So let’s talk about the idea of attempt survivors as superheros. Alicia Raimundo stood up at the end of this month’s national conference of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention and told a little of her story. We spoke this week, and she’s all for openness on the topic. And some playfulness as well. “Part of me wants to make people feel uncomfortable around me because I’m challenging their beliefs,” she says. “I’m not the media representation of the mentally ill.”
Here she talks about speaking up for a younger generation of attempt survivors, what effect it has on her dating life and how dealing with suicidal thinking shouldn’t be seen as all that different and scary. “If you take a normal person and put them in a suicidal situation, their coping mechanisms in that extreme emotional situation, they would fail too,” she says. “Just like we celebrate cancer survivors for beating cancer, we should celebrate people for beating schizophrenia or bipolar.”
Where would you start your story?
I think I would start by explaining that one of the first things you learn to do is cry, to get attention, to take the pain away, to help you get through something. And as you get older, you put Band-Aids on cuts, call the doctor. But no one tells you how to deal with pain you can’t see. No one tells you how to even start that conversation. To the point that I didn’t even realize I was sick until I was 12, 13. I thought everyone walked around extremely nervous and miserable. I struggled to find the right things to say in grades 7 and 8, and I realized this was a problem not common and unique to me. My classmates were a lot better getting people to talk and like them. That’s when it hit its hard point. And so I tried reaching out to a couple of people but didn’t know how to articulate it. One final reachout was to a teacher helping teach my grade 8 class. At this time, I was kind of known as a problem kid, the one who would not talk to anybody. That sometimes can come off as egotistical. I thought everybody was rejecting me, so I preemptively rejected others. She wasn’t too happy about me asking for help. When I went to meet her, I overheard her say, “I have to go meet this crazy girl,” and I kind of shut down: “I’m not gonna get better.” Everybody misunderstood: “She’s just acting out.” When she amplified that, I kind of just, you know, decided, “This is it. I’m done with this, being miserable every day, waiting for my mom’s car to come and to cry in the car. I’m done.” I made a plan to take my own life. It didn’t succeed, thankfully. At this point, I felt this struggling, like waiting for the next chance for it to come. It’s like just getting enough air to breathe and most days not getting that much.
One time life changed was when I was trying to get treatment on my own. I came across this woman in a treatment center. I was young, a teenager, and I looked like I didn’t care about anything. The woman says, “From one crazy person to another, you’ll need this,” and she gave me a necklace with the word “hope” on it. The ironic part of the story is, the woman was also a client, suffering from a manic stage, and her daughter came up to me seconds later: “I’m sorry, can I have that back?” To me, it was the idea that we can have small things to hope for. For me, it was watching my sister graduate from high school, which happened two years ago. The hope to see things. After that initial hope, my living was not so hard anymore. There are days where I don’t have a good day with it, but I’m a lot stronger. I don’t wish mental illness on anyone, but it’s a blessing in disguise because I had to know myself a lot better than others. I had to know what worked and what didn’t. For me, not knowing is lethal. And so at a certain point, I started getting better and better and wanted to give back.
I got frustrated sharing my story like Spider-Man, anonymously, on blogs here and there, hiding. It was really stupid. I wanted to be like Ironman, in front of a crowd. “Fuck this.” I wanted to do this, go there, start the conversations. I’m super. And from that point on, I share that story with people. You can be that person, sharing in the open. You get this overwhelming support. There’s a stupid comment here and there, but it’s mostly support. I created this peer group who supports me through bad days. I work for a large corporation in Canada, and I was on a large TV morning show here. I took the morning off from work. When I came back, they were really interested. I said this had nothing to do with work, but they wanted to see. One person just said to the other, “If you knew she was suicidal, why did you hire her?” You hear the horror stories, you know this happens. You hear this on trains, buses, people saying, “I can’t hire this person, they have gaps in their resume.” They’re not realizing people can get better. I was hearing this negative feedback nine years after I tried to take my own life, so it was really an unjust comment. Sometimes sick people should be stepping away from work to invest in themselves. If they need to take time off to get better, do it. But me, I was treated with a ridiculous amount of bias.
