Episode 4
Are You a Good Person?
Are you a good person? I'm not, and I could never see myself as being one. I'd look at people I viewed as good people, like Mr. Rogers and Steve Irwin, and just know my mind is too dark to ever be that light. Plus, due to my autism, I am what's called a low-empathy person, so a lot of advice about goodness and being a better person meant little to me. Like, the whole, "put yourself in their shoes!" How? I don't know how to do that.
But, I found a solution, and I am sharing it with you here.
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I am not a mental health professional. I do not have any qualifications or certifications of any kind. I hope that by sharing my experiences, more mentally ill people will be empowered to step into the offices of clinicians to do the hard work that leads to mental wellness, peace, and happiness. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, as all I am is a mental patient with a microphone.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Hey, what's up y'?
Speaker A:All?
Speaker B:My name is Dennis Hile and I am diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder with severe depression and high functioning autism.
Speaker B:I've been living with bipolar disorder for over 30 years, 15 of which I spent undiagnosed.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B:I would be diagnosed with autism a few years later.
Speaker B:In my podcast, Bluntly Bipolar, I'm going to share with you my experiences and the hard lessons I've learned trying to find some peace and happiness in my life.
Speaker B:I hope that by sharing my experiences, others can avoid learning these lessons the hard way.
Speaker B:I'm not a mental health professional.
Speaker B:I have no qualifications or certifications.
Speaker B:All I am is a mental patient with a microphone.
Speaker B:You could find Bluntly bipolar@bluntly bipolar.com or about any podcast distribution service.
Speaker B:Expect new episodes on the first and third Thursday of every month.
Speaker B:Listener discretion is advised for every topics related to mental health, including suicide, self harm, and more.
Speaker A:This is episode four.
Speaker A:Are you a good person?
Speaker A:Are you a good person?
Speaker A:I'm not, and it took a skilled therapist for me to realize it.
Speaker A:But here's the thing.
Speaker A:I'm not a bad person either.
Speaker A:I'm somewhere in the middle.
Speaker A:As I've come to understand, most people are.
Speaker A:And why does that matter?
Speaker A:Well, because mental illness can cause us to do things that are entirely out of character that we would never do under normal circumstances.
Speaker A:You have to be able to find peace with that.
Speaker A:And the only way I found to do that is to be completely honest about with about myself, for better or worse.
Speaker A:I'm diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder and high functioning autism.
Speaker A:I have an issue that many people with autism do, where I always feel distant from people, even the people I love most.
Speaker A:It's like sitting in a room looking at everyone outside of a window.
Speaker A:And that's as close as I can get.
Speaker A:At first I was afraid I was a sociopath because I noticed early on some things were weird about how I related to people.
Speaker A:One of the most disturbing parts to me was when I realized I could look at someone's suffering and not feel anything emotionally.
Speaker A:As far as I can tell from observation, empathy motivates people to try to relieve the suffering of someone around them.
Speaker A:I can intellectually identify suffering.
Speaker A:I can tell when someone is suffering by interpreting the circumstances, their body language, their words.
Speaker A:But most of the time I don't feel any emotions about it.
Speaker A:Or when I do, they're very deluded, like a light behind wax paper, but my diagnosing psychologist said that wasn't sociopathy.
Speaker A:Sociopaths don't understand that they're missing anything, that there's something off about how they relate to people.
Speaker A:They just tend to assume that everyone else is wired like they are and they act accordingly.
Speaker A:Instead, I'm what he described as a low empathy individual.
Speaker A:I find the way that I empathize interesting.
Speaker A:I'll sometimes look at something that would stir emotion and feel like a brief spark of recognition.
Speaker A:It's like a recognition that something is going on.
Speaker A:Then if I stop and think about the situation, I can then open a box where I have similar emotions stored and allow myself to feel more things than not.
Speaker A:However, I can also make the choice to just never open that box.
Speaker A:That has its pros and cons.
Speaker A:On the pro side, it's much easier for me to witness or carry hard things because they don't weigh on my mind like they do with more empathetic people.
Speaker A:I can compartmentalize pretty effectively.
Speaker A:It's also pretty handy when I found myself in leadership positions because it allows me to not feel so bad about making hard decisions that need to happen if I feel anything at all.
