Love is Greater than Labels

Peer to Peer support is greater than Judgment

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I was first on TED in 2011. It was an audition. I was chosen because of the power and vulnerability of my story. Sharing my experience and using my mental health diagnostic label—bipolar. The founder of TED, Chris Anderson was there hosting, and when I got off stage, he remarked that I was “very brave.” I didn’t understand the magnitude of what I was doing. Recording my video that would go viral and turn me into the speaker I would become. I didn’t think of myself as brave, I was using my story that reach people.

Because of that video, I was able to travel as a speaker, sharing my mental health experience The only issue was the condition I was speaking about got hold of me. I had a “relapse” of psychosis and needed to be hospitalized while on tour. 

During my recovery, I knew needed more of a stable job than touring, so I looked for work. Some work I got was as a coach and a facilitator. I also created podcasts. All of my roles were in the field of mental health—I qualified because of my lived experience.

In my various jobs around the Bay Area, my favorite coworker was at a nonprofit in Oakland,  a man named Kozi, or as I came to think of him, “my Gay Black Grandad.” 

Kozi had a saunter to him, a swag, and he wore gold jewelry. He was a bit of a diva. In some meetings, he would just storm out because “someone smelled too flowery.” And when I knew him, he always wore the same shirt. It said: LOVE Is Greater Than Labels. He wore it on Tuesday, he wore it on Wednesday, and he wore it every day. And one day I said, “Hey I’ve seen that shirt… let me ask you. Love Is Greater Than Labels. But is Repetition Greater Than Fresh Shirt?” Kozi laughed, we always made each other chuckle.  “Oh I got a million of these,” he said. It turned out it was a company shirt and there was a big box of them in the office. 

I thought about that saying on his shirt. Everyone at work had labels, we just didn’t talk about them. Our nonprofit specializes in lived experience with mental health. You had to have a mental health label to get a job there. It was a place of peer-to-peer support. None of us were doctors or clinicians, we all had experience with hospitals, jail, and the streets…but you usually didn’t ask someone, “Tell me what it was like for you?” And in my relapse abroad and my recovery, I experienced all of the requisites to work there. 

I had been at the nonprofit, working at my cubical, for a couple of months and was trying to figure out what it was doing there. Kozi came around my cubical in his nice little saunter and said, “Hey Josh, have you ever been to Jail?” 

I said, “Yeah…I have.”

And with a little chuckle, with a little twinkle in his eye, he said, ”Would you like to go back?”

“No.” I was very clear. At this time I was about two years out. It was very hard on me, and I did not want to go back. They say, “Time heals all wounds”. They say, “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” At this time I wasn’t healing, laughing, or even talking about my recent time behind bars. It takes me about five years before I do a public story about a personal experience, and it takes about ten years to get good at telling that story.

Kozi was asking me this question because part of our nonprofit's mission was to help those in crisis wherever they were. We would serve homeless shelters and homeless encampments, we would organize groups for the underserved. In this instance, we were going inside a jail to do a group for the inmates. I just wasn’t ready to go back there. I was afraid I would go in, and they wouldn’t let me out. 

Kozi was the outreach guy, and I worked with him several times at festivals and music events, setting up our table and passing out flyers. Occasionally we teamed up together to facilitate a group where we would take turns facilitating. Kozi was a dynamic performer, versed in music and theater, and at one of our groups, he recited a poem from memory, something that brought the group to a standstill.

About a year later, I was still working there, and Kozi asked if I wanted to go to LA with him to facilitate a group. The Big Boss lady didn’t want me to go, but Kozi pushed and I was given a ticket. On the day of our departure, I came to work and started thinking it was the end of the world. I couldn’t remember my password to log onto my computer. There had been some changes to my meds. I was freaking out and knew my only option was to bail out. I left, drove home, and eventually had to go back to the hospital. I missed LA, but I was able to keep my job after some mental health leave.

At this company, we were encouraged to tell our stories during presentations and facilitating groups, but without using diagnostic labels. They were diagnostic terms that had been assigned by doctors and didn’t use. And my previous job at, we didn’t use the term “mental health”, we said “behavioral health,” because terms that surround the idea of mental illness are based on how you behave. 

There’s no blood test for bipolar.

There’s no scan for schizophrenia.

You tell the doctor some incriminating stories about yourself. They might not send you to jail, but they label you as someone with an illness or a desire. Based on the things you’ve done. Not your medical history.

Now, is there a real difference between criminality and mental illness? If you commit a mass murder aren’t you mentally ill? A lot of people would want you to believe that.

And there’s a whole group of people who don’t believe in mental illness at all. They think that psychiatry is to blame for a lot of the misdirection in our health system. A system that separates your head from your body. 

Some experiences are conditions of our environment, of the hand we’ve been dealt with unfortunate circumstances. On one occasion at my nonprofit job, we had a group of speakers go into a homeless camp to give food and clothing. I was ready to go, my camera in hand to document the scene. But in the end, I couldn’t go there. I didn’t want to exploit homeless people. I too had been homeless for a brief time, and I didn’t want to go to the camp.

Four years earlier, I had another job, also in mental health, coaching. And one time I visited one of my clients in the mental hospital. I had been there myself three years before. In this case, going back was a healing experience—a triumphant moment in my recovery to be on the visiting end, instead of being visited.

We can transcend these moments of being institutionalized. Mental health experience doesn’t have to be one-way. street to shame and hide your dark pasts. And yet, your story, not only can free you but also can incriminate you—the same way as on a police report. It’s up to you, to decide who you reveal your past to. You’ll know when you're ready to be on the giving side of care and support to someone else who’s going through what you have also gone through. 

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