I was in a meeting with the CEO and a bunch of others. I went up to him after the meeting and said “You’re really concerned about brain injury. There’s a lot of employees concerned about mental health issues.” I told him my story, and he said, “My wife has bipolar. I would not stand for this in a million years.” He put the two gentlemen in touch with HR. I urged not to fire them because they’d get more angry and take it out on others. They started putting this into HR training. One guy came to a talk of mine a few weeks ago and apologized.
It has a strong impact. I share my story and have people telling the life stories they never shared before. Like my train story. I was on suburban rail in Ontario. I’m sitting, talking to a friend about suicide prevention. A gentleman followed me off the train and I thought, “This is kind of creepy.” Then he’s talking to me and seems normal. He says, “I’ve never heard anyone talk so openly about suicide prevention.” I said, “I’m passionate about it.” He’s telling me he felt suicidal for a really long time: “I’m glad people talk openly.” I asked if he had resources. He said, “Yeah, a lot of really great people.” I remember standing outside the station and my dad’s car comes up. “It was nice talking to you.” He says, “I want to thank you.” Why? He says, “If not for you, I was going to jump in front of the train.”
So the power of these conversations, it’s so uncomfortable and scary putting yourself out there, but the good effect is amazing. You just feel this connection with people. People come up to you in tears: “I was planning on ending my life next week, but I’m going to get help.” Sometimes you have to remember the most ignorant voice in the room is sometimes the loudest, the first to say, “That doesn’t happen” or “Your statistic is wrong!” And everyone else is waiting for someone else to say, “Me too.” My dream is showing them if you’re living with mental illness, you’re more than normal. You’re so strong. You have to know that helping yourself can be a full-time job. Help people to not beat up themselves if they’re not so productive at work. The strength of wanting to help people is amazing. [At Canada’s national conference for suicide prevention] I recounted the story of the woman [doing the mental health awareness walk] on the Brooklyn Bridge. She started feeling sick and collapsed in the medical tent. I went in and her husband said, “She has to finish for our son.” Just the power of making any choice, any difference.
I think one of most important messages is, it’s just as simple as asking what you can do for that person. Or giving a list of things you’re comfortable doing. I think there’s so much that needs to happen. It’s great to see these movements, these discussions around suicide moving from every time something horrible happens to a more constant dialogue. Just sharing stories of hope and change, saying people can get better. Because people always look at me. I’m a quirky individual, and they associate that with my mental illness. I’m like, “No, the reason I have a personality is I found a way to live with my mental illness.” My quirkiness is kind of just like … People, when someone knows you’re ill, they look for aspects of your personality they don’t like and think you’re still ill. It’s kind of like doing self-confirming bias, to make it look like I’m always sick. I do have remnants, but one reason I can have a personality is I feel a lot better now. I think it’s just one of those things that strikes me as kind of funny.
At the conference, you also told a story about following a guy around because he was scared of you …
The first time I was ever asked to speak, I was at the University of Waterloo. The guy basically looked at me, and hilariously enough, it was at our campus peer educator group. He was in charge of making information about suicide. He asked in a condescending voice, “Why are you talking about suicide? I said I was suicidal. It was not the most mature thing to do. I just was like, “Yeah, I’m going to prove I’m not contagious and follow you around.” His reaction was so unreal. I just wanted to show them I could sit next to them, have conversations, be a productive member of their team. I’m not going to, you know, snap and decide that I’m going to attack them all. I don’t really understand what goes through their mind. I was just trying to prove the point, it’s not something to be scared of. Most people with mental illness are not going to hurt you. They’ll probably hurt themselves. A lot of times when people do negative things, it’s a time for a conversation: “Why do you think that’s OK?”
And I think it’s been an interesting journey. Talking to people, sometimes they don’t realize what they’re saying is really wrong. They’ve never been told that before. They’ve not been told it’s offensive. And I do that. At the same time, I will stay in situations, and part of me wants to make people feel uncomfortable around me because I’m challenging their beliefs. I’m not the media representation of the mentally ill. The media don’t do the best job of showing it. And people don’t like feeling wrong. This is just something they believed. And one thing I’ve done for a couple of friends I lost by suicide is go to their Facebook page, and when people ask, “How did this person die?” I go in a private message and tell them they died by suicide. They suffered from mental health issues and were very sick. And there’s no type of person that does that. Like you can lose a person to cancer, you can lose them to suicide.
