The Moth Radio Hour: Fear Factor

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From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Sarah Austin-Janess.

We're exploring fear in this show.

Stories of stepping into the unknown, stage fright, irrational fears, and staring down the demon.

We start in childhood with something that went bump in the night.

Zaina Tasema told our first story at an Open Mic Moth Story Slam in Washington, D.C., where we partner with public radio station WAMU.

The theme of the night was creepy.

Here's Zaina Tasema live at the moth.

Okay.

So, Derube

became a part of my life really from the moment I was born.

Exactly what or who Derbe was, I wouldn't really know until my adulthood,

but

its presence was felt on a daily basis from until I was probably in my adolescence.

So I would describe Darbe as a,

let's say, an invisible babysitter, kind of an enforcer of the rules, even though I could never really see it and didn't know what it was.

Darbe was what my mother would call upon if me or any of my siblings were breaking the rules or if I was in a fight with my brother or if we were taking too long to do something or if I needed to clean my room.

She would just say, Do you want me to call Darbe?

And she would be met with immediate obedience.

And really the power that Darbe had over me and my siblings was derived purely from fear.

Fear of what is Darbe?

What happens when it gets here?

We have no idea.

And we were so scared of Darbe and the idea of Derbe that none of us even talked about Derbe.

Just hearing Derbe's name kind of made the hairs on the back of our neck stand up and would send a chill down our spines.

And this was our life

for years until over time our fear of Derbe gradually declined and we kind of grew a little older and we got to the point where we were able to talk about Derbe.

And we discovered that Derbe was something completely different for each of us.

So I'll start with my brother, the youngest of the three.

He always had an irrational fear of insects.

So for him, Derbe was a giant spider that hid in the shadows.

My sister, the oldest of the three, was a little more rational.

And for her, Derbe was just a man who would come and punish us if we did something wrong.

And for me,

definitively the most

imaginative of the three, Derbe

was something much more terrifying and sinister.

Darve for me was a vampire rabbit that would sneak up behind children and come and bite their necks.

So

clearly I was suffering more than they were all these years.

And I'm sure if my mother actually knew the silent torment that we were going through every time she'd say Darube's name, she wouldn't have used it anymore as a parenting tactic, but she did.

And it took many years.

And eventually, after we realized this, our fear declined even more because there was that hope that one of us has to be wrong, at least one of us.

So

maybe it's not a vampire rabbit.

And when we were adults, we were kind of laughing about this amongst ourselves.

And so we decided to finally ask our mom, How come we haven't done this yet?

So we asked my mom, what is Darube?

And she goes, Oh, Darube.

And she tells us this story: how when my sister was born, she was trying to change her diaper one day, and my sister was not being cooperative at all.

So my uncle happened to be there, and he walks past, and he says to my sister, If you don't stand still, I'm gonna call Darube.

And my sister went silent, and my mom was able to clean her diaper.

And she was like, I've never been able to do that so effortlessly before.

What is Derebe?

And he says, Oh, Derebe?

He's some guy we used to know back in Ethiopia.

He was just kind of weird.

So,

all these years,

I

came close to wetting my pants at the fear of Darube showing up in my room finally.

This whole time I was just scared of some dude that used to be in Ethiopia.

So I guess sometimes what you're scared of isn't what you think you're scared of, and sometimes what you're scared of really isn't anything at all.

Thank you.

Zaina Tasemma lived in the DC area for 20 years, but she's now in Atlanta, Georgia, facing her biggest fear of all, grad school.

She's happy to say she and her siblings have all grown into functional adults even after this episode with Dedebay.

Zaina told me that whenever she's babysitting a child who's acting up, she'll say, if you don't behave, I'm going to call Dedebay, just to see if it works.

But it never does.

The kid always asks who Dedebay is, and then she tells them, which defeats the whole purpose.

When face to face with a choice, we can be scared of risk and stepping into the unknown.

Diane Castile, our next storyteller, explores this.

She told us at a story slam in Chicago where we partner with public radio station WBEZ.

And a note, there's a quick mention of sex in the story.

