you’d like to share that you would, uh, like to talk about in regards to your origin and some of the things you’ve gone through?

[00:28:13] **Dave:** Uh, I, I think, um, quiet desperation is a great way to put it. You know, um, I’d hide, I’d stand against the wall and try to blend into the walls, just hoping nobody would talk to me. And if somebody came up and said something to me, I’d answer in one word, one syllable. You know, were trying to be as boring as possible and, and hoping they, they’d leave.

[00:28:40] And, you know, they, they, they’d leave quickly and thank God, because I didn’t want them to look into my eyes. And, um, I didn’t, it was so exhausting to pretend that it took so much energy to pretend that I, I I, I just wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it. Quiet desperation is a great way to put it.

[00:29:03] **Dwight:** Well, and you know, being that kid that you don’t want people, you mentioned earlier, you, that kids would be playing and doing whatever, you know, around you.

[00:29:15] And I, part of me, I was, it was, it was really a pull situation in my mind. Part of me wanted to be part of that clique, that group. One of the, one of the cool kids and a part of me was just like, stay away from me. I want to hide over here on the wall. And because of that though, um, and then health issues on top of that, back when I was in school, they didn’t have rescue inhalers.

[00:29:40] I, so asthma for me was a real thing. And I’d get picked last to go into, you know, sports. I’d be one of the last kids picked. So that didn’t help matters. Or if I did perform in the sport and I’d be really good initially, and then my asthma would kick in, then I’d get heckled and made fun of like, oh, you’re such, you know, you did good, but then you became a loser or whatever.

[00:30:04] You know how kids can be so, so mean. So at the end of the day, I realised that it was better to be that person sitting off in the corner, the dark part of the field during, during, during lunch breaks and stuff. Yeah. And once in a while kids would come over because that was easy prey. And the bullies would bully and, and get their chuckles and their laughs for their little peons that would follow them where most of them were suffering themselves.

[00:30:36] Even a bullies got mental challenges, emotional challenges. They, they are the way, they are from learned behaviour in most cases. From their, from their, you know, from their growing up and how they’re growing up. So, uh, I can appreciate it. And yes, quiet desperation is something I have focused on understanding and educating about, because most people don’t know how to summarise it in a simple way.

[00:31:03] Right. I’m quiet, I’m desperate. Quiet desperation. And I, and I’d rather not have that. And, and I don’t know if you went through this, this would be a good question for you. When I got older, all of a sudden when I’m, you know, I’m not around the same group of friends and moved away from my small community of a little 10,000 people, and I moved to the big city and all of a sudden I was amassing friends.

[00:31:28] I was trying to, it was like I had a basket and I wanted to go pick apples off a tree. And I, I wasn’t gonna stop until that basket was overflowing. Mm-hmm. And I was collecting friends where they really friends? No, they weren’t. And then over the next, I’d say the last 20, 30 years, I’ve gotten rid of friends that have been 15, 20, 30 year friends because they didn’t fit the season of my life.

[00:31:52] And I bring that up for people listening or watching. As you mature, as you grow, you’re gonna realise how many people aren’t meant to be around you. That I haven’t been healthy for your mindset. Because people that are, like, for me, I was attracting like people. So when I wasn’t working, I was hanging out with those, like people do, like people always help you out of quiet desperation or out of a jam.

[00:32:18] No, they don’t. They commiserate with you. They add more gas to the fire. It’s not intentional. I’m not picking on people. It’s where they are, are are at. And as I grew, I grew away from them. It was a natural progression. Um, I beat myself up initially about it thinking, well, why do I think I’m so good? Why do I think I’m better than them?

[00:32:42] Why, why? You know, that person’s been my friend for 20 years and I, and my brain started justifying and then it would cause me even more, cause me to, to be more depressed. Like, what happens if I had done this differently? Right? So at the end of the day, quiet, desperation is a reality. Probably will be the rest of my life.

[00:33:00] The difference is between me and, and maybe yourself or people listening or watching is my, I’ve worked so hard on my self-awareness, Dave, to make sure that I’m, uh, I’m always, you know, cognizant of my body triggers, which counselling has helped me understand over the last, let’s say 25, 30 years, and, you know, what has, what has worked well for you besides medication.

[00:33:26] Do you have specific routines that you like following? Um, do you find that structure is better for you to stay, um, away from the darkness?

[00:33:37] **Dave:** Yes. The structure’s important. Um, sleep. Sleep is so, so important. If I don’t get enough sleep, um, my mind is, um, I’m, I’m not well, uh, I’m, I’m not well. But if I get enough sleep and with the medication, um, today, today, I’m, I’m good.

[00:34:04] I keep getting, I keep healing. Um.

[00:34:11] Every day. Um, every year. Um, you know, and I’m, I’m getting older and I think if I, uh, I, when I think about dying, it pisses me off because I had my, my lost years, um, and my dark days. And now my days are getting better. Um, I’m understanding myself better. I’m understanding my mind, my, like you said, my body. I listen to my body.

[00:34:44] I’m living my life with purpose. And, um.

[00:34:52] I, I, I’m continuing. I, I can see myself getting better and better and better and not better as in a better, you know, working or better than somebody else, or better this or better that, but just me getting better and becoming the whole person that I was meant to be.

[00:35:12] **Dwight:** I love that. You, you’re right, we lost so many years.

[00:35:15] Like, you know, you, you, you were very defined and talk about the 14 years, but, you know, we can’t regain those years. So, you know, the past is an indicative of the future, but it sure holds a lot of secrets that we need to unveil, unveil part of me to ourselves to ensure that we, you know, people listening, watching, there’s no magic here for what Dave’s going through or what I’ve gone through or what you’re going through, but awareness, um, developing yourself, getting to a point where now th those years that I was living in a fog, now I’m more self-aware.

[00:35:59] So I can self-correct, I can, or I know who to go to to help me, give me what I need, whether it’s just listener or listener with advice or listen and maybe, uh, change my mind and I need your advice, like those type of people in my world. So at the end of the day, I find I’m more aware of my life and one thing I’ve really.

[00:36:20] Bound is more gratefulness in the last decade, whereas I didn’t have the ability when I was in my clouded years where I can never get back. Now, I think to myself, again, being in the industry, I talk about death with people all the time as a planner, right? As a financial insurance planner. So it comes up all the time.

[00:36:40] And I used to be fearful of death. Now I’m not. I I, I think to myself, I don’t know what day the Lord’s gonna call me home, but today I’m gonna be as grateful and as I can and I work on. And for those new to the show, those older, the show you’ve heard me talk about the fact of living with intention means that I never have a bad day ever.

[00:37:04] I always am able to, does it take effort? Some days it’s exhausting, Dave. I have to go get, have a nap to squeeze out the good of what happened from, right. So it’s as simple for me now is I woke up and opened up my eyes and I was given another shot. I woke up today and I thought to myself before I went to shower, I thought, I can’t wait.

[00:37:27] I get to talk to Dave today. So it’s what we tell ourselves. It’s the programming that we give ourselves that helps. That’s not have a bad day. Do I have character building moments during my day? Absolutely. So, and the reason I bring this up is people listening are watching, sometimes it’s just about us understanding ourselves well enough and learning enough and implementing enough tools that we can catch ourselves.

[00:37:50] Whether it’s through our physical body triggers or, you know, it can be other things that we can be aware of or, you know, the way we’re, we just had a conversation with somebody and now we’re done and we’re off the phone, off the video call left the circumstance where we’re meeting them and we feel kind of down.

[00:38:10] Do we really think about it? Do we really analyse it? Most people don’t. I’ve gotten to a point where I do and I’ll think to myself, why do I feel this way? Okay, let’s analyse what, what, what was said in that conversation. Did it something that I said, can I change it? Oh, if it’s something they said, I can’t really control them except maybe control how much time I hang out with them.

[00:38:29] Is it always consistent when I see them? Do I always feel that way? So if it’s not me and it’s them, Ooh, time to change an association. Right? So those of us who are watching this is taking me decades. I’m not saying this can happen overnight. Dave can tell you we’re a working project till the day we take our last breath, aren’t we, Dave?

[00:38:50] **Dave:** Oh, you bet. You bet. Um, and the awareness, um, you know, I become more aware every day. Um, and I analyse, I don’t know if analyse is the right word, but I check in with myself.

[00:39:08] **Dwight:** That’s

[00:39:09] **Dave:** a good way to

[00:39:09] **Dwight:** put it.

[00:39:10] **Dave:** Yeah. And I.

[00:39:15] I get up, I take the dog for a walk. Um, you know, we, we go for a good long walk, a couple miles and come back and then I sit down and I plan my day. And when I plan my day, it’s. It’s, there’s things that need to be done, but I also, um, what’s, what’s gonna. What’s gonna feel good to get done? What’s gonna feel good and feel good?

