World Mental Health Forum

Invited by the World Mental Health summit, members of the Collaboration Global community come together in an open and honest conversation that illustrates how their purpose came from a time of adversity and how they built their pain into their future success.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
So I would love to share with you our solutions.
This group of collaboration global members have stepped forward to
say that they have some ideas around how to support
each of our mental health. We have to take the
bits that we find useful. I would have looked back
at my life and gone, I've not really had any

(00:23):
mental health problems, but you know what, thinking about it, oh,
there were some times when it was a little bit tough.
So I just want to explain now something that happened
to me a few years ago and how it's still
affecting me today. In two thousand and seven, in January
somebody died, and in February somebody died. And in March,

(00:45):
and in April, and in May, and in June and
in July. By August, I was saying, please, somebody tell
me you're pregnant. I need some good news. They were
nearest and dearest, including my dad, including my husband's brother,
people that we were shocked that shouldn't have gone and
went too soon. At that point in my life, I
hadn't wasn't aware that I was conditioned to cope. I

(01:07):
was there to support other people. This is what I'd
been told was my life that's hereditary, from my nan
to my mum to me, what are you crying for?
That's not going to be useful. That was how I'd
grown up. So I was there over that eight month
period of horrific things that were happening, coping, looking after

(01:28):
my husband, looking after my mother for all the things,
all the right reasons, doing the right thing, and it
was okay because I was strong enough when I coped
and starting a new business and having young children and
moving house. Anyway, fast forward to twenty thirteen and my
mom dies, and all of that compounded bereavement and grief

(01:51):
that I had held on to collapse on top of me,
and I wasn't coping very well. And what I'd done
is I'd shut down my motion so much that I'd
also shut down my joy and my happiness and Q
the menopause around about the same time, I was going

(02:12):
crazy inside. I started having panic attacks. I started realizing
that I wasn't in control anymore, and I didn't know
what to do about it. And I was quite often
on the brink but not telling anybody, because you can't
do that. You're supposed to be in control. That was
my upbringing, and eventually I met a lady who was

(02:33):
a stranger, who was very kind and very gentle, and
she happened to be a homeopath, and she said, why
don't you pop in? So I popped in and she listened.
She listened, and she listened, and the tears came, and
she listened and she listened some more, and she gave
me a little pot of pills, my magic pills, my

(02:54):
homeopathic remedy that was going to help me cling on
until I needed to come out of my shadow. And
I clung on to those. They were my life saver.
But it was her listening that did it. These were
my white feather that Dumbo had. These were the thing
that kept me going. And from there I took the

(03:15):
first step forward to getting out of the darkness. I
took that first step into meditation. I took that first
step into being with nature. I took that first step
into realizing that the ocean had energy that it could
find for me. And I took that and even now

(03:35):
I have to make sure two three times a year
I get to the ocean and I breathe it in
and I take it all in, and it keeps it
there for me. It gives me that inner strength that
I had lost and I didn't have before, and that's
what caused my panic. And I still get panic attacks
and I still find that I don't like the dark,
and that's what we'll bring it on. And if people say,

(03:57):
as you meditate, breathe in and breathe out, I'm like, no,
don't talk to me about breathing, because that's when it
comes and it comes again. So we are never free
totally of being messed with our mind, but we can
learn how to cope. And these amazing people I have
around me today are hopefully going to share some of

(04:17):
their solutions when they have either experienced it with their
friends or their family, or have been part of it themselves.
So the top left hand corner for me is Jane. Jane,
would you like to share some of your stories of
how you've climbed out of the abyss or been on
the edge of it and maybe stopped yourself from falling in? Oh?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Well, thank you. You know, I'm honored to be here
and especially supporting the World Mental Health Summit here in Austria.
I'm in Canada right now and I'm just on the
outside looking in, and that was one of my coping strategies.
I went through three hundred and sixty five d's in
twenty seven, twenty seventeen to eighteen of just utter chaos,

(05:03):
left curveballs out of left field. I had a devastating
head injury a TBI that left me almost speechless. I
had a partner with a catastrophic head injury who woke
up in a hospital and said, I can't remember who
anyone is here, but you're the nicest and the prettiest.
Couldn't remember who he was, or who I was, or
meeting me. And the devastating loss of a friend within

(05:25):
suddenly and tragically within three weeks, that's a lot to
cope with. We all have stuff. We all have that stuff,
you know, with four letters starting with an S and
a T that sometimes just hits us and we don't
know where to go. And my saving grace at that
time was just letting go of all the labels that
people would put on it, because when you're going through

