How Can You Make These Claims? A Message (Invite) to the Shirilla Family

追加: 2026-06-04

[00:00:06]Okay. So, I woke up this morning to emails and comments with people asking, "Sam, how do you know? How can you make some of these claims about McKenzie Sharilla?" And I want to be clear because there are two types of analysis that you'll see me do. One is from my perspective as a clinician, as a person working in mental health for 25 years who has developed um I guess a certain eye, I I guess, right, for lack of a better way to say it, a certain ability to take all that I've learned from many, many, many, many years of formal education and an equal many many amount of years working in the field with mental illness. And I want to be clear because I think nowadays with social media, you know, it's kind of fun to take these little quizzes about, you know, what's my diagnosis or to go into the ICD or the DSM and like self diagnose and and I get that that's kind of a fun activity, but there is a very distinct difference between somebody who has a very real everpresent mental illness or mental health diagnosis and somebody who's like the average person with some anxiety and depression. And I'm not discounting the pain and suffering of somebody in that position.

[00:01:36]But I am saying that there is a very distinct palpable difference between the two. And when we see as professionals who have done this type of formal study both with people in real life and in an academic setting, we know it, right? We know it. And here's the thing that most people probably don't understand about mental illness.

[00:02:00]The reason why as professionals we can sit with somebody, get to know them a little bit and give a diagnostic picture is because mental illness is predictable in the same way that a medical professional can look at a bunch of X-rays and CAT scans and then sit you down and say, "Okay, based on the evidence that I've collected, you have this medical issue and because of that, we are going to treat it in a certain way. As mental health professionals, that's exactly what we are able to do.

[00:02:38]We are looking at the full picture of signs and symptoms and that takes on a predictable course which means in different context under different circumstances we're going to see very specific signs and symptoms over time.

[00:03:05]That's what gives us the ability to make a diagnosis.

[00:03:13]And we also know that when that's happening in a family system and the vast majority of us are engaging in some type of familial system, even if it's just a spouse or you know you and your child, that's a family system.

[00:03:28]It also a mental illness, mental health problems have a way of engaging with their systems, their immediate familial systems, friends and family, what have you. Even larger systems like institutions, it shows up a certain way. Okay, it has certain uh it's sort of grown, right?

[00:03:50]It's shaped that illness can be shaped in certain ways, but also it's shaping the environment back. Okay. So, it's a dance and that dance, particularly when we're talking about parents and children, is locked in very early on in a child's life. One of the things that is the most challenging for human beings to change is how they interact with another person that they're very familiar with. That's why couples work is challenging. That's why if you have a life partner and you start to hit challenges, it's not so simple to change because we're sort of hardwired in how we interact. Once we develop that set pattern, we're hardwired in our interactions and reactions to other people that are close to us, particularly children and parents because obviously that relationship solidifies very early on in a child's life, right?

[00:04:55]So the reason why as a clinical professional and a person who's done this work for so long, particularly working with families, when we see it the same way that a medical professional can look at a situation and give you a diagnosis and then give you a course of treatment, that's what we are trained to do. And it's every family maybe that I've ever worked with. When they first meet you, they want to give you everything that they can about them because they assume that their situation is circumstantial, that the problems that they are bringing to you are each little nitty-gritty detail is super important and their situation is different. And I get that. I'm sure I would do exactly the same thing if it was me and my family bringing that problem to a professional. I would want them to know everything they could possibly know. But what that family doesn't understand is that if this is a mental illness, let's just take um an opioid use disorder. Let's just let's just take an addiction because it's a very easy simple example. I don't need to know anything about that person's history to know when we see certain very clear indicators, certain symptoms and signs. Okay, this is an opioid use disorder. Now once I know that that doesn't just mean that person takes opioids certain drugs what it means is their entire neurochemical structure and personality has changed has been altered by the repeated introducing of a very powerful mood altering substance over time. Now the family doesn't know that.

[00:06:42]The family has no idea that the person that they've learned to engage with as an active opioid use disordered individual. They have no idea that as a professional, I already know who that person is. I know their personality. I know how they react to things. I know so much probably more than they do because once I understand that that is in fact the diagnosis, I know that their neurobiology has been changed in such a way that their personality and behavior has been shaped and changed by it too. So I don't need to know every incident that's ever happened in the family. I don't even know about that trauma yet because this person if they're in an active opioid use disorder, we can't address any kind of underlying traumas until much later.