[00:39:48] It means feel right, you know? Um, and I’m not into wasting time, um, or doing nothing. Actually doing nothing sometimes is the best thing I can do. But, but I want everything I do to, to be something that’s gonna make me feel good for getting it done. My, my annual, um, new Year’s resolution is to be happy and, um.

[00:40:20] Being happy means doing things that I wanna do, but it also means doing things that I don’t necessarily wanna do, but need to get done so that I can check ’em off the list and so they’re not hanging around and, um, I’m not thinking about ’em, and it’s not taking time, not taking space in my brain. So sometimes being happy is doing the hardest thing.

[00:40:42] Um, and other times it’s, um, doing, doing the right thing. Uh, sometimes it’s just me having time for myself here. I live in Oregon and we have a great wine country, um, and it’s about an hour southwest to where I live. And so I go out to wine country regularly and I’ll go out and I’ll just sit and have a glass of wine and look over the vineyards.

[00:41:09] And, uh, sometimes I’ll be a view of the mountains and I’ll just sit there and I’ll be, uh, just let my mind wander. And I found you probably found the same thing when I’m having my quiet time and I let my mind wander, purposefully let my mind wander. Uh, things that are important pop up, you know, they just come to mind.

[00:41:33] Um, and things, oftentimes that’s how I plan my day or my week or, or longer, is I’ll just have my quiet time and the things that that need to get done that I wanna get done will pop into my head. They’ll just come up to the surface and I’ll write those down. And those are the things that are important for me to do.

[00:41:57] **Dwight:** And, and that’s great. Um, I like that. Thank you for sharing that, being, having that quiet time and having that awareness and picking out, or, you know, what’s coming to mind to help you plan moving forward is something most people in society avoid because they, they may realise or may not realise that the thoughts that are coming, some of ’em might not be the most positive, but it’s still something that’s difficult, that needs to be dealt with.

[00:42:29] Instead, they turn to their addictions, right. They turn to, and addictions aren’t just drugs and alcohol, those listening, right? Addictions are, um, oh, I’m gonna go out and work in the yard. I’m gonna, and, and every night you’re working in the yard to avoid that quiet time, that realisation, that awareness. Or you’re a TV addict.

[00:42:52] And I’ve been there many, many times myself because now I can live vicariously through the life of somebody else and be angry about their stuff and not have to worry about my stuff, right? Movies, tv, whatever. So it’s, it’s nice to hear that you are an advocate for quiet time. I still struggle with that, I’ll be honest with you, right?

[00:43:13] Because of the fact that I know there’s gonna be more than just. Self-awareness of good things that I need to work on. There’s also gonna be some things from the past that are gonna slide in. Um, for me though, that’s, you know, that’s evil. That’s the devil coming, coming to, to affect my mindset. Again, for those listening are watching.

[00:43:32] You don’t have to be faith bearing like me. I’m not judging you, but that’s, I’m just talking about my real, my life and what, why sitting in my thoughts can sometimes be really scary. Okay.

[00:43:49] **Dave:** You, I think, you know, when the, um, bad things come to mind, I’ve learned to just, not to stuff them. Um, I’ve learned to just kind of be with them and let ’em run their course through my head, through my body, um, body and whatever emotion or whatever I feel in my chest or my head and just, just let it.

[00:44:17] And, um, that helps it to pass rather than stuffing it and having it come up again and again and again. Um, so that’s something that’s, that’s worked for me. If there’s something that’s positive or something I wanna do or something needs to happen or you know, something nice I can do for somebody, then, then that’s great.

[00:44:42] But you know, the negative thoughts come up too.

[00:44:44] **Dwight:** Yeah, of course they do. This is such a great conversation. We could just keep on this conversation for the whole show. I really appreciate you and your vulnerability and your story, your stories and things that you’ve been sharing. Um, I know it can be really tough when we’re in living it, right?

[00:45:02] We’re still living it. You and I, again, both different, but there’s commonalities. But to be able to share gives one thing that most people need in our world today in North America and the states and Canada. We need hope and I’m sure even still hope people that are listening. So thank you for that. We’re gonna get onto the next section sex segment that I want to talk about.

[00:45:26] Your teaching comedy healing with humour you now teach. We talked about it a little bit in your bio. I mentioned it about you doing your, you know, we talked a little bit about standup comedy to other people living with mental illness in some cases, you know, in inside places like a state hospital. What does that process actually look like and what’s it like the first time someone in the room finds their own laugh?

[00:45:51] **Dave:** Yeah, it’s, when somebody finds their own laugh, it’s, it’s awesome because you can see their eyes, um, and you can see the change in their, in their, uh, in their body, in their mannerisms and everything. And, uh, I remember the first time after my dark days, the first time that I really laughed, uh, I really had a belly laugh.

[00:46:17] Uh, I remember it like it was yesterday because it felt so good. And I realised that it had been years and years and years since it happened. But I see people, um. You know, and, and the class is, we start out by talking about our hard times and our challenges, whether it’s, uh, suicidal litigation or it’s depression or bipolar disorder or um, severe anxiety or whatever, um, our challenges are that’s, we start out by talking about those things.

[00:46:54] And so it’s a very open and honest. It’s a place where you can be, you can go anywhere, uh, because we’re talking comedy, so it’s not necessarily scary, but we can go anywhere. We can and we talk about everything and everything doesn’t become a joke, um, because some things are inappropriate or some things are too raw.

[00:47:19] But, but, um, so we talk about, you know, who we are and where we’re and what’s happening in our lives. And then, and then we start to look for the humour in those experiences. Um, and one of the things I’ve been able to do is find opportunities for humour in people’s challenges and negative experiences. And when we do that and we find a place for humour, and we turn that negative experience into something that’s got humour to it, and people laugh, changes, everything, it reframes their brain from this being a negative, terrible, awful experience.

[00:48:00] Um, or something that’s happened in my life that’s changed my life and, and made it worse to, um, it it, we take it out, we look at it, we look at it inside out and upside down and backwards, and we look for the humour in it. And just by doing that, it changes things. And then by finding humour in it and, uh, uh, it’s transformative.

[00:48:24] It’s transformative. I got a story in book, in my book, healing With Humour. I write about Molly. And Molly, uh, was a doctor. Everything. She, she only, that’s all she ever wanted to do was be a doctor in practise medicine in her, in her own hometown. So she went to, she worked hard and she ended up in medical school and she got her MD and went through residency.

[00:48:48] And so here was Molly McNabb, md and um. Then because of her undiagnosed bipolar disorder, she had, uh, a breakdown. And, uh, she was incapacitated and it, it, she wasn’t able, she, she wasn’t able to continue practising medicine. So Molly had lost everything. It really meant anything to her. And we, Molly came to class and, uh, her mom brought her, uh, because Molly was suicidal.

[00:49:23] And so this was something that her mom was hoping could help get her out of that. And we started looking for the humour and Molly’s story, and Molly, we were able to find it. And, um, Molly, uh, turned out, she was able to find jokes in her experiences and write jokes about her experiences. And they were laugh out loud, funny jokes.

[00:49:48] And today Molly performs and she forms around town. And, um, Molly, instead of seeing herself as being a failed doctor, her identity, uh, her purpose, her identity is that she’s a, she’s a comic, so Molly’s a comic. And, uh, she tells her story, uh, one joke at a time on stage.

[00:50:12] **Dwight:** That’s awesome. You know, one of the things, again, I’m not a psychologist psychiatrist, I’m not a registered mental professional.

[00:50:20] But one thing I’ve learned over all the years of, you know, going through counselling with my children in an individual basis for myself, um, most of us don’t realise, and you’ve talked about it through what you were just sharing, how much our emotions, so when we think about something, the emotion that was tied to it is triggered again.

[00:50:42] **Speaker 3:** Yeah.

[00:50:42] **Dwight:** And until we realise that, that emotion, that anger, that sadness, that disparity, the depression, whatever it is that’s tied to that memory, is always going. Cause the same visceral response within your body, within your mind. And that to, to change that thought process is the hardest part of correcting mental challenges, mental illnesses.

[00:51:09] I know I still struggle at it. I have specific things that, um, the counsellor will say, well, you know, your biggest problem, because I can share story after story and so can the people listening or watching yourself. But if we don’t work on changing what triggers us through that, it’s gonna continue. It’s, it’s on that hamster wheel.

[00:51:30] So your comedy is causing people to rewire that trauma that’s tied to that memory. And, and I think that’s amazing. Um, I use it as a self-protection mechanism when I was growing up into adulthood and, and even throughout adulthood of people would want me to come to their parties or to their events because I’d make people laugh.

