#mhaw17

This week is Mental Health Awareness week, so look out for any ghosties you know struggling, start conversations and let’s try and normalise talking about how we feel <3

#Postitforward

Supporting people is what I do, I want nothing more than to help. If I can make a positive impact on someone’s life (no matter how small) I’m happy for them and pleased with myself - it’s a two way thing. 

I decided to go into mental health as a career after experiencing my own MH issues and being grateful to those who helped and supported me through that difficult time. When I became well enough and was on the road to recovery I did a counselling course at night school, which is where it all began. I applied the skills I learnt on that course to situations in my personal life; being there for family and friends, even just to talk things through. I believe it made me a better listener, which a lot of the time is all someone needs - to be heard. I noticed my self esteem improve and linked it to feeling like I had more of a purpose and could make a difference/help people. I felt that I could show those going through tough times that recovery and learning to live with your mental health IS possible - because I know all too well how at the worst points it can seem like things will never get better. I want to inspire hope in individuals who are struggling!

I was sitting on my patio with my hands cuffed behind my back trying to answer all the questions the police were asking me as I watched my mother crying in the doorway. There were a few cops inside, searching my room, probably for other weapons or maybe drugs or whatever. They confiscated my step-dads shotgun, which was a gift recently given to him by his dad. I was barefoot and in my boxers in the back of the cop car for the forty-five minute drive to the emergency psychiatric ward. On the ride there and for the next few days I could not stop thinking about how scared my mom and family must be. My mom jumped on my back when she saw me hovering over the gun, she had to hear me damning my existence, her own son. My four day stay gave me more than enough time to reflect on my actions and my feelings that lead me to them. I met people with a variety of different illnesses. I heard stories of internal and external adversity, and I heard it straight from the mouths of the people it affected so regularly. These experiences began to reveal the bigger and nearly hidden picture of people facing the issues of mental health and the systems put in place to help them and how ineffective those systems can be and how mysterious these problems are.

Months before all this I was living in Austin, TX. I lived in a one bedroom apartment by myself. All my friends and family were back in Los Angeles. I made a couple friends there in Austin but wasn’t hanging out with them very often. I was a real estate agent, Uber driver and Postmates driver. None of my jobs really had co-workers. Instead my jobs meant interacting with new people every day for brief periods of time. It wasn’t long into this lifestyle that I started feeling the effects of isolation. I became debilitatingly depressed. I found myself drinking and smoking in excess. I spent night after night by myself, crying and wishing I didn’t exist. I wished for a button to press that would quietly, unobtrusively delete me from history. I valued the end of my terrible numbness more than I did the well being of my friends and family. That is to say I stopped caring about who might weep for my death.

I got a therapist and shortly after that I moved back to LA. Things were better but I was still a bit shook. There were a couple months I was feeling particularly lost and anxious and that’s when the whole shotgun and trip to the psych ward thing happened.

I’m here now writing this (on my way to the beach for my cousin’s birthday), so you know I made it out of all this shit alive. I can confidently say that I’ve amassed enough of an emotional/psychological toolset to keep me out of those super low lows. I still have lows because like anyone reading this, I am a human. Unlike before, I now see no low worth my resignation to life.

The biggest set of tools I have can be categorized as “sense of belonging”. Humans are inherently social beings, whether or not we need tons of alone time. When a group of people have a common goal that they’re genuinely enthusiastic about, there is a deep fulfillment that makes it near impossible for depression to rear its ugly head. I got a job with co-workers who I loved to be around. I doubled down on my art and months later I was doing what I loved for a living. I began spending more time with people pursuing the same things as I was. It’s good to have any kind of extreme intimacy but the most potent kind is with someone that you share goals with. Find a tribe to hunt with and you’ll seldom be tempted to escape existence.

There’s a handful of things that helped me through those dark times, but there are a couple really important sources I’d like to share:

Tim Ferriss’ “Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide” http://tim.blog/2015/05/06/how-to-commit-suicide/

Sebastian Junger’s “TRIBE” https://www.amazon.com/Tribe-Homecoming-Belonging-Sebastian-Junger/dp/1455566381

For the longest time I’ve suspected there to be a huge disconnect between the way humans have evolved to live and the way modern, developed (and mostly Western) society has been designed. Though I’ve seen plenty of films dealing with isolation and depression, none have really addressed directly the things that made my experiences so excruciating. Out of my experiences I’ve made a film reflecting the causes of my sickness and the values that have helped me overcome it. It’s called “A Short Introduction to Love and Purpose”. Though there are many more facets to what I went through, I made sure that the film embodied the most important things: isolation, feeling hopeless, and not being able to recognize that same thing in anyone other than yourself.

I hope that at the very least the film could be an insight into one of the many ways depression takes a hold of people every day, and that if anyone facing these things themselves sees this film they can find some sort of catharsis or hope in getting through their darker times. https://vimeo.com/217615235

Help support Mental Health awareness and support this week with Gielinorian Giving!

Find out more about it here - and about our charity partners, who all aim to raise the profile of, remove stigma from, and support those suffering from mental health difficulties.