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Suicide
Episode 9 • 24th February 2024 • Are You Mental? • Mick Andrews
00:00:00 01:37:59

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Mick:

The following episode is about suicide.

Mick:

It includes interviews with a man who has attempted suicide, and a woman

Mick:

who has lost a brother to suicide.

Mick:

Whilst this is a sensitive and helpful discussion on suicide, if you feel

Mick:

like now is not the right time for you to listen to it, we recommend pushing

Mick:

pause and choosing another episode.

Mick:

Thanks.

Mick:

Welcome to Are You Mental, a podcast about mental health.

Mick:

My name is Mick Andrews, and today we're talking about suicide.

Mick:

Now, obviously, this is a big, heavy, and quite confronting topic.

Mick:

And if I'm honest, when I started working on this episode, I felt quite

Mick:

daunted, even intimidated by it, but it's also a really important topic.

Mick:

Because the sad fact is that year after year, many people take their own lives.

Mick:

The world misses out on the richness of their life, and they leave behind

Mick:

a world of pain for their loved ones.

Mick:

And if there's one topic we find it hard to talk about, it's this one.

Mick:

So it's really important we do talk about it, because the truth is, quite a few of

Mick:

us are already thinking about it anyway.

Mick:

It's estimated that around 1 in 20 of us will have suicidal thoughts in any given

Mick:

year, and an estimated 700, 000 people die by suicide worldwide each year.

Mick:

I know that people will be listening to this episode for a variety of reasons,

Mick:

but I just want to take a moment to speak to those of you who are listening because

Mick:

you are having thoughts of suicide.

Mick:

I'd just like to say that you're not alone.

Mick:

Many people before you have found themselves having similar dark

Mick:

thoughts, and a huge amount of them have found their way through the pain

Mick:

and the loneliness and the confusion to a place where life is good again.

Mick:

Soon you'll hear from Joe.

Mick:

Who tried to take his own life before going on a journey of

Mick:

healing and finding happiness again.

Mick:

Even though it's a long episode, I encourage you to

Mick:

listen all the way to the end.

Mick:

If at any point you want to talk to someone confidentially, there's

Mick:

a list of helplines in the show notes and at the end of the episode.

Mick:

Our other two guests today are Debbie, who talks about losing her brother to

Mick:

suicide, and of course our psychologist Nettie, who gives us countless insights

Mick:

into what takes people down the path to suicide, what gets them off that

Mick:

path, what signs to look out for.

Mick:

And our loved ones and how we can talk about this very confronting topic.

Mick:

And by the way, for those of you listening outside ro in New Zealand, you're gonna

Mick:

hear the occasional word in the Maori language, but you'll definitely still

Mick:

understand what people are talking about.

Mick:

The one word worth knowing is that a tangi is a funeral.

Mick:

If you wanna get hold of me is can email Mick.

Mick:

That's MICK@ areyoumental.com.

Mick:

And if you wanna follow us on Instagram, we are at Al podcast.

Joe:

This is Joe.

Joe:

My full name is James Joseph Okilani Unungia Paulo.

Joe:

Obviously that's not on the passport, but I mention all those names because it pays

Joe:

homage to both mum and dad's families.

Mick:

Joe's parents came from Samoa, and he was born and raised

Mick:

here in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Joe:

Bit difficult to kind of land on where exactly they come from.

Joe:

We bounced around a lot.

Joe:

But I would call home Ōtara from South Auckland.

Joe:

So quite proud of that upbringing.

Joe:

If I was to put a chapter title to my childhood, I would call it running.

Joe:

Running, um.

Joe:

Because of what was happening at home, I had a bit of a temper.

Joe:

I think you find this, a lot of young kids when the home is unstable,

Joe:

they tend to get angry at school.

Joe:

They take all the energy.

Joe:

And one teacher, I think I shoved her daughter over because I was,

Joe:

I just got sick of the bullying.

Joe:

And she collared me in the library.

Joe:

She goes, don't you ever do that again.

Joe:

You're the teacher's

Mick:

daughter.

Mick:

Among other challenges, moving around a lot as a kid meant

Mick:

that Joe had to get used to many different versions of his surname.

Mick:

For years it became Paulo.

Mick:

Yeah.

Joe:

Oh

Mick:

gosh, cringe.

Mick:

I bet.

Joe:

So eventually when I went to Ōtara, man it was a breath of fresh air.

Joe:

You know, to hear my name not pronounced as Paulo, but kids are calling me Paulo.

Joe:

I'm like bro that sounds so good to my

Mick:

ears.

Mick:

Joe never really felt settled in his childhood, which influenced

Mick:

how he found his teenage years.

Joe:

Confusing.

Joe:

Bit lost, bit blurred.

Joe:

Never really had the ability to establish relationships.

Joe:

I was a poet.

Joe:

That was my outlet because I could not, I could not land a girl, honestly.

Joe:

You thought the poems might help.

Joe:

Couldn't do it, man.

Joe:

Yeah, yeah.

Joe:

Exactly.

Joe:

So I was like, Oh, maybe a girl will like these poems.

Joe:

And then, Guys at school were asking me to write poems for their

Joe:

girlfriends, and I'd get frustrated.

Joe:

For a fee?

Joe:

For a pie, maybe?

Joe:

But it was, it was, it was like, I was really frustrated as a teenager

Joe:

because I'd end up meeting these girls and they're like, oh, so and so read

Joe:

me this poem, it was so beautiful.

Joe:

And I'm going,

Mick:

I wrote that.

Mick:

Were you all using the same poems?

Mick:

What if they all said No, I would write unique poems for each

Joe:

and every one.

Joe:

And that was, poetry was That was my escape of being able to express

Joe:

what was going on in my head.

Mick:

What was going on in your head?

Joe:

Didn't know where I really fit in.

Joe:

I found the teenage years to be very difficult because there were so many

Joe:

different, uh, trends as to what was considered cool, what made you accept it.

Joe:

My first day at Delisle High College, I got mocked all day long because I thought

Joe:

I'm going to go to school and I'm going to look smart on my first year as a senior.

Joe:

I wore Roman sandals, had the socks all the way up past my knees,

Joe:

shorts up, tucked in, and I went to school and I just got laughed at.

Joe:

I looked at everyone going No one's wearing Ryman sandals.

Joe:

Take me out of there.

Joe:

Yeah.

Joe:

The mocking sticks, eh?

Joe:

It sticks, man.

Joe:

And like, the teenage years was really troubling because I couldn't quite figure

Joe:

out how to navigate the path of what my mum wanted, what my dad wanted, the

Joe:

pressures of my siblings at the time.

Joe:

And Pasifika kids will relate to this.

Joe:

Um, I didn't really know where I was going or what it was I really wanted to do.

Joe:

And then my mum It was around the time when mum started throwing

Joe:

National Geographic books at me.

Joe:

Um, mum had a whole lot of expectations of, I want you to be a doctor, I want

Joe:

you to be a, someone into medicine, get a high paying job so that when

Joe:

you grow up you can look after us.

Joe:

My mum ruled with an iron thumb.

Joe:

You know, things had to go a certain way, and if you deviated even just one degree,

Joe:

you were going to soon find out what it means to not follow the instructions.

Mick:

You'd get a National Geographic flying towards your head.

Joe:

Yeah, yeah.

Mick:

We're talking the kind of Africa version, eh?

Mick:

Yeah,

Joe:

it's still on the box under there.

Joe:

So it was, um, it was overall a loving home, but a very mentally confusing home.

Joe:

And I just rebelled, rebelled so much that I got all the way up to the age of 17.

Joe:

I ran away from home, chucked all my clothes in a bunch of rubbish bags,

Joe:

threw it over my neighbor's fence.

Mick:

Was there a certain event that

Joe:

I think really what I would bring it down to was, I didn't

Joe:

want to do what they wanted.

Joe:

I found the love of performing arts.

Joe:

I got into acting, I got into radio.

Joe:

If I wasn't at uni, I was on Browns Road in Ponsonby, inside the Neo FM

Joe:

studio, just doing whatever bum jobs they wanted me to do, and I loved it.

Joe:

That's what I wanted.

Joe:

I could put on a persona and be okay with it as long as the traumatized

Joe:

teenager could hide himself.

Mick:

And at this point in your life, you know, coming out of your teenage

Mick:

years, how would you describe what was going on for you emotionally?

Joe:

Angry, a lot of anger, a lot of hatred too.

Joe:

I felt that my childhood was the one that felt robbed of so

Joe:

many different opportunities.

Joe:

Angry that it wasn't fully a childhood.

Joe:

I'm 11, 12 years old.

Joe:

You know, I'm helping to look after my little niece and nephews.

Joe:

You know, I would often stay home from school and make their milk bottles,

Joe:

cook them dinner, breakfast, look after the whole, all that stuff.

Joe:

And I would look back and I'm like, I never really had that for myself.

Joe:

None of my siblings or family were actually listening to the fact that,

Joe:

hey, You guys have had your shot at life, can you let me mould my own?

Joe:

I don't want to be a doctor, I don't want to be a lawyer.

Joe:

I love the arts industry, but mum didn't see the fruit in that.

Joe:

And then there was an irony of that later on, which led to me being even

Joe:

more angry when I ended up getting my hands on a folder, a brown folder that

Joe:

was up in my mum and dad's bedroom.

Joe:

Mum asked me to get something out of there and the folder fell out

Joe:

and it was a cutout of all the news clippings on me on the Herold.

Joe:

Leading performing arts for the school doing stuff with radio.

Joe:

It just reached me and I'm like you supported me

Mick:

quietly So she was proud of all that.

Mick:

She was proud of all of it, but she

Joe:

wasn't telling me I got so angry at my mom and I'm like all this

Joe:

time, you know It would have really helped me if you just backed me.

Joe:

So I was angry for a long time Was hungry for acceptance.

Joe:

Mm hmm hated rejection like anything.

Joe:

No people love me.

Joe:

Please like me.

Joe:

Please support me You Gosh, I look back at it now and go, pretty desperate.

Joe:

That's probably the right word for it, but yeah, angry, sad, and pretty desperate.

Joe:

What I would say my teenage years would have been.

Mick:

And I mean, obviously we are here to talk about suicide

Mick:

and your attempt at your own life.

Mick:

I guess what led up to you getting to a place where you

Mick:

want to take your own life?

Joe:

I found the whole world to be hypocritical.

Joe:

And a lot of that was aimed at the church community and that was,

Joe:

you know, God loves you, Jesus loves you, we're here for you.

Joe:

If you need help from us, you know, come to us.

Joe:

And it was the complete opposite.

Joe:

You know, you go to them and seek help and they're like, oh, are you tithing?

Joe:

No?

Joe:

Oh, that's why you're struggling.

Joe:

Are you reading your Bible morning and night?

Joe:

No?

Joe:

Well, that's why you're struggling.

Joe:

Are you attending all the church services?

Joe:

Yeah, as best as I can.

Joe:

Oh, but not all of them?

Joe:

No?

Joe:

Okay, well then that's why you're struggling.

Joe:

So there was all the stuff and I'm going, holy heck, this is the most

Joe:

condemning place I've ever been to, to go to a church and just be told, oh,

Joe:

the only reason why nothing is working for you right now is because you're not

Joe:

doing this, this, this, this and this.

