Suicide and Shame with Chris Plough

00:18 Welcome everyone. We're here again at the health sovereign podcast and today should be a very interesting, a little bit different of an interview. We're going to dive right in, diving deep today on the line and I have with me my good friend Chris Plough. And as I said, diving deep. So Chris

00:38 Shotgun in your mouth. How did you get to this point? Well, so for context I'll give just a little bit of the story and then we'll think we'll go from there. Like so I think there's a variety of reasons that we end up in a place. And I know for me it was all these wounds around abandonment, around worth specifically my natural father and my mom had an incident early in life that really affected my nervous system, made me really fear, anger, maybe fear and my own worth. Like, like what did I do to deserve this? And later on, he chose not to be in my life. And this is really early age. This is all before two years old. And so like then it was again, further like rejection, abandonment, et cetera. And then, you know, where his kids' irrational stuff happens. And so when my mom got with my stepfather like there was a rational anger and fear around why would she choose somebody else over me?

01:35 Right? And so all these things got coalesced and I had a pattern in my life where when I felt deeply, deeply rejected, especially by woman it would send me into the spiral that I didn't understand. And so I had felt so deeply wounded by the rejection of a woman and felt completely worthless, couldn't feel my own worth, and just spiraled completely out of control. And so I found myself driving out into the middle of the desert when I was 16, and I drove out through the dirt roads in New Mexico and there was this unofficial landfill that people would drop stuff off at. And I drove up into an and pulled up next to a Hill. And I had a, a boombox next to me and I was, I was playing amazing by Aerosmith. It's an incredible song that actually means something very different to me now.

02:22 But I was playing, it slid over into the passenger side of the truck after I parked and I did, I pulled a shotgun, my parents shocked him that I had stolen out of their gun cabinet. And I put the barrel in my mouth and I took my right hand and I went down and flipped off the safety and I took my right thumb and I put it on the trigger. And I had every intention of ending my life at that moment because I couldn't see a life worth living. I couldn't feel my own worth. And I hurt so badly. I just wanted to attend. And for whatever reason, to the depth of my soul, I wanted, well apparently not to the depth of my soul, but to the depth of it, this physical being, I wanted to pull that trigger and I, I couldn't.

03:05 And I still remember to this day like, that tastes like oily pennies. That's the taste. And I couldn't. And then I pulled it out after being there for, I don't even know how long. And I felt even more worthless because not only was I a failure with all these other things in life, but I couldn't even do this. Like I, I couldn't even do this simple act. And then I drove back, entered the house. My mom and dad happened to be sitting at the table and they were like crazily concerned with where I was, what was going on, et cetera. Cause they, nobody knew. And I dropped the shotgun shell that had pulled out of the gun on the table and then we began to talk a little bit. So that was 16 years ago and I didn't have peace with that until I was 39 to begin to like the path out. And I didn't really feel peaceful with it until 41. So for nearly 25 years of my life, it was this cycle of depression and suicide. And I felt caught in that cycle and never really thought I would get out.

04:08 Hmm. I was just looking before the show. And suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the USA. That's, that's a lot. I mean we're, so we're talking about healthier and so many people focus on the physical right and not getting heart disease and Alzheimer's or cancer. And obviously, that's very important. But since starting the show I wanted to cover really all perspectives and health and obviously the mental and emotional is such a huge part of that.

04:38 Well take their own life, not to drop it more like it's fucking fascinating. Like more people, excuse my language, I don't even know how language goes on on your show.

04:47 Let it roll. And it will find, I think we can just throw an explicit marker on this.

04:53 Like more people take their own life than have their lives taken. It's like what a time to live in. It is a time of prosperity and abundance, but it's one in which people feel so incredibly lost. And I, I know and understand that feeling

05:07 Well. And especially when we look at them, I mean the irony is in the USA, right? Which should be, everyone's better off than other places in the world materially. Right? But we have such problems and I never got close to suicide myself, but I think like all people, I definitely did imagine like, Oh, I thought about it as an option. I never went far as planning or anything like that, but it certainly was on the table. So yeah, the, it's, it's so important to, if it's the 10th leading cause of death, we definitely need to address this. So in sharing the story, there is obvious, I think you did well as far as explaining how you felt at that time, but also why it was that way after many years of reflection and working on this.

