The Gaslit Truth Podcast

Send us Fan Mail The Gaslit Truth Podcast is hosted by Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz, exploring mental health, psychiatric medication withdrawal, therapy culture, and informed consent. In this episode, Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz discuss the billion dollar industry of sleep, including melatonin, sleep aids, and how therapy and psychology intersect with mental health c...

Send us Fan Mail The Gaslit Truth Podcast is hosted by Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz , where they examine mental health myths, psychiatric medication harm, therapy culture, informed consent and brain-based healing. In this episode, Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz sit down with author and clinician Ryan Rogers to discuss political bias within therapy and trace how graduate...

Send us Fan Mail The Gaslit Truth Podcast is hosted by Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz , where they examine mental health myths, psychiatric medication harm, and informed consent. In this episode, Dr. Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz explain blind tapering , the psychology of psychiatric medication withdrawal, and the role of therapy in tapering safely. What if knowing your dose...

Send us Fan Mail Psychiatry shouldn’t make people doubt their own pain. We open with a hard truth—gaslighting is baked into too many mental health encounters—and then chart a different route with psychiatrist Dr. Hector, who practices “medicine for the soul.” He shares how the White Butterfly ethos grew from Greek mythology and how SPECT imaging can reveal recognizable trauma patterns without redu...

Send us Fan Mail The moment you think you’re doing the right thing for your child’s mental health can be the moment everything turns. Sheila joins us to tell Tre’s story—a 25‑year‑old nurse, athlete, and gentle soul whose life unraveled in a matter of months after a cascade of psychiatric prescriptions, missed medical workups, and a system that documented his suicidality yet never built a safety p...

Send us Fan Mail What if the hardest part of coming off an antidepressant isn’t the first cut, but the last milligrams? We sit down with Dr. Mark Horowitz—clinician, researcher, and someone who’s been through withdrawal himself—to unravel why standard advice fails, how the brain adapts to medication, and what a safer exit really looks like. Mark shares his first taper attempt after 13 years on Lex...

Send us Fan Mail The story you’ve been told about depression is tidy, catchy, and comforting—and it doesn’t match the evidence. We sit down with Professor Joanna Moncrieff to unpack why the “chemical imbalance” narrative took hold, what her 2022 umbrella review actually found about serotonin, and how a drug-centered lens helps us make wiser choices about antidepressants. Instead of assuming pills...

Send us Fan Mail Electricity doesn’t care about intent—and when it meets the human brain, biology, physics, and ethics collide. We sit down with Sarah Price Hancock, a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor and former professor who became an advocate after sustaining injuries from electroconvulsive shock treatment. Her story pulls back the curtain on how misdiagnosis, catatonia, and “mainte...

Send us Fan Mail Start with a simple premise: what if the “problem” wasn’t you, but a system that muted your body’s signals and called it care? We sit down with Rachel Reynolds—garden coach, sensitive soul, and antidepressant survivor—to trace a decade-long arc from teen prescriptions to tricyclics, stacked medications, and a side effect no one wanted to own: urinary retention so severe basic rout...

Send us Fan Mail Most headlines shrug and say, “we may never know why.” We refuse that answer. With clinical psychologist Dr. Toby Watson, we examine the uncomfortable pattern linking widely prescribed psychiatric medications to spikes in suicidality, aggression, and even homicidal ideation—especially when starting, stopping, or changing doses. The data trail is stark: a small cluster of antidepre...

Send us Fan Mail Comfort can feel caring—and still cost you your future. We sit down with Daniel West, a rule-breaking physical therapist who argues that “slow and safe” rehab keeps people stuck, while blunt truth and early, focused movement produce real functional gains. Daniel brings hard-won perspective from his own car accident and years of hospital work, including a devastating story about a...

Send us Fan Mail The spark didn’t just fade—it was blunted. We bring on Cliff Yates, a 35-year veteran of the LA County Sheriff’s Department and stand-up comic, to unpack how SSRIs can quietly reorganize a relationship’s core: intimacy, memory, judgment, and even the stories we tell about each other. Cliff walks us through the gut-punch details—a cruise retold as isolation, affection replaced by a...

