Decoding Intuition: Listening to the Whisper
Each week, after recording my podcast for the week, I'm diving deeper with a follow-up blog post!
I'm currently doing a series called Your Inner North Star. Today, we're going to talk about Decoding Intuition, the second episode in the series.
I don't know about you, but if you have intuition, it is truly a whisper. It's like so many times we just ignore it, and then whenever it's screaming at us, we might listen. Intuition is a really funny thing. After I had attempted to take my own life, I spent a good year and a half just really not in a good place. And I didn't hear any whispers; I didn't hear anything because I was just so depressed and just really in dark, dark places. And that's where I lived mentally. So, I moved from Georgia back to Texas and got my own apartment. I would be there, you know, by myself, and I just knew that I needed to heal and knew that I needed to work through my divorce and what I had just been through fighting cancer and just all the stuff, and I didn't know what to do. Just suicide and the thought of suicide was my only relief, and I didn't even have that anymore.
I remember I had a long mirror in my bedroom, and I was sitting in front of that mirror, just bawling my eyes out. My eyes were so bloodshot, my face was so wet, just covered with tears, and I looked terrible. I sat there on my knees, on the floor in front of that mirror, watching myself cry, and I felt so entirely lost and alone. I looked at myself in the mirror, and all of a sudden, I saw my eyes, like other people looking through my eyes, and I looked at myself and had the thought, my gosh, how many other people are sitting on their floor in their bedrooms looking at themselves crying looking for answers as well in this exact moment?
How many others look at themselves, saying please help me do something. I didn't know what to do, and it was at that very moment that I realized there were millions of people out there suffering precisely like I was suffering at that moment, and in the moments just before, I tried to take my own life. How many of us are out there struggling right now?
It can be SO, SO hard. We don't have the answers, nobody understands, and we can't talk to anybody. People think we're selfish, and my god, the list just goes on and on. You honestly back yourself into a corner where there is no one, nothing, absolutely nothing. And if you've been there, man, I hear you, feel you, relate to you, and understand you.
It was when I thought of other people when I thought of everyone else who was also experiencing exactly what I was experiencing at that moment; how many others have attempted and survived and are facing the same thing I am. That there's something here on this earth that they were about to leave behind, that now suicide was off the table for them too, and they are suffering greatly.
I thought, okay, I was a life coach for years and taught others how to be a life coach. I was a life coach trainer, and I was damn good at it, but I couldn't even coach myself! I looked at myself and just kind of wiped my tears, and I thought, okay, if you had one of those people on the phone right now that were in your same situation and they feel exactly like you feel right now, what would you tell them to do or what would you hope they would come up with to do on their own? What could YOU do for YOURSELF right now if you're coaching yourself now? And I thought, well, I guess I could just get up and take a shower. Just take a shower.
So I got up, and I got in the shower, and I'll never forget it because I really do believe that this was the very first moment that led me to all the steps that led me to this very day today. I'm in the shower, and my hair was really short then. I had a platinum faux hawk, and I looked like Pink. So I have my shampoo in my hair, and I'm just scrubbing away. I had put too much shampoo in, and I had all these bubbles going down my body and down the drain, and I just scrubbed my head more, and I thought, man, if I could just scrub all these thoughts out of my head if I can just wash all these dark, dirty, ugly thoughts out of my head, that would be so awesome? Maybe then I would know what it was like to feel like a normal person who doesn't deal with all of this. And I thought to myself, well, why can't I?
I scrubbed my head harder. I added even more shampoo. I'm just lathering it up so I can watch it just physically go down my body, down my stomach, down my legs, down my feet, and down the drain. It was during that moment, during those minutes, that I didn't have ANY suicidal thoughts. I was only focusing on the soap, on scrubbing my head, on it going down my body, going down the drain. It's called MINDFULNESS. I didn't even know that this would work or help.
I realized that at that moment, it saved me. I got out of the shower, and I just kept thinking to myself, you're probably not old enough to remember this commercial, but there used to be a commercial that sang a ditty that said, "I'm gonna wash that gray right out of my hair." And so I just said to myself, I'm gonna wash those thoughts right out of my mind. And that's exactly what I did.