(05:46):
a crisis, you know, it's scary, it's fearful, it's hard,
it's sad, and the people around you can often put
labels on you. And I always like to say the
past is just a chapter, not the whole book. And
that's why we're all here today. We're all here to
say look at We're not here to make you sad
and make you think, oh my gosh, you know that's

(06:08):
that's awful. Look how far we've come. For me, it
was something I called omg outside and thinking, mindfulness and gratitude.
Whenever a crisis happened, we always say, oh my gosh,
only goodness, oh my god. It's our body's way of saying,
what's next, because fear and anxiety is depression is sadness

(06:29):
about the past and what was, and anxiety is fear
about the unknown and what's about to come. So basically,
the way I coped was really the first step was acceptance.
And it sounds really simple, but just accepting what is
happening to me now or what was happening to me

(06:49):
at the time, rather than what was before, that is huge.
It means for me, it wasn't being happy that I
was going through all of these awful traumatic things, my
most terrible year and not being able to speak probably
properly with speech of phasia, not being able to find
my words, not being able to, you know, have the

(07:10):
relationship that I used to with my partner. It was
the acceptance of, hey, this is pretty crummy, but you
know what, I know with a lot of with a
lot of skills that I have and a support system
around me, I can move forward. And I don't know
if you've ever read Michael Singer, but outside and outside

(07:31):
and thinking is really looking at the situation as an
observer rather than as a participant. It doesn't mean that
you're not sad and things don't hurt, but it's just
it takes the emotional sting out. It helps you keep
out of the weeds of overthinking and take that one
day at a time approach. Mindfulness is the M and
O MG, which, as you said about your meditation and

(07:53):
your one day at a time and taking time for
yourself every day, taking time to be present and gratitude
is the g taking time to be grateful. And I
don't mean that in a Pollyanna way, because there's times
where you're not grateful, but there's also I'm speaking to
you at four o'clock in the morning in Canada. I'm
grateful I got up this morning. I gave that up

(08:14):
and I didn't sleep through my alarm. I'm grateful that
I had the presence of mind that I was in
the presence to say, hey, I'm going on with my
co Glow colleagues and talking to the World Health Summit
today about mental health, and I'm very grateful for that.
So I just you know, I've come a long way.
I'm a survivor. I talk about the power of change,

(08:35):
embracing change rather than fearing it, and looking at each
day as a gift, and that's what got me through
in a nutshell. So that's me, beautiful, that's me.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
OMG. We can't forget that in a harricom. Thank you
very much, Joane. That's brilliant. Gina, what about You're welcome.
I have a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Gina.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
We've all had tars and tribulations, and you don't live
decades without experiencing. But I had a serious sky accident
in nineteen eighty three. I had two failed back surgeries,
and I've learned to work walk twice as an adult bereavement,
my brother suddenly died. That's life, and I think how
you deal with it is very much your choice. And

(09:17):
one of the principles of the work that I do
is that everything we do is a choice, even not
choosing is a choice, and when we don't choose actively,
often that's when we have the most far reaching impact
in our life. And I think for me, it was
making a deliberate choice that, despite the fact that I

(09:37):
was wheelchair bound, I wanted to look at what I
could do rather than what I couldn't do. And it's
so easy to focus on all of the things that
are going wrong, particularly when they come, you know, one
after the other after the other. But I think if
you focus on even the little things that are going right,
the fact that the kettle boiled and you can have

(09:58):
a great cup of tea, or somebody phones you, they
may seem inconsequential. But when you gather those up and
you add the gratitude for those small things, you're in
the moment. You're not worrying about the past, and you're
not anxious about the future. You are actually engaging in
the now, and I think that's really helpful. There are

(10:19):
so many strategies that can help be mindful of your language,
because we tend to make our low mood, our grief,
our depression, our identity. You are struggling with your mental health,
but that's not all of who you are and recognize
that it's the meaning we make of that, the story

(10:41):
we make up about that, that becomes our reality. And
if your reality is I am depressed and I can't
do anything and I'm not enough, that's your reality. The
actual reality is that we are all enough, and so
just some very very quick things to help one the

(11:02):
mountain molehill test. Does this feel like a mountain today?
Will it feel like a mountain tomorrow or next week
or the end of the year. If you're going to
downgrade it at some point in the future, why not
choose to downgrade it now help other people, not to
the point of detriment to yourself. But when you focus
on being of service, whether that's to people or animals

