Terri Cheney, MODERN MADNESS
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[1:34]I had the best time talking to Terry Cheney, who is the author of Modern Madness and Owners Manual.
[1:41]She's also the author of The New York Times Bestseller Manic.
[1:44]Terry's writings and commentary about bipolar disorder have been featured in The New York Times.
[1:48]The less Angela's Times, the Huffington Post NPR Psychology today and countless articles and popular blogs.
[1:55]I mean, I don't know. Somebody might be able to count them.
[1:57]She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Sex Institute for Mental Health Law,
[2:02]Policy and Ethics at USC, the honorary Board of Directors of the International Bipolar Foundation,
[2:07]and the Board of Directors of Project Return Peer Support Network.
[2:11]She also served on the Community Advisory Board of the UCLA Mood Disorders Research Program.
[2:16]She founded and facilitates a weekly mental health support group at UCLA's Neuropsychiatric
[2:21]Institute. She currently lives in Los Angeles. And also, her struggle with bipolar disorder was
[2:26]portrayed by Ann Hathaway in Amazon Prime's Modern Love series.
[2:31]Welcome, Terry. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read books to talk
[2:34]about Modern Madness, which was so, so good. So thank you.
[2:38]Oh, thank you. Thank you, Terry, for having me.
[2:41]I have to say I had seen the Modern Love episode on which this book was based or on which
[2:46]the article, well, I'm not even saying the story.
[2:48]You wrote a Modern Love article. It became a TV show and you've written a book.
[2:52]So I started by seeing the TV episode, which was great, which was fantastic.
[2:56]What are you playing me? That was incredible.
[2:59]What was that like for you?
[3:00]Every woman's dream to have, I looked so good. I never knew.
[3:05]Oh my gosh. So how involved were you with that piece of this?
[3:09]You know, they were great. The producers realized I contacted them when I found out the
[3:15]article was going to be turned into an episode and I said this is about mental health
[3:20]and mental illness and it really needs to be accurate. So they actually let me in on the process.
[3:25]I got to talk with Ann and with the director John Carney. So I think they did a really good job
[3:31]as far as portraying an expression by polar disorder is concerned.
[3:35]It was a really gripping episode from the highs to the lows and you could just see how
[3:41]embarrassed I'm us that she was and how many cancel things and anyway, so that was the TV.
[3:46]So that was great. That was wonderful.
[3:48]On to the book and just in terms of timing, did you write the Modern Love piece and then you
[3:52]wrote the book or what happened?
[3:54]I wrote the Modern Love piece back in 2008 and then a month later my first book,
[3:59]Manate, came out and became a New York Times bestseller, I think, largely writing on that
[4:06]that Modern Love piece because that reaches so many people.
[4:09]Okay. And then you came and now you're coming out with this having nothing to do
[4:13]almost with that. This is so much later.
[4:15]Right. This is my third book.
[4:16]I'm sorry. I feel like, hopefully unprepared having not
[4:21]but having read this book at least. So that's good.
[4:24]Okay.
[4:25]So it starts with you talking about Michael Jackson's feet, which is not the way most books begin.
[4:32]So the reader is immediately gripped and wondering what is going on here.
[4:36]So talk to me about your high profile sort of lawyerly life and then having to deal with mental
[4:42]illness at the same time bipolar, how you were able to fuse the two and now kind of where you are.
[4:48]Okay.
[4:48]Well, I started as an entertainment lawyer. I lived in Beverly Hills and I
[4:53]represented people like Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones and the major motion picture studios.
[4:58]So that was for about 16 years. But that entire time I was hiding a very severe case of bipolar
[5:05]disorder and I didn't tell anyone except my doctors. I didn't tell my friends, my coworkers,
[5:11]nobody because I was just terrified that somebody would find out and I'd be fired first of all
[5:17]and then ostracized and I never find work or love again.
[5:20]So somehow I did manage to keep it secret and I think it's because Hollywood is inherently
[5:27]bipolar when you think of it. I mean, it's a crazy business and it's very cyclical.
[5:33]Things are always happening. You want them, you know, faster, better, more now.
[5:39]So my manic episode certainly fit in with that. And when I was depressed, I would make up excuses
[5:46]or lies, frankly. I had all sorts of physical ailments that I pretended to have. And
[5:53]fortunately, with bipolar disorder, you can make up a lot of the work that you miss because
[5:58]you go into this really productive mode where you can just turn stuff out and your very
[6:03]charismatic and engaging and just at the top of your game. So that lasted until I finally had
[6:11]a depression. I could not hide anymore and I was hospitalized for that episode. And I started
[6:18]writing then, that out my illness. First, I just wrote about the clinical stuff that I was
[6:24]learning. But then I thought, that's anybody can write about that. I want to write about what's
[6:29]really going on inside me, inside my body, and make it visceral so that other people understand
[6:36]what it's like. And I found I started to get better with the writing. And I just kept writing and
[6:42]writing. And seven years later, I merged with the book called Manic. And to my amazement, you know,
[6:49]a month later, it's the best seller. So I kept on writing ever since then. Yeah, why stop?