[00:51:51] A lot of it was deflection, right? Yeah. It was, it was to be, to be wanting to be there. But I wasn’t really fixing challenges. So I, I appreciate you sharing that through the comedy. Can you, you give us a great example of, uh, of Molly, um, how when you, when people go through that and, you know, you watch people take your class and that, and they’ve transformed like Molly has to where now she identifies as a comic, um.

[00:52:23] What happens after the fact? Do they, do they become stewards of the same thing? Do they want to help others go, you know, to evolve? Or is it just, do the majority of ’em just stay their status quo? They’re, they’re happier, they’re changed. Do you find that it’s created a wave of change within their own communities?

[00:52:47] **Dave:** Um, for some people, uh, they do. Um, and they talk about the finding humour and people’s challenges, looking for the humour, and they help people find humour in their stories. Um, other people, uh, go through the class and they have the tra, you know, they, they, and you’re exactly right. Um, changing how you think about something.

[00:53:14] When I was, when I was, um, I used to drive down the street before I took the standup comedy class that I took, that transformed, that changed my life. Um, I, I was, uh, I’d be driving down the street or sitting at a home and I’d hear a song and it would trigger a thought, a memory, a bad memory. And I’d relive that bad memory and go back to that trauma and feel it and relive it.

[00:53:43] And it would fill me up, uh, with the anxiety and the sense of dread and I’d, I’d relive it. And when I did the comedy and when I had heard that song and started to go back to that dark place, I’d say, where can I find the humour in that? And it changed everything. I didn’t go to that, back to that trauma and relive the trauma.

[00:54:09] I was looking for humour in that experience. And I was, like I said before, you know, uh, looking at it, turning it around, looking at it, looking it up and down, backwards, side by side, you know? So really looking at that experience and looking for the humour in it. Uh, and then the next time I had the thought of that traumatic experience, I didn’t go back to that dark place.

[00:54:36] I didn’t relive the trauma. So it, it changed the pathways in my brain. It rewired my brain. Um, and, and, um, you know, that for me, I, I’d have, uh, PTSD, I had PTSD from my trauma, and I, it, I, it would happen often. It would happen, uh, once a day, maybe three times a day, uh, depending on the week. It would happen often.

[00:55:02] And I relive those experiences over and over and over again. Um. And doesn’t happen. I mean, I still have thought of you when we were, when everything, um, homeless for 18 months with the kids and, uh, think about kids and the impact that my breakdown and everything had on them. That’s, you know, that’s, um, I don’t, I I, I, I don’t find any comedy in that.

[00:55:41] I don’t find the funny in that. Um, so I still have those thoughts and they come back. Um, but they’re, they don’t take me down those dark, dark paths where they used to.

[00:55:53] **Dwight:** Well, you have that realisation and it’s important for us to have that realisation. Like you said, you don’t find the co humour and comedy in that, but I find some of the most traumatic things that I can think of just on the fly here.

[00:56:09] Can I apply humour to it? No, I can’t. There, there’s things that I can’t, but I’ve had to acknowledge those memories and the way it makes my physical body and my emotional and my mental state of mind and acknowledge it. But sometimes it still acknowledges and it’s, the outcome is sadness.

[00:56:33] **Speaker 3:** Oh yeah.

[00:56:33] **Dwight:** Depression, right? Yeah. Or anxiety thinking, oh my goodness, what happens if this same thing happens to any of my children or the people I love? Right. Yeah. So I appreciate you sharing that because it’s never gonna be perfect. Is it?

[00:56:51] **Dave:** No, it’s never gonna be perfect. Um, but I’d say, you know, some things are too raw or you can’t find humour in, or aren’t, there aren’t places for humour, at least for me.

[00:57:05] Um, but you know, when, when I was having my challenges, there was a time when I was suicidal, um, and I, I drove out to a park that’s about 10 miles from our house and sat on a park bench and there was a river, and I remember the sunning up the river and I had a gun on my lap. Um, and I didn’t, I didn’t do it.

[00:57:31] I didn’t use the gun, and I came home and put it away, um, and never got it out again. But, uh, one of the most popular jokes, the funniest jokes, one of the most popular jokes of my comedy is a suicide joke. So you say, you know, there’s things that you can’t find humour in, but you can find humour in just about anything if it’s done right.

[00:57:58] So, I’d like to share with you and the audience my gentle suicide joke, if that’s okay with you. Sure,

[00:58:04] **Dwight:** absolutely. Go for it.

[00:58:06] **Dave:** All right. And it’s okay to laugh when things were really, really bad. I decided dammed it all. So I went up into the bathroom and I took a bunch of pills afterwards. I called my wife for help.

[00:58:17] She said there are more pills under the sink.

[00:58:23] **Dwight:** Yeah, I that’s, that’s true. That, you know, at the end of the day Yeah. If you don’t make light of it and, and chuckle about it, it just consumes a person, doesn’t it?

[00:58:35] **Dave:** Oh, yeah. I had a guy I worked with, I did peer support, uh, work in the mental health field, and I had a guy who was suicidal and he came in, his family brought him in, and he was totally, um, morose and I mean, obviously in bad shape.

[00:58:51] But, uh, we talked, we talked for an hour and at one point, um, it was, it came up and I, I told him a suicide joke and his whole demeanour changed and he laughed and his whole demeanour changed. Whole demeanour changed. And he came outta the room and he was completely different person. Um, and I made him promised to come back the next day and the day after that, and the day after that.

[00:59:14] Uh, but the comedy and the humour and being able to take something such as suicide and suicidal ideation and find some humour in it made a huge difference in his life.

[00:59:29] **Dwight:** Well, and you know, we, we learn, and not everybody can be a teacher, right. Or can find, find a way to get across the information that we’ve found has helped us.

[00:59:46] And that’s amazing, right? That one joke can change the demeanour of somebody. One conversation can right. One person knowing that somebody’s actually sees them. I tell it to people all the time. I see you. I see you, Dave. I understand you’re hurting, I understand you’re going through all this stuff, but I see you, I hear you.

[01:00:10] I’m here for you. How can I support you? Right? Yeah. Sometimes that can make the biggest change in people’s lives.

[01:00:18] **Dave:** It does, and that’s what essentially what peer support is, is someone with a mental health challenge, with the mental health, someone with the mental health challenges, um, come through, um, to a point where they can work with other people and talk to other people.

[01:00:34] And, um, when people with a mental health challenge that are having a hard time when, when they talk to me or talk to somebody else, another peer support specialist, and they find out they’re talking to someone who has lived experience, who’s actually been through these things and had these thoughts and had these experiences, people open up often for the first time.

[01:00:57] You know, counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, um, you know, oftentimes they sit there with a notepad and take notes and you’re talking to ’em, but they, they haven’t had the experiences with the mental health challenges that you’ve had. They’ve read about ’em in books and they’ve seminars and classes and things, but when they realise they’re talking to somebody that’s really had those experiences and lived, lived, those experiences and those feelings, people open up and, um, they really, they, they, they share for the first time and just realising that they’re not alone.

[01:01:34] And it makes it okay to talk about it makes it okay to talk about suicide ideation. Um. I don’t know what the percentage is, but a huge percentage of people with bipolar disorder I know have suicidal ideation. Most people don’t act on it, but, um, and it, it’s, it’s okay to talk about it. I mean, it’s, if, if somebody’s, you know, if, if anyone out there in your audience or anybody that watches this, uh, at any time, um, has suicidal ideation, it’s okay to talk about it.

[01:02:09] Um, find somebody to talk to. Call 9 88. Uh, um, just talking about it is, is freeing getting out there. So it’s not in your head and not this thing. Just getting it out there is, is hugely, uh, important and freeing and, and healing.

[01:02:31] **Dwight:** Oh, absolutely. Because, uh, I know people listening to this, you may think, well, I’m gonna be judged.

[01:02:39] That’s why I call the helplines. That person doesn’t know you. It can be so freeing, just letting go of, of that tension and feeling through verbal, right. Verbal diarrhoea, maybe you’re just gonna puke it out. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day. Um, letting it out, instead of bottling it up, it’s gonna be a start.

[01:03:01] Right? And it can be that ca that could be that little ember, that little spark, and you just keep on feeding it, keep on, you know, um, seeking out help. You know, get Dave’s book, follow Dave. Go check him out. Right? Check me out. There’s so many people that we have it around us, but we don’t know until we know that that person has gone through the same journey.

[01:03:27] So the more that you share and others share, and so many of my guests in the podcast have shared their, their trials and tribulations. One person. All it takes is one more person that we’ve helped. And you know, people say, well, why wouldn’t you want to say you want to help millions? That’s unrealistic.

[01:03:48] **Dave:** Yeah.

[01:03:49] **Dwight:** I wanna help person. I wanna help the one person at a time. Yeah. So you, the person listening to this or watching, you’re worthy, right? You’re worthy of, of growth and change. Just think to yourself, you know, other people in your life that are going through challenges, what happens if you get your journey started and you start working in healing yourself and now you’re a role model, an example for that person.

