Mark Henick on Suicide and Depression

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. 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. Let's get you live in 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 Eric Zimmer dot coach slash application and set up a time for us to talk. I won't try and convince you the programs 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 of 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 shared with me that this is one of the best things they ever did. So again, go to Eric Zimmer dot 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 Henneck. Mark has appeared in more than a hundred television segments and countless us 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 six million views. Hi. Mark, Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having Mark. I'm really happy to have you on. We're going to talk in this episode about suicide, your story, um of you know, kind of what what happened with you and um just you know. We're going to explore mental health and 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 and she says, well, grandfather, which

one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you've feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that paragoul means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So for me, I think the um 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. Uh, in many ways it has saved my life. So for me, this idea of you know, 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 my way of looking at it, I guess the two sides of the same coin. Uh, in terms of which side of that coin I feed, I guess, um, you know, for me, reconceptualizing that reconceptualizing my struggle and in many ways, my persistent struggle. It's what it's given me the most life,

it's what's given me the most purpose. So so I happened to choose that definition of my struggle, that something that I overcame, because that's what I need to believe. That's that's the narrative that I need to apply to my life, and and my life is better because of it makes total sense. 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's 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, UM, 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. UM. I had been in and out of hospital by that point, in and out of psychiatric words specifically in my local small town hospital, UM at least

seven times. And as I looked back, I've 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 and all of my medical records of in that I'm in and out of hospital, and I saw a very clear what we call in the clinical world decompensation

or or or unraveling in my life. That it started out my suicidality at about twelve 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, UH than than the symptoms themselves. So what started as something very amorphous and and ill defined gradually grew over repeated attempts UH struggling, very deeply, repeated hospitalizations, to the point where I was unhelpable, that I was broken, UH,

that I was just one of the unlucky few. I was Irish Catholic, that 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, even just for the sake of dying it' said. 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 um because I just didn't. I didn't experience that on a day to day basis, with you know, growing up in a small town poor, having experienced trauma, having 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 was I

thought it was going to be my final attempt. It was my plan was for it to be my final attempt to jump from a bridge in my small hometown of Sydney, Nova, Scotia, which stretch 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 or have some sort of significance for people, and that place was significant for me because this steel plant represented an area that used to be so vital, It used to have so much life and used to provide literally the livelihood for everybody in my hometown for all thirty two plus sons 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 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, of violent criminal because I had a mental illness, which of course isn't true. But I didn't know that. Because

I didn't, I didn't hear anything else. So that was the first glimpse that, hey, maybe I don't have to be uh 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 high school and my high school principle 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. But he because he said, you know, the 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 there's right ways and wrong ways to talk about suicide. Yes, um, there reasons why on Netflix is the wrong way for I wrote all about that for CNN, and I'm very vocal on that point. And they're not the only ones, not the not the 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 um, 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 and op ed to my local newspaper, the Cape Brinton Post. I'm sure all your listeners are subscribers to the Yeah Yeah, Yes, I think I like in 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 had, what I was currently going through, or that their mother or their sister or their brother, their father, 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 and I realized that this is how I could be like that stranger who saved my life. And and really that's when an activist an advocate was born, and in that high school, not being content with the silence anymore. Yeah, it makes

total sense. So let's talk a little bit about what your recovery started to look like after that. I guess for 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 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 as 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. 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. Um. You know that that gave me meaning, but it also gave me a distraction. It gave me something else to focus on that wasn't just me um 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 is a big thing when you get into that place. So it gave me, it gave me something to do, and with that I started uhh and even just in in reflecting back again, I didn't realize I was doing 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. Uh speaking up more um, and part of that maybe it was

just being a teenager and being more vocal um. But I was the youngest in my family and 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. UM, 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 in both 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 um 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 so for me, it was that it was 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. Your family life at that point was not good. I assumed getting away to university was also ended that part of it, insofar

as it can. And you know that that part of it. But yeah, I mean my father left officially anyway when I was for um, so my mother won a single parents salary. We struggled for for years when we moved into a new home and became part of a blended family,

and that became emotionally abusive very quickly. Uh. 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 right, that it makes you a sissy. Uh. 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 know, 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. 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 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. Um, it was really the first time in many ways that I started experimenting and learning more about myself, and and I think that that was exactly the kind of safe risk taking

that I needed. 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 is this idea of 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 fort 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 try to try to marry those two things together, as I was so obsessed with this idea UM And part of that idea is that the way that I explain this, or 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 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, 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 happening 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 it 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. When we get into a state of depression suicidality, I conceptualize that as that perceptual field or that bubble around us of things that

we can know. Uh, 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 who saw a kid on the side of a bridge and literally reached out and grabbed me and and snapped me out of it.

To use an in artful metaphor, but pierce that that place for me, at least in that moment, so that way I can do other work. And I think that still, uh, the way that I think of that experience when I'm sliding into that stuck place, that dark, tight um, suffocating place, all these 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 options. Uh, 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 we can interact with the world in a in a healthy way where we have a core sense of ourselves, but then that also grows and changes and breathes depending on the world around us. That idea of expanse and contraction we've talked about on the show many times. That health and wellness and awakening, if you want to talk about in a spiritual sense, is this broadening of perspective.

