This is a transcript of Watching Mental Health Season 5, Episode 6 which you can watch and listen to here:
Katie Waechter: Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Watching Mental Health. And I am so excited because I have somebody here today who I consider to be a pretty new friend in the valley, and I think is making a pretty big difference. And his name is Michael Schneider. And Michael is a mental health speaker, he's a coach, he's a peer counselor, he's also a Stanford graduate and an advocate for organizations like NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
And also the DBSA, which is the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. And he's a speaker in this area because after living with bipolar disorder and navigating its severe highs and lows for so long and feeling like he really couldn't trust his own mind for so long, Michael discovered a powerful shift in perspective that has helped him to achieve over 25 years of continuous stability. And that is something to be really proud of.
I know people who have bipolar disorder and it can be a struggle. And today he works with high functioning individuals to help them slow down, to understand their emotional patterns, to build sustainability in their stability, in their lives, in their mental health journeys. And so today on Watching Mental Health, we are gonna be talking about his journey with bipolar disorder.
What it's like finding success with a bipolar diagnosis, which I think a lot of people maybe are unsure about when they're in the middle of that diagnosis, and how he's managed to stay stable all these years, which again is so powerful and a really amazing testament. And so with that, welcome to the show, Michael.
Michael Schneider: Thank you, Katie. Thank you. So great to be here. Thank you so much. And that's a great introduction. Thank you. Couldn't ask for more. Thank you.
Katie: Well, thank you for being here. You know, I am always grateful when someone comes on the show who has personal lived experience. It's hard to get people to talk about their own stories. And it's funny because it's when we talk about our own stories that we wind up helping others who are in the midst of their struggles. And so I'm really grateful to have you here today to talk about your journey and to talk about what you're doing today and, you know, kind of how you've overcome a lot of the struggles that you've experienced. But before we get into any of that, I always like to start off my guests, start off with asking my guests to tell me a little bit more about yourself and kind of what brought you into this space. And for you, it really is, I think, a big part of your journey while you're in this space. And so tell me a little bit more of how it started.
Michael: Yeah, well, into this specific space, it was a diagnosis when I turned eighteen, bipolar. That diagnosis came after a year of depression, my senior year of high school, followed by a very long summer for my parents and anybody who knew me, as I ramped up into greater and greater states of hypomania and then finally mania, ended up getting arrested at a college campus where I lost my wallet. Looking for a friend and got arrested for trespassing, taken to the Baltimore County Detention Center and then beaten almost unconscious by a correctional officer for an attitude that, in all fairness to the person who beat me almost unconscious, I certainly had the attitude problem. I don't know that it warranted the behavior, but certainly out of line as a manic high school kid with an attitude problem.
That led to a long—we'll talk more about it I'm sure as we go through the podcast—but led to a struggle with bipolar disorder that I found myself either hospitalized or incarcerated every six to twelve months with a major manic episode. And it was a revolving door, very common for people with bipolar, the frequent hospitalizations, all that kind of stuff. That all turned around when I walked into a tattoo studio in Redwood City, California, which is a suburb of San Francisco, and met an artist named Paco who was in AA. And in talking to him he said, "Hey Michael," cause we would share these stories of me getting into car chases with police and jumping out of airplanes and doing all kinds of crazy typical manic stuff, made for good conversation while you're getting tattooed.
And he said, "Hey, you know, the way you describe this mania, as you call it," because he wasn't a psychiatrist, he was a tattoo artist, "he's like the way you describe this mania sounds a lot like the way alcoholics I know describe their alcohol or addicts I know describe their drugs. And he said, "What would you think of saying mania was your drug of choice and working the 12 steps with me as your sponsor to see if we can get you to stop having these episodes? Because if you don't, you're gonna die. You're 23—at the time I was 23—you're not gonna make it to 25, and I'd rather have you stick around because you're a pretty entertaining guy to hang out with, and I'd rather be your friend than go to your funeral." And so I did, and in working the steps with Paco I came to have an understanding with a word that really changed everything for me, and that was ownership.
Katie: Sure.
Michael: That was the long-winded answer to your question, Katie. My apologies. But you know, I really learned how to take ownership of my illness, to take accountability, to be the one responsible. And I shifted from being a person who was blaming everybody else—the doctors, the COs, my parents, anybody who I could blame—and taking a good long look in the mirror and really owning the treatment or the management of my illness on my own, and certainly with help. It takes a village to do that. But the first thing it takes is raising your hand and saying, "I want this to stop." And I did that now twenty-six years ago with my last episode. So it's been a pretty good long run. And that led to, from there, lots of good things that we could talk about that happened in my life since then.