[6:57]Yeah, I love it. And I miss the money from practicing law, but I don't miss the lifestyle.
[7:04]And I don't miss hiding out. That was the hardest part of my life. I think the corrosive
[7:09]power of secrets is one of the worst things. No matter what it is, you're hiding the having to
[7:15]shoulder that burden. I think with a way of people quite a bit. What I've learned is hiding a secret
[7:22]is often worse than the secret itself. I feel like a lot of books are an attempt to air those
[7:28]secrets and sort of get them off of people's shoulders. So that's just one way. It's like repentance
[7:34]of some sort. And it really does help. It's so cathartic to write about even the dark times people
[7:42]often ask me, how do you go back to those like suicide attempts and write about such horrible memories?
[7:50]And for me, writing about it lets me own it. That's another subtitle to my book is the
[7:57]An Owners Manual. Yes, I think we all need to thank you. I think we all need to own our illnesses
[8:03]and learn about them, understand them and acknowledge them in order to get better.
[8:09]And you mentioned in the book later that you developed like hypothyroidism.
[8:14]Yeah. And that in that instance, it was diagnosed and you got a pill and you went about your
[8:19]business. And like how easy was that versus mental illness, which comes with stigma and shame and
[8:26]varying medications and so much else, so much baggage versus a simple physiological issue?
[8:33]You know, I actually went around and told people I have hypothyroidism. I was like proud of having
[8:39]something I could talk about as opposed to bipolar disorder. Again, and people were sympathetic.
[8:46]I always kind of am hoping. I mean, I shouldn't say this. But I'm like always hoping that there's
[8:50]something wrong with my thyroid to explain. I know. I'm kidding. But it's true. The contrast of
[9:02]like why we don't medicate in such a black and white way for something that is just as pronounced
[9:10]and specific. And as all these other things is like, I don't know, ridiculous.
[9:16]I'm so glad you bring that up because I think if you look at mental illness,
[9:20]the brain is an organ. It's not in your mind. The mental illness is not really in your mind.
[9:24]It's in your brain. And the brain is just a three and a half pound organ. Robin Williams said that.
[9:30]It is like any other organ in the body like your liver. You wouldn't tell somebody with
[9:35]liver disease to, you know, make lemons out of lemonade or lemonade out of lemons rather.
[9:40]You wouldn't tell Stephen Hawking to just snap out of it and get up out of his chair.
[9:45]You know, it's really a physical illness. And it needs to be regarded that way.
[9:51]And then you have like the double isolation of a feeling it and then b being made to
[9:57]not to feel validated in it.
[10:00]Right, you get some double whammy, yes.
[10:02]And you write about that so beautifully,
[10:04]you just read, even just in the very beginning
[10:07]when you were describing mania.
[10:09]And then later when you described depression,
[10:10]you are saying it like this.
[10:12]I thought faster, I wrote better.
[10:14]I could argue the devil out of his soul when I was manic.
[10:16]I was glorious, bionic.
[10:18]At the top of my game and I knew it
[10:19]and used it against anyone who came too close.
[10:21]Sex was mine, the asking, money and influence too.
[10:24]And I owed it all to mania,
[10:26]including my proximity to Michael Jackson and his like,
[10:28]but no matter how lofty and impervious I appeared,
[10:31]depression could swoop in and lay me low without a word
[10:34]without warning.
[10:35]The devil demanding a rematch
[10:36]then I was back to hiding all over again.
[10:39]Wow.
[10:40]That's awesome.
[10:41]I mean, not awesome that it happened to us
[10:42]and that you wrote about that way.
[10:44]And then later, oh, well, these are so funny when you have
[10:47]all these things, the 10 sacred rules you have to abide by
[10:50]when you're bipolar, like, do you know?
[10:51]My manic, yes.
[10:53]Change into something sexier where granny panties and flats, okay.
[10:58]Party do's and don'ts.
[11:00]It's so funny to have like such a great sense of humor
[11:02]about all this.
[11:03]Oh, I'm so glad you say that.
[11:05]I think of all the compliments I ever get about my writing.
[11:08]I love when people apologize for saying,
[11:11]I'm really sorry, but I laughed throughout your book.
