*This is a work of fiction, inspired by real events

He was a beautiful man, with profound eyes filled with pools of copper and a jawline so sharp it stung to look at. I met him through mutual friends – we were at one of those free music festivals Atlanta loves to throw during the spring. “Bijan,” he answered, unsmiling, when I asked for his name.

I had to ask again to hear him over the off-tune indie band playing nearby and the surrounding cliques’ overlapping conversations. I grinned. “Does that mean you’re my hero?” I teased, playing on the Farsi meaning of the name, trying to help him relax. I know what anxiety is like. He merely grimaced and replied, “Yeah.”

My girlfriend smiled sheepishly at our exchange. “Bijan comes from Persian parents as well. I thought I’d introduce you, because Middle Easterners can only date each other, right?” That was a joke, I learned later that evening – Bijan was gay.

We went out for dinner after the festival ended. I ordered spaghetti with tomato and basil sauce, while he opted for mozzarella cheese sticks and a dirty martini. “Yeah,” he said, between licking the salt off an olive, “I used to have a boyfriend. Handsome, tall fellow. A godsend in the gay community – to find a guy who wanted to be exclusive AND was ‘manly’ enough for me to take home without having to come out? Bless. Things didn’t work out, though. It is what it is.”

His demeanor was ambiguous- I couldn’t determine whether he was really nonchalant, or just resigned about the situation.

Bijan wasn’t actually from Atlanta. His parents lived in Nashville; he was here doing his Master’s in Public Health at Emory. He wanted to help impoverished men and women of color in urban communities with commonplace STI’s receive necessary treatment and prevention. Bijan was an intelligent student, but didn’t receive enough funding for his studies. Fortunately, his parents were wealthy enough to fund his degree, housing, and other needs while he built the foundation for his life.

I was fond of Bijan. We didn’t hang out much after that night, but we made time to get cappuccinos or go to shows a handful of times over the next few months. Those few times, we talked (argued) about religion, local occurrences, and epidemiology. I admired him for his pure intentions – he truly believed he could “make the world a better place” through his research, despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles world health organizations often faced, like lack of funding or permission to send aid into certain areas. He had faith that goodness would prevail. But that faith appeared to be nonexistent when it pertained to his own life.

“Yeah, my parents have a list of women for me to meet in the occasion I don’t bring one home before I turn 27,” he’d lament. “Muslim, or Coptic Christian. They really expect me to carry the family name, because I am the ‘man of the family.’ Pardis, my only sister, is older than me, but she eloped with a guitar player a few years ago. Extraordinarily cliché, but aren’t we all? I don’t know where she is now. Anyway, they’ve cut her off and now it’s just me and Parsa, who is still in the 7^th grade.”

Bijan spoke quickly, like he wanted to get a confession with a sheikh or priest over with, like I was about to assign him a punishment for simply existing. “They can’t get over the fact that they came here from Iran to have a better life, that they managed to literally go from rags to riches with their business, and they still managed to have a ‘fuck-up’ for a daughter. It puts so much pressure on me and Parsa to be great, to be venerable characters in the narrative they’ve imagined and ingrained in their heads. It’s why, despite the legalization, I will never be able to marry the man I love.

Because what the hell kind of Iranian can tell their parents, that their son has a husband? I would bring dishonor upon my entire community.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You know, I haven’t made many friends I like here. It’s hard for me to trust people. I feel like everyone lets me down. But I guess telling you all this doesn’t really make a difference.” Bijan confused me sometimes, as well, but when I prompted him for an explanation, he rarely conceded. I chose to enjoy his company, nonetheless, and take what he would give me.

I never got the sense that Bijan was a particularly happy individual, despite his aspirations and fertile inner life. Then again, very few are. Yet, nothing could prepare me for the letter I received early this year from – of all people- Bijan’s mother, stating that he had killed himself and left me a note. She didn’t write anything else, except that she hoped that Bijan hadn’t portrayed her and her husband as ‘bad people’ to me, and that they had tried their hardest to do everything they could for their beloved son.

Dearest Laila,

I hope this letter reaches you well, given the circumstances. If you’re reading this, I am gone. There is nothing you could have done. I want to thank you for being a wonderful friend during the short time we knew each other. In a different life, with different neurobiology, I might have loved you more than a friend. Alas, it was not meant to be.

