10 years ago...

This time 10 years ago, I wanted to die. Then, I started to talk about it.

I didn’t mean to. I certainly didn’t want to. It all kind of just spilled out to a friend in desperation. But that “mistake” saved my life, as I ended up going inpatient the next day, and that has led to quite the healing journey! 

It also forced me to tell my family and friends how I was really doing, something I’d long avoided.

I’d had suicidal thoughts on and off since high school, but I thought they were something that had to be kept secret, so that I wouldn’t be judged or create a panic. I also never wanted anyone, especially my parents, to worry about me. I wanted to be “a pleasure to have in class” in all areas of my life, so no one could know how much I sometimes struggled emotionally. 

But it was only in being honest with the people in my life that I started to heal. And though there have certainly been ups and downs over the past 10 years, I am really glad I’m still here. 💖

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A post shared by Dr. Leah Katz | Psychologist | Speaker I Media Contributor (@dr.leahkatz)

Now… here’s the part I’ve been struggling to put into words. I really wish I could say, “It’s okay to have suicidal thoughts,” because acceptance and compassion feel better to me (and probably everyone??) than denial, panic, and shame. It really helps when my therapist tells me things like, “It’s okay to be scared,” and I have kind of adapted that to telling myself, “It’s okay to feel [fill-in-the-blank emotion]” when I’m not in the therapy room.

But “being scared” is one thing. Suicidal thoughts are life and death. Not to mention that no one should have to go through life wanting to die. And even with the normalization of mental health, this particular topic still feels taboo, in a way that talking about anxiety and depression don’t.

But suicide is the 12th-leading cause of death in the US. NOT talking about it, or reacting to it from a place of judgment, clearly isn’t helping. Will we ever get to a place where people can share their suicidal thoughts and feel genuinely heard, supported, and helped in the process? I was so incredibly lucky to have that experience with the friend I “mistakenly” opened up to. I have not always been able to give that gift to others (when I was in denial about my own issues), and I really regret it.

If talking about my experience does anything to lessen the stigma, well, maybe that’s why I’m still here. 🫶

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts:

You are loved. 

You deserve to be heard. 

You deserve to heal.

In the US, there is the new 988 hotline for mental health crises. This page also lists a number of other resources. (I am also so intrigued by the last option on that page, Warmlines, for when you are “not in crisis, but still need support.” How did I not know things like that existed?!)

And if you’ve been there for me over the past 10 years:

Natalie Merchant was hitting me in all the feels as I was driving around on Saturday 💖🥹

Rebirthday #9

Or: Not letting certain parts of me flatten my sparkle! 😁

In case you don’t know, I look at 3/20/13, the day I went inpatient for suicidal thoughts, as my Rebirthday, because it’s the day this healing journey began!

Wow wee, as the years go on, some things get easier, some things get harder, and more and more comes up to be healed. I so often feel stuck and ashamed of where I am (or am not) in life… COUGH…

But milestones like the Rebirthday are great because they force me to slow down and acknowledge the significant-but-hard-to-quantify shifts that have happened over the years.

When I started therapy in 2013, I approached it as I had school. If I did all the things and worked really hard, I would “get better,” right? So I journaled all the time, I read all the books, I was completely in my head and out of my body, and it was great. I was working really hard, and so I was deserving of my therapist’s time and attention, right? I was getting all whole and healed, right?

…Right?

In 2013, I had zero awareness that this pull to do all the “right” things and stay out of my body was not the entirety of me, but rather the effect of the different inner parts of me that sometimes took hold.

I have a Good Girl part who feels like she has to calibrate to what other people need or expect in order to be lovable. The Good Girl seems to be entwined with a High Schooler who (as I did in actual high school) throws herself into academic pursuits to achieve her way to worth and avoid feeling.

The attentive Good Girl and drill sergeant High Schooler make a great team. They work so hard to protect me from a third part: a young inner child who is really really scared.

The problem is that they can’t actually work or ignore away her pain, and so it crashes down on Adult Me when I least expect it.

Last summer, I started having anxiety attacks as I tried to “reenter” the world, post-2020. The young inner child really enjoys having control over her environment, so not being able to leave the house during Covid was actually perfect for her. She was so terrified to have to give all of that up that she would suddenly become the dominant inner part, screaming out for attention.

