Special Messages | Tim Dreby | Madness Radio
What if you were the only one seeing coded messages, covert realities, and elaborate plots all around you? Does that make you out of touch with reality, “paranoid” and “psychotic?” Or is it real — but you are just so upset that everyone thinks the problem is you instead?
Tim Dreby, a psychotherapist and author in the San Francisco Bay Area, endured a life-threatening — and real — encounter with gangsters, police, and political conspiracy. He also survived a schizophrenia diagnosis, and today leads support groups for people facing overwhelming intuitions, coded messages, and conspiracies, helping them heal from trauma and regain control of their lives. fightingforfreedominamerica.
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I think that what is experienced in altered states, often caused by enough stress to break twenty people, has TRUE meaning on one level or another, is often symbolic, but is also connected in a very real way to the individual’s actual life experience. it is all too often dismissed as meaningless which tends to keep the person trying to get through that in a permanent state, unless he or she can find a listening ear to take it seriously and help the person move THROUGH it.
Good job on this.
Pat
Dear Patricia.
Thank you for your history of work and support for this show. I have been inspired by things you’ve had on the internet in the past that helped encourage me to start opening up with my experiences and feel very acknowledged and supported by your comments here. I agree wholeheartedly that once a person can learn to view their experiences symbolically it is a huge tool to help them endure and move forward in their lives. It can help turn trajedy into triumph and can heal a waring perspective into one of respect and tolerance.
Tim
Absolutely Tim and as you know dealing with them differently can do some pretty great things…keep sharing your experience and your hope as the world changes very often because those who suffer through it make it better for both self AND others. Good work.
Pat
Thank you so much for having Tim on, Will & Tim, thank you for being on! 🙂
It was such a wonderful and refreshing episode to listen to. I’m someone (from the east coast, too – represent :)) who has “altered states” moments when fully present and to be honest, tend to not be, to avoid them.
Hearing stories from folks like Tim, help remind me it’s OK to experience a saturated life and it also helps fuel me to be the mental health advocate I know I am.
Thanks again.
Thank you Marybeth for your support:
I too am relieved to be reminded it’s okay. Today, I needed to be reminded. So much of what we see in the system can make us forget this. It’s okay and it can be beautiful if we can just be free to just be.
Tim
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There’s a saying that many may be familiar with “keep on keeping on”. For me this interview/dialogue was one of the more ‘off beat’ ones I’ve heard so far. Off beat in the sense of fascinating, informative, occasionally on the slightly bizarre side [mainly because of my conditioning about ‘reality’, vulnerable, respectful, inclusive and ultimately oh so humnan. Thank you Tim for sharing, the contribution you offer to other lives, and for your choice to ‘keep on keeping on’. Will, I so appreciate your honest willingness to connect with others in a direct, respectful and inclusive way.
Thank you Michael, I really appreciate being appreciated for being vulnerable, true to myself, off-beat and supported by you.
Dear Will,
This comment is a little late; I’ve been very busy finishing up edits of my memoir, Fighting for Freedom in America which is due to be released by Hidden Thoughts Press as soon as the end of the month. In fact I wrote a response to your comments and accidentally erased it, so this is an effort to recapture that and address some of the ponderings that your work has left with me.
In terms of reality checking alternative realities, in my work with Special Messages one of the eight components I suggest might be universal, I call Tricksters. Tricksters are essentially ideas that come from Special Messages that could be true or could be false. Even if they diverge from mainstream thought, they may be more accurate or just accurate in a sense if they are believed in. This is essentially a magical or spiritual reality that can either work for you or against you until you learn how to make it always work for you.
If this sounds complicated, it’s not, it’s a concept that is as old as Methuselah in the bible. We all know how Babe Ruth pointed to the place where he hit the famous home run and how Muhammad Ali said, “I told you I was going to do it told you. I’m a Bad Bad Man.” Both icons said they were going to do something and then did it. Just like the little engine that could did, they told themselves they were going to do it, they believed in themselves and then their vision became reality.
The same is true of realities that become real via Special Messages; they become so believed in that they become realities in a sense. Thus in my case, the belief that I am being followed by the mafia comes from so many different sources that make my beliefs such that my reality becomes true in a very strong way. Thus, I thought my mafia family was trying to follow me and put me in the hospital and they did. I thought I was a political hostage and I became one. I thought that mafia people at work were harassing me, and they ended up harassing me.