I think the more we can have these awkward conversations with people, make people laugh … When someone reacts weirdly to me now, I say, “Don’t worry, I’m not throwing cats at you” just to lighten the mood. Sometimes suicide and mental health can be really heavy, and making people laugh, showing we can laugh and are pretty unique people ourselves, sort of starts to change the discrimination. It can help change stigma. I’ve seen minds be changed. People come around to it. Sometimes people are not exactly where I want them to be, but it’s a journey. They went up a fair bit, even if it’s not to the level everybody wants it to be at. It just shows the power. When you realize the perception they have of someone else, it’s kind of fun to have fun with them. Make them face their own discrimination. “I thought this person was cool, then she said one word, and now I think she’s crazy”? I tell people I get one of three reactions, bad reactions: Running away, telling me they don’t believe me or never leaving me alone. That’s why I always say, ask people what they want. If they tell you they’re feeling better now, just ask them what they want to share. I don’t go into certain aspects of my journey because there’s nothing positive to pull out of them. I don’t focus on the negative.
Like what parts?
I had many bad experiences with therapists and with treatment in a treatment center setting. I grew up with parents who struggle to understand how I feel. They’ve grown a lot, but sometimes they still say, “Everything will be better if you pray” or, if I stay one day alone in my house, everybody starts calling me, telling me I’m depressed. I know there’s a lot of amazing parents out there understanding or trying their best. It’s just one of those things. I tell parents, bring your kid in! One way to summarize a bad experience: The person trying to help me is trying to treat the illnesses through me, without involving me. Like my parents, and the icon of depression is behind me, and they’re trying to throw things through me to get to it. Instead of asking, “What kind of treatment do you want?” And especially since I was young, no one thought to do that. It’s like fighting the thing within them, not engaging them. I like to tell people to go to as many evidence-based practices as possible. But I also tell service providers to make the treatment fit the person, not the person fit the treatment. It’s so much easier to fight what’s hiding in the dark shadows when you ask them to turn and look at it and not throw things through them. It’s like people trying to throw meds at you because there’s no time to talk with you. The medicine works when you believe in it and when you take it on an accurate schedule. I didn’t believe in it, and I didn’t take it long enough. But nobody ever talked with me to realize that was my personal stance. For some things, you need the meds. For me, somebody should have asked me. That’s why kids come up to me, say, on 15 different medications. For side effects, etc. I’m like, “OK, at a certain point you have so much medications you don’t know what’s working anymore.” I’m not anti-medication, but I advocate health care professionals talking to their patients about how they want to get better. And talking to peer mentors, showing them how to get up the mountains. And not everyone will benefit from a psychiatrist. And so it’s one of those things that’s a good message for people. There’s many ways of getting better. If it’s working for you, great. Be careful not to give advice to other people. I’ve had a few people go off their meds the next day: “I’m going to be like you.” I’m like, “No.” Believe in your journey. And there’s not an exact science behind this yet.
And I think one thing too is, I’ve had years and months where it’s been worse and better, where it comes back but not to the same extent. I try to show people that we are mental health superheroes, fighting our own bad guys. Nobody kills the bad guy the first time they fight them. They scare them away. And every time that you seek treatment, you have more sidekicks fighting with you. Some times are bad, but I’ve learned to pull happiness from my journey. I’m helped by that. By sharing my story, I keep myself on the straight and narrow. I have to get help. I can’t be a hypocrite, right? And yeah, sometimes I do have some bad days, but I’m kind with myself, and the reason I don’t normally share is that I don’t want people to think it’s horrible every single time or that it never goes away. I’m probably one of the more happy people you’ll meet. One message I like to give is, if you’re stuck in a place where they’re trying to diagnose you but it’s not helping, just say, “I don’t care what’s wrong with me, I just want to get better. These labels don’t make me better.” People think if you know what’s wrong, you’ll feel better. That’s not always the case. You can feel a sense of doom. Not everyone fits into these little charts.
You talk a lot about superheros. What’s with that? Are you a fan?
