ashamed

Suicide Prevention- No Shame

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. A day that is particularly important to me. As a survivor it is a reminder of the place I came from, and the importance of ending the stigma that mental health issues are something to hide and be ashamed of. My shame of my disease kept me silent, and that silence nearly cost me my life. Approximately 1 and 5 adults experience mental illness in any given year in the United States. 1 in 5. Think about that. Anywhere you go, when you look around, 1 and 5 of those people you see are experiencing or have experienced some form of mental illness. So, why are we so afraid to talk about it? Why is there shame around something that so many us all share?

I know for myself I was afraid of being labeled “crazy,” of possibly being in an institution, whether a real threat or imagined, I was afraid of people looking at me differently, of possibly being medicated, something that frightened me as I had seen the side-effects of certain medications in my life having a negative effect, and, I was afraid of being seen as broken, or damaged. Those were the fears that kept me from reaching out and getting the help I needed. I was ashamed at how I was living my life, and my ego and pride stopped me for many years from finding the humility and courage to ask for help. It was someone who shared his story with me, who recognized what I was struggling with, and opened his heart to me about his journey that opened the door for my recovery. I appreciated his courage to share himself with me in that way, and his courage to seek treatment. I could see how his life was today and how he had changed, but I wasn’t quite ready in that moment to identify myself as having the same mental illness. Lucky for me, that story planted a seed, and a few months later, that seed had started to grow, and I realized that I did recognized myself in his story from what it had been like for him. It was the first time I felt like it was safe to tell someone the truth about the place I found myself in, the daily struggle just to get through each day and my constant hope that I would just die in my sleep and make the pain go away. But, in reality, I didn’t want to die, I just, on my own, didn’t know how to make the pain stop, but by asking for help I later found many people who did.

The key to my recovery, and my life today, was my ability to be honest with myself, and those who could help me. I found, that when I did reach out for help that there was an abundance of it, and a community of people who understood what I was going through who rallied around me in support. I learned that what I thought was something to be ashamed of was something that connected me to that community, and to many people who were already in my life who understood my struggle, and that connection meant I wasn’t alone. No one in my life turned away from me. There were certainly those who understood more than others, but those who did not asked questions and attempted to understand. Today, having nearly double digit recovery from my attempt, I am grateful to be here, to have the life I have today, and to be able to share my journey with others who may need to hear that there is hope, there is hope.

The more we talk about something the more it loses it’s power over us, the more that shame we may carry disappears and the more it give others permission to be honest about themselves. Everyone needs help sometime, and there is nothing wrong with reaching out your hand and asking for help. The day I tried to end my pain, I remember regretting what I had done, and when I talk with other survivors, I typically hear the same from them, I was lucky that I was given a second chance, but many do not get that chance, and I wonder how many regretted what they had done after they had done it, probably many.

I am here today to share my story, share my hope, share my light for the person that may be sitting in the dark, there is help all around you, there truly is, sometimes it may not be where you think it is, or where you think it should be, but it’s there. Share you truth and open your heart to finding the help you need, never be ashamed of the place you are right now, because where you are right now may just be where you need to be to get to the place you are meant to be, a place where you can be proud of who are you and who you are, and a place where your courage may just inspire someone else to find theirs. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you share your truth with those around you, or those you trust, or keep your feelings inside? If you don’t share your truth, why don’t you? Do you try? What stops you? Have you shared your truth in the past? What was the result? If it wasn’t a good result, is it possible you may have shared your truth with the wrong person or persons? Who can you share your truth with? There is no shame in needing help.

If you are not sure who or how to reach out, here are a list a resources you can trust. Suicide Help Resources

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Your Scars May Be Someone Else’s Hope

When I was living in my disease I used to think I was too damaged to be loved. I thought that if I let someone in, truly in, they would see my scars and see how ugly I was. When I looked at myself, all I could see was the scars, and I worked really hard to pretend everything was OK in the hopes that you wouldn’t notice them. What I didn’t realize was the longer I kept trying to hide them, and hide my pain, the more scars I was accumulating, and the harder it was to hide them. It wasn’t until I sought help that I realized that my scars weren’t ugly, or something to be ashamed of, that they were just a part of my story, and my story, and my scars, may be able to not only help me, but may also be able to help someone else.

