Book Review: Mind Over Meetings

This June, I read Mind Over Meetings: A Personal Perspective on Wellness in the Workplace, a memoir by Kody Green. Kody lives with schizophrenia, and the experiences he poured into the book are more valuable and actionable than a thousand performative mental health awareness events. In a way, his book is an even-keeled direct tirade against equity for individuals who live with a severe mental illness. This book is for those who work around him. It subtly calls out people who willfully choose to not engage in support of those with mental illnesses but recounting many stories of times conversations around the topic were not taken seriously. He lays out clear and straightforward guidance for navigating the workplace as a person with mental illness. He empowers his peers to sit at the table that most people take for granted because they don’t question their functionality. The brevity of the book adds to its practicality. There are tips, lists, nods to podcasts, peer profiles, and an outstanding index. In sum, it is all you need to fill the seat of equity for individuals with mental illness. Here is an excellent opportunity to learn.

I became a fan of Kody’s work after listening to Schiz & Giggles, the podcast he hosts with schizoaffective disorder advocate Kat Wallis.  The lived experiences of people tending to their mental health (divided by a mental illness) is their watercooler talk. Now, that conversation jumps into new applicability. I wish the candor and frankness of such conversations could float in the air of the internet.

There’s no easy way to talk about mental illness, especially when some people “don’t think it exists” (that, the symptoms like lethargy, lack of clear thinking, lack of internal grounding can be simply overcome) or look to media-driven stereotypes and narratives as expectant character profiles. Kody makes an effort to differentiate between “mental health” and “mental illness.” He writes the following: 

Mental health refers to a person’s general well-being and their ability to cope with the stress of everyday life experiences…Mental illness, on the other hand, is often a lifelong chronic disorder that requires early intervention, medication, and ongoing treatment. (ebook, 2024, p.13)

In point-counterpoint fashion, he goes on to say that “mental health ailments can be inevitable without proper self-care.” He dedicates an entire chapter to ideas around self-care. The terms “mental health” and “mental illness” are often used interchangeably, but that usage comes from (in my opinion) a lack of awareness of the difference. Different but linked, Kody writes. After stabilizing on schizophrenia medication, he started to deal with depression and anxiety—the things that weighed on his mental health. “Normal” for Kody is having a life—working, managing his illness, and fulfilling his role as a husband. “Not normal” was life prior for him, a cycle of addiction and incarceration.

Kody lives in rural America—Wisconsin, to be specific. His job history includes manufacturing, customer service, and factory work. The social setting struck me. He is someone in an environment conducive to stigmatized and taboo-type conversations. I wondered where he got  the idea to speak out and continue to choose himself, define his own measure of health, and keep pursuing healthcare treatment, education, and situational betterment. This speaks to the integrity of his character and hits a redemptive note for me. Agency and self-empowerment should be on the list to talk about during therapy—conversations around situational improvement through sheer will should happen more frequently in the therapy space. 

We exist in an ecosystem, a collection of parts such as a job, a homelife/partner, access to healthcare, and education. 

Knowing how to leverage them is so important. In Kody’s case, his ability to do just that served him well.

I don’t get the impression that this book was written with any type of pity, disdain, or  anger—no emotional ghosts, no evidence that would tamper with the attitude of the reader. I had to sit with this for a moment. I had to ask myself why I read this book. Am I reading it as a peer or as a mental health practitioner? The answer is both. The guidance on navigating work conversations around mental illness (whether it should be disclosed at all), rights, and time off for self-care needs is excellent. It’s pointed toward individuals navigating the workplace.

But it’s also incredibly beneficial for those working in human resources and building a company culture that is inclusive. Cringe-worthy “overheard at work” anecdotes are, unfortunately, not new. What’s new here is a tracklist of sorts to clock statements that are offensive to someone with a mental illness. “Mental health issues are a result of poor parenting and not disciplining kids enough.” (p. 20) – ick! It’s an ignorant, baseless statement. Awareness around language, bolstered by the examples in the book, would be an excellent training video.

I started to wonder if it’s at all possible to create an inclusive workplace without politicizing it. Struggling with mental health and mental illness means a lack of productivity (sometimes), unstable schedule (sometimes), trust and discernment issues (sometimes), and in general, a less employable employee (nerp). Having the support to address the symptoms and focus on patient-centered healthcare so that the individual can return to a semblance of reliability, trust, and dependability is the way the conversation should go. Most workplace practices are in direct conflict of that value. This is the part where I say access to education, healthcare, housing, and food are universal rights. A person can’t work when they can’t handle themselves.

