Sydney Curtin:From Diagnosis to empowerment

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world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantur.
Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide.
Joining us today is Sidney Curtin. She's an inspiring speaker, author,
multi business owner, consultant, and life coach who transformed a
traumatic past marked by a mother's addiction, mental illness, and
family challenges into a powerful story of resilience. Now is
a successful coach, she empowers others to overcome obstacles and thrive.
She's here today to share her journey and insights for
personal growth. So before we dive into our episode. We'll
be back with an uninterrupted show right after a word
from our sponsors. Thanks for coming on.
Thank you so much, Tony.
No, it's my pleasure. So let's start off by telling
people what you do. So.
I am a multi business owner. I am a renowned
serial entrepreneur. I own several businesses. I've published a book.
I own a mobile application. It's currently in the beta phase.
We have not launched the alpha phase yet. I have
an exterior home and auto restoration business. Out here in
Colorado where I live. We get a lot of hail
damage that people need their insurance to pay to restore
their home or their car back to its pre storm condition.
That's what I do. And then on top of that,
I also do life coaching and business consulting. So businesses
that have just a glitch in their system that they
can't seem to identify, I go in, I get into
the weeds. I fix that for them and people who
are trying to get back on track and just need
that mentorship that we lack in society today that I
did not lack, was very blessed to not lack while
I was growing up. I have functioned as that mentor
for several people in their relationships and their business and
in their everyday life and financial management.
Well, I can tell that certainly keeps you busy. Now
you do all this, but you also help people that
might fall into the mental health area. How did this
all come about for you?
That falls into the life coaching part? So that piece
where I had said, the folks that just need that
mentor in their life. The reason that I did not
pursue psychology when I had graduated high school, I had
several scholarship offereds for athletics to several different schools, and
I was pursuing an athletic scholarship offer for track and
field specifically, I was looking into several different schools at
pursuing a psychiatry degree, where I had identified in myself
that I was not somebody who was going to give
someone the fluff, if you will. I wasn't going to say, oh,
it's okay, poor you boohoo. And I decided instead to
reroute four years into my degree, not pursue my masters,
and instead get a counseling or coaching license, if you will,
so that I could help people identify what it was
in their life that was the obstacle and learn how
to overcome that rather than cater to all of the
politics and logistics and code that you have to live
up to as a actual certified.
Counselor well, I think that's a great idea. By doing
it this way, you can help those that need to help.
Then if they get past what you can do for them,
it will create a pathway for them to move forward
to another person that can continue. Now, what is some
of the challenges that you face? Nothing is as easy
as it seems, yet nothing is as hard as it seems,
but it's always a challenge and is always a bump
in the road. So what is some of the challenges
that you faced when you started getting into.
This in terms of challenges and bumps in that gap
if you will, between what does my modern psychology say,
or rather insurance pay for versus what can a coach provide? Ie?
What does insurance not pay for? There is a bridge
there because people have been given the expectation, society has
been given the expectation that if there's anything that we
struggle with that can be classified in the DSM in
terms of a mental health disorder, then this is outside
of the scope or outside of the capabilities of a coach.
And that's where my expertise really came in because I
bridged that gap for a lot of my clients. I've
been the person that was diagnosed with something classified in
the DSM five or the most recent psychiatric disorder manual
that we have in psychiatry today, and I made a
decision that I did not fit the standards of that diagnosis,
and I had my psychiatrist, a new one at the time,
remove that diagnosis so that I was freed of the
boundaries that were imposed upon me as an individual in
order to help facilitate others leading a more functional life
that they were in charge of. I e. Not limited
to something that a book told them they were limited to.
Right, So that's interesting. You actually have some lived experience
of what you're coaching. So does that lived experience help
bridge that gap to the people that you will be
coaching so they feel more comfortable a lot quicker than
they would with someone else that might just have that
degree that's hanging on the wall.
