In honor of National Suicide Prevention Month, I sit down with Liz Sweigart, an Award-Winning Mental Health Advocate, former PwC Partner, Author, Keynote Speaker, Advisor, Coach and Adjunct Professor. Liz understands to her core that the only way to save lives and to improve the lives of those suffering with their mental health is to speak truth without shame. “Until we put our voices together, we’re all just individually shouting into the void. But when we come together, that’s when I think we galvanize. We give people hope.”
 
Liz walks us through her journey with depression starting as a teenager. “I experienced depression like this heaviness, inertia, and this complete disconnection from the world. It was  like watching somebody else live my life and not having any sense of connection to myself or others.” Incredibly intelligent, Liz masked the severity of her depression as an adult through perfectionism and her ability to put together a high achieving persona. Eventually, Liz couldn’t fight her depression anymore. “I felt I was disappointing everybody at home. If I was at home, I was disappointing everybody at work. And no matter where I was, I was a disappointment to myself. And that was when I set the plans in motion to end my life. And I am really fortunate that did not happen. I have a wonderful life partner. My husband was there when I needed him. And somehow, I found enough of the words, and he was able to quickly put together what was going on and so I am here.”
 
Inpatient treatment was incredibly important for Liz to reset her body and mind and to keep her safe. But she is so clear that maintaining her mental health is a journey and that in order to continue on, she had to accept that there were no easy happy endings. That the work would be sitting in moments of discomfort and being able to tolerate them before they became crisis. “I can sit in these moments of discomfort, they will end, I can get through them. And on the other side, I will feel better. And right now, this sucks. It’s like, yes, the sun will come out and right now, it is raining. So no, it is not sunny. It is not sunny at the moment. The sun is still going to come out. Two things are true. Like the sun will come out and right now is awful.”
 
Highlights from Liz:
 
“I like to say, I have a beautiful mind and a jerk brain. My mind does beautiful things. And at the same time, my brain has tried to sabotage me more times than I can count.”
 
“I convinced myself that I could like eat, pray love my way out of this. Like I was going to be fine. It would take 12 weeks. All I have to do is get off all of these medications and I'll be fine. So I worked with a therapist and a psychiatrist and I got off all my medications and three weeks later I realized that I wasn't actually getting better. I needed the medication that I needed and that was a crushing blow to me because I felt like I'd failed.”
 
“I can do hard things. I know I can do hard things. I have done hard things before. I can do hard things again.”
 
Don't Miss a Beat.
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 Liz’s Website:
https://lizsweigart.com/contact