Unscripted Healing: Dr. Fred Moss on Ditching Diagnoses, Finding Your True Voice, and Why Connection Is the Real Cure

What if your depression isn’t a chemical imbalance... but a communication breakdown?

In this raw and revelatory episode, I sit down with Dr. Fred Moss—a board-certified psychiatrist who’s seen 30,000 patients and written over 100,000 prescriptions... only to realize the real medicine is something Big Pharma can’t bottle: human connection.

Dr. Fred gets real about his journey from burnout to breakthrough, why he hates how psychiatry has changed since Prozac, and how he discovered that healing isn’t about slapping a label on someone—it’s about listening, creating, and finding your true voice again.

We explore:

• Why diagnoses might be doing more harm than good
• The real reason people are desperate for medication (hint: it’s not what you think)
• How creativity, not chemistry, may be your best medicine
• Why you’re already more powerful than any prescription pad
• And how you can begin healing without waiting for anyone’s permission

Whether you’ve ever questioned your diagnosis, your therapist, or your own inner voice—this episode gives you permission to get real, get curious, and maybe, just maybe... realize there’s nothing wrong with you.
🧠 This is psychiatry unfiltered, unscripted, and unafraid.

🎧 Listen now and rediscover the freedom that comes when you stop treating symptoms and start speaking truth.

Join us at Preparedness Pro in our Facebook Group or on our blog where you'll find peaceful, practical preparedness advice every day of the week!

Transcript

Unscripted Healing: Ditching Diagnoses and Finding Your True Voice with Dr. Fred Moss

Kellene: [00:00:00] Welcome to Preparedness Pro, where being prepared isn't about fear, it's about freedom. I'm your host, Colleen, and every episode we explore the peaceful principles of preparedness and self-reliance. No gloom, no doom, just practical solutions for everyday living that help you become more independent and prepared for whatever life brings your way.

From kitchen skills to financial wisdom, emergency planning to sustainable living. We're building a community of capable, confident people who understand that preparedness isn't about preparing for the worst. It's about being free to live your best life regardless of what comes your way. So whether you're starting your preparedness journey or you're a seasoned pro, you're in the right place.

Welcome.

Hey everyone. It's Kellene. Preparedness Pro. I've got a great show for you today. No, really I do. Let's describe this show. This is gonna be a good one. It Dr. Fred Moss is like the Mr. Rogers of psychiatry. If Mr. [00:01:00] Rogers dropped the puppets and went full throttle on disrupting big pharma while handing you a paintbrush and a guitar and a journal saying something like, here.

Heal yourself friend. So today's episode, it's gonna take us from laugh out loud moments, I'm sure, to the kind of truth bombs that make you go, wait, I needed to hear that. So Dr. Fred just tell you a little bit about him. He's a board certified psychiatrist who's treated over 30,000 patients. So basically just a drop in the bucket of all of us who need help, but don't expect a bunch of al alphabet soup, , diagnoses and prescription pad poetry.

Nope. He's flipped the traditional mental health script on its Overmedicated head. With his creative method and his true voice approach, he helps people trade pills for paintbrushes and panic for purpose. And this man believes healing, starts with connection, creativity, and telling the truth, even the awkward, messy, humankind of truth.

He's founder of Welcome to Humanity, [00:02:00] host of multiple podcasts and the author of Creative eight, and find your voice. He's been on over 200 shows and today he's on hours. So if you've ever felt labeled or numbed out or just a little lost in a system that's forgotten the human part of mental health, stay tuned because we're diving deep, but in the kind of way that feels like a late night.

Porch talk with a wise friend who just so happens to also be a licensed professional. Let's get into it with Dr. Fred Moss. 

Dr. Fred: Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. What a great introduction. Let's 

Kellene: go. Oh, good. Glad. So, Dr. Fred, can I call you Dr. Fred? Sure, of course.

Okay. You went from being a college dropout to working at a state mental health facility for adolescent boys. Mm-hmm. So that's either a redemption arc or the beginning of a superhero origin story. What happened in that chapter that lit the fire for the work you do now? 

Dr. Fred: Yeah. So, , we have to go back a little ways before that, but yeah.

You know, I, I was a born healer. , when I was [00:03:00] released by my mom on my birthday, I was born into , a family, had a fair amount of chaos and disarray. I had two older brothers, 10 and 14 years older than me, and there was a lot of pain and conflict going on. And from what I can tell and from what they've told me, that was the purpose of my birth really was to bring peace and joy into a family That was pretty disrupted and I did a pretty good job of it for a few years.

I was a funny ball of joy and I remember I used to be called out almost when there was trouble going on in the family or with friends, they would call me out to bring joy into the group. And I did that for a while. And, , given that I had these two older brothers. I was pretty precocious, but by the time I started school I had been taught many things that most of my peers had never even heard of, including how to read and how to write and how to, I knew a little bit about sex and drugs and rock and roll too as a 5-year-old that didn't always fit into my kindergarten friends who were interested in throwing blocks and taping naps and things like that, which I was interested.

