SPARE: Dancing With The Devil

Written by Andi Bazaar, Henrie Louis Friedrich | March 31, 2023

What I’ve learned is as best we can we need to deal with mental illness just like any other illness with compassion and we have to care for our own health first, that means: "setting boundaries, knowing our limits, getting help and talking about it."

There’s hardly anything in life that feels as good as going on this journey, going through dark times and coming out of it with nothing but healthy love.

Let’s talk about triggers, it is a word that is used in many contexts but still not very well understood. At its core, a trigger is something in our environment that leads to an emotional response within us. So what are they and how can we be aware of manage them?

One of the main jobs of our brains is survival which means it learns and protects us from situations that were harmful to us in the past, this is especially true for issues that happened during our childhood when we were vulnerable.

Triggers happen when a situation is close to something traumatic that happened in the past, enabling us to go into fight or flight mode in order to survive that threat. In our evolution, it played an important role to save us from dangerous situations.

They also have levels. For example, certain situations can lead to full blown panic attacks while others can make us feel down and we only realize it later after the trigger happened. One of the most important things we can do is keep a list of those triggers.

That awareness can be so important, it allows us to operate from a place where we know issues in our environment that are harmful to our mental health. For example, a common trigger in many of us is people yelling because it happened a lot during our childhood, so how can we use that knowledge to help our mental health?

Let’s say I had a stressful day where my mental health is already low, watching a movie or videos where there are people screaming can trigger even more anxiety. Therefore, we know to stay away from that.

That awareness of these situations is crucial because we often go through multiple triggers without realizing how much they impacted us, when we are aware of them we can manage them better. Understanding why these triggers impact us is also important.

For some triggers, they imprinted in our brain because they happened multiple times. For example, a parent yelling often when we were kids can make us defensive or angry as adults when another person yells, for others it only needs to happen once.

HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH THEM AND IS THERE A WAY TO REDUCE THEM?

In our day to day life we can certainly reduce them especially when we are already overwhelmed, constant exposure to known triggers can lead to a lot of anxiety and even depression or numbness after a while.

However, there are certain triggers that we simply cannot avoid because they are outside of our control. Therefore, understanding why they happen and working with a therapist through the roots of those triggers can reduce its emotional impact. Safe exposure can also help a lot.

It teaches our brains that we do not need this situation anymore. For example, if crowds are a trigger for me I can slowly start to voluntarily go into crowds have the panic attacks and then wait in the crowd for the panic attack to subside on its own.

It removes the fear factor overtime, but it is also uncomfortable to go through that the first few times. That’s why it needs to be done in a safe manner, by doing it in slow steps or with people we already feel safe with before we attempt to do it on our own.

I hope this part was able to explain the impact of triggers on our mental health and what we can do to manage them and eventually recover from them, hope you all have an amazing week.

THIS IS HUGO, THIS IS MY STORY AND THIS IS MY BATTLE

"only mad people suffer from mental illness," — biggest lie ever told!

Mental health is a priority, make it the first one. This is a story of my journey with mental illness.

I’ve been suffering from depression for over 5 years until this day, it kept on growing, bringing along anxiety attacks and panic attacks. I already hit rock bottom, suicidal thoughts were always on my mind. All that and more.

Going to therapy was my choice, it was a secret for a long long time. Knowing more about mental illnesses and about your ownself, understanding your ownself psychologically has been one of the most powerful instruments that I’ve been using.

Awareness in mental not only made me learn how to control my thoughts, depression and panic attacks but it also gave me a beautiful chance to look at the world in another perspective, it gave me a chance to live my life the way I wish too.

The ability of understanding others because you already understand there behavior psychologically is a third eye opener to the way you live, I’m noy going to therapy and I’m not on my medication but the outcome of that all is spontaneous.

I’m more powerful, more optimistic. I am living my life every single moment as I’m supposed to from the beginning. I’m lucky to have supportive friends and family, I have reached a point where I can happily say that I am so proud of myself and I love myself to the fullest.

Over my 7 year entrepreneurial journey at one-on-one, I've grown to appreciate the complexities of mental health and wellness not only for myself but more for my team and family I struggle a lot.

FIRST SIGNS OF MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES:

It all started in 2017 when I was "rejected" for a Scholarship interview or so I thought, turns our the message of invitation was in my spam and I was depressed for days.

I later did the interview and got awarded the Scholarship. The next year, it was time to board that flight to pursue a Masters on Financial Engineering.

Being a boy from the country who grew in abject poverty, this was dream come true but my mother became severely illness.

I tried to solve all problems simultaneously, bad idea. The hardest believe it or not was the guilt of my daughter growing without her dad, having experienced the trauma of how poor and abusive my past was to us.

This required giving up the scholarship, I cried for days after writing the most painful letter to the embassy, attempting to defer the scholarship opportunity but later had to fullly relinquish same.

Thankfully, one by one was growing we had some investors who were passionate about education and I was crazy.

The next year, I was in-and-out of the hospital every other month or so. Many triggers, one was everytime the university would write to me (they didn't remove me from their list of students) I was like "I shouldn't be here!" — just about anything about the decision numbed me.

