The One You Feed - Mark Henick on Suicide and Depression

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

Mark Henick has appeared in hundreds of television segments and countless more radio, print and online features about mental health. Mark’s TedTalk, “Why We Choose Suicide”, is among the most-watched in the world with over 6 million views. In this episode, he tells Eric about his experience with attempts at suicide, relapsing depression and getting skillful with finding meaning and living his life. This isn’t just a broad discussion on suicide and depression – there are real, practical techniques and approaches that can be applied to life today, no matter your circumstances, to create meaning, fulfillment, and yes, even joy. Need help with completing your goals in 2019? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Mark Henick and I Discuss Suicide, Depression, and…The duality of life and deathMental Health and SuicideHis suicidality at 12 years oldThe message he got that he couldn’t talk about suicideThe complete stranger who saved him from jumping from a bridge at night – physically holding on to himHis realization that he didn’t have to be the suffering boy he was, he could be the stranger that helped him…that his life could be differentThe myth that if you talk about suicide it will give people the idea to do itThe right way and wrong way to talk about suicide and depressionHow freeing it is to talk about somethingWhen others told him they could relate to his story of suicide and depressionHis recovery through a newfound sense of purposeThe healthier relationships he pursuedGetting clear about boundariesThe toxic masculinity he was surrounded by as a childNot having the language to express the feelings he hadThe perceptual field and increasing your options by getting uncomfortable.How depression limits the options you can see Broadening of perception and expansion as a part of awakeningSomething good can come from most painful situations; It’s in the lens you take and the work that you do.His depression and social anxiety disorderThe danger in an avoidant coping strategy as well as the flaws of perfectionism.Realizing the cross you bear can change into meaning and how to turn your struggle into something good.Getting good at re-lapsing with his depressionHis misguided thought that he was failing at getting betterLearning to trust himself AND learning not to believe every one of his thoughtsThe truth: This too shall pass (the more you cling to it the longer it takes to pass)How depression hates a moving targetMark Henick Links:markhenick.comTed Talk: “Why We Choose Suicide”TwitterFacebookTalkspace:  the online therapy company that lets you message a licensed therapist from anywhere at any time. Therapy on demand. Non-judgemental, practical help when you need it at a fraction of the cost of traditional therapy. Visit www.talkspace.com and enter Promo Code: WOLF to get 65% off your first month.Daily Harvest – Delivers absolutely delicious organic, carefully sourced, chef-created fruit and veggie smoothies, soups, overnight oats, bowls and more. To get $25 off your first box go to www.dailyharvest.com and enter promo code: FEEDSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You can have a sense of identity, but you allow that identity to grow and to change. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The really no really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life goes by fast, often too fast for most of us. And when people get to the end of their lives, what they do is they look back and they regret the things they didn't do.

So what are the things that you are not doing that you keep saying you're going to do, but you're unable to do? Bring those things to me in the One You Feed transformation program and let's see if we can preempt those regrets. program and let's see if we can preempt those regrets. Let's get you living the life that you know you can live, that for whatever reason you're just not doing. The blocks could be from all different places, but what we do in the program is we look at you and we look at your life, what you want to accomplish and what your challenges are. And we come up with a plan that helps you to do the things that you want to do, to do the things that make life matter. And I'm there with you every step of the way,

helping you accomplish these things. And again, doing the things that matter so that when you look back later, you don't have these regrets about how you let all this time go without doing these important things. If this resonates with you, go to ericzimmer.coach slash application and set up a time for us to talk. I won't try and convince you the program is the right fit for you. I'll tell you what I can do to help you, where I can help you. And I'll be sure to give you a couple tips to take on your way even if you decide we're not the right fit. I can share with you lots of testimonials of really, really happy clients who've shared with me that this is one of the best things they ever did. So again, go to ericzimmer.coach slash application and let's get you moving today in the direction of the things that are really

important to you. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Hennick. Mark has appeared in more than 100 television segments and countless more radio, print, and online features about mental health. Mark's TED Talk, Why We Choose Suicide, is among the most watched in the world with over 6 million views. Hi, Mark. Welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me, Eric. I'm really happy to have you on. We're going to talk in this episode about suicide, your story of, you know, kind of what happened with you and just, you know, we're going to explore mental health in more detail, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves that are inside of us and they are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and

she thinks about it for a second. And she looks up at her grandfather. She says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So for me, I think the duality of life and death has haunted me for pretty much my entire life. And in many ways, talking about death has become my life's purpose. In many ways, it has saved my life. So for me, this idea of which one you feed, I could have fed the narrative that death could overcome me, that death was inescapable, which granted it is. But in my ways, in my life rather, in my way of looking at it, I guess, the two sides of the same coin in terms of which side of that coin I feed, I guess.