I write this, because I want you to know. I need to validate to myself that my act is not entirely selfish.

When I was 23, I contracted HIV from a hookup. At least, I want to think it was from a hookup. Unless my ex cheated on me, then I got it from him. It doesn’t really matter though.

Yeah, yeah, I know: HIV is incredibly treatable, to the point where it doesn’t even have to shorten your life expectancy, you just have to take antivirals and enzyme replacement therapy, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because HIV is the last straw for me. It’s the last straw on top of being atheist, on top of being gay, on top of an unforgiving world. I’ve been ready for this for years – the universe just told me it was time.

My father once said that he would rather me have cancer than an STI. I took that as indication that he would, façade and obligatory consolations aside, honestly prefer me dead than shameful. Everything about me is shrouded in shame. This, my death, is my gift to my parents: they can tell their family I died of a broken heart, of mental illness, of anything else, rather than the ugly truth. And maybe it’s true: maybe I am a product of my own relentless self-destruction, a product of gin, sex, and blasphemy.

I am not blaming anyone. Some people weren’t just meant for this world, not human enough, too human. I truly believe I will find peace after this. I’m going to sleep – for eternity.

With utmost love,

Bijan

I did cry. Sobbed, in fact. And I was furious, absolutely enraged, at his casual tone in the letter. Did he not understand the depth of his actions? Did he not understand the implications for his family? His poor brother, now all alone in a cruel world?

His mother didn’t leave any contact information in her note, which is just as well. I had no desire to speak about Bijan ever again. I could only imagine how he completed the act- was it here in Atlanta? Did he blow his brains out, leaving his roommate a grotesque final image of him? I shuddered, and prayed to forget Bijan’s beautiful face.

I eventually reconciled with the fact that I couldn’t call Bijan again, and would never again listen to him talk about his work, or his family, or anything. That he was gone, never to return.

Bijan was an astounding man that touched my life, and broke my heart with his demise. I wish his tale was a unique one, but I know it’s not, because suicide is the leading cause of death among young adults in the developed world, and I know that a high percentage of suicidal individuals never seek help, and I know that many people of color believe suicide, death, is the honorable way to go when they’ve disrespected the culture they come from.

And I wish for the next generation of humans on this planet to be more merciful to the gays, to the different, to each other, and I wish for the next generation of humans on this planet to cater to those who don’t know how to be alive in their communities, or anywhere else. I wish for a more forgiving world, one Bijan could have lived in, flaws and all.

I have borderline personality disorder. I have severe bouts of anxiety and depression. I can become erratic and manic in the flip of a switch. I am withdrawn from school. I’m broke. I am in debt to many. But I’m happy.

As I’ve become more and more comfortable opening up about my mental illness and the different ways it has affected me, people that I wouldn’t even consider acquaintances have shown their support to me. It’s shocking, amazing, heart-warming, and overwhelming all at once. To know that a stranger took the time to hear your words, felt sympathy, and came to me with kind words and support. One of the recurring phrases that I was told was that people hoped I would find happiness one day. One day.

It makes sense. On paper, I don’t have much that I should be happy about. But how could I not be totally and completely happy despite my mental illness?

I’m tired of people telling me that they’ll hope I find happiness or that good will come one day. Happiness is here. Good is right now. Despite all of my circumstances,  I have so many reasons to be happy. I have too many beautiful people in my life who help me. The saying “it takes a village” is no fucking joke when literally ever person in my life gets get through my day to day. Some days I’m even overwhelmed with how much happiness I feel.

Yes. Some days are sad. Some days are excruciatingly difficult to get through. Some days it, I can’t wait to just crawl back in bed and go to sleep, just to do it all over again the net day.  But there are so many other days that are joyous. And those are the ones worth sticking around for.

I am an avid gamer, I love video games, and for a while video games were the only thing I had going for me. Skyrim, Dark Souls, Civilization, all of these games can be set to varying degrees of difficulty. Most games start you out on a “standard” mode. If my life were a video game, I would have been started on Hard Mode.

In April 2013, I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. In February 2015, my diagnoses was changed to Bipolar Disorder. No matter the label, I have been living with my mental illness since I was at least twelve years old.

I don’t entirely remember when it started, I just remember family and friends telling me to “stop being so negative all the time.”