I was interested in that too, but I also had this extra added stuff. I really [00:04:00] just wanted to communicate more than anything. Like that's what I wanted. That's what I recall. Sitting at a playpen, little Freddy's just sitting there watching my brothers and my parents talk to each other. I just wanted to learn to be like them.

How can I communicate? And it seemed to me that the obvious place to learn something like that would be what they were calling school like. Yeah, that's where I'll get conversation lessons. But of course that's not at all where a conversation happens. Open discourse is not in, rural, is certainly not encouraged.

Not encouraged. That's the word I was looking for. Not encouraged in the school setting. In fact, I was told many times just sit down and be quiet and do what the teacher says. But I was a leaky faucet for sure, and I communicated a lot as a, as an elementary school student. So much so that I would say that there's no elementary school student, if any of them are alive, Elementary school teachers.

Who, ever forgot having Fred as a student. I'm pretty positive about that. And, you know, so I just was like more or less kind of disturbed and [00:05:00] disappointed because it wasn't happening in the classroom. It was not, it was maybe happening outside. I would ride my bike past a certain point and then learn something about how those people live, or how those people live, or how to talk to those kind of people.

, old, young, poor, rich , from that neighborhood. And I really just loved communication. So I figured, well, where'd these people learn? It must be in the older grades, like junior high. No, that was worse. And then high school. No, that was really worse. 

Kellene: Imagine it today. It's even 

Dr. Fred: worse today.

It's, it is worse today. And you know, I would learn, but I would always learn away from school. So in high school I finally started like skipping a lot of school and just going out there to learn what's going on in the community. And, you know, I was pretty smart, so I had these good numbers.

I, you know, I could take tests and I, you know, I was precocious and I had it. I had what I needed to have to go to where I needed to go in the educational system. Eventually I went to the University of Michigan. It was 40 miles down the road. They had very cool helmets. That's where all of [00:06:00] us were headed for, was like, you know, let's go to U of M.

And that's where I went. And I started off as an engineer because of my mathematics numbers. I started off an engineer. I didn't even know what an engineer was at the time, Kellene. I really, I thought he was a guy on the back of a train. I, I didn't know. I, I had no idea. And, that wasn't gonna work for me.

So, you know, eventually I realized that, , , this was not gonna be a life that was sustainable and I dropped outta school. I got on a bus and took it all the way to Berkeley. From Detroit. And the purpose of that was to find out what my life was about. And so I spent the summer at a youth hostel and playing around the streets of the Bay Area and, caught a lot of, a lot of news about what my life was about, but that also wasn't sustainable.

And there was this new industry. , my brothers and my parents were like, we think you have the mentality, you know, the aptitude for this new industry that's coming out. So we'd like to intro, you know, like you to consider coming back to school and learning it. You might have heard of the industry, it was called computers and it was like, yeah, [00:07:00] I think I could probably do that.

So back to school. I went to the only computer in all of Michigan, you know, truth be told, it was like two a two acre facility in the middle of the University of Michigan. And there I was back in school again, back in Ann Arbor and. Learning Fortran and COBOL and patch jobs and punch cards, and it was like, no, I'm not gonna do that either.

So I'm actually a two time college dropout because here's the second time, I was like, no, I can't do that. So I left again and went back out to California and my mom, she's like, Fred, I called her up and told her, there's no way that I'm going to school ever again, never going to university for any reason ever again.

And she's like, okay, that's cool, but you gotta get a job. You know, mom, so it'll be like that. So it's like, okay. So she, searched around, helped me out a little bit, and got me an application for a civil service job. And, there was two to choose from actually on the unemployment office. And then this job, you've already mentioned, the job of, , becoming a [00:08:00] childcare worker for adolescent boys in a state mental hospital facility.

, that one was coming on sooner than the unemployment one. It wasn't because I wanted that one. It was like, okay, I don't know. I get to get a paycheck earlier or something, and it was like, there was three weeks of orientation, 40 hours a week, so I could get paid, you know, at full rate for 120 hours. I had the math all figured out.

I take that money, buy myself a Volkswagen and drive around the country to figure out what my life was about. That was my intention. No kidding. No, for real. I mean, for real. That's absolutely what I had in mind. And on the fourth week, I, my friend Paul, who was orienting with me, told me, , that I needed to come up to the floors.

I'm like, no, not exactly. And he's like, well, if you quit, I have to quit and then my family will suffer, whatever he said, some nonsense like that. So I was like, okay, let's go. Let's do it. So I bought three more weeks essentially. I was like, okay, let's go onto the floor Now I got double the paycheck. I can get a later model [00:09:00] Volkswagen and we can really have fun driving around the country and figuring out what my life was about.

