A Tale Of Mold, Money, And Morality

As highly social beings with non-negotiable survival needs, human health is equally impacted by relationships, environmental factors, the legal system and economics.

Oct 09, 2023

Dear friends,

When my mom asked me a few days ago how I was holding up so well under the circumstances, I said:

“What’s the alternative? Devolve into bitterness, resentment and a ‘why me’ victim mentality? That sounds a lot worse than choosing to see this as a blessing disguised as hardship. Besides, it’s just money. I can make more money. What matters the most is that I followed my conscience; and I have my health.”

“If you want to go on the adventure of your life, all you have to do is commit to telling the truth; or at least, DON’T LIE.”

Jordan Peterson, who I am paraphrasing above, has been an influential figure in my life for the past couple of years.

This admission may surprise some of you; and maybe there will be a flurry of unsubscribes. Which would only serve to prove his statement above as an accurate description of the very real social perils awaiting anyone who refuses to lie and aspires to tell the truth.

Today I want to talk about something that I believe is fundamental to human flourishing and, of course, to human freedom. And that is:

Personal moral integrity is an absolute necessity for human health.

There is so little we have control over in this world. As far as I can tell, the only thing that is always within our power is the ability to choose our thoughts, and from there - to align our behaviors and actions in accordance with our moral compass. We cannot control outcomes.

I’ve shared this before but it always bears repeating:

When I act in alignment with my conscience and maintain my moral integrity, then whatever outcome arises as a result is a GOOD outcome; even if it is painful.

When I first heard Jordan Peterson speak a few years ago, I had a visceral aversion to him; but at that exact moment in my life I had a made a promise to myself: anyone that I actively judged or reacted to with repulsion, I would voluntarily choose to listen to as an exercise in expanding my mind and my heart. In the very least, I’d learn something about myself.

Why am I so quick to judge certain people?
Where do those judgments come from?
What if I can’t even “see” this person because my judgments are blinding me to the truth of who they are?

The more I listened to him, the more I respected him; and then one day I realized we have far more in common than not, and he probably has a life philosophy that most closely matches mine of anyone currently alive (that I know of, anyway). Isn’t that something?

Can I find things to dislike about him? Of course. Just as I am certain you could find a hundred things to dislike about me (if you really knew me).

Recently, one of my YouTube videos went viral out of nowhere. It is about releasing emotions and trauma from the body.

After 15+ years in private practice, and after what feels like a lifetime spent healing my own traumas (which I’m still working on, by the way), here’s one thing I am certain of:

Most of our traumas and most root causes of “mystery” pain (like fibromyalgia) are rooted in the belief that we will not be loved and accepted for who we are; that we are not safe to speak our truth and express ourselves socially; that being our true selves will get us rejected, laughed at, judged, punished, bullied, abused or banished from the tribe. And so, because of this belief - which is valid and based on real experiences, because let’s face it: we are pretty terrible at accepting each other - we create false personas; we pretend to be someone we are not; we twist ourselves in knots and pretzel ourselves into whatever we believe we need to be in order to be liked, loved, and included.

This behavior is physically demanding and emotionally exhausting, triggering relentless inner turmoil that can - and does - lead to chronic physical pain and chronic illness; because no matter how hard we try to hide the truth from ourselves, we know deep down inside that we are living a lie; and we long for nothing more than to be truthful in our relationships.

Banishment from the tribe is a deeply rooted fear based in survival biology.

We evolved over thousands of years to depend on social inclusion and maintaining our place in the tribe; banishment meant almost certain death.

And even though we don’t rely - materially, anyway, and only as adults because children absolutely are reliant - on a close knit tribe like we did a few hundred (or a thousand) years ago, this fear of being a social outcast is the most deeply ingrained and universal human fear. This is why most people are far more afraid of public speaking than death.

While working with my body, specifically via Kinetix, was instrumental in helping me rewire my nervous system and release long held emotions, by far the most important action I have taken in my life to heal from trauma has been my commitment to truthful self expression, boundary setting in my relationships, acting in alignment with my conscience, and learning to advocate for myself in social situations that mirrored the traumas of my childhood.

One of these experiences came up for me last week, which I will talk about in a moment.

First, I’m wondering if you relate to this pattern I have noticed that most traumatized people share in common: it is a feeling of being “othered” by family, friends, peers, doctors, therapists…worse than simply not being listened to, it is the experience of having feelings, memories and beliefs invalidated. In more modern terms, this is called gaslighting.

Gaslighting, as defined by Psychology Today, is “an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity.”

Personally, I do NOT believe that gaslighting is reserved exclusively for deliberately manipulative psychopathic predators; I think it’s an ingrained human behavior that we are ALL - every single one of us - capable of perpetrating on each other whenever we are accused of a social “crime.” It’s a defensive maneuver designed to deflect personal responsibility and place all blame back on the person pointing the finger.