Here's Diane.

It was a Friday night, pizza night in our house, and I was making a salad when my husband came home from work.

I looked at him and I was seized by a longing so sudden and so intense, it literally made me dizzy.

Right then, practically right there, we had sex,

which is par for the course when you're young and dating, but we had been married nearly 20 years.

Afterwards, when he could catch his breath,

he said,

where did that come from?

I'd been wondering the same thing myself.

Now I was at the age where you sometimes miss periods.

It's called pyramidopause for your young'uns.

So the next month when I didn't get my period, I thought nothing of it.

When I started feeling a little queasy in the morning, I dismissed that too.

I was under a lot of pressure.

But the day I put a t-shirt on without a bra and my nipples hurt, I said, oh shit.

I had just celebrated my 46th birthday.

This is crazy, I thought.

I cannot be pregnant.

I have my children.

They're 10 and 13, and I am done.

Sure, a few years ago, I really wanted a third, but I talked myself out of it.

Too old, too broke, too overwhelmed.

And I remembered some reading I had done that said the odds are infinitesimally small of getting pregnant at 40.

So six years down the road I figure it's about as likely as an Immaculate Conception.

This is what I told myself as I drove to Target for a pregnancy test.

You know, I felt so stupid even getting the thing.

I put it in the cart and then started like throwing in in all the this other stuff, you know, tube socks, flashlights, messimo jeans, you know, anything to give the impression that I was just a normal suburban housewife shopping for her family instead of a 46-year-old woman who may have gotten herself in trouble.

So I get home and I cannot take the test.

I am too scared.

I'm thinking, I cannot be pregnant.

I'm 46 now and by the time it's born, I'll be almost 47.

So I hid it in the bottom of my sock drawer.

Sometimes that helps.

Well it lay there all day long, all night long, beating like the telltale heart, you know, like that freaky raven squawking.

So finally the next morning I could not take it.

The minute my husband left for work, I jumped out of bed, ran to the bathroom and peeed on the stick.

And as I'm putting it on the counter, you know, to wait for the what, five minutes it's it's supposed to take, I see out of the corner of my eye the red line.

And I don't mean just red, I mean stoplight red, like siren red, like re, re, red, pregnant, pregnant, nevermore.

I call my husband at work.

Now he's a high school teacher, so this means taking him out of a classroom of teenagers to receive the news.

And I'll never forget his reaction.

One word: really?

Really?

Happy, hopeful.

His spontaneous, honest reaction was one of joy.

I slapped that shit right out of him.

I said, don't sound so happy.

I can have a baby on crack.

They're like 15.

Oh, he says,

sorry about that.

My mind started turning on me.

I really went to some very dark places.

I actually,

for a while, consoled myself by thinking, maybe I will lose this baby.

This is the hard part of the story to tell.

And for those of you out there who've gone through that, I beg your forgiveness.

But it just shows you how powerful fear can be.

Anyway, eventually I made an appointment with my midwife, and the first thing she says is, Diane, how did this happen?

And I'm like, are you kidding me?

You don't know?

This is why people don't go to midwives.

She told me, you know,

I was healthy, it'd be fine.

But she did recommend a test for birth defects that you can take as early as 10 weeks.

And when I'm filling out the form to take this test, there's a section for your age.

The last category is 40 to 45.

There is no 46.

Hey, I said, this form discriminates against women in their 50s.

Anyway, she called me a few days days later with results.

The baby's perfect, she said, a little girl.

And like that, that's what this pregnancy, this problem became.

A little girl.

My daughter, Catherine Grace.

I wanted an unusual name.

Catherine Grace turned 10 a few months ago, and now

All I want to do is turn back time.

The pregnancy was a breeze.

She was the easiest baby.

And I had more fun with her than I think I've had with anybody my entire life.

And those fears?

Mostly just noise.

Be careful of that noise.

It seems to get the loudest right when we're on the threshold of what, it turns out, we really want.

Thank you.

That was Diane Castile.

Diane is a writer and three-time moth story slang winner.