So, , three weeks went by and it wasn't that bad. I was like, wow, I can actually survive. Not only that, I can be useful. And how am I useful by communicating, by connecting, by listening, by being present, by sharing. You know, by conversing. 

Kellene: So is that what convinced you that it was worth the climb back up the academic hill?

Dr. Fred: No, not exactly. Not exactly. It's a good question, but n no, not exactly. Was it 

Kellene: a kid you worked with or a moment 

Dr. Fred: it was because it was essentially because I hated the direction that psychiatry was going into. I hated psychiatry.

, I truly hated psychiatry from the first day that I decided I was gonna be a psychiatrist. And it's because, we would call the psychiatrist on call at the center and, , Timmy and Tony had been in a fight, let's say, or Jimmy's up too late, and the psychiatrist would come from his call room and then interview Jimmy for like, I don't know, seven [00:10:00] seconds.

 He would interview Jimmy for like seven seconds and then interview us for like 10 seconds and go into the nursing station and write some order. And then we'd have to go retrieve Jimmy and hold him down on the floor, on the brick floor, the concrete floor and . Give, pack 'em full of some injectable, anti-psychotic cocktail. , and if he was in a stupor for like a whole day, we would call that a success story. Now, here's the thing that's already happened several mornings today, several places today, this morning. 

Kellene: Yeah, 

Dr. Fred: that hasn't changed. That's not ancient news.

That's what's happens in those hospitals frequently enough. And I'm not aligned with that. It's barbaric, it's unacceptable. It's mean, it's vicious, it's wrong. So I'm not aligned with that. Never have been aligned with that. And so I knew communication was working and I knew this other stuff wasn't. And I also knew that my brother was a psychiatrist, so that there was a path that I could follow and made me become one myself.

So that's when I chose to go back to school in Detroit at Wayne State [00:11:00] University and finish my degree there while I was working as a childcare worker. And before too long. I was fortunate enough to be accepted to medical school in Chicago at the Northwestern University Medical School, and, spent five years there, four years at medical school and one year as an internship, and then took my practice down to Cincinnati, Ohio.

And since there, it's been, 30,000 patients later and multiple jobs in every single arena that I know about inside of modern medicine. And here's the thing, \ psychiatry took a massive turn while I was in medical school. A massive turn, a paradigmatic shifting turn. In 1987, there was this drug being introduced that changed to everything for everyone and still does.

Still absolutely is the grandma of the drug that changed everything for psychiatry. The name of that drug is Prozac. And Prozac just completely boggled everything else that was going on beforehand. All of a sudden there was this new theory that there was such thing as a chemical imbalance, and the chemical imbalance meant that if there was any kind of pain or discomfort you were experiencing, [00:12:00] it's on you.

We don't blame a log for burning in a fire. It's completely appropriate and normal to be really anxious. Really depressed, really afraid, really distracted. It's okay. It's called human. It's like really, really? Okay. There's not a pathology associated with that, but we have learned to accept this paradigm that when there's something.

Uncomfortable, unpleasant, unsettling, imbalancing inside of us. That must mean there's something wrong with us and it needs to be fixed with the pill. Prozac was that initial pill, and there was even very real talk about putting it into the water system in LA and and New York at the time. , it was thought to be the panacea.

It thought to really calm everything down and give you a sense of peace , as if chemical imbalance was the explanation, and hence was born this whole notion of biological psychiatry. So by the time I came out and was really doing active psychiatry work that happened in 87 while I was a third year medical [00:13:00] student.

By the time I came out in like 1993 after my child adolescent fellowship, the thing was already buzz buzzing along. There was a typecast here where psychiatry was now being moved even further into diagnosing people with pathologies that may or may not even exist and medicating people as a function of that, which often made things worse.

So this was a very serious quagmire for me on how was I now gonna step in knowing what I know about what really works and what doesn't, and be able to juggle the two balls. On the one hand, communication and connection is a source of all healing. On the other hand, what's being asked for in the status quo, which is tell me what's wrong with me.

Please like, confirm for me that there is something wrong with me, and then medicate me, with the stuff that I heard can help me, which actually. Little do they know makes them worse. Yeah. And I was like, that's what I was left with. So every prescription I wrote for my entire career had this little heartache or soul sacrifice associated with it, and I've written over a [00:14:00] hundred thousand of those.

So I'm not proud of that. It's just the way that it's true. These prescriptions are never the top line and never the right answer. , I'm meaning never the immediate right answer. Now, there's a place here for an important disclaimer that I like to give on podcasts. It's very important and you have a good listener base here and there's some people, no doubt, in your listener base, who are very happy with their diagnosis, very happy with their treatment plan, very happy with their therapist, very happy with their medication regimen, and they wouldn't trade it for the world.