It's this, it's this releasing, it's this unclenching, right, and that 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 and twelve step programs, and you know, there's this idea of you know, let go and let God, and I hit a point where I's 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. That's what causes the friction, right, and then and then the friction causes the fire. But if you let it sly away now, I will say, however, that there's a limit to that. And and we 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 to be breathable, to be 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. Yeah, it's all one and it's all different. It's this, it's this balance of

those things. And and yeah, I mean we have to be able to function as human. We have to know when someone says Eric and 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 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, but 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 sunburned, of feeling the tingle

of the sun burning my skin. And why I raised that is because I love this idea of change, of different of being uncomfortable, even if it's painful sometimes because through pain comes growth, and that comes change. And I really believe, uh, you know, to reference back to your parable that even in the most traumatic, challenging situations, the most painful situations. Uh, something good can come from it depending on the lens that you take in the work

that you do with it. And I really remind myself a lot now because of the public work that I do in 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 and for nation to ensure that nobody else experiences that tragedy. That it's awful, and uh, 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 happened to us, and and that's a big part of what's been important um 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 sort. But for me, I've re narrated it in my head. I've I've reascribed 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 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 herms 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. Um, But even that is a good experience because part of having social anxiety is sort of part of having any anxiety disorder, I think, and having an avoidant coping strategy that comes with that is is perfectionism and of 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 that I've had some distance from it. Credit 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, uh, 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. That 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. 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 ascribed 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 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. For me, what I 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 hollow You come to Jesus recovery moment, you know that everything suddenly got better, and look at him now. I

still struggle. I still relapse usually once a year. Um, I've been about eighteen months or so without a relapse yet, so this is the longest stretch that I haven't But um, I've had some really serious relapses over the um last fifteen years since I 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 and that's it, that that you can 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. Do take some risks, um, use what you have. And and that's certainly what I've done. And so when you talk about relapsing, describe that word. You know 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 tie you because I've done it so many times, Um that it started off as messy. It started off as, Oh, I'm 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 be came what's known as a frequent flyer in the mental health system, you know, in and out of psychords.

So many times I thought that I was just unhelpable. If all these experts, all these super smart people can't figure out what's wrong with me, and 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 it relapsed 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 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, um so, so that's one of those 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 used, 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, twenty times before I know what this looks like.

In my case, I become more irritable. I tend I'm less patient, I tend to sleep more, I don't exercise as much, I eat differently, I socialized differently, and I just have this this feeling of a wet, dark blanket over me all the time that that feeling of contraction and feeling trapped. Um 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 realized

what was happening. But nowadays it's more, you know, I'm a 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 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 and how you know you're not doing well? Well? How do I know I am doing well? How do I 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 learned 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 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 I'm really fascinating by this because I've noticed the same thing with my depression. It just seems like there are times where I'm like, well, well, I'll be damn, 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 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 there, and it's 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 a 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 gonna hide and it's gonna it's gonna impair your faculties that see it. So for me, it would impair my um willingness to go out and socialize with my friends. Therefore, there's gonna be fewer friends around me to notice that I'm behaving differently. Right, it's a sneaky thing. Depression.

Um So, so all of those things would would happen, and and uh, 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 um or 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. Is it's not socially acceptable? Well, maybe behavior is information. Maybe you're cranky and irritable for a reason. Um, but nobody usually asks that kind of kind of question, especially if you're telling them telling them off. So I think that learn to realize. Oh, that was kind of an overreaction to that person. That person probably

didn't mean it that way. When I 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, uh, then that's what really helped me to to see my cycles

more clearly. Yeah, and I think what you said earlier about getting good at being depressed is is sort of important. I'm significantly older than you are, so I've had significantly more cycles, right, I've got I've got years of 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 and I try and treat it like I would if I was physically sick. I'm gonna take better care of myself. I'm gonna 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 you're clearly with the wrong person, you clearly don't have any friends you clearly, I just sort of go, 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 thirties now, Um I've got a family. I've got three kids and a wife, and that's you just don't learn that kind

of lesson until you actually live. And you know the number of times that I've been, you know, awake at three thirty 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 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'll only learn later on,

you know. 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 twenty four hours, it's across the street. I guess I can go to the gym instead. Like because when you when you fight it, like you said, you get into that into that back and forth, into 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 will get it 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 to my entire life, this too shall pass, And especially if you've relapsed a bunch of times before. However, many times it doesn't even matter if it's twice or twenty times or two hundred 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 a 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, and then but then you have the courage to change the parts of that you can't. 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, 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 of the most common symptoms, one of the most common expo 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 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. That 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 to herd and you really do need to meet people where they are and realize, Okay, if it's five minutes or or the rest 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 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've sort of learned how to meet him where he is in a way as much as as much as you can do that, But it's definitely very challenging, and you know that idea of moving, you know, one of my One of the phrases I cling to is depression hates a moving target.

You know, for me, it's just like whatever, just move, whether that be physically exercising, whether that me just getting out of the apartment, whether that be doing something inane, but you know, not 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 and you know, 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, uh, 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 you know, dangerous for you obviously, um, 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 helped you to recalibrate, to zone out for a

little bit. Just watch Netflix for a little while and let it flick over to the next, to the next show, over 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, um 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 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. 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 um 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. Uh. 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 with Entertainment one, uh, and I just have these kinds of conversations with other people about their stories as well. And 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 that sounds kind of gross. That's okay, thank you, Thank you Mark. Okay. Yeah, if what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to

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