Speaker 1: You can have a sense of identity, but you allow
Speaker 1: that identity to grow and to change. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Life goes by fast,
Speaker 1: often too fast for most of us, and when people
Speaker 1: get to the end of their lives, what they do
Speaker 1: is they look back and they regret the things they
Speaker 1: didn't do. So what are the things that you are
Speaker 1: not doing that you keep saying you're going to do
Speaker 1: but you're unable to do. Bring those things to me
Speaker 1: in the one You feed transformation program, and let's see
Speaker 1: if we can preempt those regrets. Let's get you live
Speaker 1: in the life that you know you can live that
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you're just not doing the blocks could
Speaker 1: be from all different places. But what we do in
Speaker 1: the program is we look at you, and we look
Speaker 1: at your life, what you want to accomplish, and what
Speaker 1: your challenges are, and we come up with a plan
Speaker 1: that helps you to do the things that you want
Speaker 1: to do, to do the things that make life matter.
Speaker 1: And I'm there with you every step of the way,
Speaker 1: helping you accomplish these things and again doing the things
Speaker 1: that matter so that when you look back later, you
Speaker 1: don't have these regrets about how you let all this
Speaker 1: time go without doing these important things. If this resonates
Speaker 1: with you, go to Eric Zimmer dot coach slash application
Speaker 1: and set up a time for us to talk. I
Speaker 1: won't try and convince you the programs the right fit
Speaker 1: for you. I'll tell you what I can do to
Speaker 1: help you where I can help you, and I'll be
Speaker 1: sure to give you a couple of tips to take
Speaker 1: on your way. Even if you decide we're not the
Speaker 1: right fit. I can share with you lots of testimonials
Speaker 1: of really, really happy clients who shared with me that
Speaker 1: this is one of the best things they ever did.
Speaker 1: So again, go to Eric Zimmer dot coach slash application
Speaker 1: and let's get you moving today in the direction of
Speaker 1: the things that are really important to you. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Henneck.
Speaker 1: Mark has appeared in more than a hundred television segments
Speaker 1: and countless us more radio, print and online features about
Speaker 1: mental health. Mark's ted talk Why We Choose Suicide is
Speaker 1: among the most watched in the world, with over six
Speaker 1: million views. Hi. Mark, Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks
Speaker 1: for having Mark. I'm really happy to have you on.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk in this episode about suicide, your story,
Speaker 1: um of you know, kind of what what happened with
Speaker 1: you and um just you know. We're going to explore
Speaker 1: mental health and in more detail. But let's start like
Speaker 1: we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather
Speaker 1: who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves that are inside of us, and
Speaker 1: they are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear, and the granddaughter stops and
Speaker 1: she thinks about it for a second, and she looks
Speaker 1: up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you've feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that paragoul means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So for me, I think
Speaker 1: the um duality of life and death has haunted me
Speaker 1: for pretty much my entire life, and in many ways
Speaker 1: talking about death has become my life's purpose. Uh, in
Speaker 1: many ways it has saved my life. So for me,
Speaker 1: this idea of you know, which one you feed? I
Speaker 1: could have fed the narrative that death could overcome me,
Speaker 1: that death was inescapable, which granted it is. But in
Speaker 1: my ways, in my life, rather in my my way
Speaker 1: of looking at it, I guess the two sides of
Speaker 1: the same coin. Uh, in terms of which side of
Speaker 1: that coin I feed, I guess, um, you know, for me,
Speaker 1: reconceptualizing that reconceptualizing my struggle and in many ways, my
Speaker 1: persistent struggle. It's what it's given me the most life,
Speaker 1: it's what's given me the most purpose. So so I
Speaker 1: happened to choose that definition of my struggle, that something
Speaker 1: that I overcame, because that's what I need to believe.
Speaker 1: That's that's the narrative that I need to apply to
Speaker 1: my life, and and my life is better because of
Speaker 1: it makes total sense. So why don't you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about your story. You gave one of
Speaker 1: the most popular TED talks of all time on suicide.
Speaker 1: It's probably is the most popular TED talk about suicide ever,
Speaker 1: although I don't have the facts to back that up,
Speaker 1: but I would assume. So, UM, you know, share a
Speaker 1: little bit about what brought you to the point where
Speaker 1: you became a mental health advocate. Well, that started in
Speaker 1: high school and I was still very much struggling at
Speaker 1: the time. UM. I had been in and out of
Speaker 1: hospital by that point, in and out of psychiatric words
Speaker 1: specifically in my local small town hospital, UM at least
Speaker 1: seven times. And as I looked back, I've I've since
Speaker 1: written a book and have now gone through six drafts
Speaker 1: of that book. So I've been through these stories a lot,
Speaker 1: and and all of my medical records of in that
Speaker 1: I'm in and out of hospital, and I saw a
Speaker 1: very clear what we call in the clinical world decompensation
Speaker 1: or or or unraveling in my life. That it started
Speaker 1: out my suicidality at about twelve years old, and it
Speaker 1: started out with just ideas thinking about it, not even
Speaker 1: really having any intent or plan or even clear idea
Speaker 1: of why I wanted to do this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And that's the other thing. Nobody gave me the idea
Speaker 1: to try to kill myself. It kind of grew organically
Speaker 1: in me. But what people did give me the idea
Speaker 1: was that I wasn't allowed to talk about it, and
Speaker 1: in many ways that message for me was far more damaging,
Speaker 1: UH than than the symptoms themselves. So what started as
Speaker 1: something very amorphous and and ill defined gradually grew over
Speaker 1: repeated attempts UH struggling, very deeply, repeated hospitalizations, to the
Speaker 1: point where I was unhelpable, that I was broken, UH,
Speaker 1: that I was just one of the unlucky few. I
Speaker 1: was Irish Catholic, that so raised to believe that it
Speaker 1: was just my cross to bear, that I was just
Speaker 1: one of the unfortunate sufferers, and that life is hard,
Speaker 1: and of course it is, but there was no hope
Speaker 1: in that for me, and I didn't want to live
Speaker 1: that life it's not that I wanted to die necessarily,
Speaker 1: even just for the sake of dying it' said. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to live like that. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: live in a world of people who I felt didn't
Speaker 1: care for me um because I just didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: experience that on a day to day basis, with you know,
