(reflective music)
- I think I'm here because of the people
who did this work before me,
and I can't thank them personally,
but what I wanna do is pay it forward.
(reflective music)
- We're here to get to the hope and healing of it all,
but if you're at home, watching, I want you to take care.
If you are considering suicide
or if you or someone you know is
in an emotional crisis, please call or text 988.
(reflective music)
I was an extrovert prior to the pandemic,
and when you are forced to sit with yourself-
- Ooh.
- And your thoughts--
- Yep.
- And your family,
(participants laugh)
there's something that changes in you, gets shifted.
I feel like that human experience that we need,
as humans, we are not built to be alone.
That was challenging and impacted my own mental health.
- I think it really made me realize
how much I love being around people
and how much I love
and appreciate being in-person with someone.
- And for me, personally, I know it was really hard
at some points because it was like,
all of a sudden, you go from your income
to how am I gonna pay my bills?
How am I gonna put food on my table?
- For me, obviously they're all heavily tied
into my identities, so the pandemic, obviously,
because I'm visibly East Asian.
I have family members who are not
from the US check up on me every day
because they see the news and they're scared,
what is going on, and they don't have
more context or means to protect me,
and obviously all the other things that you experience
with the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd
and the Black Lives Matter movement
that pushed me to think about racial injustice,
and it was just like a constant reminder
and a constant push for growth.
- You are so strong.
That's like all that- - Thank you.
- As you were talking, I was like, yep.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
You are so strong.
- I think I do have a very unique journey
of starting my mental health journey
very early on in my life as an elementary school child.
One of the first instances of societal ideation was
when I was in second grade.
I think the general context was that
I was being compared to my older sister,
so I was mad at my parents.
So I went into my room, locked the door,
and I saw an X-Acto knife on my desk,
and I don't even think I wanted to do something really big.
I just didn't want to be there.
And I remember either my mom or my grandmother knocked
on the door, yelled from outside.
I acted like nothing happened
and I just went outside and didn't say anything,
and I don't really remember when I told my parents
about it, but I did a few years later,
and they were very shocked.
They're actually the one who offered,
do you want to go to therapy?
And I said yes.
So since then, I feel like I have the privilege
to be able to go seek out therapy
or ask my support system, if I'm not feeling well.
- So where do we start when world events are too much?
Where do we start to take care of ourselves,
each other, the emotions, the feelings?
Any ideas?
- Being able to look at yourself
and how you're personally reacting,
more of like a factual point of view,
is a good place to start, to realize,
what exactly is going on that's making you feel like this?
I'm gonna state this.
I'm not gonna add any thoughts or feelings
or judgments to it.
This is just how I am right now.
- So I think a huge one is meditation.
- Yes. - Ooh, yeah.
- Mindfulness training.
And I know that when I've started meditating,
it was life-changing.
It's absolutely, it's something that I try
to do in my daily routine now, even.
Sometimes when I recognize either,
whether it's anger, whether it's sadness,
or whether I do feel over-the-top joy,
a deep breath, feel the environment around me,
and I can just feel my brain just going--
(Thready wooshes)
- It started for me after George Floyd was murdered.
I have to be able to sustain my work, and me, as a person.
I'm okay with saying not interested on posts
on social media.
I'm okay with not reading the news.
No is a complete sentence,
so if someone starts to talk about something
I don't wanna talk about, being like, nope.
That's how I keep a moat around my mental health.
- For me, it really helps when I focus on community.
Sometimes it really helps when I don't have
to explain every single thing that is impacting me,
because they also are feeling
the exact same things right now,
because they share my identities,
and that just gives me a lot of empowerment
and hope and support, that there are
other people who are like-minded
who are going to work towards the same goal.
Coming from a culture where it's
much more conservative, especially when I was coming
out as nonbinary, I was so scared
that I was going to be shunned
from the society or I was gonna lose a lot
of the people that I had in my life.
But I found my pockets of community,
and thankfully the closest people
that I talked to at the very beginning,
I personally thought it was the best way
that they could react, is, thank you for telling me
and this doesn't change anything.
That really alleviates a lot of the struggles that I went
through because I felt like I wasn't alone.
I think I'm here because of the people
who did this work before me,
and I can't thank them personally,
but what I wanna do is pay it forward.
I want to be part of those people who is,
these are happy tears, by the way,
who are going to help kids, like my 10-year-old self,
who thought there was no way out,
who thought nothing's going to change,
that it always won't be that way.
I can't promise when or how,
but because there are people fighting for you
and want you to be happy and healthy,
I hope that they can feel even slightly more supported.
- Community is so important,
and one of the things, as a mental health professional,
that we look for, whether
or not someone has a support system.
If I ask someone and they're having thoughts
and I'm like, what's your support system,
and they can come up with no one,
so I think about, well, how can we build community,
especially with where the world is today?
- Rather than focusing on what separates us
or what divides us, where we put our attention is going
to highlight the outcome.
If we're focused on, what do we have in common,
I feel like that brings people together so much more.
- I partially agree, because it is really important
to look at our similarities and we can bond over those,
but at the same time, sometimes we can't
just not talk about the individual
or unique experiences that certain people go through.
- And saying we all are human, yes,
but a white human experiences life different
than a Black human, an immigrant human,
and we have to acknowledge the difference,
and knowing that community sometimes doesn't
always mean equal.
Sometimes it means that person, who has privilege,
is doing more work in helping bring up these people
who may not have access to be able to do those things.
- So then, again, the question then circles back to,
how do we fix it?
- I think it's important to recognize,
especially me, as a white person of privilege, is,
I couldn't represent you guys,
but I can be an ally, and it's always super important
to have individuals who are part
of that marginalized community be represented,
but also have those people who do wanna be allies,
but definitely keeping that in check,
'cause I feel like it can get out of hand sometimes.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- These are the uncomfortable conversations that we have
to have to be able to create and feel safe in community.
I don't know about you,
but I personally feel this conversation in my body,
and if you're okay, can we take a deep breath together?
- Yes. - Yeah.
(participants breathe deeply)
- I wanna thank each and every one of you
for sitting here and showing up authentically
for who you are in this conversation
and being open-minded to where it led us,
and thank you for sharing your stories and narratives,
and now that we had that conversation about community,
we can go out there and try to help the world figure out,
how do we do that?
It can feel as if the world is getting worse
and we're not sure what to focus on.
How do we plan for the future in a time of so many unknowns?
People, now more than ever, are reaching out
for extra support and tools to help navigate the stresses
of everyday life.
That could be practicing mindfulness,
reaching out to family, friends, community,
and even working with a therapist
to help prevent those feelings
from escalating into suicidal ideation and self-harm.
Watch more of our discussions here,
on the PBS YouTube channel,
and watch the "Facing Suicide" documentary on pbs.org
or the PBS Video App.
(reflective music)