05:52 Yeah, I think number one is often we're just in these cycles where we don't really understand why we have these behaviors and these feelings, right. And especially when they're overwhelming and all we can do is feel this incredible thing that for me, it's a feeling in the bones that are number. And it continued for many years afterward because sometimes I would get home and I would like pull into my house after being out with a bunch of friends or, or at a party or even, you know, something that was supposedly a successful fulfilling event in life. And I would feel so deeply alone and I would feel it in my bones and then my stomach would drop. And I knew what that meant. It was that similar cycle. And so my way of dealing with, for decades was I would force myself to sleep because I knew that if I could sleep and wake up in the morning, there'd be sunlight.

06:40 And in that sunlight I'd feel a little bit better. And I'd find a way to just keep going and make it through another day. And I don't think anybody deserves to be there, man. Like, like truly. And there's an incredible number of causes. Like, I've worked with people who have PTSD. I've worked with people who you know, feel worthless and unloved themselves. I worked with people who do a variety of reasons. They feel like they're a failure because they're not living the life that they believe that they're supposed to based off of their parents or the society or their culture or whatever else. Hell, some people are just like literally just exhausted from trying to make ends meet, work, you know, working multiple jobs and just feel in this prison of financial lack for, for lack of a better term. There's an incredible number of reasons that we ended up in that place. But I think the places are the same. And so what's important is how can we begin to move out of that place?

07:30 So you mentioned that you had this time when you were 16 years old and for another 16 or so years longer in that you went through these cycles. I'm curious that you come close to it ever again or did just sleeping on it seem to put away and

07:47 Yeah, there's a key moment. If it works for y'all, I'll share it now. Is that okay? So yeah, it continued on for actually 23 more years. That's like in the depth of it. And I was at an event, this was in January, right before my 39th birthday. And at this point it began to change instead of getting to that same depth where I'm just like, I want to end it and everything else, I literally just got to a point where I wanted not to live. I didn't want to live cause living was painful …like living, it was like this endurance challenge in this pain that I was enduring day to day and age was just wearing me down and grading me down and I was just, I was done. I didn't want to kill myself but I didn't want to live. And I found that at that time I happened to be at this event and I decided on my 39th birthday, I'm going to do it.

08:42 I'm finally just going to do it and do it for real. And I knew exactly how I was gonna do it and plan it out. I knew where it was going to go and it was just there. And in the process of this, I began to have a bit of an emotional breakdown. Unfortunately, I happened to be at this event and happened to be around friends and it happened to be rooming with a very dear friend of mine and I never really said that this is what I was going through. But lo and behold, sometimes the universe works in interesting ways. He knew what that was like and I'm not going to share his name just because I haven't really asked his permission to do that yet, but we were rooming together and one evening he told me a story and he shared his story so deeply of what he'd been through and where he was.

09:24 Now that I knew that he understood he was the first person I really had a conversation with where I fucking knew that he understood and then he told me what his life was like now. And what do you describe about his life? About, you know, yeah. Every once in awhile this darkness comes, but it's not the same as before. And rather than living in it day to day or week to week or a month, a month, like maybe every few years, it comes around and it's less and less each time. And, and it's not the same darkness. It's just a thing that you come in. It's like a, it's a little shadow of a cloud that passes and, and life is good. And I could not imagine that because I'm at that point for 23 years, have lived in this place and couldn't imagine a place out of it, but because of the depth of his story, because I could see his eyes because I knew that he knew what I felt like, and he was a living example of what was on the other side.

10:16 I decided to trust, decided to have a bit of faith and faith for me is a weird word, but I don't think there's anything better than that because it's essentially a belief in something that I'd never have had actual proof of myself in my own life. And so rather than going to my life on my 39th birthday, I made a very different decision. And the first part of that was precipitated by the fact that this gentleman sat me down and looked me in the eyes and said, I want you to have a list and I want to be the first person on your list. And whenever you get to this place, I don't care when it is, I don't care what time it is. I don't care what's going on, you're going to call me. And of course, people have said things like that before, but it was the first time like really reached into my soul and I felt it.

11:00 And my integrity is so strong that like, okay, if I promise that I'm going to do it, even though it's the last thing in the world that I want to do. And so he ended up being the first person on my list. And then the decision I made was I'm going to go around and I'm going to talk to everybody close to me and I'm going to share what I had been experiencing for the last, you know, two and a half decades. And the first person was my grandmother. And so rather than going today in my life, my birthday, I went and drove up to my grandmother and I surprised her. She didn't know it was coming and I sat down with her and my hand and I shared exactly what I'd been going through for the last part of my life. And it was such a release in shame.

