The Other Side of Fear
The most important life hack you'll need: A Holistic Guide to Get You Unstuck.
Self improvement topics covering mental health, trauma, limiting beliefs, mindset, spirituality, energy healing, mindfulness, and purpose.
The Other Side of Fear explores thought provoking stories about the types of fears that are triggered by our individual insecurities, conditioning and past traumas. We examine the role of societal conventions and how they function as a strong determinant, in how we often choose to address our most personal struggles.
Our guests discuss how they navigate through various challenges, while taking ownership of their true desires. Giving you a gentle push, to live in a way that honors your authenticity. What does it mean to lean into fear? How can we recreate our stories and embrace the unknown? What does the other side of fear look like for you?
This is a reminder that, your fears are as big and as scary as you allow them to be. Your purpose is greater than the fear that hinders you.
The Other Side of Fear
Stop Saying "COMMITTED SUICIDE" | with Lisa Sugarman
Key Takeaways:
- The fear that exists on both ends of, the person living with suicidal thoughts and, the friends or family members who are not sure how to address it without causing more harm.
- The importance of being direct when addressing a person who you suspect to be thinking of harming themself or someone else; i.e. are you thinking about hurting yourself? Are you thinking about dying?…
- The language we use to speak about suicide and why it needs to change.
This conversation with Lisa Sugarman, a Boston-based author, columnist, crisis counselor and three-time survivor of suicide loss, uncovers the profound ways our words influence perceptions and stigma, through looking at how language can shape our understanding of suicide and mental health, stressing the critical need for more compassionate language, moving away from terms like "committed suicide" which criminalize and stigmatize.
Lisa speaks on the emotional complexities of losing her father to suicide and the heavy burden of secrecy that followed. She describes the prolonged mourning and emotional isolation she experienced, emphasizing the importance of processing chaotic emotions and seeking assistance. We also celebrate the power of advocacy, community and authenticity, highlighting the impactful work of The Trevor Project in supporting the LGBTQ+ community, with resources spanning suicide prevention, mental health, gender identity, diversity etc.
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A few months back I spoke with Lisa Sugarman, an author, columnist and three-time survivor of suicide loss, and she highlighted why we should refrain from using the phrase committed suicide in moments when we are attempting to bring light to loss by suicide. And this is just a reminder of how powerful words are, because not only do they help us to create and convey meanings, but they also, in turn, affect and reflect the attitudes we have towards the things we perceive and talk about in our society. So the language we use definitely has the power to shape our ideas and feelings about anything. So a phrase like committed suicide likens the act itself to something that is taboo, something that is socially unacceptable and frowned upon. Because it's very common that whenever we've used the term committed in a sentence to describe the actions of a person, it's usually because they've done something very wrong, like committed murder, for example.
Kertia:And unfortunately we've used this type of language to describe suicide for such a long time, which, in its essence, criminalizes it. It criminalizes something that really should be viewed as a symptom of an illness. So we definitely want to change the language around suicide because, in effect, it helps to change the way we think about it, the way we feel about it, so that we can, at large, begin to change the perception of it. That will consequently impact the stigma associated with suicide. Just jumping from where we left off, the last time we spoke, you mentioned having lost multiple people to suicide, and that is so hard. I can't even imagine what it is like dealing with that, but I want to know how it has affected your journey personally.
Lisa:So the people I've lost. They're obviously people who are very, very close to me. I mean, you can't get any closer than having your father die by suicide. I had my cousin who you know lived a 10th of a mile up the street from me growing up. He was not quite 10 years older than I was, so you know he was kind of in a different place in life than I was in. So our worlds, while they collided a lot in those family settings, didn't collide a lot because he was so much older. But he lived right around the corner and his death and his suicide was really the first experience that I had ever had with loss and it was the first experience I think I had ever had with suicide.
Lisa:And my parents were very open in a very age appropriate way for me, explaining to me that you know that, that he, that he had an illness that we couldn't see and that, um, you know that that he took his own life and, and so that was really kind of where it ended. And that kind of left me to form my own opinions about suicide, my own belief systems and I did for a very long time kind of lean very heavily into the idea that suicide was a very selfish act and that came from nowhere else but inside my own heart and in my own mind and I kind of carried that along and then lost my father the year after my cousin passed away. But we didn't know that my father's death was a suicide. I was always told that my father had had a heart attack and for 35 years that was the story that I believed and I had no reason to question it. His mental illness was very hidden, hidden from everybody, and it wasn't until I was 45.
Lisa:So my father passed away when he was 45. I learned when I was 45, that my father had died by suicide and then, only just less than three years ago, one of our closest childhood friends who, again, we never knew he was struggling he took his life. So there have been these suicides in my life that have affected me so profoundly at such different points in my life, in my life, and it's it's only in in really kind of discovering my dad's suicide and kind of having that rewrite my history and rewrite my memories and and create this need to grieve everything all over again that that just kind of set me on a different path. I mean only a matter of two or three years ago, I was doing very different work in the world.
Lisa:I was putting out very different kinds of content, having very different kinds of podcast interviews. I was a parenting author. I'd written a bunch of parenting books. I was very embedded in that parenting space and talking to parents about that work-life balance and the family unit and raising kids and the way that my father's suicide and my friend and my cousin's suicides impacted my life was just to change course completely from talking about raising kids to talking about mental health and mental illness and how do we stop that stigma? So that's kind of the short version of my journey from there to here.
Kertia:Yeah, it's so hard to identify when the people we love the most are struggling, because oftentimes they often are the ones that seems the most outwardly happy, or you know they always have this big smile on their faces and I can say that truthfully from my own experience I haven't personally experienced someone killing themselves due to or who.