Joe:

And what I was really trying to say There are thoughts going on in my head.

Joe:

I don't know how to process those thoughts and I'm scared that I'm either

Joe:

going to lose my mind or I'm going to do something which is what I led to 2016.

Joe:

And how

Mick:

would you describe the thoughts that were going on in your head?

Joe:

That I don't belong.

Joe:

It was really, it was really lonely.

Joe:

It was real, real lonely and it just felt cold.

Joe:

That's probably what I would express it as.

Joe:

It was just cold all the time.

Joe:

I would reach out to people desperate for help.

Joe:

And if they felt that it was now starting to get uncomfortable,

Joe:

they would back off completely.

Joe:

And now, you don't call me, you don't text me, you don't message me, you avoid me,

Joe:

and I'm going, so the problem must be me.

Joe:

And that piled on with a whole lot of other stuff that was going on.

Joe:

Got married in 2009.

Joe:

When we got married, my wife's family just said, Sweet, all our hands are off now.

Joe:

She's your responsibility.

Joe:

You're on your own.

Joe:

And my wife has epilepsy.

Joe:

So becoming a caregiver to that extent was quite challenging.

Joe:

And it was real difficult.

Joe:

You know, I needed to be at my wife's side almost 24 seven.

Joe:

And that means you losing sleep, constantly sacrificing meals

Joe:

to make sure that she was okay.

Joe:

We were living off 40 a week.

Joe:

Wow.

Joe:

And then, and then five dollars of that went to pay the taxi.

Joe:

So we would walk to New World, buy groceries for the week, and then

Joe:

we'd spend five dollars coming back.

Joe:

And we had no fridge, no microwave, no utensils, just

Joe:

a mat, pillow and a blanket.

Joe:

This is a very challenging time and it dawns on me that it's my responsibility

Joe:

to provide and I've just got criticism after criticism from all these

Joe:

people who were happy to criticize but they weren't willing to help.

Joe:

And there was a time where, there was a phase where we

Joe:

went without for like a month.

Joe:

We were like, we were scamming off MSD, food banks.

Joe:

So you,

Mick:

at that time, had a A lot of pressure and struggle.

Joe:

Yeah.

Joe:

Enormous amount of, yeah.

Joe:

It was very heavy, very isolated.

Joe:

And I probably didn't know at the time, no, I didn't know at the time

Joe:

that I was having serious anxiety.

Joe:

Enormous amounts of paranoia, bro.

Joe:

Stuff that triggered over the years.

Joe:

Massive trust issues.

Joe:

But yeah, it got really, got really dark.

Joe:

Oh, there were these different events that were happening.

Joe:

I remember the The week that led up to it, I was sitting by myself at my desk, and it

Joe:

was around the evening, and a whole lot of staff were all speaking in Hindi, it was

Joe:

Indians, and they were talking, they were looking at me, and they were all laughing.

Joe:

Now my mind's not in the right frame at the moment, because stuff

Joe:

is going crazy all around me.

Joe:

All I see is a group of Indians talking in their language,

Joe:

and they're making fun of me.

Joe:

And then I just snapped.

Joe:

I'm like, can you please speak English?

Joe:

I don't know what you're saying.

Joe:

And they're like, oh, we're not talking about you.

Joe:

And I'm like, yeah, but you're looking at me and you're laughing.

Joe:

So I'm putting two and two together.

Joe:

Why are you laughing, but you're all looking at me.

Joe:

And one of the things that made it worse was just two weeks ago, I was told that

Joe:

I'm not allowed to speak Samoan because it makes other people feel uncomfortable.

Joe:

So my mind's going, what's going on?

Joe:

It's this all over again.

Joe:

It's, am I the one that's the problem?

Joe:

Yeah, I was, bro, it felt like I was in a fog that particular week.

Joe:

I don't know how it happened, but it felt like I was on autopilot.

Joe:

Yep.

Joe:

I had already gone.

Joe:

I was mentally absent.

Joe:

So long gone bro.

Joe:

Like there was nobody home.

Joe:

It was just a shell operating on autopilot.

Joe:

The key moment that made me go, I'm done.

Joe:

I'm going home and I'm going to.

Joe:

make that, that fateful decision.

Joe:

It was a look, it was a glance that somebody gave me in the room.

Joe:

We're having some kind of meeting.

Joe:

I look up and I'm just looking around and just acknowledging everyone.

Joe:

And then this look of disgust and disdain was what I interpreted and my mind was.

Joe:

And then I looked at the next person and my mind was just seeing

Joe:

people just kind of look at me.

Joe:

in a kind of like a disgusted way.

Joe:

And I remember just the fog just got thicker and I sank

Joe:

deeper and deeper and deeper.

Joe:

And I said, I don't belong here anymore.

Joe:

I don't want to be a part of it.

Joe:

This is, I'm done.

Joe:

I've just been criticized in the morning from, uh, from one side of the family.

Joe:

Got a phone call from another family member who criticized me again, but

Joe:

nobody's coming in and going, we want to help you without asking for anything back.

Joe:

Yeah.

Joe:

All I remember was getting in my car and then I don't remember how I got home.

Joe:

My plan was to go home, going to the spare bedroom at the back where I

Joe:

could appear to have fallen asleep and then my wife to discover me later

Joe:

on at night or later in the morning.

Joe:

And bro, I, I kid you not, by some miracle, I don't know how, I

Joe:

don't know how, how I got through that because the doctors were

Joe:

saying that should have ended it.

Joe:

on that night.

Joe:

And then, um, I don't know what happened that night.

Joe:

Somehow I texted someone and I said, look, I'm going away

Joe:

and I'm not ever coming back.

Joe:

And that person started ringing all the senior managers and

Joe:

telling them something's wrong.

Joe:

And I tell you, I swear to God, like everything that should have

Joe:

ended, it should have gone to plan.

Joe:

I remember clearly turning my phone off or on silent.

Joe:

And then, I'm fading bro, like I'm, my consciousness is getting

Joe:

dimmer and dimmer and dimmer.

Joe:

And then I just hear this phone blare.

Joe:

And it was my manager.

Joe:

This is the guy who I had been told was trying to get rid of me because my

Joe:

mental health was spiralling too much.

Joe:

And then to have him on the phone say something that actually

Joe:

I had been desperate to hear.

Joe:

The, the words were, dude, you're, you know, you're larger than life, you're

Joe:

a big character and I actually value you and I really care about you and I

Joe:

don't want you to do anything stupid like you matter a lot to me, Joe.

Joe:

And I sat there going, I'm like, my consciousness is getting weaker and weaker

Joe:

and weaker and I'm just like, why is it taking now for you to say something?

Joe:

Yeah bro, that's what, um, happened on that night.

Joe:

Okay.

Joe:

I actually, I actually thought I saw the other side because the room got

Joe:

really bright, really, really bright.

Joe:

And I thought, Oh yeah, here it goes.

Joe:

And then bang, bang.

Joe:

I'm like, huh?

Joe:

I'm looking at my phone.

Joe:

I'm like, it's all this going on my head.

Joe:

I'm going, what am I doing?

Joe:

Where am I?

Joe:

How did I get here?

Joe:

I don't remember the drive home.

Joe:

I remember being angry.

Joe:

I don't remember getting on the bed.

Joe:

I don't remember.

Joe:

I just remember looking down and seeing what was around me.

Joe:

And if I were thrown into a blur like that, To hear his voice and say those

Joe:

words, it was the words you matter to me.

Joe:

Yeah.

Joe:

Nobody had ever said that to me.

Joe:

Yeah.

Joe:

Yeah, I was just bawling my eyes out.

Joe:

Yeah, just all I wanted.

Joe:

Never heard it from Dad, never heard it from Mum, never heard it from my

Joe:

siblings, not my in laws, not anyone.

Joe:

But this guy, when he said that and that kind of, yeah, so the seed that I'm going,

Joe:

Wait, people do love me, do care about me.

Joe:

I just, I'm too angry and too sad to see it.

Joe:

And um, I'm glad, I'm glad it failed.

Joe:

What followed from that, from that experience was what I can only describe

Joe:

as the journey to actual healing.

Mick:

We'll hear about Joe's healing journey soon, but first, let's go

Mick:

to our psychologist Nettie Cullen, starting with a question I felt a

Mick:

little bit self conscious asking.

Mick:

I know this question could almost be offensive in its simplicity, but

Mick:

why do people take their own lives?

Nettie:

Hmm.

Nettie:

It's interesting that you, you feel like it's a simple question, but it's

Nettie:

not really a simple question because it's a very individual process.

Nettie:

But basically, people take their own lives because of psychological pain.

Nettie:

And it's the pain of excessively felt shame or guilt or grief or loneliness or

Nettie:

despair or fear or humiliation or angst or whatever it might be for that person.

Nettie:

And the idea is that that pain becomes so great.

Nettie:

that it's perceived to be unbearable.

Nettie:

Where I'm at right now feels so unbearable that I'll just do

Nettie:

whatever it takes to stop that pain.

Nettie:

And usually it isn't, there isn't really a thought about, What happens after I

Nettie:

die for instance in fact most people who are thinking about suicide are not

Nettie:

wanting to die per se They're wanting to escape where they are right now

Mick:

Escape the pain

Nettie:

escape What feels unbearable and hopeless right now?

Nettie:

And so if people could see another solution another way to deal

Nettie:

with that pain and suffering, most people would choose that.

Nettie:

They would choose life if they could see another way.

Mick:

So not only have things become unbearable and the pain

Mick:

has become unbearable, They perceive it to be inescapable.

Nettie:

Inescapable.

Nettie:

And part of the, part of the problem there is that our our perspective can

Nettie:

narrow and shrink when we're under extreme pressure and when we're in

Nettie:

what feels like unbearable pain.

Nettie:

Our capacity to to get perspective and think outside of this particular

Nettie:

moment of suffering is So we can't see outside of that dark place that

Nettie:

we feel trapped in in that moment.

Mick:

It's all consuming.

Mick:

It's all consuming.

Mick:

Overwhelming.

Mick:

And it robs us of any perspective.

Nettie:

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Mick:

I imagine that having suicidal thoughts would scare most people.

Mick:

Are they something to be afraid of?

Nettie:

Um, Suicide, the whole topic of suicide, stirs up pretty intense

Nettie:

emotions for us in general, right?

Nettie:

It's a very confronting topic, and It is quite terrifying.

Nettie:

We're talking about life and death.

Nettie:

It is quite frightening.

Nettie:

And, and perhaps it should be in that we're talking about a permanent action

Nettie:

that there's no coming back from.

Nettie:

So the stakes are quite high.

Nettie:

I guess too, for people who, who are thinking about suicide, sometimes

Nettie:

we don't even realize what we're thinking about until we start talking

Nettie:

about it or we start reflecting on what's going on for us individually.

Nettie:

And once that Starts coming out.

Nettie:

It can be quite confronting realizing the point that we've got to in our thinking

Nettie:

Can be quite startling and in some ways That can sometimes be quite good because

Nettie:

a person might realize what's at stake.

Mick:

When you say once it starts coming out, do you mean if someone

Mick:

talks about it with someone?

Nettie:

Yeah, I think if someone starts talking about it or maybe

Nettie:

starts journaling or somehow taking the thoughts that might be

Mick:

semi conscious.

Mick:

Yeah.