[11:14]That makes me feel so good because I know I touched them
[11:17]the way I wanted to because it really is so much
[11:20]of mental illness can become extreme
[11:23]and in extremity, there's absurdity.
[11:26]So you have to sometimes stand back and just say,
[11:29]this is ridiculous what I'm going through.
[11:32]And it can be funny in a very dark way,
[11:35]but it's not a very dark way.
[11:38]It's similar in a way to grief, right?
[11:41]There are things that it knocks you off your feet
[11:44]and yet there are moments where you can't help it
[11:47]find the absurdity in humor and you just have to laugh.
[11:51]And you feel a little guilty about that.
[11:53]And I don't know quite why when we feel guilty about relieving
[11:56]yourself of the doom for a few seconds,
[11:58]but sometimes I do.
[12:00]You can find ways to feel guilty about everything.
[12:03]And if you can't just call me, I'll find another way
[12:05]to feel guilty about it.
[12:07]You talked about depression saying that you always
[12:10]do your depressed when you couldn't manage
[12:13]to get into the shower, right?
[12:14]That gets up.
[12:15]And then your shower is my nemesis.
[12:18]I just have the worst time.
[12:20]Well, I suffer from something called psychomotor
[12:23]retardation when I'm depressed.
[12:25]That means my body and my will are paralyzed.
[12:29]And I'm looking at a pen right now on my desk.
[12:33]It's about a foot away.
[12:34]If I wanted to pick up that pen, I would have to stare at it
[12:38]for 15 or 20 minutes just to get to my arm
[12:41]to move over to the pen and pick it up.
[12:44]I mean, it's just, I've noticed in COVID-19,
[12:47]a lot of people are complaining about lack of productivity.
[12:52]And that's what it feels like.
[12:53]You just cannot do what you need to do.
[12:56]And showering for me is the number one worst thing
[13:00]I have to do.
[13:01]I hate it.
[13:03]I hate getting wet.
[13:04]I hate everything.
[13:05]I like being clean, but I hate everything else about it.
[13:08]No, it's so funny.
[13:09]My mother and I had these two dogs who are now staying with us.
[13:11]And one of them hates to get wet.
[13:13]And you're just like, OK, the dog doesn't need to get wet.
[13:16]Like, you just want to share them.
[13:17]But if you're human being, you can't be like,
[13:19]I'm just kind of like getting wet.
[13:21]Let's, you know, it doesn't fly so easily.
[13:24]And I really do like being clean.
[13:26]That's what's so ironic about it.
[13:28]But well, they have dry shampoo.
[13:30]And now there must be other ways.
[13:31]Oh, I believe me.
[13:32]I have to talk in it.
[13:34]I know.
[13:36]And you wrote in the book, too, sadly,
[13:38]as you referenced earlier about times
[13:40]where you really wanted to die and how depression
[13:42]is just like fighting death.
[13:44]It's like the death march in a way.
[13:46]And how you were in the snow.
[13:48]And then your body actually is the one that made you snap out of it.
[13:51]I think, tell me about that moment a little bit.
[13:55]Well, I was in New Mexico in Santa Fe.
[13:57]And my father had died.
[14:00]And after that, I had attempted a very, very serious suicide
[14:04]attempt, which I just shockingly survived.
[14:07]I wrote about it in the first story of manic.
[14:10]And I'm walking out after I got out of the hospital
[14:15]in the snow at night.
[14:16]And I come to this park.
[14:17]And I just realize I can't go any further.
[14:19]I don't want to go on.
[14:22]So I thought maybe I'll just freeze to death in the snow.
[14:25]That's got to be an easy way to go.
[14:28]It probably doesn't hurt very much because you're frozen.
[14:31]So I lay down in the snow.
[14:32]And sure enough, it started to really hurt.
[14:35]And unconsciously or subconsciously,
[14:38]I just started clapping my arms up and down
[14:41]and my legs to get the circulation going.
[14:44]And I stood up and I looked around.
[14:47]and I realized I'd made angels wings in the snow.
[14:50]And that was such a beautiful moment.
[14:52]I thought, there is a reason I survived that suicide attempt.
[14:56]And it's got to be that I'm supposed to give
[14:59]witness to the pain of what other people are suffering
[15:03]with this disease.
[15:04]It's hard to remember that now.
[15:06]But it was a moment.
[15:07]It was in a epiphany.
[15:08]Well, I'm sorry that you have sort of anointed
[15:12]yourself that the story feller for this.
[15:15]But you really write about it just really
[15:17]poignantly and beautifully.
[15:18]And if it had to be anyone, I think
[15:21]it's a life-dictant, a good story to learn.
[15:24]I think there are reasons we're given.