Very much so, because I still have that piece of
paper that says, hey, she's taken all the classes, she's
taken all the courses, she understands how the brain works,
and that piece of paper doesn't mean anything related to
any of the life experience that any of my individual
clients have. My clients come to me with a book
of real life that they've lived through and been through
and that they need real advice going through, versus what
the standard is imposed on us state by state or
license by license that says you have to do this,
or you have to do that, or you have to
report this XYZ. That gets removed from me significantly in
this coaching license of things, where I no longer have
to resort to something that limits people to the capacity
of the DSM criteria. I no longer have to abide by.
This is all that this person is capable based on
the diagnosis that they've been given, and I'm able to
say I see you for you and this is not
something that is a permanent fixture or permanent part of you.
It's a thorn instead that you deal with. And if
we're looking at this as something that is has been
added to your portfolio of life, and if I can
teach you how to manage that and how to address
that furthermore, how to make it empower you and your story,
then you have the ability to influence a significant body
of people who have been through similar experiences.
With all this that you've done, all the people that
you've worked with, the lived experience you have. What are
some of the ranges of people that you might see.
So when someone knocks on your door and walks through,
what would you expect to see in that person of
what they may or may not be going through at
that point in time.
Yeah, that's a great question, and without sharing, you know,
personal testimony, but generalizations. I've worked with single moms and
dads who have a child that they raise ranging from
ages anywhere ten to sixteen, where it just becomes I
need my child to have somebody outside of me. They're
resistant to counseling that feels stigmatized for them. They need
a mentor in their life that can help them to
identify these pieces about themselves that is from somebody other
than mom or dad. And that goes all the way
through women in their forties, fifties, sixties who have suffered
from physical relationships that they have since separated from, or
men that have been in narcissistic marriages that they divorced from,
and then anything.
In between that, what about mental illness? Do you work
with anyone that might have varying degrees of mental illness
such as schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar anxiety, anything that falls under
that mental illness umbrella.
Yes and no is the answer to that question. I
am very willing to recognize when something is outside of
my area of expertise as a coach. I do not
hold a medical life. I do not hold a degree
that certifies me or licenses that certify me to support
people in areas that are designated to a mental health professional.
And that being said, because of my basis of faith
and because of the things that I have overcome as
somebody who was formerly diagnosed by something that met DSM
criteria and that required psychiatrists and counselors to mitigate risk
of my symptoms, I have freed myself of that. And
there is a barrier that I've self imposed on myself
where if it needs XYZ standards, I allow myself to
explore what that relationship could look like and how I
can support that client. But if it crosses something that
is beyond my area of able to help the client,
their contract becomes Nolan void and I no longer hold
them to anything written between us two individuals.
There are so many things when you get into mental
illness that insurances just do not cover.
Correct.
Then you have situations where certain psychiatrists, etc. Don't want
to touch it because oil insurance doesn't cover it. So
these people are left in a big void. Do you
kind of help cover some of that overlap?
Yes and no. A lot of the people that I
work with are referred to me by previous clients. Okay,
most coaches do not accept insurance because it's something that
is not deemed a medical necessity, but rather something that
is at the discretion of the policyholder, whereas counseling or
psychiatry is something that is deemed a medical necessity by
most major insurance carriers. And for that reason, we have
a significant bridge still that we have to cover as
a team. And I mean that in the sense that
I am not against counseling. I'm not against psychiatry. I
think that they're one and the same thing. While I
do not believe that medication is a silver bullet and
it will not fix any of the symptoms that most
individuals suffer with when they go to someone for professional help,
I do believe that it can be a crutch that
can be used very effectively while learning how to strengthen
that muscle. Let's say that the client has a issue
with just impulse control, okay, and if we're dealing with
somebody that has impulse control issues, maybe that results in
lash outs at work or in interpersonal relationships. Medication can
dule the side effects of those extreme highs and lows.
We treat that very similar to bipolar most of the time,
and we treat that with mood stabilizers, regardless of what
the diagnosis itself is. Now, if we revisit that, and
we can also in conjunction with that medication, that mood
stabilizer treat the highs and lows of the emotions themselves,
provide that client with the basis of what it means
to self control those impulse and to use tools from
diectual behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy to level those
extreme reactions that we had to things previously. That medication
will help us to strengthen those muscles. Because it's almost
like somebody spotting you. If you think of a bench
press instead of carrying the weight all yourself, you've got
somebody that's helping you lift that, And that is really
what it is when you treat medication in conjunction with
cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectual behavioral therapy, or coaching. Right, it's
just different licenses, different permissions to treat.