You know, for me, reconceptualizing that, reconceptualizing my struggle, and in many ways my persistent struggle, it's what's given me the most life. It's what's given me the most life. It's what's given me the most purpose. So I happen to choose that definition of my struggle, that it's something that I overcame, because that's what I need to believe. That's the narrative that I need to apply to my life, and my life is better because of it. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your story? You gave one of the most popular TED Talks of all time on suicide. It probably is the most popular TED Talk about suicide ever, although I don't have the facts to back that up, but I would assume so. You know, share a little bit about what brought you to the point where you became a mental health advocate. Well, that started in high school, and I was still very much struggling at the time. I had been in and out of hospital by that point, in and out of psychiatric wards specifically, in my local small town hospital, at least seven times. And as I looked back, I've since written a book and have now gone through six drafts of that book.

So I've been through these stories a lot and all of my medical records of that time in and out of hospital. And I saw a very clear what we call in the clinical world decompensation or unraveling in my life. That it started out my suicidality at about 12 years old. It started out my suicidality at about 12 years old. And it started out with just ideas, thinking about it, not even really having any intent or plan or even clear idea of why I wanted to do this kind of thing. And that's the other thing. Nobody gave me the idea to try to kill myself. It kind of grew organically in me.

But what people did give me the idea was that I wasn't allowed to talk about it. And in many ways, that message for me was far more damaging than the symptoms themselves. So what started as something very amorphous and ill-defined gradually grew over repeated attempts, struggling very deeply, repeated hospitalizations, to the point where I was unhelpable, that I was broken, that I was just one of the unlucky few. I was raised Irish Catholic, so raised to believe that it was just my cross to bear, that I was just one of the unfortunate sufferers, and that life is hard. And of course it is, but there was no hope in that for me. And I didn't want to live that life. It's not that I wanted to die necessarily, just for the sake of dying. It's that I didn't want to live that life. It's not that I wanted to die necessarily just for the sake of dying. It's that I didn't want to live like that. I didn't want to live in a world of people who I felt didn't care for me because I just didn't experience that on a day-to-day basis with growing up in a small town, poor, having experienced trauma, never having experienced any other way of living. So when I got to high school, it was after I had had a suicide attempt in which I thought it was going to be my final attempt. My plan was for it to be my final attempt to jump from a bridge in my small hometown of Sydney,

Nova Scotia, which stretched over an old abandoned steel plant that used to be in the area. That was an important place for me, like many suicide hotspots or suicide magnets have some sort of significance for people. And that place was significant for me because the steel plant represented an area that used to be so vital. It used to have so much life and it used to provide literally the livelihood for everybody in my hometown for all 32 plus aunts and uncles that I had. But here it was abandoned and empty and alone and falling down. And that's exactly how I felt inside. So I felt like that place got me. And when I went there late at night and intending to kill myself, it was a complete stranger who stopped, who eventually

had to reach out when I let go of the railing and started to fall. And he grabbed me and pulled me back. And, you know, my recovery didn't happen that night. That's for sure. I mean, I'm still working on my recovery every day. But I think the small one degree of shift that did happen when that complete stranger saved my life was that I started to get a bit of a glimpse of being somebody else, that I didn't have to be this poor kid who was struggling, who was destined to be, according to all the news media, a violent criminal because I had a mental illness, which of course isn't true. But I didn't know that because I didn't hear anything else. So that was the first glimpse that, hey, maybe I don't have to be the sufferer. Maybe I can be like this stranger who pulls kids off bridges and who saves

people's lives and who hears them. That's what was different about him. I felt like he heard me and he connected with me literally and metaphorically. And when I decided that, I think that's what started to change. So I went to my high school principal and I said I wanted to share my story for the very first time. He, of course, said no. Promptly and clearly, he said no. Because he said, you know, this old stigma trope that if you talk about suicide, it gives people the idea to go out and do it. And that's just not true. It's not supported by the research. There's right ways and wrong ways to talk about suicide.