Kertia:I would just say that they just seem so outwardly bubbly and they're always smiling and they're talking to everyone and they're so extroverted and you know like they seem like they're so confident. When you look at that guy, when he's out and he's doing his thing, you're just like geez, like I wish I could be like that.
Kertia:You know someone I knew they kind of got to their breaking point and luckily they reached out to me and I was able to have that conversation. But it was just really astounding to me because I had no idea that this person was really struggling, right. So it's so hard and I'm just saying that to say that, you know, there's also that stigma that we have. Although, you know, in society we're just beginning to now really acknowledging mental health and everything surrounding that, I think that there's also this level of fear as well, especially when it comes to the people around you, right, when it comes to family and friends.
Kertia:I think sometimes we might know someone is struggling. There are just so many levels to it, because sometimes we know someone is struggling and we want to help. But sometimes do you think that there's just this fear of a family member or a close friend just feeling helpless. You know, helpless from not knowing how to deal with a situation whereby, when someone you love, they're experiencing suicidal ideation or maybe just a fear of doing or saying the wrong thing that could probably possibly sink the person deeper into that dark space. You know like some level of fear whereby you feel like you're not. You want to help but you're not quite equipped to help in the way that they need, and so it's just like you want to help but you're not reaching out. You want to help but you don't want to do or say too much. It's just like there's just so many levels to it and I want to know what you think about that.
Lisa:Yeah, I'm listening to you and my mind is going 1000 miles an hour because I'm thinking of all the different ways that I want to respond to that. Because it's so. It's so true that people get almost debilitated by their fear of making that mistake, that catastrophic mistake that causes the person they're worried about to do something harmful. And I think that, first of all, that fear definitely exists, 1000%. I think that that fear exists as much on the person who's struggling side as it does on the person who wants to help side. And I'll tell you why. I think that in a lot of cases, even though we're in a world that's far more accepting of mental illness now and has far more mainstream resources, people are still afraid to say I'm struggling, I'm in crisis, I'm suffering because they don't know what's going to happen. They're worried that they're going to be institutionalized. They're worried that they're going to be stigmatized. They're worried that they're going to lose their job or they're going to lose their partner or the optics of who they are in the world will change. So there's that whole bucket of fear which prevents a lot of people from saying like, hey, I'm over here and I'm really struggling, help me. Then you've also got the people you're talking about, who are the people who are seeing someone struggle, who want to do something and want to be a lifeline for that person and they're petrified because they don't know how to approach that person. And what I can say is this and I say this as a crisis counselor who is on the phone all the time, helping to, on the phone all the time, helping to de-escalate people who may be contemplating suicide or contemplating harming themselves or contemplating harming someone else, or someone who is just isolated and alone or feeling depressed. People just want to be heard, they want to be validated, they want to be able to express how they feel and have someone receive it and have someone hear them and not judge them and just hold that space for them. So what I can tell you is anyone who is in a situation where they're concerned about a friend or concerned about a loved one be direct, be direct. I say this all the time and it's not just me saying it. Any counselor, any crisis counselor, any therapist, any emergency response personnel will tell you the same thing.
Lisa:Ask the person directly using very basic language Are you okay? Are you thinking of killing yourself? Are you thinking of harming yourself? Are you thinking of harming someone else if you know that their issue is with another person? By asking someone directly, using that kind of language even though it seems like it might be blunt, even though it seems really scary to ask someone who might be suicidal if they want to kill themselves it will actually have a very different impact on that person than you might think.
Lisa:People think that by asking someone directly it's going to cause that person to harm themselves. It is the absolute opposite. By asking someone outright if they're thinking of hurting themselves, you're validating what they're feeling. You're saying I see you, I hear you, I understand that you're in pain. How can I help? What can I do? And there's a certain kind of I don't. I don't know what the word would be to use for this, but there's like a certain quality to being validated that puts someone at ease. Asking directly is going to actually reduce the risk of someone's suicide. So I know, while people might be afraid it's, the best thing you can possibly do for someone is to hold space for them and then to just ask them if they're okay.
Kertia:Yeah, it's so easy to think that you would probably offend a person or cause them some level of distress by being so direct, asking are you okay? Are you thinking about killing yourself, something like that. I think a lot of people are just afraid. You kind of don't know what to do, and I think another part of it is sometimes you're probably afraid of hearing the response. Right, like, yeah, it's important for validating the person and how they're feeling.
Kertia:But on the other side of it, I think a lot of us has a problem with acknowledging these heavy things. You know, because a lot of us, even for someone who is generally okay not to generalize, but generally what you would consider just okay right, of course they go through their own struggles, they have their own difficulties and challenges and things like that, but nothing that has yet caused them to experience that level of mental anguish that has resulted in some level of suicidal ideation. Someone who is generally okay still usually has a problem with connecting with your own feelings and your own emotions and even just communicating their own feelings and emotions to their loved ones, to their spouse, to their children, to their family members. Right, this is why we have so much conflict happening all the time, right, it's so hard for us on a normal day to sit with our feelings, acknowledge them and to get our feelings out to you know, even acknowledge our kids' feelings. You say that you have some books on parenting, right, and I'm sure, as a parent, you know like it's hard.
Kertia:It's hard sometimes because for me, I'm a mom as well, of two girls, and when I was new to motherhood, there are just some things that happened that I didn't know how to deal with it. I really didn't. I am no longer in that space, but you know what it's like when you have no idea how to respond to the situation. You feel like you're just going crazy. Sometimes it's hard to acknowledge your own child's feelings, right, as a parent, right? So how does that play out now, when you're dealing with a situation that is so heavy, that is so difficult to talk about, that no one really spoke about it for so many years, and now it's just yesterday that we started to acknowledge this thing. You know, there has been so much stigma previously attached to it and there's still some level of stigma, depending on which culture you come from, right, because culture has a whole different dimension to it as well.
