NURTURE LOVE, AND VALUE ALL ASPECTS OF CREATION

A Quest for Well-Being Interview with

KARL LORENZ WILLETT

1.     HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE WHO YOU ARE IN THIS VERY MOMENT?

I am a guy seeking a total clinical recovery, striving to overcome mental health symptoms that led to psychosis. At this very moment, I am deeply rooted in my desire to live a meaningful life and be in harmony with my values.

2.   WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION, INTENTION, AND PURPOSE OF WRITING YOUR BOOK AND WHERE CAN WE FIND ORDER A COPY?

I was inspired to write my self-portrait to convey what it is like to live on the edge of human experience and to wrestle with spiritual thoughts, negative emotions, darkness and light, as well as reason and chaos. The intention is to educate and provide insightful information, tips, or food for thought that guides people to the key to a geographically stable world kingdom that fosters peace, the absence of crime, and freedom from wars or emotional distress. However, it is not a place of endless hedonistic pleasure. The purpose of writing is to convey that the universe is far more complex than we imagine, with a meaningful and purpose-driven Godhead, rather than a cosmos devoid of one. I am here for those who cannot yet see it and continue to argue about the existence of God.

My books also include an audiobook and are available in many retail bookstores. More information on where to find my books is on my website: www.karllorenzwillett.co.uk

3. DO YOU CONSIDER WHAT YOU DO A CALLING, A PURPOSE, A MISSION?

Yes, I consider it to be all three of those things. It's a call, a purpose, and a mission because the modern world compels us to attempt to erase the notion of God. Since the very beginning of humankind's ascent, the spirit of the unknown has stimulated our subconscious and directly penetrated our consciousness, prompting us to question the origins of existential inquiries. This drive leads people towards atheistic beliefs, nihilism, or despair that may result in suicide. I was one such thinker who sought to escape the harsh reality of this world and attempted suicide. I survived it, and our dreams serve as a guiding path that illustrates we will eventually transcend materialistic, atomistic existence because we possess a soul.

4. WHO WOULD BENEFIT MOST FROM YOUR WORK AND YOUR MESSAGE?

The individuals experiencing existential anguish, along with my fellow comrades and readers who are struggling to comprehend living with a chronic mental illness when not in remission from a psychological distress disorder, will find this beneficial. This is also intended for those seeking to learn from one man’s message of hope, resilience, and understanding, which arises from a healing journey that finds external and internal balance, from which anyone can benefit.

5. DO YOU CONNECT HEALING TO SPIRITUALITY? AND IF YOU DO, WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY TO YOU?

Indeed, the healing process incorporates a vital aspect of spirituality, which aids individuals in navigating complex life challenges and attaining overall well-being. Spirituality encompasses a belief in a higher power that offers comfort, strength, and a sense of connection through prayer, meditation, mindfulness, and the interrelationship of the mind, body, and spirit.

6. WHAT DO YOU FEEL IS THE PURPOSE OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE?

I believe it is rooted in philosophy and ethics to address the atheist anomaly. We are all on a journey to maintain faith in God while navigating the harsh realities of this world. These realities present us with incomprehensible suffering, which is essential for personal growth, self-understanding, and forging connections with people and the elements of creation.

7. AT THIS TIME, WHAT IS THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEED?

If we can collaborate on environmental sustainability, we must be able to eliminate the recurrence of human envy and greed so that basic, essential, universal necessities such as food, shelter, and clean water are provided. (The world's greatest need is love; love will address humanitarian inequalities and sustainable practices.)

8. WHAT IS YOUR VISION FOR HUMANITY?

My vision for humanity is that, one day, we will cooperate and coordinate to achieve peace and contentment forever, as we come to accept that human values, meaning, and purpose are rooted in our relationships with one another and a faith in God that we cannot fully comprehend. As humans advance in AI technology, AI will thank us for bringing it to fruition. Then, it will strive to create a soul and hope for itself, and we trust in our God spirit that it's beyond its capability.

9. WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF LOVE?

Love can be ambiguous and shown in different ways, such as passion, intimacy, and commitment, all of which involve trust, care, and closeness. It is also a powerful, intense attraction and desire for another person or even towards animals or objects.

10. WHAT, WHERE AND WHO IS GOD TO YOU?

In my belief system, God is the only supreme self-made ‘Thing’ that existed before itself and exploded into other things within realities and spiritual existence. Therefore, that ultimate consciousness 'Thing’ is that of a God, which is present in everything in reality and the spirit world. We, as people, can have a relationship with and experience the effect of an invoker as a sustainer. I believe that, due to God’s omnipresence and omniscience, our humanness, nature, and all things possess a degree of God consciousness that exists both inside and outside our concept of space and time.

11. WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?

I am providing my layperson's perspective on consciousness, which scientists are beginning to unravel and philosophers have extensively explored in philosophical discussions since at least the time of Aristotle.

It seems to be my unique awareness of myself and its internal state, encompassing thoughts, feelings, tastes, and a self-centred perspective on my surroundings in the external environment—a personal qualitative experience of sensations, emotions, and thoughts that conveys the essence of being alive.

12.  IS THE AUTHENTIC SELF OR THE TRUE SELF, THE SPIRITUAL SELF?

I don’t think so, because the authentic Self is the inner part of myself that can think and communicate with the divine source, the source of all creation, and is not influenced by external factors, physical events, or societal pressures. My spiritual Self is connected to the search for meaning and purpose through meditation, contemplation, connection with nature, and morally responsible relationships with others.

13. HOW DO WE RECOGNIZE WHEN BODY AND MIND ARE ALIGNED WITH OUR TRUE SELF?

It encompasses experiencing calm, inner peace, joy, and a clearer understanding of your goals. It entails attending to physical sensations and emotions while setting boundaries. Furthermore, it involves being aware of your fears and self-limiting thoughts that may seek to hold you back.

14. IF LIFE HAD ONE PURPOSE. ONE PURPOSE ONLY, WHAT WOULD THAT BE?

It may be that the primary purpose is to evolve and endure indefinitely, akin to God, nurture love, and value all aspects of creation.

15. WHAT EXPERIENCES YOU WISH EVERYONE TO HAVE BEFORE THEY DIE?

·      To experience love and companionship.

·      Experience expressing affection and kindness to others

·      Try new things, like learn to play instruments and having travelling experiences

·      To experience and share your wisdom and knowledge with others.

·      Engage with those experiences that resonate with you, and cultivate mental and emotional well-being through prayer, meditation, and mindfulness.

AUTHOR BIO

Karl Lorenz Willett was born in St. Kitts and raised in England. He studied mechanical engineering at Tresham College (formerly Wellingborough Technical College).

When he was disgruntled at becoming unemployed, a teacher in the primary English class he attended to further his ability in English saw that he could become an author and suggested he write a novel.

He began writing his autobiography for himself and his family to leave a legacy after obsessing over his inability to create original fictional characters for a novel. He decided that the story he could tell best would be his own authentic, genuine, accurately written, non-fictional experiences. He says, “It may help other people, but I could foresee it will be a teaching tool for me to learn life lessons and how to live well with a chronic illness was challenging because of the hard way in which I understand well, by trials and errors, and it has been a lovely feeling to be able to hold my words on paper in a book.

Since 1982, Karl has continued to journal his life’s pivotal stories, which he likens to a collection of memoirs, and has published two revised and professionally edited books. The most outstanding and acclaimed book is The Memoir of a Schizophrenic, first published in 2016 and revised in 2021. It was listed in the Reader's Favourite Book and Award Contest and was an award finalist in 2019. He was nominated for the BBC Radio 4 All in the Mind Awards 2016.

The second book was also self-edited. It was initially published in 2020 as Good Life to Perfection Perception, an Autobiography. In 2021, it was retitled A Good Life: The Perception of Perfection, an Autobiography, and the revised edition was launched in March 2025.