One day, a reporter from CNBC trying to understand my "why?" — it was at their headoffice and it took me out. It was my mother, I was uncontrollable.

The fear of the unknown as an entrepreneur was jeopardizing everything I wanted to accomplish for my mother and my family.

Fast forward to 2020 pandemic, it was a different problem. A good problem but nevertheless stressful within 15 days of the Pandemic hitting this country and it took a toll on me, my team and my family.

Since then, the biggest struggle I have is trying to balance being an entrepreneur and being a good father and a husband to my beautiful kids and my wife.

It's difficult because when you work fully from home, your kids don't understand that you're "unavailable," — it's numbing.

I mean, "how do you explain to a 3 year old that daddy is home but not available to play?" — it's something that I struggle with and have been getting help with. The fear being I never want my daughters to feel rejected.

Over the years, I have lost friends to mental health and wellness issues that at the time I didn't quite understand and now I do.

• It’s important to protect your mental space.
• Avoid your triggers until you can deal with them.
• Do right by your mind so you can do right by others (esp. for entrepreneurs)
• Fear of failure will either make you numb or will make you do the impossible.
• To do this, your mind must be well.

As Entrepreneurs, we are at our best when our minds are free to work magic. When you place all your eggs in one basket, you cannot allow it to fall. That weight on your mind is unimaginable. I am much better now because I've protected my mind.

Two months ago I was talking to my mom and she mentioned her mortgage interest rate was >5%, I asked for a copy of her statement to look into refi-options. Instead, I ended up making her mortgage payment. Why? Time for tell the truth on mental illness and what I learned about it.

My parents divorced when I was 3, mom re-married when I was 5. She had primary custody of me, she struggled with alcoholism and was diagnosed bipolar. She picked fights with my stepdad and the police came to our house often.

Sometimes the fights were violent, once she ripped the phone off the wall (yes they used to be mounted to the wall instead of carried around in our pockets) and threw it across the room at him. At one point she was committed to a mental institution for 6 weeks.

In about 3rd grade I was playing in the woods behind our house and ran into another boy my age, he became my best friend. He later told me he was scared of me in the woods that day cause all the neighbors said my mom was crazy and he thought I might be crazy too.

Once I woke up to go to school and there was a suicide note on the counter and pills everywhere, I ran upstairs and started pounding on mom’s bedroom door. She finally yelled out “I didn’t do it!" and then I had to go to school like any other day.

My stepdad *bless him* explained to me one day that mom was illness, he said the illness made mom do these things and act this way. This one convo was a lifesaver for me, as a child I took away that my mom was not a bad person. Mom was sick, she was suffering.

Money was always tight as mom was an overspender, people with mental illness often don’t understand limits. She ran us into bankruptcy and I remember the guys coming to repossess the car, the microwave and her furniture including her headboard.

Mom was a teacher and divorced when I started college, on a teachers salary she raised my sister and brother who are 8 and 9 years younger than me. She was always borrowing $$$ from relatives who knew it would never be paid back.

As an adult, dealing with it didn’t necessarily get easier. You never knew what might happen. I lived far away but if I went to visit would she pick me up from the airport drunk? Would she be passed out in her room for most of the visit?

At times I felt angry and resentful, I wanted a mom I could go shopping with or simply have a normal phone call with where you talk about relationships or what’s going on in your life but that wasn’t possible.

At 18 I found an incredible therapist, she helped me process these feelings and I learned it was ok to keep my distance, to protect my own mental health and yet still choose to love my mom.

My mom did not choose to be this way, she loves us fiercely. At times she suffers from horrible guilt over things she has done and what her children have endured. I know it can be hard not to blame someone with mental illness and say “why are they doing this to me?”

I know she would never intentionally choose some of the behaviors she has and so, I choose to help when I can. Mom is now 72 and retired for almost 10 years, she lives on a $3k/ month pension.

Her mortgage was negotiated during the Great Recession and has a lump sum $65k balloon pmt due at the end, while her rate is high it’s only being charged on the remainder of the balance. Refinancing was not an option for her.

On her statement I could see she was a month behind on her payments, I mailed in a check, waited for it to clear, then told her. She cried. I am grateful to be able to do this for her.

What I’ve learned is as best we can we need to deal with mental illness just like any other illness with compassion and we have to care for our own health first. That means setting boundaries, knowing our limits. Getting help, talking about it.

There’s hardly anything in life that feels as good as going on this journey, going through dark times and coming out of it with nothing but healthy love.

I say healthy love because I used to think love meant you had to put up with anything but you don’t, you must love and protect yourself first then you are free to love and help others.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Dr Oliver Schofield, MD (Consulting)
• Dr Seth Gryffen, MD (Consulting)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Scott Wynné Schofield (Publisher)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Co-writer/Analyst)
• Jwan Höffler Conwall (Art Interior Design)
• Hugo-licharre Freimann (Ass Director)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph (Writer)
• In appearance by "Hugo-licharre Freimann" (Model)