Speaker A:Now, on the other hand, it was especially bad when I was undiagnosed because my bipolar depression would often make me hostile, angry and hopeless.
Speaker A:Alternatively, I would oftentimes experience arrogance and delusions while I was escalated.
Speaker A:Low empathy mixed with those characteristics is not a good combination.
Speaker A:I did a lot of shitty, insensitive things to people who absolutely did not deserve it, and some that did.
Speaker A:At about 32 years old or so, I had already been working as a marketing copywriter for a few years.
Speaker A:The way I got into it was through a broker slate that would connect writers to people who needed writers like small business owners, marketers, and anyone who needed something written.
Speaker A:Really.
Speaker A:I was doing it for far less than minimum wage, teaching myself through YouTube articles and practice.
Speaker A:One of the first long term clients I worked for was someone who was a pretty shady dude.
Speaker A:You know, I was essentially creating material and astroturfing to help build presence for a foreign currency exchange broker and gold seller.
Speaker A:The idea behind it being to make it look and sound easy, even though it's not so easy that anyone can do it.
Speaker A:And frankly, that's not hard.
Speaker A:You know, a lot of people see dollar signs and they just stop thinking tough, wounded money or soon parted right.
Speaker A:Anyway, I was talking to my counselor at the time who asked me what I'd been working on.
Speaker A:After I explained, he commented that sounded pretty Shady and not ethical.
Speaker A:And I said, so what if they're dumb enough to fall for it and not do their homework?
Speaker A:That's on them, not me.
Speaker A:Then he asked, well, what if someone did it to you?
Speaker A:Well, then it's my own fault for being stupid and weak for being gullible.
Speaker A:Then he pulled out the whammy.
Speaker A:He looked at me and said, all right, well, what if someone did it to your grandmother or your mom and dad?
Speaker A:And that spurred memories of the scam callers trying to steal my great grandmother's money when I was younger, as she was descending into dementia, and how my mom had to deal with that constantly up until she died and for some time after.
Speaker A:So you can tell when you make significant breakthroughs in therapy because, well, in my experience, it's an awful, awful feeling.
Speaker A:It felt like someone punched me in the stomach when my dumb ass brain finally connected the dots.
Speaker A:My great grandmother was not stupid.
Speaker A:She was vulnerable, like most of the people I was working to manipulate for my clients.
Speaker A:It's kind of funny, because my refusal to see what I was doing was also rooted in how much I didn't understand or like myself.
Speaker A:I reasoned that when bad things happen to me, I deserve it, because that's what my bipolar depression kept playing on loop in my head.
Speaker A:I was able to see more clearly because I couldn't empathize with strangers through the intensity of my bipolar depression and low empathy.
Speaker A:But I could empathize with my family, particularly what my great grandmother went through and my mother went through for her.
Speaker A:I want to preface this next part by saying, this is the way I've come to understand myself and my place in the world.
Speaker A:Labels like good and evil, right and wrong, are often in the eye of the beholder.
Speaker A:Everyone has different ideas and requirements.
Speaker A:Different philosophies and religions speak similar, but different ideas.
Speaker A:I am not a good person.
Speaker A:I say that I'm not a good person because what goes on in my head does not incline me towards goodness or kindness.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:Even now, years later, I can still hear those more negative whispers coming from the shadows in my brain, telling me that it's okay to not consider others or to be cutthroat or ignore that fleeting pang of conscience until it disappears into the aether.
Speaker A:But I'm not a bad person because I've known people that I would consider to be bad and worked for them.
Speaker A:The people that I would consider bad don't feel guilty about the wrongs they do.
Speaker A:In fact, in my experience, they usually think of it as their competitive edge, their Way to get ahead in the world and get what they want, everyone else be damned.
Speaker A:Now I'm capable of feeling guilt for my actions when I realize that they're wrong.
Speaker A:I just have a hard time realizing when they're wrong.
Speaker A:I'm not a good or kind person.
Speaker A:Naturally.
Speaker A:I'm someone that wakes up in the morning and chooses to do better things than what I did in the past.
Speaker A:And that's really hard to do.
Speaker A:I remember on one occasion I was working third shift at a store, unloading trucks and stocking shelves.
Speaker A:We just got a new transfer in from Alaska of all places, and he was way between paychecks at the time, so he was trying to borrow a few dollars from someone.
