And 6 shifts in perspective to help anyone transform their life and win the battle with their inner critic.

No matter what your inner critic says… no matter how bleak it seems… there’s still time to live the life of your ten-year-old self’s dreams.

In May of 1998, when I was 16 years old, I attempted to take my own life. The fact that I was still alive three days later was called a “miracle” by the emergency room nurses who came to visit me in the Intensive Care Unit at Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis.

I was dying when I was brought to the Emergency Room, nearly 24 hours after ingesting close to an entire bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol. It was too late. Pumping my stomach didn’t work, and the IV of Benadryl just made me break out in hives. I had twelve and a half grams of Acetaminophen in my system. Seven is fatal. There wasn’t anything else they could do except wait for me to die.

My only wish at the time was that it would hurry up. It hurt. I had chosen the slowest, most painful way to go. I don’t recommend it.

But, the extra time is what saved my life.

It gave my two little sisters the time to draw a card for me, in crayon, with the words, “Please don’t die” handwritten next to a sweet little Giraffe.

It wasn’t until the moment I read it that I felt remorse and began to regret my decision. I didn’t see a light at the point of crossing over, so I called out in my mind: “I don’t want to die.”

And I heard an answer: “You can choose.”

And choose, I did.

From that moment on, my body began to heal. I didn’t even need the liver transplant they said I would certainly need.

I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to figure out what was ‘wrong’ with me and how to “fix it.” (This is a large part of the problem, but more on that in a minute).

I set out to get a degree in psychology, with a vision of helping others. I was quickly disillusioned with how bleak the outcome of the therapies available at the time (mind you, this was the early 2000’s) were. And so, with straight A’s, a membership in Psi Chi (the National Honor Society for Psychology), and only three courses left to graduate, I abandoned the field to study philosophy and religion.

Searching for the root causes of mental illness has since become a lifelong quest.

I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours and dollars studying therapy, IN therapy, working with coaches, and trying to overcome my inner critic — those voices in my head that berated me, taunted me, and led me to ending it all.

Over the course of my journey to understand and empower myself, I was able to overcome my inner critic, heal my lack of worthiness, and go from being a high school dropout with a drug problem, a serial self-saboteur, and a poor, single mom to a multiple six-figure entrepreneur, sales coach to some of the biggest stars of my industry (Deepak Chopra’s and Fabienne Frederickson’s team at Boldheart Business to name a few).

I was even able to support my daughter, Alethea Harnish, in overcoming her failed suicide attempt at 15. She has gone on to be the first student from her high school to attend an Ivy league, and to become a successful actress and award-winning playwright by 21.

So, I know a thing or two from experience about winning the good fight against debilitating depression, anxiety, and mental illness, and how someone can take their rock-bottom moments and turn them into their dream success story.

---

Here are six things you can do if you’re struggling with feeling not good enough, or feeling that life isn’t worth living:

1. Repeat after me: “This, too, shall pass.”

One of the hardest parts of struggling with thoughts of suicide and depression is the belief that things will never get better, or feeling powerless against your thoughts. But I can tell you, with 100% certainty, that how you feel right now, in this very moment, is as hard as it’s going to get.

If you can’t imagine how you’re going to win the fight with the voices in your head, the one’s saying you’re a failure, that you’re undeserving of love and a happy life, family, and future, etc., please know this: no matter what has happened or what you have done to get in this situation, this too shall pass.

You can transform the hot mess you’re in right now into success. Take life 5, 10, or even 15 minutes at a time. Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat.

2. Repeat after me: “There is no such thing as being WORTHY.”

One of the biggest (often well-meaning) mistakes I see in the personal development industry is the goal of convincing yourself that you are worthy. I love the intent behind this, on the surface. It seems like it should be helpful. It makes sense.

However, trying to convince someone that they are worthy to live inadvertently reinforces the idea that someone can be UNWORTHY of living.

If you really want to fight the inner critic, you’re better off discrediting it at the source. It’s easier than trying to beat it at its own game because the characteristics that determine a human being’s worthiness change daily and from person to person.

The qualities we use to measure worthiness are made up by, get this… other human beings, and trying to convince your mind that you are worthy just perpetuates a flawed system. I fully believe that if we came together as a society to heal the worthiness wound, we’d be able to solve all of our problems in one generation, or at the very least, free our energy up enough to try.

If you’re trying to support someone going through the throes of feeling unworthy, instead of telling them that “they are enough,” tell them “none of that matters.” Tell them about how you’ve messed up your life at some point — royally. And that someday, this moment will be part of their phoenix from the ashes story, too.

Because if I’ve learned anything from my experience of not one, but three, mental-breakdown-rock-bottom-moments, it’s this…

3. Laugh at the mess. Let people underestimate you, including your inner critic.

Rock bottom moments are the BEST moments to manifest from, and the look on people’s faces when you bounce back from this one is going to be PRICELESS.

Healing my battle with my own inner critic and then defying the odds in life and the sales, marketing, and coaching industry has become my calling card. Nothing is more satisfying than proving the inner critic wrong.

If you have more people in your life who underestimate you than believe in you right now because, well, you may have made a mess of your life more than once, let the desire to prove them all wrong overpower the voices that tell you they’re right about you.

At the bottom, there is nowhere to go but up.

If you’re afraid you’ll keep spiraling and things will just get worse, accept that may be the case for a while, and it’s okay; you can’t have a rags to riches, Cinderella success story without a rock bottom moment.

