Breaking Taboo

An amazing opportunity has come up to spread awareness and break the stigma associated with mental health.

I was recently put in touch with an organization called Breaking Taboo. Breaking Taboo is set to break the stigma, or taboo, surrounding mental health and bring awareness to the high prevalence of many disorders under the umbrella of mental health and suicide itself. It will touch the stigma surrounding Military and First Responders as one of the main focal points!

A documentary will be made soon. Some teasers will be released prior to the documentary itself. The first live interview will happen on Veteran’s Day.

Please visit there social media pages and hit like or subscribe to them all!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BreakingTaboo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakingtaboo/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Breaking_Taboo

When Death is Not Committed

In this day and age, saying the right terminology verse the wrong can be damaging in certain circumstances. Sometimes we can be over our heads in being PC and other times it is appropriate. A lot of this depends on a social groups opinion. But for this post I will be discussing the phrase, “Commit Suicide”, and why it needs to go off to the way side.

When you look up the word, commit, in the dictionary it shows you a multitude of definitions. When I use the Webster-Merriam Dictionary, I find it breaks it from a transitive and an intransitive verb. Under each are more definitions. One that stands out, is under the section of intransitive verbs. It is also marked, obsolete; To perpetrate an offense. Majority of the definitions come down to making a pledge or carrying out an action. Which is why the term, committing suicide, has long been used. However, if we break down what we have learned about mental health, we know that a person to die by suicide was not clear mind and conscience. So, in order to truly commit to something, such as marriage, a loan, or even to commit murder, you have to be of the right mind. People are found not guilty of committing murder due to being mentally unfit. People are probably, at least majority of the time, not thinking clearly in order to kill themselves.

This does not take away from the fact someone attempted to do the action. But, it can help differentiate between a person being “selfish” or thinking they are doing what is best for everyone and feeling that there is no where else to go for help. By the way, I do not think people who die by suicide are selfish, that is why i put it in quotes.

Now this can be controversial to those who still see it as an unforgivable sin through whatever religion they pertain to. In this case, they probably see it as committing suicide, due to the verbiage of committing a sin.

When suicide was a crime, saying commit had much stronger validity as proper legal usage. But, now that mental health has had many advances from science and awareness that takes away the validity it once had.

A lot of medical terminology now states attempting and completing suicide. Which is definitely a way to differentiate between death and survival.

Regardless of what you believe is the proper way of saying it. It is also important to be respectful to those who are survivors of suicide and how they would like it to be addressed. It tends to be a very hard subject to talk about already, there is no reason to add to the distress.

Please know, suicide is not a last resort. There are always other options. If you need help, seek it. You are the strongest when you seek help.

It’s been a while.

I am sorry that I haven’t written a little while. This blog is for when I find inspiration. Sometimes I will write multiple times a day, other times it will be once a month.

Enough of the excuses. I have had a great few weeks. In therapy, my therapist and I have started EMDR. For those who do not know what EMDR is, it stands for Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing.  Without getting too scientific. The purpose for this type of therapy and studies behind it, are that certain traumatic events get stuck in part of the brain. Most memories or any information that the brain receives needs multiple parts of the brain to process it in order for it to understand and react towards it. This involves both parts of the brain. With EMDR the science and understanding is that, while thinking of the image and how it makes you feel while crossing the barrier between the left and right hemisphere, it will become dis-jarred from the unconscious mind. Then it will properly be able to process the information.

Well, after that whole jargon. IT IS WORKING FOR ME! I can tell you that my brain, after each session, actually feels lighter. It was the weirdest sensation. I barely could believe it.

So EMDR is working. Amazing. Another amazing thing is currently in the works. A friend of mind introduced me to Breaking Taboo. Breaking Taboo is an organization that is trying to lift the stigma surrounding Mental Health. Early stages, but I know I will have more to share in the future.

Take care for now!

Suicide Awareness Month

September is a month to combat the stigma. The stigma of mental health. If we can all come together to understand that we do not need to be ashamed of needing help in life, then we can start preventing suicide. Life is hard enough to begin with, then with the knowledge we now know of the chemical imbalances that cause certain disorders in the brain, we need to be able to not be ashamed to ask for help!

Suicide can be prevented but not always be stopped. Just like any other illness or disorder, death sometimes will happen. But, that does not mean we can’t save more people along the way.