She's also the producer of First Person Live, a storytelling show in Chicago's northwest suburbs.

Diane told me that beyond the fear of health complications, she worried that at 47 and as a new mom, she wouldn't be able to handle the demands of a baby.

She thought she'd be mistaken for the baby's grandmother, that the physical toll would be too much on her body, and that she wouldn't have any mom friends because she was, quote, old.

But she says, none of this came to pass and it turned out to be the best time of her life.

She said her daughter Catherine is very strong-willed, very confident, and self-possessed, and they consider each other soulmates.

After our break, a story of channeling Bruce Lee on the elementary school playground, and a story about avoiding the talk with your kids at all costs when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

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This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Sarah Austin-Janesse.

Our next story in this hour, exploring dread and trepidation, was told by Tito Chavez-Wen at a Grand Slam in Portland, Oregon, where we partner with Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Tito's parents died when Tito was very young, and he lived in different homes as he was growing up.

The story takes place as Tito is trying to find his way.

Here's Tito Chavez Wen live at the Moth.

I take my first step onto the mulch.

My suit, uniform, is fresh, pressed.

And I tighten up my belt.

I've seen this battlefield a dozen times before.

I look to the high ground.

On the mound, there's the structure.

There's five guys there.

I've trained extensively for this event.

I march forward and we lock eyes and there's pure silence.

It's just me versus them.

And I choose to break the silence.

I say,

hey, come down from those monkey bars.

So just for a little bit of context, I'm eight years old.

I've traveled all around the southern states, particularly rural places.

I'm one of those people from a situation where I'm really a branch grafted onto a different family tree.

There's always a different family.

There's always a different town.

There's always a different school.

But the thing that always stays the same

is recess time becomes my war zone.

I take a step onto

recess every single time, and I go to the monkey bars because that's my favorite.

And I'm immediately punched, pushed, yelled at, made fun of, secluded into a different part of the yard.

But this time it's going to be different.

I'm living in a different place, not in the south, in Maryland, in a place called Tawnytown.

They really should just change the A to an I, tiny town.

But

I'm there, it's summertime.

It's a couple weeks out from school, and I've been staying up late.

And I see on the TV something I've never seen before.

It's really late.

There's some weird stuff that goes on, and I love it.

There's a guy on the screen who looks like me.

He's smart, confident, sexy, even a little bit dangerous.

And it's in the best movie of all time.

It has danger, it has an awesome villain, it has fights.

You've probably heard of it.

Enter the Dragon, starring Bruce Lee.

So I watched this thing 20 times in a row.

I love this film.

And there's a scene in particular that

it's my favorite thing ever, still to this day.

Bruce Lee's on a boat and he's being bullied, taunted, and he says, hey, what's your martial arts style?

Bruce Lee turns to him and says, my style.

It's the art of fighting without fighting.

The guy looks confused.

and challenges him to a fight anyways.

Bruce Lee says, yeah, let's hop on this smaller boat and go to the island.

The guy guy says, sure.

Goes onto the boat.

Before he realizes, there's not an engine, there's no paddles, Bruce Lee pulls the rope and drifts him off to sea.

Wins the fight without even throwing a punch.

Damn, that's smooth.

Now,

I've seen this so many times.

I'm just starting to ask the guy taking care of me, Chuck, to do martial arts classes.

That's all I want to do.

So every 15 minutes for the next week, I just ask, hey, I would be really good at this.

I should learn how to fight.

You know, there's great discipline in martial arts.

That's definitely what I need.

And he eventually relents.

I go into my first class.

I get the cool uniform with the cool belt.

And I do the 45-minute class.

I come out of it.

I've inherited 2,000 years of combat knowledge.

I'm the baddest kid in the world.

No one can stop me.

I know this.

School starts.

I sneak my uniform in my backpack.

Things go according to plan.

Class happens, the bell rings, it's recess time.

I go to the teacher, this is my first illegal thing ever, I go to the teacher's desk and I grab a sharpie and I go into the bathroom, I put on my uniform, I get my white belt out, tie it around my waist and start painting it with a sharpie.

