In the newspaper article he says “People have this image of me as this big strong man who can take anything life throws at him. But I’m not ashamed to say I wanted to end it after a string of setbacks. I knew I’d been a fool but I couldn’t shake off the depression at feeling what a failure I’d become.”

He said “I have hurt the people closest to me, so I’ve come out today and admitted I need help.” The honesty of a man with what was regarded as a tough as nails demeanor is emotionally affecting. I know how difficult it can be to reach out for help and I’m filled with admiration for what Dean Windass describes as his coming out. I can see why he has been described as a sturdy leader.

We often regard sports stars as role models, in this case that’s undoubtedly true. Dean Windass is a stigma-busting role model. It is so fabulous to witness the strength of a footballer admitting to a simple human frailty, a debilitating condition, and asking for help.

Dean Windass, my hero.

If you, or someone you know, needs emotional support call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia. Crisis counselling is available around the world.

Both are true, I am neither completely one nor the other. I am capable of both and I don’t want be labeled as either.

There is a meta-position too where I am neither normal, abnormal, sub-normal, paranormal, or un-normal, if you like but I am all of these. I don’t mean I am highly unusual in resisting being labelled as being one state or another but I think all are possible and almost simultaneously depending on who is making the observation about how I am.

If I am depressed, I am contrary enough to want to be considered as also having the potential for elation. This starts to explain my dislike of labeling. I don’t want to be only one of sick or well, for example. If others think I am unwell and in need of healing or repair it is more difficult for me to be judged as “very well thank you”.

While a diagnosis of a condition might be helpful, I do worry that others will see the condition first, recognising the label attached to it, and then the person – me – in the background. Being labeled can inhibit my experience from evolving moment to moment, from one state to another. I don’t like thought of being diagnosed as less than normal or in need of fixing. This is what normal looks like, colourful and multi-hued.

There is a freedom in being able to move between one state one of experience and the other and both, not perhaps in equal measures but sometimes I want to move between seemingly opposing states. I recall enjoying that freedom in grief. I know I am not the only contrary being to have been sad and solemn at a funeral and then found reason to laugh through the tears. I recently overheard that experience labeled as hysterical. I heard someone describing hysterical weeping interspersed with hysterical laughing. Hysterical is a word loaded with negative judgments implying a delirious state – but a state I’ve found natural at a funeral.

I am not sure (or maybe I am) that one thing can be posited without the other being right there, that’s polarities at play. Sometimes I am beside myself, and all the while completely myself, that’s the circus of my contrary nature. For me it is important to respect what I know and what I don’t know about myself or another person.

First I think of natural threats, squalls and storms, earthquakes, lightening bush fires, land slides. Then there’s spiders, snakes and sharks or lions and tigers and bears. Not to mention family and colleagues and friends, anyone who might misjudge, misunderstand, appraise or criticise.

Everyday is full of threats and dangers.

Safety is less related to taking risks than it is to perceived dangers. When bringing diverse groups together to work in discussion forums, safety is something the participants want. As the designated facilitator I feel it is important to respect and acknowledge the contribution of all perspectives. That’s my role, it can be hard for participants to feel safe speaking out in groups for all sorts of reasons.

What might be encountered from others is unknown. Individuals are at risk not knowing what might come from others. I can’t anticipate someone’s vulnerabilities and I am conscious of balancing protecting with empowering. I think that overprotecting, or over-caring, can disempower somebody else by not allowing the space for discovering their own strength or assuming they may not have some inherent resilience to draw upon.

I believe most of us can weather what comes our way but for a facilitator, especially one burdened with feeling responsible for the well-being of a group, it is a balancing act. I try to step lightly negotiating the gap between trying to build community and allowing those who want to remain quiet to withhold their experience and associated emotions, while encouraging as many as can to share. Building community requires connections. For the facilitator awareness of the process is paramount, all the while not knowing what might be said next. What I try to do is field the interactions and communicate about the exchanges bringing things into the open, making the implied explicit, that’s a way to support safety.

A particular concern in corporate environments is that having made a disclosure it can’t be rescinded. Information that is revealed will, in all probability, be remembered by others for a long time.

“A ship is safe in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are for” said William Shedd. That’s not to say one should be reckless.

Facilitating groups requires leaving the harbour. If we are to share our feelings and fears it is necessary to leave the harbour.

For me not feeling safe is a little exhilarating, I couldn’t blog if that were not true. I blog to address stigma and that requires a leaving the harbour and sailing the unknown. Like life in general, blogging is an adventure I am unlikely to regret.

How to make an ally of this criticism, as unwanted and as unpalatable as it is?

At first it doesn’t some possible, and at second it doesn’t seem possible, and at third I remember an exercise Max Shupbach presented in a workshop I attended what now seems like a long time ago.

Max worked through an exercise to help move from feeling like a disempowered victim of criticism and discover something meaningful in the critics message.