Nettie:

Not completely formed their feelings and urges and longings all

Nettie:

mish mashed up together without a lot of clarity And that is why sometimes talking

Nettie:

about it can be so valuable Well, I'm sure we've all had that experience of once you

Nettie:

start speaking about something out loud You get a whole different perspective

Nettie:

on it and that's true for suicide it's true for all sorts of things that we

Nettie:

might be wrestling with and That can be actually really quite motivating for

Nettie:

someone to go, Oh, wow, look at where I find myself on the edge of something.

Nettie:

That's actually pretty significant.

Mick:

Pretty serious.

Mick:

Yeah.

Mick:

Here's Joe again, talking about how things started to shift

Mick:

after his suicide attempt.

Joe:

What shifted for me was there were, there were people around me who now

Joe:

realized just how bad of a world I was in and they actually started to connect.

Joe:

Some of them did come forward and were like, we're so sorry, we realised

Joe:

that our teasing wasn't very helpful.

Joe:

Yeah, the whole work environment moved, and I'm really thankful for the job

Joe:

because, you know, all the leaders sat down and said, we're concerned

Joe:

about him, what can we do to make his life a lot more workable at work.

Joe:

more peaceful and stuff like that.

Joe:

The things that I was going through at home, they started making

Joe:

changes that actually accommodated for my wife needing sleep.

Joe:

They gave me a later shift that started at 10.

Joe:

30.

Joe:

They allowed me to work 10.

Joe:

30 to 7.

Joe:

They gave me time to go to the gym.

Joe:

And I had a colleague who would watch my phone, my work

Joe:

phone while I was in the gym.

Joe:

So they started putting in place things that would help me.

Joe:

My manager started following up with me on a regular basis.

Joe:

Like, are you okay?

Joe:

You know, is everything all right?

Joe:

If I disappeared for too long, he was calling me.

Joe:

He was making like this, the wraparound support started to pick up at work.

Joe:

My wife's family got very supportive.

Joe:

Her brother rang me when he found out what What I had tried to do and just

Joe:

feed word of encouragement and just started realizing the challenges that

Joe:

I'm going through So people started realizing I'll hang on we actually need

Joe:

to do less talking and do more actioning around supporting Joseph and Trinity

Joe:

and making sure that they're okay.

Joe:

I wasn't really connecting with my own family at the time.

Joe:

That was still challenging And then I ended up being part of

Joe:

a men's group Kiwi Daddies.

Joe:

Kiwi Daddies.

Joe:

Kiwi Daddies.

Joe:

And that, bro, was probably the lifeline for me that I so, so needed.

Joe:

I met a group of amazing men who, uh, bro, we weren't starving anymore.

Joe:

They were dropping off food parcels.

Joe:

They were, they were inviting me and my wife to all these different events.

Joe:

They were inviting us over for dinner and.

Joe:

Just real support.

Joe:

I had someone to talk to every night, you know, and I was going through and

Joe:

realized that it created a real safe space to actually start talking about,

Joe:

Hey, this is what's going on my head.

Joe:

This is what I'm facing.

Joe:

How do I deal with it?

Mick:

At work, the support from Joe's colleagues kept growing until a group

Mick:

of them were like family to each other.

Mick:

And even though Joe doesn't work there anymore, they're still in close contact.

Joe:

We still have a family chat group, bro, to this day.

Joe:

You know, where we still talk to each other, we're checking on

Joe:

each other, and sometimes it'll go quiet, but they're there.

Joe:

If you need something, they're there for you.

Mick:

Wow.

Mick:

What does that mean to you?

Joe:

Bro, it means the world to me.

Joe:

Because these are people who have seen me at my absolute worst.

Joe:

To still there be there, bro we still love you, we're still there for

Joe:

you, we're still gonna stand by you.

Joe:

But you have to do your part, as in, if you're going through

Joe:

something, you need to talk to us.

Joe:

Because they always tell me bro, they're like, bro you're too

Joe:

smart to be struggling bro, you're too, you've got all this in your

Joe:

head, go do something with it.

Joe:

And to hear that value, see I was missing this for so long, eh?

Mick:

Let's go back to Nettie now, and I've just asked her what life

Mick:

situations or life events seem to precede someone taking their own life.

Nettie:

So we know, and I guess here's the thing, there's certain risk factors,

Nettie:

there's certain events or experiences or circumstances that might be understood to

Nettie:

be risk factors for people and generally they involve some kind of loss, right?

Nettie:

Whether it be a loss of relationship, a loss of security, a loss of A

Nettie:

loss of independence, a loss of hopes, dreams, a loss of ideals.

Nettie:

A loss

Mick:

of autonomy.

Mick:

A loss

Nettie:

of, it could be any kind of loss really.

Nettie:

But it's the individuals experience of that loss that is significant.

Nettie:

So we know say that, that depression, the experience of depression.

Nettie:

does increase the risk of suicide, and we could understand that in

Nettie:

terms of a loss of hope or a loss of joy, a loss of pleasure, you

Nettie:

know, that those kinds of things.

Nettie:

But we also know that the vast majority of people who are

Nettie:

depressed don't kill themselves.

Nettie:

And we also know that people kill themselves who aren't depressed.

Nettie:

Depressed and so while we have an idea of what some of the risk factors might

Nettie:

be They're too general to be able to predict accurately who Will ultimately

Nettie:

end up taking their lives and who won't?

Nettie:

so What I find a more useful question is not what are the risk factors,

Nettie:

but what is a person's experience of what they've been through?

Nettie:

How has it affected what meaning have they made of their experience and how

Nettie:

has it affected their quality of life?

Nettie:

How has it affected how they are experiencing?

Nettie:

Their life in that moment.

Nettie:

Sometimes I give the example of a loss of a job for one person might be the opening

Nettie:

of an opportunity into a new area, but for another person that might be devastating.

Nettie:

And so the event itself.

Nettie:

It's not insignificant, but it is what it means to that person

Nettie:

and how they experience it.

Nettie:

That's most important in terms of understanding risk.

Mick:

And I feel like for me, this all leads to wanting

Mick:

to know, what are the signs?

Mick:

What are the

Nettie:

signs?

Nettie:

What

Mick:

can we look out for in our friends and family?

Mick:

Because that's what we want to know, isn't it?

Mick:

We want to know when someone could be at risk of suicide.

Nettie:

Mm, yep.

Nettie:

And people will consciously or unconsciously be telling their story

Nettie:

all the time, one way or another.

Nettie:

And the thing with suicide is that very seldom will a person come out

Nettie:

and say, I'm not doing so well.

Nettie:

In fact, I'm not doing so well that I've actually been

Nettie:

thinking about killing myself.

Nettie:

More often you will They might not even have that thought clearly in

Nettie:

their head, like we just spoke about.

Nettie:

More often you'll see things in people's behavior.

Nettie:

You'll see things in how they're acting.

Nettie:

You'll see things in what they're saying.

Nettie:

The kinds of feeling or the messages that are coming through in their dialogue.

Nettie:

You'll see things in the way that they present themselves physically.

Nettie:

You'll see things in the way that they, you'll get a sense

Nettie:

of their feelings, if you like.

Nettie:

When you

Mick:

say things, what, what things?

Nettie:

So somebody's behavior might, you might see a lack of energy.

Nettie:

You might see a lack of motivation or despondent that you might be able to see

Nettie:

in somebody, a lethargy or a, a change in how they might normally be behaving.

Nettie:

You might see them taking less care of themselves, sleeping a whole lot more.

Nettie:

Their appetite changing.

Nettie:

Their interest changing.

Nettie:

So you might be noticing that there's something different.

Nettie:

that a person's engaging in the world.

Nettie:

When you're feeling hopeless and despairing and overwhelmed,

Nettie:

that comes through.

Nettie:

It comes through in the way that you carry yourself, but it'll

Nettie:

come through also in our dialogue.

Nettie:

You know, if you listen to somebody speaking, you might be

Nettie:

hearing themes of hopelessness.

Nettie:

You might be hearing themes of, Oh, well, what's the point?

Nettie:

Can't be bothered anymore.

Nettie:

Some of those sorts of things.

Nettie:

It indicates that they're not doing okay.

Nettie:

So the other thing that we might be able to pick up is what's being expressed

Nettie:

in terms of the emotional experience.

Nettie:

You know, a person listening to sad songs, a person writing poetry, doing

Nettie:

artwork, expressing an emotional state through non verbal kinds of communication.

Joe:

Sometimes it's happening right in front of you and you can't see it,

Joe:

because they could all appear happy and everything's fine, everything's great.

Joe:

I don't know.

Joe:

It's, it's real.

Joe:

I don't know how to describe it, but there's a look in someone's eye That

Joe:

I would know something's off and I get, I don't know whether that's an

Joe:

empath type of thing, but there's an emptiness and there's a sorrowness in

Joe:

someone's eyes that I can recognize.

Joe:

Yeah.

Joe:

Not always right, but.

Mick:

So there's an element of trusting your gut.

Joe:

Yeah.

Joe:

Something's off.

Joe:

This person's essence, their, their life feels funny.

Joe:

You know, obviously some of the most obvious ones is they don't

Joe:

communicate, they isolate themselves.

Joe:

They are hard to get ahold of.

Joe:

Or sometimes everything just seems too good to be true.

Joe:

Right.

Joe:

And I'm like, hang on, I know your story bro.

Joe:

Something's off.

Joe:

But that's a tricky one bro.

Joe:

But that's one of the dead giveaways is isolating.

Joe:

Or hints.

Joe:

Sometimes they'll message dark and gloomy things.

Joe:

Like, we'll be attentive to that stuff.

Joe:

Like, ask the questions bro, what do you mean by that?

Joe:

You know, oh bro, I wish I could just disappear for a bit.

Joe:

What do you mean by that?

Joe:

Bro, I wish I could just go away and never come back.

Joe:

What do you mean by that?

Joe:

Don't just brush it off as, yeah bro, I hear you bro, yeah.

Joe:

Actually be inquisitive.

Joe:

Ask, what do you mean by that?

Joe:

To ask the questions, and then that question, bro, are

Joe:

you thinking about suicide?

Joe:

I know it's scary to ask, but you have to, bro.

Joe:

And if you have to, ask it again.

Nettie:

The kind of crunch point when it comes to talking about suicide

Nettie:

is that usually the only way to know whether somebody is having thoughts

Nettie:

of suicide is to ask them if they are having thoughts of suicide.

Nettie:

Especially if you've got an, uh, an unease in your gut, right?

Nettie:

I, I think we've talked at other times about how much I trust my gut when it

Nettie:

comes to talking with people about what they're going through, but If somebody is

Nettie:

clearly struggling, and they're speaking about hopelessness and despair, and

Nettie:

they're expressing through verbal and non verbal means that they're not okay, the

Nettie:

only way we're going to know if suicide is at risk is to ask them about suicide.

Nettie:

It's unlikely that a person will volunteer that themselves.

Mick:

That makes perfect sense to me.

Mick:

I just briefly imagine my friends and family and what it would be

Mick:

like to actually ask them that question, and it feels very hard.

Nettie:

Hard for you?

Mick:

Yeah, for me to do.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Nettie:

Why is that hard for you to do?

Mick:

Oh gosh, it's just such a confronting topic.

Nettie:

That's exactly right.