[15:26]It's forgiven.
[15:27]And that has to be mine.
[15:29]When you're doing the actual writing,
[15:32]first of all, do you still go through the highs and lows
[15:35]in the same way or have you found some medications that
[15:39]have stabilized things completely or more?
[15:42]And then what happens when you're writing?
[15:45]Can you still write through one of the hypoparilized states?
[15:48]Or tell me about that?
[15:50]Well, I'm pretty stable now, relatively,
[15:53]compared to what I used to be.
[15:54]I don't have the extreme highs that I used to or fingers
[15:59]crossed here.
[16:00]The extreme lows.
[16:02]But I do sometimes get depressed.
[16:04]And mostly in response to external triggers,
[16:08]like relationship problems, who doesn't get depressed.
[16:11]But it can trigger a chemical depression.
[16:14]But my medication is working.
[16:15]I'm really lucky.
[16:16]I work closely with a psychopharmacologist
[16:19]who manages the medications, especially.
[16:23]As for writing, I can't write when I'm depressed,
[16:26]because that involves the moving the pen thing.
[16:29]And I can't move.
[16:30]So I try to write when I'm manic.
[16:33]But I write in this really tiny, tiny, tiny,
[16:36]illegible script that you can't hardly see
[16:39]or else my fingers fly so fast
[16:41]or the keyboard is just rubbish.
[16:43]So there's a sweet spot.
[16:45]And fortunately, I've been in the sweet spot for a while
[16:48]where I can write and make sense
[16:50]and have some perspective about my illness.
[16:53]Wow.
[16:53]And so what do you do to get through the pandemic?
[16:57]What do you do now?
[16:58]Are you working on another book?
[17:00]Or how do you make sure you don't slip?
[17:03]Do you carry that fear with you all the time?
[17:05]I feel like I would be very nervous.
[17:07]That's a really good question.
[17:08]I'm always afraid of depression.
[17:11]You said earlier, it's like battling death.
[17:13]And I don't think I ever thought of it
[17:15]in those terms before.
[17:16]I may just have to steal that from you.
[17:19]So that's really powerful.
[17:21]And it is like that.
[17:22]So yes, I'm afraid, but for some weird reason,
[17:26]I'm not the only person with a mental illness
[17:28]who feels this way.
[17:29]I've had a lot of readers write in and tell me
[17:31]that I feel like I've been in training for COVID
[17:35]because I'm used to isolating.
[17:37]I'm used to binge watching Netflix.
[17:39]I'm used to eating everything in my refrigerator
[17:42]and not talking to people on the phone.
[17:44]So I have my coping skills that I developed
[17:48]during depression and I'm using them to good stand now.
[17:52]So I think I'm doing pretty well.
[17:53]That's surprising.
[17:55]The silver silver linings here.
[17:57]Definitely a silver lining.
[18:00]How do you think you learned?
[18:01]Did the writing and the style and all that just come
[18:05]naturally to you or did you get any sort of training
[18:07]or writing classes or anything like that?
[18:10]I wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl
[18:13]and my father read to me every night
[18:15]before I think I could even speak.
[18:18]I've always wanted to write.
[18:19]I've always written.
[18:20]I went to Baster College and was an English major,
[18:24]had a creative thesis there.
[18:26]And somehow I just got derailed
[18:28]with the entertainment litigation.
[18:30]That was the wrong direction for my life to go in.
[18:33]But even while I was practicing law, I was taking classes
[18:36]and I belong to a wonderful writing group
[18:39]that I've been in for about 15 or 20 years now.
[18:42]So writing has always been a huge part of my life.
[18:45]It's how I stay sane.
[18:47]The accident a litigator.
[18:49]Yes.
[18:50]That may be the title of my next book.
[18:52]Oh, great.
[18:53]Just take the transcript to this and whatever you want.
[18:56]Be my guess.
[18:57]Yeah.
[18:58]That's funny.
[18:59]What about reading?
[19:01]Like, do you like to do you love to read it?
[19:03]Were you always a reader from a young age, too?
[19:05]Oh, I'm a bookhound.
[19:07]I'm looking at your living room or wherever
[19:10]you're sitting right now and absolutely devouring
[19:13]the books behind me.
[19:15]Such a wonderful library there.
[19:17]This is my whole book.
[19:18]Oh, my god.
[19:19]Yeah.
[19:20]That's a dream.
[19:21]That is my dream.
[19:22]I have books everywhere in my house,
[19:24]but you can't see them from my Zoom feed.
[19:26]So I do read.
[19:27]Yes.
[19:28]I believe you.
[19:30]They're all under my bed too.
