October 12, 2020
SW = Sean Wellington, TN = Tim in New York

TN: You know, if it comes to just saying, know what, I'm here when you're ready. And even if you don't want to talk, I'm here and I'll sit with you. I'll sit with you right in the darkness. I would rather you call me with something totally obscure and me get pissed off in the middle of the night and have to drive around looking for you than waking up and having a phone call that something happened.

SW: Hey there, my name is Sean and this is Suicide Noted. On this podcast, I talk with suicide attempt survivors so that we can hear their stories. Every year around the world, millions of people try to take their own lives and we almost never talk about it. And when we do talk about it, many of us, including me, are not very good at it. So one of my goals with this podcast is to have more conversations and I hope better conversations with attempt survivors. Now we are talking about suicide. This may not be a good fit for everyone. Please take that into account before you listen. I do hope you listen because there is so much to learn. I want to thank all of you who are listening to this podcast. Perhaps it's your first time or maybe you're listening regularly. Thank you. These stories matter. And clearly you agree. People in 62 countries now have tuned in and heard these stories of these survivors. 25 suicide attempt survivors have been bold enough to come on the show and share their lives with me and with all. We are now in our third month. This is our 25th show. Thus far we have been dropping episodes twice a week. We are going to move to once a week for a couple of reasons. One, I'm starting a second podcast with my partner Kurt Mullen and it is around storytelling, a particular kind of true personal narrative storytelling. And that podcast is called Grit, True Stories That Matter. So stay tuned for that. The other reason is it's really hard to find people who are willing to share these stories. We are going to move to once a week and on Monday mornings and we will release a new episode. Now if you're a Suicide Attempt Survivor and you'd like to share your story, I'd love to talk. You can email us at hello@suicidenoted.com For those of you who are tuning in and listening, please keep doing what you're doing. Let other people know about it. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook at Suicide Noted. And of course you can rate or review the podcast. That really does help. Today I am talking with Tim. Tim lives in New York and he is a suicide attempt survivor. Hey Tim.

TN: Hey, how are you?

SW: Good man, how are you doing?

TN: Alright.

SW: Yeah, you good to talk for a little bit?

TN: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SW: At what point did you decide to talk at all about it? And like, how did that come to pass that you were open enough to share something?

TN: Wow, that's a good question actually. It was just one attempt. I think it was hearing stuff similar to what you do, hearing people tell their story and me personally getting something from it and going, wow, there's some other people out here that are going through the same kind of thing. Again, hearing their story kind of helped me in maybe inspiration or whatever you want to call it. So I think that was definitely some of it for sure.

SW: Yeah.

TN: I think also once I got to a certain point where I was a little bit more comfortable with it, I've just been, you know, on the whole education side of learning about all of it. So stuff that I've learned, I kind of want to be able to pass on and share in hopes that somebody else would grab onto it and go, yeah, this is pretty cool. This may work for me.

SW: Yeah. I mean, so you not only talked about it, but you're on a podcast. Most people wouldn't do that. So tell me as much, however you want to share or as much as you want to share about the attempt.

TN: Well, I'm sure as you know with your experiences and the stories that you've heard and the people that you've met, there's a lot of variables that lead up to certain things. And I think some of the variables for me, well, some of the bigger variables for me was the job that I have is kind of unrelenting, I guess you could say. It's not very conducive to someone who lives with mental illness, let's say that. You know, when you have... You're supposed to have scheduled days off and you're forced to work your days off. So you're working, you know, six days a week. And some of those days are 10 hour days. It starts to eat away at you and, know, add in the fact that a single father just to try and survive the day alone, but then to try and do as much possible for my son as, as I can, you know what I mean? So the whole fast paced modern world, my work situation and the fact that my depression can get the best of me. My whole thing is that I try to explain it as the gremlins. We have gremlins inside of our head. Once they start talking, you know, a lot of people, their gremlins have been there for 20, 30 years. So they know everything that you despise about yourself. They know all the things that you can't do. And once that something triggers those gremlins, they start talking. Unfortunately, we start to believe them. You know, some of us start to believe some of that negative talk that these gremlins are whispering to us. So as you spiral down and that and that and you know, at that time, I didn't I didn't really understand all this stuff. To be honest with you, you know, I was like, yeah, I have anxiety. I was seeing a therapist at the time and you know, I knew about my depression. I should say I knew very little about my depression because I really didn't know much at all. And I'm still learning a great deal because there's tons to it. I was basically just spiraling down and I didn't know I was spiraling. So as I was spiraling down, I'm like, okay, whatever. I'm just depressed. You know, life sucks. This is kind of what I'm used to in a way because my depression was like that old pair of jeans. Fortunately, it was that comfortable space for me to sit in. You know?

SW: Yeah, familiar.

TN: Perfect word, familiar.

SW: Absolutely, for me, and I try not to talk a lot here, but I have to share this with you, that non-familiar space, call it happiness or joy, or even something not as high, but just decent, it feels weird sometimes. How much time is this going to...yeah, it's already over. Like I just, I'm waiting for it to end.

