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WHO IS THIS MAN
I'm Jack, I've had mental illness since I was a toddler and have had suicidal tendencies all my life. I was lucky enough to have a wife who ripped me back to reality before I lost the battle. I turned my mental health into the number one priority in my life, and it worked. My life has turned from something I wanted to end to something I look forward to living. As part of my ongoing battle to make my mental health number one in my life, I want to help others do the same.
WHY I'M SHARING
I think it’s important for me to share my story in order to understand how I arrived at the tools and recommendations I have. I also think it’s important for me to share what I am not trying to do when sharing my story.Â
This is not me fishing for compliments or pats on the back. In fact, I’ll be airing quite a bit of dirty laundry. If there’s a hero to this story, it’s certainly not me. It’s the people in my support network, led by my wife.
This is not me trying to say I overcame all odds so you can too! I didn’t have a bad childhood or experience any trauma. I actually had a great childhood, had great parents and lots of love in my life. If anything, what I’ve overcome is incredibly minor by comparison to what some people experience. Now, that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell. That’s sort of the point.Â
This is not me trying to say that one size fits all or that doing what I do is a silver bullet. Especially for severe cases of mental illness or traumatic experiences. What I can confidently say is that what I have learned and applied in my life can help and certainly won’t hurt.
This is not a substitute for legitimate professional help. While everything I recommend is generally considered to be safe to apply, we know that life can get complicated quickly.
MY STORY
Mental health illness runs in my family. Alcohol abuse shows up on both sides. My grandma was a hoarder. Several of my extended family members have struggled. I’ve actually got two cousins, brothers, that both took their own lives within a year of each other.
I’ve spent my entire life dealing with a variety of iterations of mental illness. It started with me as a toddler. I had separation anxiety from my parents. I was clinically diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety disorder when I was 7 and began therapy. I was suicidal when I was 9 years old and actually made an attempt on my life through self strangulation (which doesn't work I learned 20 years later as a white belt in Jiu Jitsu, but you get the point). Being suicidal at 9 years old is pretty unusual.
Being suicidal at 9 years old is pretty unusual.
Things went dormant until high school - where I became depressed and began therapy again. I was then diagnosed with depression. Self harm began about this time as well. For me, that looked like punching myself in the side of the head.
From there, I had about a half dozen cycles of on and off depression with bouts of suicidal thoughts and therapy until my mid twenties. During 2021, I had my longest and darkest stretch of depression that lasted about 9 months.
Following that 9 month stretch, I resolved to "never let that happen again" and "make this the highest priority in my life." I truly believed it. But I hadn't actually shifted my priorities. Fast forward to later in the year, things got stressful again. Boom, back to meltdowns.
It's at this point that my wife, Dani, finally broke. She had held it together despite some tremendous mental illness challenges of her own for over a decade (we've been together since we were 15). I realized that my ego was preventing me from getting better and was trashing my marriage.
So, I did it. I went all in. I actually did it this time. I chose my mental health over hard work, being reliable, being a good friend. It sucked. It felt selfish. But it turns out that when you put yourself first, you end up being able to give more. I became a better husband. I became a better son, friend, employee and coworker.
It felt selfish. But it turns out that when you put yourself first, you end up being able to give more.
CINDERS
All of this experience has forced me to learn as much as I can about mental health in order to, literally, survive. I’ve wrestled with every tough question I can think of, read books and articles and listened to every podcast and perspective I can find. I have completely immersed my life in this. It’s driven me to design a lifestyle to optimize my mental health and prevent further mental breakdowns.
Cinders is my mental health project and way of paying forward all of the help I've gotten other the years. I've gotten a tremendous amount of support from my family, friends, therapists, psychiatrist, and personal trainer. But above all, it was my wife. I don't take their support for granted. It almost feels like a duty to pay it forward. My cousins didn't make it through. My buddy didn't make it through. If it weren't for Dani, I don't know if I would have made it through.