[01:04:16] Hey, if such and such can change, maybe I can too. Maybe I can go talk to them. Maybe they can give me a little bit of more hope to move forward. So don’t be afraid to change, because at the end of the day, change is a, as a reality, being stuck is not fun. And you don’t have to be stuck. There’s great people like Dave out there that can help you.

[01:04:43] So we’re gonna, any last comments and we’re gonna move on to talking about your books.

[01:04:49] **Dave:** Oh, well that’s nice. Uh, well, you mentioned Don’t get stuck. That’s one of the really important things, uh, that I like to share, is that don’t get stuck. It’s really important for me not to get stuck. Not to get stuck in high school, not to get stuck with, uh, the friends that I had when I was 20, not to get stuck with the music I listened to when I was, you know, 22.

[01:05:14] Uh, and then when I was unable to work, uh, and, and unable to, uh, uh, interact socially. Uh. It was, I, I kept thinking, don’t get stuck, you know, and keep trying and, and not getting stuck. For me in the really bad times meant getting out of bed and going downstairs and sitting on the couch. Even though ev it was everything I could do just to hold it together and just to pee and just to pray for peace of mind.

[01:05:48] But it was getting outta bed and getting to the couch or getting downstairs and sitting in a different spot. Um, even with my medication, you know, taking it, I’ve got ’em lined up. So, um, I get four medications, so I’d take 1, 2, 3, 4, but what I would do is I’d take 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 4, 3, 2, I’d take them in different order just so I wouldn’t get stuck and then I couldn’t work, but I kept trying and it’s so important.

[01:06:21] Don’t get stuck and just keep trying. You will come out the other side. There is hope. You know, you do come out the other side. It doesn’t seem like it when you’re in that deep, dark depression or you’re having terrible challenges, but you do come out the other side and when you come out the other side, you’re stronger, you’re better, uh, you’re more aware, you’re able to help other people.

[01:06:41] You have more compassion. Um, so yeah, you do come out the other side.

[01:06:46] **Dwight:** Yeah. And coming out the other side involves breaking routine.

[01:06:52] **Dave:** Yeah.

[01:06:53] **Dwight:** The, you’re, you’re talking about that getting out of bed. I went through that. Going down to the couch or breaking the routine and of taking medication or whatever. Those are baby steps to success.

[01:07:06] **Dave:** Yeah.

[01:07:06] **Dwight:** Right. They really are. Yeah.

[01:07:08] **Dave:** Yeah. Thank you. Each one leads to, uh, you know, if, if I’m in that frame of mind, I still do it now. I still do it now. Um, when I set an alarm, um, say I set an alarm for seven 30 in the morning to get up, well, sometimes I set it for 7 28 and sometimes I set it for 7 32. I’m just not gonna get stuck If I go for a walk with the dog, I, I take a different path or I walk a little farther, or I do what?

[01:07:43] I just, uh, don’t get stuck. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a frame of mind. It’s something where you see things in a different light. Um, you see things in a different way and you get outta your head, you know, it, it gets you outta your head. We get, I was so stuck in my head, the, the, the, the racing thoughts, the, uh, negative loops just going on and on and on and on.

[01:08:11] Um, and just. Just, you know, to get outta my head was such a relief. Just such a relief. Absolutely. And one of the ways I did that was I tried to do something nice for somebody every day. And if I was looking to do something nice, just something small, whatever it would be, you know, just, and not expect anything in return, just it would get me outta my head because I was looking to do something nice for somebody else.

[01:08:40] So it’s something nice to do for other people, but it’s also, um, uh, it was, it was something huge for me. ’cause it got me outta my head.

[01:08:50] **Dwight:** I love that. I used to do that a lot with, before we move on, I’ll just state, I used to do that a lot with my kids. Yeah. As a single dad. As a single dad, I used to be in that quiet desperation mode.

[01:09:02] Like I said, I’d get up, go to bed, live it during the day, wearing a mask, and I’d go in to a store with them, grocery store, convenience store, shopping centre, whatever. And I’d find good things to reflect on with other people. Sometimes it would be having, look at that person over there, look how friendly they are kids.

[01:09:24] Or it would be us going in and dealing with them. And I’d say, I’d find something, and I remember one day my, one of my kids saying to me, dad, why did you tell that person that, you know, they had a nice tie or they had a nice blouse on, or a nice hat or whatever. Because I, because they did. Oh. I said, never ever give a com comment or compliment part of me without being genuine.

[01:09:50] And I says, it makes me feel good. And why does it make dad feel good? Because maybe I’m the first kind thing they’ve heard that day. Yeah. Maybe I’m the catalyst for them to have a great rest of their day. So don’t ever be that way and compliment or give things unless it’s completely genuine, because that’s who you want to be.

[01:10:11] You want to be a person that’s genuine and honest and kind. And I, IN never realised till I got older how much of it was so that I didn’t be constantly stuck in my head Right. With all the problems or knowing I gotta get home with the kids and I got all this other stuff going on. So it was, it was a reciprocal thing.

[01:10:31] Right. It is. It helped them and it helped me.

[01:10:33] **Dave:** It’s, it’s very much so, and, and just like you said, you know, it could be a compliment on a tie. It could just, the smallest thing, I mean, just the smallest thing. Um. You know, helping somebody reach something on the grocery store shelf instead of just walking by.

[01:10:49] Um, just, you know, there’s opportunities to do nice things for, for people that are out there. And if we’re looking at those and, you know, we’re doing something nice for somebody else, but we’re also, uh, you know, we’re also doing something nice for ourselves.

[01:11:06] **Dwight:** Oh, absolutely. One of the things I I look around me, if I’ve got a cart full of groceries and there’s only a couple tills open, because it’s a slower time at the grocery store, I will look to see there, there’s somebody behind with two, three items, and I’ll, even if they’re two back, I’ll say, oh, come on up here.

[01:11:23] Some people get upset that are behind you, but whatever. I’ll say, come on up, you only have two, three items. Look, I got like 35 items, or 30, whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah,

[01:11:32] **Speaker 3:** yeah.

[01:11:32] **Dwight:** And it makes me feel good because you see the smile. Really? Yeah. Or they’ll say, no, that’s okay. Are you sure? I don’t mind. And then they’ll question and go, you, you were, because they don’t realise there is sincere people out there.

[01:11:46] Right. Come on up. Right. Just little simple acts of kindness. Like you talked about how people get something off the shelf. It, it is so easy to, to change our mindset with the smallest, simplest acts.

[01:12:00] **Dave:** Yeah. Yeah. That’s really helped me a lot. And I, me too, when my, when my kids, uh, went off to school, um, two things I told them were, do something nice for somebody and do your best.

[01:12:13] And when they’re young, uh, it took a while, but then they’d come home, we’d be eating dinner and uh, uh, my daughter Megan would pop up and say, I did something nice for somebody today, dad. You know, it was the, the smallest, maybe the silliest thing. But anyway, it was, you know, it was, it was in her mind and she was proud of doing something nice for somebody.

[01:12:36] So, you know. That’s great. Yeah. We can, that’s great. Yeah. We can pass it on. Great. I do have a joke about my daughter before we getting into the book. Sure. You wanna hear? That’s cool.

[01:12:44] **Dwight:** Yeah,

[01:12:45] **Dave:** go for it. Uh, tell some jokes, lighten things up a bit. Yeah. Um, Megan was, uh, in school, she was in kindergarten and um, I, uh, I gotta preface this.

[01:12:57] This is a joke. Okay. So it’s a joke and my daughter is Megan, but this is a joke. So Megan was school. She was in kindergarten and she was drawing, and the teacher came up behind her and looked over her shoulder and said, Megan, that’s interesting. What are you drawing? Megan said, it’s a picture of God. And the teacher said, but Megan, nobody knows what God looks like.

[01:13:18] And Megan said, they will in a minute.

[01:13:27] **Speaker 3:** That’s awesome.

[01:13:28] **Dave:** Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I, yeah,

[01:13:34] **Speaker 3:** I like

[01:13:34] **Dave:** that. The other thing, one more joke. Yeah,

[01:13:36] **Speaker 3:** sure.

[01:13:37] **Dave:** I dunno where, you know, where we’re at. We’re just talking, um, with my bipolar disorder, uh, and anxiety and depression, I didn’t know which me was gonna wake up in the morning. I really didn’t know who was gonna wake up in the morning.

[01:13:52] Um, the totally overwhelmingly depressed me or the not so depressed me or the manic me. And so, but I finally, uh, over time realised how to tell the difference between who was waking up in the morning. Uh, because when I was depressed, I spent all day trying to get out of bed When I was manic. I spent all day trying to get my wife into bed.