Mick:

But I'm curious to know, is there, do you know a way of phrasing

Mick:

it that is like not as hard to kind of say or a way of putting it that

Mick:

isn't as confronting that, but, but that is still has a clarity to it?

Nettie:

It's an interesting thing because we're tiptoeing around, um,

Nettie:

trying to do this in a respectful way.

Nettie:

but clear way.

Nettie:

Um, absolutely.

Nettie:

I think there are ways of couching it in a way that's going to be easier

Nettie:

to say, but also easier to hear.

Nettie:

So what we want to be asking is, are you having thoughts of suicide?

Nettie:

Are you thinking about killing yourself?

Nettie:

But if we can express to the person why that's a question we want to ask

Nettie:

that can help make it make sense.

Nettie:

So I might say to a person, gosh, there's an awful lot that you've been through.

Nettie:

And I'm hearing you talk about feeling really hopeless and

Nettie:

really helpless, really trapped.

Nettie:

And like, you don't know any other way out.

Nettie:

I've I'm seeing you looking.

Nettie:

Really, really sad.

Nettie:

And that makes me worry.

Nettie:

And I'm wondering if you've had thoughts of suicide, if you've

Nettie:

thought about killing yourself.

Nettie:

So that puts things in a frame that maybe doesn't feel quite as abrupt.

Mick:

Mm.

Mick:

Yeah.

Mick:

You say what you've been witnessing and how it has been concerning you.

Mick:

It's, it's relational.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Mick:

Is it better to, or is it important that we say suicide or

Mick:

taking your own life or killing yourself rather than say, have you

Mick:

been thinking about harming yourself?

Nettie:

Right.

Nettie:

Yes, it absolutely is because we want to be really clear

Nettie:

about what we're talking about.

Mick:

And then that person has to either lie or Yes.

Mick:

Or say.

Mick:

Yeah, that's

Nettie:

exactly right.

Nettie:

And incidentally, sometimes people don't realize that

Nettie:

suicide is harming themselves.

Nettie:

Well, actually, if you ask somebody, you're thinking about hurting

Nettie:

yourself, they might say no, because this is not going to hurt.

Nettie:

This is actually going to stop the pain.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Nettie:

So you want to know.

Nettie:

Am I talking about suicide or are we not talking about suicide?

Nettie:

And if I ask in a vague and unclear way, I'm not going to know that.

Nettie:

But I'm also going to give a message that says, Oh, this is a subject that

Nettie:

we can't really talk openly about.

Nettie:

And.

Nettie:

That's not the message that we want to give when we're talking about suicide.

Nettie:

We want to be giving the message that we can talk about

Nettie:

this stuff, this tough stuff.

Nettie:

We can talk about painful, confronting, difficult things.

Nettie:

And what we hear from people over and over and over and over again,

Nettie:

is that when somebody asks them if they're having thoughts of suicide, the

Nettie:

overwhelming feeling is one of relief.

Nettie:

that finally I'm going to get to be able to talk about this.

Nettie:

And this person has given me permission to talk about it.

Nettie:

I don't have to worry about their feelings because they're clearly up for it.

Nettie:

They're prepared to have this tough conversation, which is really

Nettie:

powerful and really important.

Mick:

And just to cover this off, I feel like there's a few euphemisms that

Mick:

float about, I think of maybe my parents generation and things like, Oh, you

Mick:

wouldn't do something stupid, would you?

Joe:

Yeah.

Nettie:

What message does that give?

Nettie:

It gives, first of all, what you're thinking about is stupid and why

Nettie:

would I want to talk to you about something that you think is stupid?

Nettie:

And you're also saying, I don't want to hear about it.

Nettie:

You're not thinking about that.

Nettie:

Doing something stupid.

Nettie:

Are you?

Nettie:

There's not an invitation there to be open and honest about what I'm thinking

Nettie:

and feeling and going through There's an invitation to avoid and shut it down

Nettie:

and help the other person feel better

Mick:

So for the record, we're deleting that from the from the vocab list.

Debby:

Absolutely, please do So I'm Debbie Kareen, I live in the far north, I grew

Debby:

up in West Auckland, and I'm a writer, and a mum, and a gardener, a beach bum.

Mick:

This is Debbie.

Mick:

She lives right up near the very top of New Zealand.

Mick:

Back in 2006, her little brother George took his own life at the age of 32,

Mick:

turning her world upside down, and sending her on a gruelling journey of grief

Mick:

Eighteen years after her brother's death, she can sit down with me

Mick:

and talk calmly and fondly about the man they all called Horry.

Mick:

Even recalling when he was just a toddler, clumsily walking around in nappies.

Debby:

He was the cutest little fella, and I'm not just saying that.

Debby:

He was adorable.

Debby:

But as he got older and grew, he became my biggest brother.

Debby:

Like, he was kind of like twice the size of me.

Debby:

He was a big burly guy, and I thought, And even though he was my youngest brother,

Debby:

I thought of him as my big brother, the brother that looked out for me and was the

Debby:

uncle to my sons and took care of us when we had some tough years being a solo mum.

Debby:

stepped up and was like a big brother then to my sons as well.

Debby:

He was cool.

Debby:

I mean, you know, he used to come and hang out with me at my place

Debby:

and smoke cigarettes and listen to music and then we'd go out together.

Debby:

Yeah, we hung around a lot.

Debby:

He was, he was a good friend as well.

Debby:

We were really close.

Debby:

One of my best friends in life.

Mick:

When Hori was 19, he'd just moved to Auckland to pursue a career in music.

Debby:

And our dad just passed away suddenly from a heart attack.

Debby:

Really suddenly, like, pretty much dropped dead.

Debby:

He was 54, so we were all still quite young, all of us.

Debby:

It was way too soon to lose our dad.

Debby:

And our dad was a really, um, he was the glue.

Debby:

It was, Help anyone shoot off his back or that type of thing.

Debby:

So, I do know that he found it really hard to talk about dad,

Debby:

even in later years in life.

Debby:

Thinking back, I think that was key.

Debby:

One of the key.

Debby:

moments in his life when maybe it was too tough, something

Debby:

that he couldn't deal with.

Mick:

Can you tell me what you remember and what you're comfortable telling

Mick:

me about the day you found out?

Debby:

Oh, I will never forget that day.

Debby:

It was just like any other day.

Debby:

I, I'd come home and With my little boys.

Debby:

I must have picked them up from school or something was about four o'clock in

Debby:

the afternoon And I heard a car pull up outside and the dogs are barking

Debby:

and I thought Who could this be?

Debby:

I had this funny little Feeling it was George and I thought oh, it's Horry

Debby:

He's come to see me and I looked out the window and it was a cop car and I went.

Debby:

Oh, that's not Horry and My thought was they must have come to the

Debby:

wrong house And I thought, they've come down the wrong driveway.

Debby:

They haven't come to see me.

Debby:

And so I went out and greeted them and the dogs ran inside

Debby:

and jumped all over the couch.

Debby:

And they kind of went, Oh, George Kareem?

Debby:

And I says, Yeah, that's my brother.

Debby:

And they said, Oh, we're sorry, we've got some bad news for you.

Debby:

And I was expecting them to say something like, Uh, He's been hurt

Debby:

in a car accident or something or not what they said next and they said um

Debby:

they said we're very sorry to have to tell you but he's dead and I started

Debby:

crying and I said how how how did he die and they went um he suicided we

Debby:

found him Um, out at Tokarew Beach.

Debby:

And I, I just started screaming.

Debby:

Doing that really hysterical screaming that you see people do sometimes.

Debby:

And I think what I was actually trying to do was I was trying to catch my breath.

Debby:

It had hit me so hard that I think I was possibly on the floor.

Debby:

Point of maybe fainting from the shock and, um, the feeling

Debby:

that I had at that time, I'll never forget that awful feeling.

Debby:

It was like, it was almost like a physical cracking inside of, you

Debby:

could probably say my heart breaking.

Debby:

It was so overwhelming.

Debby:

So from then on, They came inside and took some details, and I kept

Debby:

saying to them, it can't be him.

Debby:

You've, you've got it wrong.

Debby:

And they read out the number plate of the car, the make of

Debby:

the car, they described him.

Debby:

They said he's wearing a ponamu.

Debby:

And I went, yeah, that sounds like him.

Debby:

That's his car.

Debby:

But it just can't be him.

Debby:

I couldn't get my head around it.

Debby:

And they were said, we're fairly certain it's him.

Debby:

And I went, And they said, we need someone to identify him.

Debby:

And I said, well, I better do it because if you've got the wrong person, I don't

Debby:

want my mum talking to the cops, telling them they've done their job wrong.

Debby:

Um, so I went and, and even as we were walking into the undertakers

Debby:

and I'm saying to this cop, I still think you've got the wrong guy.

Debby:

And he's going, Honestly, I don't think we have.

Debby:

I went, okay then.

Debby:

And of course they hadn't got the wrong guy.

Debby:

It was Horry.

Debby:

And um, yeah, there he was.

Debby:

I can still see him lying there.

Debby:

He was, and he was so quiet because he was this larger than life guy who was

Debby:

laughing and talking, joking, singing.

Debby:

He's so quiet.

Debby:

Yeah.

Debby:

So from then on it was, you know, I had to tell mum.

Debby:

I had to ring my two oldest sons.

Debby:

It was night time by then, so they'd come at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Debby:

It was just the longest night.

Debby:

Um, just the longest night.

Debby:

Yeah, those were really tough times.

Debby:

Really tough days.

Debby:

Long nights.

Debby:

Yeah, real heartbreaking stuff, eh?

Debby:

There were a few things that we kept saying to ourselves.

Debby:

One of the things we kept saying amongst ourselves and the close

Debby:

family was, I don't know why Horry thought that this would be okay.

Debby:

Why he thought we'd be okay with this.

Debby:

Yeah, there were a lot of questions.

Debby:

Gosh, there was just so many.

Debby:

Yeah.

Debby:

My little brother, eh?

Debby:

Yeah.

Mick:

Can you Describe how the next weeks, what your journey was like in

Mick:

those next weeks after his passing.

Debby:

Oh, hell.

Debby:

Just hell.

Debby:

Really dark.

Debby:

There was such a swirl of emotions and none of them were good.

Debby:

Like, we'd talk and talk about the happy times and the good times,

Debby:

but everything was so tinged with sorrow, because everything was now

Debby:

a memory, none of that good stuff was going to happen again for us.

Debby:

No more music, no more jokes, no more haangis, everything that he was, was gone.

Mick:

Do you now look back and think he was experiencing depression?

Debby:

Yeah, yeah, I heard it really well.

Debby:

Because I knew that he was a soft guy.

Debby:

He wasn't, my brother and I were a bit more streetwise.

Mick:

Sounds like he had a kind of sensitivity about him.

Debby:

Real sensitivity, yeah.

Debby:

What you often find with musicians and artists and writers.

Debby:

Because that's how they create.

Debby:

And he never lost the softness of Horry or Georgie, we sometimes call him.

Debby:

He never lost that softness.

Mick:

Sounds like he didn't have a place to kind of express his sensitivity.

Debby:

Yeah, I think so.

Debby:

I think for guys, it would have been a sign of weakness that you weren't coping.

Debby:

You weren't toughing it out.

Mick:

Debbie talks more about what her journey of grief

Mick:

and healing looked like soon.