Now my answer to them is, if you have gotten any place in your life for which you would not trade where you are at for the world, then you should stay there. Like I, I'm not here to argue with that. Like that's an amazing outcome in this world if you have reached the end of the line where you wouldn't even trade it at all for something that could be better or different.

By all means, please stay there. 

Kellene: Good for you. Wow. That's a, that's a powerful question. [00:15:00] Which one? What? You just posed that to ask yourself that question. 

Dr. Fred: Yeah. If you've reached a space where you think that you wouldn't trade it for the world, then by all means, please stay there. What? Why? Who am I to tell you to get off of that perch?

That's an exquisite place to reach on any road, any pathway that you're taking in life. Mm-hmm. I am talking, however, to the literally tens, if not hundreds of millions of people who feel like they've been underdiagnosed, misdiagnosed, overdiagnosed, mistreated, undertreated overtreated, and are not happy with the way the system is managing whatever their complaint was, and that they notice that they're not only not getting better, but in fact they're deteriorating and getting progressively worse, which may in fact be a function of the actual treatment that's being provided, right.

Now this is like a hair raising concept and you know, I learned it especially about 15 years after I started working. In, 2006, . I did something that I thought [00:16:00] was, I didn't think it was very radical, but apparently many people did, and that's when I started to take people off of medicine.

I took my low risk clients off of medicine to see, what would happen because I had this idea that they thought they were okay, but they no way were as good as they could be. Mm-hmm. Like, they come in shaking, or they come in like sad or, you know, like frowning and tell me, yeah, I'm okay doctor, and I'm, I'm supposed to write.

Okay. You know, return to clinic , in a month, like, you know, patient okay with no side effects, adverse reaction, whatever, that's not even true. So when I took 'em off of medicine, what happened regularly, predictably, and , profoundly, was that they got better, much better, and in most cases, they lost their diagnosis altogether and that the whole thing that they thought they were coming for, that no longer was there.

So it was easy to make the connection that the medicines were actually causing the perpetuation of those symptoms, if not inducing, or, , at the very least, [00:17:00] increasing the, conditions. Initial presentation. Now, I wanted to scream this from the mountains, right? Mm-hmm. Like this was, I wanna get on the mountaintops and just tell everybody, tell parents, and tell other clinicians and tell.

Ancillary caregivers and maybe actual patients like, stop, don't do this anymore. Like, it's not working really. This is a, this is a, this is a myth. And, I did that for a little while. Then I realized that violence really wasn't the way to communicate this. And so, you know, being really violent from the top of the mountain, people had trouble hearing it all.

So I needed to water it down and become a little bit more friendly, a little bit more, you know, a little bit more courteous, a little bit more clean, a little bit less violent, less reactive, less emotionally charged. And I did that over the next few years. Learned how to do that so I could actually have this conversation.

And then over time I started, taking people off of medicine. It was just seemed like the right thing to do, 'cause people at least that would help them get better than they were. And so I started being, you know, [00:18:00] really count honorable for being able to do that. And, , so we roll on a little bit and we start seeing that, , my practice eventually, I, I eventually exhausted my practice because most of the people in my practice didn't need medicine and they had therefore had no reason to come see a psychiatrist.

Apparently, that's my only role is to write prescriptions rather than like carry on a useful conversation and connection, which would actually cause progressive healing. That's not what they pay psychiatrists for, right? They pay psychiatrists to diagnose and medicate. That's the things they pay psychiatrists for.

Kellene: I wanna ask you about that. Yeah. What's your view on how insurance companies and profit motives have reshaped how we even define mental health today? 

Dr. Fred: Well, it's, the whole thing got reshaped. It's not insurance companies more than big pharma because it turns out there's no such thing as insurance companies or big pharma.

Or if there is, can you gimme their phone number? See there, you can't really call insurance companies. You can't really call. There's nobody there. It's like an entity. It's like a [00:19:00] vague entity. And when we point to these entities that's causing the problem, we're really missing the point. It's like saying the government or something.

It's not, there's no accountability inside of something called an insurance companies or, we don't even know who to talk to. But the whole thing is unfolded in a way that, you know, especially in the world of mental health. People do not seek a clinician in order to find out if there's something wrong with them.

In fact, they come to a clinician to find out what is the label of what is wrong with me. They already are confirmed that there's something wrong with them, so. The bottom line is, as a psychiatrist, when you tell somebody that there's nothing, it might be the only subspecialty in all of medicine is that when you tell somebody there's nothing wrong with them, they actually get upset.

Mm-hmm. Like, it's like shocking there. None of my colleagues have to deal with like that. You know, if you tell somebody they're okay, they're supposed to say yay. But if you tell somebody in a psychiatric office that they're okay, they get pissed, they protest immediately. They're very angry. I wouldn't be here if I was okay.[00:20:00] 

And they wanna be medicated, they wanna be diagnosed. So the system has nothing to do with pharmacology or, or insurance companies creating the problem. It has to do with the idea more or less, at least. The only powerful entryway that I've ever been able to determine exists. It has to do with people thinking that there's something wrong with them.

