Therapist Reacts to "Hi Ren" by Ren
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
- Jeremy Schumacher, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, reviews the song "Hi Ren" by Ren. In today's video, Jeremy discusses everything from mental health treatment to the importance of autonomy to the devil.
Find more mental health information, weekly blogs, and social media for Jeremy at wellnesswithje...
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Another renegade subbed! Let’s go! I’m sure there are several that everyone will suggest but one you won’t want to miss that sometimes gets overlooked is “dominoes” by ren it’s very MH relevant regarding self image
Ren was mostly bedbound from 19 to 26 with rampant pain,brain fog, digestive issues and unable to eat. Doctors insisted that his symptoms were all in his head and all of the drugs he was fed for bipolar, depression, anxiety just gave him more issues. All the while, it was Lyme disease, Bartonella and increasing autoimmunity issues caused by the bacterias. Six years into his illness,still without a diagnosis, he entered psychosis at 25 in an autoimmune reaction to a fecal transplant. In that state he believed he was possessed and was living in excruciating pain. BTW he is adhd also and has ptsd from all those years in bed. He has been doing brain retraining ing because of all the neurological damage and memory loss. He still has Lyme and Bartonella ,MCAS, POTS, DISAUTONOMIA and damage to his body from inflamation. He takes about 100 pills a day and a very restricted diet. He is planning his 3rd stem cell transplant next month, since that did help him before.
Ren is agnostic but has always lived the stories of our interactions with the Bible stories and Greek mythologies.
You mughr like his song Seven Sins which talks about the fall into psychosis and Slaughterhouse which lays out his internal reality with 15 years of chronic illness
Renegade here. He’s amazing and a gem for mental health.
Other songs of Ren. Chalk outlines, How to be me, Su!cide, Hold on, Diazepam, Troubles etc etc. all about the mental .
Re: blocking
Ren allows monetization of reactions, but he had to turn content ID on because scammers were claiming the content in his place when it was off. His YT guy, Ethan, set up a form for reactors to use to request release... you can still just dispute the claims, but the form is a direct line to the team and is faster and guaranteed to reach them. We can't put outside links in YT comments, but I have the link on my Community Tab.
As a disclaimer... I'm actually atheist and while I'm not mad at literal interpretations, I don't love them, either. I found your interpretations thorough and they fit more than some therapist-reactors' do for me. Enjoyed it. That said, Ren definitely leans into theological imagery (though not always Christian) but even within this song, he ends with "demons, angels or gods" - gods, plural - which should be antithetical to a purely Christian framework. I much prefer to interpret it as the devil on your shoulder and the fact that we who are familiar with him know that Ren believes there is good and bad in everyone. So the devil (on the shoulder) can just be saying individuals and even humanity has never existed without the darkness/ light duality or without choices. In that context, it remains in the realm of personal responsibility.
That said, there are circumstances to Ren's particular story that do overshadow the mental health narrative and explain why he does drift into the "lack of responsibility". As people said, Ren's underlying issue was undiagnosed Lyme disease destroying his body over a number of years. Early on he was given a number of mental health diagnoses (depression and bipolar-related, mostly) and told the pain was psychosomatic. He put in the work and kept getting worse, anyway. He took the psych drugs and they only piled on complications. Then they told him he had ME, which was another illness that had no prognosis and no actual framework for getting "better" and he struggled with that, too. If you hear his story, he's actually crazy driven to take control of anything he can... his determination is insane and the lengths he went to to get himself diagnosed and treated are really insane. That at least partially explains why he also has to remind himself it isn't all in his control and to "soften" and also just exist with it. But after half a decade of trying to get better and slowly dying anyway, he did turn to the possibility that an outside force of some kind - and not just spiritual, also things like government experiments as he became mostly bedbound and his grasp on reality declined - could be responsible because he was out of ideas and still fighting an unknown foe. One of his greatest struggles is in trying to come to grips with the "why". If there was a reason or a purpose for how much he suffered seemingly needlessly or if it really was pointless.
Ultimately that's why he's recently decided he identifies as more "spiritual" than the agnostic he used to say. He told us (in the Slaughter House livestream, for anyone interested) he still questions but it makes him feel better to believe there's a purpose and he sees no reason *not* to lean into what will make him feel better if it doesn't hurt anything. Anyway. By the time he got diagnosed - and still had to fight to get treated - it had been six years and permanent damage was done.
