The five reasons behind Story of My Life

It was 2020: the year from hell for so many around the world.

There were those who lived their hell openly, but there were also those who lived their hell in silence.

By the time the year entered its final quarter, I had heard of five friends, or friends-of-friends, who had attempted to take their own life in the previous 12 months.

They were all men. They were all in their 30s.

Thankfully, none of them succeeded, and their explicit suffering led to them seeking and receiving the support they needed.

Rudimentary maths

But there was something of equal concern hidden beneath those five people, and that was the sheer number of people facing similar challenges, but whose suffering was not – or, not yet – explicit enough to receive the support they needed.

The thought made me do some rudimentary, unsubstantiated maths:

• Lifeline reports that more than 65,000 Australians attempt to take their lives each year;
• Beyond Blue states that one-in-16, equating to 1.16 million Australians between the age of 16-85, have experienced depression in the past 12 months;
• That makes one suicide attempt for every 20 people suffering depression.

I know that’s simplistic and not everyone who attempts to take their own life has depression.

However, it served its purpose in illustrating my concern.

I knew five people who had attempted to take their own life in the previous 12 months, which meant – according to the maths – I knew 100 people with depression.

Correction: there was 100 people whom I knew that suffered depression.

There was a subtle difference in those conclusions because I knew the five – as in, I knew precisely who they were. They tried to kill themselves and began receiving help.

But I had no idea who the majority of the 100 were. They hadn’t tried – yet. They were suffering in silence. They were more than likely not seeking help.

When order descends into chaos

I’ve not tried to take my own life. I’ve not considered it.

But I was certainly no stranger to the ills of 2020, and, for many months, I had followed the shadows down a long hall that turned into a dark hole, and I went through bouts of depression that slowly became more than I was able to cope with on my own.

To be clear: there are still days that are extremely hard. I don’t ever want to create an illusion of false paradise, especially when selling a product.

Life is not like that. Life has downs to balance its ups. Life is hard.

I’m grateful, though, that I never felt it was too much that life wasn’t worth it.

That’s the thing, though: for much of the time, most of us can cope with the tragedies, burdens, pressures, and responsibilities of life, and sometimes we can sustain a level of endurance we never thought we were capable of.

But sometimes it gets too much. Or it goes on for too long. It wears us down. And everything we thought was working, no longer works.

We look around and discover we’re not where we thought we were. The world doesn’t look how we thought it looked. We’re not who we thought we were. Our order has descended into chaos.

My circuit breaker

That began happening to me amidst 2020.

The cracks started appearing as the pressures of a year like no other began mounting before it came to a head.

My resilience dropped. My ability to perceive and work towards a future reduced, until I was only able to fixate on the day, hour, minute – or one specific issue that would suddenly overtake my emotions and engulf everything.

My emotions raged. I was having far more down days than up.

Then, my boss pulled me in for a chat. It wasn’t so much a chat, as a circuit breaker.

I thought I was handling it. I wasn’t.

He spoke a truth I needed to hear: “Whatever you’re doing to try and manage and cope, it’s not working.”

I took a week off. My wife gave me a couple of days space, taking the kids away. I started the process of seeking a psychologist – I’ve been seeing her monthly since.

There have been a lot of tears, a lot of ups and downs – there WILL be more – but she helped me to feel human and to think about the future again.

Scratch, scratch, scratch

I had been interested in personal development for years before 2020 and had been actively journaling and unpacking my life to that point, but my psych helped me to scratch beneath the surface and dig deeper.

She helped me begin to understand the parts of me that had served me in some ways, but in other ways had driven me relentlessly down that dark hallway.

The first scratch was in helping me begin to see patterns in my behaviour, then the triggers or reasons that had led to those behaviours.

I scratched a little deeper and became aware of the values that were directing me to see the world in certain ways, which was leading to those triggers, then those behaviours.

I scratched a little deeper.

And I suddenly saw the stories I was telling myself – stories about myself, about the world, and about my place in that world – that were underpinning all of it.

They were stories such as those around the significance of achievement in determining a person’s worth, which were spawned from my childhood and strengthened throughout my life through unchecked confirmation bias.

I saw that those stories helped me tremendously in certain ways, propelling me to achievements I was proud of as I strived to be worthwhile.

However, I then saw the other side of that belief – that story.

It was the side that, inevitably, ensured I felt unworthy of love, unworthy of attention, unless I achieved.

The challenge with that belief over a prolonged period – such as 30 years of life – is that an achievement is only an achievement for the briefest of moments.

And, when the achievement dissipates, so too does the sense of self-worth.

It left in me a belief that who I was, as I was, was simply not enough – and never would be.

The lesson of my life

It was a shattering revelation to understand a story such as that was not only living, but growing, inside me.
It was also incredibly freeing to realise it.

Why? You cannot write the end to a story if you do not know its beginning.

I was coming to that realisation when I heard from a friend whom I cared for.

The world was closing in on them in ways that were all too familiar – firstly through my own experiences, but also through my observation of the five people I’d known to have attempted suicide.

I did not – and do not – want to lose, or almost lose, another friend, or for my friends to feel as horrible as I had – and sometimes still do – in my darkest days.

I do not want them to lose the moments with their children, because they’re bathing in a pool of despair and hopelessness. I do not want their relationships to fall apart.

At least, I do not want any of that to be because they feel there’s something wrong with them.

That they’re alone. That they’re the only ones.

I don’t want them feeling they’re not enough.

I absolutely encourage everyone to strive for more, achieve all they can, and to be the best they can be, but those achievements do not make a person who they are.

I wanted my friends – just as I wanted for myself – to know that who they were, deep within and beneath the layers of life that had surrounded their identity like the layers of an onion, was enough.

I wanted them to know they were supported, they weren’t alone, and to be able to see the stories they were telling themselves – that they weren’t even aware of – that had led them to where they were.

I wanted them to know there were ways out – even if it was not the same way as I had found.

Story of My Life Journal

The concept for Story of My Life Journal took hold and ran through the veins of 2020 – that year like no other.

That year that tested every one of my friends, family, and fellow Australians in some way.

That year that tested millions – billions – around the world.

That year that tested people – people who never let on that they were being tested.

I knew from my experience that understanding who I was, where I came from, and how I got there had enabled me to feel more empowered in deciding where I wanted to go instead.

It made me feel like there was something I could do.

I knew that understanding that my life was like a boat, sailing on the waters of my stories, had enabled me to not only see those stories, but to decide if I wanted to continue holding onto them, or if I wanted to write new ones.

I knew all of that had helped me dig myself out of a hole.

And I knew I was a male, in my mid-30s, who had been struggling.

Just like those five 30-something males I knew who had attempted to take their own lives.

I knew there must be something in that. I knew that was too coincidental to be a coincidence.

Sure, I knew that what worked for me was not going to work for everyone, but I also knew that what I had learnt and what had worked was – at the very least – worth a try.

I knew that if I could bring together all the tools, lessons, strategies, and routines I had found so helpful, they might form an invaluable tool for others to not only uncover what was at the heart of their challenges, but to also discover who they truly were within their heart – and who they wanted to be.

Story of My Life Journal was born in a hell of a year, in the hope it would help others out of their own hell.