A Splintered Mind

As National Suicide Prevention Week comes to a close, I wanted to share a few words. I was once suicidal. I hated myself. I hated my life. I was blind to the love of people around me. I was virtually on the precipice, but stepped back at the last moment because of their love. They mattered to me, and I mattered to them. I remembered that at the moment it would do the most good. I survived that dark period, and other dark periods that followed. I survived, healed, and now I try to help other people as desperately miserable as I once was by opening up about depression , ADHD , and suicide with my writing. In fact, I wrote a book to #StopSuicide , but helping people doesn’t need to be that elaborate. Just listen and care when somebody is in crisis. Take the time to care. Don’t recoil from the subject. The fact somebody is opening up to you about such a difficult subject is an amazing blessing in your life. Don’t waste it. The other night I spoke with a gentleman whose b...

During #NSPW17 , my ebook for the suicidal (& their families) is FREE for iBooks, Kobo, B&N & Kindle https://t.co/qkcmqt8PkC #suicide Plz RT pic.twitter.com/JsFVDEy7T5 — Douglas Cootey (@SplinteredMind) September 14, 2017 Another year; another National Suicide Prevention Week has passed. This year I thought it would be a good service to the community if I offered my ebook, Saying “NO” to Suicide , for FREE throughout the week. Since I’d never made my ebooks FREE before, I had no idea what an ordeal this would become. I started last Saturday, and soon Kobo reflected the new price. Yes! Excitement! By midnight, Apple’s iBooks was also reflecting the price. This was going to work! But then World Suicide Prevention Day arrived on the 10th, and neither B&N nor Kindle reflected the newer, freer price. This was a problem because I sell most of my books on Amazon’s Kindle (followed closely by iBooks). I decided to hold off making any an...

This has been a tough year for me. I’ve kept my struggle mostly secret because the drama that ails me relates a story that I cannot share. The results of it are fairly obvious to those who observe me day to day, however. I’m less cheery; I’m more stressed; my sleep is horrible; I’m way behind in my writing; my finances have thrown up a white flag; I don’t find relief in social media anymore; and my real social life has evaporated like water in the hot, Utah sun. The most unfortunate aspect of the drama is that the more stress I encounter, the worse my Tourette’s becomes. Still! During all of this, I fulfill all my duties as a dad, and plug forward. There is always a dawn on the other side of the darkness. I believe that completely, but these days I don’t have extra energy or time for writing books or articles. I thought I had a handle on things, albeit my life was full-time daddy work and no freelance, but then I woke up a few days ago an...

I have to admit. I haven’t been the most punctual of guys. I’ve tried, but I failed a lot. Last Tuesday, I had an appointment to meet a counselor at my daughter’s school. I left on time. I maneuvered through traffic like I was in the Indy 500 (without breaking the law!). I arrived early! Two minutes early! Then I reminded myself to put up the sunshade before getting out. I’ve written before about the effect sun-heated cars have on my noodle. So up went the sunshade. Is this the right way? No, it’s upside down. Wait, I should really put up the side window shades, too. There. Looks great! No overheating for me! By the time I walked through the door, however, I was two minutes late. Dang, foiled by ADHD again! Some of you might be thinking that two minutes is hardly LATE. It’s certainly not the latest I’ve ever been. With my Tourette’s and my super awesome ADHD organization, I’ve been known to push a courtesy fifteen minute grace period into the sixteenth minute and beyond. I’v...

I've got a new blog going up soon, but I came across something tonight that I felt compelled to share with you. Over on The Passive Voice , PG wrote about the turmoil his family has been going through due to the suicide of his son and the death of his brother — both within the same few weeks. Any death in the family can be devastating. I recently stood over the grave of my brother on Memorial Day, teary-eyed with a tight throat, even though its been nineteen years since the car accident. We don't forget those we loved. His son's suicide has pushed PG beyond the limits of his strength. Then he lost his brother to cancer. What a difficult time for his family. And yet, despite all of that, he put together a blog with such fabulous advice, I was in awe of his stamina. His blog post gives advice on words of comfort, discusses preparation for deaths in the family, and includes a stirring passage on mental illness. I was just thinking today about the need for a will now th...

Do you have a lot of bookmarks on your browser? What about open tabs? I just love them. I like to keep dozens of them up at any give moment, to go along with my hundreds upon hundreds of bookmarks. Don’t want to forget anything, right⸮ Just now I discovered that my daughter had been on my computer again and had closed yet another window filled with dozens of tabs. There was the usual moment of panic, followed by a loud, wailing sound very much like the sound Luke Skywalker made in that movie where he met a long lost relative. All my research! Gone! Doesn’t she realize I use open tabs like a ToDo list on my browser?! Then it hit me. I was finally free. I try to keep my problem under control, but tabs and bookmarks are just so easy to make! There I am, watching a show about detectives in Shetland, when suddenly I’m looking up Shetland on Flickr, researching the LDS community in that area, reading a Shetland article from 2009 about a twenty-three year old girl going on ...

Does living next to greenery offer benefits to your mental health, or is something else at work? Last month, the headline “Access to nature reduces depression and obesity, finds European study” caught my eye. All I had to do to feel happier and fit in my pants better was surround myself with trees? I felt silly. Here I was using cognitive behavior therapy techniques, exercising, and working on my sleep schedule. Instead, I should have been sitting in a bush all day. After all, that’s what it implied in the news. Look at what they were claiming: Middle-aged Scottish men with homes in deprived but verdant areas were found to have a death rate 16% lower than their more urban counterparts. Pregnant women also received a health boost from a greener environment, recording lower blood pressures and giving birth to larger babies, research in Bradford found. See? The babies know all that verdant abundance matters. Just being near the plants made a difference! Ther...