This meant that I would agree to do things in 2021, and then childhood fear and panic would blindside me, and leave 2021 me a confused, crying mess.

My therapist and I began talking about how I could take therapy with me into these difficult moments, which led to the practice I mentioned here: channeling my therapist’s calm acceptance of and curiosity about my emotions. I don’t meditate, per se, but I suppose this has become a sort of meditation, a going-inward to find peace.

It was not therapy homework. It was not something with big “should” energy behind it. It just grew organically out of our therapy conversations.

When I’m blindsided by strong emotions now, it has been really helpful to consider who (what inner part) is crying out for attention and what she needs. Or, what she needed back then and did not get. (I don’t journal a ton these days, but this also makes a 10/10 journal prompt.) Then, I can go into this sort of inner therapy room for comfort and understanding.

It has taken years of therapy and healing work for Adult Me to have some capacity to empathize with and attempt to “parent” these inner children, rather than run from them or scream at them in frustration. I have no clue what I’m doing a lot of the time, but, thankfully, I am learning from my therapist. Offering my inner children the same calm acceptance and curiosity that Adult Me gets in therapy has been a great start.

If any of this resonates with you, please know that you are inherently worthy, and that healing is possible—even if you are resistant to meditating, feeling/being in your body, loving “difficult” parts of yourself, etc. I struggle mightily with all of those things but am slowly embracing them in my own way and in my own time. 💜

Rebirthday #8

This girl had just done inpatient, started therapy, started IOP, and moved into the city. She’s the patron saint of sparkle punching.

(In case you don’t know, I think of the day I went inpatient for suicidal thoughts [3/20/13] as my Rebirthday!)

Last weekend, I did a group meditation (who am I??) on the future self and past self. The only thing I could think to say to my 10-years-ago self was, “Stop crying over boys and work on your thesis.” (Books before bros?)

With that out of the way and my Rebirthday fresh on my mind, I then thought back to my eight-years-ago self.

Man, that girl had guts.

She walked up to a nurse in the ER and said out loud the kind of thoughts she was having.

She chose to stay in the hospital with complete strangers (and her depression and anxiety) for five days.

(And she still stayed after immediately panicking about that decision, haha.)

She admitted to her family that things really weren’t okay. So not okay that she had suicidal thoughts, and not just thoughts, a plan.

I am in awe of that girl. I don’t know that I could do any of those things today.

And she was so diligent in tending to her mental health after inpatient too. For months, she went to intensive outpatient four days a week + therapy one day a week and worked a full-time job. She read every book her therapist recommended. She went to retreats and yoga classes specifically for “women with trauma.”

I have no advice for her. I could use some advice from her, actually! I feel like I’ve lost so much of the spark and dedication that she had. (Although, to be fair, nothing will zap it quite like losing a very good friend and experiencing a global pandemic in back to back years….)

But I do get glimpses of her sometimes. Like when I recently got up the nerve to get a second opinion about the horrible physical and mental symptoms I’ve been having along with my period. The second NP I saw really listened to me and actually had me answer the questions that determine if you have PMDD. Sure enough, I met the criteria. (I had already wondered about that here.)

And I think eight-years-ago me is the part of me that makes sure I track my mood, a recent assignment from the psych NP. And what do you know? Consistent mood tracking showed me the cyclical nature of my drastic mood/mental state changes, thus giving me months of evidence to present the GYN NPs. It also showed me how nuanced my feelings truly are. (i.e. I’m not just anxious all the time.)

While I do often think of my various inner children, this was the first time in a long time that I’d thought of 26-year-old me. I need to fix that because she’s pure magic. She didn’t realize it, but she still had so much life in her, even in her darkest moments.

I want to be her when I grow up. 💜

Linking up with Andrea and Erika!

Rebirthday #7

Friday was my seventh Rebirthday—the anniversary of the day I went inpatient for suicidal thoughts. 2019 was a year of intense loss and great anxiety, but I’m still here. That is something to celebrate, especially in these trying times!