11:36 Like I really, I didn't realize there was so much darkness and so much shame there in doing that. I told her the story of this friend who had helped me. And you know, I mentioned the list and I didn't think anything of it and it always gets me, she demanded to be on that list, like demanded. It wasn't even an ask. And then every person I went to thereafter, it was the exact same story and it was easier to tell each time and the shame was less each time. And I realized more and more people, as I began to share this, they began to share that they had gone through similar things and like I didn't feel alone anymore. And then this list grew and then by the end of it I had this list of like 11 people, 11 people who felt my life was worth more than I did.

12:17 And it was proof, man. Even in those times, the doctors would come back like I couldn't refute this list. It was physical proof that whatever I was feeling, experiencing was not real. It was all within my head and it was all like clouded and everything else and both talking about it, releasing the shame and the creation of the list were the path out for me. [inaudible] Well, I'd never heard that part of the story and that's quite amazing. What I want to ask is, was with your friend at this event in January, the first person on your list, was he the first time you had really shared this stuff before? I mean, you mentioned before, after the initial story with the shotgun, you talked to your parents about some stuff, but for that 20 years that you never really let people in. For the most part, I didn't grow up with this identification, this belief that the world is unsafe and that the only person I could really depend on was myself.

13:14 So in times of turmoil, my automatic reaction and it, it, I still have a tendency towards this way. My automatic reaction is to pull into myself as opposed to reaching out to others. And yeah, I had never shared that story before then. And even with that first person, I didn't share everything with him. I'm not, to begin with. Like he just saw enough of it that he took the first step and I was very fortunate with that. And then that allowed me, because of what he shared and the space, the vulnerability that he created, it allowed me to step into it and share more than I'd ever felt comfortable before. Were you surprised that he too had had similar experiences where you’re thinking like, oh, I'm the only person that's ever had this before? It's the weirdest experience because there's a lot of similarities in life that he and I have and I was both completely surprised.

14:05 I think my mind was completely surprised, but like my heart, like there was something in me that, that knew that there was something in me that felt that that simpatico, that felt that resonance. And so it was so weird that I was like flabbergasted and not surprised at the same time. Yeah, and you mentioned the word shame and I think that's a big part of why you kept it hidden for so long, but also the same thing that would stop a person from sharing it in the first place. But as you shared it, you were saying that you're releasing the shame around it and it just felt so much better. Could you go in a little bit further on that? Because I do feel that is a key piece. And I know even when I do have issues, like, you know, I don't always share directly with my wife, even though if I did do that, it would make it better instantly.

14:52 And I know for whatever reason we get in these loops in our head and that may be a minor thing or maybe a life-altering life-changing thing like this. Yeah, I think that we experience several corrosive emotions. And, and in my particular worldview, in my particular experience, I don't know if any is as corrosive as shame. I've heard it described as this once before, like guilt is feeling bad for, you know, something you've done and shame is feeling bad for who you are. And so like there's this inherent feeling and belief in yourself that the, a, whatever it is it's going on, you deserve it. And B, you're not worthy of anything more and see that nobody else would understand. And D, that you're alone in this experience. And that just furthers this, this spiral of isolation. Right. And so you never ended up breaking out of it because of all of these beliefs.

15:42 Nobody else understands this is my own personal experience, you know, et cetera. And because of that, the one thing that literally like telling the story and going out and sharing with people what I had been through, I'll tell you right now, it was the hardest thing that I'd ever done in my life to that point. And I've driven a motorcycle in the middle of winter to Siberia. I've slept outside in minus 42 degrees. I've done some things in my life and this was the hardest thing that I'd ever done. And it was literally the most freeing. So what happens is I, I've come to like experience. We have this shame and the shame is like this dark fog. It's like this black fog that's all around us that obscures our vision, keeps us from feeling the things that we're feeling, keeps us from connecting to others.