It's cool, it's fine.

No one will know.

Now, I go into recess

and all the teachers know how cool I am because they're all smirking and kind of chuckling chuckling because they know, like, wow, I've learned some stuff.

All the other kids in the playground are wide-eyed.

They know I'm a bad, bad kid.

So this brings me back to those

five guys looking at me.

And I say, hey, do you want to see a front kick?

And their eyes just bug out, their face contorts.

I've seen this.

I know this intimately.

It's a face I typically have whenever I go into recess.

It's terror.

It's being scared.

And I think back to Bruce Lee saying,

my style, it's the art of fighting without fighting.

And I look at them and I say, hey,

do you want to see how to do a front kick?

I can show you.

It's really cool.

And they're quiet.

They're whispering to one another.

And then they start all running right at me.

And I close my eyes.

And I think this is where I get my black eye again.

Now, I open up my eyes.

And they were to the left and the right of me and they're looking at me and they're like, hey, yeah, can you show me that front kick?

And I like smirk a little bit.

I'm like, oh yeah, I can show you this.

And this is one of those moments where I know things can change again.

I say, yeah, let's do that front kick.

But you have to promise, we have to go to those monkey bars afterwards.

And with that, I do my first front kick with a new group of friends.

I take one step with a new group of friends.

And I finally get to swing on some monkey bars with some friends.

That was Tito Chavez-Wen.

Tito describes himself as an Asian Latino and a global tumbleweed.

The events in this story happened over 20 years ago, and these days, Tito still loves Bruce Lee films, but he now avoids all kinds of fights, even verbal ones.

He's a peaceful soul.

In fact, when I tried to let him know his story was going to air on this radio hour, he was at a silent meditation retreat.

Do you have a story about being face to face with something that scared you or avoiding what you fear at all costs or really any personal story that matters to you?

We'd love to hear it.

You can record your pitch right on our site or call 877-M-O-T-H.

That's 877-799-6684.

The best pitches are developed for moth shows all around the world.

Next in this hour of things we're afraid of is Patty Arrow.

Patty told the story in Seattle, Washington, where we partner with public radio station KUOW.

Here's Patty live at the moth.

So, my dog and I have a ritual.

Well,

it's kind of a ritual.

I have a ritual.

I go to the pet store about once a month and I buy the biggest bag I can carry of organic lamb and rice,

senior formula dog food with glucosamine and chondroitin.

And I bring this thing home and I say to her,

You have to stay alive until this is all gone.

And I'm serious about this

this dog was 15 years old in April and I need her to live a long time

I need her to live because

I do not want to have the talk with my children you know the talk

My daughter is six my son is four and I have been thinking for six years about this talk

you see I too am an atheist.

So I am bereft of that beautiful narrative that we're all familiar with of what happens after you die.

So I don't know what to say at all.

Which is why when one night we were putting the kids to bed, we heard this sound in the living room like.

We raced out there and said, chicken boat, chicken boat, chicken boat.

We left the dinner on the table.

So I raced the dog to the animal emergency hospital in the middle of the night where they were able to sedate her and get the chicken bone out with forceps.

And it only cost $300.

I got off lucky.

You see, the second time Sophie got a chicken bone, they had to call in the scope driver.

who had to come in, wake up from his bed, and come to the veterinary hospital and drive drive a little mechanical hand down her esophagus and retrieve the chicken bone.

So that night I said to her, you better live until this credit card is paid for.

When the cat died, I did not tell my children for three weeks.

It happened the night before Valentine's Day.

What are you going to do?

Like, here's your heart-shaped pancake, by the way.

Charlie's dead.

And then once you started faking the cat being alive, there's really

hard to get out of it.

You know, it was easy.

Charlie is grandma's cat.

Grandma and Charlie live downstairs, and he really didn't like the children anyway, so they were used to going for long periods of time without seeing him.

And then one day, you know, we're at breakfast, and the nanny says, Oh, by the way, and I said,

She's like, You haven't told him yet.

I haven't told him yet.

So that night I vowed I'm going to tell the children about the cat.