It may seem surprising now (since I blab about it openly on here 😂), but I was initially horrified about other people finding out about inpatient. I wore my hospital bracelet as a reminder for a solid month afterward, but actively hid it from anyone who might ask questions. I told my co-workers some flimsy lie. I had a lot of shame around my mental health issues, especially—gasp!—suicidal thoughts. It felt like the suicide stuff put me beyond anxiety and depression into some other category that people didn’t know how to handle. It IS a lot. It IS scary. I get that. But at the same time, trying to protect people from my scary feelings almost killed me. I feel extremely lucky that I had a friend who listened to me without judgment and helped me to get help.

That’s not to say that I don’t still, at times, feel shame about the fact that I had a “breakdown,” and worry about having another one now that I’m in therapy and on better medication and doing all the “right” things. When I recently brought up this fear in therapy, my therapist replied with this gem:

“You can learn a lot from a breakdown, though.”

Definitely true. I learned more and grew more from the experience of falling apart, going inpatient, and then admitting my “imperfections” to people than I would have if I just had pushed through and pretended that I was okay.

Thank you for supporting my imperfect, human self in this space. And please know that help is out there, be it in the form of therapy or medication or inpatient or the suicide hotline (1-800-273-8255). Suicidal thoughts thrive in isolation—but there are people out there who will listen. In fact, that friend I mentioned above was Kristin, and our friendship was much deeper and more meaningful after we went through this experience together. ♥️

Rebirthday #6

3-20-13

Five years since inpatient felt like a big deal. Six… doesn’t feel like much of anything. I didn’t even want to write about it! Like, okay, yay, I did a thing six years ago. What am I doing now, though?

Clearly, there is a part of me that beats myself up for not being “further along” on this whole healing journey (even though I know full well that healing is non-linear). I’m also super aware that I’m not checking the boxes of a typical 30-something: marriage, kids, house, some combination thereof. I try to remind myself that I’ve never been one to do things on the “typical” timeline (hello, driving at age 27!), but I do get there eventually… which I guess means that my forties are gonna be LIT! 😂

In all seriousness, I don’t feel ready to check those big boxes. But that’s not as healthy as it sounds. Rather, I feel like I will crumble under the stress and uncertainty that come with those momentous life changes.

When I was a kid, my anxiety—especially about situations outside of my control—was at times accompanied by big emotional and physical reactions: not eating, not sleeping, crying all the time, obsessive worrying... so I started to avoid anything that would potentially set off that avalanche of symptoms. The only problem is that I’ve learned that coping skill very well over the years. If anxiety makes every one and every thing seem scary, how do you get yourself to do anything? Not to mention that a trigger can show up in all sorts of unexpected ways.

Traditionally, I would only do a “scary” new thing because I was forced into it (by, say, a graduation, or someone else’s life changes). But this past year, I’ve actually chosen the “scarier” option a few times, and although the situations wouldn’t seem like that big a deal to an outsider, they were momentous to me.

In one instance, I initiated a very difficult, emotionally vulnerable conversation with a friend who I would have normally ghosted (so as to not have said difficult conversation). I also started seeing a male therapist, a scenario I typically avoid due to some unresolved guy issues.

These experiences are teaching me that I can handle more than I think I can. Did speaking so honestly with my friend leave me feeling incredibly exposed? Yeah—I felt like I’d ripped off my own skin.

But I survived.

And when I made the initial appointment with the male therapist (a suggestion from a different therapist who was leaving their practice), it was just to cross it off—to confirm my belief that I would be too triggered seeing a male and thus can only see female therapists. But that didn’t happen. (Full disclosure: this particular therapist has a very calm and gentle way about him, and that helps a lot.) Being emotionally vulnerable with a male does freak me out, don’t get me wrong, but it’s giving me a chance to talk about these feelings with a trained professional as I’m experiencing them. That just wouldn’t happen in the same way with a female therapist. It also gives us the chance to try to make sense of what I’m feeling, instead of me just running from the feelings by default.

I guess I need to remind myself that growth and change come in all forms. It’s not always the big box life events or the celebratory moments you’d post about on social media. It’s driving somewhere new when driving isn’t your fave. It’s being your authentic self with someone who loves you… and being brave enough to do it when you’d rather run away screaming. It’s continuing to show up for a situation that scares you. It’s the willingness to look at what is going on in your mind and your life so you can understand it better.

It’s one hell of a ride. The fact that I’m still on it at all, I owe to the girl in the ER six years ago and her very powerful decision. 💜