TN: Right. You know, that's where my anxiety comes into place because you can't even enjoy those, you know, hour, two hours of joy because as soon as you start to feel it, you're going in your head, your voices are going, all right, well, when's this going to end? What's going to happen? Why am I feeling this right now? And then how long is it to be? What's going to happen after I feel this? So you can't even be, stay in the moment and enjoy it because yeah, takes over. But so I started to spiral down and as I'm spiraling down, I'm trying to climb out of that hole. And every time I try and climb out of that hole I get, I'm getting mouthfuls of sand and more rocks and more dirt, you know, every time I climb and I'm like, what the heck is going on here? So, you know, here I'm thinking like, I'll hit rock bottom one of these times, one of these days, you know, and I just keep pumping along certain relationships in life, whether it's friendships years and years ago, I went through a divorce. So that always comes into play. You had these abandonment issues that you don't realize that you have, you know, when something, you know, nudges that little piece inside of you and it keeps nudging it until it falls off the table and breaks open. Then you're like, okay, now here's another thing. You know?

SW: It just starts adding, it's adding up. Most people have a breaking point.

TN: Yeah. It was weird because I didn't necessarily have that breaking point. I just had almost like a very, very, very bad panic attack. And then there's more to, there's more to that too, because I also have this weird thing that has to do with the vagus nerve.

SW: Oh wow, okay, don't know anything about that.

TN: Well they call it vasovagal syncope, which is like a fancy term for passing out. It's a little bit more common than you would think, but as more that happened to me, I looked into it and talked to specialists and saw cardiologists for years. Most people that it happens to them, they'll pass out, they'll come to within the hour or whatever, they'll be fine and they can kind of go on with their day. Well, when it happens to me, I pass out and I'm useless for the next two days. Like I'm throwing up, I'm weak, I can't move. Well, going back years and years ago, it happened to me and I was rushed to the hospital. When I was in the hospital, I had like, I was hooked up to all these, you know, monitors and all the different machines and I felt it coming on. said, look, I'm going to pass out again. Cause I think they may have put me in like a chair and moved me for like chest x-rays or something, but some kind of movement in it and I felt like it was going to come on. I passed out. What they happened to notice was that my heart stopped. So that's like an extra bonus element that, uh, that I get with mine. So, yeah. So now I'm going to fast forward again. So when I was having this really bad panic attack, I thought maybe it was more of this vasovagal, your heart, you feel like you're going to pass out. You're clenching and I was driving. I pulled off, luckily there was like one of those rest areas. So I pulled off and I actually made, I don't know if I texted or phoned my ex-wife because we were together for so long. She's been through these with me before. She just knows what to do. And I just kind of wanted to let her know I was where I was. You know, I was at this rest stop, parked and I'm just laying down in my car. So she was further up north at the time. So she ended up phoning my brother and one of my brother's good friends at the time he was a state trooper, which is a good thing. So they came and then they brought his wife and somebody drove my car home and I went in the car with one of them. They bring me home and you know, again, at the time I didn't realize why, but I'm shaking and they're like, are you cold? Like freezing? Like what's going on? And you know, of course now I realize it was the adrenaline.

SW: Right.

TN: You know, when you go through these episodes and it's just like, you can't stop shaking. You can't unclench your fists. You know, you can't breathe. So they stayed with me for a little while as long as they could. And I was, I was like, you know, I'm like, look, let me just sleep it off. I can sleep this off. You know, I've kind of been here before. I think one of them just didn't trust it and they ended up calling my ex-wife, which was good because she brought my son down at the time. And that helped, but I kind of felt bad that they had to like be there. So I was like, I felt like a burden, you know? I was like, I don't want you guys to spend too much time here. get, you know, your, cause they were up at her parents. They were celebrating. They may have been celebrating like Christmas. was right around New Year's Eve. I think it was right around that time.

SW: How many years ago are we going back?

TN: Three, I believe it was three years.

SW: So a few years ago, winter.

TN: Yeah, cold, winter. It does, I mean, the whole seasonal affect disorder is a real thing. You start losing the vitamin D from the sun and all these you know, the way you think and it's cold, it's depressing, right? You can't leave your house much because blah, blah, blah. So unfortunately, there were a lot of elements that were up against me at the time. So anyway I told them to go home. I said, I'll be fine, sure enough I slept for like three hours maybe and woke up and I, and of course to an empty house and I'm like, okay, so let's see. You know, what I can do now is look around for something. What can I do? And I had a bottle of pills. I ended up....

SW: So you are thinking at that time, I'm checking out.

TN: Yeah.

SW: So there was planning or?

TN: Not really. was just the, I mean, I had the thought the night before I had, you know, ideations pretty much the whole night. I believe that there's like a survival mechanism in us. And I think it was just gone. It wasn't there. And it was like, I truly believed that I was a burden and people were better off without me here. So like here I am on the bathroom floor. Basically like on the other side of the door to the demon. There's the demon. I'm at the door with my hand on the doorknob and I, and I, I don't know what it was. And I just said to myself, here it is. I have two choices. I have, it's either death or to do something about it. And thankfully I chose to, I drove myself to the hospital that morning.

SW: Did you take the pills?

TN: I didn't

SW: You didn't, so you got real close.