[01:14:23] **Dwight:** That’s awesome. I love it. You know, and, and humour is a good medicine. Let’s be real people like you’ve heard this maybe your whole life, you know, laughter is the best medicine. Humour is the best medicine. You can say the simplest comment that’s, you know, little ins that are funny or just little comments or maybe a body movement that makes somebody chuck or laugh their, they’ve done.

[01:14:49] Science has proven their, their blood pressure regulates more. Their body, their tension, everything changes in a matter of a heartbeat. Right. So don’t ever discount humour,

[01:15:01] **Dave:** right? That’s right. Humour. Humour heals. It’s really, it’s, it’s really, and that’s sliding into the book, you know, the healing with humour.

[01:15:10] The story of, uh, the folks that have taken the class and transformed, um, you know, writing the book. Um, you know, I talked about Molly and then Lorraine was in the state hospital, um, six times. She was sexually abused when she was younger. She had challenges. Um, you know, she lived with mental illness. Um. And, and she came to the comedy class and she tells her jokes.

[01:15:39] And there’s a chapter about Lorraine in the book and, and we find ourself cheering for, for Lorraine. Um, and, and seeing and reading her jokes and chuckling along with her. Um, so it’s, it’s, it’s a book that’s inspirational. Um, it’s also funny because the jokes are included in it, and the audio book just came out and it’s really us.

[01:16:09] And because we were able to splice in them telling their jokes live on stage. So here’s the story you’re reading about Lorraine, and then here’s Lorraine’s joke, and then you hear Lorraine telling her joke on stage and you hear the audience laughter and stuff, and it’s, that’s really cool. That’s really cool.

[01:16:29] **Dwight:** Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll get more into that book though. But what I wanna start out with in regards to your book, um, I find writing my own book was very cathartic. I’ve only done one, I haven’t been blessed to do two yet, that which could change. There were moments that caught me off guard when I was writing the book, getting stuffed up to the editor, coming back and forth memories.

[01:16:53] I hadn’t let myself sit in for years, quiet little celebrations and never told anybody about small wins. Nobody saw but me. Things that I, you know, I was gonna, I should have given myself a swift kick in the pants and dressed years before. It was just like emotional rollercoaster. So when a guest has written their own book or books in your case, I always wanna know what the process was like for them, what it actually cost them and what it gave them.

[01:17:22] **Dave:** Yeah, you talk about the cost. I mean, when, for OMG, that’s me. Uh, it’s OMG, that’s me. Bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, panic attacks and more. And, um, it’s been a best seller on Amazon in the mental health category for years. Um. I, I, you know, I, I, I relived those experiences. Um, when I was, you know, um, I couldn’t go to the mailbox because I was afraid I’d see a neighbour or see somebody and they’d talk to me.

[01:17:55] So I’d go to the mailbox at night. So I write about that. I, I went back and I went back to feeling that feeling of being afraid to go to the mailbox, afraid to see the neighbours, um, and writing about that. And so each of, each of my chapters in OMG, that’s me. I went back and I relived and there was a cost to that.

[01:18:17] I haven’t been able to read OMGI wrote OMG, that’s me. I edited it. Um, I did everything. Um, I haven’t been able to sit down and read front to back because it. I’ve kind read it back to front, you know, kind of peeked at it and, and stuff. But, um, I wrote about the real raw experiences of what it’s truly like to live with mental illness.

[01:18:48] And so, um, there was, there was a cost to that for me, but it was on the same time it was cathartic, you know, to uh, to get those things out. Because like you said, you know, there are things you dunno, you don’t realise. You don’t remember the important thing. You know, when you’re writing a book, you get to those things and you get into those things.

[01:19:09] Um, but it’s completely, I, I feel good about it because completely open and honest and when people read it, they know it’s open and honest. They know it’s real, they know it’s raw. They can look at it and see themselves and realise they’re not alone. So I, I feel good. The, the, the cost was worth it.

[01:19:27] **Dwight:** Oh, definitely.

[01:19:28] I, I agree with that. Um, take a hundred percent my book itself until recently, because I’ve been asked to be, to write a chapter in a faith-based book. Somebody I had on my podcast actually in the last year, we’ve become really good friends. You had some hell scares and, and mental and emotional challenges as well throughout his life and didn’t think he’d survive.

[01:19:55] And now he’s putting together a book and asking for, I don’t know, a dozen or 20 of us to write chapters specific to what he’s gotten to know about us. ’cause I’ve been on his podcast as well. He is been on mine. We just become friends. And, and the reason I bring this up is I had to look back at my book and I had to go through specific stuff I had been avoiding because I didn’t want that feeling again.

[01:20:21] Right. Even though I’ve some ways dealt with it, maybe, uh, adapted and changed the emotion tied to it. I just didn’t want to relive it. That’s why the rere mirror is smaller than the windshield. Right. So, um, I can, I can understand what you’re saying. Um, it makes a lot of sense. It, it’s not like I’m going to, and, and I’ve been, I haven’t put mine into an audiobook and it’s already been, um, five years.

[01:20:46] Why haven’t I done it? ’cause part of me doesn’t wanna read it out loud and I, and I refuse to hire somebody else to do it.

[01:20:52] **Dave:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. I tried to do mine. Um, well, first of all, I’m dyslexic so that it didn’t work. But, um, I, I couldn’t read mine out loud. Yeah, that was good.

[01:21:07] **Dwight:** Yeah, so I get keep on getting bugged by people to do it and I’ve had people that do audio books that, you know, I can pay to do it.

[01:21:16] I’ve had people offer to do it where I wouldn’t probably cost me anything though. I wouldn’t, you know, expect their time for nothing. And it’s nine chapters, you can see it, uh, you can see it over my shoulder right there. Yeah.

[01:21:29] **Dave:** Yeah.

[01:21:29] **Dwight:** Right.

[01:21:29] **Dave:** Yeah, there, it’s good pointing.

[01:21:31] **Dwight:** Yeah. My book, um, give a Heck Out of Life on Purpose And Not By Accident.

[01:21:37] The lessons that I put in there, the stories that shared were raw, vulnerable, and real in the sense of how they changed my life. But it doesn’t mean that I want to constantly live within that. Right. Yeah. I want it to help others. So, you know, there’s times when people will say, well, I read your book and this chapter changed me and I have a brain fart.

[01:22:00] I can’t remember what’s, what exactly chapter number that was. I know. So then I’ll have, so then I’ll have a conversation with them and I’ll, and I’ll, and I’ll say, oh yeah, well, tell me a little bit. And I’m trying to have it so it jogs my mind. Right.

[01:22:16] **Dave:** Yeah.

[01:22:17] So

[01:22:17] **Dwight:** I don’t know if you’ve

[01:22:18] **Dave:** experienced

[01:22:19] **Dwight:** that, but Yeah, it’s,

[01:22:20] **Dave:** oh yeah.

[01:22:21] Yeah.

[01:22:21] **Dwight:** It’s real brother.

[01:22:23] **Dave:** It’s real. I was, I, I dunno where I was. Um, I was somewhere, it was about a year ago. Um, I was somewhere and just. Place, I think it was. I, I, I don’t remember. And, uh, uh, I was talking to this guy and, and he figured out who I was. We ended up talking and I didn’t talk about mental health or anything or whatever.

[01:22:45] But anyway, he reached into his backpack and he pulled out my book and he said, he said he takes it everywhere and reads it, just pulls that out, reads it on the bus or, you know, whatever. So, but you know, the same thing. He, you know, talking about it, he asked me about some of these things and I was like, you know, I talked about it and whatnot, but, you know, I don’t, I don’t wanna go relive those experiences.

[01:23:11] **Dwight:** Yeah. It’s, oh, well, again, we have a lot of commonalities for those that listen to them and watch the show, know that I’m very faith bearing and I believe that on the, the service that I found you on, which is Pod Match and other services I belong to are the multiple emails I get lately. I’ve been getting five, six a day emails.

[01:23:36] Wow. Wow. Just to be on my show.

[01:23:38] **Speaker 3:** Yeah.

[01:23:38] **Dwight:** Um, not including the massive amount of requests I get on Pod Match still, um, I dropped a couple of other services because they weren’t talking to me in the sense that I didn’t feel it, I didn’t feel that warm and fuzzy. Whereas I believe I, I can go through a plethora of people and I’m reading, you know, some people have terrible pitches, but something still draws me to go and click up on their right and read about them.

[01:24:04] Good

[01:24:04] **Dave:** profile. Yeah.

[01:24:05] **Dwight:** Yes. To look at their profile.

[01:24:07] **Dave:** Yeah.

[01:24:08] **Dwight:** And other people it’s just pass Pass. Yeah. Or delete the email. Delete the email. I had one yesterday and I’m gonna have to do a deep dive today because of their experiences. I wanna, I want to see whether or not, because I get podcast services that people hire that reach out to me.