It has to do with them thinking that if in fact they don't feel good, that's because there's something wrong with them. Rather than realizing that, living is hard. It is difficult to be a human. There are unbelievable amount of hurdles and obstacles and challenges, and being human and being uncomfortable about that is completely accepted and acceptable.

And in fact, if you're gonna diffuse that discomfort, the most potent medication that I've ever heard of is a human connection. When someone actually understands you, when you feel like you've been heard, when you feel like you're resonating harmonically with another human being, that's when the [00:21:00] magic of healing actually arrives.

So conditions that you thought you might have had actually disappear. They're actually dissolvable. And you know, most, a lot of people don't even believe that they actually believe, no, I got a condition, dude. And that's fine. If you have that condition and that's working for you to call yourself with a condition, then you should keep doing what you're doing if you don't want to alter things.

However, there's a lot of people who come in to relinquish the responsibility for the parts of their life that they're not happy with. And rather than getting that, I am very clumsy as a human. I'm very clumsy. I'm often misaligned. I do things sometimes that are destructive. I do things that hurt people or hurt others.

, hurt myself even at times. Like say things that aren't very kind about me to me. When I can write this off, when I can start seeing that that's part of what it means to be human, then I won't have to enter the door to get a so-called diagnosis so I can get [00:22:00] so-called treatment so I can get a so-called medicine, which induces increases, perpetuates, or causes the symptoms or marketed to treat.

I don't have to enter the system. If I can finally learn once and for all that maybe there's nothing wrong with me for being as uncomfortable as I am. Maybe what I really just need to do is share and be shared with so that I can understand and be understood what the human condition is all about. Now, there's a couple things about this.

We have, if we wanna look for a hundred reasons to be like, like exorbitantly depressed, we can do that. How long would it take us to be to find a hundred reasons to be depressed? I don't know. Four minutes if we started right now? Yeah. 

Kellene: Yeah. Okay. 

Dr. Fred: How about a hundred reasons to be really nervous? Same. Okay.

How about a hundred reasons to be terrified? Probably the same. Yeah. How about a hundred things, a hundred things that are distracting us? 

Kellene: Oh, definitely 

Dr. Fred: easy. Okay. How about awkwardness? Yeah. Yeah. You see a hundred reasons [00:23:00] for every one of us. No problem. Four minutes, four minutes later. We have a hundred reasons for those things to exist.

So thereby if they exist, it does not mean there's something wrong with you. It doesn't, and here's what I know. I've worked in every single, I, I don't know any modality that I haven't had a leader leadership position in inside of the world of psychiatry in western medicine. But I'll pick on the, , prison for now, and that is like working in the, in the prison at, Folsom State or at at at Pelican Bay where I've work.

, when I connect with these prisoners, when I connect with these inmates and actually listen and be there and be with them. Such that that resonant frequency actually is discovered. Healing takes place not only for them, but for me as well. I mean, healing is a, is a, it's a shared space that occurs where all of a sudden, wow, I'm looking and being with a human and really getting them and they're looking and being with me and really getting me there is nothing better.

It's almost like all you need is love and , [00:24:00] it's almost like that. 'cause what we really need to do is be with each other and really get and respect each other now. It's this pie in the sky and lofty. You could say that if you want. It's not true. This is actually the truth, right? You can call it pie in the sky and lofty if you want.

Yeah. But there's people with diagnoses. Yeah. There's people with diagnoses. Someone has given 'em a diagnosis, usually out of the side of their hip, and they have accepted it, and now they walk away with thinking that they have that diagnosis and they have all the preconceived notions of what comes with that diagnosis.

So, for instance, let's say I went to the doctor and said, I, you know, my skin is dry. I have, too big of a nose. I drink too much water, and I'm love peanuts and I'm nasty in a China shop. And the doctor listens to those criteria and says, you know what, you're an elephant and you're like. Cool.

That explains everything. Thank you for telling me. I'm gonna go [00:25:00] tell my family. They've probably got some half elephant, gene as well. And, I should go tell everybody that explains everything. I got my diagnosis now, and you walk out thinking that you're an elephant actually looking for a chain that you can attach yourself to so you can be in a circus.

Because you have a preconceived notion now of what it means to walk around as a big elephant. And then you come back the next week and you say, you know, I have a, a really good memory and really big ears. Oh, you got elephant type two. Like, oh, that's really great. That's so cool. That explains everything.

And now you walk away and if anyone thinks you're not an elephant, you call them wrong. The doctor gave you the diagnosis and already told you you're an elephant. They obviously don't get it or don't get it yet, and maybe they're afraid or even jealous that you're an elephant. And that's how we work with these very arbitrary diagnoses that are called psychiatric diagnoses.

