988, know this number.

In case you haven't heard, there is a new number to call for the Suicide Helpline; 988.  Make a note of it.  Even if you don't need it, someone you know might.

Every 11 minutes, someone loses their battle with their demons and ends their life.  This selfish act leaves a walk of heartache and tragedy for others to clean up and come to terms with.  If you thought you were gonna get a sympathetic ear on this one, you are mistaken.    

This is a national pandemic that needs to be treated as such.  We are losing too many people that have lost hope and need help.  We cannot wait on this and need to devote resources to this.  It's not just our youth but people of all ages.  

I was 47 when I tried to kill myself.  Men kill themselves almost 4x more often than women.  Over 48,000 killed themselves in 2021.  This shit is serious.  

The Buddha once said, life is suffering.  So right about now, someone is saying hell yeah.  Suffering means we are experiencing difficulty.  It means life is hard.  Well, depression is hard.  But you know what else is hard?  Self care.  

Yeah, thats right, I said it.  

You gotta make it a priority.  You gotta get uncomfortable.  Maybe that means calling a doctor or a therapist.  That isn't easy.  

We often hear suicide is selfish and I would agree with that.  But it's also hard.  Considering how to harm yourself is not easy.  Trust me, been there.  But so is picking up the phone and asking for help.  We gotta choose our suffering. 

Working out is hard.  Being fat is hard.  Which do you prefer?  

Ok, just to be clear, I am not at all minimizing this stuff.  But when we are at our lowest, the view is not pretty.  It is on you to change the view and that is hard.  So do one thing. Just one thing, dial 988.  

That, my friend, is self care.  You got this.  

Shopping for therapists

I will be completely honest, I am all for working with a therapist.  I know alot of guys, well, and alot of women, are not comfortable working with a therapist.  It's often viewed as being weak and not very valuable.  Well, I think that is complete bullshit.  

But here is the thing; I hate finding a new therapist. 

The first thing is the finding one and making an appointment can take an act of congress.  COVID is kicking just about everyone's ass so getting on someone's schedule will take some patience.  You are not the only person that is coming apart at the seams.  One other thing to know is that they don't all take insurance and some will work on a sliding scale.   Thats a nice way of saying that they will work with you on price.  Don't be surprised if its gonna be a month or two or six before you see someone.  But once you are on their schedule, you are golden.  So don't flake it off and decide later that you don't need to do.  You are full of shit, you need to go.  Besides, if you flake, you just wasted someone else's opportunity to get help, so don't be an asshole. 

Ok, you finally have an appointment and you are there.  Think of this an an interview, you need to get to know them and see if its a good fit.  I once met a therapist that brought her faith into her counseling sessions.  Fine for some folks but not this kid.  She was fired.  Ok, not retained is a better way of saying it.  Another was clearly a Trump fan and that wasnt cool with me.  She didn't have a MAGA hat or anything and I dont recall what she said exactly, but it chilled the vibe. You may disagree with me but thats ok.  It was my interview, not yours.  The point is, you need to feel safe with the person you are talking to.  

But be careful here.  You need to be honest with yourself and not look for reasons to scratch this one off the list.  Are you just making shit up to ensure that its not a good fit?  

Next, its time to talk.  And I mean, really talk.  I look at therapy as a time for me to lay out all of my cards and she helps me see what I have in my hand.  I may think that I have nothing but an outside perspective is good for connecting dots.  Don't make assumptions about what is or isn't a big deal.  Let your therapist do their job.  And for the love of God, be honest.  Most therapists that I have worked with have done a great job of being non judgmental.  They are professionals. And they have likely heard worse than you so just let it all out.  

Fair warning, if you tell your therapist that you want to hurt someone, you should know that she/he might have to report that.  I don't know the specifics but if you make a joke, they may laugh it off.  If you have a plan, that might be a different conversation.  

Therapy sessions are a single point in time. You will do the real work in between those sessions when it is just you and your thoughts.  So make the most of the hour you have with a therapist.  It is best to emotionally vomit and let her/him help you clean it up.  Get it over with so you know what you need to be thinking about until the next session.  

The problem with "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"

I am not sure that I have previously shared this but when I was in college, I worked in a psychiatric ward. I was a psychology major but having to go through statistics pretty much made that impossible.  But then working on the psych floor kinda put the nails in the coffin.  I had a hard time letting stuff go after my shift.  People find themselves in psych wards for a variety of reasons from med stabilization to self harm.  But people dealing with serious trauma can also find themselves in a psych ward.  And hearing of the trauma was often times too much for me.  