My story really begins at the end of sixth grade. My parents and I decided that it was okay for me to skip seventh grade and go straight into 8th grade so I could go to a prestigious private high school in my hometown. It seemed like a good idea at the time. At this private school, 8th grade is part of high school, so here I was, a twelve year old going into high school. I was pretty excited for this new chapter in life.

Turns out being the youngest, most naïve, and physically weak member of your class isn’t good for your social life. I was awkward as I was just hitting my growth spurt. I was socially awkward because I was always socially awkward. Needless to say I wasn’t in the popular crowd. In fact I wasn’t in a crowd at all. I was alone.

Loneliness sucks, especially when people go out of their way to make your life absolute hell. Every chance they got, insults were hurled at me. Never fists, only insults. I scurried around the school, frightened of the next verbal assault. It got so bad that I refused to change for gym in the boy’s locker room, as I couldn’t stand being in a tightly packed room with my bullies able to hurl their insults at will.

I eventually got fed up and reported my bullies to the school. It worked, the insults stopped, however I was shunned by the majority of my class for getting the ringleader of the bullies suspended.

I was just as alone as ever.

Fast forward to senior year of high school. I now had friends, I had a few girlfriends in the intervening years, life was supposed to be going well, but it wasn’t. I was always negative, always “in a funk” I was always the one that killed the happy mood.

My negativity made it hard to keep friends around, though thankfully a few stuck with me. After senior year I went to college at Auburn University. It was not my first choice school, but it was the only one I received a scholarship for. It was the Army ROTC scholarship. I hoped Auburn would see me turn over a new leaf, that in the promised land of college, I would finally hit my stride and flourish socially and academically. That new leaf didn’t turn.

Early in the semester my new roommate and I had a physical altercation. The fight centered around him waking me by urinating on me while he was drunk. I may or may not have hit him… I was considered at fault by the University, so they gave me my own room. I would have no roommates. I was alone.

From then on I lead a miserable existence. The depressive part of bipolar disorder consumed me. I felt that my very soul was being tortured by this depression. I quit ROTC because I couldn’t handle it mentally and as a result, I lost my scholarship.

I had no friends within a hundred miles, and my pervasive horribly negative and fatalistic mood was pushing away the ones that were already far away. I hated life, I could barely drag myself out of bed, my grades plummeted, and I thought my family believed I was a failure. They didn’t, but nothing would get through my depression. At this time I didn’t know anything was wrong with me. I just thought that this was part of life. It isn’t.

Reader, if you identify with anything I have said please tell someone, I didn’t and I almost died for it.

One Friday in the April of 2013, I decided to end my life. It wasn’t the first time I had this thought, it had been a daily thought since September 2012. I was finally ready. I went home to Birmingham that weekend, my parents and little sister had left the house that night. I was alone.

I got my handgun, which was my 18th birthday present a few months earlier, I loaded it, and placed it against my head. I put my favorite song on full volume. I gave myself the run time of the song to pull the trigger. In hindsight it seems dramatic, but it seemed appropriate at the time. If you’re interested the song is “Explorers” by Muse. Well the song finished, and I couldn’t pull the trigger. The next day I started my road to recovery.

When I told my parents what I had tried seriously to do, they quickly got me psychological help. I was put on medication to control depression. It worked slightly, but was not fully effective as I am Bipolar and not depressed, but I wouldn’t know that for a year or so. Yet, I was slowly getting better.

In the fall of 2013, I rushed Alpha Phi Omega-National Service Fraternity and gained some of my closest friends. In October of 2014, I published my first book, “Hell Has No Stars” which is about my struggle with depression.

I wanted to use my story to help others, and thankfully I found an outlet for that.

My psychologist knew of my desire to help people and set me up to give a speech on my story to Active Minds at Auburn University. Active Minds is a college group dedicated to spreading mental health awareness and ending the stigma around mental health. I was drawn to the group and became a member.

Now, almost two years to the day that I tried to kill myself, I am so glad I did not. They changed my diagnoses to Bipolar Disorder after I had a documented manic episode earlier this year, but I did not let that deter me. Now I am Vice President of my chapter of Alpha Phi Omega. Active Minds just elected me to be the Vice President of the chapter for next year. I will graduate college on time with a degree in History. I have friends. Life has improved so much since my darker days.

I can say now that I love life. I am not alone. I may still be playing life on hard mode, but the game has gotten a little easier.