Katie: Mm-hmm.
Katie: Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you for, you know, just yeah, telling us your story in such a succinct way. It can be hard to do that. You touched on a few things that I wanna bring up. The first was you said that you really started experiencing these symptoms at eighteen, right? And I think a lot of people do who are experiencing maybe bipolar disorder diagnosis or even psychosis, maybe something related to schizophrenia. It is that age range, you know, between maybe sixteen and twenty-four that people do start to experience these, typically, right? Especially if they're, you know, going out of high school or big changes in their life are happening. So it's not surprising that it was at 18 that you really started experiencing these things.
Michael: Very common.
Michael: Yeah, yeah. So bipolar is a genetic disorder and it can be triggered by stress or trauma. And the event, actually looking back on it, the event that triggered me or triggered the bipolar was my grandfather, my mother's father, died. I was very close with him and he died my senior year. And that put me into the depression. That was the beginning of the roller coaster that lasted years.
Katie: So that's so interesting because there often is a trigger point and maybe sometimes there isn't, but you know, it's interesting to know that. And then you also talked about the justice system a little bit, this kind of revolving door and you know, that first correctional officer, you know, perhaps you did have an attitude, but it sounds to me like he didn't understand that you were in a state of mania. You were unmedicated, in a mental health crisis, essentially.
Michael: Right.
Katie: And you know, and he didn't see that. And so I mean, I hope that today things have gotten better with crisis intervention training. I know in some ways that it hasn't. I think it varies state by state, but you know, how has your experience with the justice system evolved over your time? You said it was a revolving door. Did you experience that a lot or did you finally come to a place where you were getting maybe someone paying attention to your mental health and not just your criminal behavior?
Michael: Yeah, I'd actually say it's come a long way. So it's gone from me being incarcerated or more often hospitalized and incarcerated, but there were actually episodes of both, to fast forward to now and I work with the San Francisco Police Department. I've spoken with their CIT—crisis intervention team—that I've spoken to different classes of new recruits, probably now six or seven times I've talked to them.
Katie: Yeah.
Michael: It's been really encouraging in terms of... I think the world has changed a lot. I mean, granted, when I was 18, I'm an old man now, so that was a long time ago. That was really 30 years ago. And the world of mental illness has evolved quite a bit since then in terms of the stigma and just the ignorance, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation. And now I find it's... there's a ways to go, we're not there yet, but I think the world in general has come a long way from certainly 30 years ago, even 10 years ago, in terms of attitudes toward mental illness and general awareness of mental illness. Like my parents, when I was diagnosed, had never heard the word bipolar before. They had no understanding of what that was. And this was again 30 years ago, but now the general education or understanding of the population in general has gone up quite a bit in that time, I would say
Katie: That's amazing.
Katie: Yeah, I think that's interesting you bring that up 'cause I think you're right, our education around it has gone up, stigma has come down. And I think that even maybe ten years ago, coming out and saying, "Hey, I have a bipolar disorder or I have a bipolar diagnosis and I'm gonna lead this company," right? I think that even that has evolved, that we used to give a lot more stigma to people who had diagnoses and not as much chance to shine or chance to get better and to lead an organization or to do something they're passionate about. How have you seen that? Because you're a successful person, I think, in the career world, right? And you know, we've talked before and you've kind of talked to me about some of your ambitions and some of the careers that you had. I think that that's valuable that you have had that experience and a bipolar diagnosis at the same time.
Michael: Yeah, thank you. It's been a good run. I've been very fortunate to work for a number of great companies that have had good outcomes, I would say. For the first... with rare exception, I was a closeted bipolar person. I didn't talk about that with very, very rarely did I talk to a coworker about my diagnosis or my experiences. And now that's come kind of full circle. I am a poster child for this treatment and mental health in general. So it's come a long way, but I certainly spent easily twenty years of my career behind closed doors.
Katie: Yeah. Tough, you know, to feel like you didn't have that, but you were getting support in another place, is what it sounds like. And so I want to touch back on your story a little bit and a couple of things that you said. You said that it came down to owning your treatment, but really you got that from support, right? This person was willing to be like your sponsor in many ways, and so I think that that's powerful. That it's not just about changing your perspective, it's also about having that support as you go through that change.
Michael: Yes.