That's how we work with them. Very, very similar process. [00:26:00] I invite you to get that there might be nothing wrong with you in saying that to your listeners. And, you 

Kellene: know, your brand, welcome to Humanity. It, it kind of feels like a warm hug and maybe a little slap up the side of the head for all of us sleepwalking through life.

But, but what does that phrase mean to you on a soul level? 

Dr. Fred: . I had several different choices when I picked that brand name. So the idea was, you know, there was a couple out there. Global Madness was another one that I really enjoyed. , we got pretty close with that one, to calling that the brand.

But the overarching message is that welcome to humanity can be the answer to the log who's burning in the fire, or it can be the answer to anything you find that's a miracle or exquisite or beautiful. You know, it can be the answer to almost anything that anyone says about anything inside of the idea that I'm human and so are you.

Comes the phraseology Welcome to humanity. So from a soul level, what I get is that I'm not alone. What I get is that there's 8 billion samples of me walking the face of the planet right [00:27:00] now and several billion who have lived and they therefore died before me, who were also in this same group of humanity.

And welcome to humanity can go so far to have a sea that life is very uncomfortable at the base, you know? Buddha sat underneath that Bodhi tree for a while and then, you know, eventually got up off his butt to come out and work in the community. But I can tell you this, at some point he realized he wasn't gonna get away from the fact that life is inherently miserable.

I. And you know, he had figured out so much, right? He figured out like 90% of all, 95% of most everything about what it means to be alive enough that we are still studying him. And we care a lot about most Buddhist cl Buddhist statements. But the one thing he was unable to reconcile was the idea that life is inherently miserable.

And that's our job to actually work with that. And the way that we do that is by connecting with each other. That's gonna be the best way, that's gonna be the most potent and obvious. And by the way, no side effects, no [00:28:00] copays. , no need for prior authorization. That's it. So, , human connection is really where the heart of healing is, and you don't have to have a degree.

In fact, a degree might get in your way of actually providing that kind of care. 

Kellene: So if we're, if we're all a little broken, and frankly, who isn't, how does Creative Eight help us patch up the cracks without duct tape and denial? 

Dr. Fred: Yeah, so Creative Eight really looks at the, , fact that when we are being creative, when we're actually in the act of creation, whether that's through visual arts, performing arts, art, music, dancing, singing, drama, cooking, writing, gardening, those are the eight, initial ones.

 And then there's, , two more that added on was photography and cleaning. And then there's a Trump card. Helping anybody do anything. When we look at, when we're in the act of doing any of those things, our uncomfortable feelings tend to dissolve and disappear At that point, tend to actually go away.

And when that happens, we get free from whatever it is we thought we had going on before that, before we [00:29:00] started that activity. So what I realized is that, you know, oh, so I'm depressed and if I pick up a harmonica and blow out some notes, I will not be depressed while I'm blowing those notes.

That's kind of interesting. I then have a choice of whether or not I wanna go back to depression. When I'm done with that harmonica, because I have just now been released, I can choose to go back to feeling like inherently depressed. And as we said, there's no shortage of reasons to be depressed. Yeah, no problem.

I can be like, like, I don't know, like morbidly depressed in about one second. If I want to like pick up a piece of whatever I think would make me depressed and call that my life, I can be morbidly depressed in a second and I'm not special. That way any of us can, and then I can hang onto that stuff forever if I want.

If I want to stay depressed, there's no problem in being able to do so. Now the problem that does exist [00:30:00] is that the medications and frequently the therapy actually promotes the perpetuation of those conditions. I get paid for a retention rate. Isn't that fascinating? Mm-hmm. What the hell is that You're paying me to keep patients.

Patients? Yeah. What kind of healing is that? Yeah, I should be paid to move people out of the system. And that's what I do now. That's what the UN doctor does. The UN Doctor Undiagnosis on. Medicates and indoctrinates people. And I do that by offering them the possibility that they're really good the way that they are.

They just need to clean up all the dust and become more authentic with who they really are, so they can resonate at the human frequency and thereby have a better shot of resonating with another human. Because when that occurs, that's where healing actually arises and when healing arises, there's no more potent medicine for feeling well in this crazy world than healing through communication, which a lot of times we call.

Kellene: Which of the eight [00:31:00] practices has been most powerful in your own life? Do you have any juicy client transformations that perhaps you can share anonymously, of course, that made you go, yep, this works 

Dr. Fred: well. Um, yeah, , there was a girl. , this is the eight practices out of the, creative eight, but there's also, in the Moss method, the Moss method has 20 practices and creativity is only one of 20.

But for the, and I usually use the moss method for that point, but let's talk about the creative aid. If you're asking about those eight. There was a girl I was treating who was like, suicidal. She was like, you know, 15, 17 years old. And I saw her online for a while. And, when she first came in, she just had, you know, really poor self-esteem and didn't feel like anyone could hear her.