TN: Real close. Yeah. It's hard because I feel like it was almost like, you know, thinking back on, of course you're not, you know, I was definitely not in the mindset of thinking, you know, logically or properly, however you want to, convey it. But I was, my mind state was just so, so, so bad. Like, just driving to the, driving myself to the hospital and then tears like, I don't even know if I really want to go to the hospital. Like, is this the right thing to do? And then you start questioning yourself. Well, like, geez, you know, I fail at everything else and now I'm going to fail at this. So you just keep pouring that water in the shot glass and it's just overflowing all over the floor.

SW: The fucking gremlins man.

TN: The gremlins, it's the gremlins. You know, I think knowing what I know now and looking back, it's habits, bad habits that we did when we were younger, when we learned these things. maybe when we were seven, 10 years old, they worked and they helped us get through a certain stage. At some point they don't work and they create these bad habits, but we always go back to them because we're in this subconscious loop that we live in. And we just like clinging to them and we don't even realize we're doing it. Thankfully, again, like I said, something inside of me just said, like I said, I really said to myself, like, that's one thing I remember, like, this is it, like, I'm checking out, like, it's either death or it's do something about it. I just wanted a way to stop the pain. I couldn't live the way that I was living. There was no, like, crazy substance abuse or any of that stuff. It was pure depression, anxiety, and the gremlins, you know, throwing wrenches and things.

SW: And a lot of external factors from what you shared with your job and being a single dad and there's other stuff.
TN: Yeah, the environment for sure gets me. Again, knowing now, I'm a very sensory person. And plus, you know, I think people want to relate to something else. People want that community. They want to be heard. That's it, you know. So when you start having these ideas in society and you realize that what society feels is proper, you're skies away from, you know what I mean? So what you think is funny is society doesn't think it's funny. What you think is right, society doesn't think is right. So it's like you have that whole, as Dami Gal Ruiz would say, know, the domestication going on. You know, you're domesticated to this whole culture that, you know, that I look at now and I'm just like, it's almost disgusting. These people that claim to be humans, you know, it's just, I see things in a different perspective. You know, I notice sins on every single corner. I noticed people doing things that say that they're helping and they're healers. But what they're doing is actually the opposite. There's people that have, they're on a level to help. But those are the people that usually have a hand in why there needs to be help, if that makes any sense.

SW: It makes sense to me. One of the ways I look at it, I won't name names, but there's a couple people I know, they won't reach out, but they will plaster all over their Facebook page to call me. Great. So that's cool. You put the whole NAMI thing on your Facebook, 1-800-blah, blah, blah. You're not fucking getting it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing that. That's a good thing too. Oh but you're not going to pick up the phone and actually check in. You're full of fucking shit.

TN: Right, full of shit. Thank you. yes, I actually just made, because I make up some memes sometimes not so much positive affirmations, just like sayings that I come up with and I don't remember how I wrote it out but I made something along the lines of “since when did mental health advocacy turn into photos of yourself ?” Like it's not about you it's about the cause.

SW: I’m proud of what I'm doing, but it is not my face you're gonna see. I'll put your face on there bro but it ain't: gonna be mine.

TN: I get it, but I don't mind, like if you're promoting your podcast, absolutely. I don't mind that. But I see it mostly with extremely good looking either women or men. It's a bad image. Let's face it. We're all under pressure, but you know, you have young women out there looking at this picture going, well, geez, you know what, I'm kind of overweight and now I see this, I want to be more like her and it's not helping. It's hurting. It's not helping. It's hurting people. You definitely were right with the environment. The environment is a huge factor. The culture that we live in and again, when you see things a certain way, you just see people and just how rude they can be to them. It honestly does not take anything out of your day to smile at a stranger or to say hi or hold a door even. Like you have no idea what that little tiny insignificant thing can do for somebody. What kind of a change you could make out of somebody's day by just saying hi is like, I'm not telling everybody to be kind and to do all these things, but just to be mindful of, you know, at least don't, don't be an ass. Don't contribute to the problem.

SW: Yeah. I wanted to ask you, cause you had said earlier something about gremlins, right? I wanted to gauge, that's not the right word gauge, but when you were a kid or like a teenager, did you deal with this stuff?

TN: I did, but I didn't notice it. I dealt with it with, you know, music. I'm a big music fan and I immersed myself in the music. I gravitate towards the heavier stuff, metal.

SW: I'd have guessed that. I don't know why I would have guessed that.

TN: But I just, as a younger teen or whatever you want to say, I buried myself in music. I would get lost in the lyrics. It was almost like they were my friends, like these bands that I would listen to would come into my bedroom and speak to me through the lyrics. That was my meditation, I guess you could say back then. You know, that was my go-to. And it's still today. One of the things that I use is music. I listen to music, you know, I can listen to music to help keep the darkening at bay, basically.

SW: It's amazing music, isn't it?