Speaker 1: growing up in a small town poor, having experienced trauma,
Speaker 1: having never having experienced any other way of living. So
Speaker 1: when I got to high school, it was after I
Speaker 1: had had a suicide attempt in which I was I
Speaker 1: thought it was going to be my final attempt. It
Speaker 1: was my plan was for it to be my final
Speaker 1: attempt to jump from a bridge in my small hometown
Speaker 1: of Sydney, Nova, Scotia, which stretch over an old, abandoned
Speaker 1: steel plant that used to be in the area. That
Speaker 1: was an important place for me, like many suicide hotspots
Speaker 1: or suicide magnets or have some sort of significance for people,
Speaker 1: and that place was significant for me because this steel
Speaker 1: plant represented an area that used to be so vital,
Speaker 1: It used to have so much life and used to
Speaker 1: provide literally the livelihood for everybody in my hometown for
Speaker 1: all thirty two plus sons and uncles that I had,
Speaker 1: but here it was abandoned and empty and alone and
Speaker 1: falling down. And that's exactly how I felt inside. So
Speaker 1: so I felt like that place got me. And when
Speaker 1: I went there late at night and intending to kill myself,
Speaker 1: it was a complete stranger who stopped, who eventually had
Speaker 1: to reach out when I let go of the railing
Speaker 1: and started to fall, and he grabbed me and pulled
Speaker 1: me back. And you know, my recovery didn't happen that night,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. I mean, I'm still working on my
Speaker 1: recovery every day. But I think the small, one degree
Speaker 1: of shift that did happen when that complete stranger saved
Speaker 1: my life was that I started to get a bit
Speaker 1: of a glimpse of being somebody else, that I didn't
Speaker 1: have to be this poor kid who was struggling, who
Speaker 1: was destined to be, according to all the news media,
Speaker 1: of violent criminal because I had a mental illness, which
Speaker 1: of course isn't true. But I didn't know that. Because
Speaker 1: I didn't, I didn't hear anything else. So that was
Speaker 1: the first glimpse that, hey, maybe I don't have to
Speaker 1: be uh the sufferer. Maybe I can be like this
Speaker 1: stranger who pulls kids off bridges and who saves people's
Speaker 1: lives and who hears them. That's what was different about him.
Speaker 1: I felt like he heard me and he connected with
Speaker 1: me literally and metaphorically. And when I decided that, I
Speaker 1: think that's what started to change. So I went to
Speaker 1: high school and my high school principle and I said
Speaker 1: I wanted to share my story for the very first time.
Speaker 1: He of course said no, promptly and clearly he said no.
Speaker 1: But he because he said, you know, the this old
Speaker 1: stigma trope that if you talk about suicide, it gives
Speaker 1: people the idea to go out and do it. And
Speaker 1: that's just not true. It's not supported by the research.
Speaker 1: There's there's right ways and wrong ways to talk about suicide. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: there reasons why on Netflix is the wrong way for
Speaker 1: I wrote all about that for CNN, and I'm very
Speaker 1: vocal on that point. And they're not the only ones,
Speaker 1: not the not the point the finger at them. But
Speaker 1: there's a right way and a wrong way to do it.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to do the research. And um, I'm also,
Speaker 1: I think, starting at that moment, an activist in many
Speaker 1: ways too. So I went home to my little basement
Speaker 1: bedroom with my Ozzy Osbourne posters on the walls, and
Speaker 1: I wrote my first ever article and op ed to
Speaker 1: my local newspaper, the Cape Brinton Post. I'm sure all
Speaker 1: your listeners are subscribers to the Yeah Yeah, Yes, I
Speaker 1: think I like in the high school administration to Communist
Speaker 1: Russia for stifling my free speech. And the next morning
Speaker 1: there were television news cameras in the principal's office asking
Speaker 1: why it wasn't okay to talk about suicide and why
Speaker 1: it wasn't okay to talk about mental health. And I
Speaker 1: felt like two things happened after I did that. The
Speaker 1: first thing was that I felt freer for being open
Speaker 1: about my story. That I think I had been suffocating
Speaker 1: myself by the idea that I couldn't talk about this stuff,
Speaker 1: and that I was being controlled by this idea that
Speaker 1: I couldn't be open about who I was and what
Speaker 1: I had experienced. And the other thing that happened that
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting was that people, even relatives, friends, family members, colleagues,
Speaker 1: complete strangers, started coming up to me and telling me
Speaker 1: that they had experienced what I had, what I was
Speaker 1: currently going through, or that their mother or their sister
Speaker 1: or their brother, their father, their best friend, whatever had
Speaker 1: struggled or even had died with mental illness, and they
Speaker 1: felt like they couldn't talk about it. So that showed
Speaker 1: me that people did want to talk about all these
Speaker 1: really hard things, even like suicide. And the problem was
Speaker 1: that nobody was asking. People were waiting at the door
Speaker 1: for somebody to open the door. And and I realized
Speaker 1: that this is how I could be like that stranger
Speaker 1: who saved my life. And and really that's when an
Speaker 1: activist an advocate was born, and in that high school,
Speaker 1: not being content with the silence anymore. Yeah, it makes
Speaker 1: total sense. So let's talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: your recovery started to look like after that. I guess
Speaker 1: for for that block of time, your final suicide attempt,
Speaker 1: you know, what sort of things did you start doing,
Speaker 1: What sort of help did you get? You know, how
Speaker 1: did you how did you sort of go from suicidal
Speaker 1: to a life that's different, And you know, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that you still deal with depression. I
Speaker 1: think that's an important part of the story, but an
Speaker 1: equally important part of the story as you did get
Speaker 1: better I did, I did, and I have repeatedly, and
Speaker 1: that's something I didn't realize until later. But I think
Speaker 1: in those early stages of what I now know of
Speaker 1: as my recovery, because I didn't know that I was
Speaker 1: recovering when I first started. That's an important thing. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you don't realize that you've started to recover until much
Speaker 1: much later. Don't always realize how far you've come until
Speaker 1: you actually take a minute to look back and realize
Speaker 1: where you were. So for me, I think it started
Speaker 1: with that having that sense of purpose. Um. You know
Speaker 1: that that gave me meaning, but it also gave me
Speaker 1: a distraction. It gave me something else to focus on
Speaker 1: that wasn't just me um and my problems and the
Speaker 1: darkness inside me and all of the things that I
Speaker 1: thought other people were thinking. Mind Reading is a big
Speaker 1: is a big thing when you get into that place.