I’m a superhero fan, but I really wanted a new way of framing it. I wanted to show people they are strong, and they need to celebrate their strength and celebrate how awesome it is they’ve come this far and not get sucked into comparing themselves with people who don’t go through this. I joke that I used to call myself a mental health superhero in training. I also talk about intentional superheros. When you know someone is part of a stigmatized group and you be a friend to them, that’s how you change people’s minds about racism, sexism. I’m just going to treat you like a normal human being. You’re putting intention behind it, becoming a kind of superhero, becoming someone who will help them through their journey. And yeah, I’m kind of a nerd, whatever. Just taking off that mask and fighting the demons without your mask on and still showing you’re strong. All humans at some time wear a mask of some sort, but being able to show “This is me, I’m suffering with this” in the same way that people say, “I can’t come out today, I’m sick.” Creating the same situation: “I can’t come out today, I don’t feel so good.” Being a superhero shows people they’re strong. You’re dealing with something so much more than the average experience. You should be celebrating that, not thinking something’s wrong with you because you can’t deal with normal life. If you take a normal person and put them in a suicidal situation, their coping mechanisms in that extreme emotional situation, they would fail too. Just like we celebrate cancer survivors for beating cancer, we should celebrate people for beating schizophrenia or bipolar.
How did you start speaking out? And what were the reactions?
When I went to university, I had control of my life for the first time. I could do things and not justify them to anyone. So I started openly telling my new friends what I had went through. When I wanted to get involved with the health community, I was so comfortable with telling friends and family that I just told my mental health mentor at the university, and she said, “We need a speaker.” I gave the speech and was nervous as all heck. I got off there and people gave me big hugs: “If you need anything, let me know.” After that, I reached out to regional suicide prevention things. I would always mention I have lived experience too. When they heard me speak, they just recommended me to be on national TV, and when they needed a speaker, they’d bring me along. It was really just people empowering me, really believing in me. I went on MTV Canada, our national breakfast TV show, and after that I decided I wanted to give back to the community. I was working in research to the front line. I was involved with TED and said I wanted to give back. I tried to nominate someone else, but they said, “Why don’t you do it?” I put in an application and got a phone call two months later: “Can you speak?”
Some people want to have this journey. I’m lucky that people believe in me. I’ve had speaking engagements where no one shows, but I always have had a standing ovation at TEDtalk. I give off positive energy, and people want positive energy, too. It was the scariest thing of my life, but I had so many people share stories with me after that. Then I became a “face of mental illness” in Canada after that, for people with lived experience and who give back. We get to be in a national campaign, meet politicians, work with Bell, which is donating a lot to mental health. It’s been soaring since last year, really. There’s a lot of benefit in putting yourself out there, not only sharing your story but being involved in the community. Some speakers, all they do is speak. Others act out the message. I want to share my story but also want to influence a good message.
The message for other people is, when you start sharing your story, you will find people supportive to you. Allow yourself to build up, and when you’re ready to jump into big things, jump. But don’t jump into big things first. Your experience, for the audience, may be triggering. You don’t have to be 45, 50 years old before your journey with this is done. And show young people we don’t have to be at the mercy of our parents, psychologists, psychiatrists. We can stand up for ourselves. Because we are the only ones knowing our experiences in our heads. If we don’t feed into the dialogue, we will not be as effective as we could be. And young people deserve the best people just like anyone else. If you don’t like your therapist, don’t be afraid to fire them. Don’t be afraid to do what you need to do to get better, as long as it will help you live in the future.
Have your parents seen you speak?
Nope. Well, a that’s a little bit of a lie. They tried to see my TEDtalk, but they don’t know tech very well, so they didn’t get a live stream. They watched the video. My dad’s Portuguese, and he doesn’t understand how he can give me everything and how I’m not super-happy. I own my own journey. My journey is me. Sometimes people say, “We want you to bring your parents,” and I say, “No, this is about me.” I’ve had journalists say, “I want to talk to your parents,” and I say, “I don’t know what they’ll be able to tell you, I was so good at hiding it.” I think one day I’ll invite my parents to talk, but the journey is mine, and I want to stand as an independent woman. I did it alone. Because I assumed that people would reject me, and I want to show if people want to do it alone, they can do it alone. I do have parents who are very supportive of whatever I want to do in life, but with this journey, I shut them out and I’ve only let them in recently. I’ll let them see me speak, but they had no idea what was going on. My journey is something that I own. People try to share their coping mechanisms, parents do that, but that tends to not work for me.