I will start with this. I have major depressive disorder, anxiety, ADD, and PTSD along with reoccurring suicidal thoughts (never wanted to act on them). I seek help from a therapist, psychiatrist, meditation. I have been to 2 outpatient programs. I work on my mental well-being daily. I, like many others, have my ups and downs. But, I am worth fighting for. I will be there for myself and my family! I only am saying this to show you that, if you have any mental disorders, you are not alone. Let’s fight this together!

Celebrating Life, not Death.

I usually post a written memorial for my parents on the day that they died. I have decided to stop doing this. To remember the days of my parents deaths, takes away from the beautiful lives they lived.

I didn’t write anything for my Mom this year. This was not a mistake, nor an omission.  I wanted to really think of how I was going to go about celebrating their life. I will be writing a late post this month in regards to my Mom.

Death is a one time thing. Yes, the memories are not. However, if we continue to dwell on the final moments, it will soon overtake the many amazing memories during their lifetime we shared. So from now on, I will be writing about their life and our lives together.

As anyone who knew my parents, knows that it will be hard for me to run out of stories. Plus since I have had many of my own, I think this blog will last for a while.

To those who were hoping for daily posts, or weekly posts. I am sorry. At this point in my life, I am working on school and re-establishing my career and long with the most important thing. Living and enjoying my life with my beautiful wife, and amazing son! I hope to in the future write more frequent posts. But for now, please bear with me.

When People Say You’re Strong

People who have known what I have been through, have told me that I am strong. What they don’t know is the countless times I have cried going to sleep. When I have woken up in a dream crying. When I have called my sister to normalize what we have been through.

We maybe strong in a way. But, we are human. I see a therapist. Weekly. I have seen 3 different therapists. I have made two cry. I honestly did not know how to respond to that. I know there are people who have it worse than me. But, it did feel good that there are people to empathize with me.

Losing both parents at 15 and 19 is not easy. But the amazing skills the instilled in me and my sister has helped us progressed healthily in life. Without my sister, I do not know where I would be. She is one reason why I went into the fire service. A few months prior to my Mom dying from Cancer. I was in a Navy recruitment office taking the tests. When I told my sister, she made me promise not to leave. So, like the rest of my selfless family. I decided to help on the home-front. I would be a Firefighter. It was a great career. But now I am finding out that it might be more lucrative for my therapist…

To be continued…

The day I was asked to publicly speak on suicide.

I started my career as a firefighter/paramedic with the Shrewsbury Fire Department on January 4th 2010. I fairly quickly became active with my Union. We had just had quite a bit of suicides of firefighters in the area. My first day volunteering for the Health and Wellness committee, they talked about needing someone to discuss about suicide. I rose my hand. What did I just get myself into? Before this speech, I talked to friends, family, and a few people here and there about mental health. Now, I would be talking to 100+ first-responders about a topic that was still seen as taboo. A good friend my made through this experience, Keith Pigg, decided to record one of the times I talked in front of my local. It was humbling, people who I would never have thought in a million years, came up and gave me hug and agreed that this was an important subject. So without further ado, here is the video.

The decision that changed everything.

I am living a wonderful life. Everybody goes through trials and tribulations and my life is no different. I am a 33-year-old male who just went through a career change. I never expected to make a career change at this point in my life. I knew that if I wanted to live a long life, as well as being there for my wife and son, that I would have to make a change. I was a firefighter/paramedic and now I am a financial representative, which changed in the matter of 3 months. Now let me tell you how I got to this point.

October 2nd 2016 was one of the best days in my life. My wife gave birth to our beautiful baby boy. We named him Nico and he instantly changed our lives forever, in the best way possible. I had enough time saved up at work in that I was able to take an entire month off, in order to help raise our son at home. But that month went by quicker than I would have thought.

November 2016, was when I went back to work. It was pretty uneventful, except I was lucky enough to not have any calls over night, which meant I actually got some sleep! After two of my 24 hour shifts it was time to go home for a few days before going back to the grind. However, I would not be going back to the grind for quite some time. I started to suffer from panic attacks that left me frightened for my life and unable to do the career that I had loved for 10 years. I was lucky enough to have a Chief who understood the seriousness of behavioral health disorders and allowed me to take another month off in order to regroup and become mind healthy once again. Through my primary care physician and therapist, I thought that I was getting back on track. But as quickly as I thought I had overcome what afflicted me, I lost it just as quick. I knew I could not go back to work by the end of the month. I once again had to talk to my Chief. This time I had my wife by my side. She has been by my side the whole time. My Chief, wife and I decided that it was time to try Outpatient therapy. This was scary, the unknown tends to be.