Speaker A:When he came to ask me, my reflective reaction, before I could even think about it, was to laugh at him and say, hell no.
Speaker A:Then about three seconds after that, I stopped myself and I said, no, wait, I apologize.
Speaker A:That was rude.
Speaker A:My brain sucks and I'm sorry for being an.
Speaker A:And I gave him a few dollars to get him through and he probably paid me back too, just like he said he would.
Speaker A:That was like over a decade ago.
Speaker A:And I don't have as many reflexive you responses anymore because I've so regularly chosen to the do the opposite of what my brain reflexively tells me to do.
Speaker A:The reflex is the conditioning from decades of thinking that way.
Speaker A:And while it's smaller than it was, I don't think it will ever completely go away.
Speaker A:But what does it mean to be a good person, though?
Speaker A:As I've expressed this opinion in the past, for some reason, a lot of people tend to think I'm not being fair to myself.
Speaker A:I can't tell you how many times I've had someone tell me, well, you're actually a good person because you choose to do good.
Speaker A:Do you not see the paradox there?
Speaker A:I don't think that works that way.
Speaker A:Why would someone whose thoughts and emotions point them toward goodness need to choose to be good and kind?
Speaker A:They just do those things.
Speaker A:And I'm not saying the good people don't have struggles or dark thoughts or anything like that.
Speaker A:I just think that there are some people whose moral compass points north and they can more easily walk that path, Whereas my moral compass is really more like a merry go round, particularly when I start getting unwell.
Speaker A:Then it becomes a turbocharged merry go round.
Speaker A:But there's so much purity testing about whether or not someone's a good person.
Speaker A:In pop culture, people point to people like Bob Ross, Steve Irwin, and Mr. Rogers as good people because of how they carried themselves.
Speaker A:But at the same time, when I cross paths with people who claim goodness but they've never been tested, then you can't really know.
Speaker A:Alternatively, I can't tell you how many stories from abuse survivors I've heard where they're abusers.
Speaker A:This wonderful, well liked, charismatic person, a pillar of their friend, group or community.
Speaker A:And that's the problem, because you can pretty easily pretend to be good or nice for a while if you feel so inclined.
Speaker A:If monsters acted like monsters all the time, they wouldn't be able to find victims.
Speaker A:And personally, I don't trust anyone who appears too shiny and clean because of that.
Speaker A:That's also why I don't look for the good in people.
Speaker A:I'm far more interested in how bad they are and what they're willing to do about the wrong actions when they make them.
Speaker A:Because we all do.
Speaker A:And I'm not saying that the Bob Ross's, Steve Irwins and Mr. Rogers of the world aren't good people or we're hiding anything nefarious.
Speaker A:I think it's valuable to see people like that as a reminder that, hey, I may not be a good person, but maybe I should at least try, right?
Speaker A:But at the same time, who knows how someone like that might react if something ugly or terrible happens?
Speaker A:What decisions might they make if they were actually tested?
Speaker A:Like, you can claim to be an honest person, but do you know that until you're tested, how many times have you loan money?
Speaker A:They swore they'd pay it back and then find every reason not to.
Speaker A:Not like my former co worker who literally ran across the store to give me my money back a couple weeks later without me ever asking once.
Speaker A:That's honesty, that's integrity, that's goodness to me.
Speaker A:And I never would have known that about him had I not given him money.
Speaker A:Not loaned.
Speaker A:I never loaned money.
Speaker A:If I don't have it to give and lose and I don't give it that way, I don't get taken advantage of.
Speaker A:But he swore he paid me back and he did.
Speaker A:In retrospect, I should have tried to strike up a friendship with him, but I was still too lost in my own shadows for that.
Speaker A:Now, if you can't see yourself as a good person, if you don't feel like you can trust your moral compass, you may want to consider doing what I did and adopt an external one.
Speaker A:One of my biggest hang ups in my own journey of trying to fix my perspective and how I related to the world was looking at these people that I also believe to Be good people, to be good examples of people.
Speaker A:But I couldn't see myself in them at all because my brain just doesn't function that way.
Speaker A:I didn't know how to be soft, gentle and kind.
Speaker A:My brain was constantly telling me to kill myself.
Speaker A:So I didn't have the emotional bandwidth for any kind of peace or happiness or to create the space for them to flourish.