Yes. 13 Reasons Why on Netflix is the wrong way. I wrote all about that for CNN, and I'm very vocal on that point. And they're not the only ones, not to point the finger at them. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. So I wanted to do the research. And I'm also, I think, starting at that moment, an activist in many ways, too. So I went home to my little basement bedroom with my Ozzy Osbourne posters on the walls. And I wrote my first ever article, an op-ed to my local newspaper, the Cape Breton Post. I'm sure all your listeners are subscribers to the Cape Breton Post. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's real popular. I think I liken the high school administration to communist Russia for stifling my free speech.

And the next morning, there were television news cameras in the principal's office asking why it wasn't okay to talk about suicide and why it wasn't okay to talk about mental health. And I felt like two things happened after I did that. The first thing was that I felt freer for being open about my story, that I think I had been suffocating myself by the idea that I couldn't talk about this stuff and that I was being controlled by this idea that I couldn't be open about who I was and what I had experienced. And the other thing that happened that I wasn't expecting was that people, even relatives, friends, family members, colleagues, complete strangers, started coming up to me and telling me that they had experienced what I was currently going through,

or that their mother or their sister or their brother or their father or their best friend, whatever, had struggled or even had died with mental illness. And they felt like they couldn't talk about it. So that showed me that people did want to talk about all these really hard things, even like suicide. And the problem was that nobody was asking. People were waiting at the door for somebody to open the door. And I realized that this is how I could be like that stranger who saved my life. And really, that's when an activist, an advocate was born in that high school, not being content with the silence anymore. Yeah, yeah, makes total sense. So let's

talk a little bit about what your recovery started to look like after that, I guess, for that block of time, your final suicide attempt. You know, what sort of things did you start doing? What sort of help did you get? You know, how did you sort of go from suicidal to a life that's different? And, you know, we'll talk about the fact that you still deal with depression. I think that's an important part of the story. But an equally important part of the story is you did get better. I did. I did. And I have repeatedly. And that's something I didn't realize until later. But I think in those early stages of what I now know of as my recovery, because I didn't know that I was recovering when I first started, that's an important thing.

Sometimes you don't realize that you've started to recover until much, much later. You don't always realize how far you've come until you actually take a minute to look back and realize where you were. So for me, I think it started with that, having that sense of purpose, you know, that gave me meaning, but it also gave me a distraction. It gave me something else to focus on that wasn't just me and my problems and the darkness inside me and all of the things that I thought other people were thinking. Mind reading is a big thing when you get into that place. So it gave me something to do. I started, and even just in reflecting back, again, I didn't realize I was doing it at the time, but I started seeking out healthier relationships and defining my boundaries better of what I was willing and not willing to accept in my life. Speaking up more, and part of that maybe was just being a teenager and being more vocal.

But I was the youngest in my family, in my immediate family, but then the first to go away to university. And I think that was one of the things that really just put me on the fast track to my recovery because university is hard, obviously, but it was the first time I had ever lived anywhere outside of my hometown. So it showed me that the world was actually a lot bigger than it was in my head. And that if I was willing to be uncomfortable and to push myself outside of my own self-imposed, often boundaries, but also culturally imposed boundaries, that I could discover so much more in the world if I was just willing to take the risk and be uncomfortable and do things that weren't exactly what was expected of me and to do things that weren't necessarily quote unquote normal. And now I know, of course, that normal is a relative term.

So for me, it was finding and being willing to be uncomfortable and finding that willingness to just push through it even though it was hard. And that's a lesson that I still use in almost every aspect of my life. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really?

That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your family life at that point was not good. I assume

getting away to university was also ended that part of it insofar as it can and you know, the that part of it. But yeah, I mean, my father left officially anyway when I was four. So my mother, on a single parent salary, we struggled for years. When we moved into a new home and became part of a blended family, that became emotionally abusive very quickly. And I was surrounded constantly, especially by my stepfather, by this toxic masculinity, this idea that men especially can't show emotion, they can't cry, that that makes you gay as though that were the worst thing in the world, you know? Right. That it makes you a sissy. And, you know, that was always around me. So I received the message very clearly, consistently from a young age that it was not okay to talk about how I was feeling. But also, I never really had the language for it anyway, because nobody ever taught me what to call these things that I was feeling.