Lisa:It does, you're right.
Kertia:There's that level where it's just like, yeah, we need to be direct, but if on a regular day we can't do that with our kids, we can't do that with our partners, how do we do that with someone that's in crisis?
Lisa:we can't do that with our partners? How do we do that with someone that's in crisis? Yeah, it's a hard one. It's a really hard one and, look, being vulnerable is a really scary place to be, but it can also be an incredibly liberating and empowering place to be, and I'm thinking in terms of what you just said about well, what do I do if someone confides in me that they are suicidal, like I ask them the question.
Kertia:Whoops, we are experiencing some technical difficulties. Bear with me, guys.
Lisa:I think that people are afraid of that. I think people are afraid of being in that position, like you said a few minutes ago. Well, what happens when someone answers the question, yes, I am feeling suicidal or yes, I do want to harm someone else, you know that opens up a whole box of challenges and that's, you know. That's a very understandable thing to be afraid of. But at the same time, we're only a single person with the capacity to hear what someone is saying, take it in, validate it, maybe try and help de-escalate them by giving them some options would be benefited by keeping the 988 number, the 988 crisis and suicide hotline number, like right here, right in their head in their phone, kind of figuratively in their pocket, all the time.
Lisa:Because we don't all have all the answers, we don't all know all the resources, we can't all be expected to navigate someone else's pain and the depth of someone else's struggle or illness. We and you can give that to someone as a resource. That's a place where someone can go to continue the conversation, to find the appropriate resources, to maybe discover some coping strategies or a safety plan, and it's a way that you can lead the person who's struggling in a more positive direction without having to have all the answers yourself. So I think I think that for anybody listening who's fearful of kind of opening up, that you know that box of challenges with someone. Don't be afraid of that. Just know that the only job you have is to give that helpline number to the person in crisis, because that's the help they need in that moment.
Kertia:That's a really good tip. That is such a good tip because we are not all equipped to handle. To handle that, you know, and a lot of us we struggle with just dealing with our own stuff and the stuff that happens with our own families and kids. And even when it's a family member, you still have that fear, you still have that that anxiety about getting involved or you want to get involved, but how deep should I be involved? You know, and you still experience that, even when it's someone close to you. So, um, having lost your dad, I can't imagine how your own mom even navigated her spouse going through that.
Lisa:Well, she didn't know. She didn't know. My mother had no idea that my father was struggling, none at all. What my mother did, navigate by herself, completely by herself, was the secret that he had taken his life. So when he died and I was 10 and it 1978, and where was she going to go for coping strategies and resources for suicide? They didn't exist, not the way they do now. So my mom, in that moment, made that decision to tell me a different story, to keep me from the added pain of knowing that his death was a suicide. So she had. She had that secret in her head and in her heart for 35 years. That's, that's the thing she dealt with. She didn't know that he was mentally ill. Because, if you go all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, yours and mine.
Lisa:We talked about um, about how skilled a lot of people are with mental illness at keeping it hidden. My dad was that person. My dad was the guy that you would see out in the world or out you know, out and about, who had the big smile on his face, who was so charming and so kind and so loving, and you would have no idea what was going on under the surface. Yeah, it goes. You know people, everybody has their own coping strategies and that's why it's so tough to know when someone is hurting. I mean, you look at all of these celebrities who have taken their lives and and we see them more often. Because we see them and know about them more often, because obviously they're in the public eye. So we learn about their stories and you think, my God, like how how could they have been so low? Look at their life, look at all they had. How could they have been so low? Look at their life, look at all they had, look at all they did. You know, mental illness doesn't discriminate. It's equal opportunity as far as illnesses go. It does not matter who you are or what successes you've had, or how much money you've got. None of that stuff matters, and because of that it can impact anyone, which is why one of the things that I do an awful lot about talking about now is being vulnerable, and there are two things that I talk a ton about. One is that power of vulnerability and how it can lead us to the help that we really need, because we're being honest with what's going on in our minds.
Lisa:And the other thing is storytelling. That's why I tell the story of my dad's suicide whenever I can, because it's a simple act and it's one of the oldest tools we've got. We did that before we had anything else. We told stories right, and that's the thing that creates community. That's the thing that creates hope. It creates a connection, an understanding, a validation. You know you can bond with someone who has had a similar experience. Look at Anderson Cooper from CNN. He's his new podcast, all there Is. You know Anderson talk about getting vulnerable. You know he lost his brother to suicide, his mother passed away, he lost his father. I mean, he's had it over and over and over again and he's out there sharing his story and you think about all the people who that story resonates with and that empowers those people to start sharing. So it's a total trickle down, and that's how we do it.
Kertia:You're so right on that. Storytelling is so important because one of those key things that you can do that shows people that you're not alone, that your suffering isn't just unique to them alone, that there are are in that darkness. The whole fallacy of it all is that you are the only person in the world that feels the depth of this darkness, that can feel this way, that you're the only person and something must be wrong with you. You know what I mean. Like no one can understand, no one can feel this, no one else can possibly know what you're going through. And that's pretty much what happens when you're in that dark space. You feel alone, it's isolating and you're suffering so much you can't think that someone else has possibly went through the same thing, went as deep and as dark as you did and came out of it and survived it.
Kertia:You know it's so hard to think about that when you're in that mind frame. So storytelling is very, very important to show people that you're not alone. Very, very important to show people that you're not alone, um, other people are suffering as much as they have, or as much as they currently are. There's nothing wrong with them, they're not broken, they're not flawed, um, and that they can get help. That is possible. I know we don't have all the answers and you can't say anything is ever 100%. And just to show that there are other possibilities out there, yeah, also, just like what we were speaking about, just the fear of people intervening, whether you're a friend or a family. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to intervene. Don't be afraid to intervene, don't be afraid to speak up, don't be afraid to ask the hard questions and to have the difficult conversations, because it's that fear that has held you back from possibly helping someone, from possibly validating someone, from possibly making them aware that they're being seen that someone sees them, so yeah, In terms of crisis intervention.
