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TEDx Talks
Published: 2013-10-01
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1QoyTmeAYw
I was barely a teenager the first time I tried to kill myself if I knew then what I know now well it probably would have changed very much and it probably wouldn't change very much because sometimes it doesn't matter what you know what you feel takes over and there's so many ways like this that our perception becomes limit limited in fact our perception is its limits
and these limits their created by our biology by our psychology by our society these are the factors create that bubble which surrounds us that is our perceptual field our world as we know it now this bubble our perceptual field it has this incredible ability to expand and contract based on changes in any of those factors which create and inform most of us have experienced the challenges
of traction of our perception from time to time think about that time when you got cut off in traffic in the city it was probably today let's face it when it happened maybe you felt your heart rate starch quick in your face flush jammed on your brakes in order to avoid a collision and when you did you focused in on that one license plate as it
sped by maybe the only thing to go through your mind at that time was how creative you could be in the words you are about to hurl out the window at the guy no eventually your perception would have returned to normal he would have relaxed you what went on with your day you probably would have even forgotten about it but imagine you didn't imagine you stayed
there stuck there in that narrow dark place well that's what I can be like to live with a mental illness at least that's what it was like for me at the depth of my own mental illness a teenager my perception had become constricted darkened and collapsed I felt like an asthmatic who had lost his glasses in a hurricane so when I was sitting in that chair
across from my eighth grade guidance counselor the only thing that I could think was you're not good enough you're not smart enough you're not enough and it didn't matter if I was because these were the constricted limits of my perception so when I held that eight inch chef's knife in my hand and I raise this to my throat and I expressed that there and I felt
the blood begin to trickle down my hand the only thing I could think in that moment nobody would even know you're gone I heard the guidance counselor asked from across the room miles away it seemed like he said mark please don't I heard him but I wasn't listening I just took a deep breath I don't have a choice had the guidance counselor not reached for me
across the room tackled me to the floor wrestle that night from my hand maybe I wouldn't be here today about that a lot now not all days where that dramatic in fact most days I probably seem like just any other normal kid if not a little quiet and because the truth is I was in fact I was so normal most people never would have guessed they
probably would have even been surprised to find out how I would hate the way the sunlight came in my window every morning when I would wake up I know that some of you know that feeling too I was so normal that a few years later after not getting the help that I so clearly needed most people would have never known that I was the one that
caused so much commotion late one night when I tried to jump from an overpass then again if they did know I would have in the last to find out anyway because that's all these types of things go people seem plenty here to talk about mental illness and about suicide just as long as it's behind closed doors and hushed voices well this is the part that I'm
doing differently with you today by sharing with you my experiences I hope to raise my voice and I hope to open those doors and this is how I do it I remember I remember I was wandering the empty streets of my hometown I was alone this time on like that other time and it's because I wanted to die alone my mind was running screaming shaking collapsing
in on itself again when you're in that place and your perception is collapsing like that those old thoughts kept coming back again you're not good enough you not smart enough you're not enough so I walked up and approached the railing to the overpass I walked along it I looked over a candle light post on my left hand side and I stopped should I hang in there
for just one more day that's a phrase that people always seem to ask themselves when they're suicidal I found I asked it to myself and others with whom I've worked for young people today they've asked to to its this instinctual word of hope should I hang on there for just one more day for what to be that crazy kid I've already held on for this long
and things haven't gotten any better why would I keep trying what hasn't been working I'm not crazy my perception it's collapsing squeezing out that instinctual hope but everybody has inside them so I climbed the railing in three parts like rungs on the ladder was being very careful not to slip I climb back down the other side again I had very few choices in my life this
this was certainly one and I needed something anything that I could be certain about so I turned around and I felt the railing pressing against my back just below my shoulder blades I stretched my arms out on its cool metal surface I remember feeling raindrops under my fingers I looked down and my shoes my running shoes where old worn out tired my heels were on the
concrete my toes were on nothing I look past my toes the ground fifty or so feet below and on the ground I saw a rusted out chain link fence topped by three strings of barbed wire as I was standing there in that moment the only thing that I could think for my collapsed perception was how far out what I need to jump from this bridge so
I wouldn't land on that fence because I just didn't want to tear I just didn't want to hurt anymore in that moment my entire life it's completely in my control and when you're living in a hurricane like this all the time that's a really unfamiliar but really satisfying feeling to feel like you have control over your whole life so I stayed like that for a while
I just stood there in that feeling experiencing that feeling of having agency over my life for a change eventually I was brought back into the present by a man's voice over my right shoulder I talked to him for awhile but even today I don't remember about what he was wearing a light brown jacket but I don't remember his face I didn't look back long enough and
I never saw him again before I knew it I could see flashing lights from the corner of my eyes I looked to my right and to my left and there are three police cars on either side blocking off the street there are crowds of late night gathers gawking at me from either side this was two three in the morning I guess either they came home from
the bars are just walked up to see what was going on a male voice from my right side I heard him scream to meet jump you coward again Brett then and as I did my arms they seem to highs from the railing but it's suddenly become weightless and unburdened I feel the edge of the concrete under the arches of my feet begin to shift I started
to pitch forward and as I did I felt the wind blow around my body and on my face and through my hair and it felt free then an arm reached around my chest I hand grab the back of my shirt the man in the light brown jacket later told police that my body was completely limp when he grabbed me and he dragged me backward over the
railing can suicide really be a choice if it's the only choice available we ask ourselves how can it be the only choice how can that even be a rational choice and hopefully we wonder and we ask ourselves how we can help we can start to help by better appreciating that our mental health is contingent on this state and the flexibility of our perception whether we have
a mental illness or not how expanded our how contracted our perception becomes impacts the choices that we make when I was standing on that bridge my perception was so collapsed but I only had that one choice now when we encounter the suicide of somebody else we always seem to try to rationalize it I hear it all the time and I think that's because we're uncomfortable with
feeling helpless and with not understanding but since we know that our perceptions are created and continually informed by our biology buyer psychology and by our society we actually have many entry points potentially helping and better understanding suicide one way that we can help is to stop saying that people commit suicide people commit rape they commit murder but nobody has committed suicide in this country since the
early nineteen seventies when suicide decriminalized and that's because suicide is a public health concern not a criminal one and it's a health concern we know that ninety percent of people who die by suicide have a diagnosable and treatable mental illness at the time of their death and we know that with medication with psychotherapy these treatments work so we need to make these treatments more available in
an informed way to everybody and we can be a part of that change whether we have a mental illness or not by taking charge of our own mental health when we go in for our annual physical we make a point of doing an annual psychological to at both the individual and the societal levels we can challenge our old ideas like that old idea of saying that
people commit suicide when I first started out doing this I used to beg for somebody to do something about suicide and stick well that's not acceptable anymore so instead of started doing something when a leading cause of death among new mothers in the first year after childbirth is suicide that's not acceptable either when our First Nations in you in may two communities are being ravaged by
a suicide rate five to six times higher than the national average that's not acceptable when almost a quarter of fifteen to twenty year olds fifteen to twenty five year old sorry who die at all die by suicide that is not a acceptable so like I said when I used to plead for people to do something and that's not acceptable either well you're here and you're doing
something already because you're changing the way you think and that's what changes the world so for those of you who might be thinking about suicide today good thinking about it then start talking about it and then start doing something about it too and for those of you who might be contemplating suicide I know that there's a hope somewhere deep inside you I felt the two keep