(11:25):
or the environment, that takes the pressure off you, and
in doing so, you get a sense of satisfaction. And
in my experience, even on those really dark days, and
there have been many, it's what can I do to
be of service that have lifted me out of that.
Look for opportunities to get into nature, to take exercise,

(11:47):
and to laugh, all of those three things, releasing dolphins
and all of the feel good hormones, and that can
actually help you when you do it on a regular basis.
And lastly, remember that nothing lost forever, however dismal a
day it has been. The sun is shining behind the clouds.
Un Tomorrow is a new day. And please don't beat

(12:10):
yourself up.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Oh wise words, Gina, thank you. The sun will come
out tomorrow. They wrote a song about that, and there
was a yeah, it's so true. Thank you very much. Stanley.
What about you, what's your experience?

Speaker 4 (12:26):
Well, I want to say that number one, I'm privileged
to be here, and I was honored to speak on
the summit. And I understand that there's a lot of
things that go in our minds, and a lot of
times we'll find ourself feeling that we're at blame for
the circumstances. We carry this bondage that maybe we did

(12:46):
something that deserved, we earned the penalty or the punishment
or the pain that we're experiencing. And in my own
particular life, the experience that I had was there was
a I was married and we had a full term pregnancy.
We were expecting in eight days and on ten days

(13:07):
before the delivery of this new baby, my mom calls
and said she had cancer. Immediately, my wife buckles over
and thought she just went into shock because of the
news because they were very close, and the doctors told
my mom that she had to have surgery otherwise she
wouldn't live to see the baby. So there was a

(13:30):
gamut of experiences going on. And so, you know, being
a controller, because I learned to take charge of situations,
this was something that I couldn't So I had to
ruminate these thoughts and these experiences and emotions in my mind,
and I didn't know how to process it. Ten days later,

(13:50):
our baby was born, but he was still born. And
you know, when my mom was told that she had cancer,
now you start going through all these thoughts, why does
this happen? And so, long story short, we got pregnant again,
and three months later she had a miscarriage, and it

(14:11):
was the question what did I do to deserve this?
And these are the thoughts that we can't express outwardly.
We can't talk to other people because you know, there
was some nice people that said, hey, you're young, you
can have another baby. Well, I want to say that
that's not a good thing to say. And the idea
that God needs an angel in heaven, that's another not

(14:33):
nice thing to say because it's nowhere in the Bible
that it said that. So when I start to process
these things in my mind, you start, you start to
dig deep and you start to find and I began
to find truths that set me free. And that's why,

(14:55):
that's why the Bible says, when you know the truth
that will sets you free. Now here to talk about religion,
because it's not a religious book. What I am here
to talk about is the mental experience that went on
in my mind and that I was not alone. I
kept listening for that still small voice, and what helped
me to understand it may not help you, but what

(15:17):
helped me to understand was that I came across a
passage in the Bible that Jesus is walking with the
disciples and he says, they say, why was this man
born blind? Was it from his sins or his parent sins?
And the reason that we do this in our own
mind is because we're looking for us to blame for

(15:37):
an outcome that we didn't control, that we didn't experience.
And this can be, I want to say, as bad
as a traumatic brain injury, because it's an internal brain injury,
it's an emotional brain injury. The chemicals that are released
create this defective feeling, but you're not defective and you're

(15:59):
not broken. It's an experience of life. And by having
that understanding, having that draw to it. So you're probably
wondering what the answer that question was, and Jesus answered them,
and he said it was for neither. It was so
the work of God would be displayed in his life.
Now that's when Heaven opened up for me, and that's

(16:20):
what's on the headstone of my son for so the
work of God would be displayed in his life. And
because of that, I've been able to help other people
go through those ruminating thoughts that cancer is not the end,
that a death of a baby or a child is
not the end. It could be the very beginning. And

(16:40):
it began the beginning for me, and it began planting
new seeds into soil that would grow up thirty sixty
one hundredfold. And like I said, this is not about religion.
This is about what my thoughts were. This was about
my relationship not only with my God, but with my family,
with my friends, with those that I would now deal with,

(17:02):
and ultimately it was my relationship with me. And how
I thought through that and that's the idea of it.
And when my mom finally did die of cancer, I
was sitting at the bottom of her bed and she
sat up. Now her bones were broken, her bones were eaten,

(17:22):
she had cancer all over. She'd been laying flat for
two weeks. She sat straight up and looked me right
in the eye, and I knew then that she was saying, three,
yourself from the guilt, the shame and what you couldn't do,
and go and help somebody else process that same thing.
And so that's what I want to share in this

(17:44):
mental health It is about your spirit, it's about your emotions,
it's about the chemicals that you release. And if you
can't do it on your own, which I'm going to say,
you can't find somebody that can speak with you, into
you and also hear what you're saying. And they're out there.