With Halloween behind us, people with mental illnesses were reminded that our society still thinks mental illnesses are a joke. Last year, costumes like the infamous “Ana Rexia” were criticized on Twitter for making light of a deadly eating disorder. This year, I saw a costume that is the most appalling thing I have ever seen.  Walmart was selling a “suicide scar” adhesive, complete with a gash presumably engraved by a razor blade.

As someone who has struggled with multiple mental illnesses and has attempted suicide as a result, I know the suffering that causes suicide attempts. I also know that it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Suicide is not just the result of a bad breakup or bullying; it is often caused by an accumulation of pain that kindles in one’s mind years before being set aflame.  For some, it is planned out; for me, it was impulsive. That is what terrifies me; I did not experience the warning signs that professionals talk about in seminars. Yet, every day, I live with the knowledge that I tried to end my own life.

For me, mental illness and suicide are not a joke. But I do not ask for trigger warnings: not for my classes and not for the media.

I understand that it is not society’s job to coddle me with bold-faced labels and alternative lessons. I understand that I must develop my own coping skills that do not interfere with the lives of those around me.

Instead of asking my friends not to engage in diet-talk (I am also recovering from an eating disorder) for instance, I will change the subject or take a walk. I have never requested that my professors give me alternate assignments when suicide or another aspect of mental illness is being discussed because it’s often an essential part of the lesson plan. I still must learn and engage in the same activities as my peers in order to earn my degree – regardless of my history of mental illness.

While I am not a proponent of ever-present trigger warnings, blatantly making a joke about people killing themselves is horrific and inhumane. Tip-toeing around delicate topics is different from understanding that mental illnesses are not funny and should be taken seriously. It is important to openly discuss suicide, self-harm, abuse, eating disorders, and other taboo topics associated with mental illnesses. These open discussions may upset some people, but making an illness into a Halloween costume is even more disgusting. A line must be drawn between political correctness and basic human decency because it seems as if our society is losing its humanity.

Costumes like this are reminders of the countless days spent running scissors across my thigh as a means to stop my mind from racing. They are reminders of months spent in treatment, lost friendships, and my newest fear that if I keep a pen open during a lecture, I will unconsciously dig it into any bare flesh to relieve anxiety. This is what people are mocking when they dress up as mental patients; the constant fear that I have the power to hurt myself and that I might use that power at the first sign of discomfort.

For those of you who don’t know,  this week is National Suicide Prevention Week. So, I’m just going to start this off by throwing some statistics at you. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US. On average, there are 117 suicides per day. Each year, 42,773 Americans die as a result of suicide. So, are you listening now?

While mental illness is not the only cause of suicide, it is the leading factor. Mental illness is not something we can keep ignoring. As a society, we’ve created such a negative stigma around those who suffer from mental illnesses, but in reality, 57.7 million people in the United States suffer from a diagnosable mental illness every year. Having dealt with my own depression and anxiety and watched others do the same, this is something that I hold very near and dear to me.

I am here to be a voice.

Mental illness is not something that you just “get over,” so stop telling people who are depressed to “stop being sad.” Depression is so much more than just being sad. It comes in waves. Some days you are the happiest person in the world. Other days you feel like the entire world is crashing down around you, and sometimes you don’t even know why.

Mental illness is not something you can just explain, so stop telling people to tell you what’s wrong or what they’re freaking out about. Sometimes even on the brightest days, depression can make you feel like the world is coming to an end. Sometimes you wake up at 4 in the morning feeling so much anxiety you could throw up. It doesn’t always have an explanation, and sometimes it just happens.

Mental illness is not always something that can be seen with the eyes, so stop saying it’s not real just because you don’t see it. Sometimes anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses are suffered internally. Just because someone seems like the happiest, most outgoing person in the world, doesn’t mean they aren’t dealing with anything. As a matter of fact, most people who deal with mental illness are dealing with it alone, which really sucks.

Mental illness is not just for “crazy people,” so stop making it a “no-go” for conversation and causing people to feel so alone. Quite honestly, there are so many people who deal with mental illness of some form on a daily basis. The only “crazy” thing about it is that we try so hard to ignore it. Mental illness is something that we should be able to talk about as easily as the common cold.