None of us enjoy being made wrong; it’s incredibly uncomfortable to be accused of anything resembling “bad.” So this behavior makes sense.

Very, very few people today are naturally good at healthy communication, which relies on relationship skills like collaboration, the art of negotiation, the courage to face conflict together, and the ability to repair.

It is, however, our individual responsibility to STOP the cycle of gaslighting, or “othering,” when we become conscious of our role in it - whether as the one who feels invalidated, or the one being accused.

Unfortunately, gaslighting now appears to be a socially rewarded sport, as more and more people take “sides” on charged issues (like terrain theory, vaccines and woke ideology) every “side” does their best to invalidate their opposition in order to control their behavior.

All of this social maneuvering has immense impacts on our physical and emotional health, which we often neglect to include in any of the public discourse about issues of collective consequence.

Human physiology is deeply affected by social life and relationships (one of the 5 primary constraints that help us develop freedom).

Under social duress we might shut down, dissociate, or learn to endure pain rather than feel it; we might build literal armor, since fascia thickens in the presence of prolonged fear; we might enter chronic states of fight or flight, succumb to all manner of addictions, or devolve into to a state of perpetual freeze, which has been proven to cause chronic fatigue, chronic pain and chronic disease.

All systems of the human organism, from blood flow to organ function, are affected by the state of our psyche; and human psychology is impacted most profoundly by social life.

The only thing that will truly help us heal these social wounds at a root level is to open our minds and our hearts to each other, especially when we disagree on matters of moral importance.

The thing is, we don’t even know who we are until we bump up against that which is not us. Most of us learned who NOT to be in childhood; to find out who we really are, we have to open our mouths, speak, and see how it feels to say what we think and believe; along the way we will undoubtedly find many reasons to change the way we think, and adopt new beliefs. This is “the adventure of your life” that Jordan Peterson talks about with such eloquence.

Likewise, morality and moral will can only be developed when we bump up against something (or someone) that we find repugnant to our values. We don’t even know we have morals until one of our values is violated!

And only when we recognize that we are all works in progress - that our moral virtues are in a state of perpetual development, and that it takes exercising our moral will to even know if we align with the values we think we do in our minds - will we understand what it takes to build a culture worthy of human dignity.

For example, there have been many times that I’ve “acted in alignment with my moral compass” only to find myself bedeviled by pangs conscience for months (and sometimes, for years) after taking said action.

Again and again, we get to choose; at all times, in all moments, we can choose our thoughts, and our response; and then choose again.

In the words of my favorite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

*Translation by Joanna Macy

Mold, money and moral conundrums.

I was supposed to move into my new apartment last Wednesday. A POD full of my belongings was sitting on the street, waiting to be emptied before the pick up date.

Tuesday morning I received an email from the landlord with a few updates about the move in process, and one line at the bottom of the email hit me like a gut punch: “btw, the floors were replaced.”

The bamboo floors were one of the things I was most excited about when I toured the apartment last month.

After 4 years living with vinyl flooring that I believed was making me sick because of off-gassing VOC’s (including formaldehyde), and which I also believed contributed to the development of a wicked case of plantar fascitis I had finally cured, I was so excited to have floors made of a natural material.

Instantly, I suspected that the new floors would be made of vinyl. And indeed, that is what I found out.

Vinyl floors, which are increasing in popularity, are made of VERY hard plastic and are supposedly “indestructible;” which means that whatever or whoever comes into contact with them is therefore the destructible party in the relationship; and since fascia absorbs mechanical stress, these floors are, I believe, incredibly destructive to the human body.

Since I had not been told the floors would be replaced when I toured the apartment, I had a sinking feeling that something very bad had happened. So I wrote back and requested a phone call.

With Stefan as my witness, I was told that extensive water damage had been discovered in the bedroom, along with mold in the drywall when they took out a few floorboards; and this was the reason for the new vinyl floors.

If you’ve ever suffered from mold related illness, as I have (and I know there are some of you reading this), then you will understand why alarm bells immediately went off upon hearing this.

I asked if the mold had been remediated professionally, and was not given an answer other than the mold had been removed along with some of the drywall, the cork and plastic sheeting, all baseboards and floors.

This was meant to reassure me, but it had the opposite effect; my heart started beating rapidly, and my body was flooded with the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. My body was reflecting to me that I was going into a fight response.

My first encounter with mold occurred in South Carolina in 2008. I got violently ill for months, and after that experience I became hyper sensitive to chemicals of all kinds.

In 2018 I spent Christmas with Stefan’s family in Texas and got so sick that I stayed in a hotel room for a couple days. Six months later they put their house up for sale, and when it was inspected they found a whole bunch of black mold growing inside the walls behind the stove where I’d spent hours cooking for everyone.

Ever since 2008, my body reacts within minutes to the presence of black mold. After a few hours I get violently ill.

Some of you might recall that Stefan and I tried to move to Austin, Texas in 2021.