You're born feeling emotions, of course, but you're not born knowing actually what to call those emotions, or even less so what to do with those emotions. all those emotions or even less so what to do with those emotions. So as a young boy, being told that he had to be a man from as young as eight or nine years old, I never really got the basic skills for how to deal with my emotions. And then when I was faced with, you know, going off to undergraduate and living in residence and needing to figure all that stuff out for the first time and make a whole lot of mistakes along the way, that's for sure. It was really the first time in many ways that I started experimenting and learning more about myself. And I think that that was exactly the kind of safe risk-taking that I needed. Yeah, makes total sense. So in your TED Talk, you talk about something, you call it the perceptual field. Let's start by having you kind of define

what you mean by that. Yeah. So I started thinking about this, and this idea of a perceptual field or perceptual space, it's been haunting me almost my entire personal and professional life, because I think it really, in many ways, started on that night at midnight, standing on an inch and a half of concrete, 40 feet above the ground, ready to kill myself, when I could not see any other option. And it didn't matter that there were other options. It didn't matter that there were people who loved me, who would be devastated if I died, who wanted to help me, who even tried to help me. None of that stuff mattered in that moment because I couldn't see it. And if I can't see it, then it's not real. In undergrad, I did psychology and philosophy, tried to marry those two things together because I was so obsessed with this idea. And part of that idea is that the way that I explain this or think in my own mind of this perceptual field is that it's like this bubble around you. And it's basically everything that you can perceive in any given moment. And then from a Freudian perspective, I suppose, what's just beyond that bubble are the things that you could perceive or have perceived,

and that can move in and out of how you perceive the world at any given time. What I think that I add to this, and I think I'd still like to be able to articulate this, it's going to take me my entire career to do it, but is that that bubble changes, that the composition of that bubble around you, that perceptual space around you changes. You know, sometimes we've experienced this experience of transcendence, where we feel like we're at one with the universe. But at other times, we're so focused in on one thing. In the TED Talk, I use the example of getting cut off in traffic in a really dangerous way, or if something really shocking happens, or something really exciting and happy happens to us, we tend to zoom in on that thing as though it's the only thing happening. And we've all had this experience of time feeling like it drags on forever or that time flies when you're having fun, as they say. You know, I think that's all stuff that happens because our focus and this perceptual field around us is changing all the time, depending on what we need.

depression, suicidality, I conceptualize that as that perceptual field or that bubble around us of things that we can know. It calcifies, it hardens, it darkens, and it becomes very difficult to see anything outside of that bubble, even if it's standing right next to us at the time. So then we need something to pierce that field, to let some of that poison out, to let some of that pressure out. For me, it happened to be a complete stranger who saw a kid on the side of a bridge and literally reached out and grabbed me and snapped me out of it, to use an inartful metaphor, but really pierced that place for me, at least in that moment, so that way I could do other work. And I think that's still the way that I think of that experience. When I'm sliding into that stuck place, that dark, tight, suffocating place, all these synonyms for it, that's what I think of as being in that place of depression, is that that's what it does.

Depression is a problem in the functionality of your psychological perception of your world around you. It limits your view. It limits your view. It limits your options. It limits, it depresses literally everything that you can experience. So, you know, this is something that I still add flesh to almost every day, this idea of how can we reinflate that space? How can we air it out? How can we make it more permeable? So that way we can interact with the world in a healthy way where we have a core sense of ourself, but then that also grows and changes and breathes depending on the world around

us. Yeah, that idea of expansion and contraction, we've talked about on the show many times that health and wellness and awakening, if you want to talk about it in a spiritual sense, is this broadening of perspective. It's this releasing, it's this unclenching, right? And that it's that sort of shutting down more and more myopic, you know, gripping tighter, holding tighter is the direction that we get more ill. And it's funny, I often think about this, you know, I got sober in 12-step programs and, you know, there's this idea of, you know, let go and let God. And I hit a point where I was like, well, I don't really believe in a God who's going to come in and clean up what I let go of. So what am I letting go of? And I eventually hit a point where

I was like, it does not matter, right? It's the holding on so tight that's making me sick. see this in Eastern religious traditions as well, for those listeners who happen to be experts, I'm not, but this idea of becoming one with your surrounding and losing, actually, your sense of self. So, I think you do actually need that bit of boundary. You need to be able to limit your perception in a way, but it does need to be able to be breathable, to be permeable. So, you can have a sense of identity, but you allow that identity to grow and to change depending on the environment around you. I think that's key. Right. And even, I think, in those spiritual traditions that talk about no separate self, there is the idea that at the same time, there absolutely is both. Yes, on one hand, no,

you're not what you think you are. You're not this small, limited thing. You're more connected to everything that you think you are. It's all one and it's all different. It's this balance of those things. And yeah, I mean, we have to be able to function as humans. We have to know when someone says, Eric, that I go, oh, that's me. You know, I answer to that. But yeah, I think it's in general that how do we expand? So what are some of the things that you've thought of or have worked in your life to either expand that perceptual field? You use the word darkness and closed, you know, you talked about making it more permeable. What are some of the things for you that help you expand that field?