Psych floors in hospitals are essentially a temporary stop, while a plan for care is created.  My title was Mental Health Technician which is a glorified bouncer.  I would check vitals and do bed checks, while assisting with tasks for the nurses.  But the exciting part of the gig was when someone needed to be strapped down to a bed, typically in the ER.  Police would bring someone in, usually in handcuffs.  They would take the cuffs off and wish us luck as they went on their way.  Getting a kid into a bed wasn't too tough but sometimes there was someone who was tripping on PCP or drunk and delusional and they were a bit more of a challenge.  Especially if they were young and strong.  Oh, the stories I could tell...

My issue with working on the floor was seeing people that who had few options.  Some were terribly abused by someone and were incredibly broken.  Watching families come in and come to terms with the fact that they were unable to help or even care for a loved one was not easy.  But there was some really interesting things from working there.  Like learning of how terribly maligned shock therapy was.  

Back in 70s, a movie came out called One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest starring Jack Nicholson.  Was very popular and won a bunch of awards.  It was the story of a guy that was put into a psychiatric hospital. He games the system and pulls off a bunch of stunts and comes to a rather depressing ending.  But it did a massive disservice to the psychiatric field.  In fact, there were several but the one I want to discuss is ECT(electroconvulsive therapy), or shock therapy.

The film shows the main character being strapped to a bed and being given shock therapy. His body violently convulses as the electricity rushes through him. Well, that may have been how it was done in the past, but it is no longer accurate and because of the popularity of the film, it's how people see it today.  

ECT is often used with severely depressed patients that have not responded with other methods.  How exactly does it work?  Quite honestly, science can't give us a straight answer how or why it works.  But for many people, it does.  And it is incredible.  As a Mental Health Tech, part of my job was to assist with ECT.  I would see people who were seemingly at the end of their rope.  The docs had tried just about everything and nothing seemed to help.  So ECT was often a Hail Mary pass and it was amazing.  

We did ECT two days a week; Tuesdays and Thursdays.  People would come in for treatments on those days.  I would stand on one side of the patient and someone on the other side to make sure they didnt roll off the bed or something like that.  The doc would place some paddles on their head and give them the electricity.  Kinda like how the movie portrays except for a very important step; before the doc gives the juice, an anesthesiologist would give some medicine to help the patient go to sleep for a very short period and to relax their muscles.  This way, there was no thrashing and no fighting.  The patient was asleep for it.  The patient would tense up for a few seconds, maybe make a slight fist but then go limp for maybe 20 seconds.  They would wake up, sit for a minute or two, get up and on their way out the door. 

But this was the cool part, it was like a light switch was flipped.  They were often bright and pleasant and talkative.  Like, immediately.  They had just had a controlled seizure so they were often tired and would go sleep for a bit.  But it was really something to see.  Sometimes they had some confusion about what day it was or something like that.  Sometimes, it took a few sessions before it would work but when it finally kicked in, it was truly incredible to witness.  

Look, I get it.  The entire idea can be scary and the movie does not help.  But that is not how it is.  Perhaps it was once upon a time.  In fact, I am sure it was.  But dental procedures used to be done without anesthesia but we have made some advances there, too.  

My point to this one is that if you are being presented with this as an option, give it some serious thought.  I am not a doctor, I am just sharing my perspective as a literal bystander.  And yes, there are possible side effects and all that crap.  But sometimes, you need more help than therapy or antidepressants.  And again, if someone is suggesting you need to go get coffee or pray or get out of the house, as well intentioned as that may be, they are wrong.  You cannot do this alone.  You cannot pray away diabetes and you cannot sit in Starbucks, waiting for cancer to leave your body.  

Just don't give up.  Keep fighting.  There are better days ahead. I promise you that.  Don't make any decisions based on an old and very outdated movie.  If you want to see a good Jack Nicholson movie, check out About Schmidt, one of his most underrated films!

It would have been a relief...

This is a really hard post to share but its an important one because its about the trauma that others suffer from when someone they love tries and/or kill themselves.  

About a month or two after my unsuccessful attempt, we went to see our marriage counselor.  A side note about her, she is the greatest counselor I ever met.  She has helped me more than any other person on this earth.  You will be lucky to find a therapist half as good as this woman, but I digress.. 