And I psyched myself up and I told all my friends at work, This is it.

We're telling them about the cat.

So that night, they came home from school, and I said, Scarlett, honey, I have sad news.

Honey,

Charlie died in the night.

And she said, Mommy.

And I said, I know, honey.

And she said, can we get a kitten?

And her brother said, I want a black kitten.

And Scarlett said, I want a white kitten.

Let's get two.

And the conversation then, the sad news was we're not getting a black kitten or a white kitten.

Disaster averted.

But it wasn't long.

Before I was faced with this question again.

Last month, we traveled to Oregon to attend the funeral of my beloved uncle.

And at the family dinner, where everyone was gathered, my cousin, whose father had just died, said to Scarlett, it's okay, honey.

Uncle David's up in heaven.

Heaven is second life.

And he's up there with his dad and his mom and everyone else is already dead.

And we're all going to see him up there.

And I froze like a deer in the headlights.

Thank goodness.

My son, meanwhile, had gone out into the driveway and had gotten in somebody else's car and was honking the horn I just ran.

Oops, gonna get the boy!

For the next few weeks, my daughter was telling me about the second life up in heaven, and I was like, I

um

I don't know what to say.

I've been trying all this time to construct a narrative, something that's beautiful and magical and compelling, like that narrative.

So far, all I have is

we are made of stardust.

Any suggestions would be really welcome here to finish that up.

So I continue to work on my narrative.

And in the meantime,

I keep buying that dog food

because she's going to live a little bit longer.

Thank you.

Patty Arrow is a writer who lives in Seattle.

She refers to Sophie as her dear obedient dog because Sophie stayed alive until she was 16 and a half.

I'll save you the math, that's almost 116 in human years.

That's an old dog.

You can see a photo of dear obedient Sophie if you go to our website themoth.org.

Patty said when she told this story, her biggest fear was coming out as an atheist.

She said it was a big moment to get up on stage and confess that in front of the moth audience.

She told her kids that she actually doesn't know what happens when we die, and that some folks believe in heaven and reincarnation, but she likes to think that when we die, all of our atoms will mix with other atoms in the world and be used to create something or someone new.

She said there are things in life we just can't protect our kids from.

Fear of death is a big one.

After our break, two final stories.

A split decision is made made when a driver is pulled over by police and a psychiatrist reveals a long-held secret that may threaten his career when the moth radio hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.

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You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Sarah Austin-Janesse.

Chelsea Short told this next story at a Moth Slam in Washington, D.C., where we partner with public radio station WAMU.

Here's Chelsea Short live at the Moth.

Hi, everybody.

I often joke that my real father is the Dos Ekis spokesman and the most interesting man in the world.

I know.

You could tell from the bun, the man bun that I'm wearing.

And it's not because my father was not in my life.

He was, of course.

It's just that my father never really accepted me as a young, queer kid, like a young, masculine kid.

So like whenever I would ask like, dad, hey,

can I get one of those pocket knives you got, my brothers?

My dad would be like, no, right?

Or, hey, dad, that flag football looks really fun.

Can I try it?

I see my brothers are doing it and no, right?

So I thought, oh, the Jose Eckies guy, he can teach me everything I need to know about being masculine, right?

Just

get the hair, get the clothes, just be the best dancer, like try to learn languages, know like a few phrases in each.

Just be as interesting as you can, and then you'll have it.

You'll be the perfect stereotype of masculinity.

You'll be charming.

You'll always have something smart and fun and to say.

Perfect.

But that's not it, right?

My dad did a great job of raising me, right?

He gave me so much.

He definitely sat me down and gave me all the talks I needed with my mom about, yes, being a black woman, you have to be twice as good to get half as much.

When I started my journey as a young adult, I kind of thought, all right, I got it.

I'll do it all.

If you've seen me before, you might know that I'm a stand-up comedian.