Mental illness is not a cry for attention. Seriously. IT IS A REAL THING AND PEOPLE DEAL WITH IT AND WHEN YOU TELL PEOPLE THEY ARE JUST ASKING FOR ATTENTION YOU ARE JUST MAKING THINGS WORSE AND YOU NEED TO NOT.

Mental illness is not discriminatory. I first started going to counseling for depression when I was 8 years old. It is something that impacts regardless of race, gender, religious affiliation, age, what your favorite football team is, what your favorite color is, or what you ate for dinner last night. It can be anyone.

Mental illness is not a sign of weakness. People who deal with mental illness of any kind are some of the strongest people there are. They are fighting a battle bigger than you could ever imagine every single day of their life, and most of the time you don’t even know.

Most importantly, mental illness is not something you have to take on alone.

I challenge every single person who reads this to change your way of thinking. Say something kind to someone this week. Do some random act of kindness. You never know who you could be helping or how much it could mean to someone. Most importantly, act as a voice, whether that is in the form of sharing this blog post or sharing your own words. We can’t continue to ignore something so big.

For anyone dealing with your own battle with mental illness, just know, you are not alone. You are strong. You are amazing. Shine your light for the world to see.

5 years. 1,827 days. 43,848 hours. 2,630,880 minutes. 157,852,800 seconds. That’s how long it’s been since you’ve been gone. Some days, it feels like a lifetime some days. Other days, it feels like it was just yesterday.

I remember the phone call. I remember the way the room smelled and the color of the sheets on the pull-out couch. I remember, oddly, not being surprised when my mother told me you took your life. I remember the agonizing painful cries of my loved ones mourning an unnecessary death.

I remember it all.

There are so many things I wish I could say to change it all, but we can’t change the past. We can only try to make a difference in the present, hope for the best, and pray our hearts aren’t broken again. I have so many words that I wish I could type on this page, but they’re jumbling around too fast and confused. I wish I had words to say to comfort others feeling the same pain I feel, but again, I don’t know what to do.

I wish, I wish, I wish.

So instead, I fight against suicide. I fight against the mental illnesses that take 42,773 American lives each year. I fight for those who are too burdened or too tired to fight themselves. I fight for myself, because sometimes I even ask myself if this world is worth it anymore.

I fight for you because your memory deserves more than a suicide sticker. Your memory deserves to be unburdened of all the unanswered questions. Your memory deserves to continue living through love, not anger. Your memory deserves to fly free and know that we miss you.

We miss you.

I am the walk coordinator for the University of Georgia’s Second Annual Out of the Darkness Campus Walk, which raises money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and awareness for suicide prevention. This year I am raising money and awareness in your honor. I miss you immensely, and I hope your story can save a life.

I would do anything to have you back, but thanks to you, I can make a difference. I like to think that you didn’t take your life for yourself but to make me a better person. You have. You’ve taught me to love with no boundaries.

You’ve taught me that life is too short to go to bed angry or to live too safely or with too much fear. You’ve given me a passion so strong that my body shakes when I speak about it. You’ve changed my life, for the better. I would give anything to say goodbye or to change your mind, but thanks to you, I can change the mind of millions of people.

Fly high Jaay Bird. We’ll never forget you.

Human beings are living in a time of great transition.

The shift away from the medical model, to new ways of understanding how our emotions shape our day-to-day reality, is now increasing in awareness.  We are learning how our emotions influence our day-to-day experience of life on earth. We are learning to understand how the heart is the power center of feeling loved and accepted, and key to happiness as much as the mind. When we are experiencing a highly emotive event, our mind embeds the experience on many levels with a super awareness, to ensure the event is highlighted and we pay attention when it reoccurs.

There is a growing understanding that using holistic models of mind, body and spirit, work to bring balance for individuals who are experiencing a mental illness.

Using medication alone is now becoming outdated and this is an amazing time, but it is a challenging time too. It is a time when human beings are seeing societal structures breaking down and lots of change in restructuring happening very quickly. This is necessary in order to create new ways to live that are healthy and balanced. Often the focus with mental health is treating the human being. The emphasis is on the person believed to be out of sync with the world in some way.

I offer that it is society’s way of living, which is out of sync, and that people become ill trying to fit a way of living that is very unnatural.