And, , had some, , cutting of her wrists, suicidal gestures and, she was generally, pleasant, very pleasant actually, and able to relate. And we talked a little bit about what it would take for her to begin to do some of the creative acts that she's done in the past. She was a artist.

She had done some painting in the past, and, , one day, , a couple weeks or a [00:32:00] couple, maybe a couple months into our treatment, she came in and she told me that, this artistic stuff has changed her entire life. Big old smile. And I'd seen her getting better week after week. And, she took out and did the, is it called the Cup Song, you know?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She did. I know what you're talking about. She did the cup song for me right on, right online, and I just cried my eyes out. It was just insanely beautiful. 

Kellene: Hmm. That is beautiful. Yeah, that's a great story. 

Dr. Fred: Yeah. 

Kellene: Yeah. It's not called the Cup Song. I can't remember what it's called, but everybody knows it and they've seen other people on TikTok or something doing it, so that's wonderful.

So let's talk about the true voice method. What's keeping most people from finding and using their voice? Is it fear of rejection or just the fact that we've forgotten how to be human while. Tweeting our feelings in 280 characters. 

Dr. Fred: Yeah. Look, there's a lot of things that, created it, and the idea of finding your true voice is that your true voice is already [00:33:00] here.

You know, you just have to rediscover it. You don't have to go out there to find your what's important to you. You already know you. It's the same thing that was important to you back in the day when you were just a little child and you just piled on other things. So in way, in a way, the way to find your true voice is unlearn the things that you've learned that have now covering that up and now smothering that.

So like taking off the cobwebs and the rust and the dust and the dirt, and the mud off of who you really are. Now, where did we really originally learn that? I think you could go back to what I've already talked about, and that's Ms. Rosenau, my Kindergarten Garden teacher, and Ms.

Monroe, my first grade teacher. This is where we learned to stop being who we are and to be who we're not. We pretend to be somebody that we're not in order to so-called protect the person that we are. But that crack in the cement gets, never gets fixed as an elementary school student.

So instead we continue to be who we're not and so that we can fit in so that we will be in our tribe so that we won't be thrown off the island for fear of rejection, [00:34:00] like you said. . Then, you know, as society has evolved, now we've got these sort of simple, silly ways of trying to communicate with each other, mostly online, including right here staring at a blank screen of literally millions of pixelated light bulbs.

And talking into that thinking, I'm talking into a person called Kellene. It's gonna mess with my capacity to actually be able to speak. I. Now we all do a good job. You know, we're able to take the facsimile of a Zoom call and pretend that we're actually with somebody. But you, again, I'm not with you. I don't even know what city you're in, but you're not here.

I do know that I'm staring at a freaking tv. That's what's happening here. I'm talking to a tv, which by the way, funny enough, when I was going through medical school, that used to be criteria to hospitalize somebody. If I saw somebody in a living room or in a day room at a a unit talking to a tv, that was enough criteria to literally [00:35:00] hospitalize them.

And now if you can't talk to a tv, that's enough high criteria to hospitalize you. So obviously these diagnoses are deeply arbitrary. Yeah. If talking to a TV is psychosis. Really, and what the hell's going on right now? Right? So we start getting, you know, all sorts of funny changes. There's so often that the diagnosis is actually made up after the treatment is discovered.

That's also just hilarious. Yeah. You know, a pill comes out and now we looking for what diagnosis could this treat? Why is that? Because these pills are actually designed. To cause the symptoms they're marketed to treat. So when giving these pills, if you can then document what symptoms they cause, you can then choose that drug to treat those symptoms.

Kellene: Now wait a minute. Say that one more time. Yeah, that was, that was powerful. Say that one more time. 

Dr. Fred: Yeah. The pills are often [00:36:00] designed to create the symptoms that they're marketed to treat. 

Kellene: Mm-hmm.     

 Well, let me ask this question. What do you say to someone who insists, I'm just not creative or I don't have anything important to say? How do you break through that lie that we tell ourselves?  

Dr. Fred: Well, you are creative. It's a million percent chance because . You had to be creative just to live this. Second, you had to be creative just to keep things outta your way so you can stay in the way of the things that are presently on your mind. You have to be creative just to choose what to pay attention to.

You have to be creative. In order to pick your clothes, you have to be creative to decide when to eat or when to go to the bathroom or when to man, how to manage life. It takes an immense amount of creativity to get through one hour on this planet. I. So let's just face that. That's just natural creativity.

Now people say, I'm not an artist, I'm not a musician, I'm not a dancer. That's because too many people, when you were young, put a big red check mark, a big red X on the top of your paper, like, that's not good art or not good music. You've been told enough that what you're doing doesn't meet the [00:37:00] standards, and then you decided I'm not good.