Lisa:That's a huge piece of that equation. Is that validating of someone's feelings? Because, just like you said, people get so isolated in their own headspace and they're so bogged down by whatever it is that's affecting them that they get so clouded and they can't share it because they don't think they deserve the help. They don't think their problem warrants the help there. I mean, like I said, mental illness is a tricky bitch. It's just, you know, it's, it's just, um, it's very deceiving and it's very easy to become a victim of that type of toxic thinking.
Lisa:When you are the only one who's locked in your own head, it's when you start to put it out into the world. Not only do you get that validation back, not only do you feel seen and you feel heard, but when someone else, when you talk to someone and you find out, oh my God, you were, you're really feeling that too, or you've gone through that too, not only is that connection incredibly valuable, but then maybe, maybe you went through something similar and I can benefit from whatever you might've done to get yourself out of it. We benefit from each other's experiences, we benefit from each other's strategies and from each other's successes. So all those things are kind of byproducts of storytelling and of community and connection, and that's where the real power is, I think.
Kertia:Absolutely, you're absolutely correct on that. You said that so well. I love it. No, thank you. So it would have been hard for you to truly see her process in this, in the truth of what her process really was. So I'm aware of that. But just having that loss when you came to that realization of how your dad really died, how would you advise someone to what I say to seek help? I'm not sure. But what is the next step? I wouldn't say to seek help, because you know, sometimes when you experience something that tragic, you kind of just freeze, right. It takes so long for you to even wrap your head around what's happening, right. So sometimes you kind of just freeze and you're kind of stuck in that frozen space for a while. What could you advise from just from your personal experience or from the counseling that you do?
Lisa:Well, I mean first of all for me in my case. So I found out about my father's suicide, so he died 45 years ago. It was. It was a whole new kind of grief, and suicide grief is so nuanced, it's so different. I mean not to minimize any other kind of grief, because every kind of grief is is so challenging in itself. Suicide is just is different. There are different components that don't exist in other types of loss and for a long time the first few years, I would say I, just like my mother, was the only one who knew.
Lisa:I told my husband I also have two daughters who are grown women now. They were teenagers at the time and I didn't feel emotionally ready to talk about it, even with my daughters. For a number of years I sat with it. I sat with it for probably three years, cried myself to sleep for three years life. And then I was someone very different. When the bedroom door closed at night and I put the girls to sleep and I would climb into bed and I would cry and I did that for three years, I would wake up sobbing in the middle of the night out of a deep sleep and I went through that and I sat in that and I felt that and I do a lot of journaling, that's just part of my own daily practice, and I was kind of putting it all there.
Lisa:This is before I was talking about it or writing about it publicly, and then like, little by little for me in my case, what I would recommend anybody do first and foremost, you just have to somehow manage to sit in those feelings, whatever they may be, and they may be the most chaotic and toxic and impossible feelings that you've ever felt and you can't imagine surviving in your own head like that for 10 minutes, let alone extended amounts of time. But we have to. We have to allow ourselves to feel every bit of it, because we don't and we push it away or we try and sidestep it or ignore it or bury it it's coming back. It's going to come back hard and fast and heavy, and it as a counselor, I'm suggesting it as somebody who's lived with grief my whole life since I was nine years old. And you know, like I said, there are other outlets. There's talking about it, there's writing about it. Keep a journal, let yourself cry when you need to cry. I mean, I ultimately eventually started talking about it, of course, and started writing about it. It publicly started advocating for suicide awareness and prevention, which is what I do now. It's what I do seven days a week, um, probably 25 hours a day. At this point I can't get enough of of um. You know, this community that needs so much help. I can't I I can't break away from it because I want to help so much.
Lisa:And the other thing is therapy. I went back to therapy. I had, you know, had seen a therapist when I was like in my twenties, you know when, when I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life, and you know when I wanted to talk about my father's death but I didn't know it was a suicide. So I was just talking about the fact that I'd lost my dad. I hadn't gone to therapy in 30 years. I finally started prioritizing my own mental health and went back to therapy about a year and a half ago One of the best gifts I've ever given to myself.
Lisa:And granted, we talk about an awful lot more than just my dad's suicide or my friend Stephen's suicide or my cousin Arnold's suicide. Talk about a lot of things, but that's definitely that was the driver for me going back and having someone else to talk to. Like that, having someone else who's not connected with you or your story or your past, just this unbiased person, just to kind of hold that space for you to take it in, that was, that was definitely life-changing for me. It it connected me with things that I hadn't been connected with. It connected me with things that I hadn't been connected with. It helped me connect dots that I hadn't connected before. So those are all the things that I would suggest somebody consider for sure.
Kertia:I love that. That is so helpful. You know, I appreciate the fact that you know you mentioned, because we always hear like get help, get help, get help. But I don't think people realize how long you can literally freeze for you know, for you, yeah, three years.
Lisa:Yeah, yeah.
Kertia:You can freeze for three years or five years or 10 years, but there are little things you can do to slowly get yourself out of that. For you, you channel that through journaling, right.
Kertia:You can do that through music, you can do that, and so you can channel that energy and that grief in so many ways that is unique to who you are, right. So you as a writer, journaling, of course it makes sense, right. But someone else, it might be music or you know, they might say it to someone somewhere else, or they might join a program or not. I realized that we often take so long to even think about going to therapy.
Lisa:Yeah, I did, I did. I mean it was ridiculous and my husband kept saying like, why don't you go? And it's like, well, I want to make sure the kids are good and I want to make sure you're good, and I mean, you know, when you're especially like in that position of being the mom especially, we're kind of dead last in everything that we do. We're focused on every. You know, you've got two girls, I've got two girls, everybody's ahead of us in line, you know.