You didn’t really mention the details of your attempt earlier. Do you choose not to?
I choose not to. I say I attempted, but … There is some evidence of contagion, and I don’t want to give people the method because, “Oh, look at her, she’s getting all of this attention now, I’m going to do this half-assed attempt and get this attention too!” Also, out of respect for my family and my parents. But yeah, it’s something that I do. I briefly talk about it because at the same time it’s hard for me to go there. I was somebody who, after being suicidal, it was only a couple years after that I started cutting. Not enough to get really deep scars that friends have, but I have one on my wrist. What we basically are doing is creating external pain to distract from internal pain. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and I want to focus on the positives. I want to know there’s a possibility of living life for you again.
Are there other possible drawbacks?
It will affect your dating life, I will tell you that right now. I’ll be honest, I’m on a dating site because I’m a busy person. And I talk about being a public speaker. I guarantee nine of 10 people say, “Let me see it,” I send it and they never speak to me again. And you know, it’s painful. Whether people don’t want to get close to a person who they think is going to take their own life … You don’t want to be with people who don’t understand you. If they’re judging you based on one talk, I probably don’t want anything to do with them anyway. And your friends, you deal with a lot of weird initial reactions. I had one say I was faking it because I didn’t go into the details of my attempt, or because I’m better now. Just one of those things where you sit down and prepare an answer to those reactions. Just having a way of having a nice, canned answer for them. “Oh, you’re faking it” or “Oh, you’re scary.” Well, I’m sorry, but if you ever want to have a conversation, I’m here to help you out. And the faking one, I understand, because people are really good at hiding it, and I was too. But it took a lot of effort to get here. This is genuinely me. I do want you to understand you can get better. The first time I got that, it was really funny. Why on earth would anyone want to fake this?
Are you making good money or something in speeches?
Sometimes I get paid when I talk about how to create a discrimination-free workplace or school or whatever. I just think any time someone says something bad, they are scared at the notion it could happen to them, too.
Has any reaction caught you off guard?
My mother. The first time she watched me on national TV, she called me. Up to that point, she had been uncomfortable. I had been bracing myself, but she actually called me in tears and said, “You are my warrior. I thought I had something wrong. I wanted to take this pain away from you but didn’t know how.” My mom was the best surprise to me. I have had weird comments or advice. One person said to get rid of depression, walk on hot coals.
You didn’t try it?
No, I didn’t try. Maybe one day. It was just one of those ones that I just kind of went, “Huh?”
What if everyone just started talking openly? Are we ready?
I don’t know if people themselves are ready. Whatever journey you want to take, be it two or 2,000 people, it’s a personal choice. It’s up to you. It should be based on what you want to do with that message. It’s not based on stigma. With some people, five people know they went through cancer, and for some, 5,000 know. I want a world where people feel OK saying, “I went through that, too.” But as a society, we’re not ready for people to say, “I’m going through that, too.” Because the resources are not enough. People seek help, but they might have to wait a year and a half. So I feel like I’m dangling a carrot sometimes. I’m scared for that “I’m going through that now, help me.” We don’t have a good system to rely on yet. There’s not enough people to help them navigate the system.
You really think there are not enough resources to deal with everyone?
In Canada, there’s a six-month waiting period for psychiatrists and stuff, they probably agree with me for that. I think what we have to deal with more is, you know, having all the organizations work together to rally behind people and help them, but sometimes they all compete for the same funding and don’t want to work together. I remember filling out an application for To Write Love on Her Arms on my campus, but they said they can’t come if we have Active Minds on campus. I’ve seen lots groups working against each other. There’s two therapy offices in the town there I used to live. One deals with family violence, the other doesn’t. If someone comes in and says they’re being beaten by their husband , they would rather send to their partner office in the next town than the one two streets over. The petty competition needs to stop.
Well, I assume that’s a lot different than in the U.S.
