Kirill: This is FiveMinuteFriday, Depression and Suicidal Thoughts.
Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast everybody. Super excited to have you on the show and even though this is a FiveMinuteFriday episode, today I do have a guest with me and the guest is Anthony Metivier. Anthony, welcome.
Anthony: Hello. Thanks for having me on this special episode.
Kirill: Thank you. Thank you for coming. And so how we’re going to structure this episode or what I wanted to talk about is I heard that in these times and it’s probably true, that in these difficult times with the coronavirus, everybody’s locked in. More and more people are having depression or depressive thoughts, depression, even suicidal thoughts. And Anthony is here because we just finished recording a podcast, a longer podcast, which is featuring a lot of valuable insights from his upcoming book. And that podcast will go live in a few weeks.
Kirill: But I asked Anthony to stay on because I would like Anthony, your thoughts or maybe opinion on this situation. And how we can help people or what advice you can give them. Because you’ve actually been through this and you talk about this in your book, The Victorious Mind on how you went through depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts and how you worked with psychologist, psychiatrist and so on.
Kirill: And now more than ever, many people in the world need help, need some sort of light, some sort of reassurement, encouragement that everything is going to be okay. And maybe some techniques on how to deal with this situation during these difficult lockdown times when you can’t go outside, when you can’t meet your friends, when you’re just facing challenges you never faced before. So, I’ll pass it over to you. What advice, what guidance can you provide in this time?
Anthony: Well, thank you. And extra thank you for dealing with this topic because it’s really, really important and a lot of people can’t or won’t or don’t talk about it for whatever reason.
Anthony: The first thing that I would advise people to understand and it’s something I had to learn to understand, is that it doesn’t have to do with you. It’s not a flaw in your personality. It’s not anything that reflects on your morality or anything like that.
Anthony: There’s something going on in your brain. It’s just a biological mishap. So, in my experience, I was hospitalized for three months for manic depression and they thought I was on the heavy psychotic end. I had lots of crazy ideas and it was only just beginning.
Anthony: And they let me out a little bit too soon I think. And I wound up flipping out and almost jumping in front of a subway train. And I was pulled back fortunately by a stranger. And the thing is that I had to deal with in my life is to realize that it had nothing to do with me. It’s not anything to do with personality or whatever. So that’s where I would start.
Anthony: It’s just a brain that is sick. And people who have had fish and the fish go crazy and they start banging their heads against the glass tank. I mean everybody’s probably seen that. It’s not because the fish is bad person or bad fish, it’s just something in the wiring has gone crazy. So that’s the first tip that I would suggest is really look into the brain science and understand it’s not about you. There’s nothing wrong with you as a person.
Anthony: And the other thing I would suggest is to try to, and I mean I still deal with this stuff, let’s just put it out there. I still have what is sometimes called harm OCD, which is extraordinarily strange impulses to jump off the balcony, et cetera, et cetera.
Anthony: And this is not going to go away anytime soon, but you want to face it. You want to find a way to face it. You want to seek help. You want to understand it, read books on it and get somebody in front of you who will help you talk about it.
Anthony: And there are people who are professional about it. But the thing is is you’ve got to be willing to explore a couple of people. And you’ve also got to not try to control the show because one of the things that really slowed my healing is I was a control freak. And that’s part of what some of these mental health issues are, is that we want to be in control. And if we want to be in control, we are often making ourselves more sick. And then we’re making ourselves more afraid of the psychological content that we have. Right?
Anthony: And I had an experience with a guy as a therapist and he wanted to take me to a bridge that I was constantly thinking about jumping off. I didn’t want to jump off the bridge. Right? But it’s just like endless impulses. I couldn’t even walk across it normally.
Anthony: And he said, “I want to take you to that bridge and I want to stand with you.” And I said, “No way in hell.” And not only that, I lectured him on how that he ran his therapy and dah, dah, dah, dah. And I gave him a peace of mind and he shouldn’t have patients in the waiting room when I’m coming in because that violates my unconscious mind, et cetera, et cetera. I was the problem and it wasn’t me as a person.
Anthony: There’s something in the brain trying desperately to have some small amount of control. So that’s what I would suggest. Get some help but also don’t try to be in control of it. And see if you can’t just follow some of those recommendations and allow yourself to feel the feelings. And that’s what a lot of them will try to do in cognitive behavioral therapy is try to get you to feel the feelings because they’re not as scary as they seem. And you can get quite comfortable with them.
Anthony: And to do that, the last thing I would suggest before turning it back to you, is learn to relax your body because your brain produces your mind. And your brain is physical and it is your body. So if you can just learn to relax all these things, you’re going to have a much easier time of it because your mind can in turn cause your body to be more stressed, which causes more thoughts and more panic. So if you can just find some kind of meditation practice.
Anthony: And again, try multiple meditation practices because not all of them are going to work and they may not work until later. But if you are willing to explore many, and I’m glad I explored many, something is going to click. And then you can go back and explore some more.
Anthony: But you got to also spend a sufficient amount of time with each one in order to actually know whether it’s going to work or not. And then add on some more. So you get compound effect, you get familiarity with things. And you can deal with this and you can quiet it. And you can actually even neutralize it to the point that it’s just a weird little thing that comes to your mind.
Kirill: Thank you for the guidance there. It felt quite strong. And even I felt a little bit resistance when you said it’s something of the mind, the mind is sick. And I guess this advice would or guidance would be very helpful in the case when somebody has… Or when it’s been led too far.
Kirill: But can any of these tips be applied even before you get to that stage before it’s too late, while you’re starting to feel the onset of anxiety, panic attacks and so on? When you’re starting to feel like dark, gloomy thoughts because you’ve been endorsed for too long. Can any of those tips or maybe you have some other additional tips for people that are just starting to feel the onset of some kind of uncomfortable feelings like that?
Anthony: Yeah, I believe you can train your mind to stop thoughts very, very quickly and contextualize them and neutralize them. So I shared this at a TEDx presentation I gave recently. If you could just remember two questions. Are my thoughts useful? How do they behave? And then answer those questions.
Anthony: Get into the practice of just those two questions and you’ll quickly see, “Oh, these thoughts are not particularly useful and they are behaving in this way.” So you identify and you label and then that can help them disappear or at least be contextualized.
Anthony: So for example, “Oh, I’m super stressed out. I can’t believe that I’m locked in for another day. I’ve lost my job,” and all that sort of stuff. Just, are these thoughts useful? How are they behaving? Right. And just start to interact with them. And accept that they’re there and you can start to enable yourself to have strategies for dealing with them.
Anthony: How do you train yourself to automatically come up with those thoughts? Well, I talk about this in The Victorious Mind and long story short is I memorize them and I memorize them using memory palaces and I practice them every day. I’ve been practicing them every day for nearly three years now. And it’s tremendously rewarding. And now I have periods where I don’t even have any thoughts at all. And it’s very blissful. So yes, you can. And it’s just a matter of training yourself to do it.
Kirill: Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you Anthony. Thank you for that guidance, encouragement. And everybody listening, look out for the upcoming podcast with Anthony Metivier where we’ll talk more about a lot of these things and other memory techniques as well.
Anthony: Thank you.
