A note before you start: this issue talks about suicide, including my own attempt. If that's not what you want in your inbox today, it'll keep.
In 2017 I walked onto the stage at the first Don't Forget the Bubbles conference with a temperature of 39.5.
The flu was the least of what I was about to say.
"Let me take you back to the year 1999.
The year of partying purple pop pixies, the year Neo first taught us about death by bullet point.
It was also the year I tried to kill myself."
I watched the whole room take a breath and hold it.
The fever didn't help. But up there, under the lights, it felt like I was telling someone else's story.
💡 ONE IDEA WELL
I didn't get onto that stage on my own say-so.
Before the conference, I'd shown the outline to a handful of friends I trusted to be honest with me. I'd sat down with a psychiatrist who'd spent years advocating for doctors' mental health and talked it through.
Any of them could have said not yet. None of them did.
I'm also good at compartments. It's a very doctor skill, and it's not a long-term plan. That's what my therapist is for. But on the day, it kept the story inside the talk.
Years later, I watched what happens without any of that.
A speaker came to tell the story of the worst thing that had ever happened to them. I'd checked in beforehand. They told me they were ready.
The tears came early, and the tears were fine. A room can hold tears.
Then the tech failed. The video wouldn't play. You could almost see them sweating.
In the questions afterwards, if you disagreed, you didn't get an answer. You got a fight.
I watched the talk come apart in slow motion.
🧰 LESS MESS, MORE MESSAGE
Vulnerability isn't the problem. Some of the best talks I've ever sat through cost the speaker something.
Look at the order of that opening. A joke about the nineties, then the worst sentence I've ever said on a stage, delivered by a man standing in front of them. They held their breath, but they already knew how it ended.
When I talk about my daughter's death, there's a point where I tell the room I now have three healthy girls. It isn't a happy ending. It's a handrail. Nobody has to sit in grief for the whole talk wondering if I'm okay.
When you're ready, you look after the room. When you're not, the room looks after you.
By the end of that other talk, nobody in the room was an audience any more. They were carers, worried and stuck, with no way to help.
And the speaker had told me they were ready. I believe they meant it. That's the hard part. The one person who can't tell whether you're ready is you.
⌨️ TRY THIS
If you've been asked to tell your story, at a wellbeing session, a grand rounds, a conference that wants something personal, do two things before you agree to the slot.
First, hand the decision to someone else. Show the outline to one or two people who know you and know the territory, and give them permission out loud: "If you think I'm not ready, I need you to tell me." If they say not yet, believe them. The slot will come round again. You only get to tell it for the first time once.
Second, build the handrails in. Find the point in the talk where the room will start to worry about you, and get there before they do. Tell them how it ends, or give them something to hold while they listen.
A room will hold its breath for you. Make sure you're the one who lets them breathe out.
🧭 ASK YOURSELF THIS
Who would tell you not yet?
Forward this to someone who's just been asked to tell their story at a conference.
Speak soon,
Andy
PS. I said the fever didn't help. That may not be entirely true. A temperature of 39.5 turns out to be a decent way to lower your inhibitions. It didn't make the Try This.