Well, one night I was coming back from a stand-up show in Arlington and I was driving home on Rock Creek Parkway to my apartment in the city and

I was driving along and if you know Rock Creek it's it's dark there aren't that many streetlights it's like one it's one lane in some spots and I was driving along and whoop whoop police lights show up in the in the back of in the in my rear room mirror and I got immediately really nervous because this was actually the week after Philando Castile was murdered and the week after Alton Sterling was murdered And it hit me all at once that this was the first time I was being pulled over appearing as masculine as I had been.

And just because I had it, I kind of got that feeling that this guy had been following me for

a while.

Because if he was following me for the reason I thought he was, I had done that several miles ago.

Okay.

So why is he pulling me over now?

Something's wrong.

Something's wrong.

And the place where he pulled me over made me nervous too, because,

yes, everybody was nervous, especially with interactions with cops, black people interactions with cops at the time.

And the place where he pulled me over in Rock Creek Park,

there was no space for cars to safely pass him.

There was no overhead light.

And I know that when a police officer is feeling uncomfortable, the likeliness of me getting injured goes up.

So I was super nervous.

And I realized my dad did not prepare me for this.

And how could he have known that I would be in this situation when he thought that I was always going to be his little girl?

So, I did everything I overheard my father tell my brothers to do.

All right, get your wallet out, put it on your thigh, put your hands on the wheels, don't move, turn off the music, turn off the car.

He came up to my window,

he was like, Hey, what you doing?

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he asked me for my ID, my registration.

And this is something that sickens me to this day.

He reads my license,

and he clearly wasn't paying very much attention to it because he says, Okay, Mr.

Short, I'll be right back.

And I pitched my voice up and I said, Oh no, it's Miss.

It's Miss Short.

Dressed completely like this.

I mean, he should have been confused.

But the thing that makes me sick about it is that my instinct was to hide, to hide my gender for survival.

And even now,

looking back at that time, it strikes me how tough it is to be a black person, to be a queer black person in this world that's always changing, that's changed so much since I came out, since I was a kid, to how we respond to queer people, to being trans.

There's so much about survival here that's instinct and luck.

And that I tried to hide my gender, hide it in black femininity, which didn't save Sandra Bland.

And

why?

Why did I come up with that solution?

It's just, I guess it came from fear.

The next day, I posted on Facebook about what had happened to me, and I had the most amazing reaction.

Everybody that said something loving and compassionate, they were all black men who had been through a similar experience and were welcoming me into this

twisted brotherhood.

And

it was like masculinity come full circle.

Thank you.

Chelsea Short is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actor based in Washington, D.C.

I asked Chelsea if they still reflect on this night and the instinct to identify as female.

Here's what Chelsea said.

I think about this experience quite a lot.

I don't like that I so quickly gave up on all the hard work I had done on myself and with my therapist to identify as non-binary, but an illogical survival instinct kicked in.

There are so many examples of the police treating black women and girls with excessive force, but

In my panic, I didn't remember any of those.

Black men's interactions with the police often get more news coverage, and black women's traumatic experiences with police are often under-acknowledged.

I thought femininity would save me, though I knew and know that the performance of femininity doesn't work for black women the way that it works for white women.

So

since that night, I've spent a lot of time thinking about pride,

specifically that it is more than just a party or you know, one weekend a year, but in action and a commitment to truth.

I know the next time

this happens to me,

I want to and I will make a different choice to take pride in myself.

That was Chelsea Short.

It's time for our last story in this hour about fear and trepidation.

Rufus May told this at a moth night we produced along with the Edinburgh Book Festival, where the theme was hearing voices.

And while this story is exactly on theme, you will also hear that there were lots of fireworks going off outside the theater that night.

But don't let the noise scare you.

Here's Rufus May live at the moth.

So I'm in a phone box in the south of France

and I'm phoning Professor Mary Boyle.

She's head of the clinical psychology doctorate at the University of East London where I've been studying for three years.

I've passed all the

course

and the placements

and she's quite an intimidating woman.

She's somebody I respect greatly.

She's written a book called Schizophrenia: A Scientific Delusion,

really challenging the idea that we can know anything scientific about people's intense confusion.

And that we need to look in a lot more creative way at these experiences.

The phone rings.

She answers.