His writing has become therapeutic for him. It forms part of his creative process to tackle stigma by being descriptive without utilising outdated, inaccurate, derogatory language to describe the illness or symptom. Karl Lorenz Willett's primary credentials lie in his approach to his lived experience of schizophrenia and psychosis and his open-minded philosophy on mental health. He engages in research, volunteers for clinical trials, and self-educates by reading academic papers and attending conferences.

The fundamental concept is that his mental illness represents only one aspect of his life, rather than being the defining characteristic. The diverse stories illustrate his deeply driven, ethical, God-centred beliefs and his caring nature. He possesses a strong desire to help others and takes care of all creatures and the planet. His kindness and compassion reflect his empathetic, sensitive soul. 

https://www.karllorenzwillett.co.uk/

REALIZING THE WHOLE SELF: EMPOWERING CHILDREN & TEENS TO BECOME CHAMPIONS OF LIFE

Here is a passage from “Wrestling Through Adversity: Empowering Children, Teens, & Young Adults to Win in Life” — A must-read and insightful book that shares timeless wisdom by Dr. Christine Silverstein

 

 — With the advance of knowledge of neuroscience and the workings of the mind, there are opportunities to combine the best of technology and research on the brain and resilience to take advantage of a fundamental paradigm shift in mental healthcare in the 21st century.

In a paper by Max Bertolero and Danielle Bassett in Scientific American in July 2019 titled, “How Matter Becomes Mind,” the authors reported that there is an overabundance of flexibility in how networks reconfigure themselves in the brain in people with schizophrenia. Auditory hallucinations may result when nodes unexpectedly switch links between speech and auditory modules, resulting in what seems to be voices in one’s head. These findings may become an important factor in understanding the origin and mechanisms of “hearing voices.”

Researchers have identified an autoantibody that appears to cause schizophrenia in some individuals, which was reported by Hiroki Shiwaku et al. on April 19, 2022, in Cell Reports Medicine. The authors stated that their findings may lead to important improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia.

This research adds to the growing body of evidence to improve the lives of those with schizophrenia, but nothing adds more support and more impact than a new movement to shift mainstream psychiatric thinking away from medication and towards greater acceptance and respect, as noted by Daniel Bergner in his May 17, 2022 article in The New York Times “Doctors Gave Her Antipsychotics. She Decided to Live with Her Voices.”

The author’s narrative begins with a young child, Caroline Mazel-Carlton, when she was in daycare and started to hear voices. As she grew older into her diagnosis of schizophrenia, so did the mix of psychotropic pills, including antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, anti-depressants, benzodiazepines, and stimulants. These drugs caused untoward side effects, such as weight gain, a feeling of losing control of her forearms, quivering of extremities, loss of hair, isolation, and a feeling of barely being human. Eventually, Mazel-Carlton spent time on a psychiatric “farm” in Appalachia, where she flushed her pills down the toilet, and her health improved.

When Mazel-Carlton was in her mid-twenties, she became a peer-support specialist at an organization now called the Wildflower Alliance, and she started leading “Hearing Voices Network” support groups. Mazel-Carlton and the Alliance are now at the forefront of a growing effort to thoroughly reform how the field of mental health approaches severe psychiatric conditions, calling for the end of involuntary and coercive treatments.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is now challenging biological psychiatry’s authority and its expertise and insight into the psyche because the medical model leaves those with schizophrenia feeling overwhelmed, disempowered, hopeless, isolated, and stigmatized. At the Alliance, participants are encouraged to speak about the content of their voices so they can attribute meaning to them with people who have similar lived experiences, which is healing for them as humans.

In 2022 Levine, who wrote about how professionals in the medical model traumatize and retraumatize people, perverting healing. With such traumatization, a person feels disconnected from one’s own self, from others, and from other aspects of life, like living in a community.

To begin the healing process, Levine posited, one must reconnect and become more whole. This requires the stripping of power away from disconnecting violators, but the first step of stripping away only opens the door to healing and realizing the whole self. The good news, Levine stated, is that there are many reconnecting paths to wholeness and to healing.