On move in day I got sick with the all too familiar mold symptoms after less than an hour in the house; which led me to inspect the place more closely. Sure enough, black mold was visibly growing in the kitchen (and, I suspected, the walls); so I began repacking the U-haul and we left Texas the next day.

After six long months of living out of hotels and AirBnB’s, we landed in southern California…where I learned that I do not fare well by the sea. (Geography, weather and environmental factors impact human health more than we realize).

I was invited to inspect the apartment for myself.

When I got the email I knew instantly: I would not be able to live there.

But my mom and Stefan both thought that I should go look at it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad? Maybe I could use an ozonator, or a HEPA filter?

As soon as I walked in, I felt my throat and lungs burning; a few minutes later my chest started tightening, my belly began distending, I felt nauseous and close to throwing up.

You don’t need a play by play of this saga.

What feels important to convey is the very real costs of dismissing intuitive knowings.

We all know what is healthy and unhealthy for us, and it doesn’t always make logical sense (especially to other people!) Often, we lack “proof” for what we know.

The question is: how much pain and hardship will we have to go through before we are willing to consistently and unquestioningly ACT ON those knowings?

What ensued after the inspection was a series of texts, email exchanges and one phone call with the male landlord, in which my very real and legitimate health concerns were dismissed or diminished. They did return my deposit, but kept the rent I’d paid them for October.

I imagine they experienced my strong reaction to this news as an accusation of sorts, because I couldn’t hide the astonishment and anger I was feeling that they hadn’t immediately called me when they discovered the mold a week ago.

I believe I had a right to be made aware of the presence of mold, and my own moral values would never allow me to move forward with a tenant if I were in their shoes. But I am not in their shoes.

I wish, in situations like this, that it was a more common impulse to work together in support of everyone’s best interest. To listen to each other. To re-negotiate contracts with compassion and care for all involved. Unfortunately, it’s extremely rare; and most people act in defensive and offensive self protection and self interest.

Meanwhile, the legal system in the United States is designed to protect property owners (those with the economic resources to buy land and investment properties). Tenants have almost zero rights.

Where is our morality as a culture?

Why are we so afraid to talk to each other?

How can we build a more ethical legal system?

Is money really all that people like these landlords care about?

Why do so many people (like my past self) just roll over, and either forfeit their money or put themselves in harm’s way to avoid conflict, or because they feel disempowered?

I could have moved into the apartment out of sheer terror, re-traumatized and frozen into inaction.

Thankfully, I’ve healed this part of myself and I will no longer be bullied, gaslit or intimidated into submission.

Thankfully, the wife disclosed the mold to me when I asked why the floors had been replaced.

While there were a million obstacles in my path the last week - the POD that had to be picked up empty in 48 hours, my shrinking bank account, the crazy housing market here (it took me 5 weeks to find the apartment), and the fact that it is almost winter - I knew that the only real obstacles were inside my own mind and body.

No matter what, I would honor my intuitive knowings and follow my conscience; and I knew I would get sick if I moved into that apartment. So I quickly started looking for alternative housing.

I moved into a new condo yesterday 🙌🌟.

The owner is friendly, warm, kind, helpful, compassionate and capable of negotiating needs in our new relationship as tenant and landlord. I almost rented his condo a month ago, and he was so disappointed when I decided not to move forward. The primary reason I didn’t take it before is because it’s big - it has 3 bedrooms.

Remarkably, he hadn’t rented it yet.

After spending the last 24 hours there, it is starting to feel like a home I could grow into over many years.

We’ll see.

I have my health; and my moral will.

Everything else is is figure-out-able.

Human health depends on our ability to understand the complex dynamics playing out between all of these separate and connected elements of life.

We are not the purely material robots that modern science often portrays us to be; we cannot be divided into ever smaller parts, and treated like cars that we can just take to the mechanic; if this were true then we would be healthier, happier and more functional than 100 years ago…but we are not. Our life spans are getting shorter while chronic disease, chronic pain, mental illness and addictions are skyrocketing in developed countries.

If I had moved into the apartment, it is hard to say whether any illness that may have resulted would be due to mold, or formaldehyde (or other VOCs); or from suppressing the truth of my inner nature and acting against my better judgment; or because I succumbed to the intimidation tactics of landlors, or the imploring voice of my mother. All of these can cause dis-ease.

I didn’t lie.

I told the truth.

And I’ve been on one hell of an adventure the past week.

Freedom isn’t an easy path to walk; it’s the hardest thing we will ever do. It’s also the most rewarding.

I hope you are speaking your truth and acting in accordance with your conscience today.

If you’re not, I wish you the courage to begin. Your life is already hard; I don’t need to know you to know this. Life is often painful, and hard.

When you embark on a path of true human freedom, at least you will develop yourself through the inevitable hardships into someone you deeply love and respect; and you are guaranteed to have the adventure of your life.

With love,
Elisha

The Human Freedom Project

Discussion about this post