I love being uncomfortable. I know that sounds really strange, and part of it is just maybe sensation-seeking. I don't know. But I remember as a very young boy, either laying on a beach or walking along the street on a sunny summer day, and I used to love the sensation of getting a sunburn, of feeling the tingle of the sun burning my skin. And why I raise that is because I love this idea of change, of difference, of being uncomfortable, even if it's painful sometimes, because through pain comes growth and that comes change. And I really believe, you know, to reference back to your parable, that even in the most traumatic, challenging situations, the most painful situations, something good can come from it, depending on the lens that you take and the work that you do with

it. And I really remind myself a lot now because of the public work that I do in suicide prevention, suicide awareness, that family members talk to me all the time. Parents especially who have lost a teenage kid, but somebody of any age to suicide. And one of the most common emotions that they experience is blame and guilt, rather, because they feel like, you know, if we're raising awareness of suicide, maybe they could have noticed it earlier on. And what I almost always tell them is that it's an absolute tragedy that their loved one died and they didn't have to. And we can use that information to ensure that nobody else experiences that tragedy, that it's awful and it's useful to others, it's useful to others, that we can not let them die in vain, that we can use that tragedy to help ensure that nobody else ever has to experience that tragedy again. So I think that we can use these things that happen to us. And that's a big part of what's been important for me in breaking free and in expanding that perception and being uncomfortable, leaning into discomfort. You know, I have depression, but I also have an anxiety disorder. I have social anxiety disorder, actually. That was one of my very first diagnoses when I went into the hospital. And I still get nervous before I

go on camera. And I've done hundreds, literally hundreds of on-camera interviews and conversations. I go on stage all the time. It's my full-time gig now. And I still get nervous before I do it because I still have social anxiety disorder. But for me, I've re-narrated it in my head. I've re-ascribed new meaning to it to be, oh, I'm feeling nervous. Okay, that's how I know where the wall is. That's how I know where I need to jump over, where I need to push through. I think that's how I do it. I identify what makes me uncomfortable and I run into it rather than away from it. Most of the time, I try to make sure that I'm actually doing the right thing, that I'm not going to be putting myself in harm's way.

That hasn't always been the case. You know, I've made terrible mistakes in that way and I've gotten hurt, of course, you know, so I'm not always right. But even that is a good experience, because part of having social anxiety disorder, part of having any anxiety disorder, I think, and having an avoidant coping strategy that comes with that is perfectionism, and of avoiding things that make you uncomfortable. avoiding things that make you uncomfortable. But of course, that just feeds the beast, that just maintains the anxiety. That's what it wants, is to stay around. So it makes you avoid all the things that could challenge it. I think in many ways, especially now that I've had some distance from it, credit a liberal arts undergraduate education. You know, in undergrad, when I studied psychology and philosophy, the whole idea of the liberal arts is asking challenging questions and identifying what you believe. Great, wonderful that you believe that. Let's see how you stand up against all the things that you don't believe. You know, it's what you

believe is the starting point. So now let's expose you, let's interrogate you with all of these other things. And especially now in the age of social media, that's so, I think, antithetical to what people think. To step outside the echo chamber is one of the most terrifying things in the world. But I think that's necessary. I think that's how we expand our perception. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you say to someone who is suicidal or contemplating it thinking about it? You must get asked this question When it feels like everything is wrong with you, what if there was nothing wrong? What if exactly what you were experiencing is exactly who you need to be right now? And that's okay. And you can use that. And it can be great. And I say in the TED Talk, we need you. We need your story. We need your struggle. Because that's what changes

the world. Nobody has ever changed the world who hasn't gone through terrible struggle. And I know that, you know, it comes back to that old Irish Catholic idea, I guess, of maybe it is, I don't know, that's what I ascribe it to, of, you know, I don't want this to be my cross to bear. It's not always going to be. That's the thing. When you're able to accept it and when you can accept that you can use this, that's when you change. That's the dichotomy of it, this idea, this tension of acceptance and change. When you accept that, okay, it is what it is. I don't like it. I don't have to. That's okay. That's when you can really start to change. That's when you can really start to change. For me, what I try to tell people all the time is, yes, it's hard. It's awful.