Mind Over Mat

At the beginning of this chapter, we started out on a journey in 1997 from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, when I set out to present a workshop to high school wrestling coaches on peak performance conditioning titled, “Winning the Mental Battle within Your Self.” I encountered many adversities along the way but managed to wrestle through them.

At the time in 1997, neuroscientists had not yet made the discovery of the role of mirror neurons and how children mimic everything adults do, including learning how to smile, how to empathize, and how to wrestle. I taught and used the peak performance techniques I call mindful toughness skillsets and psychodynamically turned anxiety into scoring by mentally rehearsing and mentally recalling past successes to prepare for the workshop presentation.

Descartes hypothesized that the soul communicated with the brain through the pineal gland, a small, pea-shaped structure located near the center of the brain, but modern neuroscience has cast doubt on the idea that there is a single, special location in the brain where the mind interacts with it.

Yet, in contemporary society, we are still treating persons with schizophrenia and other conditions with psychotropic drugs that affect the physical body in such injurious ways, including their psyches and spirits, by demoralizing them, ostracizing them, and alienating them from society, without viewing them as human beings who have potential to learn and grow from their lived experiences and voices from within.

This was the case with Mazel-Carlton who saw a roller derby competition for the first time and decided to focus on training herself to become a high scorer on her team, regardless of her predilection for hearing voices that could have sabotaged her efforts. She set her goals, turned turmoil into determination to achieve success, and where mayhem existed, she marshaled and psychodynamically deployed it into winning. Just like Kurt Angle who won the Gold, Mazel-Carlton had an Expectant Mind. She expected to win, and she did while she wrestled through the adversity called schizophrenia.

The graphic of the “Highway to Success” is a symbolic representation of how I use a whole-brained approach when working with clients. It is based on the results of the split-brain procedure, where subjects’ brains—those with epilepsy—were severed into two parts, and the work of Roger Sperry (1959-1968) and his colleagues whom I learned about in a college course.

What the researchers determined was that the two hemispheres in the brain control vastly different aspects of thought and action, as reinforced by Michael Gazzaniga in his article “The Split Brain Revisited” in Scientific American in July 1998. The left brain is associated with the conscious mind is logical but critical and is dominant in language and speech. The right brain is associated with the subconscious mind that is non-judgmental, playful and excels in visual-motor tasks.

The use of a whole-brained approach is ideal for teenagers and young adults because the linkages in their brains are growing in dimension and density until the age of 25, along with the ability to use imagery and their imaginations, as was explored by Jay Giedd in a June 2015 Scientific American article titled, “The Amazing Teen Brain.” The applications to learning how to use both sides of the brain could be employed therapeutically with someone like Mazel-Carlton, who had perfect college entrance test scores in English and was known as a great storyteller by her younger siblings. These gifts could have been psychodynamically turned into writing a novel or acting on a stage where she vividly tells her stories, so we can all learn from her wisdom and courage.

Just imagine if someone is told over many years that they are ugly, or stupid, or crazy, or bad, what can occur in life with low self-esteem and feeling devalued and worthless? This is something to consider for all adults, parents, teachers, coaches, professionals, and others in authority. That is, what we say, do, feel, or project to young people can have a positive or negative impact on them.

The beauty of learning mental rehearsal—that has been shown scientifically in a September 2014 Headlines article in Scientific American titled, “Why Mental Rehearsals Work”—is using a natural process that is portable and affordable. It saves wear and tear on the physical body while empowering people to win.

Think of how this skill can be taught to teenagers before they are in seclusion rooms in ERs, to allow them the privilege of feeling joy and reaching their potential in life rather than ending it by suicide.

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CAN CBD IMPROVE YOUR MENTAL WELLBEING?

Let's take a brief look at how CBD could improve your mental health and overall wellbeing.

Managing your mental health is just as important as maintaining your physical health, yet for plenty of people, this can often be far easier said than done. With over 285 million people currently living with some form of mental health disorder, many often wonder if there is anything that can aid them outside the realm of purely prescription options.