You can’t have a rainbow without rain.

You can’t have a miracle without dire circumstances.

Your rainbow is coming.

4. Stop using phrases like “died by suicide.”

This will be controversial and maybe a bit uncomfortable, but hear me out.

While I believe the intention of people and organizations who advocate for changing the language used to talk about suicide are coming from the best possible place, using terminology like “died by suicide” actually does more harm and, from my experience, makes it HARDER for those who battle with suicidal compulsions, or who have succeeded in their suicide attempt, to have responsibility for their actions.

It may seem obvious, but once someone has lost their life, do they really care about whether or not they are responsible for it?

The person who has committed suicide is, to be blunt, already dead. Changing the focus only helps those who are grieving feel better. And while this is incredibly important, and I feel deeply sorry for those who have lost someone they love to suicide, this isn’t the path to preventing suicide.

If the goal of suicide awareness is to empower still living humans who struggle with feelings of hopelessness, depression, and unworthiness, implying they are victims of suicide only perpetuate those emotions. What this language does is unintentionally DISEMPOWER that person, and creates a mentality of victimhood and powerlessness. It encourages over identification with a disease or disorder that is “controlling” them, and that they are unable to overcome.

This is only disempowering when you’re in the throes of suicidal thoughts and compulsions.

Instead of worrying about whether phrases like “committed suicide” assign too much responsibility, we can assign personal power, strength, and the hope that someone CAN fight the battle and WIN.

Many ground-breaking studies are calling on the medical model of psychiatry to look deeper at the root causes of suicide, with shocking evidence against the theory that depression, a significant factor in suicide, is caused by chemical imbalances. The fact is, “after decades of study, there remains no clear evidence that serotonin levels or serotonin activity are responsible for depression,”

Again, I’m not a clinical psychologist. Take this with a grain of salt, and do your own research. But, from my experience, pointing to mental illness as the sole cause, and then creating an identity around it is a mistake.

While on my journey, medication and therapy were helpful to get through the worst moments, and I know that an official mental health diagnosis can feel like a relief. But it is important to remember that the field of psychology is still in its infancy, and most mental illnesses are just a group of symptoms that occur together frequently and have been given a name. We still understand very little about how the brain operates, and so it is not cold, hard truth that a mentally ill brain causes mental illness and suicide.

I believe that it is actually childhood trauma that created the defense mechanisms we need to survive, which are then considered these diagnosable symptoms.

5. Avoid blaming mental illness, or referring to people and things, especially yourself, as “crazy.”

I’ll be the first to raise my hand as ‘guilty’ of this one. I am still in the process of changing the way I think and speak.

Back when I was initially discharged from the hospital after my suicide attempt, I spent some time working with a psychologist. My official diagnosis was Adjustment Disorder. My home life was turbulent; my parents were both alcoholics and going through a messy divorce at the time. I was being bullied daily at school, and I was using drugs to cope with the emotions that I couldn’t bear to feel.

But what I didn’t know then was that my issues could have been attributed not to Adjustment Disorder, but to a new and not yet officially recognized disorder: Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).

I’ve had not one but three therapists tell me over the last year that I have the most traumatic life experiences of anyone they’ve ever worked with, and that they can’t understand how I have been so resilient. Without going into detail — because I fully believe that we are all just doing the best we can, and that generations of my family were hurt people who hurt people, just like the rest of us — I scored a 9 out of 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences assessment.

The sad fact is that an alarmingly high percentage of people who attempt suicide, up to 68%, were abused as children in some way.

The article “Adverse Childhood Experiences and Suicide Risk: Toward Comprehensive Prevention,” published by The National Library of Medicine, states,

“The prevalence of ACEs is high, and exposure to ACEs, particularly in the absence of protective factors, has been linked to underdeveloped executive functioning and a distorted physiologic stress response; unhealthy coping; physical, mental, and behavioral health disorders; and reduced life expectancy. ACEs have been associated with markers of diminished life opportunity (e.g., reduced education, employment, and income), which are also associated with suicide.”

“Both fields, child maltreatment and suicide prevention, acknowledge the importance of relationships and connectedness; however, focusing on the conditions in which children live, learn, and play (and thereby form healthy connections) within suicide prevention has, in large part, remained absent.”

And yet, we see an aversion by society and the media to discuss the topic of child abuse. It’s not politically correct, and it feels better to reduce suicide to something we cannot prevent, like mental illness, rather than to ask the question, “could child abuse lead to things like mental illness and suicide?”

We need to change that. We need to empower those battling depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide. We need to rethink our victimization of those struggling with mental illness, because it’s likely that they have already been victims as children. They need to be empowered by forgiveness and compassion.

A GREAT place to start is by working with a therapist trained in treating trauma. There are so many new therapies that can help. Or you could donate to organizations that give children a positive environment to live and grow in, like React Theatre in Indianapolis, which fosters confidence, creativity, and inclusivity for youth. They helped me afford acting lessons for my daughter when I couldn’t, and work day in and day out to support every child that goes through their program.

6. Finally, remember this: if you’re battling thoughts of suicide, I see you, I feel you, and I know you are STRONG.

You’ve already survived so much. You can survive this and feel happiness again.

You don’t have to commit suicide, and there is nothing wrong with your beautiful brain; it will heal as you will.

Never ever forget that truth.

The odds are stacked against you, but you are NOT a statistic.