But she doesn't suffer for fools gladly.

So I'm a little bit scared.

Hello, Mary, I say.

Hello, Rufus, she says.

Hello.

I was wondering if there was a student who had had mental health problems in the past, but when he got to the course, he'd not mentioned it when he started the course.

And I know it's a dismissal offence not to mention it on the occupational health form, but he just thought he might get discriminated against, so he kept quiet about it.

And then he wanted to be more honest.

Now he's close to qualification.

She said, Rufus, are you talking about yourself?

I said,

Oh, yes, Mary, I am.

She said, Well, it shouldn't be a problem, she said.

So, what was the mental health problem?

And I said, Well, they gave me a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Oh dear, she said.

I was just thinking, Mary, think of your book.

You know,

it's a delusion.

And

I said to her, look,

I had some problems when I was 18.

I haven't taken medication since the age of 19.

And I really want to train as a psychologist.

I don't want to have to keep this secret anymore.

She said, Rufus, you really shouldn't have lied.

I said, well, Mary, I'm not sure I would have got to where I am today if I hadn't have lied.

It was one of my more sanctimonious moments.

She said, well,

I want to support you.

We want to support you, but we're going to have to take this further.

So they spoke to the occupational health department, and the occupational health department said, well, what do you think?

Do you think he's worth standing by?

And they said, yes, we do.

And they said, well, we'll have to talk to his GP.

So they wrote to my GP, and my GP wrote a report saying that at the age of 18 I'd had a nervous breakdown related to family, related stress and it had had psychotic features.

I thought, oh, that sounds good.

That sounds a lot better than schizophrenia.

I wish they'd have told me that at the time.

What they told me at the time was that I'd have to take medication for the rest of my life, that I had this lifelong illness, and that I needed to lower my expectations of what I could achieve.

But I was a bit rebellious, so I didn't believe them.

I got through, I had a clean slate, I could now be open.

Mary and the team supported me, and I qualified and I got a job in East London.

And I wanted to

be honest, but I didn't know how to bring that part of me in.

I'd hoped in psychology I could bring it in as a form of wisdom, but there never seemed a place for it.

Personal experience just didn't seem to fit in there.

A year later, there was a conference, and they really wanted to hear stories of people coming through

what's seen as severe mental illness.

And so, I wrote and applied to give a talk, and they took a risk, they'd never heard of me.

I got to give a talk about my journey

and how I worked as a professional.

I wanted to bring the two things together: how what I'd experienced in psychiatry, heavy drugs, no talking,

a bit of doom and gloom,

and a bit of occupational therapy, how that had influenced me and what I had found helpful, and how I worked with people.

And before I gave the talk, it was really important to look like I was sane.

So I wore my best shirt, I did a few press-ups beforehand, a bit of yoga to look serene.

And

there was a woman next to me,

Sandra Escher.

She's like the fairy godmother of the Hearing Voices Movement.

The Hearing Voices Movement is like a network of self-help groups for people who hear voices.

She was next to me, and I told her it was my first ever talk, and she was really nice.

And as I was giving my talk,

there were 150 people there.

And I was talking about people who'd helped me and inspired me.

And one of the people I was talking about was my mother.

My mother had had a brain hemorrhage when I was 11.

And together with my dad and family and friends she'd done lots of exercises.

I'd seen her make a real strong comeback from her brain hemorrhage and I was talking about that, how it inspired me

and I paused and Sandra Escher said, You're doing really well

and something inside broke and I just started to cry, which was a disaster.

I wanted to appear sorted.

That's how we're trained in clinical psychology to appear like a sanity consultant, you know?

And not only was I crying,

there were sobs.

I couldn't speak.

And I looked to the audience, to my friend, for support.

And to my horror, she was crying too.

So I...

I thought, I'm going to have to leave the stage.

And I just said, offhand,

someone helped me out.

And a guy stood up at the back and started clapping.

And then everybody started clapping.

And I could breathe.

And the sobs subsided.

And I could carry on.

So I finished my speech.

And I felt like I brought these two parts of my life together, the professional and the personal, and I felt like I'd spiritually come home.