This is my recollection of the work, rather than Max’s original, which I no longer have a record of. It was something like this:

1. Name a situation where you have been criticised and describe it. Role play the critic – move like them and find a hand movement that is central to the criticism
So first up is taking out the content, and finding the central energy what was said to you (or in this instance me). Standing up I try to play my critic accusing someone (me)of sarcasm, without the words, I notice my left hand making quite a direct sharp movement. I repeat the hand movement and study it to discover what it means to me. It is a certain direct movement, angry and pointed.

2. How can you use that energy more in your life?
A big breathand I keep moving my hand around amplifying the movement I’ve dicovered. It becomes apparent that I could be more direct and express my anger/frustration/feelings more authentically. I reflect on how often what I say has a less than authentic veneer of niceness. My good nature is mostly genuine and there are occasions when my message can get moushed up and unclear, perhaps that’s when sarcasm is heard, it must be in me. I could certainly use anger more effectively, and bring it out more directly.

3. Stay in the role of the critic and look at yourself. What is going on, what is the critic seeing as missing in you?
I don’t know what my critic saw as missing in me, but I can see unexpressed anger. Held back or missing is an authentic expression of what I am really experiencing and want to say.

4. How did you already know that – there is no criticism that you get that you haven’t been aware of…
I do feel too eaten up by emotions I struggle to find an outlet for. My dog Shortbread was sick last week after chewing on a dead rat in the garden. When I chew on some allegorical rat I swallow it down. I like to think I have a strong constitution, that I won’t be sick, however I must be a bit poisoned by vermin. I do know that

5. How have you already started to change “I am starting to be so and so…”
I am starting to be more detached around my good, nice persona and to say what I feel. Starting…

I see, I start to see something useful…

My thanks to Max and Ellen Schupbach for their work in the world and permission to write about this exercise. More of their work is published here. I am grateful for what they share as they train leaders, facilitators and me.

I haunt myself with criticisms and on some days I am more resilient than on others, on a good day I might hardly notice my internal critics – or just not pay attention to my own petty complainants. Most days I am judged by my own high standards, so I’m well motivated to improve. I judge myself, and there is never a shortage of evidence to support how I don’t measure up. I guess housing my own complaints department provides motivation for change, wanting to be better. Engaging with my inner critic might even be emotionally healthy, I’m not sure.

External critics are more difficult to defend against, I find. That’s funny because I tend to think that criticism from someone could not be worse than that I dish out against myself. People who offer me feedback and helpful suggestions not only fuel my own inner tyrants, but their criticisms, in whatever guise they are delivered, are keenly felt.

Someone recently stabbed me by telling me I was sarcastic. They claimed my voice was sarcastic and that when I was talking in ordinary conversation I sounded sarcastic. I was sufficiently wounded to cry. My everyday identity, the me that I believe I am, was wounded in a way I couldn’t address or apologise for. The sound of my voice is like my height, something I can’t change.

I felt unfairly attacked, I have tried to pick up the accusation and find a grain in truth in it. I can be sarcastic, I am quick witted enough to sarcastically, or viciously, defend myself. I have a limited set of defences to fall back on and sarcasm is one, I use it to protect myself and my sense of self. It was Oscar Wilde who said that “sarcasm is the lowest form of wit”, and low it may be but I also find it witty.

The thing I said may have been sarcastic and hurtful, it was not my intent and even so I can be more careful with my words. I can be mindful about what I say but not about the voice I use. I can’t hear my my voice the way I am heard and perhaps I do sound more sacracastic than the average bear. I am carrying that particular criticism months later. It has fed my inner critics about not being helpful or kind enough, too direct, inconsiderate. I am shamed by and guilty of something I can’t really change.

Sometimes judgemental comments pierce our protective shells and not all negative feedback is useful. Even so I want to be able to face my critics, to learn from the unexpected, for the insight the information provides. I want to welcome the unintended, unwanted and mostly unwelcome messages, this one is more challenging to me than most – maybe that challenge make it worth working with to gain an appreciation of the message.

Much criticism can be assessed and integrated, and some I’m unsure of how to deal with. My sense of self-worth has been mostly recovered and my voice sounds like it did before. I have resolved to be authentic, before sarcastic, and more careful with the delivery of what I say.

I am stalked by critics, and I trust my voice critic intended only to protect themselves not to wound me. I would like to ask external evaluators to give me a break, I’d like them to know my inner critics are enough to deal with. It is also true that “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Another snippet of wisdom is thanks to Thumper, Bambi’s rabbit friend, who said “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all”. Actually I think it was Thumper’s mother who said it to Thumper, who then related the advice to Bambi.

The themes and feelings that were expressed of guilt, loss and not understanding, were familiar. There were two points that caused me to call out with a mix of outrage and distress. One was the suggestion that suicide was a selfish act and narcissistic. Three or four recent posts here have been devoted to exploring that view. I don’t seek enlightenment, per se, but I am looking for greater understanding, and empathy.