Michael: Yeah. 100%, 100%. Yeah. It actually... I think the thing that changes in the whole dynamic of having a mental illness, bipolar or otherwise, is you either come to a point or sometimes don't come to a point where you raise your hand and say, "I've had enough." And in AA they call that hitting a bottom. There are all different terms for it and different philosophies and methodologies and ways that people look at things. But call it hitting a bottom. At the time when I walked into Paco's shop, I was jobless, kicked out of Stanford, single—my girlfriend had broken up with me because I was intolerable basically as a manic person—nowhere to live, living in a halfway house, so basically homeless and thousands of dollars in debt. So that was enough. What it often takes is enough pain that the person who is struggling with whatever mental illness is willing to raise their hand and say, "I've had enough and I'm ready to make some changes." And that was the beginning of the beginning for me, basically, with that.
Katie: That's so interesting. And I mean again, you said something earlier, you said owning my treatment, but then you also said that bipolar disorder is a genetic disorder. And so I just like that, I just want to bring these two thoughts together because I think a lot of people will maybe use mental health as an excuse for why they didn't do something or why they can't move further along. And it's not an excuse, right? We all have our mental health and we all have our mental health struggles, and everybody is maybe in a different boat in the storm of life, so to speak, but it's not an excuse to not get up and try. It's not an excuse to stay down, to keep allowing yourself to stay. "Well, this is my life and it's just gonna keep being shitty." You were like, no, like I know that this is a genetic disorder, but I can still make a difference in owning my treatment. And I think that's so powerful. I want to touch on that.
Michael: Yes.
Michael: Yeah, yeah. I mean I've known... I've been hospitalized many times and met many bipolar people, and there are some who go in and out of hospitals for their whole life, in and out of treatment facilities and halfway houses and support centers and all this stuff. And there are people who kind of rise out of it and go on to live a more independent life. And I don't know what I credit it to—good luck, good parenting, good friends, good support.
Lots of very fortunate to have a lot of that in my life. Good role models, good mentors, all of the above for me, thankfully, thankfully. And I know not everyone has that. So I certainly don't take it for granted. But every time I got knocked down, I got back up. And that was... it was frustrating to have the repeat of a manic episode every six or twelve months that went on for years. But when I did find a way out of that, I had the grit, whatever you want to call it, to latch on to something that was good that was going to make a positive change and to embrace it and to actually affect that change.
Katie: It's inspiring for other people who are struggling, right? That you can go to where you were, right? Which is a thousand dollars and thousands in debt and virtually homeless, to where you are today. And so talk me through this 25 years of stability. Once you figured it out, what did that look like? What was that shift, that change that looked like? And how did that lead you to the kind of work that you're doing today?
Michael: Yeah, good question. I think it led to a very rewarding career basically in technology. That was the career part of it. To the work that I'm doing today, I was actually very fortunate to have worked for some of the best tech companies in the Bay Area. So very fortunate to have those opportunities. But I was able to succeed at those companies because I had learned the lessons from a lot of it from AA, and certainly from Paco as a mentor and a sponsor and a role model for how to keep getting up. And I think that applies not just to stopping manic episodes, but once you stop having manic episodes, or schizophrenic episodes, or anxiety episodes, or depressive episodes—whatever mental health challenge you have—it's the beginning of a long road. So that is step one in the process. Then you still have to find a doctor that you can relate to, and that can take years. I've probably had 15 or 20 psychiatrists in the course of my career as a bipolar person.
So you have to be very patient weeding through. There are better doctors and worse doctors, and you have to find the right one for you. And that takes time and patience and determination and a really strong work ethic to get through and find the right person. Then let's say you finally find the right doctor, then you and that doctor have to find the right meds. Not everyone takes meds—I take meds—but you have to find the right combination, and that can take another set of years to get figured out. It takes a lot of patience and hanging in there and doing the footwork day after day after day. It's a lot of patience, a lot of determination. Thankfully I was pretty quick in finding those things, so I didn't struggle as much as a lot of other people that I know that struggle for much longer than me, but it's the beginning of the road.*
Michael: Leading to answer your question, Katie, leading to the work that I do... You know, I have 26 years of stability. It's a pretty good run for a bipolar person. It's not rocket science. When I coach my coaching clients, there's nothing miraculous, intellectual property, or mind-blowing about what I do. It's just a handful of good habits that are non-negotiable that we do, that I do every day and teach my clients to adopt and do every day. And you do them one at a time. It's all the stuff you've all heard before: take your meds, get your sleep, get exercise, talk to your doctor, get a therapist, blah, blah, blah. All the typical stuff. But it's just the discipline, I would say, to make them non-negotiable. I haven't missed a medication dose in 30 years, for example. Like that is non-negotiable. I get eight hours of sleep. I worked 20 years in enterprise sales. That is some stressful stuff—end of quarter, end of year quota, stress, stress! I slept eight hours every night for 20 years. It's non-negotiable. I teach my clients to adopt the same mentality and they have the same success.