I remember posting something about this on Twitter, and someone responded almost immediately and said, you really are insane if you think that washing your hair and watching soap go down the drain will save someone's life. And my immediate response was, "Well, it saved mine." And that's how I feel. And that's kind of how this whole thing is with me. There are a lot of big things that you can do to not be suicidal anymore. But I think I said it in my first episode. You can't teach a baby to walk overnight. They learn to crawl first. And then they pull themselves up to the couch, coffee table, or end table. Then they try to take their first step, fall, and stand up slightly longer. They're wobbling, they fall down.
It's a process, and that's how it is. You think about how many thoughts we think when we're suicidal at any given time. We can think of a massive number of thoughts simultaneously, and we can jump to the world's worst conclusion. We can think of the worst possible outcome just like that. So it does take baby steps. That day, I knew I was on to something. The next day back to my old self, the relief didn't last long. It helped me, for sure, but it didn't last too long till I was right back to the negative, terrible thoughts again.
I remembered myself crying in front of the mirror, and I thought, okay, you don't want to take a shower today, and that's okay. What could you do? The thought came to my mind: Just open the blinds, just get some sunshine in this place, and I only had one set of blinds. It was a really small apartment, and I opened the blinds up, and then I just pulled them up, which really helped me. It helped me see the light, see that there is some light out there. And again, it might not have lasted me all day long and took care of all my problems, but it was something. It was something that I could do. I didn't have to call anybody. I didn't have to lean on anybody. I didn't have to trust anybody or depend on anybody. I was learning to depend on myself. Learning that I have the answers. We ALL have the answers and intuition is the tiniest little whisper in our chest sometimes. It's just a little knowing, a little thought, and that's what we have to pay attention to, and I'm telling you, every single day, a different little whisper would happen.
A different little idea would come to me, and they started out really small, and they may appear stupid to people, and I don't care because I know that it works!! The next day, it was the same thing. I thought, ya know, I took a shower the first day, I opened the blinds the second day, what else could I do? I could just fix my hair do something with my hair and try that today.
I got a flat iron out, and I flat ironed my hair. I even put on a little makeup. The next day, the same thing happened. I was determined every day I was going to do this. It was about the fifth, sixth, seventh day, when I realized I was creating a toolbox for myself. You can imagine it. You open it up and it's got all these ideas and tools on what I can do to save myself. Day after day, week after week, month after month.
I didn't use these tools each and every day. I wish I could say I did. Sometimes, I used it once or twice a month. Sometimes, I just stayed and wallowed in my shit. You probably know how it is. Months went by. Some days I won, and some days I didn't. I didn't want to deal with my mind and I built that box for myself knowing that one day, hopefully, one day, my toolbox will be shared with other people, and I will teach them how to create their OWN toolbox and listen to their OWN inner voice and their OWN intuition.
I want to empower you and help you become stronger and stronger and realize, wow, you're pretty damn amazing. Because you know what? People who don't struggle with this don't realize how many times we have not attempted day after day, after month, after month, after year, after decades. And that's courageous, guys. That's SO courageous! That takes a lot of courage.
You're so brave.
You know, I was brave every day. Every single day that I didn't Attempt. Every day I talked myself out of it. When I made it to another day, that was some fucking courage. That took some bravery because it was HARD. It is hard to live with a mind like that. It's exhausting.
I just want you to know, and I'll go ahead and share a couple of more tips. You know, I got up one day, took a shower, washed my hair, got all clean, shaved, fixed my hair, put on some make-up, put on a cute outfit, and went somewhere. I would just get in my car and drive around the block, get in my car and drive up to 7-Eleven and get a Coke, whatever it could be.
To help me do things different than my normal stuff that wasn't working, which is feeling sad, feeling depressed, letting other people, you know, control me. Thinking of the worst that could happen, how terrible the situation is, and seeing no positives out of it whatsoever, only stuck in my one perspective, which was not good. Making some slight shifts in my mindset. I don't think a lot of this stuff I even realized back then, but it is a mind shift, and it's learning to understand the way that we cope and currently know how to cope and change it little by little by little.