Mick:

But first, I was curious to ask Nettie whether there's a sequence of stages that

Mick:

people go when it comes to suicidality.

Mick:

I'm guessing that it starts with like a fleeting thought of, oh

Mick:

I don't want to, I don't want to live anymore, this is too much.

Nettie:

Be better if I wasn't here.

Mick:

Yeah.

Mick:

and then goes from there.

Mick:

Is there, is there kind of a known?

Nettie:

Yeah, there's a bit of a trajectory.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Nettie:

So the act of suicide is very visible and confronting, but the pathway towards

Nettie:

that point is often very, very private.

Nettie:

But it does start, like you say, with just kind of maybe vague thoughts.

Nettie:

Better if I'm not here.

Nettie:

This is all too hard.

Nettie:

I just wish I didn't have to wake up tomorrow morning.

Nettie:

And go through all of this again.

Nettie:

So there can be vague fleeting thoughts that might develop into something with

Nettie:

a little bit more form and substance.

Nettie:

Like what if I wasn't here?

Nettie:

What might that look like?

Joe:

And

Nettie:

then that might progress into.

Nettie:

What we call sort of threats, you know, the things that start coming out

Nettie:

of the mouth that aren't necessarily just the things that are sort of

Nettie:

whirling around in my head, but I might say, you'd be better off without me.

Nettie:

I might start putting those things out there, start

Nettie:

expressing things to other people.

Nettie:

And those are often things that are said and heard, but not really

Nettie:

taken seriously because they feel like they just throw away.

Nettie:

I mean, But we should take them seriously?

Nettie:

I think we should always take them seriously.

Nettie:

What's the worst that can happen?

Nettie:

If, well, if you go, oh, what's that about?

Nettie:

What do you mean if you weren't here?

Nettie:

What are you talking about, right?

Nettie:

Giving an opportunity for the person to be heard and to start recognizing

Nettie:

what they themselves are saying.

Nettie:

Then there might be what we've kind of, suicidal gestures, if you like.

Nettie:

A little bit of risk taking behavior, a bit of kind of

Nettie:

toying or playing with Danger?

Nettie:

Yeah, playing with knives, playing with guns, playing chicken, the kind of

Nettie:

carelessness that might indicate that, uh, does it matter if I live or die?

Nettie:

And then it can, it can become more intentional.

Nettie:

I mean, the interesting thing about suicide is that you have a natural sort

Nettie:

of resistance to hurting ourselves, harming ourselves, or killing ourselves.

Nettie:

There's, there's a, a natural survival instinct, if you

Nettie:

like, but that can be eroded.

Nettie:

So if I'm pushing myself to the edge a little bit, you're

Nettie:

playing with drugs and alcohol.

Nettie:

Playing with risky behaviors, it can erode.

Mick:

Desensitize that survival instinct.

Nettie:

Exactly.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Mick:

I know that in some training I had, we were often taught

Mick:

to ask, do you have a plan?

Nettie:

Mm hmm.

Mick:

Is that kind of the next stage?

Nettie:

Well, yeah, because the more planned something is, the more risk

Nettie:

there is essentially in terms of how likely it might be to actually happen.

Mick:

What do we know about what can take people off that trajectory, off that path?

Mick:

What can redirect people from going down the path to suicide?

Nettie:

Well, when somebody is thinking about suicide, They are more

Nettie:

commonly focused on stuff that has happened previously in their lives,

Nettie:

something that's in the past, painful things that they've been through.

Nettie:

They've got their blinkers on, if you like, and all they can see is

Nettie:

the hopelessness, the stuff in the past that They're having trouble

Nettie:

escaping from, and often that sense of being very, very alone to suicide.

Nettie:

When somebody is consumed with thoughts of suicide, it's often

Nettie:

very, very, very isolating, right?

Nettie:

It's very disconnecting.

Nettie:

So anything that shifts a person's focus from being consumed with

Nettie:

thoughts of the past and hopelessness and death and aloneness can start.

Nettie:

Broadening the perspective and that's what we want to do essentially is provide an

Nettie:

opportunity for a person's Perspective to shift if they're feeling very very

Nettie:

alone what we want to be doing is starting to connect them And that might

Nettie:

be just with you in that moment, right?

Nettie:

It might be just you're this person who's starting to have a conversation

Nettie:

with them rather than that preoccupation with the past and hopelessness

Nettie:

and helplessness and despair.

Nettie:

Oftentimes what I find is that And just having an opportunity to talk about what's

Nettie:

going on, I want to say can be enough to shift, but it's actually, it can be

Nettie:

more than enough to start that shift,

Joe:

right?

Nettie:

Because that conversation, that engagement with another person,

Nettie:

starting to process things that have been swirling around inside my head, starting

Nettie:

to express that and being heard and being listened to and being understood.

Nettie:

Stood can do a lot to alleviate the pain and distress that

Nettie:

a person is experiencing.

Mick:

And the isolation right, and

Nettie:

the isolation.

Nettie:

And it's amazing actually what can happen when a person starts feeling cared for and

Nettie:

understood and listened to being able to.

Nettie:

join with another human being means that the suffering is alleviated.

Nettie:

We often talk about a bird in shed is a bird in halved and all those

Nettie:

kinds of cliches that we throw around, but it's actually true.

Nettie:

When I get to talk over with somebody who cares and is prepared to listen anything

Nettie:

that's going on in my life, it shifts it.

Nettie:

It shifts it for me.

Nettie:

When I get to talk through a problem, I have talking it through.

Nettie:

changes it for me, changes my perspective, changes my feelings about it, and gives me

Nettie:

an opportunity to look at it differently and find different ways of approaching it.

Nettie:

So the most powerful thing that we can do is connect with a

Nettie:

person who's at risk of suicide.

Mick:

And I guess the challenge to all of us is to meet people where they're at and

Mick:

to be willing to step in and make space for whatever it is they're experiencing.

Mick:

Because we don't want them to be experiencing that.

Mick:

We'd rather that they're feeling positive about life rather than feeling hopeful

Mick:

and looking forward to the future.

Mick:

And it's confronting and hard.

Mick:

We almost don't want to face the idea that they might be

Mick:

experiencing that level of despair.

Nettie:

That's exactly right, which is why we'll often say, oh for goodness

Nettie:

sake, you've got so much to live for.

Nettie:

You've got so many good things in your life.

Nettie:

And what happens then is we just miss them.

Mick:

And they just feel all the more shame for feeling

Mick:

the way they are feeling.

Mick:

But what we need to be doing is going, what is it you're experiencing?

Mick:

And even though it might be hard to hear, make space for it.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Nettie:

Tell me, why, why are you thinking about suicide?

Nettie:

Why are you thinking about that now?

Nettie:

What's going on for you that you've got to that point?

Nettie:

Help me understand.

Mick:

Is it okay to say, you know, that makes me really sad that someone I

Mick:

love this much is thinking about that?

Mick:

Is it?

Nettie:

It depends, really, on the person.

Nettie:

I mean, that's a tricky one, because you don't want to make it about you.

Nettie:

True, very true.

Nettie:

Right, and that's, that's, I mean, the reality is that That actually might

Nettie:

be a valuable thing for that person to hear, but we've got to be careful

Nettie:

that we're not making it about us.

Mick:

Keep the focus on them and try to understand their experience.

Joe:

People make that decision because they don't feel valued, they don't

Joe:

feel that they belong, and more importantly, they're not feeling heard.

Joe:

And so you get to the point in life where your absolute existence feels

Joe:

like it has absolutely no worth and value, and therefore the only way

Joe:

to add value is to remove yourself.

Joe:

It's a weird mathematical equation.

Joe:

The world is mean to me.

Joe:

If I remove myself to punish the world for what it's done to me, then sweet.

Joe:

If I remove myself I don't have to suffer pain anymore, or, that's the third one,

Joe:

I'm hurting other people and I don't want to hurt them anymore so I'm going

Joe:

to remove myself because I'm a burden.

Joe:

But I think it's, it's so hard for us to grasp what that means.

Joe:

What does it mean to feel valued?

Joe:

What does it mean to feel connected?

Joe:

What does it mean to feel heard?

Joe:

Without adding all the scientific jargon to it, to be able to sit

Joe:

down with somebody And have a good yarn, and not necessarily take on

Joe:

that person's mamai, because it's not what you're supposed to do.

Joe:

It's giving them a space where they can share what they need to share, knowing

Joe:

that they won't be judged or discriminated against, and to be able to just go.

Joe:

Blurrp out into the atmosphere, let it sink to the ground, and then you

Joe:

need to be the trusted person who will not go around and repeat that.

Mick:

Four years ago, Joe got a job as an intake coordinator for community housing.

Mick:

And

Joe:

I would assess whānau for two hours at a time, up to six times a day.

Joe:

And then I learned that people in life who are going through hard

Joe:

times all want the same thing.

Joe:

It's someone to listen to them, someone who can hear them.

Joe:

and do the best they can to relate to them without being judged and discriminated

Joe:

against because of their poor choices, because of their current situation.

Joe:

And that

Mick:

process you just talked about where someone who's in that dark,

Mick:

hopeless, isolated space where they're not coping, if they get a chance to

Mick:

have that conversation, to have that chat, to offload what's going on

Mick:

inside them in a trusted space with someone who listens and doesn't judge

Mick:

and doesn't expect anything from them.

Mick:

What power does that have?

Joe:

I can only describe what I saw in the eyes of other people.

Joe:

So I assessed, assessed about 2000 plus families and I discovered that

Joe:

when they were given that space, But it's like seeing a completely

Joe:

different person or a different, completely different group of people.

Joe:

They came in and they brought darkness with them.

Joe:

When they walked out, they could take on the world.

Joe:

The power of doing that has the ability to shift someone from feeling that

Joe:

life is impossible to life is possible.

Joe:

And it created this atmosphere where if you came inside for an assessment,

Joe:

you were sitting around a fire.

Joe:

to share your story and all of the hurt and the pain gets put into that fire.

Joe:

And so it almost kind of like a sacrificial experience where

Joe:

we're going to throw all the mamae now that's been burdening us.

Joe:

And we're going to start talking about the dream.

Joe:

And it's amazing where we knew that the biggest question that has helped a

Joe:

lot of families and those discussions that have helped them break through.

Joe:

And it sounds real cheesy.

Joe:

What are one or two things you've always wanted to do?

Joe:

But because life is so life.

Joe:

it always got in the way.

Joe:

What are those two things that are always burning in the back of your mind?

Joe:

Probably the stories that would come out.

Joe:

I've always wanted to get in the carpentry.

Joe:

I'm a solo mum with three kids.

Joe:

I don't have time, but I've always wanted to be a nanny.

Joe:

I've wanted to be a nurse.

Joe:

I want to go and study, you know, but I've got all this that's going on.

Joe:

And then you start asking them what are the consequences of that not happening?

Joe:

Now you're connecting pain to the dream and they would go away.

Joe:

And realize that it hurts more to constantly put the dream in the back

Joe:

pocket than being stuck in the treadmill of the merry go round of hardship.

Joe:

Bit of a runaround to that question, but bro, coming in, beaten up by life,

Joe:

and then walking out going, fah, bro, I feel mean, bro, I feel amazing.

Joe:

And the theme was always the same, it's the first time I've had someone listen to

Joe:

me, hear my story, and I feel like, and I walk out, I don't feel I'm being judged.