I am sharing my personal human being story, as emotional intelligence and health is core to my life and what I am passionate about. I have often been in a deeply dark place because of relationship and feeling lost, lonely, and confused. Sometimes to a point of simply not wanting to feel the pain anymore and having run out of ideas as to how to numb myself out. Over the years, I tried several addictions to “numb myself out”, not even realizing at the time, that this is what they were.

Medication can take many forms such as food and shopping, workshops, and work too. Today, I am a 50-year-old woman with two adult children living near a beautiful pilgrim site, Glastonbury, in the South West of England. I am a holistic therapist and I assist people who are seeking a return to well-being, focusing primarily on understanding the emotional mind and how to work with it.

I love the work I do, having finally come home to myself.

I am still very much a work in progress and open to new learning. I share my own journey as I have experienced times of great emotional imbalance in my life and that was essential to my path in life. What the ego mind perceives as the “problem” is also, where solutions are found: the keys to personal freedom. We really do have all that we need within us and the key is to go and search and find the answers.

I suggest people do their own research because this article contains only my views and opinions. I believe that it is one of the most important aspects of people’s personal journeys; that they are discerning and find their own way and truth. I believe it is exactly what we are here for at this time.

I grew up in a middle class family in the North West of England. My family was innovative. They had moved away from a sizable town to a brand new estate in a small semi-rural village much to the surprise of their elder’s. This was in the 60’s and it was “new beginnings”. We had a very good standard of living and traveled abroad quite often. My family was very open with me about their history and, as a child; I did not know how unusual that was.

This formed a key belief system for me from an early age, which was to become the structure of my whole life.

Talking openly and sharing what were in fact taboo subjects, especially around mental illness and in many circles, this is still the case today. On my grandfather’s birthday, his mother committed suicide. My mother found her. She was nine years old. This had a profound effect on my mother and she had a breakdown. She could not eat or sleep and was obsessed with anxiety around death. Conventional medical frameworks at that time offered Phenobarbital or Electroconvulsive Therapy. These methods would sedate her heavily or use electricity on the brain to reset the short-term memory and remove the memories of the trauma. These methods are still used in the UK today.

My grandfather decided to look for alternatives and found a Hypnotherapist. Hypnotherapists were considered alternative at the time and still are in many conventional circles today. Hypnotherapy worked for my mother and she started to recover. The Hypnotherapist focused on creating belief systems that supported well-being and recovery for her, by creating new codes of consciousness in her unconscious mind.

These overrode her anxiety and fear to a large degree. She had a relapse and a breakdown at 19. Again, she returned to see the same person and again she made a quick recovery with further supporting well-being codes being reinforced. This understanding really helped me when I had my own breakdown at 22. I did not see it coming. I believe there is a pattern of relating that leads to a nervous breakdown in this way.

Generally, there are shared components that affect all human beings.

People experience their own unique process and there does not have to be a big life trauma to trigger this response.   Here are some common factors: Living an inauthentic life – people pleasing for a corporate framework, a family framework, a romantic relationship framework and trying to be something that is unnatural/perfect/controlled. To be overwhelmed is to be doing too much and over stretching oneself physically and emotionally in an attempt to tick all the “perfect life” boxes.

This is a coping mechanism of the psyche to try to stay in control or feel like one has some control. Living dishonestly in relationship – experiencing abusive relationship and not feeling able to speak to anyone about it or leave because of fear and shame. Lack of self-esteem and self-confidence, or not being “the norm”, which is a movable feast, especially in today’s super-fast consumer model system, or being a highly sensitive person who does not want to hurt others by becoming the behavior that has wounded them.

t that time, I was in a relationship with a man who was very aggressive and had a lot of control and anger issues. He was an alcoholic. His way of relating to other people did not match my values.

I was at odds with myself. He was controlling about what I did every day, how I dressed, how I cooked food, my friends and many other aspects. This was over a period of 3 years. Over this time, he became more violent and eventually physically attacked me. When I tried to end the relationship, he would turn up at my place of work and try to persuade me to take him back full of remorse and insisting he would and could change.

This man had huge anger issues, which were always present and surfaced when alcohol released any control mechanisms he had in place. This type of behavior is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In my experience, any event in a person’s life that has created a huge emotional response for them and/or a person close to them emotionally creates Post Traumatic stress Disorder. I do not believe him to be a “bad’’ person.