Kertia:So true.
Lisa:But you know, as far as grief is concerned, like there's no playbook, there's none. And we talk about the different facets of grief, we talk about the anger and the disillusionment and the bargaining and the sorrow and like all of those components, and they're so universal and they exist, but they're not on a continuum, it's not linear. You're over here one day and you're a hot mess and you can't function, and for three weeks you're great, and then you see something, you hear something or something triggers a memory and you have a grief attack. I mean, my dad's been gone 45 years I still. I used to mountain climb with my dad. That was one of the things that we did, a ton, that was one of the things that we did a ton. And to this day, when I go up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, it's my favorite place and it's also the place I feel closest to him and it's also the place that stirs the most emotion in me, and so it's not unusual for me to be climbing on a trail and all of a sudden, I'll just, I'll just. You know, the tears will start to flow, and that's grief. It's what we.
Lisa:What we have to understand is that grief is something that we carry with us. It's there, it's always there, it's always going to be there. We don't, we don't finish it, there's no end point to it. We learn how to live with it, we learn how, we learn how to be happy again, we learn how to be joyful again and we learn to accept the fact that grief is going to kind of fit in the spaces in between and that when it comes that I wouldn't say we welcome it because nobody wants to welcome it, but we accept it and we accept that when we need to feel that way, we allow ourselves to feel that way and, you know, we connect, we got to connect with all of it, all of these pieces of our life. Grief is just one of them. Grief and loss are, you know, life, death. They are the two most universal experiences that we have in this world and you can't have one without the other. So they have to learn to coexist.
Kertia:Absolutely. You said that so well, yeah, that is so helpful. Grief is not the linear and it's never done. You know, I I don't like this uh thing that a lot of us often do is just like we expect to get over something you know, or give ourselves a timeline to get over things, and it just doesn't work that way.
Lisa:No, no, it doesn't. It doesn't work that way and I think once we kind of once, we kind of accept the fact that it's out of our control, what grief looks like for each of us, how we react to it, is unique to each of us. Once we accept that, I think it somehow makes the process a little easier. It softens it a little bit. It makes it, I think, a little bit less scary. We all go through it. We're all afraid of the same kinds of things. We don't want to lose the people we love and we're sad when we do. And that's okay because grief is, in my opinion.
Lisa:There are times, don't get me wrong there are times when I'm an empath, so I feel all the feels of the world and life very deeply. And there are times I want to shut that off because it gets really overwhelming, it's hard and it's painful. And when I get into those moments when I'm really missing my dad or I'm really questioning, like why he decided to do what he did, all those pieces, and I don't want to be in that headspace, I force myself to let myself be in that headspace because that's how I feel connected. It's another way of loving the people that we've lost right. That's when we feel those emotions. That's love. It's just love in a different form, that's all.
Kertia:Yeah, I like that Love in a different form, that's all. Yeah, I like that love in a different form. Lisa, I want to know why should we not refer to people killing themselves as committing suicide?
Lisa:think about the word committed just as a word. When you think about that, do you think of it in a negative way or in a positive way? Most people think of it. When you think of committed, do you think commit crimes? Do you think commit adultery, do you think commit sin? That's usually what most people associate with the word committed. It's a negative, right, there's a negative connotation to it.
Lisa:And when you attach that word to suicide, which is brought on by a mental illness which you can't control, all of a sudden, now you're kind of unintentionally stigmatizing suicide. You're kind of labeling suicide as a negative act, as an illegal act, as an immoral act, as a bad thing. And you know, look, word choice is everything right, whether we're talking about suicide or mental illness or whatever it is that we might be talking about. The words that we use to communicate have an awfully deep meaning, and when? Well, look look at the word gay.
Lisa:Back in the day, the word gay meant happy. That's what the word gay meant. Then it became slang, then it became an insult. You know what I mean. It changed its meaning. Suicide has been this thing, this negative thing, for so long, and then we attached a word to it that made it even more negative. We said committing suicide. So we don't want to say that anymore, because if we're working so hard in so many other ways to change the narrative on mental illness and to stop the stigma that surrounds it, then we have to really do everything we can to change the words that we use. Yeah, you know.
Kertia:Yeah, yeah, language adds so much dimension to our experiences. It's definitely true, we can. I can easily think of a lot of words. The way that we use it and how we use it can have. Wait, wait, wait, we're frozen again yeah, she's frozen.
Lisa:Yeah, oh my god, we're gonna. We're persevering the shit out of this, though we are, you and I are good, this is gonna be the best, the best podcast episode you've ever recorded, in spite of the fact, oh my god, I'm telling you man it's already so good, though.
Kertia:I'm really loving this conversation.
Lisa:I am too. I am too, and I appreciate just like how ridiculous the technical behind the scenes piece of it is yeah, it gets it can.
Kertia:The technology can get really nasty sometimes I know, I know, I know.
Lisa:I think I'm going to ask my husband if it is on my end. I'm going to ask him like I need to get a booster, a router or something different. Never had problems. Maybe the universe is paying extra attention to this conversation.
Kertia:Exactly, there's that too yeah.
Kertia:But yeah, just to get back to what you were saying, um, language is so important. It adds so much nuance to the meanings that are conveyed when you speak, right, because you can say one thing and it could be used in so many ways. It could carry so much meaning, dependent on the energy behind what's being said and how it's being said, depending on the perception of the people involved. And sometimes something that we think is simple or, you know, not that serious, can be so filled with fuel for someone else, right? So when you speak about committed suicide, I personally never thought about that, but when you started to talk about this person committed murder, you kind of see that association and it's just like it's true. It now puts it in this bracket with things that are considered negative, because when people say you committed an act of like, the acts that follows is usually negative.