[01:24:26] You should have this person on. That person on. Yeah.

[01:24:29] **Speaker 3:** Yeah. And

[01:24:29] **Dwight:** it get, it gets overwhelming, but for me, I believe God leads those to me and me to them. Right. I can honestly say there’s only been, I bet you there hasn’t been five episodes and, and now you’re the 308th episode. I don’t think there’s been five episodes where I went away feeling like I needed to take a shower, if that makes sense.

[01:24:53] Yeah. They weren’t very satisfying. I felt dirty and Yeah. It’s, yeah, it’s, I’ve been blessed. Right. And I bet you those five, God was yelling at me, don’t do it.

[01:25:05] **Dave:** Right. I’m sure,

[01:25:06] **Dwight:** but Right. So,

[01:25:08] **Dave:** but you know, you’re doing it for the right reasons. I mean, obviously that’s what you’re saying. That’s what I’m hearing is you’re doing it for the right reasons.

[01:25:15] And when you do things for the right reasons, you know, good things happen. Good things happen. And so you’re doing things for the right reasons and you get, you know, you end up with the right people on, on your podcast. Uh, I hear you with the, you know, I’m getting just because my story, I’m willing to tell it.

[01:25:33] Um, but the mental health and the breakdown and successful business mentalism everything to stand up comedy, I mean, it’s a unique story. You know, it’s a unique thing. So I’m getting lots of, uh, requests as well to, to be on the podcast. And I’m, I’m, uh, finding myself being, you know, selective now. Um,

[01:25:55] **Dwight:** yet you have to though, because some of the podcasts that I’ve been guests on, especially in the last six months, you know, they’re, they’re just not good.

[01:26:04] They’re, no, they’re not, they’re, they’re verbatim questions. They take what I put in my pod match or what I’ll send to them in an application because I, they’ll email and want me to be on their show or whatever the case may be, and it’s just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yep. There’s no interaction, there’s no chemistry, there’s no nothing.

[01:26:26] And I get off that podcast and a lot of ’em are audio only. They’re not, um, yeah, I like seeing people. I like, I can connect with you over video. We have done that already, right? Numerous times now, in the last hour and a bit. And at the end of the day. You have to be careful of what energy you give out there, because you’re never gonna get that time or energy back.

[01:26:50] Maybe you will in another way, but you won’t get that specific time back. So I’m very cognizant of what I represent with my podcast, who I have on the messages that I portray. I’m not perfect at it. I’m still working at it. Sometimes I’ll have a guest on and, and I’ll have to really work at, at, I’ve already agreed to having on, I’ll have to really work at putting my plan together for how I’m gonna have a good conversation.

[01:27:19] And you know what? God’s always right. And here’s what I mean by that. I’m pleasantly surprised. All of a sudden, the person that I thought was gonna be a struggle is just like amazing, right? Yeah,

[01:27:31] **Dave:** yeah, yeah. So

[01:27:33] **Dwight:** I just sometimes give it up to God and hit record, right? A way I go and my genuine self. And if, you know, it doesn’t work for those, I don’t look at advertising on my podcast.

[01:27:46] I don’t look at all these services that want to help me grow to, you know, oh, we’ll help you grow in 30 days to 10,000 listeners. But is it done the right way? I’m just gonna continue to do it. And I base it on the fact of one person always, right? Ooh, wow. I looked at my analytics. I haven’t looked in six months now I’m up to 84 different countries.

[01:28:09] That was a few weeks ago that my podcast is reached. Does that mean every episode’s listed to in 84 countries? Other people will tell you that that’s what it means? No, it does not. If you go dive deep into it, maybe I might get a podcast that’s listened to Recently. I, I had a podcast that was listening to, in five countries, very solid and a few stragglers, Russia, Ukraine.

[01:28:33] I was shocked, right? And it, and it tells you there was one person only. How, how much of a difference did I make in that person’s life? The higher that number, that just means that I have a, my shotgun blast is, is is spreading out more. Right? Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s given me the opportunity to hit that one.

[01:28:52] Right?

[01:28:53] **Dave:** Yeah. Yeah.

[01:28:54] **Dwight:** I just keep, I just keep on keeping on, even though it’s a lot of work to do podcasting. I, I, I thoroughly, most times I love it the people I meet. Well,

[01:29:02] **Dave:** and you edit your honour producer on, I mean, that’s a lot of work. That’s a lot of work. Well, yeah, a lot. It takes a lot of commitment to do that.

[01:29:10] **Dwight:** And people will say, well, you know, and then there’s the, the finance side of me time, value of money. Like, you should be hiring that out. Well, I did. I had different people. I had people doing my show notes for years. I, I fired a person that did my show notes. Well, well, I didn’t directly fire ’em, the company did.

[01:29:28] And I said, I’ll take that over. That was like three years ago. So maybe a couple years into my show, because they were so dry, there was no feeling to them. The show notes you see on my site now for the last few years are all me. And I continually get better at them at, uh, and making sure that people can go in and dive into chapter summaries.

[01:29:48] They can look at, um, the, all the social media links. And I’m not sitting here patting myself on the back, people that are listening to this. I’m just being real. ’cause, uh, Dave brought it up. Doing what I do takes a lot of effort and hiring other people to do it. I would never do it again. At least right now in my life, I wouldn’t because I have become too much of a stickler to ensure that my message and the message of my guests who give me their time, they’ll never get back, is really gonna be resonated with others and listened to.

[01:30:21] So to me, to go in and, and trust, or pardon me in the past, trust somebody else to edit it, and then I go, let’s, I, I always felt like I couldn’t trust it. And I was, the last couple years I started listening to my episodes. After it, I’d get it from product, I’d listen to it again to make sure, and I’d find mistakes and I’d be reaching out to them like, why didn’t you do this?

[01:30:43] Or Why did you do that? Now the only person I can blame is the person I see in the mirror. Yeah. Right?

[01:30:49] **Speaker 3:** Yeah. Yeah.

[01:30:50] **Dwight:** And, and I’m so much more happy with it. Yes. It takes six to eight hours. That’s just production side, six hours you from start to finish. I’ve already, before we even hit record, I’d already spent an hour and a half.

[01:31:04] Right? So then you add in the recording and then the production side, I could be eight, 10 hours. And people say, well, you could, you’re wasting your time. What’s your definition of wasting time?

[01:31:14] **Dave:** Yeah, exactly.

[01:31:15] **Dwight:** I’ve become connected. I’m become more connected with my guest. I become more connect when I’m the person, the reels that I’ll create from this will be me.

[01:31:24] It will be mm-hmm. Me making that decision, right. And trying to find the most impactful way to present the real. And I’ve played around with that. And it’s not even necessarily. A burden. It’s a blessing where it’s gone Right. In five and a half years, if that makes sense.

[01:31:44] **Dave:** Yeah. Yeah, it does. It does.

[01:31:46] **Dwight:** So let’s go on to talk a little bit more about OMG.

[01:31:50] That’s me. Like you said, it’s it. It’s sold over a 22,000 copy. Readers keep telling you the same thing that you’ve captured exactly what they’re going through. The gentleman you talked about that has it in his backpack, that that is amazing.

[01:32:03] **Dave:** Random,

[01:32:03] **Dwight:** right? Yeah. What made you decide to put something that personal into a book for total strangers to read?

[01:32:10] What was the defining moment that made you wanna write that book?

[01:32:17] **Dave:** Interesting. I was, I was writing my blog post for bp hope.com. Um, and like I said, they’ve been read by over a million or over a million times. Uh, and people would comment, and I think, you know, they’d say, OMG, that’s me. You tell my story. I, I think what motivated, what, what the, the point where I decided to write the book is when I came up with the title, which is OMG, that’s me.

[01:32:51] And, um, so I was kind of contemplating whatever, but then when I, when I came up with the title, omg, that’s me. That’s, that’s, um, I felt like, okay, that’s it. That’ll, that’ll, that’s the book, you know, uh, that’ll reach people. Um. And yeah, I was writing the blog post to so people know they’re not alone. Uh, same thing with the book.

[01:33:19] You know, same thing with the book.

[01:33:23] **Dwight:** Yeah. 22,000 copies. 22,000 people that have purchased it. And even if you said only half Reddit, that’s amazing how many people you’ve touched that just

[01:33:37] **Dave:** Yeah. And people, people

[01:33:37] **Dwight:** gives me the warm and fuzzies. It really does.

[01:33:40] **Dave:** Yeah. Well, and, and me too. Uh, me too, because that’s kinda why I do what I do.

[01:33:44] Um, and people buy it for, you know, family members buy it for their kids. Uh, adult children who are going through challenges. Um, people with mental health challenge buy it for their family members, so their family members will know what they’re really going through. Uh, people will buy it and give it to their psychologist or their counsellor or their psychiatrist.