I said this in a prior blog, and I reiterate it here:

The point of mental healthcare isn’t to restore a person to a level of functioning that others who are healthy embody; the point is to empower a person to cultivate the dedication to health as it is relevant for them while building a meaningful self-care practice and community around others who validate that dedication. He writes that negative ideas about  work start with the employees, not necessarily human resources. 

Human resource departments are the hubs of company culture. Kody writes that it was nice to not have to “mask” (consciously alter behavior or opinion to hide the truth) after talking to HR about his mental illness. So if self determining definitions of health is a start, then the next step is shopping for employment that fits your needs. It seems counterintuitive: we look for jobs we would like, right? Or pay well? Or are easily accessible to us? But the point Kody softly continues to emphasize is that it is the other way around—the company needs to fit us. 

In other words, understand your rights.

 

The lack of empathy required to fire someone when they’re struggling is staggering. It happens all the time. But not firing (or hiring) someone due to their mental illness is just bad business. I wish I could google stats for “workplaces that don’t even try.” Kody brings up the idea of reasonable accommodations, and mentions that the ADA (American DIsabilities Association) offers provisions for protecting employees. Having and managing a chronic illness is a disability, and not all disabilities are visible. Mental health, varying levels of functionality, and how that affects the dynamic in the workplace are important conversations to address. 

Kody says that it’s important to have these conversations before the situation slumps. 

Narrative shift happens with memoirs like this. This book is an insight into living successfully with schizophrenia. The masking will come from those people who read the book and think nothing should be done to make a workplace more of a space for inclusion. Human resource departments should look at the practical guidance—and then reflect on why do it at all? 

Because, one day, what if you are the person who is afraid to speak up for yourself?

Works mentioned

Green, K. (2024). Minds Over Meetings: A Personal Perspective on Wellness in the Workplace. Wiley.

 

The writer behind The Conversation

Hi there! Thanks for reading. I’m a writer, editor, and mental health practitioner who helps GenX individuals ignite their inner fire and find their joy. I specialize in working with exceptional experiences, spiritually transformative experiences, and worldview change. My group program Self Mastery is for GenX individuals with mood disorders, their therapists, and their caregivers who are working on self care so they keep their inner fire and joy burning in this challenging world.

I offer my words as service–the stories I share about my own psychospiritual growth, the process of self exploration & self transformation, and the way culture affects me and inspired me to go beyond mainstream mental health protocols to find my own joy. May my ideas ignite a fire inside of you.

I offer consultations, workshops, and a group program through my online business Planet Dust. It’s a global community for GenX individuals with mood disorders, their caregivers, and their mental healthcare practitioners. Learn to work with your active mind and imagination to make meaning. It’s psychological and it’s spiritual.

I also work in the advertising and publishing spheres. Information is medicine, so why not work directly with it? The gatekeepers of culture are those who allow or inhibit ideas. 

BTW: I love tattoos and coffee.

Start a conversation to book a consultation

 

Defining mental health, mental illness, and your version of health

In April, I wrote a book review for The Body Is a Doorway, a memoir by Sophie Strand. Sophie questions definitions of physical health. She channels her experience with Ehlers-Danos syndrome into a magical realism-infused perspective on reality. But she embraces the messy line between supernatural and super-real because she has found her illness as something that takes her out of a conventional understanding of health. 

But why are we always comparing ourselves to versions of health that we never necessarily had? That we long for, a nostalgia akin to childhood innocence? When have we ever been in full health? What the heck is conventional health anyways? 

 

 

I ask myself this set of questions all the time, and they have bearing for the students who come to seek mental health guidance with me. These questions set a compass for my own practice and inner growth. I’ve been challenged in seeking answers, and I have needed to revise my understanding of the mind and body, how they work upon (work with, work against) each other, and where the soul (the mediator of all experience), tells us, “this feels true for me” or “this isn’t right and now I’m struggling with my inner life).