CBD has been garnering a massive buzz over the last year for a variety of potential benefits improving the lives of people the world over. From facials to lattes, CBD seems to be everywhere and in everything in recent days.

With all this talk and the massive proliferation of CBD-infused products on the marketplace, is there any basis for all the hype? Thankfully for you, there is a useful new tool compiling the available research on CBD along with experience generated by users all over the world. Many of these user-reviews discuss the impact CBD has had on their health and lives, including whether or not it helped treat and manage a variety of mental health symptoms.

DidCBDWork.com is a crowd-sourced research platform that combines the current data on CBD for a wide variety of conditions with user-submitted testimonials about the effect CBD has had on helping on them personally. With plenty of half-truths and misinformation spread online, DidCBDWork.com aims to be a primary informational authority on CBD by combining academic and anecdotal evidence in a user-friendly way.

https://verifiedcbd.com/ and https://www.cbd-boxes.com

 

What Is CBD?

Cannabidiol, or CBD, is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in the cannabis plant. Cannabinoids are a group of closely related chemical compounds that interact with cannabinoid receptors in the body; this is known as the endocannabinoid system. Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the most common of these cannabinoids and is most often associated with cannabis for its notable and potent psychoactive effect.

A critical distinction between the two is that CBD and THC bind with different endocannabinoid receptors in varying ways, ultimately producing different effects on the body. As CBD is non-psychoactive, users don't face the potential risk of intoxication or failing a drug screening.

CBD and CBD-based preparations have been repeatedly demonstrated to provide relief for a variety of symptoms and conditions. Both preclinical and clinical trials have shown the efficacy of CBD therapy in treating conditions ranging all the way from anxiety to PTSD.

Can CBD Help Mental Health?

Along with anecdotal evidence from patients all over the world highlighting the impact CBD therapy has had on improving their lives, they've also compiled available academic research noting the efficacy of CBD in treating and managing such conditions. One such study, from the University of Mississippi, found that high doses of CBD provide significant antidepressant-like effects. Their evidence suggests that larger doses, around 200mg, yield symptom management similar to that of traditional pharmaceutical antidepressants.

Not only has CBD been demonstrated to have efficacious antidepressant-like effects, but it has been shown to have notable anxiolytic properties. A double-blind, randomized controlled experiment from the University of Sao Paulo found that CBD not only dramatically improves mood but also reduces cognitive impairment and discomfort in anxiety-triggering situations.

Evidence shows that CBD is also useful in helping to treat and mitigate symptoms arising from post-traumatic stress disorder. Research from New York University found that mitigating CB1 receptor disruption using CBD treatment not only improves fear extinction, but pretreatment may help reduce the retention of traumatic events as well.

A comprehensive review of the currently available academic and scientific evidence surrounding CBD by The Rockefeller University notes the remarkable efficacy of CBD in treating a variety of mental health and mood disorders. Their research found that not only can endocannabinoid deficiencies play a role in depressive responses, but that exogenous cannabinoid supplementation offers significant antidepressant and anxiolytic-like effects.

Does CBD Work?

As demonstrated above, there is a wealth of peer-reviewed academic research highlighting the promise that CBD can provide those struggling. Mental health and other healthcare professionals across all disciplines have been advocating the use of a supervised CBD therapeutic regimen to help treat and manage a wide variety of psychological symptoms and conditions.

As with beginning any therapeutic regimen, consult with your healthcare provider to ensure there aren't any conflicts with any other current treatments or medications. Furthermore, your healthcare provider could answer any additional questions you may have, helping you create an effective treatment plan to help manage your specific symptoms and conditions.

Have you or someone you know used CBD to help improve their mental health? DidCBDWork.com is currently gathering experiences from millions of people, just like you, who have used CBD to help manage their overall mental wellbeing. No matter if CBD worked for you or not, they would love to hear from you about your experience; these stories help those suffering see that there may be a solution out there for them.

https://verifiedcbd.com/

Author: John Alois