TN: It is. Yeah, it's healing. It heals people, you know what I mean? Especially now, like some people go to a live concert. You're with your clan, you're with your tribe and you're watching music and you're hearing it. It's healing. It's healing, man. It really is. It's healing. But I think I've always had major, major anxiety. And I think it fuels the depression. And then once they get together, they just kind of tiptoe through the tulips together hand in hand, you know, walking down the street at one point, you know, pain, hurt, depression. They were like, they were my best friends. It was almost like all that I knew. I'm not, and I'm not here looking for sympathy. I'm just, I'm just telling the story. You know what I mean? Like this is how I saw things, you know, and at the time I was, I was kind of fine with it. I didn't really know much different. Growing up in a household where things were kind of forbidden to talk about, of course, doesn't help the situation, you know? If anything, it probably fueled it. If there was a death in the family or somebody was mad at something or something happened, like it was, shh, we don't talk about that.

SW: But we talk about it 30 years later when the shit really hits the fan. There will be a day of reckoning.

TN: For sure, man. For sure and that day of reckoning came. You gotta heal. You gotta heal that inner child.

SW: When you went to the hospital that night, did you get checked out like that night in and out or did they send you somewhere else to get that other stuff checked out?

TN: I stayed there. They didn't want me to leave right away. But at the same time, it was almost like they were trying not to technically admit me. I was upfront with them. I was like, this is what I want to do. Basically, these are my choices. If you could help me get help, then I would probably prefer that. At the time, I didn't really know what actual help was I guess. Again, I'm not trying to paint a doom and gloom and feel sorry for me, but I didn't really have a support system. I didn't really have any of that. So that's why now in my path, I can be a little bit critical. I can be a little bit intense just because when you don't have someone to help you heal, you learn to heal yourself. You what I mean? You learn to pick yourself up off the ground. It's a bit much for some people and I get it. I'm not for everybody and that's fine. People don't have to like me. That doesn't really define my worth. I do. But I'm just explaining it as where that comes from. We all have that reference point. So when you know the reference point, you can go, okay, I kind of get it now.

SW: What did they do there? I'm curious. Like, cause I want to know what happened when you went there and eventually when you got out and you kept living your life.

TN: Well, yep so I went there. I believe I didn't really want them calling anybody because whether it was, you know, the shame that is attached to stigma, I don't know if that was a part of it. I'm pretty sure it was a part of it, but I didn't want to burden anybody. You know what I mean? I didn't want that extra burden. It's like I was carrying a huge load as it was.

SW: I hear that with other people and it applies to myself to some degree. You didn't want to be a burden. One reason connected to almost ending your life. And then when you're trying to the first steps of getting better, still, I don't want to be a burden. It's all pervasive. You just can't escape it. At least then. Right?

TN: No, you're absolutely right. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

SW: It's a type of gremlin really.

TN: Yeah absolutely.

SW: We punish the shit out of ourselves and then it's like shitty alcohol and you're about to throw up and you're like nah give me some fucking some more right and you know this is gonna be bad and I'm on the ground but shove it in my fucking throat.

TN: That's a great analogy. No, know exactly what you're saying. That's a great analogy. That's a great analogy. It was almost to the point where, again, I was in such a low mind frame. I was just so low. I believe that I just, at one point, just smashed through rock bottom. I'm just like, it was just so low that I couldn't even think, like, hey, you know what? You're not a burden. Maybe you should reach out for help. It wasn't even about that. was just, yeah, the ruminations, the, the gremlins, it's, it was all there. Like that whole positivity was just formed to me. So I'm in there. They were, you know, they go through the, I don't know if they call it a certain thing. They go through the questionnaire, you know, they ask about the medication, who my therapist was. which I believe they may have tried to contact my therapist at one point, but I can't remember, but what, what, what ended up happening, they're like, we need to get a phone number because we can't let you leave by yourself.

SW: Did you have anybody in your life at this point who you could have called, right? And said this, said something around, I just kind of really fucked up. Help me out. There's very few people in my life where I would feel comfortable doing that, to this day and I'm more a little more aware than I used to be and I'm advocating and I’m doing this show. And still I have almost no one who I would call and be like you know what, I think I'm gonna really hurt myself or I just did this stupid thing I went to the hospital can you...Its tough right?

TN: I know I didn't at the time. Thankfully I do now, which is the cohost of the Above Ground Podcast. We, we use the term struggle buddy, always have a struggle buddy. And if you don't have a struggle buddy, be somebody's struggle buddy. Call me. I don't care. What did it, you don't even have to tell me what it is. Just tell me where you're at. I'll pick you up. It doesn't matter.

SW: Right, if that's not a thing, it should be a thing strugglebudy.com

TN: Right? You got to kind of, hopefully get these things into place before. I always kind of say, look at it as a vehicle. Like, do you drive a car or a truck? Okay. So do you take care of that truck? You do routine maintenance on it. You get oil change, you get the filters changed, you check the tires for air. You know what I mean? And the more you do that, the better it's going to run. So if you wait until that check engine light comes on, you may be stuck on the freeway alone in a bad situation. So you have to do the routine maintenance to keep yourself. You know, on the wellness side of the spectrum.

SW: What is that for you?

TN: I think a lot of it is your perception and your, your thinking when you get into that, that routine, that loop that you just kind of go on and it's just like a negative loop and you just keep, keep watching that rerun, man. You keep watching it. You don't really know much better. I think I walk at my job, which helps. So I think the exercise helps. I try to watch what I eat like a food nutrition, take, I take some magnesium. I do omega threes. I do zinc and another vitamin.