Speaker 1: So it gave me, it gave me something to do,
Speaker 1: and with that I started uhh and even just in
Speaker 1: in reflecting back again, I didn't realize I was doing
Speaker 1: at the time, but I started seeking out healthier relationships
Speaker 1: and defining my boundaries better of what I was willing
Speaker 1: and not willing to accept in my life. Uh speaking
Speaker 1: up more um, and part of that maybe it was
Speaker 1: just being a teenager and being more vocal um. But
Speaker 1: I was the youngest in my family and my immediate family,
Speaker 1: but then the first to go away to university, and
Speaker 1: I think that was one of the things that really
Speaker 1: just put me on the fast track to my recovery,
Speaker 1: because university is hard, obviously, but it was the first
Speaker 1: time I had ever lived anywhere outside of my hometown. UM,
Speaker 1: So it showed me that the world was actually a
Speaker 1: lot bigger than it was in my head, and that
Speaker 1: if I was willing to be uncomfortable and to push
Speaker 1: myself outside of my own self imposed often boundaries but
Speaker 1: also culturally in both boundaries, that I could discover so
Speaker 1: much more in the world if I was just willing
Speaker 1: to take the risk and be uncomfortable and do um
Speaker 1: things that weren't exactly what was expected of me, and
Speaker 1: to do things that weren't necessarily quote unquote normal. And
Speaker 1: now I know, of course that normal is a relative term,
Speaker 1: so so for me, it was that it was it
Speaker 1: was finding and being willing to be uncomfortable and finding
Speaker 1: that willingness to just push through it even though it
Speaker 1: was hard, And that's a lesson that I still use
Speaker 1: in almost every aspect of my life. Your family life
Speaker 1: at that point was not good. I assumed getting away
Speaker 1: to university was also ended that part of it, insofar
Speaker 1: as it can. And you know that that part of it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean my father left officially anyway when
Speaker 1: I was for um, so my mother won a single
Speaker 1: parents salary. We struggled for for years when we moved
Speaker 1: into a new home and became part of a blended family,
Speaker 1: and that became emotionally abusive very quickly. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: was surrounded constantly, especially by my stepfather, by this toxic masculinity,
Speaker 1: this idea that men especially can't show emotion, they can't cry,
Speaker 1: that that makes you gay, as though that were the
Speaker 1: worst thing in the world. You right, that it makes
Speaker 1: you a sissy. Uh. And you know that was always
Speaker 1: around me. So I received the message very clearly, consistently
Speaker 1: from a young age that it was not okay to
Speaker 1: talk about how I was feeling. But also I never
Speaker 1: really had the language for it anyway, because nobody ever
Speaker 1: taught me what to call these things that I was feeling.
Speaker 1: You know, you're born feeling emotions, of course, but you're
Speaker 1: not born knowing actually what to call those emotions, or
Speaker 1: even less so, what to do with those emotions. So,
Speaker 1: as a young boy being told that he had to
Speaker 1: be a man, from as young as eight or nine
Speaker 1: years old, I never really got the basic skills for
Speaker 1: how to deal with my emotions. And then when I
Speaker 1: was faced with you going off to undergraduate and living
Speaker 1: in residence and needing to figure all that stuff out
Speaker 1: for the first time and make a whole lot of
Speaker 1: mistakes along the way, that's for sure. Um, it was
Speaker 1: really the first time in many ways that I started
Speaker 1: experimenting and learning more about myself, and and I think
Speaker 1: that that was exactly the kind of safe risk taking
Speaker 1: that I needed. Makes total sense. So in your TED
Speaker 1: talk you talk about something you call it the perceptual field.
Speaker 1: Let's start by having you kind of define what you
Speaker 1: mean by that. Yeah, So I started thinking about this,
Speaker 1: and this is this idea of of a perceptual field
Speaker 1: or perceptual space. It's been haunting me almost my entire
Speaker 1: personal and professional life because I think it really in
Speaker 1: many ways started on that night at midnight, standing on
Speaker 1: an inch and a half of concrete fort above the ground,
Speaker 1: ready to kill myself when I could not see any
Speaker 1: other option, and it didn't matter that there were other options.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter that there were people who loved me
Speaker 1: who would be devastated if I died, who wanted to
Speaker 1: help me, who even tried to help me. None of
Speaker 1: that stuff mattered in that moment because I couldn't see it,
Speaker 1: and if I can't see it, then it's not real.
Speaker 1: In undergrad I did psychology and philosophy try to try
Speaker 1: to marry those two things together, as I was so
Speaker 1: obsessed with this idea UM And part of that idea
Speaker 1: is that the way that I explain this, or or
Speaker 1: think in my own mind of this perceptual field is
Speaker 1: that it's like this bubble around you, and it's basically
Speaker 1: everything that you can perceive in any given moment. And
Speaker 1: then from a Freudian perspective, I suppose what's just beyond
Speaker 1: that bubble are the things that you could perceive or
Speaker 1: have perceived, and that can move in and out of
Speaker 1: how you perceive the world at any given time. What
Speaker 1: I think that I add to this, and I think
Speaker 1: I think I'd still like to be able to articulate this.