It's just about the most, it's the worst thing in the world to feel like you don't want to be in the world anymore. And I've been back there. My story isn't just a hallelujah, come to Jesus recovery moment, you know, that everything suddenly got better and look at them now. I still struggle. I still relapse usually once a year. I've been about 18 months or so without a relapse yet. So this is the longest stretch that I haven struggle. I still relapse usually once a year. I've been about 18 months or so without a relapse yet. So this is the longest stretch that I haven't, but I've had some really serious relapses over the last 15 years since I was on that bridge. But I'm still grateful for even that. I'm grateful for every relapse because it teaches me a little bit more about who I am,

about how I recover, what my triggers are, what my strategies are to get out of it. I've become very good at being depressed because I know how to do it now. And that's it, that you can turn your struggle into something good. And why not? We're all going to die anyway. That's guaranteed. So you might as well have fun with it. You might as well do something with it. Take some risks. Use what you have. And that's certainly what I've done. And so when you talk about relapsing, describe that word. You've had relapses. What does that look like or what does that mean for you? Well, for me, relapse in many ways has become kind of clean and tidy because I've done it so many times, that it started off as messy. It started off as, oh, I'm on medication now and the doctors tell me I'm going to be fine. And then a few weeks later, I'm not fine, very clearly not fine.

And then I blame that on me, especially near the end after I became what's known as a frequent flyer in the mental health system, you know, in and out of psych wards so many times, I thought that I was just unhelpful. If all these experts, all these super smart people can't figure out what's wrong with me, then it's my fault, basically, which of course isn't true because there are so many problems with the system and so much that we don't know about the brain and about the mind and about struggles, that it's not your fault that you're struggling in the way that you are. But I didn't know that at the time. So I thought that relapse in those early days, that it was a failure on my part. Why am I failing to get better? Or even if I would attempt suicide and not complete it for whatever reason, that I

failed at suicide. Well, no, if I didn't die, that's not a failure. That's a pretty big success if I'm still alive, actually. So that's when I became interested in stigmatizing languages as well. People don't fail in suicide attempts. They do or don't complete. That's the language that we use. You know, I think that I started to get the hang of my relapses several years in once I realized more about my pattern, that it was okay. Things are starting to go downhill. I've been here before. I've been here, you know, 20 times before. I know what this looks like.

In my case, I become more irritable. I'm less patient. I tend to sleep more. I don't exercise as much. I eat differently. I social less patient. I tend to sleep more. I don't exercise as much. I eat differently. I socialize differently. And I just have this feeling of a wet, dark blanket over me all the time, that feeling of contraction and feeling trapped. So when that starts to set in, it used to take me a very long time to realize I'd be very deep underground early on

before I'd realize what was happening. But nowadays, it's more, you know, I'm a few weeks into it. And it's been, you know, a couple of weeks and I just, I'm not where I like to be. And, you know, part of getting good at depression, I think, is realizing where you like to be, just as much as realizing your triggers and how you know you're not doing well. Well, how do I know I am doing well? How do I appreciate and celebrate and take note of and be grateful for the times that I'm doing really well? It's important to notice that too, because that shows you the comparison. And once I learn to do that, you know, it still takes me some time. And sometimes I can get pretty far down the rabbit hole before I realize, but that's because I'm human and I'm gentler with myself now.

So, you know, I think depression and recovery takes practice and you have to get used to the uncomfortable feeling of, if you want to call it failure, fine, that that happens. That's okay. It's just another chance to do it again and to learn more about it. It's cyclical. It's not a one-size-fits-all, and it's not a one-and-done thing. Recovery is weird. It's up and down, back and forth, sideways, and every other direction. But you figure it out as you go, and there's no right way to do it. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. What do you think causes you to swing back down? Do you think there are external reasons? Do you think there's just a cyclical nature to the thing that you have? Do you stop taking such good care of yourself? I'm really fascinated by this because I've noticed the same thing with my depression. It just seems like there are times where I'm like, well, I'll be damned, there it is again. You know, I don't even necessarily know most of the time why. I do sort of know what I can do that will help minimize it. And, you know, I can sometimes look and see like, oh, well, I haven't been doing this, this, and that, which I know are really good for me.