We sat down in Jennifer's office and began to tell the story.  We had been seeing her for about 6 years because of the impact that my depression had had on our marriage.  I talked about what was going on and what led me to that point.  I was pretty upfront about the fact that I had stopped taking my antidepressants.  She then asked my wife what her thoughts were.  She talked about her fear and how it impacted everyone in the family.  I totally got that and I realized just how selfish of an act it would have been.  The fallout and collateral damage would have been significant, to say the least.

But then my wife said something else that shook me.

"It would have been a relief if he had been successful".  

She was crying when she said that and it came from a very emotional place.  Her feelings were very raw and I get that.  She went on to share how it felt when she arrived at the scene and that they wouldn't let her see me.  And that seeing 20 cop cars scared her because they were adamant that she not be allowed anywhere near me.  Then she talked about walking into the ER and seeing me alone in a room, in handcuffs with a cop standing outside the room, as if I was criminal.  How she knew I had been struggling over the past several weeks but had no idea it would get to this point.  

She paused and collected herself and then said that she and the kids would have been forced to move forward but now they didn't know what to do.  That they were uncertain what to say or do around me.  That I had shaken everyone to their very core and no longer felt any sense of emotional safety with me.

I have tried every which way to make sense of that one and I still struggle with it.  Yes, things had been hard for us.  I have never been a picnic to live with.  My depression had a major impact on us and I was not always my best self.  I have owned that.  But this one stung quite a bit.  I was not myself and I was imploding.  

And then I realized that it wasn't just about me.  I had been so consumed with my own hurt and emotional fog that I failed to see the situation through anyone else's eyes.  When you are seriously depressed, it is nearly impossible to think of someone other than yourself.  And I don't say that in a mean way, you just can't see through someone else's eyes.  When the dark clouds of depression come over you, all you see is darkness and 2 feet in front of you.  Now, as I was beginning have some distance from the event, I was able to have some perspective.  And it wasn't good. Well, it was the mess I created.  

Did my wife want me dead?  No.  But she didn't know what to do or say now.  She wasn't able to just snap her fingers and say that everything is so much better now because I wasn't dead.  There was a mess to clean up.  My children were traumatized by have 4 cops cars show up at the house and being told by a complete stranger that their father was trying to kill himself and they needed to know if there were more guns in the house.  My wife was trying to make sense of how quickly everything fell off the rails and she was sitting in the ER with her husband in handcuffs.  Hell, now she even had to figure out how to explain to friends why I was "unavailable" for a week while I was sitting in a psych ward.  Not exactly a light topic of conversation. 

Depression is not something to take lightly.  You cannot do it alone.  And you will leave a terrible mess behind.  If you think you won't, you are wrong.  People love you, more than you realize.  Ask for help. Suicide is probably the most selfish thing you can do.  You aren't going to fix things, you will make matters worse.  There is a new number to call; 988.  You can also text it.  You can learn more about it here at https://988lifeline.org/.  

Someone give a shit about you.  Believe it or not.  

Triggers...not that kind of trigger.

For the longest time, when I drove by the parking lot when I tried to end it all, I used to get really anxious.  I could feel my heart racing and want to climb out of my skin.  I wouldn't call it a panic attack but I would definitely get nervous and not feel good.  My therapist pointed out to me that it was a trigger.  Triggers can be a place or a thing or a song or even a person.  For me, it was commuter parking lot.  As I would leave that area, things would settle and I would go about my day.  

So one day, I decided to face my trigger by driving back to the parking lot and parking in the same spot that I did on that terrible July day.  It was warm, not quite as warm as that day, but warm enough. I turned off the car and sat in the silence and listened to my body.  Everything was quiet, painfully quiet. I could hear the blood pumping through my veins.  I could feel the hairs on my arms stand a little bit.  I closed my eyes and could see the police cars surround me.  I could see the massive SWAT vehicle park itself directly in front of my little Chevy Malibu.  I was able to see all of the guys get out of their vehicles and set their weapons on me.  

At that moment, I was back at that very day.  It was almost a year later and yet, it felt as if I was still in the moment.  I began to feel my shirt sticking to me with sweat, as my heart was pounding to keep up with my breathing.  I began to relive the phone conversation with Theresa and felt the anger when I realized that she had contacted the police.  I felt the sting of the sweat getting in my eyes as I wiped the tears from my face.  I could sense the dread again as I came to realize that none of this was going as planned and I had made several key mistakes. My choices were dwindling and none of them good.