Speaker A:All I knew was I'm not like them.
Speaker A:I can't be like them.
Speaker A:So I guess I'm just a bad person.
Speaker A:And what's the point trying to be something that I can never be?
Speaker A:Everyone always tells you to be yourself, be your authentic self, be your true self.
Speaker A:But no one ever talks about when you finally do see your true self, and that self is not that good, is not that impressive.
Speaker A:So should I just continue to do wrong things?
Speaker A:Because that's what my authentic self is telling me to do.
Speaker A:And as I started unraveling this, I look back to how I was raised.
Speaker A:Christian Methodist.
Speaker A:And there were several reasons.
Speaker A:I just cannot connect with that belief system.
Speaker A:I would love to be able to, but I just can't.
Speaker A:I turned to philosophy, had a lot of success in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker A:And I found out that it took a lot of inspiration from the philosophy of stoicism.
Speaker A:When I started learning more about that, everything kind of clicked into place.
Speaker A:There were no gray areas to the simple core premise of Stoicism.
Speaker A:That virtue is the sole good and that the most important pursuit is that of a virtuous life.
Speaker A:And virtue is composed of four things to act with.
Speaker A:Courage, wisdom, moderation, and justice.
Speaker A:The Stoics believed that virtue was all you needed to have a happy and well lived life.
Speaker A:Additionally, we should strive to figure out our place and role in the world so we can serve whatever our purpose may be.
Speaker A:And lastly, we work on mastering our emotional environment because that is the only thing that we are ever truly in control of.
Speaker A:Most of the time, as anyone with a mental illness will tell you, we are definitely not in control of our emotions and thoughts all the time.
Speaker A:So instead of relying on my own moral compass, which is about as reliable as mainstream media, I instead use virtue to help guide my decisions.
Speaker A:When I'm making tough choices, I ask myself, is this courageous, wise, reasonable, fair?
Speaker A:And if I can answer a hard no to any of those four questions, then I'll do whatever it is.
Speaker A:I try to think of a better idea or research other options.
Speaker A:And then the obvious question is, well, how do you make that determination on whether or not a particular action is virtuous?
Speaker A:How do you define these four qualities?
Speaker A:I mean, that's a big, big challenge.
Speaker A:And that's why I keep reading, researching, listening to people talk about these things so I can better develop my empathy and see more clearly.
Speaker A:I also went back and reconsidered many of my bad life decisions and actions through that new method of thinking and thought about what I would do differently if I were in those situations before.
Speaker A:For example, I still freelance as a copywriter in the digital marketing space.
Speaker A:I love writing and I love helping people who are doing good business connect with customers.
Speaker A:I like providing good quality information to people who need it.
Speaker A:However, I don't do shady or unethical anymore.
Speaker A:I don't mislead, I don't slant, I don't astroturf.
Speaker A:I do everything in my power to produce an honest product for my clients to connect with their audience and customers.
Speaker A:I'm not a good person and honestly, I'm glad I'm not.
Speaker A:Wish I'd been able to make better decisions when I was younger and unwell, but I couldn't.
Speaker A:However, I can do that now.
Speaker A:Not only that, but having these experiences also makes it easier for me to see other people like me.
Speaker A:Game recognized game after all.
Speaker A:And that's beneficial because the people who haven't been in the gutter or walked in the shadow and negative parts of their brain can't.
Speaker A:There's only so much you can learn from books and observation.
Speaker A:Even the mental health industry recognized that with their dramatic increase in using pair workers over the past decade or so.
Speaker A:What if you feel like you can't be a good person?
Speaker A:What if you feel like you're just too dirty, like your thoughts aren't good enough, or you've done a lot of questionable or awful things behind you?
Speaker A:What if you look at people like Mr. Rogers, Steve Irwin and Bob Ross and think, well, I'm definitely not like them.
Speaker A:I have great news for you.
Speaker A:You don't have to be a good person.
Speaker A:You just have to work at not being a bad person that has a far more reasonable, honest goal than posturing some saint.
Speaker A:And that's why I say I'm not a good person.
Speaker A:But I'm not a bad person either.
Speaker A:I'm somewhere in the middle like most people are.
Speaker A:At its most basic.
Speaker A:I just have to make better decisions today than I did yesterday.