People are not their behavior. This is also not excusing his inappropriate behavior or any other abusive behavior. It is also being realistic about people. People do what they know. Period. It is as simple as that. How can people do what they do not know? Human beings learn experientially and model what they see as children, which is why these patterns of behavior live on in generation after generation and this is key for understanding.

As people are not their behavior, this creates a wonderful opportunity to create change. I believe every single person can create this change if they have the motivation to do so.

All human beings have the core potential to heal and love and to live from compassion. I believe this is happening now more and more as all the tools are there for people, ready to do their personal journey, to create well-being for themselves on an emotional level. Information is everywhere and conscious ways of being are becoming mainstream with social networking and search engines.

My first panic attack happened at 22. I was barely coping, had two jobs, and was stretching myself physically and mentally. I was hiding my true feelings and not confiding in anyone. I went to a shopping center, literally 10 minutes walking distance from my home. I went into a shop I used regularly and was very familiar. On that day, the shop’s layout changed and was unfamiliar. That was my tipping point. I was overwhelmed. I started to hyperventilate, became dizzy and my eyes could not focus. I left the shop and sat on a bench in the shopping mall.

I saw a police officer and thought about asking him to take me home, as I could not access any memory of how to get there. How would I explain it him? This created even more anxiety. I sat for what felt like hours, in reality probably 20 minutes. Eventually I had enough confidence and calmness to go home. Feeling shaken, I sought medical advice. In a snapshot, I went through the medical model and had my heart and my eyes tested. Then the doctor gave me some Valium. I took one and felt like I was in a bubble, which was even worse than feeling anxious, I felt like I was under water in a goldfish bowl remote from the world. I did not take any more.

I experienced continued panic attacks, tunnel vision, could not function, and could not work. I was also experiencing physiological ill health with psoriasis on my face and cervical cancer cells. My body was revealing my true state of inner being. Many people see this as something that can be fixed. I offer an alternative perspective now, that the body and mind are simply illuminating the outer relationships requiring a change in this unhealthy way of being. At the time though, I just wanted to fix all these symptoms so I could carry on doing the same thing, the same thing that had led me to this place of imbalance.

I was not consciously aware of that back then. This is the change of focus happening now and it is the realization that our so-called diseases are revealing out of balance ways of living and relating for the human being. My doctors were sympathetic but had no personal experience of mental ill health and again, this is key to awareness. They did what they knew and eliminated all the medical model scenarios using tests then gave me a pill to keep me calm.

This is holistic too, in a sense of looking at all the avenues to find a way forward and ensure the physical body is functioning, as it should. Medication does not alter any patterns or give any practical tools for the individual to use.

The doctors did not prescribe talking therapies because they were not mainstream in 1980s UK.

In my understanding, it is essential that a health facilitator in the mental health field has walked the path of the people they are working with; otherwise, there can be no deep level of understanding or empathy. I hear this over and over from people who have sought help from talking therapies and the person they are working with, has no personal life experience of being in their shoes so although they have the best intentions, they cannot possibly understand what that person is going through.

People sharing this perspective of a lack of genuine empathy have felt that the therapy has very little impact because of that lack of understanding. Academia is important and it does not allow the same deeper understanding as experiential learning. It is recognized that support groups work exactly because of that shared experience and, I hope this will expand to include one to one facilitators helping others to move forward because they themselves have moved forwards and understand key aspects of that process. It would have been greatly beneficial for me to know how my physiology created symptoms. This came much later.

Changing the breath prevents hyperventilation. Knowing how my physiology was creating a loop of symptoms with short breaths and how to break that loop, stopped the process and the panic attack in its tracks, and really helped me help myself.

Seeing the bigger picture is essential too, but often that is not possible when we feel we are at the bottom of a dark pit.

It is good to find someone who has been there and climbed out of it and knows that we can too with a helping hand. Although we can fix certain aspects of our ill health, looking at the core root of what gave rise to it is the focus point. If this is ignored, eventually this will rise up again in a different form, as this is where the change has to take place. This foundation structure creates our day-to-day experience of the world. This is the root of all that is out of balance in our society generally and where human evolution lies.

I know now that this was the start of my personal experiential journey. I left that relationship at last and moved to London with another man, who is the father of my children. I learned how to cope with my symptoms and they happened less and less. I tried to learn more by reading around this subject. We managed pubs and had contact with many people. Some of the staff had mental health issues and one in particular had severe bipolar experiences. They were manic at times, spending hours being creative with bar displays and then going into the depths of depression with very little energy.