[19:32]Gathering moss.
[19:33]Do you gravitate toward memoir?
[19:34]Or do you have a genre you like?
[19:36]Or do you make that?
[19:37]I tend to read 19th century.
[19:39]And before, I'm very much the Jane Austen girl.
[19:43]But I love Fitzgerald too.
[19:45]And I just, I love people who love words.
[19:48]I love an author, Nabakov, anyone who can just
[19:52]make me look at a phrase and say, oh,
[19:54]that's what language is supposed to do.
[19:56]That gives me a thrill.
[19:58]I think that's all.
[20:00]just go to sex. It's great.
[20:03]Sentences versus sex. Who will win?
[20:07]Do you have any advice for, well, for twofold? One for aspiring authors, but also for anybody
[20:13]out there who might have a mental illness and maybe hasn't been as forthcoming as you have
[20:20]and still more in the hiding phase?
[20:22]Well, I think that, first of all, I think everybody who has a mental illness should at least be
[20:27]keeping some kind of journal, some kind of mood journal where you track your, your episodes,
[20:32]because that's the only way you can really get a handle on something as tricky as bipolar
[20:38]disorder is to see the pattern of it as it plays out. I can only go by my own experience,
[20:44]which has been before manic was published the night before, literally. I wanted to call
[20:50]my editor and just call the whole thing off. I thought, what am I doing? This is crazy. Nobody's
[20:56]going to understand what I'm writing about. And the response to coming out of the closet,
[21:02]which was a very deep closet for me and lasted for many, many years, has been incredible.
[21:08]I mean, the support, the compassion that people have shown me, I never would have guessed in
[21:14]a million years that people could be so understanding. And I'm always hearing about my courage.
[21:20]I just felt back up against a wall. You know, I couldn't, it was either stop hiding or die.
[21:27]So those were my choices. And I don't know how much courage was involved in that.
[21:33]Well, maybe you're selling yourself a little short.
[21:37]I think maybe courage isn't the right word, but it still takes such a strong sense of self to be
[21:42]able to articulate it all and share it. I think that's where writing comes into it really does
[21:48]the writing group that I referenced is we write our personal stories and we learned to find
[21:53]our own voice. And that's been really influential for me to just keep digging and digging and digging.
[21:59]And I am surrounded by journals. You can't see them right now, but I still journal every day.
[22:05]Wow. I have all my in-hidden, like, under here from when I was a kid. My mom, like, cleaned out my
[22:09]room years ago and was like, take everything. So I don't get rid of them. They come in so handy
[22:16]when you decide to write your memoirs, believe me. I mean, they're all like, I think free, you know,
[22:22]22 or something. But yeah, now I'm debating if I should share them with my kids, but I better read them.
[22:28]I need to read them first.
[22:33]Some stuff I'm not so sure I'd want them to read, but I think for people like you and me and
[22:37]like so many other people who do write to sort things out, not having that. I don't know how
[22:43]anybody else kind of does it. I know. How do they have a conversation even? Yeah. I would have
[22:49]the words floating around in my head, like, you know, just like a jigsaw puzzle. If I didn't
[22:55]write, I don't know how people function. Yeah. I used to even for my podcast. I used to like
[23:00]write out every question first. I don't do that because it's more a conversation, but I wanted to
[23:05]like have it all clear. Everything had to just be clear and out of the chaos.
[23:10]And I was a litigator. I wrote every single thing I was going to say to the court down,
[23:15]including Ann and the I was very, very much that way. Yeah. I get it. Well, thank you. Thanks for
[23:22]chatting with me today. Oh, yeah. I'm so tired to read books. So fine. I have to go back now and read
[23:27]manic. So that was on purchase or I shouldn't say I'm done at whatever. Independent bookstore
[23:32]purchase. It's open. There you go. So anyway, so thank you. I really enjoyed chatting with you. And
[23:38]again, your book was absolutely beautiful. And so important. I'm so glad you liked it. Thank you.
[23:43]It was really great chatting with you too. Great. Have a great day. Bye. Bye. Bye.
[23:49]I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I know I enjoyed recording it. Don't forget to check out my new
[23:55]podcast. Moms don't have time to lose weight. Pretty soon. Moms won't have time to listen to
[24:00]podcasts. And check out the Instagram community that goes along with it. And if you would like to join,
[24:06]please request to join. It's for anyone who wants to feel body better in their body tomorrow than
[24:11]they do today. And it's a supportive group of like-minded souls who just need the community to achieve
[24:17]their goals. Moms don't have time to lose weight. Thanks for listening to this episode of
[24:21]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens
[24:26]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com
[24:30]and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:35]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to
[24:39]Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.