Lisa:Right, it's like a sin or treason or murder or you know, committing a crime. So isn't it, isn't it wild how dissecting that one word and the meaning behind it can completely cause a mind shift.
Kertia:I've hardly come across anyone that has a very neutral perception of suicide. They are usually so totally against it. I've heard people say it's so selfish. I've heard people say it's cowardly. I've heard people say it's sinful. I've heard people say it's sinful. I've hardly ever come across anyone that is compassionate, understanding. I think I can only think of one compassionate, understanding, empathetic way, Right To say I can see why they would feel like that.
Kertia:I could see why they would want to do that Right, because sometimes it's just too much, sometimes it's just too heavy and sometimes it feels impossible to hold that all of that heaviness inside of us.
Lisa:Right. Look, I used to be one of those people when I was very young and first learned about suicide. I didn't have any education to go along with it, I just learned about it and then was kind of left to form my own opinions about it, and so my own belief system was it was selfish, I wouldn't say cowardly, necessarily, but I definitely felt like it was a selfish act. And it was only when I learned about my father's suicide I really started to understand mental illness from a different perspective, as an illness, just as an illness like any other illness that you can't control, that needs to be treated, that needs to be addressed, that needs to be validated. Then it just changed everything for me. It just almost instantaneously changed my whole perception. And then I was like oh right, like I would never hold it against someone who had cancer. I would never hold it against someone who God cancer, I would never hold it against someone who, god forbid, was hit by a car and lost their life or, you know, died of a heart attack. Like you, you think of it in those terms and there's no stigma attached with that. There's no, there's no negative connotation attached to that. So why should there be with mental illness, which is also something that's beyond your control. It's just more abstract. You just can't see it in the way that you know. You know that someone has cancer in their body.
Lisa:So now I'm at that place and I have been for so many years where it's so crystal clear to me, it's so crystal clear to me and it's so obvious that that it's it's something that is truly beyond a person's control, and that's why we have to change the way we we talk about it. We have to change the way that we classify it. So the whole mental health world as a whole has really kind of joined together in trying to change the language. You know, it certainly is not just coming from me to use a different word and to stop saying committed suicide, but it's kind of coming from everywhere within the community, because everybody understands that once we change the way that we talk about it, we change the way that we feel about it, we change the perception around it and that's how we impact things like stigmas and that's how we change narratives and that's how we make mental illness no different than any other kind of an illness yeah, and then it becomes.
Kertia:It makes it easier. Not just easier, but I think it makes us more prone to want to put the research into it, to want to figure out how we can help, because we know how much money goes into cancer research sure, right, and research for heart disease and all these these chronic or fatal illnesses, but it wasn't like that for mental health, you know, it's just starting to get a lot of attention. So you know, changing the language definitely will help with the perception change and then the way that we deal with the thing as a whole. So I definitely agree and I'm so happy that you pointed that out to me, because I personally never thought about it in that way, and I'm so happy that I now know that, because it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense and that is definitely something that I'm going to share.
Lisa:I'm so glad. I'm so glad to hear you say that and, like I said, you know, it wasn't long ago that I learned about it in the way that you're learning about it now, and it was like an epiphany for me, in the same way it now is for you. And what did I do? I went off and shared it with people. What are you going to do? It's on your podcast. Now you're sharing it with people.
Lisa:When you're in conversation with people. That's you know. That's that's the new attitude that you'll have and that you'll put out into the world. And that's how it happens. It's that you know. It's that, that grassroots impact that these kinds of conversations have on these overall topics and issues. And and that's that's where the best kinds of conversations have on these overall topics and issues, and and that's that's where the best kinds of change come from. Because now, when you're in a conversation with someone that you, that you know well, that you feel close to, and they say committed suicide, you'll feel empowered to say, hey, look, you know, I I don't know if you're, if you're aware of you know, I don't know if you're, if you're aware of you know the change that's happened in the world where we don't say that anymore, and here's why, like you'll feel, like you can educate someone else so you know, it's a, it's a, it's a positive trickle down effect.
Lisa:Thank you so much for that, oh you're welcome, you're welcome.
Kertia:Trickling down from that, I want to know what lesson did your personal grief teach you about yourself.
Lisa:Yeah, wow, that's a big question.
Lisa:It taught me, I think, first and foremost by being vulnerable with myself and by being vulnerable out in the rest of the world, I'm actually helping myself and helping the world around me far more than I am when I'm trying to keep it all together.
Lisa:By being open, by being honest, by putting my true self or my true feelings or my true headspace out into the world, I can get what I need far better than I ever could by picking and choosing and curating what I put out to people around me.
Lisa:And by doing that, by me being vulnerable in the world, it's encouraging other people to be vulnerable back to me, to themselves, to their communities, and I think that's one of the most powerful things in the world that we can do, because if we don't really know where we're all at, if we're not admitting it to ourselves, if we're not admitting it to the world, then we're not living authentically and we're not helping each other as much as we truly can. So I've learned that that's become one of my biggest assets is to be exactly. What you see is what you get, and you know now where I stand in a very, very true way and and, uh, I don't think I can ever go back to you know, to to not kind of putting it all out there, because I've seen it benefit me in too many beautiful ways.
Kertia:Yeah, I think the problem sometimes is we feel unsafe being authentic. Right, it's frightening. Yeah, A lot of us feel unsafe with our authenticity and bringing that out to the forefront and just standing in that and allowing other people to witness that, people to witness that. And I think when you're able to do that bringing that vulnerability, talking about your story, about yourself, about where you stand and being true to that I think when people can witness you do that, you can possibly help them to do that themselves. Or maybe, if they can't do it tomorrow, maybe even ask themselves why can't I do that? Why is it so hard for me to do that? Because authenticity comes with so many things. It's not about just showing the world about everything that you are, but you're also helping so much people, so many people right In the process. It's not just about you. It is about you, but it's so much bigger than that.