Speaker 1: It's going to take me my entire career to do it.
Speaker 1: But is that that bubble changes, that the composition of
Speaker 1: that bubble around you, that perceptual space around you changes.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes we've experienced this, this experience of transcendence
Speaker 1: where we feel like we're at one with the universe.
Speaker 1: But at other times we're so focused in on one thing.
Speaker 1: In the ted talk, I use the example of getting
Speaker 1: cut off in traffic in a really dangerous way, or
Speaker 1: if something really shocking happens, or something really exciting and
Speaker 1: happening and happy happens to us, we tend to zoom
Speaker 1: in on that thing as though it's the only thing happening.
Speaker 1: And we've all had this experience of time feeling like
Speaker 1: it drags on forever, or that it or that time
Speaker 1: flies when you're having fun, as they say, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that's all stuff that happens because our focus
Speaker 1: and this perceptual field around us is changing all the
Speaker 1: time depending on what we need. When we get into
Speaker 1: a state of depression suicidality, I conceptualize that as that
Speaker 1: perceptual field or that bubble around us of things that
Speaker 1: we can know. Uh, it calcifies, it hardens, it darkens,
Speaker 1: and it becomes very difficult to see anything outside of
Speaker 1: that bubble, even if it's standing right next to us
Speaker 1: at the time. So then we need something to pierce
Speaker 1: that field, to let some of that poison out, to
Speaker 1: let some of that pressure out. For me, it happened
Speaker 1: to be a complete stranger who who saw a kid
Speaker 1: on the side of a bridge and literally reached out
Speaker 1: and grabbed me and and snapped me out of it.
Speaker 1: To use an in artful metaphor, but pierce that that
Speaker 1: place for me, at least in that moment, so that
Speaker 1: way I can do other work. And I think that still, uh,
Speaker 1: the way that I think of that experience when I'm
Speaker 1: sliding into that stuck place, that dark, tight um, suffocating place,
Speaker 1: all these all these synonyms for it, that's what I
Speaker 1: think of as being in that place of depression, is
Speaker 1: that that's what it does. Depression is a problem in
Speaker 1: the functionality of your psychological perception of your world around you.
Speaker 1: It limits your view, it limits your options. Uh, it
Speaker 1: limits it depresses literally everything that you can experience. So
Speaker 1: you know, this is something that I still add flesh
Speaker 1: to almost every day, this idea of how can we
Speaker 1: reinflate that space, how can we air it out? How
Speaker 1: can we make it more permeable, so that way we
Speaker 1: can we can interact with the world in a in
Speaker 1: a healthy way where we have a core sense of ourselves,
Speaker 1: but then that also grows and changes and breathes depending
Speaker 1: on the world around us. That idea of expanse and
Speaker 1: contraction we've talked about on the show many times. That
Speaker 1: health and wellness and awakening, if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about in a spiritual sense, is this broadening of perspective.
Speaker 1: It's this, it's this releasing, it's this unclenching, right, and
Speaker 1: that that it's that sort of shutting down more and
Speaker 1: more myopic, you know, gripping tighter, holding tighter is the
Speaker 1: direction that we get more ill. And it's funny. I
Speaker 1: often think about this. You know, I got sober and
Speaker 1: twelve step programs, and you know, there's this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, let go and let God, and I hit
Speaker 1: a point where I's like, well, I don't really believe
Speaker 1: in a god who's going to come in and clean
Speaker 1: up what I let go of? So what am I
Speaker 1: letting go of? And I eventually hit a point where
Speaker 1: I was like, it does not matter, right, It's the
Speaker 1: holding on so tight that's making me sick. That's what
Speaker 1: causes the friction, right, and then and then the friction
Speaker 1: causes the fire. But if you let it sly away now,
Speaker 1: I will say, however, that there's a limit to that.
Speaker 1: And and we see this in Eastern religious traditions as well.
Speaker 1: For those listeners who happen to be experts, I'm not,
Speaker 1: but this idea of becoming one with your surrounding and
Speaker 1: losing actually your sense of self. So I think you
Speaker 1: do actually need that bit of boundary. You need to
Speaker 1: be able to limit your perception in a way, but
Speaker 1: it does need to be able to be to be breathable,
Speaker 1: to be to be permeable. So you can have a
Speaker 1: sense of identity, but you allow that identity to grow
Speaker 1: and to change depending on the environment around you. I
Speaker 1: think that's key, right, And even I think in those
Speaker 1: spiritual traditions that talk about no separate self, there is
Speaker 1: the idea that at the same time there absolutely is both. Yes.
Speaker 1: On one hand, No, you're not what you think you are.
Speaker 1: You're not this small limited thing. You're more connected to
Speaker 1: everything that you think you are. Yeah, it's all one
Speaker 1: and it's all different. It's this, it's this balance of
Speaker 1: those things. And and yeah, I mean we have to
Speaker 1: be able to function as human. We have to know
Speaker 1: when someone says Eric and I go, oh, that's me,
Speaker 1: you know, I answer to that. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's in general that how do we expand? So what
Speaker 1: are some of the things that you've thought of or
Speaker 1: have worked in your life to either expand that perceptual field.
Speaker 1: You use the word darkness and and closed. You know,
Speaker 1: you talked about making it more permeable. What are some
Speaker 1: of the things for you that help you expand that field.