[00:07:35]Like we have a everpresent pressing issue and that is the opioid use disorder that must be treated before we're going to go deep and delving into effectively traumas. I mean we could talk about trauma but we're not going to get anywhere with treating it until way later. Now, obviously, families don't understand that, but it's not different if you come to me with an active mental illness either. It's not different if you come to me with a very active uh personality disorder either. And once that diagnosis is made and once I'm sure of that diagnosis, and sometimes I might absolutely, you know, sit down with a group of other professionals and say, "Hey, here's what I'm seeing. I have a supervision group who I'm going to be seeing on Friday." And we meet periodically so that we can do just that. We can talk about cases and say, "Hey, what do you guys think about this?

[00:08:22]And do you think this is the the right intervention?" Right? That's what we do.

[00:08:25]We we work together in the best case scenario uh with other professionals, with other psychiatrists or psychologists or counselors, we work together to try to offer the best possible outcome for the people that we support that we help.

[00:08:41]So when a Sharerilla family member, when mom or dad says, "You don't know my daughter, you don't know my Mackenzie, you don't know us." So, how could you possibly make these claims? Well, the truth of the matter is, no, actually, when we see when I spend hours listening to mom and McKenzie on phone calls, when I look at texts between McKenzie and her dad going back, you know, to 2020, when I am seeing anything at all, I look at these um I don't know what they're called, infraction reports from prison.

[00:09:15]When I look at that, I look at the sum total of every bit of information that I am collecting about McKenzie Sharilla and I am evaluating that to try to understand what's going on here. What's going on here? What's going on here?

[00:09:26]What's going on here? And that's how diagnosis are arrived at. Now, I am not and I will admit this absolutely with no problem at all. I am not sitting with Mackenzie Sharilla. I can't say from interacting with her directly that I know for sure what her situation is. No, I can't say that. Nor would I say that because if McKenzie Sharilla was working with me, I wouldn't be saying anything at all about McKenzie Sharilla. Right?

[00:09:55]So, no, I cannot tell you with absolute certainty that this is the diagnostic picture. However, if I was sitting in a room on paper with this case and had a bunch of other mental health professionals in that room with me of all types and we were looking at this case, I am certain that we would all come to the same conclusion. We might argue about whether or not there's a degree of narcissism and to what degree.

[00:10:22]But I don't think that we are seeing the typical psychopathy as someone who does not have is born without the ability to feel empathy. I don't think that's what we're seeing. McKenzie was not, you know, putting kittens in microwaves when she's 5 years old or obsessed with starting fires or actively trying to murder somebody for the sake of murdering and harming another person.

[00:10:49]McKenzie's being motivated by something else. It is not simply to feel pleasure at the um cost of somebody else's pain.

[00:11:00]That's not what we're seeing here.

[00:11:02]McKenzie is coming from a place of uh inner angst and it is spilling out onto the world. So if you're in her path for some reason, if you wind up in front of her in such a way where she sees you as a threat to her directly or if you are maybe prettier or smarter than her, if she sees you as somebody who's going to take something from her, or if she feels, you know, that you have some power or authority over her, then yeah, you're going to be in her crosshairs and then she's going to target you. But she's not somebody who at random is going to look to hurt you because it makes her feel better to make somebody else suffer. That's not what we're dealing with here. However, as I said, I am confident if we got into a room as a bunch of professionals and we were looking at this case on paper, we would all arrive at a very the same or similar conclusion.

[00:12:06]This is somebody who has a borderline personality disorder and it's a pretty severe one. And because we know that it's a personality disorder, what that means is the signs and symptoms are going to be consistent across circumstances and situations over time.

[00:12:28]And if it goes without any treatment intervention whatsoever, it is likely to only get worse. It does not spontaneously just disappear. A personality disorder is a personality disorder. It is diagnosed as such for a reason. It means it's how this person inherently behaves and thinks and operates, what they're motivated by. And again, it is consistent across situations and over time. That's how the diagnosis is formulated.

[00:13:05]So, I don't have to know McKenzie Sharilla to know that this is what's happening. And this is a pretty serious case. I mean, this is behavior that's consistent over time. And here's what I will say about Natalie Sharilla. I am sure that these two, particularly Natalie, is terrified right now, scared to death, freaking out. And you know why? Because she doesn't want McKenzie to feel the backlash of all of this media attention. She doesn't want her to feel the pain and suffering of somebody like Kim Kardashian publicly saying she wants no part of McKenzie Sharilla's case. That she sees, God forbid, McKenzie as responsible for her behavior.

[00:13:55]This is Natalie's number one driving force. It's her biggest fear.

[00:14:02]And if Natalie would like, and I am inviting her formerly, Natalie or Steve Sharilla, if you want to come on with me and have a conversation privately or publicly about your daughter's situation and you want me to hear you out, I'm happy to do that.