He's still trying everything he can to claw back as much of his life as he can, 13 years later. BUT he has talked about the mental health struggles he had even before the Lyme and the PTSD and brain damage symptoms that have been piled on since. He's a major spokesperson and advocate for chronic illness, mental health and su!c!de awareness, all three, as well as the need for reforms in the medical industry... and society as a whole with very stringent anti-greed/pro-community messaging. He's a really inspirational guy on all fronts.
Off the top of my head, song-wise...
Depression, Insomnia, Diazapam, Sick Boy, How To Be Me (live version), Chalk Outlines (live version), Everybody Drops, Ready For You, Hold On... even songs like Heretic and Penitence have their mental health moments. I know there are more on Love Music but I get a lot of the early ones confused.
Freckled Angels, Su!c!de and For Joe are su!cide-related.
Power, Genesis, Troubles, Seven Sins, Castles Made Of Sand, Lost All Faith, Crutch and Pocket Full Of Pain are more about Ren's personal story. (The first two being pretty upbeat songs as opposed to the heaviness of a lot of these)
I wouldn't recommend doing *just* Ren's mental health songs... if people don't intersperse some of his lighter "just for fun" tracks even these with hopeful messages tend to take their toll on reactors just because Ren has a way of really drawing emotions to the surface. I think it's how raw and open he is with his own emotions, leading by example kind of gets minds mirroring. It's beautiful and actually healing... but can be exhausting.
Well written 👏👍
I totally learned some things watching this and I have icky internal dialog. I'm apparently a lot smarter then I thought I was...lol. Love your message and I definitely wanted to say thank you!
@@Shelleyc1972 glad you found it helpful!
Reactors always give the two sides names devil/angel, good/bad, light/dark, even you gave them Gollum/Smeagol. In the part you don’t like he’s not giving it an outside identity, he’s using descriptors that have been used forever for that negative voice.
Yep we are here❤Ren
Imposter syndrome is such a pain, it hit me hard after trying to recover from a stroke in my 40s. Trying to dig myself out of a pit medically while trying to maintain skills in an area I’ve worked in for two decades has not always worked out but I feel close to pushing myself out of it. At least I can sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Ren’s story is interesting and Lyme disease does absolutely nothing good for anyone (myself included).
Appreciate the thoughts and reaction.
Ren is misdiagnosed for many years, leaving him with a lot of healthproblems because of the wrong medication. ( after years a doctor from Belgium diagnosed Ren with Lyme disease and after that he got stemcell therapy and now he is slightly doing better)
Would love to see a reaction to NF. His music is mental health focused. I would really suggest starting with mansion
Sorry, but can I suggest you tweak your sound a bit? I had to really boost sound to hear you, and then I was jumping out of my skin when the song continued (it's really late here and people are asleep!) 😄
Your analysis was was incredibly in depth, but lengthy. You dislike certain themes/tropes used in this song and that's fine, it's your opinion but can we just acknowledge that a) this is Ren's expression of HIS lived experience and b) this is art, not a peer reviewed article? I've either read or heard somewhere (please don't quote me people!) that when he was incredibly ill, he saw:
"God tied a noose to his neck and he walked to the edge and he jumped,
Angels wept,
I bear witness, watching the whole thing unfold from my bed" (from Seven Sins)
He has a very conflicted relationship with religion but he believes creating music is the "closest thing to God".
Its worth reading the comments on Hi Ren btw
Have subbed for more Ren
Ren had 4 months in psychosis and so its a part of his lived experience and he has had some short relapses into that because of the infections and parasitic damage to his brain and body
As others already stated Ren was misdiagnosed for years and as the doctors weren't able to help him properly he was convinced at some point that the cause for his pain has to be something supernatural, something demonic, he even had an exorcism once. Obviously it didn't help. But the deep dive he took into several religions stayed. He says he's agnostic but he likes the stories and metaphers, how things are worded so he has religious lines throughout his catalogue (as well as Lord Of The Ring references ;) ).
The other recommendations are all great and I want to add Dominoes and The Tale Of Jenny & Screetch (it's one story over 3 songs, so please watch the full version (12+ mins))
The one thing I love most about reactions is to see the direct impact a song or a line has, so 1st watches are welcome :D Still very thoughtful insight, I enjoyed it!
Renegades here's another one. 😊