Joe:

They feel empowered, they feel valued, and they feel heard.

Joe:

That word value, bro.

Mick:

As you're hearing, Joe has been actively involved in the healing

Mick:

journey of hundreds of other people.

Mick:

Him and his wife have even started a charitable trust called You Matter,

Mick:

focusing on suicide prevention and supporting those bereaved by suicide.

Mick:

Their goal is to help people turn their stories of trauma into

Mick:

stories of strength and resilience.

Mick:

But, what about Joe himself?

Mick:

What were the key things that led to his healing?

Joe:

Having mentors.

Joe:

Having mentors and teachers who genuinely want you to succeed.

Joe:

I came across a guy named Daniel in August, and he saw me posting

Joe:

up my little woe is me on LinkedIn.

Joe:

He reached out to me and goes, look, I've been reading your content and I've

Joe:

been moved by it and I really want to get around you and kind of support you and

Joe:

find some solutions to what's going on.

Joe:

And they've given me what I wish I had earlier.

Joe:

What's that?

Joe:

And that was people who I could go to for perspective.

Joe:

People who I could blurts out all my problems and my challenges and

Joe:

they'll come back and they'll give me what I need to hear As well as

Joe:

some affirmation and some support.

Joe:

I would say they have given me a spine a Backbone, that's what they've given

Joe:

me bro strength resilience perseverance encouragement and Life they'll hear

Joe:

what I have to say and they just speak life into You Into me as a person but at

Joe:

the same time keeping the conversation real to go This is the consequences if

Joe:

you make that decision and here's our perspective And that is something that

Joe:

i've never had before But it's powerful Someone who's making time for you

Mick:

What are some common myths about suicide?

Nettie:

The biggest and I think the most significant myth around suicide is that

Nettie:

if I talk to somebody about suicide I will put the idea in their head and Somebody

Nettie:

who wasn't suicidal before will now become suicidal because I have raised it.

Nettie:

We know that's not the case We know that Me asking somebody if they're

Nettie:

having a thought of suicide is not significant enough to make that

Nettie:

transition between a life worth living to a life not worth living, essentially.

Nettie:

And it's more

Mick:

likely to be a catharsis to them to be able to talk about it.

Nettie:

Absolutely.

Nettie:

And that's, that's what we hear overwhelmingly from people is that being

Nettie:

able to talk about it is, a relief, right?

Nettie:

Other myths about suicide, that a person who's thinking about suicide is

Nettie:

weak or selfish or just can't hack it.

Mick:

Gosh, yeah.

Nettie:

It's a big one.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Nettie:

And so, I mean, and the selfishness thing too, because the reality is if somebody

Nettie:

dies by suicide, it does hurt them.

Nettie:

People who are left behind.

Nettie:

That person is not typically wanting to hurt people, not, sometimes not even aware

Nettie:

of the pain that they might leave behind.

Nettie:

Often they think they're doing everybody a favor by taking

Nettie:

themselves out of the picture.

Nettie:

And that judgment or that assessment of somebody who's thinking about

Nettie:

suicide only creates more distance, only disconnects and avoids connecting

Nettie:

with that person around there.

Mick:

Despair.

Mick:

To

Nettie:

their despair.

Mick:

And it is only likely to make them feel worse about themselves.

Nettie:

Exactly.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Nettie:

Exactly.

Nettie:

I've got a whole list of myths about suicide.

Nettie:

One is that if people are talking about it, if people talk about

Nettie:

suicide, they won't actually do it.

Nettie:

That's a commonly held myth that if someone's talking about it, they're

Nettie:

just attention seeking and they're not, they're not actually going to do it.

Nettie:

They're just waxing lyrical.

Nettie:

People who talk about suicide do sometimes.

Nettie:

Do it.

Nettie:

People who talk about suicide may be attention seeking

Nettie:

because they need attention.

Nettie:

One of the other myths about suicide is that it occurs without warning.

Nettie:

You can never tell and we know actually that that's not the case that for

Nettie:

the vast majority of suicides There are indications along the path that

Nettie:

if, that if we know what to look for, that can be recognized and seen.

Nettie:

Very often what we experience when somebody that we know dies

Nettie:

by suicide, it often is a shock.

Joe:

Right.

Nettie:

Their private journey has suddenly become very public, but we

Nettie:

hadn't tuned in previously to what might have been going on for them.

Nettie:

So it seems like there was no warning.

Nettie:

It seems like it came out of the blue, but if we had tuned in We might have

Nettie:

seen things beforehand, and often when I speak with people who've been bereaved by

Nettie:

suicide, one of the struggles that they have is recognizing after the fact what

Nettie:

some of the indications might have been.

Nettie:

That if they'd only noticed, if they'd only seen, they might have

Nettie:

behaved differently, or they might have done something differently.

Mick:

And the level of self blame that must occur in that

Mick:

situation must be just unbearable.

Nettie:

It's huge.

Nettie:

It's huge.

Nettie:

But what we can learn from those experiences is that we can pay attention.

Nettie:

We can tune in now that we know what we need to pay attention to.

Debby:

There's a lot of guilt.

Debby:

There's a lot of guilt around suicide for, I think, for family members and friends,

Debby:

of why didn't we see what was happening?

Debby:

Why didn't we see this coming?

Debby:

Why didn't we do something?

Debby:

I think there was a really huge one for me, was I, I just, I don't know

Debby:

if I'm being arrogant and thinking that if I had have gone and seen him

Debby:

in those last few days, I might've been able to talk him out of it.

Debby:

Maybe in my false hope and, and in denial, I told myself I could have saved him.

Debby:

Why didn't I save him?

Mick:

So you almost did.

Mick:

Experienced a season of self blame.

Debby:

Yeah, huge season.

Debby:

That was probably the biggest thing for me because we've been

Debby:

so close and I loved him so much.

Debby:

If I loved him so much, why wasn't I looking after him better?

Debby:

And why, why couldn't I have seen this coming and why

Debby:

couldn't I have stopped him?

Debby:

And, um, so there was a huge part for me and, and just so sad.

Debby:

I was so sad that I didn't have him anymore.

Debby:

One of my best friends had gone.

Debby:

I felt I was almost going to die from a broken heart.

Debby:

I'm not being melodramatic.

Debby:

It was so intense and so painful.

Debby:

There was no let up.

Debby:

And just trying to figure out life without him.

Mick:

And what do you, uh, what do you know about how things were, uh,

Mick:

emotionally for George throughout his twenties and the start of his thirties?

Debby:

That's probably conversations we didn't have in hindsight because he

Debby:

always seemed like he was doing okay.

Debby:

But there were times I did think to myself, it doesn't look like he's

Debby:

doing okay, and should I say something?

Debby:

But then I didn't, and then the next time I'd see him, he'd be okay again.

Debby:

Yeah, so they weren't conversations that we had.

Debby:

Yeah.

Debby:

I don't know why.

Debby:

And it's brothers and sisters too, like, if Horry had been a sister, we probably

Debby:

would have talked about that stuff, because no disrespect to guys, but we all

Debby:

know that ladies talk about everything.

Debby:

And like I say in the conversations after dad died, my mum and I were able

Debby:

to easily talk about Dad and how we were feeling and have a good cry because it's

Debby:

okay for ladies to, um, have a cry, eh?

Debby:

It's almost expected, but for guys, we've got to have that stiff upper lip and

Mick:

Yeah, it's an unfortunate.

Mick:

We'll have a little

Debby:

cry in the corner, bro, but you know, make it quick.

Debby:

We

Mick:

don't want to see it.

Debby:

No, it's

Mick:

It's a pretty unhelpful part of our culture, isn't it?

Debby:

It is.

Mick:

That toughness we're expected to have that involves not

Mick:

sharing what we're going through.

Debby:

Mmm.

Debby:

It's not good.

Mick:

I've heard that when a family member takes their own life, that there

Mick:

can be a lot of like shame and stigma around suicide for, for family members.

Mick:

Did you experience that?

Debby:

Yeah.

Debby:

Yeah, we did.

Debby:

I remember when it first happened the next day and my mum, God bless her, she said to

Debby:

me, do people know what happened to Hori?

Debby:

And I said, mum, everybody knows.

Debby:

And she goes, oh, and for a long time, um.

Debby:

She told people he died in a car accident.

Mick:

Wow.

Debby:

And not because I think she was ashamed of what he'd

Debby:

done, but it was just too hard.

Debby:

The conversation's too hard.

Debby:

And there is that shame in that, why weren't we looking after him properly?

Debby:

And people say that to you, there's, there's a list of things that people

Debby:

say to you that should be banned.

Debby:

Things like, what the hell did he do that for?

Debby:

Or, how selfish, what a bloody selfish thing to do.

Debby:

And I'm kind of like, come on, like, give the guy a break.

Debby:

They think it's a selfish thing to do, I, I don't think it is at all.

Debby:

It's the end of a tether.

Debby:

And I think possibly people think that loved ones and family

Debby:

are better off without them.

Debby:

I hope they don't, but I think they do.

Mick:

You mentioned, you talk about the kind of support

Mick:

people gave and the lack of.

Mick:

How would you describe helpful support that you got?

Mick:

And how would you describe unhelpful support?

Debby:

So helpful support is the people, like I mentioned,

Debby:

my best friend, Lightning.

Debby:

That's something, that's my nickname for her.

Debby:

She came in.

Debby:

Because

Mick:

she's there in a flash.

Debby:

She's there in a flash.

Debby:

Yeah.

Debby:

She doesn't muck around.

Mick:

It's a good friend to have.

Debby:

She's a great friend.

Debby:

Yeah.

Debby:

She stayed and she said to me when she eventually went home, she said,

Debby:

I want you to ring me every morning.

Debby:

Just ring me.

Debby:

And just let me know you're okay.

Debby:

And some mornings I would, I couldn't talk.

Debby:

And so she'd say, is that you sweetie?

Debby:

And I, and I'd just go, yeah.

Debby:

And that went on for probably a good couple of months.

Mick:

What did it mean to you to have someone wanting to do that for you?

Debby:

have meant that someone cared and someone was still there for me and

Debby:

someone wasn't judging me for being what I perceived as, I was bad sister.

Debby:

And she wasn't judging Horry either, despite him taking off too soon

Debby:

and for breaking their, their best friend's heart.

Debby:

Yeah.

Mick:

Hearing you describe what You were like in that first year and then

Mick:

sitting with you today, I can tell there's been a massive journey of

Mick:

healing has gone on between those two.

Mick:

How do you heal from something this big?

Mick:

What does that healing process look like?

Debby:

Yeah, it's so huge and it's almost like when I speak about Debbie in 2006.

Debby:

Yeah.

Debby:

It's in the third person, you

Mick:

know,

Debby:

it's a different person.

Debby:

It's kind of like grief took real Debbie away for quite a few years

Debby:

and then brought her back and she was different, but still real Debbie.

Debby:

Um, one of the best things that somebody said to me, she

Debby:

lost her brother to suicide.

Debby:

She said to me, um, you only have to be really kind to

Debby:

yourself in the coming days.

Debby:

And I've never forgotten that, and it's something that I always address

Debby:

other people with their big loss.

Debby:

I say, be kind to yourself, be gentle, don't have any expectations

Debby:

on yourself, and staying safe.