[00:14:19]And I get that it would probably make them feel better to be able to write us all off as just trolls who are only out for our own 15 minutes to ride the coattails of this case. I get it. You want to say that's fine. For me personally, I just go where I'm interested. I go where I personally am interested. I go in the direction of what I find interesting or what somebody else asks me to investigate or to look into. That's what I'm going to look at.

[00:14:47]This is an interesting case. My sister just happened to contact me. She knew that the crash was coming out on Netflix. She said, "Hey sis, I think you should check out the Mackenzie Sharilla case. This documentary is coming out and I think you would find it really interesting." So that's what I did. It happened to blow up. Great. If it did or if it didn't, either way, I was going to talk about it because she asked me to.

[00:15:09]And that is what I have done in the past. It's what I will continue to do.

[00:15:12]That's how I discovered the Karen Reed case. That is how I discovered uh the Casey Anthony case. That is how I will discover probably many cases going into the future.

[00:15:25]But I also understand that people need to make sense of things how they need to make sense of things and I'm fine with that. But to try to write off all of our opinions as just trolling, just looking for our 15 minutes or we don't know because we don't know McKenzie. And that's fine. That's a defense.

[00:15:45]Everyone's entitled to their opinion.

[00:15:48]I'm fine with that. But I'm giving you the answer to the question. The the answer to the question is that as a professional, we don't need to know all the nitty-gritty circumstances to know what's going on because we look at signs, symptoms, and behavior across time.

[00:16:03]And mental illness is very predictable.

[00:16:07]And generally speaking, humans are pretty predictable. But when it comes to a mental health diagnosis, that's what makes it a diagnosis. That's what makes it diagnosable is that it's predictable.

[00:16:19]Okay. So that's the first part. The second part which is very important also is then I will do statement analysis.

[00:16:29]Statement analysis is skill set that is completely separate although it's still me making you know doing the work. It's not coming from my clinical training.

[00:16:39]It's coming from a different type of training. This is more of a law enforcement training, more of what you'll see high level law enforcement professionals will use in interrogations to try to figure out if somebody's telling the truth. But in that tool, in the use of that tool, as it has become more refined, we are able to use that skill to compare how somebody talks normally with how they are talking in a certain circumstance to come to a conclusion about what the meaning of their words are.

[00:17:22]And this is not body language analysis.

[00:17:25]I want to be clear, statement analysis and body language analysis are not the same thing. Somebody like me might use body language analysis, but in this case, I didn't do that because I couldn't show you the Netflix documentary because of copyright. So, I was really stuck with just her words.

[00:17:41]And I prefer that anyway because I don't want to confuse people. I want you to understand that statement analysis is about somebody's language, their use of language, and how their brain draws from memories. our use of language and our ability to put that language into certain grammatical structure because of how the brain does that naturally.

[00:18:04]If you study this very specific tool, you learn that people will vary their speech patterns within themselves when they're being deceptive.

[00:18:18]And in those variances are clear indicators of deception. Now, I can't always tell you what the truth is based on somebody's language because they're not always giving us their truth. This is a different skill set, but I stand by both.

[00:18:38]And I invite the Sharillas if you want to come on with me and give me your reason for why I'm wrong. Believe me, I love being wrong. Actually, I'm somebody who really enjoys being wrong because that's what learning is. And I care much more about truth and learning than I give a about being right. Sometimes people think I come off as arrogant because that's just how I talk. It's not because I think I'm better than anybody.

[00:19:05]It's just how I talk. You know, I had a boyfriend once that used to say to me all the time, "Dumb it down, Sam. Dumb it down." And I felt bad. I just talk this way because I've been in school for 25 years. You know what I'm saying? It's just the way I talk. But let me be clear that I stand by what I am saying. I won't say anything that I don't stand by. Just so you know, for the future.

[00:19:26]And I'm happy to go against public uh belief, right? Like if you look into all the videos I've made over the last year, I have no problem going up against the the grain. I don't like it. I don't want to tell people things they don't want to hear. But I will because what I care about is the truth and I will be unapologetic about that truth if that's what I conclude based on what I'm seeing. So in this case, I'm not blowing smoke. I'm not just telling you the popular opinion. I'm telling you what I truly believe based on many years of doing this work and an incredibly obsessive personality who studied statement analysis every day for the last two years so I could use it in situations like this with Mackenzie Sharilla. Now that I've got that out of the way, I invite you Natalie and Steve to join me anytime you want. I'm more than happy to have a conversation about this with you or anybody for that matter because this is what I do. It's fun for me. I'm happy happy to hear anybody out anytime.

[00:20:34]But I want to be clear about why I'm saying what I'm saying and hopefully that has helped.