Speaker A:And if I keep doing that, well, then the issue kind of corrects itself.
Speaker A:I'm no longer doing harm, no longer doing shady things and not making anyone's riot on this planet any more difficult than it needs to be.
Speaker A:Furthermore, stoicism also encourages the idea of supporting the common good.
Speaker A:If you decide to look into it at all, be aware that there are right wingers and podcast bros who have co opted elements of it to make it a more selfish pursuit.
Speaker A:The easiest warning sign I've identified is that they rarely talk about how important it is to be proactive in your community, whatever that community may be.
Speaker A:Or they push the message that other people's actions are outside of your control so you shouldn't worry at all about anything going on that doesn't directly affect you.
Speaker A:Stoicism is not a selfish philosophy.
Speaker A:It's not about being emotionless and passive.
Speaker A:It is a philosophy of action guided by virtue to not only create some peace for yourself, but but improve the common good for everyone.
Speaker A:Now that's what works for me and what makes sense to me.
Speaker A:But I'm not suggesting my way is the best way or right way for you.
Speaker A:Maybe there's a philosophy or spiritual practice that could provide a better compass for you than that.
Speaker A:And if you're not the religious or philosophical type, you may find the seven tenets of the Satanic Temple more appealing.
Speaker A:Now don't be fooled by the name.
Speaker A:The Satanic Temple is an atheist organization that is heavily focused on humanity.
Speaker A:Their tenets include Number one One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward old creatures in accordance with reason.
Speaker A:Number two the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
Speaker A:3.
Speaker A:One's body is inviable, subject to one's own will alone.
Speaker A:4.
Speaker A:The freedom of others should be respected.
Speaker A:Who, including the freedom to offend to willfully and justly encroach upon the freedoms of another, is to forego one's own.
Speaker A:5.
Speaker A:Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world.
Speaker A:One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
Speaker A:6.
Speaker A:People are fallible.
Speaker A:If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
Speaker A:7.
Speaker A:Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought.
Speaker A:The spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
Speaker A:Which is pretty similar to stoicism and is pretty similar to several other belief systems who kind of hinge around those four those ideas that are within virtue.
Speaker A:So if, like me, you're not a good person, ask yourself, what's a better decision I can make today?
Speaker A:Can I choose to not do something Shady.
Speaker A:Can I apologize to someone I wronged?
Speaker A:Can I help out someone who needs help?
Speaker A:What are some better choices that I can make that won't cause harm, won't saddle me with guilt, and won't make me feel worse about myself or humanity?
Speaker A:Now, if you choose to take a step like this, I want you to understand an obstacle you may experience if you talk about this with other people.
Speaker A:You may run into people who are quick to anger and tell you that you're not actually a good person.
Speaker A:You're just pretending to be one.
Speaker A:Essentially, yes.
Speaker A:Guess what?
Speaker A:I'd be willing to bet that most people, if they're willing to be honest with themselves.
Speaker A:And guess what?
Speaker A:I'd be willing to bet that that is most people, if they were willing to be honest with themselves.
Speaker A:Why do you think all these philosophies, religions and beliefs about how to be a good person exist?
Speaker A:It's because people aren't that good.
Speaker A:They never were, they never have been, they never will be.
Speaker A:But they'll be more than happy to point the finger and moralize your shortcomings because you don't feel the correct feelings.
Speaker A:Don't expect too many other people to tell you that you're doing a good job.
Speaker A:And if you don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation about it, if you find yourself in this situation, just stare at them and ask, would you prefer me to be who I was before?
Speaker A:Because it's really amusing to watch the gears turn as they contemplate that.
Speaker A:So if you're like me, and you look at whatever example you see of a better person and think, well, I can't be like them, it's all right.
Speaker A:You don't have to be.
Speaker A:You just have to be better than you were yesterday.
Speaker A:These people moralizing as though their feelings somehow mean more than meaningful action.
Speaker A:In my experience, most of them are hypocrites who've never been tested.
Speaker A:Besides, what kind of good person would shame you for wanting to be a better person?
Speaker A:It's almost like they're full of shit.
Speaker A:Thank you for spending your time with me.
Speaker A:If you liked what you heard, subscribe and share it with someone who you think it might help be.
Speaker A:Well, There.
