Drew this when I was in a bad way, with depression and anxiety.
At the time, I was drawing lots of pictures of this speccy man (me), to make sense of how I was feeling.
I used the pictures when I gave talks inside big companies and professional services firms. Big firms like Slaughter and May, Linklaters, Freshfields, and others too.
I wouldn’t have said this at the time because I believed I was profoundly worthless, but the talks were a great success.
They opened up a wider conversation.
If one person goes first, speaks openly and honestly, then others will follow.
Several times, people contacted me directly to say they had sought help after hearing me speak.
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I don’t LOVE talking about mental health. I have a terrible fear that I am destined to become Mr Mental Health. That everyone will think I’m just a really depressing specimen.
I prefer to talk about other things:
- books I’ve written, which include FUNNY BITS.
- improvisational theatre shenanigans.
- art I make, which can be vibrant and zingy and full of joy – attempts to capture the beauty of the world around us, and the people in it.
I’ve talked about these things to audiences as big as 5,000 people, on four continents.
So why, today, am I posting a picture of myself as a Holey Man?
Because I just read something here on LinkedIn about someone in one of the big professions taking his own life, and I remember a promise I made to myself in psychiatric hospital:
K E E P T A L K I N G about this.
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Every day or so, during the weeks I was there, someone was admitted to the hospital – and to my group therapy sessions – having been lucky enough to fail in a suicide attempt the previous day.
Over several weeks, I saw a lot of people.
Before then, as a journalist on the Sunday Times I’d had the dismal, bitter experience of being sent again and again to interview people about suicide.
Most were bereaved relatives, but some had tried and failed to take their own lives.
One man, Kevin Hines, had jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
It’s a four-second drop, so the force of impact is – well, you can imagine.
Also: the water is freezing cold.
And there are sharks.
For these reasons, most people don’t survive the jump.
But this man, Kevin, “only” broke several vertebrae on impact. And he was lucky enough to be seen falling, so he could be dredged out before he froze and before the Great Whites got him.
When I interviewed Kevin, he said he regretted jumping “the moment my hand left the rail”.
Please read that again!
Life is short enough as it is. Don’t make it shorter.
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Should I add that I still do talks occasionally about my breakdown and recovery?
Well, if I didn’t mention it you wouldn’t know.
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Thanks for looking / reading.