SW: No, no other medications from doctors?

TN: Yes, I do. Yep. I do have a regular prescription.

SW: And that helps?

TN: Yeah, I believe it does. I take it. I take it regularly.

SW: That's the same thing I I say to people about me and my. I think so, I don't not take it.

TN: It's one of those things. Right. I definitely am med compliant with it for sure.

SW: Good word, compliant, good word.

TN: I try to, you know, I try to try to be strict with it. I try to be strict with my sleeping patterns. Like if it's a day off tomorrow, like, stay up! No, like I need my sleep. Like this is how I operate. You know what I mean? And if somebody, if the people who I'm around care about me enough and respect me enough, they'll understand and respect my wishes.

SW: You know, so do you have a job that is uncomfortable with people's mental health struggles? Because, not pushing you, but you didn't. And I figured, there's certain jobs they don't

TN: No, I mentioned it quickly. I didn't say what I did but my job is, like if you walk through the door, you feel the negativity. You feel the negativity as you walk in the door.

SW: I the way you're not telling us because we're all imagining. I think it's either this or....

TN: I work for the government. I'll give you that clue. So that can help.

SW: I think most of us are on the same page.

TN: Yeah, yeah, for sure. But I could tell you some stories and you probably wouldn't believe some of the shit that happened.

SW: Specifically to this stuff is that it's negative often.

TN: Yes, absolutely. It's disgustingly negative. To even further that, actually now I have FMLA in place. So basically what it states is I'm not allowed to work over eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. So I can't be forced in. I can't be forced overtime, which they try to do on a daily basis. But I have to be my own advocate and say, this is when I'm leaving today you know, and then it starts a whole thing. Because then if I end up having to leave a half hour of my work, it goes to a handful of the other guys. So now they're pissed at me, which is bullshit.I know it is bullshit, but to go back to that list, sleep is very important for me. Just being aware, I think staying mindful of the things that, that I know trigger me situations that I probably shouldn't be in, know, just being mindful of those things, you know, being mindful of, you know, not sleeping. Hey, last night I didn't get any sleep. So tonight I'm going to make sure that, you know, I get my full eight hours because I need it. I, it, it, it's part of my wellness, a hobby or something that you love to do, you know, which could be different for you, her, him, you know, it could be different for everybody, but, but something, something that you love to do. If you want to collect coins, stamps, if you want to draw any kind of art you want to create. I mean, if you can get creative, that's huge what creativity does for your well-being and your mind is absolutely incredible. So to pick something like that and to stick with it, a daily routine, I try to do, I don't know if you're familiar with the tapping.

SW: I know much about it, but I know of it, sure.

TN: I try to do that every morning. So that does, I mean, that's something that honestly I can say, like I've tried a slew of things and I will try anything to help me. And there's some things that are just so hokey, but, this seems hokey, but I can tell you as I do it, to this day, I still feel like this whole, you know, when you have that feeling of letting go and you just go, that's how I feel when I do it.

SW: How would, if someone wanted to Google that, what would they Google?

TN: EFT tapping. Yep, it's emotional freedom technique, I think it is. Yeah, it's tapping.

SW: Cool. I'm glad that gives you some...

TN: Yeah, there's certain, there'sw: 10 points and they're all, you know, have their own, you know, unique quality to them, I guess you could say. Going back to the hospital part. They wouldn't let me leave unless I had somebody come. So I ended up, again, I ended up calling my ex wife who was great for this whole situation. so she came, she came to get me and then even better brought me up to her parents' house, which is where my son was, and they actually have an in-law apartment downstairs. So I stayed with them for two or three days, which was super, super kind of them. They fed me. I was able to just lay low-key, go downstairs and just be by myself if I needed to, hang out with my son, hug him as much as possible. So that was a huge, huge, huge help and I'm definitely eternally grateful for that. Yeah. Because I don't know, you know, could have gone, could have gone back downhill after that. So after kind of getting my bearings, those three or four days, I called my therapist and, you know, let her know what was going on. And she immediately was like, you need to come in. So I went in and, know, she's like, we need a plan. And I said, well, of course I opened my mouth and I said, I'll do anything because I can't. You know, at that point, I'm still like half the day in tears. I'm just weak. like, I'm just, I'm just, just overwhelmed. I'm irritable. I'm just done. I'm like ready to throw in the towel. I said, I'll do anything. So she said, okay, that's all I needed to hear. So she called a place that we have out this way called four winds. was like an in outpatient program. It was a five week program that I did there. They introduced me to a thing called DBT, dialectical behavior therapy. And that is a huge variable in why I'm still here. It was tough the first week because it's like group, it's like group psychotherapy. And I'm like, okay, here goes my anxiety now. I can't speak in front of people. You know what I mean? It's bad enough to be in a big group and now I have to actually speak out. So the first week or so was very tough because I was just so low that I couldn't really understand or get any of the stuff that they were teaching us. It didn't really make any sense. At one point, one of the therapists was like, tell me something, one thing positive that happened to you today. And I'm like, I can't, I can't tell you one. I stuck to my word, I said I will do anything. And I looked at it as there's people that probably can't get into that program. So I'm not going to screw it up. You know what I mean? It was like, I was, I was really grateful that I was accepted into it and I was there and I didn't want to take advantage of it. So I stuck it out and like the last two weeks, I really started to understand some of these skills. These