So I kind of get back to it. But there's other times it just seems completely unexplainable to me. Yeah, and I think that's actually one of the symptoms, of course. We're talking about mental illness here, and it's mental for a reason, because it impacts the way that you think, right? And one of the first things in my personal experience, I can't speak for everybody because it is different for everybody, I think, generally. There are a lot of commonalities, but one of the first things that depression attacks is your ability to see it. Because, again, it's like a parasite. It's like an abusive lover. It doesn't want to be caught. It doesn't want you to know,

right? So it's going to hide and it's going to impair your faculties that see it. So for me, it would impair my willingness to go out and socialize with my friends. Therefore, there's going to be fewer friends around me to notice that I'm behaving differently, right? It's a sneaky thing, depression. So all of those things would happen. And, you know, I'd be feeling all these different ways. And I'd be gradually, very often, it wasn't usually black and white, I'd be gradually cutting things out of my life or withdrawing. And I'm an introvert anyway, even though I do all this public stuff, I'm an introvert anyway. So it often people wouldn't realize. Or if I was cranky, you know, sometimes crankiness and anger and irritability,

that bothers people. So they don't want to be around you because it's not socially acceptable. Well, maybe behavior is information. Maybe you're cranky and irritable for a reason. But nobody usually asks that kind of question, especially if you're telling them off. So I think that I learned to realize, oh, that was kind of an overreaction to that person. That person probably didn't mean it that way. person. That person probably didn't mean it that way. When I'm able to ask myself those questions, that's what starts to help me break out of that or expand that perception, break out of that bubble, because it challenges my view. I had to learn, and this is one of those dualities again,

I had to learn to trust myself, but I also had to learn to not believe everything that I thought. Just because I thought everybody was out to get me, just because I thought that I had tried everything, quote unquote, everybody says that. Despite the fact that it's almost physically impossible to try everything, right? That there's always more things to try. You know, I think that when I realized that I could challenge thoughts in my mind, then that's what really helped me to see my cycles more clearly. Yeah. And I think what you said earlier about getting good at being depressed is sort of important. I'm significantly older than you are, so I've had significantly more cycles, right?

I've got years of it, right? So I think I catch it fairly quickly now. I actually sometimes refer to it, right? So I think I catch it fairly quickly now. I actually sometimes refer to it as the emotional flu. It sometimes seems to me the equivalent of when I get physically sick. It's just, there it is. And it's, you know, there's not a whole lot to really explain it. And I try and treat it like I would if I was physically sick. I'm going to take better care of myself. I'm going to do the things I know are good for me. And I'm not going to make a huge fuss about this. And what I mean by making a fuss is I'm not going to sit there and when my brain starts saying, well, you're clearly in the wrong career. You're clearly with the wrong person. You clearly don't

have any friends. You clearly, I just sort of go, I, you know, same way, like when I'm sick, the world looks bleak. I'm just physically, I'm like, I'm just going to sort of let those to the best of my ability. I'm not going to engage in any deep thought here about the quality of my life. I'm just going to take care of myself and wait for it to pass. And that's one of those things that I really think you can only learn through experience. Look, I mean, I'm in my 30s now. I've got a family. I've got three kids and a wife. And you just don't learn that kind of lesson until you actually live. And the number of times that I've been awake at 3.30 in the morning and for some brilliant reason thought, oh, I better send that angry email or that text or do that weird thing or say that thing that I'll regret later. But it seemed like a good idea at the time because when you're in that bubble,

that's how you see the world. Those are your depression-colored glasses that you're wearing. And you only learn later on, now, sure, I can still lay awake at three o'clock in the morning. This just happened the other night. And I thought, well, I guess I can go to the gym. It's 24 hours across the street. I guess I can go to the gym instead. that tension. It causes that friction and that fire. And that doesn't help. I don't have any tattoos, but if I ever do, the one that I'll get, it's a little cliche maybe, but it would be that this too shall pass. I've repeated that mantra to myself so many times. It's the mantra to my entire life. This too shall pass. And especially if you've relapsed a bunch of times before, or however many times, it doesn't even matter if it's twice or 20 times or 200 times, it passes. And it will. Sometimes it takes longer than others. But like you said, the more you cling to it, the longer it will take to pass. So let's just sit back and this sucks, yes, but let's let it suck. And that's okay that it sucks.