16:26 And literally just by talking and sharing the story of these things that go on to somebody who will sit there and listen. It's as if like there's this light that comes in and the fog begins to evaporate. Like, cause it's nothing. It's a theory. It's not even real. Right? But it feels so solid, no Paik that you just get lost in it. And so when that begins to dissolve, like this light comes in and you realize like this darkness wasn't an all-encompassing darkness. It's not a solid thing. It's not this like huge blackness that I can't get out of. It's just a fog. And literally the fact of sharing it every time it lessened and lessened and lessened and less than until I got the point where it's like I don't feel shameful about this. I don't feel shameful about it at all. And matter of fact, the number of people as I go, like I've never told anybody this, but, and would share their story and not just a, okay, I've had those conversations or I've had those feelings or, or anything else.

17:21 But literally I've had several people who have been like, so here's the funny thing. I've been to that edge. You know, my one friend was like, I've literally had this bag of nerve gas and I was just about ready to put it over my head cause that was the easiest way that I could imagine out of this. And somebody knocked on my door. Hmm. And another one's like, you know, I was literally standing on the ledge of a building and I thought I was going to fall forward. And I ended up falling backward and fell onto the floor of the building. Right. And like, like the number of people who have been to that place. And I'm like, we're not alone. Like, no, we're not alone. We never have. And it's an illusion. I don't even know. I'm censoring myself at this point. I've already cussed.

18:02 Like it's an illusion that we are. Right. And that was one of the more healing things to the point where I know, hope I'm not skipping too far forward or, or missing anything. But that happened at 39 and I continued for months and months and months to talk to people. Everybody close to me. I just had a deep conversation with and by the time I was midway through my 41st year, right. So about two and a half years later, I ended up traveling down through New Mexico and I went to that same spot in the desert. I was literally in that same spot, the desert, and I sat down to meditate and the sun was coming up and as the sun rose like, okay, I'm like, I'm gonna feel this. This was a big point in my life. All right, I'm going to feel this and this isn't going to be easy, but I'm going to endure it.

18:49 And as the sun rose, man like all I felt was peace. Like all I felt was peace and there was none of that darkness or that blackness or anything else there. And then all I could feel was love, like literally love and gratitude for that 16-year-old who had this incredible strength not to pull that trigger. And so I just meditated and I sent love back to that kid and it was like, it was like the last of the shadow had just been released. And I literally and I don't, I'm not saying this for effect, I'm just saying this, to be honest. I literally have not, I'm now 43 years old. I literally have not feared or worried about suicide again. And you know, I can't say what the experience of my life is going to be from here. I would never claim that because I don't think anybody understands that, but I don't have any fear of it whatsoever. And it's a fascinating experience to move from something that was so all-encompassing, so deep that I could never imagine being out of it, to literally being on the other side of an experience and almost having difficulty imagining what that was to be within it. It's like waking up from a dream

20:03 and want to ask about it, I guess the courage to share with other people. So you had this person that had the sympathetic resonance, he had had similar experiences and you also saw that he had turned it around in some ways, some fashion. So you had faith as you mentioned that it was possible and it would be possible for you for whatever reason you felt this at this time, but as you said like to go and have this discussion with further people, too many people that would actually be a worst fate and death. Right. And I'm sure that that crossed your mind that way. Yeah. Even though it's a conversation, like it shouldn't be like that, but it feels like that it feels like or death.

20:48 Is there anything else that, cause yeah, and I'm sure other people that may be in that place where I've been in that place that felt that same when you're depressed, right. It feels like it's awkward racist that it's going to last forever even though that's generally not the case. So how do you make that first step? It's fascinating like things like that in my life, especially at that time. Like when I would step into a conversation like that, I would feel literal fight or flight. Like adrenaline would dump my vision would tunnel might, my hearing would get kind of tinny. Like I would literally experience a full-on fight or flight trigger. Right. And it was so hard because when that happens, then it becomes really hard to think, right? All you can do is like you're there in the moment and your body's just like, do I run?

21:31 Do I hide? Do I fight? Like me? That's all it gets good it's going on. And the things that really, really helped me with it is one, I started with somebody who I knew loved me more than anything. Like I, ah damn, I love my grandmother. There was a part of me that knew that this was the safest possible place that I could like do this with. First, I didn't start with a place that I had other fears and stuff around and that was really helpful. The other part about it is I had done things in my life where I'd experienced that physical danger in different ways and so I wasn't like this feeling of adrenaline dump wasn't unknown to me. It was just in a different context. Like I had gone bungee jumping. I've done other things before. I had learned like from bungee jumping that literally if I just keep, even though like full of adrenaline dump everything else, they just keep stepping down this plank and then just step off of it, it's going to happen, right?