The other point that brought a strangled sort of howl of ‘No…” from me was when someone suggested that making a suicidal person an involuntary patient saved lives. Saving lives maybe a noble cause but not while removing every gram of self in the process. I couldn’t quite believe that such an oppressive action was possible, involuntary detention is used in the USA and now I know that similar action is also codified in law in Australia.

I am outraged and distressed that someone can be taken into custody and subject to treatment against their will. That this sort of action is deemed to be for their own good, and the very system set up to provide support. Whose good does that serve?

I am outraged that someone who has lost hope can also be made helpless, powerless, and be so disregarded.

I am also indebted to the person who left a comment, on another post, explaining how that combination of hopelessness and helplessness can motivate acts of suicide.

I think of how ill my mother was with an undiagnosed cancer last year and the efforts of my sisters to support her at home until she relented and reluctantly agreed to go to hospital. We wouldn’t we have forced her into treatment, not for her own good or for ours.

At work, where I am responsible for delivering training, I occasionally come up against a corporate imperative to make attendance at training sessions compulsory, and it makes me a little bit ill. I won’t make training compulsory. If somebody wants to come to training I am pleased, and if they don’t I trust they are managing their own learning and career needs. I can try to entice them by making the training more interesting, more relevant, more compelling and delicious but I do not want anyone there who doesn’t want to be there.

I don’t feel that allowing the space for self determination makes me a ‘patsy’, a loser. I don’t feel diminished by allowing someone else to hold onto their own power and the right (it is a right) of self determination. We have choices, each of us must be able to exercise our own power of choice in regard to our needs and treatment.

This is an instance where I can not appreciate or support what was expressed, however well intentioned some are about forcing others into treatment. No. I am one-sided on this issue.

As I think about depression, I would like to feel it as both an inner and outer experience. First as an inner experience: it is a dark feeling or mood that drains my colour and leaves me without enthusiasm. Pallid, grey and exhausted.

The outer experience of the same persistent state is different: I imagine being diagnosed and labelled with depression. Saddled with it. Others might start to notice or think that I am not myself, and I could believe I’m not me and be knocked off balance.

As the inner and outer experiences merge I am enveloped in an atmosphere of depression and it starts to become an identity, at least a way to identify – how I am becomes who I am. Overcome by the experience, depression itself turns into something to overcome. The battle makes me a victim or sufferer.

From the perspective of a victim the experience is harrowing. Things happen to victims, we have so little power and nothing to call on. At it’s worst I could lose the rest of me, and be consumed by darkness. What else?

My experience is incomplete and so I stop struggling for a moment. I let go and stop fighting allowing myself to just be depressed, while wondering if it’s possible to feel something positive. A little something, it would be small as I have dulled senses and only a detached sort of sensitivity, to feel with. Detached? I start to feel a sort of wakeful, not sleeping if not exactly wakeful, detached inert expert. A wakeful detached expert of what – of giving up? The feeling of being gripped, even if not struggling, creates an urgency to solve and resolve while still being unable to move beyond the condition, disempowered…

The sense helplessness coupled with a loss of hope pushes against the boundaries of what’s endurable, and I start dreaming that I don’t belong here. I can’t think of how to live and love the misery of depression.

Not yet…

“We all fear our symptoms and want to heal them. We go to all kinds of healers not realising that our worst problem is not the sickness but that we are hypnotised by culture into believing that what we experience is bad and has to be repressed and healed instead of lived and loved.”

Mindell, A. & Mindell, A. (1992, p. 34) Riding the Horse Backwards: Process Work in Theory and Practice. London, England: Penguin Books.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

I was sad to think that if I don’t speak to suicide, then suicide speaks to me and grabs my attention in a dramatic way, a confrontation. I am listening to the message in Denver trying to decipher it, and sad not to know how to help people in the grip of a personal crisis more.

I am also remembering that not everybody wants to live.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14, and in Denver.

Here are a few ideas quickly thrown together that may help in traumatic situations, things I have found useful over the years of working with “hot spot” kinds of situations. I want to write these up quickly because of all the calls I am getting about dealing with trauma. Sorry I did not do this earlier. Everyone should add their tips if they have some. May these ideas be of help. I have not published this material, I am just sharing this out of good feeling for all those in the midst of, or going through trauma including victims, eye-witnesses, rescuers, and everyone included.

Love arny
p.s. excuse me for haste and incompleteness I just wanted to get this out now. There are many good teachers about these subjects such as Emetchi!

You might not agree that everyone should be in therapy as Thomas Moore says. I vehemently agree, I think everyone should be in therapy. In therapy may just be the new normal.

I’ve written before about how much I ♥ therapy it is valuable to me. There is nothing wrong with me, strictly speaking (maybe don’t ask my family they may express another view), and I draw incredible support from my therapist. Incredible unconditional support.

Thomas Moore says he is “…yet to meet a completely healthy, adjusted neurosis-free person”, and maybe he is yet to meet you. For me everyday dysfunctional, neurotic, and emotional is more interesting and more normal.