life skills really are what they are. And they really started to resonate. And I was like, wow, this is really good. And then like one of the last few days I was there, we were in like a group therapy and there was this one kid that I made friends with in there. There were maybe seven of us in the room and prior, I don't know if it was during lunch, we had sat together and we had talked and he was like, he was more on the shy side and he wanted to speak up and he wanted to talk about something. You know, he's like, either somebody speaks up before me and they get the turn or I just, so anyway, so later that day we had a group together and normally like they'll start off saying, anybody have anything that they want to bring up, you know, and if nobody speaks up, maybe someone eventually will or, but so nobody did. And I said, well, I said, if it's okay, so-and-so would like to speak, you know, he would like to add something and he did and we talked about it he came to thank me afterwards and it just, it honestly made me feel really good. That was the first time in a long time that I was like, wow, this is actually really cool. Like, you know what, I feel like I did something almost worth something, I guess you would say, you know? So that was like a little spark inside of me for sure. So then fast forward another week, I have to leave because insurance won't cover anymore. So I gathered some therapists at the end and I said, I need to continue this work. Are there any kinds of groups going on? Can you refer me to some specialist, maybe that will, will focus on dbt and the skills. They gave me some numbers. Nothing worked. I called numerous places. I've tried new, I tried to see if groups were happening, nothing was like nothing going on and I started to slip again and I'm like, all right, now I'm going back down the stairway. Like I'm trying here. Like, please give me a sign or something. Like, you know, so unfortunately I didn't really get a sign. I just kind of struggled with it and turned to the internet and started educating myself. started getting audio books, learning...

SW: But on your own. Without community without any group.

TN: Right.

SW: Good for you.

TN: Thanks. I went to my therapist and then told her what was going on. And she was like, why don't you just start a group? And I'm like, I can't do that. Like, look at me. I don't really, I don't know shit. Like, what can I do for somebody? I don't know what I'm doing. She's like, I think you can do it. I think you should do it. So she had a patient of hers that went through DBT a few years earlier and she was a part of a group, like an ongoing group for like a year that they met. And so she's like, let me contact her to see if she'd be willing to meet with you. So she did. And she was, we met up. We had talked about it. And we were like, let's do it. Like, let's just do it. So we just started our own peer group. And that was almost two years ago.

SW: If you did that, you can do struggle buddies.com

TN: Right, StruggleBuddies.com right?

SW: That's amazing. That's really good. Man, that's good. So is that group still going?

TN: It is still going the whole, you know, pandemic thing really put a damper on it. I was able to connect with a place up in Saratoga Springs, called Healing Springs and they, they do, recovery more on the substance side, but they, but, they didn't really have a mental health side. So I had, I had talked with, one of the ladies there who was super nice and helpful and was like, let's get you a night that we can do some outside groups. And I was like, okay. So it's a little bit North for some of the people that would go to the others. But, you know, it's, it's something for now. We're just, you know, trying to do what we can. You know, we have a Facebook page and we try and post some stuff up on there, some helpful things and you know, some memes and everyone can, you know, it's, it's everyone's group. It's not just ours. Everyone's a part of it. And you know, we all need that space and we all need, if they need to talk, bring up a topic or whatever, and they feel safe and comfortable doing so, you know, I encourage it, you know, for sure.

SW: I'm tangenting a little bit. How many people know what happened that night? We’ve got at least your ex wife and we've got at least one therapist. We're not going to the emergency room nurse who just...

TN: Yeah, so I would say my friend Will, who I do the podcast with. And then I had another friend. I was good friends when I worked with him. And he unfortunately ended up dying by suicide. Like a year and a half ago. He knew. So that was, that was a tough, that was a, that was a, that was a tough thing for me. That was a hard hit, for sure.

SW: Yeah.

TN: It was tough because we were friends, like outside of work, you know, like we would literally text a lot and hang out once in a while, sometimes once a week, you know? So that really kind of...

SW: Was that a surprise?

TN: It was a tremendous surprise. Yeah. Like the last, the last person on earth that I would think, you know?

SW: Fucking astounding.

TN: It was terrible, yeah. And that's when Will and I got together, we had talked about doing a podcast for a while. And I was like, I should do a blog or something. We need to do something. And then after our friend Patrick had passed, we were like, all right, it's time. Let's do it. Let's just do it. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Right. And that's what we did, you know, yeah, just did.

SW: Sometimes you just gotta start.

TN: And that's what we did.
SW: Above Ground Podcast. I'm going to put a link to that. And, and it's, it's conversations. I'll let you say it, around mental illness? How would you describe it?

TN: Yeah it's stopping stigma, one conversation at a time. You know, it's just, we're basically two not so normal dudes talking about not so normal things. You know, that's the way I like to and we're funny like that. Like we joke around, we don't, we don't take things too seriously. Obviously we're not medical professionals, but we just want to make it more, more open, more comfortable for people to talk about and let them know that it is okay to talk about it.