(18:05):
There's a panel that was on this last week and
amazing people. So they're all around you. We just have
to have the opportunity to open our eyes to see them.
And that's what I'd like to share with you.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, it's very true, Stanley. If you can't help yourself,
you need to get some ask for help and that's
sometimes the hardest thing, isn't It's just having somebody that's
prepared to listen and sit with you. Sin A. Sinek
would say, you sit in the mud with you when
somebody's down, so long as you're not pulling them down
with you, but somebody just to be there, just to

(18:41):
hold you and be there through that time and listen
to what you're going through. Thank you, Mattale, some brilliant
ideas coming out here. It's just, yeah, so many good
thoughts around how we've all dealt with it in our
own sweet way. But isn't it funny that we've dealt
with it in an eye way and now we're okay.
Now we can share it and hopefully let people not

(19:04):
go through the same kind of stuff that we went through.
What's your experience?

Speaker 5 (19:09):
What was interesting what you said earlier, Jill, even you know,
getting on to the brink and how we bought ourselves
back from it. I didn't bring myself back from the brink.
I went straight into the brink and went right back
to the bottom. So I ended up because of experiences
that I had growing up. I grew up in a

(19:29):
I want to say, predominantly white area, it wasn't predominantly white,
it was it was white. It was me and my family,
and there was nobody of color for over ten mile radius.
So obviously was you know, we were picked on and
bullied at school. This is going back to the eighties
when that sort of thing was. That sort of thing
still happens now, but it's not really expected. You know,

(19:51):
kids are now growing up in multicultural societies and communities.
That wasn't the case when I was growing up. But
what really kind of broke me was I didn't find
solace in my own community. I always say that in
my life, I've experienced more colorism than I have racism.
And what's really hurt me the most and cut through
my soul was Indian people looking at me and saying

(20:15):
that I didn't fit in, that I was too dark skinned.
You know, one of my earliest memories is somebody coming
up to my father. I think I may have.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Been six or seven.

Speaker 5 (20:23):
I'm not entirely sure, but I do have one of
these memories that's definitely there, which is someone saying, oh, well,
make sure you educate her, because if she's educated later
on I managed to understand, obviously, as a six year old.
I didn't fully understand what they were talking about. Looking back,
and I think what that conversation was all about is

(20:44):
that if she's educated, the fact that she's not very
attractive would be overlooked because you'd be able to get
a guy from India to come over for the passport,
which is what I now gather it. I mean to
grow up, even though I was only six or seven
at the time and I didn't fully on stand it.
A child is not stupid. They're very aware when something

(21:05):
is wrong. And you know what Stanley talked about, you're internalizing.
You think that's something I've done. I've done something wrong.
So I grew up with that. So when I was
unleashed into the world went to university, of course I
was going to go crazy, and I did go absolutely crazy.
I ended up having an nveetterment addiction. I lost my
place at university, ended up homeless. I actually stepped on

(21:29):
the streets for about a week and a half. Thankfully,
at that time the government had more funding than there
is now, which terrifies me. What's happening now? And as
a female anyway, within a week or so, I was
spotted and then put into a shelter for my own safety.
So I wasn't on the streets. If I was male,

(21:49):
lord knows how long I would have spent on the streets.
So strangely, being a woman actually helped me in this arena.
So I ended up in homeless shelters for about two years.
Oh yeah, I didn't pull myself from the brink. I
went straight into the brink, unfortunately. But that really affected.
I mean, my mental health was already unstable. Add street
drugs on top of that. That isn't going to help.

(22:13):
But now I realized what I was doing. I had
no idea at the time was I was self medicating.
That's essentially what you know, anybody who takes drugs or
even alcohol or you know, the self medicating, they don't
realize they're doing. They say they're doing it for fun,
and they're doing it to be sociable, or doing it
to relax, all these reasons that we give to other
people why we're doing various drugs, but the legal or illegal.