Scars prove we are survivors, warriors, they are what’s left when the wound is closed, it’s evidence the pain was there, but a sign that the healing can begin, or has already happened. They don’t make us ugly, or unlovable, in fact they can show the world just how beautiful we are, and how strong our spirit is. To still be standing, to overcome whatever obstacles we have had to to be here today is a show of our strength and our ability to overcome the suffering and to let that pain become one of our brightest assets because it didn’t break us. The fact that we’ve come so far despite the scars from our past allows us to shine a beacon of hope to those out there who are still suffering, I know this is true, because 13 years ago someone else’s beacon caught me in it’s ray of light and it showed me that there might be another way, a way to live in the light.

A large part of this journey for me was accepting those scars I could not see. Those scars that ran deep inside, and went back in time as far as I could remember. Those scars that would get in my way of friendships, relationships, commitments, dreams and ambitions. I had to learn to love those scars as well, and if I couldn’t, at least acknowledge them and learn from them as I stepped forward on this new path of light. Those scars were the ones I needed to share the most, as they needed the most light. And, the more I did share them the more I realized that there were many like me who had those same scars and I learned to find the beauty in them, and, in myself. I used to think of myself as a warrior because I was a fighter and I could get through things on sheer willpower alone, but that’s not what makes a warrior strong, it’s about knowing those weak places inside of us, loving those places, and moving forward anyway, overcoming those parts that aren’t strong, or we’re not proud of, and accepting them all, loving them all, sharing them all, and as we do those scars, those scars we used to think of as ugly, or things we should hide, become the most beautiful things about us because they show our strength, or character, our ability to survive, and we can use that to offer hope to those who still think they need to hide their scars. Our scars offer hope.  SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you try to hide those parts of yourself that you think are ugly? Why do you hide them? Why are you afraid to let people see them? Do you think other people don’t have the scars that you do? Even if some may not, the fact that you have overcome your obstacles, have lived through your scars, proves how strong and how much of a survivor you are, which is nothing to be ashamed of. Those things we have survived in our lives, those things we’ve overcome are what make us the most beautiful, not only because we’ve survived them, but because we can show others it’s possible, we can use those things we thought were the worst of us to show others it’s possible to not only live through difficult circumstances or events, but that we can use them to grow, to connect, and to thrive on the other side of them. I believe we survive, not only for ourselves, but to show others the way to stop hiding the scars and things we used to because we now know the beauty and value they hold today, and they remind us of where we’ve come from, and where you don’t ever want to return to again.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Swap Out I Can’t With Actually I Can

I used to tell myself I can’t a lot. What that really meant for me a lot of the time was that I was too afraid to try or I didn’t think I deserved to. And the more I said it to myself, the more I believed it. In fact, it got so ingrained in my brain that I no longer believed I could do it. But when you swap out I can’t with actually I can, you give yourself permission to try.

That switch for me came the morning I finally reached out for help. For years I told myself that I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on for fear of what the response would be, and for fear of what that admission meant to me as a person. I let those things stand in the way of my own well-being, of me getting better, and stopping my own self-punishment. But when I finally let out my big secret and told someone what my truth was, that embarrassment, that fear, that huge burden and power that secret had over me was gone. I opened the door to ‘actually I can’ the moment my truth became more important than my shame.

In the end, there is nothing to be ashamed of. We do the best we can with what we have. And if we aren’t able to do our best, even if we do have what it takes to do better, well then maybe that’s all the best we could muster in those moments. We now have a choice each day to make our best our best. To do better. To learn. Grow. And to start looking at what you can do rather than what you can’t.

When we shift our focus from cannot to can and start dwelling on those things, rather than the later, we start to look for the things we can change, and those things we can’t, don’t come so much into focus. And as we celebrate each new victory of those things we can do, our list of what we think we can’t gets shorter, or becomes less important. We put our energies into what we focus on, so why not focus on the positive, and seek out the positive if we feel we don’t have enough, or any, in our lives. Look for it. It’s there. It may be small when you start, but find it, but set your sights on it and it will grow.