22:25 So my focus is just one step, next step, next step, next step, next step, next step. And so I've just trained myself that literally in that moment, rather than worrying about anything, all I do is what is the next step? What is the next step? Was the next step. Okay, ring my grandmother's door. Okay. Say hi. Okay. Walk-in. Okay. Say I'd like to talk to you. Okay. Sit in the chair in the living room. You know, like literally step by step and then just begin it. And then the third was breathing. Like literally I, I've learned this through meditation. I've learned this through mindfulness. I've learned this in a lot of ways. In that moment there's a particular breathing and you'll know this better than I do, but I've just found it helpful. It's like there's a certain breathing box breathing that I believe was also taught to soldiers back in world war II and all throughout time.

23:13 And in those super traumatic moments, like you breathe in for four seconds, you hold it for four seconds, you release it for four seconds and you hold it for four seconds and you continue. And that is a way of telling the body that you are actually safe regardless of what it's experiencing. And it begins to calm the, and it begins to bring, you know, blood flow back to the brain and you begin to be able to process. And that has been insanely useful to me multiple times in my life. So during this time from when you were that initial suicide attempt to 39 when you had this change like you became a very successful entrepreneur business person, right?

24:08 To the outside world you were on cloud nine. Yeah. Well, that can add to the isolation a bit as well at times. But it was also, I'm very fortunate for it. So I learned early on that for me, like the one of the ways that I could get attention and some of the stuff that I craved was achievement and was I good at achieving? Like, you know, and I love learning. Like I've always had this beautiful innate curiosity and I love to learn anyways. I had succeeded in a lot of realms in life. I was, you know, an incredible student and had done really well there. I learned to do construction and was incredibly good with that. I had learned computer architecture and computer engineering and had, you know, worked with a startup and you know, achieved honors. Within that, I had moved into the realm of theater and had won many, many awards for theater.

24:54 I started a company and grew it from zero to eight figures over the course of a few years and into a global company. Everything else. So like to the outside world, like Mr. Plough, Chris had his shit down and he was living the life and, and I was also like because I was not always happy with my life, I would do reckless things, but people on the outside wouldn't view that as reckless. Like he doesn't care about his life. They'd be like, dude, he's so fearless. And dude, he's adventurous and looks at all the stuff that Chris gets to do. But I, I was using that to try to fill a hole that could never be filled at the time. And I was using that to put forth this facade of perfection's facade of achievement so that I could try to feel good about myself. And there were parts of it that I really enjoyed as well.

25:42 Like there were times in there I was having an incredible time. There were times that I was really doing what I wanted to do, but there was a lot of it that I just felt insanely, insanely alone. Yeah. That achievement could only momentarily make you feel good, but as you said, it can't fill a hole if at your core you don't believe you're worth living. Right. And yeah, and if you like to keep running at that speed, like what I was doing essentially as I was taking what is essentially, you know, a journey or a marathon in life and I was turning it into a sprint. And so I was literally sprinting every day and it's no wonder that like between like this depression and suicide that I was experiencing and feeling worn down by that, by not really putting attention into relationships and openness and connection and fulfillment in life and all the things that would normally fill me up.

26:31 And by running at this sprint speed for so long, it was inevitable that I would essentially have a complete burnout because there was nothing, nothing left in the tank. And then when there was nothing left in the tank, that's when I got to the point of, Oh crap, I can't do this anymore. And fortunately, that for me eventually came about in great. Here's a whole new path. We've got to try something completely different because the old patterns are obviously not working. I'd done it for so long, but it was a dangerous place to go in because it could have very, very easily without the right influences. Without that moment, with that beautiful friend, it could have gone the exact opposite.

27:14 Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week to conclude with Chris Plough as we dive into the transformative psycho technologies that Chris has used and also I myself have used to make big changes in life, so stay tuned at Lost Empire Herbs. We guarantee our herbs will change your life or your money back, more energy, mental focus, better sleep, sex hormones, workouts, and more. Unlike the vast majority of supplements out there with us, you can notice a feelable difference to perform at your peak or you don't have to pay for them. That's what performance herbalism is all about. Get started by going to Lost Empire Herbs.com and take our new quiz to find the right groups for you.