This is the point that my worldview departs from mainstream mental health protocol (which in short summary is that the individual is responsible for their own health and that the body is a machine and disorders have just a biological basis, and that the mind is a finite thing). I work with a post-material mindset. In part I see things in systems of energy. There are only waves ofenergy in the form of experiences that our soul must move through and then let go. The result creates a perception of inner life and affects the body in many ways.

The value of thinking like this results in the meaning that we make from the experience. I believe in the things you feel or sense that can’t be quantified until you language them in your own way. 

 

And I also believe that mental health is different from mental illness. The way a person can manage their mental life is similar to the way a person can manage their physical life. Mental health is about inner life and relates to how well a person functions, performs daily duties, honors a social contract. Mental illness distinguishes the way a body responds to the physical world.  Mental health might be affected by a mental disorder, and the “disorder” is more or less an atypical neurology, which means the individual inherently experiences the world in a way that is different from most people. The body is doing something different from another body, and that is the entry point to assess health–what is health for that body? 

And then there’s the narrative. People who are “not healthy” inherit that preconceived storyline as they live their own experience. Individuals with a mood disorder like bipolar disorder arrive in a world that treats them with the veil of “otherness” in their human experiences. Bipolar disorder is a body that is prone to extreme mood swings, which include emotional highs (mania or hypomania) and lows (depression). Such fluctuations and changes to the experience of reality affects behavior, energy levels, thinking, and daily functioning. The narratives constructed around these symptoms based on definitions of health are disingenuous.

I embody my bipolar disorder diagnosis because that label connects me with a community who knows the challenges of having that type of atypical neurology–the mood swings, cognitive dysfunction, manic-pixie-girl hypersexualized motif that appears in mainstream media. It took me years to achieve the level of stability I have now. One of the most salient points in my journey toward recovery is the acknowledgement that I was actually a person within the disorder. I don’t think mental healthcare (or healthcare professionals in general) know how to make the distinction between a person and their disorder. There is a me (a you, a we) within the experience of a person with atypical neurology. Just as there is a unique self in a person who has had a traumatic brain injury or someone cannot verbalize their inner life. 

The point of mental healthcare isn’t to restore a person to a level of functioning that others who are healthy embody; the point is to empower a person to cultivate the dedication to health as it is relevant for them while building a meaningful self-care practice and community around others who validate that dedication.

The way this relates to a post material worldview is that this highlights (in my opinion) the quality of experience. How are we receiving the moment? Where are the waves of energy hitting? The body and mind aren’t just machines; they operate within the ecosystem of the soul to body and mind. And, as Marc Wittman (German philosopher and researcher on time) says: “Experience takes place in the present moment only” (2023, p. 41). 

 

 

In a poor state of mental health, there are challenges to presence. In mental disorders, the access of the present (and the perception of time) might be too open or too limited so that the individual lacks an awareness of the present because their ability to interact with it is affected by atypical neurology. Wittman’s book is an excellent exploration about the perceptual passage of time, the way time is constructed in the body, and (my favorite) the way that time alters perception and consciousness so that the continuity of the moment is interrupted. Disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia can throw the normalized perception of time into a less conventional and easy to understand experience. 

For that reason, I argue for labels (aka diagnoses) and the ability to find community within those diagnoses. I believe that the meaning-making and connections forged in community are crucial for establishing a connection to soul (the individual to the awareness inside)  within those disorders. It happened for me during my own journey (one that I recount in my Hero’s Journey). It is also a jumping off point for redefining our understanding of spiritual–material reality. Once I could detach from the stuff of my mind (and recognize it as an ecosystem, a separate thing, a [so to speak] altered state of consciousness [the mood swings were happening but I was not the mood swings]), I could start to dissect the contents of it. It’s about making the moment of the swing into an atypical experience, ordinary by examining it. The definition of health must come from the individual having the experience. A person who has a determined commitment to themselves, a self-care practice that directly supports that commitment, and a community to validate their experience is a person who will achieve a definition of health that is meaningful to them––something I have done myself.

 

 

This is the principle and foundation of Planet Dust Enterprises, my online business created to serve GenX individuals with an affective disorder, their therapists, and their caregivers. We have a distinct experience of reality, an inherited and a forced-upon-us narrative, and a lack of transparency around what it means to live in health, that is, in recovery, with a body and mind that experience reality in a way that many other bodies and minds do not.