Mick:

What do you mean staying safe?

Debby:

Just being amongst my friends and my family, my close friends,

Debby:

the people that cared and weren't going to judge me for anything.

Debby:

ask anything of me.

Debby:

I didn't put too much on myself for a couple of years really,

Debby:

just stayed home and healed.

Mick:

How common is it to have suicidal thoughts?

Nettie:

Well, the interesting thing is that People actively don't

Nettie:

communicate thoughts of suicide.

Nettie:

So it's a little bit tricky to work out how many people might

Nettie:

be having thoughts of suicide.

Nettie:

But what we know is it's far more common than most people think.

Nettie:

And, um, Estimates are that around 1 in 20 or 5 or 6 percent of people in any one

Nettie:

year will be having thoughts of suicide.

Nettie:

So in New Zealand we're talking like 250, 000 people a year

Nettie:

might have thoughts of suicide.

Mick:

How effective is therapy when it comes to feeling suicidal?

Nettie:

Well, the good news is that therapy is effective.

Nettie:

If people can recognize that there is an issue, it's Um, then we can work on it.

Nettie:

We can absolutely work on it.

Nettie:

Therapy works.

Nettie:

Whatever the issue is that's underlying a person's thoughts of suicide.

Nettie:

And that's varied.

Nettie:

So one person's reason for thinking about suicide will be completely

Nettie:

different to another person's reasons for thinking about suicide.

Nettie:

Like Sinead O'Connor once said that a sunny day was a reason

Nettie:

for her to think about suicide.

Nettie:

Which for most of us seems bizarre.

Nettie:

But when she was asked more about it, she said that she didn't deserve

Nettie:

to be alive on such a beautiful day.

Nettie:

If a person's had thoughts of suicide, The underlying issue is what needs to

Nettie:

be addressed in order for long term healing, long term recovery and growth.

Nettie:

So therapy is very effective because a lot of how we've ended up where we are

Nettie:

when we're having thoughts of suicide is complex and it's interwoven with

Nettie:

all of our past experiences and our relationships and the meaning that we

Nettie:

make of life and and all sorts of things and being able to sit down and really

Nettie:

nut that out and It can be incredibly powerful and helpful for a person.

Nettie:

It absolutely works.

Mick:

In our conversation, Jo and I got talking about male culture,

Mick:

and what aspects of it can be unhelpful when it comes to suicide.

Mick:

Get past the hardin up

Joe:

stuff.

Joe:

It doesn't make you weak to talk about stuff that you're going through.

Joe:

Just because you're a man, just because you may be the husband in the

Joe:

marriage, doesn't mean that you have to be the pill of strength all the time.

Joe:

Men are human beings.

Joe:

Remember that you bleed, you get tired, you get restless,

Joe:

you get sick, you have emotions.

Joe:

That happens.

Joe:

You're a human being.

Joe:

You're a living creature.

Joe:

You have the same level of emotions or the same type of emotions as a woman.

Joe:

Stop thinking that we're Superman.

Joe:

We can handle it all.

Joe:

And I'm only saying that because it's something that I would say to

Joe:

myself and someone that the people that have said it to me is Sup bro,

Joe:

you may be big buff and strong.

Joe:

I don't know, lanky, skinny, whatever.

Joe:

You being a man doesn't mean that you have to be strong 24 7.

Joe:

Allow yourself the ability to be human.

Joe:

It's no shame.

Mick:

What cultural or societal norms do you think can be unhelpful and

Mick:

might even increase the likelihood of someone taking their own life?

Nettie:

Yeah, that the idea of what's expected of us in terms of how we're

Nettie:

meant to be in society, some of those attitudes around, you know, blacks don't

Nettie:

cry, men should toughen up and shouldn't go to therapy, say, um, so in terms

Nettie:

of our, our kind of Western culture, I think there's something about the

Nettie:

idealization of self sufficiency, right, that we have in our society, that you

Nettie:

should be able to do it on your own.

Nettie:

You shouldn't have to rely on people.

Nettie:

You should be able to exist.

Nettie:

And, fix it yourself, do it yourself, cope with it yourself,

Nettie:

and not depend on other people.

Mick:

And if you're not managing or even coping, there's something

Mick:

deeply flawed about you.

Mick:

That's right.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Nettie:

Yeah.

Nettie:

The idea of dependence is like.

Nettie:

unthinkable.

Nettie:

To acknowledge that I'm not okay and I need help can be especially

Nettie:

hard in our society, I think.

Mick:

Obviously, your suicide attempt very nearly ended your life.

Mick:

If you could go back and sit down next to yourself that day,

Mick:

what would you say to yourself?

Joe:

Oh, just hug me.

Joe:

Take care, bro.

Joe:

I just thought, bro, what do you want to do there?

Joe:

I would hug me and I would say, it's okay, bro.

Joe:

It's going to be all right.

Joe:

It's going to be all right.

Joe:

That's all I do.

Joe:

When I wait for myself to talk.

Joe:

Yeah, bro.

Joe:

Power of a hug bro.

Joe:

That, do you understand the hug I'm talking about?

Joe:

The long strong.

Joe:

It's that strong hug.

Joe:

Let's say, bro.

Mick:

I'm not going to let you

Joe:

go.

Joe:

Yeah, you feel it.

Joe:

There's that hug.

Joe:

Yeah, I can't put it.

Joe:

It's that, it's that, it's that hug bro.

Joe:

That's what I would give myself.

Joe:

And I'm like, got you bro.

Joe:

It's going to be okay.

Joe:

And whatever it is that you're carrying, it's two of us now, whatever it takes.

Mick:

Casting your mind back again to like before that attempt, did anyone

Mick:

ever ask you directly if you were thinking of taking your own life?

Mick:

No,

Joe:

not once.

Joe:

No one ever asked me that question.

Mick:

And what do you think would have happened if they did?

Joe:

Oh bro, I probably would have just said, no, what are you talking about?

Joe:

Or I probably would have started bawling my eyes out right there in front of them.

Joe:

I would have been very hesitant because I would have been like, why

Joe:

are you asking me that question?

Joe:

And can I trust you with that question?

Mick:

What would you say to someone who has noticed some changes in a friend

Mick:

or a family member, maybe they're not coping with life and they've got

Mick:

kind of like an unsettling worry that there might be a risk of suicide.

Mick:

What advice would you give that friend or family member?

Joe:

I would say make the time, make the time to check in on that

Joe:

person and to make that check in 100 percent about that person.

Joe:

And if you feel you want to ask the question, ask the question.

Joe:

Are you having suicidal thoughts?

Joe:

Are you thinking about suicide?

Joe:

And it's important to ask those questions to then not have

Joe:

asked and then regret it later.

Joe:

We need to ask that question.

Joe:

I actually said this just yesterday to a brother of mine

Joe:

that's going through quite a bit.

Joe:

I said, you know, bro, whatever it takes, I'll be the guy that you can

Joe:

swear at, the guy that you can come and punch in the face and Curse me,

Joe:

whatever you want, because what you're going through now is pretty crappy.

Joe:

But to know that it's safe for you to do that, you know, I don't care what it is.

Joe:

I'm that guy and Be that for other people.

Joe:

Remember, it's not about you.

Joe:

It's about them.

Joe:

You're not taking on their heaviness.

Joe:

You're not taking on their pain You're just the person who's there to be able

Joe:

to give a sounding board to be able to let them Put it out and into the ground.

Joe:

Let it sink into the ground.

Joe:

But, um, but if it were you and you were going through a dark time, how

Joe:

would you want someone to love on you?

Joe:

Or that hug bro?

Mick:

Back to that hug, eh?

Joe:

Yeah bro.

Joe:

Come out of nowhere, just, you go up to the, I've done this a few times, met

Joe:

some, some very good friends of mine, you know, when they, I see it, I'm

Joe:

going, I know that look in that eye.

Joe:

And I'd go up and I'd hug them, bro, no words, they'd just break down and cry.

Joe:

That's all it is.

Joe:

It's just carry that, that weight for them for a little bit.

Mick:

What can I do if a friend or family member, if I know

Mick:

they're having suicidal thoughts?

Nettie:

If you know they're having suicidal thoughts.

Mick:

Yeah, maybe I have asked that question and they have said yes.

Mick:

So now I know that they have been having suicidal thoughts.

Mick:

What can I do?

Nettie:

Well, be prepared to listen, understand, and listen.

Nettie:

and provide the space for that person to be able to talk and

Nettie:

process what they're going through.

Nettie:

Be prepared to sit there in that dark, helpless, hopeless place with them

Nettie:

so that they can feel understood.

Nettie:

Often that can be enough to start shifting things and I can't, I can't stress enough

Nettie:

really how significant that can be.

Nettie:

It feels like it's a very It's not doing much, but it's actually doing a whole lot.

Nettie:

The other thing I do want to say though Is that it's important to remember what

Nettie:

you can't do as well what you can't take responsibility for So you can be

Nettie:

there to support people that you care for and love, but you can't solve all

Nettie:

their problems You can't be their savior.

Nettie:

You can't be the only one Who's going to be able to support them.

Nettie:

So knowing what we can do, but also knowing the limits is really important.

Nettie:

Because we can't jump in that hole with them.

Nettie:

Uh, we need to be able to recognize when other supports are needed,

Nettie:

which is, in the case of suicide, is pretty much always, right?

Nettie:

We always need to get other people involved.

Nettie:

Usually understanding what the issue is underlying that suicide

Nettie:

will help us identify what extra supports might be needed, whether

Nettie:

it's financial, relationship.

Mick:

Therapy.

Nettie:

Therapy.

Nettie:

All sorts of things, but recognising the limits is important and looking

Nettie:

after ourselves in the process too.

Mick:

What do we know protects people against suicide?

Nettie:

Yes.

Nettie:

So protective factors tend to be around resources, you know, personal resources.

Nettie:

And what I mean by that is a person who feels connected to other people

Nettie:

that tends to be a protective factor, a person who has meaning,

Nettie:

meaning, and something to live for.

Nettie:

Having something to live for that's a connection to life and whether

Nettie:

that's something to live for is um a family or a meaningful occupation

Nettie:

or a faith or a cause you know that that that sense of Connection

Mick:

and purpose

Nettie:

can be really important because when we feel disconnected,

Nettie:

the threads get very, very thin, what's holding us into life.

Nettie:

Relationships in particular, though I think are particularly significant.

Debby:

When you're in those really dark spaces and there is no light,

Debby:

you really look for the gold.

Debby:

And you grab onto everything, every nugget of light and goodness, and

Debby:

okay, there's another one, and there's another bit of goodness, and so you,

Debby:

it starts to build, and I think that becomes your strength, and I did come

Debby:

out, I did come out the other side.

Debby:

It's kind of like, you always have a limp in your soul.

Debby:

There's always this limp.

Debby:

Something broke and it's mended but it's crooked.

Debby:

So you always have this kind of limp some days.

Mick:

What's life like for you now?

Joe:

Life is good bro.

Joe:

It's pretty amazing at the moment.

Joe:

But hey, the challenges are still there.

Joe:

But my approach to these challenges has changed.

Joe:

They no longer bother me in the sense of, I want to give up, you know, it's, I'm

Joe:

excited about challenges that come now.