Speaker 1: I love being uncomfortable. I know that sounds really strange,
Speaker 1: but and part of it is just maybe sensation seeking.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I remember as a very young boy,
Speaker 1: either laying on a beach or walking along the street
Speaker 1: on a sunny summer day, and I used to love
Speaker 1: the sensation of getting a sunburned, of feeling the tingle
Speaker 1: of the sun burning my skin. And why I raised
Speaker 1: that is because I love this idea of change, of
Speaker 1: different of being uncomfortable, even if it's painful sometimes because
Speaker 1: through pain comes growth, and that comes change. And I
Speaker 1: really believe, uh, you know, to reference back to your
Speaker 1: parable that even in the most traumatic, challenging situations, the
Speaker 1: most painful situations. Uh, something good can come from it
Speaker 1: depending on the lens that you take in the work
Speaker 1: that you do with it. And I really remind myself
Speaker 1: a lot now because of the public work that I
Speaker 1: do in in suicide prevention suicide awareness that family members
Speaker 1: talk to me all the time, parents especially who have
Speaker 1: lost a teenage kid, but somebody of any age to suicide,
Speaker 1: and one of the most common emotions that they experience
Speaker 1: is blame and guilt rather because they feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're raising awareness of suicide, maybe they could have
Speaker 1: noticed it earlier on. And what I almost always tell
Speaker 1: them is that it's an absolute tragedy that their loved
Speaker 1: one died and they didn't have to, and we can
Speaker 1: use that and for nation to ensure that nobody else
Speaker 1: experiences that tragedy. That it's awful, and uh, it's useful
Speaker 1: to others that we can not let them die in vain,
Speaker 1: that we can use that tragedy to help ensure that
Speaker 1: nobody else ever has to experience that tragedy again. So
Speaker 1: I think that we can use these things that happened
Speaker 1: to us, and and that's a big part of what's
Speaker 1: been important um for me in breaking free and in
Speaker 1: expanding that perception and being uncomfortable leaning into discomfort. You know,
Speaker 1: I have depression, but I also have an anxiety disorder.
Speaker 1: I have social anxiety disorder. Actually, that was one of
Speaker 1: my very first diagnoses when I went into the hospital.
Speaker 1: And I still get nervous before I go on camera.
Speaker 1: And I've done hundreds, literally hundreds of on camera interviews
Speaker 1: and conversations. I go on stage all the time. It's
Speaker 1: my full time gig now, and I still get nervous
Speaker 1: before I do it because I still have social anxiety sort.
Speaker 1: But for me, I've re narrated it in my head.
Speaker 1: I've I've reascribed new meaning to it to be Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling nervous, Okay, That's how I know where the
Speaker 1: wall is. That's how I know where I need to
Speaker 1: jump over, where I need where I need to push through.
Speaker 1: I think that's how I do it. I identify what
Speaker 1: makes me uncomfortable, and I run into it rather than
Speaker 1: away from it. Most of the time, I try to
Speaker 1: make sure that I'm actually doing the right thing, that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be putting myself in herms that
Speaker 1: hasn't always been the case. You know, I've made terrible
Speaker 1: mistakes in that way, and I've gotten hurt of course,
Speaker 1: you know, so I'm not always right. Um, But even
Speaker 1: that is a good experience because part of having social
Speaker 1: anxiety is sort of part of having any anxiety disorder,
Speaker 1: I think, and having an avoidant coping strategy that comes
Speaker 1: with that is is perfectionism and of avoiding things that
Speaker 1: make you uncomfortable. But of course that just feeds the
Speaker 1: beast that just maintains the anxiety. That's what it wants
Speaker 1: is to stay around. So it makes you avoid all
Speaker 1: the things that could challenge it. I think in many ways,
Speaker 1: especially now that that I've had some distance from it.
Speaker 1: Credit liberal arts undergraduate education. You know, in undergrad when
Speaker 1: I studied psychology and philosophy. The whole idea of the
Speaker 1: liberal arts is asking challenging questions, uh, and identifying what
Speaker 1: you believe, great, wonderful that you believe. That Let's see
Speaker 1: how you stand up against all the things that you
Speaker 1: don't believe. You know, it's what you believe is the
Speaker 1: starting point. So now let's expose you. Let's interrogate you
Speaker 1: with all of these other things, and especially now in
Speaker 1: the age of social media. That's so I think antithetical
Speaker 1: to what people think. To step outside the echo chamber.
Speaker 1: That is one of the most terrifying things in the world.
Speaker 1: But I think that's necessary. I think that's how we
Speaker 1: expand our perception. What would you say to someone who
Speaker 1: is suicidal or contemplating it thinking about it? You must
Speaker 1: get asked this question when it feels like everything is
Speaker 1: wrong with you. What if there was nothing wrong? What
Speaker 1: if exactly what you were experiencing is exactly who you
Speaker 1: need to be right now And that's okay, and you
Speaker 1: can use that and it can be great. And I
Speaker 1: say in the Ted Talk, we need you, we need
Speaker 1: your story, we need your struggle, because that's what changes
Speaker 1: the world. Nobody has ever changed the world who hasn't
Speaker 1: gone through terrible struggle. And I know that, you know,
Speaker 1: it comes back to that old Irish Catholic idea. I
Speaker 1: guess of maybe it is. I don't know, that's what
Speaker 1: I ascribed it to of. You know, I don't want
Speaker 1: this to be my cross to bear. It's not always
Speaker 1: going to be. That's the thing. When you're able to
Speaker 1: accept it, and when you can accept that, you can
Speaker 1: use this, that's when you change. That's that's the dichotomy
Speaker 1: of it, this idea, this tension of acceptance and change.
Speaker 1: When you accept that, Okay, it is what it is.
Speaker 1: I don't like it, I don't have to that's okay,
Speaker 1: that's when you can really start to change. For me,
Speaker 1: what I what I try to tell people all the
Speaker 1: time is yes, it's hard, it's awful. It's just about
Speaker 1: the most It's the worst thing in the world to
Speaker 1: feel like you don't want to be in the world anymore.
Speaker 1: And I've been back there. My story isn't just a
Speaker 1: hollow You come to Jesus recovery moment, you know that
Speaker 1: everything suddenly got better, and look at him now. I
Speaker 1: still struggle. I still relapse usually once a year. Um,
Speaker 1: I've been about eighteen months or so without a relapse yet,
Speaker 1: so this is the longest stretch that I haven't But um,
Speaker 1: I've had some really serious relapses over the um last
Speaker 1: fifteen years since I since I was on that bridge.