[01:34:08] So the psychiatrist, and they’ll say, Hey, this is me. This is what, you know, this is, this is what I’m going through. Um, so it’s, yeah. And I, I, you know, I wish that every medical school would have it in their curriculum so that the people wouldn’t just be reading the, you know, the, um, book about what symptoms are there for bipolar disorder, how to figure out what this and what that instead of people reading about mental illness and in books and then going out and trying to help people out that they’d read it and to really understand what it’s like to live with a mental illness.

[01:34:53] But, um, that’s, you know, that’s not gonna happen. But that would be, if I could, if I could wave a wand that’s, I think that, that, that would be it. Because I think that would really make a huge difference in Oh

[01:35:09] **Dwight:** yeah.

[01:35:09] **Dave:** Or, or that libraries

[01:35:11] **Dwight:** would put our, or libraries would

[01:35:13] **Dave:** put our books. I, i books, libraries actually from, uh, I’m here in Oregon.

[01:35:17] Um, I’m in libraries from, uh, over at the Oregon coast, uh, all the way to, um, Nova Scotia, so. Wow. Um. Yeah. It’s in libraries. All all, not all libraries, not necessarily a whole bunch, but libraries all across the country.

[01:35:37] **Dwight:** That’s good.

[01:35:39] **Dave:** Congratulations into Halifax. So, yeah. Yeah.

[01:35:44] **Dwight:** Right. I I, I think of this story of a lady, God rest her soul.

[01:35:48] She succumbed to cancer. Now, two years ago, she reached out to me, I met her at a few, I have a, a, he’s a famous, um, singer in Canada and around Europe and stuff. He’s from Britain, Martin, Kerr, and Martin. And I’ve been a supporter of him since he first moved to Canada and started his career. Oh my goodness.

[01:36:12] This is, we’ve been friends now for oh, 21 years. And I met this lady at one of the events. I don’t even recall talking to her. And she started reaching out to me on social media and she went to the library to find my book and said, well, how come your book isn’t here? I said, well, it’s not as simple as that.

[01:36:33] Libraries just don’t. Yeah,

[01:36:34] **Speaker 3:** yeah.

[01:36:35] **Dwight:** If you knew how many books were published every single day in the world, the library would never be able to do that. It just doesn’t work that way. And I said, would you like one of my books? Yes. I said, what’s your address? What? I said, yeah, what’s your address? I’ll, I’ll send you one.

[01:36:51] Well, what do I owe you? Nothing. Yeah. I’m, I give away so many books. It would blow your mind, Dave. I do. Mm-hmm. I just, I don’t care. I give, if it’s gonna change a life, I don’t need the five, six bucks profit I’d make by selling it or $4. It’s not a lot. So I gave her, I sent her a book and she wrote a review about it online, and I just come across some of her stuff lately and she passed away succumb to cancer and such a kind lady, and, and.

[01:37:21] She’s, she posted pictures of her having the book open and reading it Right. Nice and nice. It just, you know, and, and, and there was one little thing like that, right. Or the gentleman that reached out to me from, from how he lives in Texas and how one specific chapter changed his life. Have I gotten a lot of them?

[01:37:41] No, I haven’t. People are terrible at leaving reviews or reaching out. I’m not trying to pick on people. It’s just, it is what it is. I notice you have like 800 or something like that. Reviews. You have, you have quite a few. I went and checked it, checked it out obviously. Sure,

[01:37:55] **Dave:** sure.

[01:37:56] **Dwight:** And, but those little things that makes a difference for us.

[01:38:00] It makes a difference. That, that I know that it’s changed and maybe her life was a little bit better the last couple years that she was alive, right?

[01:38:09] **Dave:** Yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:10] **Dwight:** We never did ever get together. We’d talk about meeting up at my friend’s next concert in the city here, and we never ever did. I’d see her, but she’d be in a crowd of people and I’d be off with, I’d have people with me.

[01:38:23] I’d always bring lots of people to my buddy’s concerts. And we never did get to Connect, but we did connect,

[01:38:30] **Dave:** yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:31] **Dwight:** Through the written word.

[01:38:32] **Dave:** Yeah. Yeah. That’s where you do what you do. Yeah.

[01:38:36] **Dwight:** Yeah. So I just keep on, keep on wanting to make a difference in people’s lives. Right. So

[01:38:41] **Dave:** yeah.

[01:38:42] **Dwight:** You, you, you talked a little bit about healing with humour and one of the stories, um, you know, it, it’s, it’s made a difference in people’s lives, obviously.

[01:38:53] What made you decide that you wanted to share the, through the voice of others as opposed to the first person of your book, your first book?

[01:39:01] **Dave:** Yeah. I think, um, just because the transformation was so amazing, um, and it, it’s kind of a hard book to, to categorise, you know, you’re talking about people with a mental illness, learning standup comedy, and having their lives transformed.

[01:39:18] So it’s, it’s kinda like, it doesn’t, you know, it’s not easy to categorise, but I, it’s an important message. I think the healing power of humour. Uh, and so that, that was why, um, I wanted to, to write it and get the word out. Um, I’m terrible at promoting.

[01:39:41] **Dwight:** That’s okay. That’s why, that’s why you

[01:39:43] **Dave:** have

[01:39:44] **Dwight:** people like me that are gonna

[01:39:45] **Dave:** Yeah.

[01:39:46] **Dwight:** Or

[01:39:47] **Dave:** bringing, yeah, you’re asking some questions about my book. This is the most I’ve talked about in my books. Um, but, but, but that’s, that’s why, and honour

[01:39:59] in, um, to tell their story because they have, they have compelling stories that I think, I think, um, difference in their lives, you know, that I’m telling their stories and their chapters in the book that’s, you know, available, you know, and

[01:40:18] **Dwight:** that’s a great mission. That’s a great mission though, right? Yeah. My mission has been to show, I started this show because the pandemic, everybody was locked up, isolated, got challenged by a friend.

[01:40:28] Where are you gonna be at the end of this? You don’t know how long it’s gonna take. Are you growing? Are you developing? Are you changing? And I created the Give Aack brand during the Pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. I wrote the book during the pandemic. I started the podcast during the pandemic, and I kept on thinking, if I feel like this, how many outs are people are feeling like this?

[01:40:46] I need to share their messages so that other people can relate, commiserate, whatever. Maybe that commiseration helps ’em elevate, right? I never know what the outcome’s gonna be, but I love that. Right? It’s, it’s sometimes we just need to get our voice out there. We need to realise that we were put on this planet to serve others, and by serving others, we serve ourselves.

[01:41:09] Right? Yeah. That’s the way I look at it, right? Yeah. The more I serve, the more messages I bring to the table, to, uh, you know, to the world. One more person. Mm-hmm. That’s all I keep on thinking. One more person. Right? Yeah. And then gratefulness, being grateful for having conversations like tonight when I’m sitting or laying in bed, part of me and praying, and I’ll think about you and I’ll, thank God, I’ll be grateful.

[01:41:35] Right. For the fact of having this opportunity.

[01:41:39] **Dave:** And maybe the nicest thing somebody said about me, at least for a long time.

[01:41:45] **Dwight:** For that being grateful for you.

[01:41:47] **Dave:** Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, just the way you said it and all that kind of stuff, so it was very nice. Thank you.

[01:41:52] **Dwight:** Well, you’re welcome. I appreciate you.

[01:41:54] So thank you for sharing. Is there anything else you’d like to share about the book before we move on?

[01:42:00] **Dave:** No, I, I think, I think we’re good. We’re good.

[01:42:03] **Dwight:** I appreciate the, the vulnerability and, and rawness that you’ve presented right through the whole conversation and talking about and sharing that story, uh, about that person.

[01:42:16] Um, so we’re gonna move on. Um, coming out of the other side is what this segment is, is that I labelled what is actually breaking down the shame around mental illness look like in practise beyond just talking about it.

[01:42:37] **Dave:** I think writing about it helps, um, the more we can just get it out there. Um, so it’s talked about, you know, I, I get asked to, to speak from time to time, and so that’s breaking down the stigma and the shame, you know, and talking about it, uh, and being open and honest about it. I, that’s, you know, that’s truly important.

[01:43:08] Um, there’s still a lot of stigma associated with mental illness. Uh, there always will be, but, um.

[01:43:17] You and my work, I work with folks, you know, doing peer support and, uh, work with people with mental illness and, you know, um, I communicate to everybody. Not everybody, but I communicate that, you know, uh, we’re just regular folks. You know, we’re, we’re not scary, we’re not dangerous. We’re just regular folks who happen live with mental health challenge.

[01:43:44] Uh, we’re your neighbours, your, you know, your family, your friends. Um, so, you know, understanding and acceptance. Um, I, I think those are, you know, um, hopefully those things are happening and will happen more and more.