SW: And is it just the two of you talking or do you sometimes invite others?

TN: We do, we just started recently inviting others on as guests. What, what we've been kind of doing now is it's every Wednesday and then so say this Wednesday it would be, just the two of us next Wednesday, we would have somebody on as a, like a, like an extra chat, you know, like a interview or whatever you want to call it.

SW: You were saying something about one of your projects being, I think you used the word selfish. Like that's how I feel. This is serving me as much as anyone else.

TN: Absolutely, I feel the same way.

SW: It's good for my mental health, overall health, whatever kind of health you want to call it. It's a weird thing to say enjoy talking to people who have tried to end their lives, but.

TN: It's not a weird thing, man. It's an awesome thing. I'm telling you right now. I'm not just saying, it's an awesome thing that you do. It really is. Cause you're getting people, you know, this is a hard thing to talk about, man. It is for me. I'm not, I'm not very vulnerable and open to this at all. But if I, you know, if I, if I take myself out of it, if I take the ego away and say, you know what, it's not about me, it's about the conversation. And it's about the goal to, let's lessen the amount of suicide that we see in a year. That's how I view it. And that's why what you do is absolutely amazing. These conversations with people are huge, huge.

SW: So let's pretend somebody can hear you right now and you get this platform as well for your podcast and they are in a similar spot. Maybe not the night when all that shit went down, but they're not doing well. Really not doing well, right? Really hard question I'm gonna pose to you. So they're hearing this right now and they're like, I don't know what I can do here. I do not know how much longer I can take this, whatever it may be. What would you say to them?

TN: I would say a lot. I would say that there is hope. There are people that will listen. Perception, balance, downtime, these things that I learned to be helpful for me when I decided I had enough of living that way, of letting the darkness control me. And a lot of people use diagnosis. I don't really like diagnosis. That's the first thing that people like to ask. And we are not our diagnosis. We are much more than that. You know what I mean?

SW: Sure.

TN: So that, again, the perception of language, the way that you talk to others, the way that you talk to yourself is so important. It sounds again, hokey, but the way that you talk to yourself. Consuming everything that we consume, whether it's food, whether it's something we read, we're watching, you know, we're, know, most people are addicted to social media and they just follow. It's like, how many times can you put out a fire for somebody that wants to watch the fire? You know, they don't care if they get burned. They just want to sit by the fire and let it, let it go and let it rip. It's like, no, man, don't watch that fire because that fire will pull you in.

SW: It's insidious, its tricky though.

TN: It is, believe me, it is. So I would say that there's hope. I would say that, you know, reach out to somebody. Doing something is better than nothing. I feel that what we have is a gift. I feel like we've been touched with this gift. And it's not really ours to wear as a badge. It's something that we have to pass on. It's like, you know, maybe give somebody hope, make somebody not feel so alone, maybe be inspired, maybe educated on the facts of mental health, maybe just having them, you know, have courage for an hour out of the day. You know, maybe letting them know that there's somebody that does understand where they're at, you know, without comparing a diagnosis or pain or hurt or trauma. Just to say like, I do get it. You know, maybe, maybe one of ours is worse, but I hate that whole comparison thing. It's the quickest way to an unhappy and unhealthy life is comparing. Taking things personally is something that I do and I struggle with. But try not to take things so personally because at the end of the day, we are like a piece of ant shit on a blade of grass. Like we really don't matter that much to where the universe is saying, let's single out this dude and make him suffer. Or let's let this woman get pulled over by a police officer and get a ticket. Like we're not that important, man.

SW: Sort of another sort of, I'm asking Tim to say the words to people out there, not necessarily the people who are in that kind of pain, but the people like your ex-wife that night or one of your buddies who might be in a position to help you or that person and they don't know what they're necessarily doing. They know that somebody's in a lot of pain. Would you have any words for those people so that they can feel a little bit better about engaging them?

TN: Again, doing something is better than doing nothing. Just ask and don't try and fix it. Just, you know, if it comes to just saying, you know what, I'm here when you're ready. And even if you don't want to talk, I'm here and I'll sit with you. I'll sit with you right in the darkness. I said this on the podcast with Will a few episodes ago. I was like, I would rather you call me with something totally obscure and me get pissed off in the middle of the night and have to drive around looking for you, then waking up and having a phone call that something happened. Like each person is different, but I feel like we all don't know. Like you said, we all, I think, I feel like we all struggle with that. Like, I don't know what to say to this person. I don't know how to react. I don't know how to act or how to act. You know what? But I think at that moment, it really doesn't matter as long as you feel what you're doing is kind. It's probably going to be kind. And if it's from the heart and open and genuine, that's all that matters. Like I said, it's as simple as like, dude, I'm here for you. If you don't want to talk right now that's fine. But I need to know at the same time, like we who are the one in five have to have some responsibility and say, if somebody comes to us and says, Hey man, Sean, you okay? Like, are you going to hurt yourself? Is there any kind of threat to that? You need to be able to tell me. Like if I'm reaching out, you got to say, you know what? There is, I don't feel safe right now. So either stay on the phone with me or maybe come over something like there needs to be that.

SW: For sure.

TN: I don't know if that helped, but.