(22:37):
But the reality is we self medicating ourselves from life,
which is the sad thing. It was self dedicating ourselves
from life. So I think my take on my experiences
and how I was able to come out from that
did take me ten years where I kept I would
get clean and I relapsed, and I'd get clean and

(22:58):
I relapse. And it was only really when my dad
died when I was twenty nine years old. That was
the big wake up call. I realized that because of
my addiction, I didn't spend much time with my dad
in this last decade of his life, and that's time
I'm never ever going to get back. So that was
the wake up call. It was like, I need to

(23:19):
be there for my mother. I can't keep relapsing and
just destroying my life and rebuilding it again. But I
think what I mean, I've been in therapy and I
still have a therapist. By the way, wonderful people. Get
yourself a therapist and never let them go if you
find a good one. Even that's the other I would say,
the big The big thing I would say is people
kind of think of therapists something that something goes wrong,
then they go and get a therapist to fix that

(23:39):
thing that goes wrong. That's exactly what I did. But
then what I realized is that you still should see
a therapist for the rest of your life, because why
would you want to get broken again to go and
see a therapist, wouldn't it. You know, you don't go
to the gym after you know, you get fit and
then you stay fit by going to the gym. You
don't just go on fit. Now I won't go to
the gym anymore. So it's the same thing. So best

(24:02):
advice I would say is if you find a great
therapist who helps you carry on seeing them even once
you're fixed, because you never truly fixed anyway. But the
main thing I learned from therapy, and something that Harold
talks about, and I think that's why I clicked with
Harold when we met, is yes, there's a lot of
accountability you do have to how you. I think Gina said,

(24:23):
you know, how you deal with the problem is about you.
But also what I would say to further what Gina
says is understanding what is you and what isn't your problem.
One thing I learned is that there's too much stock
now placed on the individual becoming resilient to everything. We
shouldn't be resilient to everything. I don't want, for example,

(24:46):
my skin to be resilient to fire, because it just
means if I'm near a fire, I'm just gonna burn dead.
You know, I need my skin to be sensitive to fire.
So it says, hey, get out of this. You shouldn't
be here, you don't want to die. It's the same thing.
You know, Harold talks about this so eloquently. You know
that suicide is seen as something well, that person was

(25:07):
either weak or too traumatized.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Or yeah, all of those things.

Speaker 5 (25:12):
But also as a society, why have we created a
world where people are committing suicide? We need to look
at ourselves. I'm not just making about the person who
committed suicide. Actually I haven't told me, not even used
the word committed anymore. So died by suicide because they
didn't do anything. It's you know, it's a result of
what we've all done. So yeah, the biggest thing I've
learned is to actually not be so resilient. Be resilient

(25:34):
to a point, but there are things that have happened
to you that are not your fault, and really you
should be angry. And that probably informs me with what
I do now helping my authors write books. They're usually
quite angry about things that have happened to them, and
they're saying, actually, things need to change. In the world
around us. It's not just for the individual to change.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think things like this summit
are moving us in the right eye direction because the
more we can talk about these things, the more people
can connect up and realize that they're not on their own.
They're not you know that there are other people out
there that who've been through what they've been through, or
understand what they've been through and want to help them
come out the other end. So the more we can

(26:15):
talk about it, the better it is. I totally agree
with what you're saying there, Tarie. Thank you, Phil, Last,
but not least, what are yours? What's your story? Yeah?

Speaker 6 (26:25):
First of all, thank you for being upon this brilliance
here of these people, and so tried to condense this
started around nineteen ninety nine two thousand, I was falsely
accused of through the Chiropractic and Medical Board. Three things
were going to happen to me. Number One, I was

(26:46):
going to lose my license to I was going to
jail for insurance fraud. And three I was going to
have to pay back three times of what they gave me.
And as I said, it was false went through a
few years of that but everything was fun. It was
just a false accusation. But during that process of the stress,
I started to really break down my body. And then

(27:08):
my father, seventy one years old healthy, developed brain cancer.
Seven months later he passed away. And then I had
developed a disability that caused me to close my practice
as a fifteen year old practice. I closed it. Now
now what do I do? And then I became the
primary caretaker of my mother for seven years until she passed.