Narrative shift happens when stories, one by one are rewritten into meaningful and empowered spaces and are offered out into the world. A person’s experience can be a domino that tips a line and lets another person discover more of their true nature and understand themselves as a collection of parts and in parts, a whole. Understanding our true nature, really knowing who we are, can make the way we live a part of the health we embody. As living beings, our relationship with the world we live in changes.

This means rewriting our versions of health every day. 

Works mentioned

Wittmann, M. (2023). Altered States of Consciousness. MIT Press.

 

The writer behind The Conversation

Hi there! Thanks for reading. I’m a writer, editor, and mental health practitioner who helps GenX individuals with mood disorders, their therapists, and their caregivers source inner joy in this dumpsterfire world.

I offer my words as service–the stories I share about my own psychospiritual growth, the process of self exploration & self transformation, and the way culture affects me and inspired me to go beyond mainstream mental health protocols to find my own joy. May my ideas ignite a fire inside of you.

I offer consultations, workshops, and a group program through my online business Planet Dust. It’s a global community for GenX individuals with mood disorders, their caregivers, and their mental healthcare practitioners. Learn to work with your active mind and imagination to make meaning. It’s psychological and it’s spiritual.

I also work in the advertising and publishing spheres. Information is medicine, so why not work directly with it? The gatekeepers of culture are those who allow or inhibit ideas. 

BTW: I love tattoos and coffee.

 

Start a conversation to book a consultation

Book Review: The Body is a Doorway

AUDIO REVIEW

The Body is a Doorway by Sophie Strand leads to the doorstep of self-empowerment. It starts with the recognition that the body is rich. Intricate, nature-based systems give us insight to the piece of the puzzle and through that, provide us a way to experience the nectar of interconnectedness that heals our existential longing, if only for a fleeting moment. There’s no need to give our individual power away to narratives of health that are fundamentally based on lack. The Earth is rich.  Our embodiment and beingness is already wealthy in riches regardless of physical status.

The originality of Sophie’s prose reads like a botanist’s journal had a love affair with a professor of postcolonial literature. What results is a perfectly sculpted body of work that takes a steady walk through a diverse ecosystem of healing potential. What struck me most is Sophie’s ability to give bitter medicine in the form of sweet milk. This memoir is autotheory, a format of feminist critique where the normative gaze is woven between information and story. It’s “power through knowledge” and Sophie successfully distances herself from masculine logic and meaning-making. (Fournier, 2021) Sophie does bring a queerness to her experience, especially in the forest. The flora and fauna and death-rebirth ecosystem need nothing but themselves to keep on going. By extension, humans need reasons and things beyond themselves. 

The Body is a Doorway gives me a lasting love affair, generous, considering it started as a one-night stand (an evening of bed rotting and reading till 3am and suddenly, the book was done).  This book was an oblique take-down of health “wellness” as a concept and reframed it and self care and disability as differently-abled values. So generous.

Sophie refers so often to mythology, that one must wonder if she has coffee with all the cast of characters or if they are her marathon partners. She talks in myth as fluently and with integrity as a professor. In referring to Penelope’s myth, Sophie weaves and unweaves a death shroud–Death is never finished. This perpetuates the pain of being, which for Sophie seems to lie in the nebulous unknowing of what will set her body into a flare: her stomach to vomit or her nerves to freeze like a deer in headlights. Never escaping, she befriends the value of never-ending. The only story that ends here is her ability to escape pain. For Sophie, and for her readers, the light isn’t at the end of the tunnel; it’s already inside for you to step through.

Dragon Cairn on Overlook Mountain (Anastasia’s photo, June 2017)

There’s no trite mention of transcendence. And I know well the healing power of the Catskills (especially Overlook Mountain, mentioned several times in the book)–the right meadow or trailhead or glimpse of golden light at sunset will put you in an altered state. A deep connection to land can activate the transpersonal self–a wide, expansive, or field-like conception of self (Fox, 2017)–and this experience is duly and beautifully conveyed here: 

I ducked under a fringe of ivy trailing down from a stone entryway that had once held a door. Someone had camped on the mountain, setting a fire in the blown-out remains of a hearth. Peppery drafts of ash and pollen streaked through the roofless ballroom. Spiderwebs laced up the windows, long and glassless. Peppermint starbursts of mountain laurel hovered like pink clouds at the top of a staircase that led into open air.(Strand, p. 70)

Can you feel it? Can you be there? Can you step through the empty door or fly through the open window? I work with clients who explore the psycho-spiritual experience. In the years of this work, we do a lot of imagining. The scene  quoted above from The Body is a Doorway, is an invitation that I might use. Step out of your day to day. Step out of normal. Step out of the self that is limited by what you can only see around you. Can you expand into the smell of peppermint starbursts or feel the draft of ash? Where does this imagining take you?