Now, initially a three-year-old is never gonna be told they're not a good artist. That's never going to happen. Nobody will tell a third, a 3-year-old who's singing that they're not a good singer. But by the time that you get to be five or six and you start singing and dancing and arting inside of school, now you open yourself up to a evaluation, assessment and judgment and you will get judged at times as not, that isn't the kind of rug I wanted you to hook.

That isn't the kind of tracing I wanted you to make. That isn't the kind of. Relief map I wanted you to create or whatever it is, you know? Mm-hmm. Or stuffed animal or whatever you had, whatever you were creating. And in that is when you start ripping into yourself, assuming that you don't meet the grave.

So, the lie is very loud in that, well, in fact, anything you say in create is creative and you're already creating so much in a day. And that's what I mean by anything you say and or create. So the second half of your question is, you know, if you say something that you think you don't have anything to [00:38:00] say.

 It's not really up to you actually. Number one, just say what's on your mind, including, I don't have anything to say. It can be an answer. , and when we communicate, we have the possibility of really making a difference inside of the crowd. You know, we have the possibility of, being able to connect with somebody, not just through our words, but through our listening, which might be more powerful than words in the first place.

Kellene: Yeah. , okay, we're running out of time here. Um, it's, it's been great. But, I have a question for you. If you had a billboard that could be seen by every human being on Earth tomorrow, what would it say?

Dr. Fred: It would say, 

Attention,

there may be nothing wrong with you. 

Kellene: Hmm.

What's a moment in your life, either recently or long ago where you had to find your true voice again? 

Dr. Fred: Hmm. Every single day I have to find my true voice as a psychiatrist, that's for sure. 'cause every single day I still have a job and I still am being asked to, you know, to diagnose and medicate a handful of my patients.

And just speaking, I like being a podcast [00:39:00] guest a lot. This is a reminder to me that this is where my truth really sits. This is what's really happening. And, , this is where my truth sits. I notice that I don't stumble and bumble,. I don't stutter the, and, uh, that's because I'm speaking to my true voice now and you can really tell, what's really here now. Am I great at it? No. I also have residue. I have that same mud and that same, you know, that same, , cobwebs and rust and dirt , on who I am as well.

So I'm constantly trying to uncover it so I can get to my own thought in, authentic self. If I don't speak my voice, no one will hear me. Right? If I don't speak my true voice, no one will know me. That's the real truth. Hmm. And as Henry David Thoreau said, the massive men go through life in quiet desperation and then go to their graves with their songs still in them.

Now, this is very interesting. This is a suggestion that we can actually get through life without anyone getting to know us. I don't what the hell is that kind of life, right. Is there anything more tragic than living an entire life and having [00:40:00] nobody ever know you, 

Kellene: and yet isn't there anything more beautiful than to be saddled with someone who does truly know you and loves you?

Dr. Fred: A hundred percent. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Exactly. 

Kellene: Well, on that note, we're going to, , wrap things up, share with us, Dr. Fred, how people can find you, find out more about your, your mission. 

Dr. Fred: Yeah. Well, I have a few different places I buzz around a little bit on social media. I'm almost sad to say that I'm back on Facebook after trying to get off for a while and, 

I just really don't like Facebook, but it's a place you can find me. And, , you can also find me on LinkedIn. I like it a little bit better. Then I have some sites. The site I'm most excited about now is, my Mighty Network site, which is, welcome to humanity.mn. Do co uh, that's a very, very cool site.

, and then, my main website is welcome to humanity.net, where you can see it all spread out.

And then my compact website is the same kind of thing. , it's called Dr. Fred three [00:41:00] sixty.com. And that's a pretty cool place to find me as well. And all of those have, you know, possibility for creating a discovery call for any issue you might be having about you or a loved one, or even any questions in general, and I'd be glad to take those calls at an initial discovery call.

Wonderful. And, , see whether or not we could, do we have anything that we can work with or can I refer you to any of the, I don't know, hundreds or maybe even more people that I've been introduced to in my career? My storied incredible, beautiful career all over the United States, and in fact, all over the world.

 I've been very lucky to work in multiple different states and multiple different modalities and multiple different countries, so thank you. 

Kellene: That's wonderful. Well, may your mission continue to grow and thrive and helping people to navigate , their perceptions of, the illnesses that they feel that they may have, and maybe they can be released from those.

Yeah, 

Dr. Fred: that'd be great. Yeah. Wonderful. 

Kellene: Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. 

Dr. Fred: Thank you for having me. It's really been great. Thanks for the great, [00:42:00] great conversation.   

Kellene: Thanks for joining us today on Preparedness Pro. I hope you enjoyed yourself and learned something new. Want more preparedness? Inspiration? Join our live shows every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern on YouTube or Facebook at Preparedness Pro, where we can answer your questions Live looking for a community of like-minded people who understand that preparedness is about freedom.

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Until next time, remember, preparation brings peace, and peace brings freedom. See you [00:43:00] soon.