Speaker 1: But I'm still grateful for even that. I'm grateful for
Speaker 1: every relapse because it teaches me a little bit more
Speaker 1: about who I am, about how I recover, what my
Speaker 1: triggers are what my strategies are to get out of it.
Speaker 1: I've become very good at being depressed because I know
Speaker 1: how to do it now. And and that's it, that
Speaker 1: that you can you can turn your struggle into something good.
Speaker 1: And why not. We're all going to die anyway, that's guaranteed,
Speaker 1: so you might as well have fun with it. You
Speaker 1: might as well do something with it. Do take some risks, um,
Speaker 1: use what you have. And and that's certainly what I've done.
Speaker 1: And so when you talk about relapsing, describe that word.
Speaker 1: You know you've had relapses. What does that look like
Speaker 1: or what does that mean for you? Well, for me,
Speaker 1: relapse in many ways has become kind of clean and
Speaker 1: tie you because I've done it so many times, Um
Speaker 1: that it started off as messy. It started off as, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm on medication now, and the doctors tell me
Speaker 1: I'm going to be fine, and then a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: I'm not fine, very clearly not fine. And then I
Speaker 1: blame that on me, especially near the end, after I
Speaker 1: be came what's known as a frequent flyer in the
Speaker 1: mental health system, you know, in and out of psychords.
Speaker 1: So many times I thought that I was just unhelpable.
Speaker 1: If all these experts, all these super smart people can't
Speaker 1: figure out what's wrong with me, and then it's my
Speaker 1: fault basically, which of course isn't true because there are
Speaker 1: so many problems with the system and so much that
Speaker 1: we don't know about the brain and about the mind
Speaker 1: and about struggles, that it's not your fault that you're
Speaker 1: struggling in the way that you are. But I didn't
Speaker 1: know that at the time, so I thought that it
Speaker 1: relapsed in those early days, that it was a failure
Speaker 1: on my part. Why am I failing to get better?
Speaker 1: Or even if I would attempt suicide and not complete
Speaker 1: it for whatever reason, that I I failed at suicide, Well, no,
Speaker 1: if I didn't die, that's not a failure. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty big success if I'm still alive actually, um so,
Speaker 1: so that's one of those That's when I became interested
Speaker 1: in stigmatizing languages as well. People don't fail in suicide attempts.
Speaker 1: They do or don't complete. That's the language that we used,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that I started to get the
Speaker 1: hang of my relapses several years in once I realized
Speaker 1: more about my pattern, that it was okay, things are
Speaker 1: starting to go downhill. I've been here before. I've been here,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty times before I know what this looks like.
Speaker 1: In my case, I become more irritable. I tend I'm
Speaker 1: less patient, I tend to sleep more, I don't exercise
Speaker 1: as much, I eat differently, I socialized differently, and I
Speaker 1: just have this this feeling of a wet, dark blanket
Speaker 1: over me all the time that that feeling of contraction
Speaker 1: and feeling trapped. Um So when that starts to set in,
Speaker 1: it used to take me a very long time to realize.
Speaker 1: I'd be very deep underground early on before I realized
Speaker 1: what was happening. But nowadays it's more, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a few weeks into it, and it's been
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of weeks, and I just I'm
Speaker 1: not where I like to be. And and you know,
Speaker 1: part of getting good at depression, I think is realizing
Speaker 1: where you like to be, just as much as realizing
Speaker 1: your triggers and and how you know you're not doing well? Well?
Speaker 1: How do I know I am doing well? How do
Speaker 1: I how do I appreciate and celebrate and take note
Speaker 1: of and be grateful for the times that I'm doing
Speaker 1: really well. It's important to notice that too, because that
Speaker 1: shows you the comparison. And once I learned to do that,
Speaker 1: you know, it still takes me some time, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I can get pretty far down the rabbit hole before
Speaker 1: I realize. But that's because I'm human and I'm gentler
Speaker 1: with myself now. So you know, I think depression and
Speaker 1: recovery takes practice, and you have to get used to
Speaker 1: the uncomfortable feeling of if you want to call it failure,
Speaker 1: Fine that that happens, That's okay, It's just another chance
Speaker 1: to do it again and to learn more about it.
Speaker 1: It's it's cyclical. It's not a one size fits all,
Speaker 1: and it's not a one and done thing. Recovery is weird.
Speaker 1: It's up and down, back and forth, sideways and every
Speaker 1: other direction. But you figure it out as you go,
Speaker 1: and there's no right way to do it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: couldn't agree more. What do you think causes you to
Speaker 1: swing back down? Do you think there are external reasons?
Speaker 1: Do you think there's just a cyclical nature to the
Speaker 1: thing that you have? Do you stop taking such good
Speaker 1: care of yourself? I'm I'm really fascinating by this because
Speaker 1: I've noticed the same thing with my depression. It just
Speaker 1: seems like there are times where I'm like, well, well,
Speaker 1: I'll be damn, there it is. Again. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't even necessarily know most of the time why. I
Speaker 1: do sort of know what I can do that will
Speaker 1: help minimize it. And and you know, I can sometimes
Speaker 1: look and see like, oh, well, I haven't been doing this,
Speaker 1: this and that, which I know are really good for me,
Speaker 1: so I kind of get back to it. But there's
Speaker 1: other times it just seems completely unexplainable to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's actually one of the symptoms. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're talking about mental illness there, and it's it's mental
Speaker 1: for a reason because it impacts the way that you think, right,
Speaker 1: And one of the first things in my personal experience,
Speaker 1: I can't speak for everybody because it is different for everybody.