If you are suicidal all day long, you're not going to just instantly stop being that way. But when you catch yourself, when you're like, wow, I was just zoned out. How long have I been thinking about that? That's 30 minutes that has gone by. THEN, you are on the right track. When you catch yourself, it's just like, if you decide I'm going to listen to this song, it's a new song, it's my favorite song. God, I love this song. I'm going to listen. I'm going to learn all the words. You start the song, and five seconds later, you realize the song's over. You don't even know where you went in your mind.
That's the same way we do with these suicidal thoughts. All day can go by when we've wasted the whole day, just like a robot. We don't know how we got through that day because all we remember doing is thinking about how we can figure out how to take our own lives. So it's these baby steps where every time you do something for yourself something happens IN you. I am here to tell you that if you knew me, the Kelley before and the Kelley before this year, let's say, and the Kelley now, I would hope that you would say, I don't recognize you. something's happened to you, and something has INDEED happened to me. For the last almost 12 years, it's been slow progress because I had to figure all this out on my own because I personally refused to go to a therapist. I had some really bad situations happen to me. So I had to figure it out on my own. And I didn't want to call or tell anybody. Because I knew people wouldn't understand. It's the people that say, how could you even think that? How could you leave your kids? How could you do that? It's so selfish, blah, blah. You know, I couldn't call those people, and if I were to now go to these people that I know felt that way and say I still struggle with this, they would have no empathy for me whatsoever. Even if they would, well, they didn't come off like that in the beginning. I did have two really good friends. One's my girlfriend, and one is my very best friend, that I could call or I could at least text.
I remember my girlfriend coming home from work one time and me saying to her, "I do not want to live. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be here." Now, I'm not the funniest person. I'm usually very serious, and I have my shit together, and I am the get shit done kind of person, the type A personality. Nobody can; if I'm in a bad mood or I'm in one of those modes, no one can get me out of it. You just want to stay clear of me until I figure it out. And she's a singer. The song, You Can Leave Your Hat On, started playing, and I had been just so into myself on the couch and just feeling it, you know, and I heard that song come on, and I turned the corner, and all I could see was not her, but this puppet monkey and it was singing the words to the song, and it had a hat on and I just literally busted out laughing, and it's bringing tears to my eyes now because no one has ever done that. No one has ever been able to do that, and I guess no one in my life has ever been brave enough to do such a thing when I'm in that kind of mode! So yeah, she helped me too.
I just know that wherever you are now, we were meant to be; we were meant to meet. And I know that those two people I was meant to meet, they saved me. And even if I wouldn't have attempted suicide ever again, I would have every day in my head, I would have thought about it every day. And that's a terrible place to be. It's an awful place to be.
Living like that is not fun and there's so much more to life. There's so, so, so, much more out there. And I'm not talking about how you can go on these vacations, and you can have a brand-new car. You know, you can do all these things, you can make more money or blah blah blah blah blah. No, no, I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about just getting this right. Okay, because if you can just clear up your mind, if you could just learn, let's just say during these first few five, six, seven, eight episodes that I create about this, that you learn how to stay suicide-thought-free. You're out of the death loop for 20 minutes a day. Let's say you figure that part out for yourself.
You take these tips, and then your own intuition and guidance system will tell you what works for you. you will just know. Could you imagine? I used to be a major drug addict in my early twenties. And if I said I had been clean for three days, anybody else who did drugs knew that was a LONG time. So, if you could not think about suicide for 20 minutes a day, that's a big ass start. I don't know about you, but I think that's a really big start.
So let's make that our goal. I hope you find these episodes, you listen to them, and that you're able to reach out to me and tell me, guess what? I realized instead of, wow, five minutes went by. I've been thinking about suicide the whole time. I realized I hadn't even thought about it for five minutes. Even if it's 30 seconds, even if you could close your eyes, see the darkness behind your eyes, and realize in those two seconds you didn't think about it, that's progress.
Well, you should pat yourself on the back. Don't let anybody tell you any different because this is you trying and I am so here for it!!
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