We are the only ones who stand in our own way. Even when others try to put roadblocks in our way, they can’t stop us, they might slow us down or distract us, but we have the power to push through and overcome the obstacles, but many times the obstacle that is the hardest to overcome is ourselves. Try swapping out I can’t with actually I can in your life. See how that changes your perspective, and, how you start to get things done. Focus on what you can do and leave the rest. Soon you’ll notice those ‘I can’ts’ will move over to the ‘I cans’ and you’ll wonder why you ever doubted yourself. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you tell yourself that you can’t do things? Do others tell you you can’t do things? What do they say? Why do they say it? Are they wrong? They are SLAYER. You can do whatever you put your mind to. The victory comes in just trying to do it. Write down 5 things you want for yourself. Write ‘actually I can’ next to those 5 things. Now write down what action you can take to get those things. Even if you’re not able to complete them write down, write down what you can do. Write down what you are willing to do. Write down what you are going to do. Much of what holds us back in life is a matter of perspective, so when we start looking for the positive we see more positive. Make a commitment to yourself to change your way of thinking and talking to yourself, instead of saying I can’t, say actually, I can. You can, and you will!

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you

Shutter Shame

How often have we let shame get in the way of living the life we want to have? How often have we let it limit us, hinder us, and diminish us? We think our shame is a way to protect us from being hurt, from being rejected, from allowing others to see who we really are, because we believe we are not good enough. All of this thinking is false. Shame isn’t real. We can make it real by believing in it, by buying into it, but it’s no more real than The Boogeyman, or whatever else we hid from as a child. We give it life by feeding into it’s energy. We give it permission to be active in our lives. We let it in by and let it grow by not talking about it, not sharing with others, and believing it’s lies.

Shame can manifest from many places. Childhood trauma, addiction issues, or even just the failure in something you place importance and value in. Once we have let shame in we typically engage in a series of behaviors as a result of feeling shame, we try to cover up our perceived flaws by overcompensating, by blaming and shaming others, by perfectionism, by lying, or by isolating thinking we don’t deserve or are not good enough to engage with others. Shame has a ripple effect, it’s not just our own stinking thinking that disrupts our lives, but it ripples out to all relationships we have affecting us personally and professionally. Shame holds us back from connecting, from sharing, from allowing us to be our best selves and from celebrating that. Shame steals our light and causes us to choose self-destructive behaviors to reaffirm shame’s negative voice that you are less-than and not good enough.

But really, shame doesn’t exist. Not unless we let it. When you think about it, you can’t touch shame, smell shame, taste shame, it’s not really there, so why do we give it so much power? Why do we have so much fear around it, when, only we can give it the power to hurt us? Why would we turn our power over to something that, when we let it, becomes so strong it can manifest itself physically in our lives? Many of us, while in shame, will feel flush, dizzy, have tunnel vision, have an inability to focus, hear loud noises in our ears, feel a tightness in our chest, have shallow breath, or not be able to make eye contact. When we’re experiencing this level of shame, we have lost control. We have completely given into it. So, how do we overcome the shame we feel and allow ourselves to be who we are meant to be, flaws, and all, and not only be that person, but be proud of who we are?

First, shame is a feeling and feelings are not facts. As I say all the time, what are the facts? What do we know to be true? If the answers start with “I feel,” that’s shame talking, not what is fact. Second, shame can’t thrive when we talk about it, when we share how we’re feeling with others, it diminishes it’s power. When we talk about our truth it brings in the light, shame can only survive in the darkness. Also, when we share, we realize that shame is not a unique feeling to just you, we all can relate, and when we feel a sense of connection of our common experiences shame starts to die and our relationships get stronger, and we feel a bigger bond to those around us, we realize that we are all the same, and that really, there is nothing to be ashamed of, we all make mistakes, we all fall, we all have lessons in life we need to learn, we shouldn’t feel shame over not getting something right the first time, or at all, because our path and our journey is on it’s own timeline, not someone else’s.

We all feel shame from time to time, but when we live as our authentic selves, when we share our feelings and connect with others, shame goes and hides. We have the power to stop shame in it’s tracks by not apologizing for who we are and who and what we love. Things may not look the way we think they should, but they look the way they are supposed to look, it’s up to us to find the good within that place, and to change those things we can that we feel we can do better. Tell shame to hit the curb, it has no place in your life SLAYER, practice self-love and acceptance and allow yourself to make mistakes, there is no shame in that.

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel a sense of shame about yourself? Are there certain events or incidents that you carry around as badges of your shame? What are they? Have you ever told anyone about them? Why not? What do you think will happen if you do? What do you think is happening because you don’t? When you think about your shame, is it based in reality? Or is it based on your own perception of how think it should have looked or should look? Is it based on what others think it should look like? All that matters is that you live in your truth, through the highs and lows, just be you, no one gets it right all the time, it’s part of our journey and part of this path, shed your shame and shine bright, celebrate everything that is you, and take your power back over shame.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you