Katie: Sure.
Katie: Love that.
Katie: I love that. Yeah, you know, people don't talk about patience when it comes to mental health treatment. And it is a patient game, and you have to have determination. You have to have grit to stick it out, to keep going when you aren't sure it's working, right? But it matters, and I love the terms that you use: non-negotiables. So for someone out there who's maybe struggling with bipolar or with any mental health challenge right now, who's listening to this show, what's some advice that you would give them? What are some non-negotiables that they should be following in their life? You mentioned a couple of them. I, for one, am a big proponent of sleep. If I do not get enough sleep, I am not an okay person. So I think, and I think that, you know, maybe in some ways what you should do varies by every person, but there are probably non-negotiables that every single person should be following. What are your thoughts on that?
Michael: Yeah, I think so. I think if I had to rank order them, I don't know how to rank order them, but certainly sleep is one of them. Taking meds as prescribed—if meds are part of your program, then not messing that up and doing what you're told to do by your doctor, following those directions, really important. Getting some regular exercise, having an outlet for your stress, that's good. I have a meditation practice that I do every morning, a gratitude practice that I do every evening.
That happens every day no matter what. That can be helpful. But really sleep and meds probably, if I was gonna pick two things for somebody who's actively struggling: get on board with those two things, and also get all of the other stuff out of your brain. So all of the substances and the alcohol, all that stuff has got to go. I had a really phenomenal doctor for a long time. His name is Terry Ketter, out of Stanford. He ran the Stanford Bipolar Clinic, and he was my doctor for a long time. And I asked him about doing drugs one time, and he immortally said, "Michael, your brain chemistry is exotic enough." That was his line to me, and I took that through the rest of my life. You've gotta protect what's up here, you know?
Katie: Yeah, you do. You have to protect what's up here. That's right. Because without that, we're lost virtually. And it's just so important I think to pay attention to these things. And so now here you are today. Talk me through some of the work that you do. You mentioned that you're a coach, but at the top of the hour I also mentioned that you do speaking with NAMI and with the other organization that I'm always struggling with there, D...
Michael: DBSA. D B S A, yeah.
Katie: That's it. Yeah. So talk me through your work with these organizations and why it's important to tell your story, and kind of what kind of work you're doing now in getting the word out and being a bipolar advocate.
Michael: Yeah, I just volunteer. Most of the speaking I do is for NAMI. They put me to work a fair amount. I go back and forth between Vegas and San Francisco, but if I'm in Vegas and I get an opportunity to speak for NAMI, I'll fly back—it's an hour flight. So I'll go back to San Francisco and speak for them pretty much whenever they want. I'm still kind of establishing roots here in Vegas. So if anybody listening has any opportunities for speaking or coaching, I have a website that I put up. You can contact me through there. Happy to share that with you if you're open to that, Katie. It's michaelschneiderspeaks.com, so it's my name speaks.com, and there's a contact us form on the page.*
Katie: Yeah, what's the website?
Michael: Michael Schneider Speaks dot com. I am eager to be of service. I was at a conference over the weekend for a clinic that I run and met a nonprofit at that clinic that is in the Vegas area called Recovery International. I walked right up to them and just said, "Hey, how can I be of service?" Because this last chapter... fortunately I have a wonderful partner who supports me doing this stuff. And when I was winding down my last tech job, she said, "Why don't you make this last chapter of your career a chapter of service?" And I am here to do that to the extent that I possibly can, and to have as much of an impact on as many people as I can, which is why I like speaking and coaching.
Katie: Yeah, that's amazing. And yeah, I think that that's so valuable to kind of give back with your story and with your journey to help others in finding your own happiness. So I like that you kind of mentioned what would make you happier. And so what does happiness look like to you today as somebody who isn't 'over it', right? You are still in active recovery, and you always will be. So what does that look like to you?
Michael: Yeah, it's waiting around the corner for me. That next manic episode is just a couple bad nights of sleep away from creeping in and me ending up in the hospital. And I stay very vigilant, on guard for that. I don't take it for granted. It's very much an active recovery. And every night when I take my medication, every morning when I do my meditation, every time I go to the gym, every time I talk to my therapist—that's all part of the process. One of the really nice things is being of service rewards me. My personal practice of stability gets stronger by doing this podcast with you, Katie. So thank you for having me on. This stuff strengthens my resolve and my dedication to being stable.
Katie: Yeah.