Send us Fan Mail What if the root of mental illness isn't just in your brain, but in how your entire body processes energy? Dr. Ruth Dottin, a board-certified psychiatrist, takes us on a journey that challenges everything we've been told about psychiatric care. After years of practicing traditional psychiatry, Dr. Dottin confronted an uncomfortable truth: many of her patients weren'...

Send us Fan Mail "Does that mean I'm broken?" This question haunted Michelle Reittinger after her bipolar disorder diagnosis in 1998. Like countless others, she believed the psychiatric narrative that her condition was incurable, neurodegenerative, and would require lifelong medication management. What followed was a harrowing decade-plus journey through the mental health system tha...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the medication meant to help you becomes the very thing that steals your life? Katinka Blackford Newman's journey from successful documentary filmmaker to psychiatric patient began with something deceptively simple: stress-induced insomnia after learning she would lose her family home during a divorce. When one doctor's visit turned into a prescription...

Send us Fan Mail Psychiatry's dark patterns know no borders. In this eye-opening conversation, Safa Asgari reveals his three-year journey through psychiatric treatment in Iran that mirrors the experiences of countless patients worldwide. What begins as a straightforward OCD diagnosis quickly spirals into a nightmare of polypharmacy and cascading misdiagnoses. After experiencing severe side ef...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when psychiatric systems designed to "help" actually hurt the most vulnerable among us? Minister Fred Shaw Jr., a powerhouse advocate with decades of experience fighting for children's rights, pulls back the curtain on psychiatry's troubling relationship with minority communities. Shaw's journey began when his own son was diagnosed with dyslex...

Send us Fan Mail Mental health stigma becomes a weaponized battleground in divorce and custody proceedings—a reality that impacts countless families navigating the family court system. In this eye-opening conversation with family law attorney McKenna Zimmerman, we peel back the layers of how mental health diagnoses, treatment decisions, and even therapy records can dramatically alter the trajector...

Send us Fan Mail Freedom of speech lies at the heart of democracy, but what happens when speaking your truth is met with violence and death? The tragic loss of Charlie Kirk has revealed a disturbing trend among mental health professionals who have abandoned their ethical obligation to neutrality, celebrating the death of a human being simply because they disagreed with his political views. Drawing...

Send us Fan Mail "They told me Ativan would be a part of my life for the rest of my life. Well, they were right—but not in the way they thought it would." Meet Luanne Wall—registered nurse with 41 years of critical care experience, wife, mother, grandmother, and survivor of benzodiazepine dependency. When pandemic stress, family illness, and mounting anxiety led her to seek help from her...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever wondered why schools seem so quick to suggest ADHD medication for children who don't sit still? The truth behind this practice is more disturbing than most parents realize. Sheila Matthews never expected a single school meeting about her seven-year-old son would launch her into a two-decade fight against the psychiatric labeling and drugging of children. After w...

Send us Fan Mail When you've been told your brain chemistry is permanently broken, the idea of coming off psychiatric medication can feel terrifying—or even impossible. But what if everything you've been told about these drugs is based on an outdated model? Psychologist Anders Sorensen joins us to shatter the myths surrounding psychiatric medication and share evidence-based approaches to...

Send us Fan Mail The moment Willy Millard walked in on his parents meeting with school officials asking "What did we do wrong?" after he came out at age 12, he knew the journey ahead wouldn't match the promised narrative. That painful memory still resonates years later as he navigates the unexpected complexities of identity both within and beyond the LGBTQ+ community. In this raw, u...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the medication prescribed to help you ends up stealing fundamental aspects of your humanity? We sit down with Cael, a courageous 22-year-old who sought help for college anxiety at 19 and ended up trapped in a web of psychiatric medications that permanently altered his ability to feel emotions and experience physical pleasure. His story exposes the devastating rea...

Send us Fan Mail How can a seemingly harmless prescription for a sleep aid turn fatal? When Kim Witczak's husband Woody died by suicide after just five weeks on Zoloft—a medication prescribed not for depression, but for trouble sleeping—she was thrust into an unexpected role as a pharmaceutical safety advocate. Her journey from successful advertising executive to FDA committee member reveals...