Well, here people pay for it with tax dollars. In the U.S., it’s more private. It’s a problem in itself. Everybody deserves to get better. One good response is the surge in online communities in sharing mental health issues. All these people are rallying to help people get treatment. One of my best friends from Philadelphia, she reached out to me on Facebook after the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention posted a story of mine. Just the power of social media, having this community that’s not there face-to-face for a hug but can rally and give a support network when you feel you don’t have one. So people stay in treatment longer or fight for themselves more. I work with Your Life Counts, and they do an e-mail service. They say, “We give you an e-mail back in an hour and give you thought-out answers, so you have one person out there who believes in you.” It’s a great thing that’s happened. It’s really creating stronger people to go out and show people that mental health is something we can talk about. And empowering them to believe in themselves.
Do you know of any support groups online?
I think this a problem. I, with a gentleman in England, started one in the summer of 2011, I believe. But because it’s really hard to get people to talk about these things, we had to close it down. But I think the things you can do is, there are a lot of online communities out there. There’s a Twitter called The Buddy Scheme. You can say, “I need somebody.” And you can message them, you can ask them to find an attempt survivor to speak with over Twitter. Those things are going to come. It sucks sometimes to have to find an attempt survivor who’s a speaker and then e-mail with them, because there should be forums out there with everybody talking to everybody else. It has to come to that. Just knowing you have that person in your corner is a good thing. I have a couple of people in my corner who are attempt survivors.
(I ask about the common fear about attempt survivors sharing information.)
It’s misguided a fair bit. I think it’s very important to have a facilitator to create positive conversations. Make sure the mentor is really stable. There is a genuine danger of someone sinking, and it will be like trying help someone drowning. If you don’t have the proper life jacket, they can pull you down with them. There are times people are straddling the line between OK and not OK and don’t need more triggers. But these groups are good, like Skills for Safer Living. Teach them skills on how to live. We need to see that more often. You know, I have about 15 friends who are suicide attempt survivors. We can get together, laugh, watch movies, we are normal people. There definitely is that fear, but there’s a one in 10 chance this happens. That “We’re not trying this at all” makes no sense to me. Because yeah, especially youth, we definitely need to talk to people who have been where we are because we have built-in BS sensors. If someone is telling us what we know isn’t true, we can lose trust so fast. You know how Judy talks about a survivors conference and not feeling welcome. You have the BS sensor. Even if I’ve been through the same disorder, my experience is very different from others. But we will see more and more people talk about what they’ve gone through. There’s always the issue of stigma. You want to start support groups, but you can’t because there’s not enough people showing up. I tried to do a youth bereaved by suicide group, but no one showed up. Because no one wanted to be part of that, you know? I think, too, the more you can educate people in a fun, light way, the better. I work with Mind Your Mind, and they work with games and celebrities. You can learn about it and have a fun time doing it. One way to break down stigma is not have a lot of super-duper heavy conversation with a lot of anger.
Some people say you can’t laugh at this topic.
If you’re able to laugh at jokes that are well-meaning … Some people say you can’t laugh at this, it’s horrible, but I bet that at some point when a person’s back is turned, they laugh at them being crazy. But laughing with us is great. We’re human, just like anybody else. And sometimes humor and light atmosphere allows to ask questions. One of my big criticisms about the mental health field is it’s so somber. Have you ever watched “The Bridge”? My god. It’s like, “This is the most depressing hour and a half of my life.” It’s all about the balance.
Is there anything else you really want to share?
The way I like to end is, if anyone’s looking at this and suffering, just know you’re worth it, worth living for, you have a beautiful mind, and the world wants to hear what you have to say, though it might not feel like it sometimes. There’s a life to live, and there are supports to help you live that way. You’re strong, and you’re fighting for yourself. Just don’t try to do it alone. Reach out and realize you are deserving of the best possible help you can find.
Who else are you?
I love photography, bad cop shows, hilariously even though they make fun of mental health. I love laughter, pulling pranks, being like, you know, the bad mom jokes, bad dad jokes. I love helping people, even if it’s not mental health. I’m a recent psychology grad from the University of Waterloo. Just quirky little me, who loves a lot of things. And I’m not defined by mental health, mental illness, but I’m looking forward to beating stigma in our lifetime. It’s actually funny, I have a therapist I see every couple of months, and that’s what she asked me: “What else are you? It’s like it’s consumed your life!” Yes, but in the best way. I have time to go out with friends, joke around, be completely like girly girls, complete idiots, jumping into shopping carts in malls and stuff. I’m still a youth, so I do things youth do.