(27:28):
She was always ailing during that time. As that time
went through, I was going through financial ruin, trying to
figure out what to do, went through a horrific divorce.
One of my daughters almost tried to commit suicide. They
said that if my ex came home ten minutes earlier,
she would have been dead. And there's a lot more

(27:49):
I can go through that. But during that process I
realized that it was for a reason. I didn't know
what the reason was. And this was going on over
the last like ten years, one thing after another after another,
and then other things as well. But it forced me
to discover what I discovered. And one of the things

(28:11):
I tell people is that the more you go through,
the more of an impact you can make. And one
of the things I discovered was an inborn sabotage and trait.
That was reason why a lot of this was coming
to me is because I needed to evolve in such
a way. And during the process, one of the things
I used to say a thousand times a day was

(28:31):
I wonder a gift on getting. I wonder what gift
on getting? I wonder on gift on getting? And then
I realized that it wasn't coming, it was already in me.
And through these experiences, it was breaking down the wall
to get to what I had to offer to impact
the world. And yes, you know a lot of times

(28:54):
it was like why me, and then immediately say why
not you. So one of the things that really allowed
me to do is was knowing that the universe or
God or higher power, whatever you want to call all
that for you. It doesn't speak your language. It speaks
through experience. And when you can see that whatever is

(29:15):
coming my way was ever in my world at that
moment in time, what is it trying to tell me?
And there's three things that it will always do for you.
Number one, it's a benefit, it's a detriment, or it
just is I choose to see what is the benefit
out of this at this moment, And even though I
can't find it, I do my best to stay in
the moment of feeling better knowing that this is going

(29:38):
through a situation. But sometimes you just can't get through
it and you need help. And all the techniques that
everybody talked about here is very very important for you,
especially having some type of support, and some people just
don't have that support, so they're out there. You just
got to be open to it. Sometimes you don't trust
anymore trust people, so you push people way. But one

(30:01):
of the things I would express is that it's having
the gratitude even though I don't know what I'm going through,
that there is no force out there that's trying to
punish me. Like Stanley said, it's here for my to evolve.
And what I discovered through self sabotage is that it's
just when you don't do what you're supposed to do

(30:24):
or whatever that And I don't think I don't like
to say you don't you get I have to do this.
I say, you get to do this right? And what
is this particular moment in time, what will make possible
for me going through this? What could I help to
impact other people. So at that moment, you're just in protection.

(30:47):
That's it. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not an
idiot or a loser. You're just protecting yourself at that
moment in time, and that's why you're not moving through
that situation. But if you can really figure out why
am I protected myself? There's nothing wrong with me? And
how can I benefit this and from doing so? The
answer will come if you're open to it. So those

(31:11):
are the things, and of course the big g word
is gratitude is doing your best to say thank you
for this. I have no idea why I'm going through this,
but I'm going to have enough trust that this is
for my evolution. Because there's only two things you do.
You dissolve or you evolve. That's it. They happen at
the same time, right, I cannot move forward without detaching

(31:35):
from something where I'm at right, and I cannot evolve
without that dissolution. So dissolving and evolving happened at the
same time. It's up to you which side of the
coin do you want to focus on most of the time.
And if you want to look at something negative and
you want to feel sorry for yourself. That's okay, you're
just in protection. Right. If you go into the corner

(31:58):
and your suck your thumb and take the pill and
go and look in a beautiful position and cry, I'm
good with that. That's just protection. The question is how
long would you be there for? And that's the key.
It's okay to go through negativity and feeling loudsy and
all that, but it's how long are you going to
be there for? How can you find a way that

(32:20):
this is a way to not only impact my life
but also others, and how can I move forward with that?
So that's some of the things I would suggest to
look at.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Thank you, Phil, I mean, you've kind of encapsulated a
lot of what everybody's stories are about. What is your gift?
I think if you look at all the stories that
people are talking about here, we find that. So let's
just check it so it we find that everyone has
taken these horrific experiences that we've been through and have

(32:57):
created something that's special that we can share with ours
and support others. I think for me, a question maybe
back to you is when you've got your pillow in
your corner and you're sucking your thumb and everything's like
and everything shut down. For me, it was I could
hear my Nan talking, my Nan, who was very good,

(33:17):
set of prayers every night, gave blessings to everybody every night.
She always used to say, bearing in mind she died
at ninety six back in nineteen seventy six, so she'd
lived through two World wars, Queen Victoria on the throne,
different lifetime, different generation, been through the blitz, et cetera,
et cetera. But she always used to say to us,
look you in the eyes, and say, look, life might

(33:39):
be tough, and there might be clouds over you at
the moment, but there is always a silver lying in
those clouds. Sometimes it's hard to see it, but it's
there and you've got to find it. So when I'm
sitting there going stop the world, I want to get off.
It's all too much. I just I can't cope that.
I hear her voice in the back of my head