Lisa:Yeah, yeah, it is, and and I think, I think, that once we realize that we need to be making decisions that are not only beneficial for ourselves but for the greater population, that's when, that's when we'll start to see epic changes in the world. When, when it becomes, it becomes we, not me.
Kertia:Yeah.
Lisa:And you know, I'm just thinking about even the title of your podcast, like the other side of fear, like it is so frightening to think about what will happen if you're honest and vulnerable, to think about what will happen if you're truly exposed. What's going to happen if we're transparent and we tell the truth and we own our shit. You know what I mean. We're worried about what's going to happen. But then, when you get to the other side of that fear to borrow your title we see it's not really as scary as we thought, we see it's not really as hard as we thought. We see that it impacts so much more in such a positive way than we thought. So you know it's. You know it's like they say, the best lessons are the hardest ones to learn. And you know the best parts of life come on the other side of your comfort zone and this is no different.
Lisa:Absolutely different absolutely, absolutely.
Kertia:I've actually had some of my best, most profound experiences and insights on the other side of all of my fears, yep, yeah yeah, I would, I would agree, yep same, all the things that I allowed to hold me back and keep me stuck in this space, and, you know, thinking that I was better off over here than over there, because over there it looks scary, I don't know what's on the other side, I don't know what's waiting for me and all the risk that it involves it involves. But when I finally took the step to challenge myself, to do it anyway, you know, to talk myself through it, there are many things that I do and people are just like how do you do it? You make it look so easy and they have no idea it's so hard. And even my partner, when we were years ago, when we were just getting to know each other and I was very open with her, I said listen, there are things that sometimes it might look like, oh, she's got this, she's doing the thing, she's, she's, she's flying. It's just like.
Kertia:I don't feel like that. It might look like that to you, but I don't feel that way. I don't feel that way and you need to know that, while I am doing this thing, that that it looks so easy to you when you're watching me do it, I'm literally talking myself through it, I'm literally coaching myself through it so that I can make it through, so that I can make it all the way to the end of the line.
Lisa:Right, so I know I get it. I'm sitting here like I'm laughing because, I get it.
Lisa:I'm sitting here like I'm laughing because I get it. I'm laughing because I'm exactly the same way and I have those same feelings for sure, because we are so afraid of what we don't know and it takes an awful lot of guts and a lot, awful lot of effort to take those steps, to do those things. And so I like mad respect for you because to do the thing, it's hard enough. To do something that is just a challenge, it's even harder to do something that's a challenge that you're afraid of.
Kertia:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's so hard, it's so so hard and I don't feel like doing it. I want to run away, I want to crawl under some rock somewhere, but I you know the things that I'm afraid of. I've gotten to this state whereby, instead of running or freezing, I begin talking myself through it. Instead of running or freezing, I begin talking myself through it.
Kertia:You know, when you're running that race and you feel like you're getting tired and you're losing breath and your muscles are aching, and you want to slow down and you're just exasperated and you're starting to slow down and there's someone watching you and they're telling you go and they're clapping and they're cheering and it helps to just push you a little harder that's what I have to do for myself.
Kertia:I literally have to talk myself through things sometimes yeah, you know like, even if I don't know what this huge thing is gonna look like. Um, let me see this one tiny thing that I can do today. If I can do this tiny thing, well, maybe tomorrow I can take on something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, and it's not about.
Lisa:it's not about doing all the things and getting every single thing right and doing these big, massive accomplishments. It's it's the micro wins, it's the, it's the little things. It doesn't have to be something so dramatic. It can be something so basic and simple and it's all relative. It's all relative just making a phone call, picking up the phone and scheduling a doctor's appointment. They're uncomfortable with that and for them to get up the courage to do that, that's a win and that should be celebrated Like it's all relative.
Lisa:It doesn't you know, it doesn't have to be more than that, but we think that it does, but it really doesn't Exactly.
Kertia:I just want to talk about the Trevor Project that you've been working on that. You've been working with and doing some really important work in the LGBTQ plus community mental health space. I'd love to just talk about that and end on that note. Yeah, of course.
Lisa:Trevor Project has become such a big and important part of my life for so many, so many, many different reasons, and again it was one of those things that was not even really on my radar until a handful of years ago, when probably when my oldest daughter came out in college. She came out as bisexual in college. She was a junior going into her senior year, and so we had always been allies of the LGBTQ community, but then having a child who was part of that community elevated it to a different place for all of us.
Lisa:And my daughter, ironically, was the person who unknowingly encouraged me to come out. I came out about two years ago as pansexual, and so now, all of a sudden, I wasn't an ally, I was a member of the community. My child was a member of the community, and so Trevor Project, along with so many other beautiful LGBTQ communities, became a part of my life. And so when I started looking for ways to to make more of an impact as a mental health advocate, that was a no-brainer to me because it was like a perfect intersection for me of the things that I cared most about, which was helping people and, more specifically, helping the LGBTQ community. And so I got involved and was fortunate enough to get into their training program their crisis counselor training program into their training program, their crisis counselor training program and spent a whole bunch of months actively training. And then I've been now on the crisis lifeline. So there's a texting line.
Lisa:A lot of people don't know that Trevor Project not only offers a telephone helpline that's 24 hours, 365 days a year but they also have a texting service. If you don't feel like picking up the phone and calling talking to someone, you can do it over text. So I trained to be a lifeline counselor. So I'm actually on the telephone and it's been about a year and a half now that I've been regularly on the phones every week and it's it has such a profound impact on my life and on the way that I hold space for people and on the way that I've learned to validate people and encourage people to preserve their agency as a human and their own decisions, and I'm just it's a gift. Every time I pick up the phone and someone's on it who is struggling, you know, I think of my dad and I think of my dad not having that and wondering, of course you know, would the outcome have been different if my dad had a Trevor Project to call or a 98 Lifeline, in his case, to call?