We're going to get through it. Right, right. Yeah, I think it's sort of this strange balance of on one hand, accepting it that, okay, this is here, like you said, this kind of sucks, and sort of being skillful about the things that I know can help and making sure I'm engaging in them and doing them. It's sort of like the serenity prayer a little bit, right? Like, you accept the fact that the depression is here, but then you have the courage to change the parts of that you can, oh, am I eating well? Am I taking care of myself? Am I seeing friends? You know, it's, it's sort of both of those things. I think at least that's what helps me. I think it is. And that's one of the things too, though,

that, you know, you have to meet people where they are in terms of giving advice and, you know, advocacy, mental health advocacy and awareness and activism is like anything else. You make a lot of mistakes. And when I have talked about that in the past, you know, this idea that depression actually physically does not steal away your ability to walk. It does not. It does not infect your legs. It does not break your bones. It's one not break your bones it's one of the most common symptoms one of the most common experiences i've felt it on virtually every relapse where you want to say i just can't get out of bed in the morning i'm just not able to get out of bed in the morning

and you really believe that with every fiber of your being and in in many respects it's true except for the fact that biologically it's not, right? That it's your brain convincing you of that. But yes, you actually can. And even if you only step out of that bed for five minutes just to get that short, quick shower, and you hate every minute of it, maybe that's something that you do need to push yourself to do. That maybe it's not the healthiest thing in the world to give into your mind, to believe everything you think, and to stay in bed for nine days straight. You know that that maybe you do need to make yourself uncomfortable. But there comes a point where you can you can push that too hard and you really do need to meet people where they are and realize, OK, if it's five minutes or the rest of the day, you do have to do something to help your own well-being.

I've got a couple of really good friends who struggle. One of them is similar to you, multiple suicide attempts. And, you know, he'll sort of cycle back down and it's really difficult to find like, how much do I push him? How much do I let him be where he is? How much like I sort of learned how to meet him where he is, in a way, as much as you can do that. But it's definitely very challenging. And, you know, that idea of whether that be just getting out of the apartment, whether that be doing something inane, but you know, not something stupid, but just moving. And I almost feel in some ways, like one of the things that has helped my depression is that my

life has a momentum to it that carries me through if I'm struggling. Like I have so many things that I have committed to that I'm doing. Sometimes I just feel like literally it just carries me through. And I know there were times in my life where that was not the case. And being dead stopped, I was dead stopped and it's really hard to get moving.

But I just, like I said, sometimes I think a busy life for me can be helpful in just keeping me moving when I'm struggling. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes you just have to let life flow. You don't have to be super mindful in every minute of every day about your recovery. Sometimes you just live. And that's actually even better often to just do things and not worry about the implication that it has for you. Worry about that later.

And ideally, it's nothing too dangerous for you, obviously. But doing things unexpected can be some of the best things for your life. But then just falling into rhythm can be great, too, because that helps you to recalibrate, to zone out for a little bit. to recalibrate, to zone out for a little bit. Just watch Netflix for a little while and let it flick over to the next show or to the next episode a few times. Ideally, though, everything in moderation and not falling into that trap because I'm hyper aware of my own tendency for comfort, my own need for comfort to not want to do that. And even though, you know, I've, I've made a life from, you know, I've had depression for more than half my life now. I've had it for longer than I haven't, for much longer than I haven't actually. And still my tendency is to avoid discomfort, but I know that that's what's best for me and that's what's good for me. So,

you know, I, I, I think that it's important that you, that you do that, but it's also important that you balance it as well. It's all about balance. Yeah. Amen. Well, Mark, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure talking with you and, you know, thank you for sharing your story and the work that you're doing out there. Well, thank you for having me. And I really hope that, like I said, the book is on its draft number six now. I'm waiting for my editor to get back to me, but it should be out sometime next year, I would imagine. And I hope that people check out my podcast as well. That's really been a really eye-opening experience for me to sit back and do what you're doing now. It's called So-Called Normal. It's available on all podcast platforms everywhere with

Entertainment One. And I just have these kinds of conversations with other people about their stories as well. And I hope that my background can help illuminate there. So, I really admire what you're doing. And I would like to thank you and your audience for inviting me into your ears. You are very welcome. That sounds kind of gross, but that's okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Okay.

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