If you will, sure, Now, what can you tell us
about what you went through that changed your life when
you got diagnosed and of course when you got rediagnosed
and it was taken off? Number one? How did it
affect you when you got diagnosed? Then? How did it
affect you when you got it removed so that you
could continue when you doing what you're doing now?
Yeah, absolutely, no, I love that question. So I grew
up with a mother that had a drug addiction, and
it started in college. For her, it was all of
the things that kids commonly experiment with in that platform
where you're free of parental control, but you're not free
of you know, financial freedom. Perhaps when she had my
two younger brothers, she suffered serious medical complications that led
her to also be on narcotic drugs. And I think
for her, the combination of the narcotics plus her past
of what one might call street drugs or something that
is not prescribed, that just led her back down the
rabbit trail of addiction. So, when I was thirteen years old,
my mother took her life of a drug addiction, and
I was the only female. I was raised by a
single dad, and I had two younger brothers, so I
was the only girl in my family. Because of that,
it really led my dad to want answers. I believe
as a parent now that it's strongly because he wanted
to protect me from the what ifs of having an
only girl that had a strong genetic disposition to her
mother's genes.
That makes sense. So what happened from there?
So, after my mother had passed, he had gone to
a psychiatrist and said, this is who my wife was,
this is what she struggled with. Tell me what she
had so that I can protect my daughter from it.
In different words, of course, but that was sort of
the gist of it. What did the wife have that
I was unable to save her from? It may or
may not have contained any information about me at that time.
The psychiatrist that he saw then had said, based on
what you've described to me, it sure seems like your
wife may have fit the criteria of borderline personality disorder.
As I grew up in my dad's home with my
two younger brothers, I started displaying very similar personality characteristics
of that of my mother. When I was of an
age that it was appropriate to do so, he took
me to a psychiatrist and disregarded the fact that I
had lost my mother to a drug addiction and that
I was being raised by a single dad and all
of the trauma that my mother had put me through,
and instead wanted a label for it so that he
could control what the outcome of this was.
So, with all this happening, what was next on the
list that came up.
When he took me to that psychiatrist. The psychiatrist diagnosed
me with exactly what the psychiatrist that had spoken to
my father about my mother had said. He said, your
daughter most likely has borderline personality disorder. Well, currently that
is a relatively new psychiatric disorder according to the DSM
five or the most relevant form of psychiatric disorders that
we have, and borderline personality disorder is treated such as
bipolar disorder is well. The fundamental difference is is that
bipolar it's not a psychiatric disorder in the sense that
it doesn't it's not. Borderline is called borderline because it
borders neurotic and psychotic, whereas borderline, sorry my apologies, bipolar
is mostly neurotic. It's a chemical imbalance, whereas borderline crosses
that boundary of Okay, well, we're fading into this psychotic
in the realm of psychology disorder. So that's why it's
called borderline is because it has that very gray boundary
of the two disorders. That's the answer to your first question.
How did you feel when you got that diagnosis? What
did it do to you mentally?
What it did to me mentally was enabled me, if
I'm being entirely honest, like very honest, that it gave
me an excuse for my behaviors because now I had
somebody in my life justifying my actions based on a
psychiatric label that I had no control over. I didn't
choose this label. A professional that had a license chose
this label. So why should I be held accountable to
my actions as long as it meets the criteria of
what a doctor has prescribed to me a medication for.
Right, Okay, So let's get into this. Why did you
have this removed from your records? And then once it
was removed from your records. How did it or did
it liberate you? From that point? Moving forward in.
College, when I had moved away from my dad's house,
I found myself in several abusive relationships that I continuously
justified based on that criteria of my diagnosis of the
impulsivity and the lack of control. When I found myself
pregnant with my oldest daughter in a very very tricky
situation that I've spoken on several times and won't get
into the full story here, but I had to uh
mostly for the sake of time. But I had to
find a reason bigger than myself to change, and for me,
that reason was my daughter. I continue in this train
of thought of I need something bigger than me to change.