Lisa:But being a part of an organization that's making this kind of an impact is, uh, it's just a.
Lisa:It's just a very valuable part of the day to day that I live now and I'm so proud of the work that I get to do. I'm so proud of the community that I work with, because these Trevor Project counselors and supervisors are just some of the best people and to be part of that is really truly something special. So I've really just had such a positive experience across the board. It's just so eye opening. You just never know what someone's dealing with and that's the biggest thing. Like you know, I live here in the East coast and, um, you know I live in a quiet little seaside town and you know it's pretty affluent and not a ton of diversity, unfortunately, and what I've seen, what I've heard, what I've, you know, been able to experience as a crisis counselor, it just it blows your brain wide open in terms of what's really going on in the world and what people are really struggling with, and it creates a different level of empathy that I don't think I ever had on that level than.
Lisa:I do now. So, yeah, that's. And for those who don't know what the Trevor project is, it's the largest crisis support hotline and network for at-risk LGBTQ youth ages 13 to 24. Amazing, yeah, yeah, they're um, and they've been around for 25 years, so they've helped a a a lot of a lot of people, which is, which is, a beautiful thing yeah, that is so beautiful.
Kertia:I love that so much and I love that for you and your daughter amazing, yeah, it's, it's it's been a.
Lisa:It's been pretty special Both my kids.
Lisa:It's given me a lot of pride that my kids have been so proud of the work that I do with the Trevor Project.
Lisa:You know it's one thing to be an ally or to be a member of a community or to support a community. It's something entirely different to do it on this level and to be able to give back to this community that I've grown to love so much, this LGBTQ community on this level and to know that you know, you, you maybe have changed the course of someone's life, that when you know there have been so many times where I've spoken to someone who is suicidal, I've gotten someone on the phone who does want to take their life and maybe in the process of trying to take their life, and that feeling of being able to kind of deescalate that person and create a, you know, a safety plan for that person and have that person's mind shift to a place where they don't feel that need to end their life anymore, like that's, that's it, that's all there is. As far as I'm concerned, that's, that's worth everything. So to be able to do that as often as I do, it's one of my favorite things.
Kertia:You know you don't.
Lisa:You don't want to say that you don't want people to be in crisis, but it's one of my favorite things. You know you don't. You don't want to say that you don't want people to be in crisis, but it's one of my favorite things to be able to help someone who is?
Kertia:Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. That's so beautiful. Lisa, I love that so much, so much. And just to wrap up, I know you have written a few books, even though we've really focused on mental health. I want you to tell people where they can find your work. You know, because you've done a lot. Yeah.
Lisa:I try to keep busy. For sure. I, you know, I've had this weird career, this, this, this pretty eclectic career path. It's been so organic when I kind of look at it from above and I'm kind of looking down on it. I do all these different things with all these different platforms and somehow it all just kind of jives. You know, it all just kind of fits together and it's been it's. It's been a beautiful little journey. So anybody who wants to find any of the work that I do, the best place to find it is on my website, so that's just at lisasugarmancom. And I just this summer did a complete rebuild, rebrand whatever you want to call it of my website, because now my work is really focused around mental health advocacy and crisis counseling and putting resources into the world to help people with whatever mental health challenge they may have Overall well-being, certainly suicide prevention and awareness. So my website now really reflects all of that. I mean you can find all my books and everything on my site.
Lisa:I've written a column. I wrote a syndicated column for years called it Is what it Is, and I just recently launched a new column with a whole new vibe, a whole new focus. It's called we Are who we Are and it's a very much a mental health focused column. That's on my website as well. I have a YouTube channel and on my YouTube channel I have a fairly new series of short videos that I've been putting out. I drop them every Monday and it's called the Suicide Survivor Series and it's really just like quick little vignettes. Maybe it's in fact one of the ones that I did that that I've gotten a lot of feedback about is the one where I talk about why we shouldn't be saying committed suicide anymore, why I talk about word choice and that whole conversation. So videos like that, where I talk about grief, I talk about loss, I talk about depression, I talk about coping strategies, all the different things, all the facets of mental illness and mental health and, yeah, it's all on my website.
Lisa:And one of the big, big features of my site that I'm really encouraging people to go and check out is the mental health resources page that I have been curating now for like the past five or six months, really just trying to find and capture as many resources for as many different communities as I can. I don't just want to have a resource page with a bunch of 800 numbers. I want people in the Asian community and the BIPOC community and people who are disabled and veterans and parents of young children and the elderly. I wanted to have a place where all the resources for all the communities could be found and accessed very quickly and very easily. So if you go on my website, I have about 16 different categories and if you click on any of them like there's grief resources, um, mindfulness resources you click on that and it goes to a separate page where you can find all the top resources in that category. So that's out there too on my website, so people can find that there as well amazing, love it.
Kertia:So happy we had this conversation me too.
Lisa:Me too, like so so grateful that we found each other and like I feel like you're, you're one of those people. I feel like I could probably continue this conversation for another two hours, Like not even thinking twice. Yeah, yeah.
Kertia:Yeah, all day. Yeah, yeah. Hope you all enjoy this conversation and I'd love to hear your thoughts about the phrase committed suicide and how you think that might have in some way affected your own perception of suicide. And if you'd like to get deeper into this topic or any other topic discussed on this podcast, join us over in our patreon where we really get into it, because that is what it's all about Creating a community of support, of shared experiences, where we can get real with no judgment, where you are seen, heard and validated. All right, until next time.