(34:01):
and I'm like, well, what's the silver line? What's civil line?
And you could eventually you can open your eyes a
little bit and see that, well, evolve, dissolve and evolve.
I mean, that's exactly a beautiful phrase. I want to
put that on a T shirt. It's that kind of
It's the beginning of you taking the tiniest step forward

(34:22):
to just going well, where is this going to take me?
What could this lead to? Why am I experiencing this?
Not because it's my fault, which is the whole title
of this whole summit. It's not your fault, but because
there is a purpose behind it that you can create
that will make it better for somebody else. I don't
know any of you guys listening to these stories, have

(34:45):
you got any sort of feedback that you want to
share around what other people have been through? Jane, yes, Hi.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
I thank you so much, Phil for emphasizing the gift,
because you know trauma and drama in your life. You're right,
I mean, death and grief is very very challenging at
the time to say. And as I said in my book,
Butter Side Up, I said, I felt like I was
going to the principal's office, but I didn't know what

(35:15):
I was going there for. And once I accepted that, no,
I wasn't going to principal's office all the time. It
was that meaning and sometimes we have to come out
the other end of it to look for the gift
and the meaning of it. So I'm really happy that
you and Gil that you said that because I just

(35:36):
want to emphasize and I think Stanley you tried to
do that too. When you go through these difficult things
in life, it's not just you that's affected. It's also
people around you, and so you're not actually alone you're
going through it. You may think that there's nobody else
going through this, but they are and they're going through

(35:59):
with you in it, but all in different ways. And
it's how you respond rather than react to what's happening
around you. So I think what we've all tried to
do as individuals and now as a collective is we've
all tried to look at our experiences and say and
find meaning. And that often happens when people go through
difficult situations in their life, and it's like a fork

(36:22):
in the road, you know, it's like a you know,
you're either going to go this way and you're going
to get stuck. And it's easy to get stuck. And
that's what we're all talking about, how to get unstuck
and move forward. But there's also then okay, how do
I move forward and clear my path? So thank you
for dissolve and evolve. I'm going to borrow that and

(36:43):
I'm going to say doctor Phil taught me about dissolving
and evolving. So anyway, it's been an absolute pleasure. I
really gained a lot from everything that people have said.
So that's the gift of being here today. Thanks Gail
for bringing us all together.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Welcome, Thank you, Jane, Gina, what were your thoughts.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
Inevitably, everybody's got a story, and it doesn't matter who
you talk to, wherever you go in the world, everybody
is experiencing life, and one person's trauma is another person's.
That's an ordinary day. Yeah, and I think that we
sow off. I mean, you know, the news this morning
is people facing another hurricane. It's two weeks since the

(37:28):
last one, and you can only imagine what they're going through.
And I think one of the problems that we have
is that we tend to create almost degrading You know,
this is my trauma, and my trauma is bigger than
your trauma, and it's more important than your trauma. And
the reality is it doesn't matter what other people are

(37:48):
going through. If you're finding a challenge, then it's your challenge.
But Ultimately it's your decision whether, as Phil says, you
stay in the corner with your thumb in your mouth
and you and the fetal position for a few minutes,
a few days, a few years. So how do you
then choose when you're feeling desperate? How do you choose?

(38:11):
How do you move yourself when everything feels so monumental?
And I think you can't eat an elephant in one
sitting or a few matala. You can't eat a whole
field of corn in one setting. Because she's a vegan.
Mouthful by mouthful, you can do it. So I think,
if you're going through real challenges, break the day into

(38:35):
how am I feeling in this moment? Now? Can I
in this moment? Now find something that is going well,
because we tend to generalize everything in my life is
going bad. So find one thing and be grateful for that,
and then think, well, okay, what can I do in
the next five minutes that will lift my mood, whether

(38:56):
that's watching something on YouTube or tiktop or will make
you laugh or phoning a friend. And I do think
that the looking outwards rather than looking in at yourself
when everything feels desperate is a really good thing to do. Now,
that doesn't mean that you don't have to do the
deep dive work, but you need to be resourced to

(39:16):
do that. So how can you look outward and perhaps
phone a friend or do a random act of kindness
for someone that will actually make you feel better, and
then think, well, what can I do in this day?
And I think there are two other things I'd like
to say. Everybody that I have worked with, I have

(39:37):
known that's done great things in the world. Everybody has
been through some level of crisis or crisis, and they
have used that as the rocket fuel to then make
a positive difference in the world. The challenge, of course,
is how quickly you can move from that place of

(39:59):
poor me, the the world is happening to me, till
the world is happening for me. And it's that balance
between looking out in terms of helping and doing the
introspective work. And the last thing is so many people
here have said get help. If you're sitting there thinking
I can't afford it. We've all got loads of free stuff,

(40:21):
go and look at our websites, Go and do something,
take a step, take an action, because in me doing
that that semblance of control comes back and even if
it is as you're walking down the street, however you're
feeling inside, you smile and say hi Phil, Hi Jill.

