00:00
Okay, so this is episode two of six. And in this episode, I really want to talk more about what I mentioned briefly in episode one. Remember, everything here is to allow you to make a decision to see if what we do can help you in some way. That's really the whole point of this entire private podcast. And as you can see in the show notes, I've broken this down into the honesty paradox, the silence epidemic, what's at stake.

00:29
I want to talk a little bit about narrative frameworks and then some new and I think really kind of cool interesting ways to share and listen to people's stories, their words, their voice. Now, anybody who knows me knows I could talk for a long time about any of these, let alone all of them. So I am going to give you essentially an abridged version, hopefully enough so that you can get a good sense of how I feel about these things and these problems. And again, decide if we might be a good fit.

00:57
I was not shy about the title of this episode in calling bullshit on the problems that almost no one or certainly very few people are talking about, at least that is in my experience. And a whole lot of people perhaps you are dealing with or navigating. A lot of the bullshit that I'm calling out is how we talk. And when I say that, I'm really not talking about you, the person who might want to share something with somebody. But how so many people...

01:27
in our lives, everywhere, are not very good at listening, or choose not to listen, or don't know how to listen, or engage with us in a way that feels helpful or useful or supportive. And this is a problem. These conversations we are not having, these stories we are not telling. Now, of course, I don't know how you feel about this, but I know how I feel about it, and a lot of people who I've spoken with.

01:55
for our projects and I'll get more into them a little bit later. For a moment I want to zoom out and talk not so much about a particular thing that you might want to share with a particular person or group of people because I think what we are going through in our culture, and it's not just our culture I don't think, is what I have labeled or coined the honesty paradox and the silence epidemic. They're just names I came up with. Clever me.

02:23
The honesty paradox is simply referring to the fact that when we are honest with hard things that we're going through, it often backfires. The silence epidemic refers to, well, we don't talk about it for good reason. Because when we get honest, it backfires. Now again, I don't know if that's what you're going through, but chances are if you're listening to this, you probably have an idea of what I'm talking about. When I was in my late 20s, my best friend ended his life.

02:53
And not too long after that, I started getting sick. It didn't last weeks or months, it lasted years. To this day, it's undiagnosed. We think it's probably something autoimmune, but nobody really knows. And fortunately, it's gotten a lot better. Now, obviously, if you lose your best friend and you're getting sick a lot and it's impacting your life in a lot of ways, you do whatever you can to try to figure it out and feel better. Doctors, counselors, alternative care providers,

03:22
support groups, you name it. I tried as best I could. Some of those people seemed to give a shit. Some didn't. Some did their jobs well. Some didn't. By and large, and I know this sounds rather critical or judgmental, people didn't listen very well. Now, of course, I knew this before then, but it took this thing, this experience or set of experiences for me to really kind of get, wow, people aren't very good at this.

03:51
Sometimes they just don't want to hear it. Maybe they don't know how. It was confusing. And I share that sort of zoomed out perspective because I think it often shows up in our lives with our families and with our friends. For me, when I tried to talk about it with a few family members and a few friends, and I believe to this day, all well-intentioned, all caring, I got mixed messages. So some of them would imply or say right out, just talk about it with some.

04:21
Of course, I had been talking about it with somebody and in this case, I wanted to talk about it with them. Or I was met with some version of, I don't really want to talk about this. And what that often looked or sounded like is what I call conversation killers. And I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

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platitudes or perhaps they are pontificating, making unfair or inaccurate comparisons, sometimes diagnosing, or telling you how to think or how to feel. All of these are invalidating or minimizing and rarely do they ever actually invite someone into a conversation. And I think most of the time that is what we're looking for. We want to talk about.

05:20
Now again, I don't know if people, at least in my life, didn't wanna talk about it or didn't know how to talk about it, or perhaps they were just really busy, but these conversations didn't really happen. And I'm sure if I asked you, you've probably dealt with this, likely more than once. You might be dealing with it right now. But with people in our lives who we wanna still have a relationship with, we can't just not talk. And if we wanna talk about these things, we...

05:49
change how we talk. So we start saying things like, well, I'm doing okay, I'm fine, yes, I did this or yes, I did that or whatever it might sound like. But the conversations aren't happening. Well, sometimes they just stop. You may not have that conversation at all with someone and perhaps even that relationship is compromised. Maybe it ends. But I know for me, it festered and I know that happens to a lot of people. I also know that others speak on our behalf.

06:16
Now that might sound a little dramatic or even paranoid, but I don't think it is. Other people are telling our stories and things get twisted, things are not accurate. It's a shitshow. And so when I say bullshit or I'm calling bullshit, what I'm calling bullshit on is the ways in which so many people seemingly have normalized really shitty conversation, really shitty communication, bad listening.

06:44
Now I don't know what you're going through or who you might want to talk to about whatever it is you might want to talk to them about. And I don't want to seem like a jerk because I know a lot of this is charged and people are probably trying as best they can. I get that. But I do know the damage it does or the damage it can do when we try to get honest and it backfires when we go silent when we change how we talk or simply stop talking about

07:13
This thing or these things entirely. For me, I started drinking more, I started drugging, and I was angry. Really angry. So several years ago, I used to go on these long walks, and I picked up my phone, and I hit record, and I started talking, and talking, and talking, and I went on for hours. I wanted to clarify some things, and I wanted to share how I had been feeling and thinking about certain things.