Thus if I am trying to reality test I like to do what Will did for me in the interview: validate validate validate. Then when I come across something that may not be entirely accurate, I don’t check it, I ask if it is possible that that reality could become a Trickster.
I recall some of my wildest realities, that I could read California license plates through number and letter associations and tell what the government thought about the driver. This was linked of course to the associations of the sandwich specials at the Italian Deli I worked in and associations validated through music and folklore stories.
Then out of intense Message Crisis, ten years later, I read an article in the news paper that reveals that in Cuba this is actually a reality.
Thus, all the time I was right in a sense; yet the more focused I became on the alternative reality, the more I communicated about it (which I did not!) the less likely I was to obtain anything in this social world we call America.
By the way, since I have recovered and stabilized, the government has given me better and better license plates according to my magical association skills.
So am I right? Do I really work with real gangsters at my job?
It doesn’t matter.
But what I can say is that daily I am blessed with beautiful people who surrender their wide variety of beautiful cultures and come together in an effort to be vulnerable and voluntarily give to each other to mutually endure conditions and realities that aren’t known widely in mainstream culture. Indeed, when I lived under those conditions, I found them to be torturous. I called them concentration camps. I could see real genocide everywhere I went.
Thus, the world that my “gangster” partners live in is so inspiring, I decided to be like them in the interview. Every nook and cranny of their silenced stories need to be told so we can all see our world better for what it really is and so they can heal and we all can be better to each other.
Everyday I get to learn more about their real experiences and their real lives and their real beauty.
Ultimately that make me the greedy carpetbagging charleton. I am so thankful for all the lessons and the life that my family, my mafias, and my “gangster” heroes have given me. I do pray for peace serenity and health for all.
You speak of experiences that many people have, but cannot talk about. I never had these experiences until I was put into the psychiatric system. How Ironic, that the very thing they tried to break from me–that hadn’t yet developed, this intuition or insight–basically–I realized due to their violence and assault on my mental and emotional existence.
I sense that you can see what I’m going through, and that is also true of me, I have had premonitions since I was 17 the last time I was hospitalized, and it started then—with the medications I was forced to take. I sort of let it roll away, the pain or trauma. I had no prior substance or self-harm issues when I was seventeen, and then I began waking up.
To the reality of reality itself! Maybe bravery is a beautiful thing, even when agents of darkness threaten to tear the truth from us, just simple ordinary citizens–who see things others can’t or refuse to because society has conditioned us to be fearful and submissive to deceit and control or whatever it is, they want us to kneel to the republic, and we stand for human freedom, so what? Call me a freedom fighter, well I’m not fighting or resisting–I am able to experience freedom, now I’m under some sort of investigation related to stuff I had no real involvement In, basically I’m screwed. Basically Im at odds with everything I hate, slavery…but wait, I don’t even know what I am considered? So what?
I’m not scared. Fuck em’
So what I have experienced? Hmmmmmmmmm……I would hesitate to call this reality the matrix, more like the creatrix–more like the multiverse, more like infinite possibilities layered over layers of realities, infinite loops, infinite dimensions of existence!!!
Maya, illusion, delusions, whatever. This is what AMERICA IS FACING!! We are facing a lot of secrecy.
I take medication, I comply with this system, and yet—covert reality is a nice term for it– a sweet way of saying the world is more than it appears. And God bless you! God is on my side too. On the side of the true Americans, unafraid and unashamed to show what they believe, no we aren’t what you would call prophets or ministers or whatever…
Simply being honest. I can’t even describe it. Reality itself. They’ll look back and say, 2015 Earth—What a joke! This is where the journey ends, and for me/I wished it to begin again.
My book is called SERENITY!
Wow, I really love this comment! I have been busy getting my book published and am just embarking on a marketing process. I am struck with how difficult this is and how difficult it is to get readers. I am very interested in your book and would love to collaborate with you in a marketing project to get our work and visions out. I am currently waiting for reviewers to get back to me and awards to review my work and it is not comfortable. I apologize for not responding sooner but maybe we can work together. The web page for my book is http://www.outskirtspress/fighingforfreedominamerica
Please feel free to visit my linked in page and contact me via this. I am going to look up your book. Maybe working together we can get the word out.
(Originally an email to Will Hall)
I just listened to one of your shows, and it was so full of amazing things, one after another, it may be the best one I’ve heard! Of course, it could be overtaken when I listen to another one – I should get to your site more! Well, I may not get there often, but when I do, it’s always a feast of awesome.