Speaker 1: I think generally there are a lot of commonalities, but
Speaker 1: one of the first things that depression attacks is your
Speaker 1: ability to see it, because again, it's a it's like
Speaker 1: a parasite. It's like an abusive lover. It doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be caught. It doesn't want you to know, right,
Speaker 1: So it's gonna hide and it's gonna it's gonna impair
Speaker 1: your faculties that see it. So for me, it would
Speaker 1: impair my um willingness to go out and socialize with
Speaker 1: my friends. Therefore, there's gonna be fewer friends around me
Speaker 1: to notice that I'm behaving differently. Right, it's a sneaky thing. Depression.
Speaker 1: Um So, so all of those things would would happen,
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, I'd be feeling all these
Speaker 1: different ways, and I'd be gradually very often it wasn't
Speaker 1: usually black and white. I'd be gradually cutting things out
Speaker 1: of my life or withdrawing. And I'm an introvert anyway,
Speaker 1: even though I do all this public stuff. I'm an
Speaker 1: introvert anyway. So it often people wouldn't realize um or
Speaker 1: or if I was cranky, you know, sometimes crankiness and
Speaker 1: anger and irritability that bothers people so they don't want
Speaker 1: to be around you. Is it's not socially acceptable? Well,
Speaker 1: maybe behavior is information. Maybe you're cranky and irritable for
Speaker 1: a reason. Um, but nobody usually asks that kind of
Speaker 1: kind of question, especially if you're telling them telling them off.
Speaker 1: So I think that learn to realize. Oh, that was
Speaker 1: kind of an overreaction to that person. That person probably
Speaker 1: didn't mean it that way. When I when I'm able
Speaker 1: to ask myself those questions, that's what starts to help
Speaker 1: me break out of that or expand that perception, break
Speaker 1: out of that bubble because it challenges my view. I
Speaker 1: had to learn, and this is one of those dualities again.
Speaker 1: I had to learn to trust myself, But I also
Speaker 1: had to learn to not believe everything that I thought
Speaker 1: just because I thought everybody was out to get me,
Speaker 1: just because I thought that I had tried everything quote unquote,
Speaker 1: everybody says that despite the fact that it's almost physically
Speaker 1: impossible to try everything right, that there's always more things
Speaker 1: to try. You know. I think that when I realized
Speaker 1: that I could challenge thoughts in my mind, uh, then
Speaker 1: that's what really helped me to to see my cycles
Speaker 1: more clearly. Yeah, and I think what you said earlier
Speaker 1: about getting good at being depressed is is sort of important.
Speaker 1: I'm significantly older than you are, so I've had significantly
Speaker 1: more cycles, right, I've got I've got years of it, right,
Speaker 1: so I think I catch it fairly quickly now. I
Speaker 1: actually sometimes refer to it as the emotional flu It
Speaker 1: sometimes seems to me the equivalent of when I get
Speaker 1: physically sick, it's just there, it is, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot to really explain it, and
Speaker 1: and I try and treat it like I would if
Speaker 1: I was physically sick. I'm gonna take better care of myself.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do the things I know are good for me,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to make a huge fuss about this.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by making a fuss is I'm
Speaker 1: not going to sit there and when my brain starts saying, well,
Speaker 1: you're clearly in the wrong career, You're you're clearly with
Speaker 1: the wrong person, you clearly don't have any friends you clearly,
Speaker 1: I just sort of go, you know, same way like
Speaker 1: when I'm sick, the world looks bleak. I'm just physically
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm just going to sort of let those
Speaker 1: to the best of my ability. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: engage in any deep thought here about the quality of
Speaker 1: my life. I'm just going to take care of myself
Speaker 1: and wait for it to pass. And that's one of
Speaker 1: those things that I really think you can only learn
Speaker 1: through experience. Look, i mean I'm in my thirties now,
Speaker 1: Um I've got a family. I've got three kids and
Speaker 1: a wife, and that's you just don't learn that kind
Speaker 1: of lesson until you actually live. And you know the
Speaker 1: number of times that I've been, you know, awake at
Speaker 1: three thirty in the morning, and for some brilliant reason, thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I better send that angry email or that text, or
Speaker 1: do that weird thing or say that thing that I'll
Speaker 1: regret later. But it seemed like a good idea at
Speaker 1: the time, because because when you're in that bubble, that's
Speaker 1: how you see the world. Those are your depression colored
Speaker 1: glasses that you're wearing. And you'll only learn later on,
Speaker 1: you know. Now, sure I can still lay awake at
Speaker 1: three o'clock in the morning. This just happened the other night,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, I guess I can go to
Speaker 1: the gym. It's twenty four hours, it's across the street.
Speaker 1: I guess I can go to the gym instead. Like
Speaker 1: because when you when you fight it, like you said,
Speaker 1: you get into that into that back and forth, into
Speaker 1: that tension. It causes that friction and that fire, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't help. I don't have any tattoos, but if
Speaker 1: I ever do, the one that will get it it's
Speaker 1: a little cliche, maybe, but it would be that this
Speaker 1: too shall pass. I've repeated that mantra to myself so
Speaker 1: many times. It's the mantra to my to my entire life,
Speaker 1: this too shall pass, And especially if you've relapsed a
Speaker 1: bunch of times before. However, many times it doesn't even
Speaker 1: matter if it's twice or twenty times or two hundred times.
Speaker 1: It passes, and it will sometimes it takes longer than others.
Speaker 1: But like you said, the more you cling to it,
Speaker 1: the longer it will take to pass. So let's just
Speaker 1: sit back and this sucks. Yes, but let's let it suck.