(40:43):
That will help you, and you have no idea how
much can help other people too.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
Oh absolutely, I love that, Gina Is. I mean, one
of the things I do if I'm feeling low is
I get a carrier bag and I go on a
little walk and I pick up all the rubbish that
I see. And there's always rubbish that you see. You
can't go anywhere without seeing a bit of rubbish. And
then if you bump into somebody and they spot what
you're doing, they are so thrilled that you're doing that
they want to chat and say it's very kind, that's
and You've got this interaction with this total stranger. And

(41:11):
I just say that I'm doing my good deed for
the day. I'm just picking up some rubbish and it
makes me feel good. I've done something worthwhile, So it
makes me feel better, and that other person looks and goes, oh,
that's a nice thing to do. It might encourage them
to do the same at some point. It's a tiny
little thing, but it can when you're feeling like you're
nothing it makes you feel like you've got a purpose

(41:31):
to get out and just pick up some rubbish somewhere.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Thanks response to that, Jill, when people say it's a
tiny little thing, the power of tiny little things is immense.
Spend the night in a room with a mosquito. I
know just how powerful a little thing can be. And
just finally, Phil, you talk about dissolving or evolving. Think

(41:55):
about a caterpillar when it goes into the chrystalist to
dissolve and become mush before it can become a butterfly.
We have to go through that metamorphosis in order to
be stronger and to evolve.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
And that's just nature. That's the way it is. Thanks Gina.
I'm looking at the clock with only a few minutes left,
so I'm going to take Phil as the last one
and then we'll round up. Thank you.

Speaker 6 (42:20):
I just want to know how Gina got into my
head and said the same things that I was going
to say. So now I'm trying to pivot into something else,
like real quickly. Is that you know, if you're looking
at nature's is. One of the things I have done
is that if you are in the northern hemisphere during wintertime,
and you hate the winter, you don't have to freeze.

(42:41):
You can just go down to the southern hemisphere and
get warmth. So both are happened at the same time. Okay.
And if you love your TV and your Netflix, then
find true, real movies that people have gone through detriment
and be inspired by them, knowing that they were nothing special,

(43:05):
they were just people moving forward and certain things happened,
but just knowing that you have that same ability to
move forward, So that could be the inspiration that you
need at that moment in time.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Perfect. Thank you, Phil, Yes, definitely last one, Stanley over
to you.

Speaker 4 (43:24):
Okay. So the last thing that I want to say
is that you know, we talk about women having emotions,
but men have emotions. And when you understand that and
you can appreciate that, you don't have to be the
tough person and you can be male or female having
that experience where you've carried the baggage you've carried, you've

(43:47):
carried the way you put the armor up for other people.
But I remember reading a journal where my ex wife
really didn't think that I was going through the same stuff,
is going through it in a different way, and just
because I hid it from the world didn't mean that
I didn't deal with it, and it really is by

(44:09):
the grace of God that I did not, you know,
beat myself up continually. And it is it is finding
and processing, and it is processing in the way that
you find is best for you. Because there's a panel
of six people here and we all are helpers. We're
all that's why we're here. And but we all have
our own unique style. And you have a unique style,

(44:32):
You have a unique emotion or emotion, and embrace it
and don't don't negate it for anyone, especially yourself. That's
the last thing that I'd like to say.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Yeah, that perfectly said. Thank you so much. Thank you
to all of you for getting up in the middle
of the night, for being here this morning, and for
sharing your experiences and your You're iner genius because all
of these things that we have gone through have created
the person that we are today, for good or for bad,
but generally we're using it and utilizing it into evolving

(45:11):
into being better than we were previously. It takes guts
to look inwards and look at yourself and go how
can I be better? And I think we've all been
on part of that journey. And it's evolving and it's
still carrying on and we're not perfect, but we've just
got experiences that we're sharing. So if anybody wants to
connect up with these people, we will be giving you

(45:32):
details of that later as well. So for now, thank
you very much for joining me on this fire side
chat for the World Mental Health Summit today.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Thanks guys, thank you everyone,