December 2016, I started in Outpatient therapy in a program called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT for short. I quickly learned that the anxiety I had about entering the program was baseless. It was a place where I could share, a place where people listened, and where no one judged. I was so worried that people wouldn’t understand, because they were not paramedics and did not share the same experiences. But it turns out, they didn’t need to. They used empathy to replace common experiences. I went to CBT for three days a week for 5 weeks. I built friendships and confidence in myself. My wife and I were as close as we had ever been, she has always had my back. By the last week I was ready and itching to go back to work. I wanted to get back on the trucks and help other people, now that I had helped myself.

January 2017, was when I was released to go back to work. Anxiety had seemed to be all but gone. I could concentrate like I had prior to the past few months events. It was great to get back into the firehouse and be with “the guys” again. It made me feel human again. As soon as I came back, our department hit the ground running. Calls seemed to come out of the woodwork, and quite serious ones at that. It was rough, but at the same time with my new found coping techniques I felt that I was healthier mentally than I had been in a long time. But a person can only take so much trauma in a life time. No one deserves to see what first responders see on a fairly constant basis.

February 2017, unknowingly, was the last month I would work as a firefighter/paramedic. We continued our pace of serious and mind-altering calls. Looking back, I can say that in the 6 weeks that I had been back, the amount of serious calls I had in that short amount of time was what I usually ran in a year’s time. February 23rd was the day I had to make the hardest decision of my life. I woke up that morning with every intent to go to work. It felt like any other day at first. But suddenly my heart started to race. My mind started to have circular thoughts that felt like a hurricane in my head. So many words were swimming around in my head. It was hard to know what my brain was trying to tell me. I really tried to open the door to get out of the house and go to work, I collapsed instead. My body would not allow me to go any further. My wife was as scared as me. She was able to call my Chief, as I was unable to speak in this moment of crisis. I did not go to work that day, and after talking with my wife, we made the decision that I would never be going back. The career that for so long defined who I was. The career that I had loved for so long.

March 2017, the official month in which I retired. My Chief was sad to see me go. I was sad to leave, but if I didn’t leave I would not be able to truly heal. In order to help others, you must be able to help yourself first when needed. I retired on March 14th. I was lost, what was I going to do now? I only knew being a paramedic/firefighter. I was lucky in that I had a great therapist along with a support system which included my wife, family and friends. It didn’t take long to figure out what I was going to do.

April 2017, was the month in which I decided which route I would take in my next stage of life. I love math and I also love investments so I decided that something in finance was where I wanted to go. My good friend from high-school reached out to me for an opportunity to become a financial representative for a fortune 100 company. I could not resist the opportunity even if a 100% commission based job scared me a bit. I decided that I needed to take a chance. I already made a huge change in my life and now it was time to move forward. I went through their process. I had 3 interviews, 2 tests and was in competition with 60 other applicants. They picked me to move on to their training program. They would not be disappointed.

May 2017, the month I earned a whole new certification. I became licensed as an Insurance agent. My first of many more classifications that I would need to continue in this career. I took this opportunity that was in front of me very seriously. I went in to the office prior to even receiving a contract in order to learn as much as I could about the career before I would start full time. I have made mentors, friends and amazing people who I can now ask for help when I need it while learning my new job.

I have no regrets of becoming a firefighter/paramedic. It was a very important time in my life and I grew a lot as a person. I also learned that it is okay to seek help. Unfortunately, a lot of people wait until it is too late to ask for help. This could ruin a life or multiple lives. I consider myself lucky to have such a strong support system in which I was able to make such a huge life change. Not everyone is afforded such an opportunity. I know that I will be okay, but it will take continual work. I am okay with this, because the best things in life are worth fighting for.

My continual growth as a human will always evolve throughout my lifetime. Over the past 6 months it feels like a whirlwind of evolution in a short frame of time. However, I have come out of this pressing time a healthier person. Weight has lifted off of my shoulders. I feel like I can be there for my family again. I no longer have to worry about the next emergency that we would respond to. I am looking forward, but only a day at a time. The only one who will get in my way is myself, and I will not let that happen. Today I am stronger, and each day I will continue that upward trend. I am a financial representative. I was a firefighter/paramedic and I hold no regrets.