Tim Dreby, what a story! So many things rang true with me. Many, many experiences I’ve dealt with too. Listening to him, what he’s gone through, how much he’s accomplished, his experiences, his morality and work ethic, he is someone I admire. Perhaps even more than that, I was impressed by his attitude of complete acceptance — wow. Acceptance, that’s something I could use more of!! (AA, as you may know, is all about acceptance. So am I!…as far as they know, heh heh heh)
I seriously did not expect to get that much inspiration, hopefulness and just basic good cheer from a single radio show. Stunning! In a good way!
[I attempted here to say something about paranoia. I actually had a story I think you’d like, but it will have to wait, because instead I got off on a rant about the DSM, e-books, a herpes-infested tapeworm, and other vile and/or exciting topics. Upon reflection, I cut it mercilessly from the document and beat it into a tranquil permanent coma.]
Back to the radio show….
You too were outstanding. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a better interview – on Madness Radio or anywhere else. You always come across as insightful, calm, knowledgeable and well-prepared (to name just a few). This time, in addition, I noticed how you can respond to the interviewee in such a way that your response both restates and clarifies – or, if needed, explains – what they just said. I seriously don’t know how you do it.
Further, sometimes when responding you also give it a little tweak, and presto, different topic! So, in the same response, you can restate, clarify and/or explain, plus you can alter the topic a little or a lot. It’s kind of subtle, perhaps, but it’s there – and it’s remarkable,
Also I loved the way you brought in, more than once, how experiencing extreme states wasn’t just a problem, it had added to his life, helped him, given him new ideas, made him laugh or otherwise enriched his life. It was great you kept going back to that – I needed to hear it, and I’m sure I’m not the only one!
Really, overall, you surpassed yourself – I think it’s the best Will Hall I’ve ever heard – i.e. you are getting better and better!
[There was more but I had to delete it. Don’t worry, it was a quick deletion and the doctor assured us there was no pain. That paragraph was ready to be deleted. In a way, I think it WANTED deletion. So let’s all–Ahhhh screw it! Whatever, am I right? Let’s go back to my place, get drunk and read the will!]
Wow, today I’m deleting as much as I’m writing. It’s too bad after my death no one can publish a huge volume of my compiled deletions. All my “fans” and my “Facebook friends” would be lining up around the block. Literary gold – gone in a click!
And darn if I didn’t just think of something I’ve been meaning to email you about. Oh well, it’ll just have wait for a nice fresh email later! :-0
Jenny
You speak of experiences that many people have, but cannot talk about. I never had these experiences until I was put into the psychiatric system. How Ironic, that the very thing they tried to break from me–that hadn’t yet developed, this intuition or insight–basically–I realized due to their violence and assault on my mental and emotional existence.
I sense that you can see what I’m going through, and that is also true of me, I have had premonitions since I was 17 the last time I was hospitalized, and it started then—with the medications I was forced to take. I sort of let it roll away, the pain or trauma. I had no prior substance or self-harm issues when I was seventeen, and then I began waking up.
To the reality of reality itself! Maybe bravery is a beautiful thing, even when agents of darkness threaten to tear the truth from us, just simple ordinary citizens–who see things others can’t or refuse to because society has conditioned us to be fearful and submissive to deceit and control or whatever it is, they want us to kneel to the republic, and we stand for human freedom, so what? Call me a freedom fighter, well I’m not fighting or resisting–I am able to experience freedom, now I’m under some sort of investigation related to stuff I had no real involvement In, basically I’m screwed. Basically Im at odds with everything I hate, slavery…but wait, I don’t even know what I am considered? So what?
I’m not scared. Fuck em’
So what I have experienced? Hmmmmmmmmm……I would hesitate to call this reality the matrix, more like the creatrix–more like the multiverse, more like infinite possibilities layered over layers of realities, infinite loops, infinite dimensions of existence!!!
Maya, illusion, delusions, whatever. This is what AMERICA IS FACING!! We are facing a lot of secrecy.
I take medication, I comply with this system, and yet—covert reality is a nice term for it– a sweet way of saying the world is more than it appears. And God bless you! God is on my side too. On the side of the true Americans, unafraid and unashamed to show what they believe, no we aren’t what you would call prophets or ministers or whatever…
Simply being honest. I can’t even describe it. Reality itself. They’ll look back and say, 2015 Earth—What a joke! This is where the journey ends, and for me/I wished it to begin again.
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This is a fascinating story. It brings to mind the case of Aaron Alexis and others who have experienced voice-to-skull electronic technology.