Katie: That's so powerful. And the way that you talk about it, you do kind of frame it in an AA mindset, you know, every day because that's how alcoholics are when they wake up and every day is a choice. They're still in active recovery. Many of them still crave that drink, right? They still crave whatever that substance is, and so they have to follow these steps every day. They have to go to AA and check in with their sponsor and do their meditation and make sure they get enough sleep because it's part of their active recovery process, and it's going to be. It's not like something that just goes away. And so I think that that's so interesting how you say it, how you explain it. Nobody's ever said it that way before.
Michael: Yeah. The folks that I've worked with from a coaching standpoint have adopted a similar approach to it. It's a very simple and really beautiful philosophy. And if you can get past... there's a pretty heavy God element to AA, so that's a turnoff for some people. But if you can get past that—and Paco was very creative in just making the steps work for me and not getting hung up in the God piece of that, that's a whole separate conversation—it is a very simple, back to non-negotiable system.*
Katie: Mm-hmm.
Michael: You follow these things in this order, and you don't get creative and you don't come up with a bunch of new ideas. "I know you're really smart, Michael, but shut up and do what I tell you to do." And that discipline gets beaten into you, certainly by Paco—he's a two hundred and fifty pound giant tattoo artist and monster guy. But yeah, it's just a very simple cliche, taking it one day at a time, and the Serenity Prayer. So much good stuff comes out of it. And at the end of the day, it's a very simple philosophy to follow if you just follow directions and basically do what you're told.
Katie: Mm.
Katie: Yeah, yeah. Really powerful. And you know, I think you're absolutely right. I don't personally follow it, but my husband has. My husband has followed the steps, and it's the same kind of thing. Once you kind of get past the God element, there are some really powerful steps in there. And I think a lot of people are just like, "Okay, well, I don't need it because I'm not an alcoholic or I'm not addicted." And it's like, well, wait a minute, these steps can be used in so many different areas of life. So that's cool that you're bringing it into your coaching, this sort of perspective that these are non-negotiables. These are steps that you follow in order to make sure that you're living a happy life and that you're taking care of your mental health.
Michael: Thank you. Yeah. I was just really fortunate to be at the right place at the right time. I mean, I literally walked into a tattoo studio. Who would have thought? Not where you go looking for answers to spiritual questions or cures for major mental illnesses! So it all came together. I'm just very, very fortunate to have it work out.
Katie: Yeah, it just shows that you can find healing anywhere, right? You never know where you're gonna find healing, and it's a matter of being open to it. You know that saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." So you gotta be open to the healing that's in front of you, and if you're out there struggling, be open to maybe trying a different perspective, right? And to try a different way of looking at it to see if that helps. At the end of the day, it's all about what helps us to succeed in life.
Michael: Yeah.
Katie: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, yeah. And I think if there are listeners of yours who are actively struggling, what I found for sure was that when I finally raised my hand and said I'd had enough...
Katie: Mm-hmm.
Michael: ...there was no shortage of people stepping up to offer me solutions. Even in Las Vegas, there are ten different groups of people who are wanting to help you. You just have to have had enough. Usually pain is the motivator for change. In the case of my recovery anyway, that's what got me to raise my hand. And thank goodness I did, 'cause it turned out pretty well afterwards.
Katie: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, "I've had enough," and to find your village, right? To keep looking for help, even if maybe the first place you went didn't work. So I just think that your story is a testament to what it can look like to live a happy life with a bipolar diagnosis. I think that a lot of people who are in the midst of struggling with their symptoms maybe don't see that light at the end of the tunnel, that it's possible. So I'm just so grateful that you came on the show and talked a little bit about your story and kind of what it can look like on the other side of a very challenging journey—and one that you're still in, that you're still in active recovery. I think that that's really important to point out.
Michael: Yeah, thank you, Katie. Thank you. It's really an honor to get to talk with you and to be able to address your audience. So yeah, if somebody is struggling out there, whether it's you or a family member or someone you care about, reach out. I'm here to be of service. So if anything that I said is interesting to you or you're even curious, drop me a line, reach out through the website. Happy to be of service.
Katie: Absolutely. Yeah. And one more time, that website, because can people see your coaching program too there? Okay, perfect.
Michael: Yep. It splits when you get to the site. It's Michael Schneider Speaks dot com. Yeah, thank you.
Katie: Thank you so much for being here, and for all of our listeners out there, please check out Michael's website. If you're looking for a coach in this space, if he resonates, definitely reach out. And then we hope to see you more speaking here in Las Vegas. I know as you continue to establish roots here, it's valuable to have another mental health advocate in this space, in this city, because we need it. And so I'm so grateful that you're here, that you came on the show. And to everyone out there listening today, thank you so much for tuning in, and with that, we'll see you next time on Watching Mental Health.
Michael: Right on, thank you.