[01:44:03] **Dwight:** Uh, I agree and I hope that people learn to block out all the noise, the clutter. Um, our society growing up, as, you know, growing up in the seventies, uh, we didn’t have the internet.

[01:44:18] We didn’t have all that noise. We didn’t have connection to data right in front of us in a millisecond. Today’s day and age, there’s so many keyboard warriors, there’s people looking to, you know, and then people using AI to use chat bots to attack people on social media, to tear people down. I, and don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of things on social media people don’t realise you gotta look for it.

[01:44:45] The algorithms are gonna serve up what you are looking for.

[01:44:49] **Speaker 3:** Yeah.

[01:44:49] **Dwight:** Right. If you’re looking for anger and dissension, you’re gonna find it, and the algorithms are gonna give it to you because in between all that, they’re throwing an ad at you and it’s gonna make ’em money. Right. It’s not about caring. That’s why I agree with what some countries are doing right now.

[01:45:03] I don’t know if you follow it in regards to social media. Right. Cutting off all access to kids right now. Yeah. Right now, a child at any age can create a fake account and they can lie and they can get onto social media.

[01:45:19] **Dave:** Yep.

[01:45:19] **Dwight:** It is that simple. And it can destroy their lives, right? Yeah. It really can. It, it mental causes, mental and emotional stunting of their growth.

[01:45:30] And it’s just, it’s just terrible. And we need more positive people like yourself. So those listening who are watching, I’ll mention this again, if we’re getting closer to wrapping up the show. Share this with people you want to truly change their lives. Share this episode with the people you love and care for and, and listen to it again.

[01:45:54] Take notes. Reach out to Dave. If you’re nervous, reach out to me. I’ll connect you to Dave. We’ll, we’ll work on helping you be the best version of yourself at this moment, because the version of yourself can change moment to moment during the day, during your lifetime. Things will change. Your seasons will change, people will change, associations will change.

[01:46:19] You just need to be aware. Be at the forefront of your change so that you are as in control as you possibly can be to the light, not the darkness.

[01:46:34] So we are going to move forward here and we’re gonna talk about, we’re gonna ask, I’m gonna ask a couple last questions. Oh, go ahead,

[01:46:46] **Dave:** Kathy. Scott.

[01:46:50] **Dwight:** So I have a couple last questions I wanna ask you. So Dave, you spent years now teaching other people living with serious mental illness, how to find their own punchline. What has the work taught you about what it truly means? To give a heck, not just about mental health, but how we show up for each other.

[01:47:10] **Dave:** It, it’s huge. Being able, I mean, I had no idea that I had, I mean, I came to comedy late, I think at 59, so I had no idea, never thought about comedy being comic writing jokes, any of that kind of thing. But I, you know, I had a found out I had a talent for it and I could find humour in other people’s stories and let write, laugh out, laugh, funny jokes.

[01:47:36] And I’ve written hundreds of jokes for people. Um, and, and, um, when people find the humour in their story, you know, their eyes light up. And when we collaborate on a joke, and it’s funny, they’re really proud, you know, they feel really good, they feel really proud. And people come to my comedy class and they come in and say, I wanna do the class.

[01:48:05] I wanna find the humour. I wanna do it. I wanna do this, but I’m never gonna get up on stage and perform. And I say, that’s great. No problem. You know, just being here is great, you know, have a good time. We’ll do our thing. Um, but by the end of the class, we found, uh, we’ve written, uh, really good laugh out, laugh funny jokes, and they like them.

[01:48:28] And so they wanna get up and they wanna tell ’em to other people. And it’s really interesting that the people in the classes, including myself, we don’t get nervous before a show. Uh, and the reason we don’t is because, well, we prepare, but um, we like our jokes. We know they’re funny, so we wanna get out there and tell people.

[01:48:53] And you know, I say we tell people, we tell our story one joke at a time. So, um. Yeah, that’s, yeah.

[01:49:04] **Dwight:** That’s perfect. One last final question, and then we’re gonna close up the show. Dave. There’s someone listening right now who feels like they’re in their own lost years, maybe even the darkest place. A person can be someone who’s been on the edge of giving up entirely.

[01:49:20] What do you want them to hear before this episode ends?

[01:49:24] **Dave:** Um, I wanna hear, I want them to hear, first of all, uh, that there is hope and there is hope. Um, I, I, I was as low, as low as low could be. And unless somebody’s been in that deep, deep, deep, dark depression, it’s impossible to understand where it’s at.

[01:49:46] But I understand how low and how awful it can be. But you do come out the other side. There is hope. You do come out the other side. And the thing about thinking that you wanna end it all is that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

[01:50:08] **Dwight:** So

[01:50:08] **Dave:** positive, you’re gonna come out the other side and you come out with compassion and strength and a power. The most, the strongest people I know are the people that have been who through these challenges and have come out the other side. They have courage and they have conviction, they have strength, and they have compassion.

[01:50:23] So that’s, that’s, that’s what I want. That’s what I want that person or those folks to know.

[01:50:29] **Dwight:** What a great closing message. Thank you so much for that. So Dave, thank you. What you built over the worst years, the classes, the books, the stage time isn’t just your own recovery. It’s turned into a way of pulling other people out of the same darkness you were in.

[01:50:46] That’s not something everyone can do with their pain. You did. Dave, what’s the best place for listeners to reach out to you to get your books to connect with you?

[01:50:58] **Dave:** Dave mallory.com. That’s Dave, M-O-W-R-Y dot com’s. The website, there’s links to the books on there and, uh, people can reach me through there. I respond to everybody.

[01:51:13] You know, if there’s somebody out there that just, uh, wants to connect, has a story, wants to talk, um, you know, um, I respond to everybody. So, uh, I’ll give you my email address too. It’s Dave Mowry, the number two, Dave Mowry to gmail com. So if you wanna reach out, reach out by email or on the website and, uh, yeah, let’s connect.

[01:51:39] **Dwight:** Fantastic.

[01:51:40] **Dave:** Those, you know, the, the books are great. If you wanna, um, if you’re up to purchasing, uh, the books, the audio book for healing with humour is awesome and omg, that’s me is a really important book for anybody that’s living with a mental health challenge or has a family member.

[01:51:57] **Dwight:** Fantastic for those new to the Give a Heck podcast, go to give a heck.com at the top Hit podcast.

[01:52:04] It’s really simple. Scroll down, you’ll see a picture of Dave, and you’ll see very detailed show notes where you can go in and find his email address. You’ll find anything to do with social media, links and connections, websites, everything, chapter summaries. Um, it’s a one stop shop for you to stay connected to this episode.

[01:52:27] I would highly suggest if this resonated with you, to listen to it again, take a pad of paper and write bullet point notes to make it easy on yourself and just go through it again. There’s so many nuggets of greatness and, you know, vulnerability that were within this episode that you’re doing yourself a service by taking it seriously.

[01:52:51] Right? Check out the show notes, reach out to Dave, get his audio books. Get the, if you’re a person that likes holding the book, grab the actual book. Whatever works for you works for you. Just make a decision and move forward. So before I wrap up, the last comments here that I’m gonna say, is there anything you’d like to leave with our audience before we wrap up?

[01:53:14] **Dave:** I think something, um, uh, a little humour. Um, I’ve got a silly joke. It’s a dad joke and it just came into my head one time. Uh, do you know what the difference is between a Canadian squirrel and an Oregon squirrel? The accent

[01:53:38] **Dwight:** That’s true. Absolutely. I get picked on about my accent all the time by Americans. So yeah, that’s, that, that, that holds true. So before we wrap up completely, I want to say this again. If anything in today’s episode, hit close to home. You are not alone, and help us available in the United States and Canada.

[01:53:57] You can call or text nine eight eight to reach the suicide and Crisis lifeline. Anytime, dare night. To our listeners and viewers, thank you for investing your time with us today. We do not take that lightly. If this episode resonated with you, please share it. When you share an episode, it helps us message, reach more people so they too can give a heck and live with purpose and intention.

[01:54:22] Please subscribe to the Give a Heck Podcast in your favourite platform, and leave a comment to review. It helps to show grow and allows more people to discover conversations that challenge ’em to step up and live intentionally. Until next time, live life on purpose and not by accident. And remember, it’s never too late to give a heck.

[01:54:46] Thank you for taking time outta your day and listening to Give a Heck if you find value. I’d appreciate you sharing with your friends and family so they too can learn how to live life on purpose, not by accident. So you do not miss the next episode. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and please also post a review.

[01:55:07] I look forward to reading your comments. This has been Dwight Heck. If you want to check out other podcast episodes or today’s show notes, please check out my website. Give a heck.com, and until next time together, let us all strive to give a heck.