I’ve encountered those who spiritually bypass, unable to drop into the embodiment of their bodies, unable to feel the pain or reaction to any experience. They often say, “It’s the Universe’s plan” or “Just go with the flow.” Dangerous detours. And there are others I’ve encountered who frequent a psychotherapist’s office, without resolve or meaningful progress in reframing their painful inner experience. To both of these individuals I’d recommend Sophie’s book because she does neither. She is able to find stable ground and then she digs deeper, just looking. Sometimes she encounters miniscule but alive ecosystems that remind her of life, and this is what brings her back, despite the spiritual and physical discomfort. A kaleidoscope of poetic descriptions awaits those who dare to drop into Sophie’s body of work. With Sophie, you’re in for a circular experience, a term artist Zara Kand used in a review of an unrelated Surrealist art show referring to the way the artist “negotiated the gallery space… how my mind moved from examination to inquiry to insight and back again.” The surreality of Sophie’s work provides a similar landscape to narrate.

The normative narrative around health is the problem. Remember how I said I found The Body to be an oblique critique? Sophie effectively asks, “Is this a health problem?” When the body doesn’t work as it should, when it generates pain, adverse reaction to life, hemorrhaging function for an embodied and leashed-form of incarnation, of course—there’s a health problem. This is what Hygeia, the goddess of health, would be invoked for. When it’s a question of comfort, Venus is the main character. The journey must go below and beyond the workings of the mainstream narrative of white, cis embodiment. Sophie’s self care and allowing herself to be in flow with the nonhuman world–the spores, the plants, the animals, the collective unconscious–affords her the wealth of disability. There’s so much that lives between the cracks. Broken, breaking, crack, renew, recalibrate, regenerate. The circular experience of weaving a never-ending story in the fabric of ripped, patched, spun. The Body is a Doorway is an excellent manual for your own journey of being and becoming.

 

Email your local library. Have them order a copy. Once you read it, return it, put it back on the shelf like you were planting a seed. Let others discover their power through this work, too.

 

What I was referring to…

Fournier, L. (2002). Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism. MIT Press.
Fox, W. (1990). Transpersonal ecology: “Psychologizing” ecophilosophy. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 22(1), 59–96.
Kand, Z. (2024, September 10). A Circular Experience: “With the Moon Under Our Feet” at the Hansell Gallery. https://dispatchesmag.com/review-with-the-moon-under-our-feet/

Strand, S. (2025). The Body is a Doorway: A Memoir. Running Press.

 

The writer behind The Conversation

Hi there! Thanks for reading. I’m a writer, editor, and transpersonal guide who explores psychospiritual growth.

I write my own story. In that light, my writing is service–the stories I share about my own psychospiritual growth, the process of self exploration & self transformation, and the way culture affects us are my gift to the world.

I share the knowledge and processes that anyone can implement to achieve inner peace. This is a transpersonal point of view and embodied transformation through creative writing.

And, I explore the deep stuff–what we do when we recall past life experiences; how we engage the archetypal resonance of embodied experience; when to call the “weird stuff” you’re experiencing a spiritual awakening and when to call a mental healthcare practitioner.

  • If you are a mental healthcare professional who wants to integrate transpersonal psychology into your practice, go here
  • If you are a mid-life woman who wants to hold your own, let teach you about managing your light in a dark world here

BTW: I love tattoos and coffee.

***

Curious about seeing the world and the mind as multidimensional? What does that mean for science?

  • Check out Public Parapsychology. Learn more about what psi is and why psi belongs to everyone. Join other seekers and citizen scientists who are exploring parapsychological phenomena for the benefit of understanding the spiritual nature of the material world
  • Also consider joining The Parapsychological Association. Support an organization of professional scientists and independent researchers who are pushing the boundaries of our current understanding of the mind. Programming and publications include excellent resources for mental healthcare practitioners and healers who support individuals with transpersonal experiences