It had to become one. My daughter was the trigger right.
My faith was the second. I had not grown up
in a home of faith, but I had found faith
along my early adolescence. But I hadn't really abided by
what the principles of my faith were because it was restricting,
it felt coercive in some ways. A lot of people
in my life had convinced me that it was something
that was kindering me rather than giving me strength. And
then the third thing was that I had really just
decided that all of the people in my life that
were telling me that I wasn't enough for my daughter,
that generational trauma would continuously repeat itself, that that wasn't
a good enough answer for me, because I was not
just a byproduct of my mother. If somebody were to
ask me who I was, I was more than the
daughter of my father or more than the daughter of
my mother. And I was not going to allow people
to to just label me that. And when I talked
to my friends about who I was, that wasn't even
how they were like that. Most of them didn't even
know my mom had struggled with drug addiction. It wasn't
something that I openly publicized.
Sure not so understandable.
I had gone to a psychiatrist. I said, I was
diagnosed with this at one point. I'm not going to
tell you what it was. I would appreciate if you
don't pull up my profile or my medical history. I
would really like a completely, absolutely untainted view of who
I am. We talked for just under two hours, and
at the end of it, he said, you may struggle
with ADHD to some degree, but outside of that I
wouldn't diagnose you with anything. In that moment, it was
the most freeing experience I had ever had because I
was no longer tied to not only anybody's opinion of me,
but I had no excuses for my behavior anymore. Everything
that I did was fully in my control and I
did not have a reason to justify anything that I
was doing. If I fell short, I had to take accountability.
Sure, that's great now with that new lease on life,
so to speak, what were your next steps?
That was tough. That was the tough part because I
had leaned on that label for so long that I
had even damaged some relationships because of it. So it
started with a lot of apologies. It was a lot
of forgiveness that I needed, even just if it was
to clear my conscious. Some people told me that it
was not something that they held against me, but my
faith played a lot into it. I'm an avid believer.
Now I am a Christian. I had to turn back
to Jesus and say everything that I've turned against you
from in conjunction with the diagnosis that I've had, I
need your help fixing. Every time that I did that
in my relationship with God, he showed me where I
had a bridge that I needed to mend or where
I had communications that I needed to cross the bridge with.
It was a slow but steady process. I had to
go back to people and say, look, this is where
I messed up. And if you don't want a relationship
with me, I understand, but I just want you to
know that this was something that was not appropriate. Here's why.
Here was my perspective and it wasn't okay, and it
doesn't justify my behavior, and I hope that you'll forgive
me for that. That's not who I am anymore.
Yeah, that's great. So it's kind of like the twelve
steps you have to go through each one to get
to where you landed.
Yes, yes, Removing a piece of your identity that you've
plung onto for so long requires revisiting relationships that you've
had because some of those relationships have been built on
the foundation of who you are. Some of those relationships
are I have a relationship with this person, because sure,
once you remove that piece of you as a foundation,
sometimes you have to revisit that and it's not always fun.
Yeah, and it's a really hard step to go back
to someone and say do you know what I screwed up.
Sorry about that.
It is. Forgiveness is not something that's easy to ask for,
but it's crucial.
Absolutely. So when you went back and asked for forgiveness,
how did they receive you?
For everyone, except for the exception of a handful of people,
it was in my benefit. And what I actually found
was that in some cases, it was not myself that
was instigating or propagating the self imposing boundaries that I
had had. I found that there were some people in
my life that had been restricting me to the limitations
of the diagnosis that I had previously held. Okay, my
only conclusion now that I've healed from that, from that
encounter and from those relationships, is because of their own
unhealed trauma. But there's some people in my life. My
dad is one of them. And I love my dad
dearly and we have a great relationship now, but I
strongly feel that some of the reasons that he treats
me the way that he does and has in the past,
is related to the unhealed things that he has in
his relationship with my mother. He was married to her
for thirteen years, and that's reasonable. That's a long marriage,
and he did not understand all of the things that
happened to her. As the the only woman left that
has my mother's DNA as his daughter, I think I
would be in a similar vote to him, so I
don't hold it against him. There's several relationships like that, though,
where even if I did ask for forgiveness and we've
mended things to a degree that people still see my
mom and me to some capacity, we call it in
psychiatry just radical acceptance is really what it is. I've
had to radically accept the things that I cannot control,
and it means that I can appreciate somebody for their
intentions and their perspective without holding their opinion true or gospel.
