When I was at my cohort, I knew I belonged there.

I was very suicidal in my thinking and felt as if I’d been “caught” being there, having hidden my constant suicidal thoughts from the world.

I never admitted that I was suicidal to anyone, either, because I considered it to be a weakness of mine at the time (and for me, anything considered weakness was forbidden to express).

But I thought about suicide daily. It was simply part of my normal day-to-day thinking.

One thing I’m grateful for was the extreme religious beliefs I held at the time.

I believed in Hell, and I also believed I was ultimately one of the damned and that’s probably where I was headed.

If I looked down from a building, I would always wonder if it would hurt.

I’d think, “You know you’re going to go straight through that sidewalk and right into Hell. Are we interested in visiting Hell today?”

I’d answer, “Not today,” and walk away.

That “not today” answer kept me alive for a long time, so I held onto those religious beliefs with a firm grip.

But I was running out of extra days.

I used to explain it by saying I was desperately running out of runway and about to crash when my cohort happened.

SAW woke me up.

It seemed as if I woke up mentally and spiritually almost instantly at one point. It was stunning, as if I had suddenly become conscious for the first time.

My suicidality vaporized, too.

I mean, I had a lot of work to do on myself. Sure. But a lot of the hateful words that had screamed at me inside my own mind for my entire life suddenly went silent, as if a light had suddenly turned on.

For the first time, my entire life made sense to me.

You’d have to be me to fully appreciate what I’m trying to express here.

There was still a lot of work to do and I understood that.

I find it easier to describe the process of recovery as “unlearning.”

A lot of the things I was doing and the ways I was reacting to life were exactly that: reactions from a person who wasn’t taking responsibility in a lot of areas of his life.

There was a lot of “letting go” of things in my recovery.

A lot of unlearning programmed thinking and inherited beliefs.

A lot of stuff.

I had errors all the way down in my adult thinking.

Many of the ways I defended myself were rules I had constructed when I was five or six years old, growing up in a very dysfunctional environment.

I had a tendency to defend myself when I wasn’t even being attacked (hyper-vigilant).

As I investigated my thinking, I realized that most of the rules I was still living by and seeing the world through I developed when I was @ six.

They worked great then, so I just hung onto them.

Ultimately, I also knew my way of thinking had led me to a suicidal ideation detox facility.

That realization taught me to become very flexible with my beliefs.

I only think something is true now because I don’t know what I don’t know, and I know that.

I had to construct new ways of thinking and seeing life because there were well-traveled footpaths of practiced negativity inside my mind.

Am I experiencing negative feelings because of my thinking, or are my feelings driving my thinking?

It’s been my experience that it doesn’t matter which is chasing the other.

They chase each other and feed one another.

Like a whirlpool of negativity that’s hard to escape.

Something has to give if I’m going to get out of that current and start thinking differently.

I know negative thinking fosters negative energy (suffering).

Positive thinking fosters joy.

So here’s a shortcut to positive thinking.

Actually, two shortcuts.

The first is to do the work and keep doing the work.

I won’t ever retire from doing the work.

The second shortcut is a random act of kindness.

If I’m in a bad mood because of my negative thinking and can’t seem to get out of it, I’ll go find someone to do an act of kindness for.

That instantly changes the world I’m looking at.

Instead of looking around and seeing enemies, I’m looking for someone I can bless in some way.

I start examining other people for suffering I can detect, often hidden.

I used to hide my own suffering and I know I’m not terminally unique.

Observing the suffering in the lives of others somehow makes my own suffering easier to bear.

It always does.

It’s humbling when I notice what other people are surviving and having to face in life.

When I notice an area where I can be of service and choose to do so, I immediately experience gratitude.

I’m grateful that I could be of service.

I’m grateful when I see someone else’s suffering lessen.

I find it best if I can do some of these things anonymously.

Some I can’t, and that’s okay, too. Studies in the matter have shown that those who witness “acts of kindness” are more apt to replicate them in their own lives.

If I do this often enough, the well-traveled neural pathways inside my thinking begin to form new trails.

I find myself more and more often living in a state of peace or joy as my normal way of being.

Those angry internal voices (manager)…

I rarely hear them screaming anymore. If I do, an act of kindness silences them and refocuses my mind.

Photo: Jessica Lynn