Then I noticed the smell of fresh cut grass.  Within seconds, I heard the growl of a poorly tuned lawn mower getting louder and louder.  I opened my eyes and was back in the present.  While the step back was incredibly uncomfortable, for me, it was necessary.  I needed to walk through each moment of that day to remind myself of how fortunate I was that I called the Suicide Prevention Hotline.  And that Theresa kept me on the line while the police tracked me down.  I had to remind myself of the look of sadness in my wife's eyes when she walked into the emergency room and held me.  It was probably the worst day of my life.  And probably the best day of my life. 

It's a little easier for me now.  I can drive by that parking lot and not get worked up. It's not a trigger for me. I admit, it's not my first choice of places to go hang out, but it no longer has that hold over me.  I needed to take back my control over that place.  It was a little easier for me than for others who's trigger may be a person.  I had the ability to have some control over it.  I could choose to go there or avoid it. Not everyone is so lucky with their triggers. 

I guess if you are aware of a trigger, get some help facing it and staring it down.  There is often a feeling of helplessness that goes along with depression.  Recognize the things that you can control and work on those things.  Don't do it alone. Find someone that can help you along that battle.  Sometimes, you just need someone to sit with you and hold your hand.  

Depression is a bitch and I don't say that lightly.  Don't let it own you.  Reach out to the Suicide Prevention Hotline if you need to talk to someone,  800-273-8255.

Whats your trigger?  

Asking for help

 This has to be one of the best ads I have ever seen:

Here is a another good one:

As a society, we have made up this stupid notion that being strong means not asking for help.  It's just plain stupid.  I don't get it.  Because we can't see our emotions, they aren't real?  But a broken leg is somehow different?  

I can see the bone sticking out and since I am not an orthopedist, I better go talk to one.  

But lack of expertise in how the mind works is somehow different?  The person that has gone to school for eight years and has been working in the field for even longer doesn't know more than me.  Um, thats not really correct.  

I normally wouldn't pitch or promote something but I think this one is different.  Go check these guys out; https://www.betterhelp.com

 

Someone else's definition of success...

I have a feeling this is going to be one of those posts that I will delete in a few days, after I look at it with a clearer head. 

I am not in a good place today.  I am realizing that at 52 years of age, it's probably time for me to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.  And yet, I am further from knowing now then when I was 18.  In fact, I am farther from knowing.  I have been successful but I am starting to realize that I have been using someone else's definition of success.  

I had to take an EQ assessment for work which is an emotional intelligence thing.  It measures how I see myself and how I connect with the rest of the world.  I scored quite well on empathy but my measurements for how I see myself were...not good.  Apparently, getting beaten up at work for 4 years has an impact on you.  Who knew?  Ok, I guess I knew but I didn't realize just to what extent.  The report went on to say pretty clearly that I am not in thrive mode, rather, survive mode.   It said alot of things but the bottom line was not good.  

It's hard to ignore things when someone holds a mirror up to you and points out that massive zit on your face. I would like to say that ignorance is bliss but I have to be honest, I knew that the zit was there.  Having said that, I wish that I was blissfully ignorant.  I think I have been pretending for awhile that things are good.  Things are not, I am not well.  I am having a hard time finding joy in my life.  I see every day as the same.  There is little to look forward to.  I often ask myself what makes me happy and I can't seem to land on something.  

Somedays are worse than others.  I work from home and I hate it.  I don't get to socialize or collaborate.  I was remote before COVID came along and actually, COVID helped because then everyone else had to be intentional about connecting with others in a virtual world.  I was no longer the odd man out.  But I still feel lonely.  There are some days when I don't talk to anyone.  I hate it.  But I have to accept the truth that even on a good day, I am not finding the joy in my life.  The good days just suck a little less.  

Before the report, I didn't feel good but I wasn't in a terrible place and I guess thats part of the problem.  Unless I am planning to suck on the end of a gun, I tell myself that I am fine.  And that is not the case. I am overwhelmed right now and I am not sure why.   I just feel alot of despair and that is not a good thing.  

I do not have a plan to kill myself but I would not be sad if a bus fell on me.  Thats what the smart people in coats call a "passive suicidal ideation."  Not enough to get me locked up for three days but clearly, not a good thing.  If you are feeling that way, something isn't right.  

Ok, so I am going to make a commitment to you and the numerous bots from Russia and China that are reading this that I am going to speak to my wife about this. I am going to say something tonight.  I need to think about what I am going to say so that I don't just start bawling like a 6 year old girl.  I doubt she will be surprised; I am not good at playing poker.  I guess I will just give her a heads up and ask for her perspective.  

I will check back in a couple days and either give an update or pull this down.