Sure. So, now what about your family? Have they accepted
you as well?
Yeah? So, I think that one of them has more
so than the other, my two younger brothers, because they're
younger than me. They grew up obviously also heavily under
the influence of my dad as a single dad. One
of them, who's closer in age to me, still struggles
with his own set of problems, and I almost feel
that he's in the same boat as I am, or
was at some point at one point, I used that
diagnosis that I had as a justification for my actions,
and I love him dearly, and I see similar tendencies
in his life now. I see him using the things
that he's been told he struggles with, and the excuses
of his life circumstances to justify where he is in life.
But the bottom line is that everybody's got stuffed. Everybody
has things that they deal with, and it's not an
excuse or a justification for how you turn out, because
we're not ultimately in control. If we're coming from a
position of faith, which now me and all three of
my brothers are, sorry, two of my brothers, all three
of us, is what I meant to say. Because we
all come from a position of faith, we don't have
that control over our lives. And if we're here to
influence the greater good, then whatever we went through was
actually a blessing that equipped us for the greater good.
I have only recently come to understand that more. Whereas
my middle brother, he's young, and I don't expect that
of him yet I hope that he comes to that.
My youngest brother ironically astounds me all the time. His
maturity and his relationship and his faith. Sometimes we'll even
call me out on things to this day, call me
and be like, hey, I saw this post that you made,
or I saw this video that you did, and I'm
just curious where in scripture did that come from? And
I love that about him because he constantly keeps me
on my toes.
There's nothing wrong with that at all. That's great communication
and it just shows as something there that's worthwhile.
Absolutely. No, I love them both dearly. They're just at
different stages for sure.
Yeah. Now, what would you like to tell the listeners
that you think is very important that they hear not
only about what you're doing, but about everything that you've
gone through and how you're thriving because of it.
I would tell everyone that's listening that follows you for
the mental health aspect of your podcast, that whatever you
have been diagnosed with is not a limitation on your capabilities.
That it is just an indicator of the areas of
your life that may need reformation or improvement or mentors
self imposed limitations or restrictions on any given individual. It
gives us a compass where we can improve and grow
as individuals.
Yeah, Now, one last question, how has your dad accepted
what you've done. You've kind of shown the world what
you want to be and you're going out there and
you're doing it, which it's probably completely different than what
he anticipated from you. So how does he accept it?
And how has that created a place where the both
of you can thrive because of it?
That's I Actually that's one question I haven't been asked
before of all the podcasts that I've done, and so
that one is probably one that I'm going to like
coin token that I appreciate a lot. It goes back
to I have to start with I love my dad.
In case he listens to this, of course he has
his own un healed stuff. Because of that, he doesn't
always acknowledge the wrongs that he has had in our relationship.
I always say, even when I'm coaching people, right, trauma
attracts trauma. So when I'm speaking with somebody that has
an abusive relationship and what they're talking to me about
is their abusive spouse or their abusive partner, Okay, what
is it in you that's attracting that? And I don't
mean that to negate responsibility from the other person, because
of course I'm going to help someone get resources and
gain information and sharpen their tools that they need in
order to get out of that situation. That if we
don't address the root of that poisonous tree, then we
don't kill the tree, we just kill the branches. My
dad and I have had a similar relationship in the
sense that he has never acknowledged the wrong that he's
done in my life, and it always gets passed on
to my mom or it gets passed on to my
behavior and my adolescence. I forgive him, and I give
him grace for all of the other areas he's compensated
in my life without negating the responsibility that he held
in the circumstances that I had to endure because of that.
Sure that makes sense. Well, it's been really great. I
appreciate you taking the time to come on.
Thank you. No, it's been fantastic, and I hope that
your listeners get something out of this and that it's relatable.
I'm sure they will. Thanks again, thanks for taking time
out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today.
We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed
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