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things as well. And I sent it to a few people in my life, which felt good. And even though things didn't change too much after that, I was glad that I got it out. I also learned from that experience that it's hard. It's hard to find the right words to convey some of these things, especially when you're doing it alone. In 2020, when we locked down, when

08:13
I decided to go all in and create spaces for people to have these kinds of conversations. And I did that in two ways. The first was an organization called Grit True Stories That Matter. And the goal of that was to create a space for people to talk about the hard things, to help them talk about this stuff in a crafted form, personal narrative story.

08:42
create events where they could tell some of these stories to other people and help them continue to do that. Now, this wasn't some impulsive move. I had first learned about personal narrative story more than eight, nine years earlier, told a lot of stories myself on all kinds of stages and had gotten more involved in creating events and helping people and teaching people how to do this. And I started spending more and more time.

09:10
Focusing on the hard stuff so it made sense when I had a little more time and people's lives were in such chaos That I went all in on this and really tried to help people and we're still doing that to this day now what we're doing Here is not personal narrative story the crafted kind. These are more Conversational but there is some overlap which I'll share with you in a little bit in the summer of 2020 I started a podcast called

09:39
Suicide noted where I have honest candid conversations with suicide attempt survivors One of the reasons I started that was because as I've mentioned my best friend took his life and for quite a long time I felt like my friend Jimmy did I Ideated I contemplated not being here I also knew there were very few if any places to really talk about it. So

10:05
without gloating here or patting myself on the back. I started this podcast, it's still going today, more than 200 episodes in. Conversations with people from all over the world. So great true stories that matter in the Suicide Noted podcast. Now about four years in, I've learned some things. As I've mentioned, there's nowhere to talk about it or very few places to talk about it. And I don't just mean suicide, I mean a lot of the hard stuff.

10:32
And when I say there's nowhere to go, I'm also including, for many people, their homes, people that are close to them. I learned that spaces that call themselves safe are often not so safe. I learned that it's really hard to do this stuff on your own. These stories, whether they're crafted or more conversational, are big and long and often confusing. And in the case of this work,

11:02
they can be rather charged. Now it's a long list, but I'll add one more thing I learned, and that is far more times than not, the people in our lives want to hear what we have to say, but that can be really hard to do. So for both the crafted story and this work, the conversational story, we created some frameworks, and that sounds kind of fancy, but it's not.

11:30
It's just ways in which we can help people find what they want to say, find the right words, get to the heart of the thing they want to talk about, really honestly, so that they could not only get it out, but also hopefully feel a little less shitty and a little less alone and a little more understood and maybe help other people feel that way too. Because when you do it and when you do it well,

12:00
People in your life are more likely to listen. And when they do listen, they can follow it, can track it, can connect to it. Now, there came a point when an interesting thing happened for both projects, but especially for the Suicide Noted podcast. Some of my guests would tell me that they were able to share our conversation with people in their life, people who probably would not have found the podcast on their own, and it really helped.

12:29
These were conversations they were unable to have with them one-on-one or in real life, but they still wanted to communicate with them. So that got me thinking. I wonder how many people are out there, suicide attempt survivors, or how about anybody going through something difficult who has nowhere to talk about it but still wants to talk about it? And last year, I started asking that question more and more. And what I found is that there are a large number of people who want to talk about something.

12:59
with people in their lives but don't know where to do it or how to do it. So I started having more conversations with people about all kinds of things, the kinds of conversations they weren't having, the kinds of conversations that some of them had actually never had, and looking more into ways in which people could share it with people in their lives. Now, some of them decided to do what I did when I sent that audio out several years earlier.

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make an audio on their phone or some kind of recording device, and send it. As I started researching, I learned that there are other ways to share audio. Ways that are easier to send and receive, ways that are easier for the listener to access and organize and save. And I went all in on learning about these other ways, which include private podcasts, which is probably what you're listening to right now.

13:53
and stumbled on some other technology or platforms that allow, for example, us to create simple websites for people. Another easy way for people to access it. Now I talk more about this in a later episode, so I'll spare you all the tech details for now. What really matters is do my words resonate? When I say the honesty paradox or talk about that idea, the silence epidemic, which might more accurately be called a pandemic.

14:22
Does it resonate? Are you somebody who gets that? Are you going through that? Do you understand the stakes? If you're going through it, you probably do. Do you feel like you might need some help or support in finding the right words or getting to the heart of things, the real truth, so you can communicate or convey that in a way that people in your life can understand, can connect to, and does the idea of sharing it in places that are both easy to access.

14:50
and secure places where those people in your life might actually prefer to listen to audio. Does that make you curious? Do you want to learn more? If so, I encourage you to keep listening. Now you'll also find in the show notes of this episode, a few links. One is to the suicide noted podcast. I think it's probably a good idea for you to listen. So you get a sense of how I engage with people. Now of course,

15:17
That is different because I am talking only with Suicide Attempt Survivors and it's a public podcast. It's not designed for them to be speaking specifically to one or two people or a small group of people in their lives. So I am much more a part of the conversation, much more than I would be with you when you're creating your audio story for people in your life. And you'll get a better sense of that in episode three.

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The other links are the suicide noted reviews. They are all from Apple. That's the main place people leave reviews and you can get a sense of what people say about me and how I go about my business and engage with people. And the final link is the grit true stories that matter podcast. That was also a public podcast. We stopped that at the end or towards the end of 2022. There are 99 episodes and again.

16:11
That's not really the work we're doing here. But if you are curious about that and you do want to get a better sense of that, you can check that out as well. Like I said earlier, I could talk for a long time about this stuff, but I will stop here. Of course, if you have any questions, you can reach out to me. I've blasted our email. Hello at true Several different places here. So you should be able to easily find that. Please reach out.

16:38
If you have any questions, really, I'm happy to answer them. And I hope you continue listening.