Our staff used to confide in us about their day-to-day ways of being, often they were far from home living in squats looking for the streets paved with gold and often had stories of family trauma. All I could do then was speak of what happened to me and suggest books I had read on the subject. I have always been open about my mental health experiences and this allowed the taboo to be released. I found once I shared my mental health story, other people opened up and shared theirs. We could then share our learning too.

Our lives changed radically in 1995 when I gave birth to our son. It was an amazing time for me, as I had never planned to be a mother and involved lots of new learning. I really wanted to be the most informed parent I could and started learning about psychology at evening class.

I was passionate about it and my intention at the time was to be a forensic psychologist. I was attracted to the pathology of psychology, which I coined “the dark side of human nature”. Our daughter arrived in 1998. It was a joyful time and a tipping point in many ways.

I would not accept for my children what I had accepted for myself in terms of the medical model. I researched all areas of health and started to look for alternatives. After studying psychology for a while, I concluded that there did not seem to be a great deal of change happening for individuals seeking help.

There could be many years of talking therapies and understanding of what created the trauma but it seemed that people were still experiencing the symptoms and not feeling or being free of trauma. I started to learn about NLP, or Neuro Linguistic Programming created in the 1970’s. It creates theories around how the human being learns and stores their life experience. There are practical frameworks to use from a variety of sources based on people who achieved excellent results in their field. It also includes shamanic frameworks from indigenous people.

It is very dynamic. At the same time, I began learning about Eastern frameworks of healing, using energy meridians. Although new in the West, Eastern frameworks have been extensively chronicled and used in the East for thousands of years.

I came across Emotional Freedom Technique in 2007 and was very excited with what I could achieve personally to move debilitating migraine headaches in seconds, even though I had not even started the training and only had a bare bones idea of the framework. I started to use it in all manner of ways with all age groups and found it so easy that literally children can do it and let go of trauma in minutes. At my first training session, a key part of the course clicked for me and made complete sense. The emotional mind is the fight/flight/freeze part of the brain and is a pattern matcher for trauma. When this part of the mind is activated, the individual literally cannot access their logical brain.

Accessing the logical brain is inhibited and the human being goes into survival mode.

To overthink could mean the death of the person. Whenever there is a pattern match for a previous emotional trauma, the amygdala is activated. This created huge understanding for me as to why talking therapies on their own do not create a shift in emotion and behavior. The pattern of the original trauma is still there as is the emotion so the hijack continues. Using Emotional Freedom Technique changes this. As I started to work intuitively on emotional times in my life, using this framework, I got an amazing shift.

It gave me the confidence to feel more and start to come into balance with all my emotions. One of the biggest was anger and unresolved issues around that. I love sharing this information and technique with people, because it has changed my life and many people who I have worked with. People do not have to suffer for years or be in therapy for years. They can start to take action themselves and feel self-empowered. It is a simple framework and accessible to all. In the UK, EFT is now recognized and used as a Cognitive Behavior Therapy and is becoming mainstream.

This gives me so much hope and enthusiasm. I have worked with people in the past who had sad stories. One person fell in love for the first time in their life. This created expansive feelings of joy beyond anything they had ever known and led to one episode of bipolar disorder in their teens. Because of this behavior, their family who were unable to cope committed them to an institution. They had been on lithium to keep them under control for 40 years and were afraid to come off it in case it happened again. EFT helped them let go of this fear and feel safe around their emotional self. Again, this is not a quick fix; it is a personal peace procedure that can be used every day to move to balance.

I believe that people will experience what is known as mental illness at some time in their life. It is what can help us grow, mature, and make the changes required now to support healthy relationships. For some people it is a huge turning point. Some do not overcome these crisis points and this is hugely painful for the people in their lives. This is so saddening and my heart goes out to them. I know what a huge impact suicide had on my family. I do feel that there is always light that goes out from these dark points. The more we start to speak and share our shadowed dark times, the more they become acceptable into the mainstream. The dark side is where the light is waiting to return.

It holds the potential of new ways and understanding of all the aspects of our human being self. It holds new beginnings for our world and expansion of compassion and love for ourselves. When individuals love and accept themselves, then they can truly do this more and more with others.

Jo Kenworthy www.barefootholistics.co.uk www.flowwithjo.com