Speaker 1: And that's okay that it sucks. We're going to get
Speaker 1: through it, right, right, Yeah. I think it's a it's
Speaker 1: sort of this strange balance of on one hand, accepting
Speaker 1: it that, okay, this is here, Like you said, this
Speaker 1: kind of sucks, and sort of being skillful about the
Speaker 1: things that I know can help and making sure I'm
Speaker 1: engaging in them and doing them. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: the Serenity prayer a little bit, right, Like you accept
Speaker 1: the fact that the depression is here, and then but
Speaker 1: then you have the courage to change the parts of
Speaker 1: that you can't. Oh, am I eating well? Am I
Speaker 1: taking care of myself? Am I seeing friends? You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of both of those things. I think
Speaker 1: at least that's what helps me. I think it is.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things too, though, that you know,
Speaker 1: you have to meet people where they are in terms
Speaker 1: of giving advice, and you know, advocacy, mental health, advocacy
Speaker 1: and awareness and activism is like anything else. You make
Speaker 1: a lot of mistakes. And when I, when I have
Speaker 1: talked about that in the past, you know this idea
Speaker 1: that depression actually physically does not steal away your ability
Speaker 1: to walk. It does not It does not infect your legs,
Speaker 1: it does not break your bones. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most common symptoms, one of the most common expo I've
Speaker 1: felt it on virtually every relapse where you want to say,
Speaker 1: I just can't get out of bed in the morning.
Speaker 1: I'm just not able to get out of bed in
Speaker 1: the morning. And you really believe that with every fiber
Speaker 1: of your being, and in many respects it's true, except
Speaker 1: for the fact that biologically it's not right. That it's
Speaker 1: your brain convincing you of that. But yes, you actually can,
Speaker 1: and even if you only step out of that bed
Speaker 1: for five minutes just to get that short, quick shower,
Speaker 1: and you hate every minute of it. That maybe that's
Speaker 1: something that you do need to push yourself to do. That.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not the healthiest thing in the world to
Speaker 1: give into your mind to believe everything you think and
Speaker 1: to stay in bed for nine days straight. You know
Speaker 1: that that maybe you do need to make yourself uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But there comes a point where you can you can
Speaker 1: push that to herd and you really do need to
Speaker 1: meet people where they are and realize, Okay, if it's
Speaker 1: five minutes or or the rest the day, you do
Speaker 1: have to do something to help your own well being.
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of really good friends who struggle.
Speaker 1: One of them is similar to you, multiple suicide attempts,
Speaker 1: and you know he'll sort of cycle back down and
Speaker 1: and it's really difficult to find like how much do
Speaker 1: I push him, how much do I let him be
Speaker 1: where he is? How much? Like I've sort of learned
Speaker 1: how to meet him where he is in a way
Speaker 1: as much as as much as you can do that,
Speaker 1: But it's definitely very challenging, and you know that idea
Speaker 1: of moving, you know, one of my One of the
Speaker 1: phrases I cling to is depression hates a moving target.
Speaker 1: You know, for me, it's just like whatever, just move,
Speaker 1: whether that be physically exercising, whether that me just getting
Speaker 1: out of the apartment, whether that be doing something inane,
Speaker 1: but you know, not not something stupid, but just moving.
Speaker 1: And I almost feel in some ways like one of
Speaker 1: the things that has helped my depression is that my
Speaker 1: life has a momentum to it that carries me through
Speaker 1: if I'm struggling, Like I have so many things that
Speaker 1: I have committed to that I'm doing. Sometimes I just
Speaker 1: feel like, literally it just carries me through. And and
Speaker 1: you know, I know there were times in my life
Speaker 1: where that was not the case and being dead stopped.
Speaker 1: I was dead stopped and it's really hard to get moving.
Speaker 1: But I just, like I said, sometimes I think a
Speaker 1: busy life for me can be helpful in just keeping
Speaker 1: me moving when I'm struggling. Yeah, And you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: you just have to let life flow. You don't have
Speaker 1: to be super mindful in every minute of every day
Speaker 1: about your recovery. Sometimes you just live and that's actually
Speaker 1: even better often, uh, to just do things and not
Speaker 1: worry about the implication that it has for you. Worry
Speaker 1: about that later and ideally it's nothing too you know,
Speaker 1: dangerous for you obviously, um, but doing things unexpected can
Speaker 1: be some of the best things for your life. But
Speaker 1: then just falling into rhythm can be great too, because
Speaker 1: that helped you to recalibrate, to zone out for a
Speaker 1: little bit. Just watch Netflix for a little while and
Speaker 1: let it flick over to the next, to the next show,
Speaker 1: over the next episode a few times. Ideally, though, everything
Speaker 1: in moderation and not falling into that trap, because I'm
Speaker 1: hyper aware of my own tendency for comfort, my own
Speaker 1: need for comfort, to not want to do that. And
Speaker 1: even though you know I've I've made a life from
Speaker 1: you know, I've had depression for more than half my
Speaker 1: life now, I've had it for longer than I haven't,
Speaker 1: um for much longer than I haven't actually, and still
Speaker 1: my tendency is to avoid discomfort. But I know that
Speaker 1: that's what's best for me, and that's what's good for me,
Speaker 1: So you know, I I think that it's important that
Speaker 1: you that you do that, but it's also important that
Speaker 1: you balance it as well. It's all about balance. Amen. Well, Mark,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show. It's
Speaker 1: been a pleasure talking with you, and you know, thank
Speaker 1: you for sharing your story and the work that you're
Speaker 1: doing out there. Well, thank you for having me. And
Speaker 1: I really hope that, like I said, the book is
Speaker 1: on its um draft number six now. I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: my editor to get back to me, but it should
Speaker 1: be out sometime next year, I would imagine. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I hope that people check out my podcast as well.
Speaker 1: That's really been a really eye opening experience for me
Speaker 1: to sit back and do what you're doing. Now. It's
Speaker 1: called so called normal. It's available on all podcast platforms
Speaker 1: everywhere with with Entertainment one, uh, and I just have
Speaker 1: these kinds of conversations with other people about their stories
Speaker 1: as well. And and I hope that my background can
Speaker 1: help illuminate there. So I really admire what you're doing.
Speaker 1: And I would like to thank you and your audience
Speaker 1: for inviting me into your ears. You are very welcome.
Speaker 1: That sounds kind of that sounds kind of gross. That's okay,
Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you Mark. Okay. Yeah, if what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
Speaker 1: donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to
Speaker 1: One you Feed dot net slash support. The One You
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Speaker 1: supporting the show.