Joe:

Life is very exciting, you know, my wife and I are going into business, we've

Joe:

gone into business for ourselves and we're, we're chasing our dreams and our

Joe:

goals, but wherever I can, be available.

Joe:

That's what I'm doing my best with now.

Mick:

If someone's listening to this

Joe:

and

Mick:

they,

Mick:

they've had a loved one take their own life, And maybe it wasn't that long ago.

Mick:

What would you want to say to them?

Debby:

Oh, man, I want to say to them, I'm so sorry that you have to go through this.

Debby:

It's, this is probably going to be the most painful thing you're ever

Debby:

going to have to do in your life.

Debby:

But know that you will get through it.

Debby:

The pain lessens and, um, Just really cherish all the really good

Debby:

times that you have with your loved one and talk about that stuff.

Debby:

And the important thing to do in these early days is talk about them a lot

Debby:

and talk about how you're feeling and if you need to get counselling or

Debby:

you need to maybe have some just mild sleeping pills or some herbal remedies.

Debby:

Or some not

Mick:

so mild ones.

Mick:

Or

Debby:

not so mild ones.

Debby:

Just And just see it that it's for a time and it's not for, it won't last forever.

Debby:

If this awful, awful, terrible, sad time won't last forever.

Debby:

And eventually, um, you will be able to talk about them again and

Debby:

think about them without crying.

Debby:

So, um, go really easy on yourself.

Debby:

Really easy.

Debby:

Yeah.

Mick:

And.

Mick:

Can life be good again after losing someone to suicide?

Debby:

Yes, it can be.

Debby:

It can be good.

Debby:

Um, so I'm a, I guess a testament to that, is that Yeah, life did go on,

Debby:

and it went on well, and, man, you cherish people after this, and you hold

Debby:

them close, and you're hyper vigilant about when people are struggling.

Debby:

So you come out different, yeah, life, life does become good again.

Mick:

There's a chance that this is a slightly unfair, an almost kind of

Mick:

unfair question to ask, or one that you might, just might not want to answer,

Mick:

basically, and tell me if that's the case.

Mick:

I also know that you will have gone over a thousand what ifs in your mind.

Joe:

Yeah.

Mick:

Over the years.

Mick:

Obviously George Horry had a battle with some deep and dark emotions

Mick:

that were all consuming to him.

Mick:

In the midst of that battle with those feelings, can you describe what

Mick:

other path you wish he was able to take other than the one that he did?

Mick:

Oh

Debby:

yes of course.

Debby:

I wish he'd come and seen me.

Debby:

I wish he had a cool round.

Debby:

Or

Debby:

just reached out to one person.

Debby:

I think that is possibly all it would have taken.

Debby:

Um, yeah, that's probably the biggest wish I, was that he

Debby:

could have come and seen me.

Debby:

And I would have done anything, um, to, to save you, Horry.

Debby:

That, you know, I would have done anything if you had have told me.

Debby:

That's how you were feeling?

Debby:

If only I'd known.

Debby:

And there would have been no shame in it, honestly.

Mick:

In what?

Debby:

If he had have said to me, Deb, I can't go on anymore, I

Debby:

would have just said, it's okay.

Debby:

Just stay here.

Debby:

Just stay here until you can.

Debby:

And I would have probably followed him around.

Debby:

Made sure that he was okay until he was okay.

Debby:

And then more.

Debby:

Yeah.

Mick:

And what about the feelings themselves that he

Mick:

was obviously battling with?

Mick:

Like, the dark and hard feelings.

Mick:

What do you wish he was able to do with those?

Debby:

Mmm.

Debby:

I remember at the time, part of the grief for me was that

Debby:

he was in such a hurting place.

Debby:

That grieved me and that he was hurting so badly.

Debby:

I'd probably say, why don't you just have a good cry?

Debby:

I won't tell anyone.

Debby:

I promise you.

Debby:

What do you think you need to go and talk to somebody?

Debby:

Do you want me to help you find someone?

Debby:

It's like, please don't do it.

Debby:

Please don't do that.

Debby:

People don't realise their value to other people.

Debby:

Somebody said to me during the tangi, there are hundreds

Debby:

and hundreds of people there.

Debby:

And this guy said to me, I don't think Horry realised

Debby:

how much everybody loved him.

Debby:

Not just liked him and thought he was a great guy.

Debby:

People loved him.

Mick:

If someone's listening to this and they are in a really hard and dark

Mick:

place and they're experiencing the hopelessness that we talked about before

Mick:

and things, Have become unbearable and they're not coping and they are

Mick:

thinking about taking their own life.

Mick:

What would you want to say to them?

Nettie:

I don't want to say there's always another way.

Nettie:

There's always another way.

Nettie:

I want to say that there are, oh, yeah, I'm aware of all of these kind

Nettie:

of cliches that come up, like suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary

Nettie:

problem, but that doesn't capture the the reality of the struggle, that the

Nettie:

struggle is real, and the struggle is agonizing, and nobody's denying that.

Nettie:

Even if you need to let somebody else hold the hope for you for

Nettie:

a time, there's always hope.

Nettie:

Please don't give up.

Nettie:

I know that it can feel overwhelmingly hopeless.

Nettie:

It can feel overwhelmingly lonely.

Nettie:

In this space, the despair can feel inescapable and yet,

Nettie:

and yet there, there is hope.

Nettie:

You don't have to do this on your own and it's, it's tough and it takes courage to

Nettie:

reach out and to let somebody know that you're struggling and to ask for help.

Nettie:

You might be surprised at who's there for you.

Nettie:

You might be surprised that there can be hope.

Nettie:

There can be joy.

Nettie:

There can be healing.

Nettie:

There can be recovery and

Nettie:

there can be a different ending to your story.

Debby:

Your life is worth so much more.

Debby:

Then you think it is.

Debby:

You still have so much to give that you don't even know about.

Debby:

And don't think that your life has been a waste of time because it hasn't.

Debby:

There's still so much more ahead.

Debby:

And just know that people really love you and they really do care about you.

Debby:

And there's people around you that you don't know about that would

Debby:

do anything to keep you here.

Debby:

And you, you staying here.

Debby:

is worth everything to some people.

Debby:

And, um,

Debby:

if I was in a room with someone now, I would, I would do it.

Debby:

I would say, please, please don't do this.

Debby:

You'll regret it.

Debby:

You know, there's so much, there's so much ahead of you that is worth

Debby:

staying for and where you won't be able to make any more memories if you go.

Debby:

So, yeah, that's what I would say.

Debby:

And I would I would personally beg someone to stay.

Debby:

I would hold onto their leg.

Debby:

And not let go.

Debby:

I honestly would.

Debby:

Yeah.

Debby:

So people need to know that.

Debby:

That's what people would do for them.

Joe:

Bro, sis, if you're listening, if you hear one, if you hear me, the important

Joe:

thing is I want you to recognise is that one, is that you can hear my voice.

Joe:

Two, is that you're listening to this podcast.

Joe:

And I want you to understand that you're not crazy, you're not stupid in the head,

Joe:

it's okay.

Joe:

You may not know me but I love you.

Joe:

I really want you to know that I love you.

Joe:

It's coming from a stranger, but don't you dare quit on yourself.

Joe:

Don't you dare.

Joe:

You matter to me whether I know you or not.

Joe:

Love you bro, love you sis.

Joe:

If you haven't heard it, you're hearing it now.

Joe:

It's okay.

Joe:

That voice you're hearing in your mind that's telling you that

Joe:

you're useless, that's wrong.

Joe:

That voice that says that you're not worth anything, that voice is wrong.

Joe:

You are valuable.

Joe:

If you did not belong here you would not have ever been born.

Joe:

You belong here.

Joe:

Somewhere, somewhere up in whatever sky, whether you believe in God

Joe:

or not, something, someone decided that this earth needs someone to

Joe:

be here to make it worth existing.

Joe:

They chose you.

Joe:

So your life has value.

Joe:

You have purpose.

Joe:

You are important.

Joe:

You're not small.

Joe:

You're not useless.

Joe:

You're not thick.

Joe:

You're not stupid.

Joe:

You are chosen.

Joe:

You are loved.

Joe:

And I want you to say that out loud to yourself.

Joe:

You wake up in the morning, you say that, you say it 50 times, I am loved, I am

Joe:

loved, I am loved, I am loved, I am loved.

Joe:

You say that for a whole month and you keep saying it.

Joe:

You wake up every morning, it's now, you know it's automatic.

Joe:

You belong.

Joe:

You tell that voice it's wrong.

Mick:

And what could that person do?

Mick:

What might be the next thing that person could do?

Joe:

Reach out.

Joe:

I don't know you, but you can find me online.

Joe:

I tell you what, I got some amazing friends that could help you.

Joe:

I may not be able to help you, but I got some great friends

Joe:

that I can connect you with.

Joe:

I'm more than happy to tell my story up in the open so that you can find hope in it.

Joe:

But if everyone else is not listening, I'm here.

Joe:

I may not reply to your message straight away, but if you find me,

Joe:

you should meet some of my friends.

Joe:

Reach out.

Joe:

Please help.

Mick:

I'd like to say a particularly big thank you to Joe and Debbie.

Mick:

Their stories are not easy ones to share with the world, and I know they've put

Mick:

them out there because they want to give hope to people in dark places.

Mick:

If you want to reach out and talk to someone, here's a list of helplines.

Mick:

Calling one of these numbers could be a good first step, confidentially telling

Mick:

someone what you've been going through.

Mick:

If you're in Aotearoa, New Zealand, you can call 1737 at any time of the day or

Mick:

night, or call Lifeline on 0800 543 354.

Mick:

In the UK, you can call Samaritans on 116 123, or the Suicide

Mick:

Prevention Helpline on 0800 543 354.

Mick:

On oh 806 8 9 5 6 5 2 in the US and Canada.

Mick:

You can call a suicide prevention lifeline for free.

Mick:

On 9 8 8 in Australia, you can call Lifeline on one three one one

Mick:

one four, or the suicide callback service on 1 306 5 9 4 6 7.

Mick:

If you're in any other country, you can go to find a helpline.com

Mick:

to find your local helpline.

Mick:

And I'd just like to say that everyone's experience with and reaction to

Mick:

this topic is unique and different.

Mick:

So if you've found something has been stirred up for you, even if you don't

Mick:

know how or why, I encourage you to look after yourself and seek support.

Mick:

A massive thank you to Nettie for generously bringing her wisdom and

Mick:

expertise to this conversation.

Mick:

And a big thanks to the Lovett Media team for their support and guidance.

Mick:

You may remember Debbie mentioning she's a writer, and part of her

Mick:

grieving process was to write poems which she's compiled into a book

Mick:

called The Long Cold Nights of June.

Mick:

She gave me a copy of the book, and I found many of the poems really powerful.

Mick:

You can buy a copy of The Long Cold Nights of June by Debbie Careen on Amazon.

Mick:

One great thing about podcasts is that they can be listened to

Mick:

confidentially in the comfort of your own home, and with a topic like

Mick:

suicide, listening to this episode could be a good first step for someone.

Mick:

Before they feel like they're able to reach out.

Mick:

So please do share this with anyone you think could do with hearing it.

Mick:

As ever, follow the podcast on your podcast app.

Mick:

If you've got 10 seconds, rate the show.

Mick:

If you've got five minutes, post a review.

Mick:

Thanks a lot for listening.

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