SW: Yeah, It's very helpful. Some stuff I've heard before, some stuff I haven't, all of it's good because it's all a reminder. I mean, people need to hear this way more than they're ever going to. So I want people to say it again and again. And I do think there's special value when it comes from people who have been in a particular, a certain lived experience. I just think it has, I just think it has more weight.

TN: I agree. We're like wounded healers, you know what I mean?

SW: Yeah, man How old's your son, by the way?

TN: He is 14 now.

SW: He's probably better off that his pops didn't do that to himself.

TN: Yeah, I try to tell myself that. I think so. think.

SW: I don't know anything really about you or your relationship, but I'd like to believe it's probably

TN: I do too. I appreciate it. I'd like to believe the same. Yeah.

SW: Anything else?

TN: You know, I would like to add, add a couple of things real quick. I won't take up too much of your time, but I do, I do think that something that we should focus on is in this Western culture, we, we focus on, you know, the symptoms and taking care of this, treating the symptoms and not the cause we need to, we need to get it at the root. And I think one of the things that we can do is, is basically get rid of the education system as we know it and and focus more on these life skills like dbt cbt you know age appropriate as they get up in the different grades we we give them a little bit more and teach them you know kindness teach them strategies to make it through these hurdles. I was 40 years and people were telling me about emotions I’m like

I thought I knew about emotions, like someone said to me, like, you know, we have emotions for a reason. Like it's okay to feel them.

SW: There's a reason you have fear. There's a reason you're sad.

TN: Right. Sometimes those, those aren't the, sometimes what we're feeling isn't facts, but it is a fact that we do feel this way. You know what I mean? And we should pay attention to it because once you start to push away and fight that, it's going to make it that much tougher to deal.

SW: There's a reason we have those emotions.

TN: Yeah. Like I try to, like I tell people, learn to surf, lean into that wave, you know as big and terrifying as it is lean into it.

SW: That's what you're supposed to do in surfing, isn't it?

TN: I don't know, actually, to be honest, I'm not sure.

SW: Like meet that wave and then that tension. Because if you don't, you're done. Man, that's why I keep getting toppled over by those.

TN: Do you surf?

SW: But I tried to figure it out myself and I didn't know what I was doing. Anyway, back to what you were saying about the emotion.

TN: So just, well, just, just, you know, just with the school, like if we taught these kinds of skills and strategies, instead of telling people, you know, that room is dangerous, let's not go in there. No, let's say let's go in there and I'm going to teach you strategies to get through these, these hurdles. Can you imagine teaching somebody these kinds of skills? Emotional intelligence, like fuck your test scores, man. Like, you know what I mean?

SW: I was a teacher for several years in New York and I'm imagining the look on people's faces.

TN: Oh, no kidding! Well, sorry if I'm offending you. These are just my thoughts.

SW: Dude you’re not offending me at all. I don't teach anymore. But what do you mean replace all those things with this silliness? What if we did? What would happen there?

TN: I don't want to pat myself on the back, I would say that you would start to see a significant difference, a noticeable difference.

SW: Probably true, yeah.

TN: You know, and I think with just with, with what I've learned with what I've been through, what I deal with on a daily basis, just learning and, and learning more about myself, learning more about the mental illness and, and, my depression and my anxiety, I believe that that mental health in general is a spectrum. I think we are all, we all have, we all have mental wellness and on one end of the spectrum is illness and one in his wellness. You know what I mean? So you need to, again, be mindful. Be aware of where you are in that spectrum. If you're leaning down towards that illness side, it's tough because you are the one that needs to do the work sometimes. You have to pick yourself up and go and pay attention. I need to start eating better. I need to, you know, maybe, maybe stop drinking as much on the weekends or staying up late watching, you know, shit TV or whatever it may be, you know, and pay attention and focus on these things. But these are just my thoughts and again, I think maybe some people might understand it, some people may get it, some people may not. Some people may get it on a level that we get it on, maybe. But I guess to everybody out there, know this, that you're not alone. And I think we are stronger together. And if we join in this fight, stomping out stigma, doing what you're doing, talking about, trying to decrease suicide, trying to talk about these difficult topics, making them more acceptable in conversations. I think we can learn from each other and, and I think we have to accept these things in us in order to write new chapters because the story's not over yet. And you can continue to write your story the way that you want it to. You know, I didn't choose this story. I didn't choose this illness, but I do make a choice daily to do what I can do to make it better. And if I can help somebody else along the way, that's that's having the cake and eating it too.

SW: Despite having a podcast, Abovegroundpodcast, you're not necessarily super comfortable talking about some of the things you shared so for you and me and everyone who hears it, that's a huge thing man. So thank you.

TN: Thanks, Abovegroundpodcast.net it's available wherever you podcast.

SW: As always, thanks so much for listening and special thanks to Tim up in New York. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook at SuicideNoted. We also have a YouTube channel. can check that out if video is your thing. If you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to share your story with us, I'd love to talk. Hello@SuicideNoted.com I check the email all the time. I'd love to hear from you. And if you have a question that you'd like me to ask one of our guests, send that too. We connect again. Stay strong. Do the very best you can. I'll talk to you soon.