It was valued.

Finally.

And

when I got to work after the conference, and obviously I kept quiet about this, so they didn't know.

And then they did know.

And some of the professionals, they were uncomfortable.

One therapist said to me, this kind of thing is best left on the therapist's couch.

And somebody else was honest enough to say, I feel really intimidated by you.

And I'm sure when people do come out, they are a bit intimidating.

And you're sort of suddenly, you know, mad and proud.

And I got a bit of a reputation and I got some a bit of media coverage.

And people knew knew about these kind of two parts of my life often.

There was some coverage of that.

And a few years later, I was working in Yorkshire and

a junior doctor came to see me, her name was Ruth, and she just wanted to meet someone, another health professional, who'd also had mental health problems.

And how do you manage that?

We had a chat.

And then a week later, she called me up to say she'd been suspended from her medical training because she'd had a period of depression six months before.

She'd been hospitalized for

a month.

And

she was horrified.

She was so passionate about becoming a doctor.

And then a week later she phoned me up again and said, I've started hearing a voice.

And the voice is telling me to kill myself.

And I said, we better meet.

I've been working a lot with self-help groups around hearing voices.

And a few days later, I had a dream that I knew about a bomb being put in a grocery store and I didn't say anything about it and then the bomb went off and I woke up feeling the most immense amount of guilt

and I interpreted that dream.

There might be other ways to interpret that dream, but I interpreted it as that if I didn't reach out to Ruth

I was going to lose her.

There's a high suicide rate amongst junior doctors anyway and she was under tremendous pressure.

She knew that if she told her doctors she heard voices, she'd definitely lose her career.

She was too junior to get the support she needed.

So I agreed to confidentially support her to learn how to manage the experience.

And we tried lots of things.

She did many different approaches, including self-help groups and

using nature, using exercise.

One of the things we did was I talked with her voice.

And I'd only just learned this technique.

And

one of the tough things about voice hearing is no one else knows what you're going through.

But this technique, we asked somebody to sit in a different chair and be a spokesperson for the voice

now I would probably

I'm a bit more skilled in these dialogues and I would ask why you know what pain are you holding on to that makes you so angry you know is there anything we can do to help you

but I didn't know how to do that stuff then

and

But we we didn't try to get rid of him, but we tried to strengthen Ruth so she could get on with her life And she managed to make compromises with him so she could.

And she got back onto her training.

You can see voices as often carrying painful experiences, parts of people carrying terrifying experiences that have been shut away.

And

we need to help people both set boundaries with them, but also

help those parts come to some peace.

So I guess I just wanted to share those ways to speak our truths and face our demons.

Rufus May is a clinical psychologist who manages the inpatient psychology service in Bolton, Lancashire.

He's still passionate about holistic and creative approaches to mental health problems, and he uses dance, martial arts, drama, and drumming in his work.

For more information on his training workshops and free resources, visit themoth.org.

The links are on our radio page.

We were all concerned about the discrimination that Rufus faced, and I asked if these days the field of psychology is more understanding.

Rufus said the climate has changed a bit, but it's his opinion that only a few clinical psychology courses welcome applications from people who've had personal experience with mental health problems.

Rufus says says these days he doesn't hear voices, but he still volunteers with the Hearing Voices group he mentioned in the story.

He talks openly about his experiences and he's happy to say he's well received by his colleagues.

Remember, you can share these stories or others from the Moth Archive and buy tickets to moth storytelling nights in your area through our website, themoth.org.

Find a show nearby and come out to tell a story.

That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour.

We hope you'll join us next time.

And that's the story from the Moth.

Your host this hour was Sarah Austin-Janes.

Sarah also directed the stories in the show along with Make Bowls.

The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, and Jennifer Hickson.

Production support from Emily Couch.

Moth Stories Are True as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is by The Drift, other music in this hour from Stellwagon Symphonet, Blue Dot Sessions, Abdullah Ibrahim, and the Silk Road Ensemble.

You can find links to all the music we use at our website.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX,

org.

For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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