Feeling It for Yourself
Kevin Breel from his The One You Feed conversation, Sep. 23, 2015:
"If I could explain what the one biggest shift has been from when I was 17 and suicidal to today and 22 and a lot healthier place, it's just that before I used to try to run away from my pain and tell no one about it, and now I try and run right into it and tell the people closest to me about it.
I think that's a huge shift in psychology, because one says that I don't want to seem hurt, I don't want to seem vulnerable, I don't want anyone to see my weaknesses, and the other says, I want to explore this because there's something on the other side of it and I don't judge myself for feeling this way. I don't think it makes me inferior. .
There's just no part of me that feels less of a man or something for struggling with depression. And anyone who thinks that has a poor view of masculinity or people in general or humanity.
There's no part of me that's embarrassed or ashamed and I just think that's a big part of this conversation that needs to disappear -- as if you would have some reason to be embarrassed or ashamed.
If you get the flu or cut your knee, does anyone think that you did something wrong? No. And so to experience something that is painful in your life or to go through a season of depression or to go through a period of time when you're just asking a bunch of questions about everything, that just makes you alive. I think that's a good thing.
I think that means you're actually trying to progress. You're not just asleep on your couch turning on the news letting people tell you what life's like. You're actually going out there and feeling it for yourself and feeling the rough edges. There's something noble, almost, about the pursuit of trying to wake up to your life, and it runs the risk of being uncomfortable. I think that's a great thing.
"Confessions of a Depressed Comic," TEDxKids@Ambleside