Is Someone You Love Suffering in Silence? Here's What To Do | Gus Worland | TED

I want to talk about my mentor.

I want to talk about the day

that I got a phone call saying that he had died.

And I want to talk about the moments later in the same phone call

that I'd heard that he'd actually taken his own life.

And I'm saying this because I want you to listen

and also think about all the people that you love and adore

and you cannot imagine living without in your life

as you're listening to me talk.

My friend, my mentor, my father figure, Angus.

I truly loved him.

My father had left the family home when I was quite young,

and he took on the mantle to look after me.

I'd known him from a very young age,

he taught me how to swim.

He was my cousin's boyfriend then my cousin's husband,

and he was just my go-to guy.

When I was starting to date girls and I wasn’t sure what to do,

I'd ring him up and I'd ask him, "Mate, what do you think?

What's going on?

How should I perhaps do this?"

When I ended up working for him years and years later

in a big multi-corporate,

I'd always go to him for workarounds, "How can I get this deal done?"

He always seem to be that guy that I could turn to,

and he would always give me the right answer.

Not only me, I remember walking around the corner at work one day

and there's always someone in his office.

There was always someone waiting for him,

if you rang him up, he was always on the phone, he'd ring you back.

He always seemed to be that guy that had people going to him,

asking for help,

asking for favors, asking for support.

He was good-looking.

Beautiful wife, my cousin.

Three beautiful children.

Why would someone like that take their own life?

Why would they?

Makes no sense to me.

And at the funeral,

and talking to people after the funeral,

just the frustration,

"Did you know?" "Did you know?"

"Did anyone know?" "Did you get a clue?"

And of course everyone's saying, "No, I didn't have a clue.

In fact, he was just like you're saying, he was my go-to guy."

He seemed to tick all the boxes.

He seemed to just know what to say at the right time,

and he seemed to be able to work his way,

both personally and with work, to get life done.

And he was successful.

I told that story on a breakfast show that I was on

called "The Grill Team" in Sydney, Australia.

I was on there for 11 years.

And one morning, I decided to be vulnerable.

One morning I said, "Do you know what? I'm going to talk about my friend."

Because we were six years into that 11-year stint,

and I'd never really spoken much about myself.

We spoke about sport,

we spoke about telling jokes.

We did things like ticket giveaways and concert giveaways and fun stuff.

We wanted to get people driving to work or listening to us having fun.

We didn't want to sort of drag them down with personal stuff or being vulnerable.

But one morning, 4:30 in the morning,

sitting around the production table with the producers and my cohost, I said,

"I'm going to be vulnerable today.

I'm going to talk about something that I haven't spoken about before,

and it's been eating away at me and I want to do it."

And they supported me.

We've been on for a long time, we were like brothers.

We said, "You know what?

Whatever you want to do, let's go for it."

So 8:05 just after the eight o'clock news, the Hollywood hour in radio land,

we flicked on the mics,

and I told the story that I just told you guys.

It was hard.

I was getting support from my cohost,

I got the words out eventually, a bit like I am today.

Emotional stuff, certain things trigger you.

But what was truly happening behind me

was all the phone lines into the radio station were flashing,

which means people were phoning in.

Normally those lines would be for you to ring up to be part of the show,

to tell a joke, to win a concert ticket, to win a movie ticket.

All of a sudden, all those lines were flashing.

Didn't quite realize why.

The producer comes in and says,

"We've got all these people that want to thank you for telling your story."

I thought, that's nice.

I've put myself out there,

It is nice to get a little bit of love like that.

So we started putting a few calls through.

Not only were they telling me, "Thank you for telling that story,"

more importantly,

it was like we'd given them a green light,

we'd given them permission to talk about the stuff

that they wanted to talk about.

All of a sudden, in a safe place,

like a radio station where they'd normally laugh their way to work,

we'd given them a little opportunity to talk about the stuff

that's truly important to them, the stuff that they had in their bellies,

the stuff banging around in their heads

that they never thought they would get a chance to talk about.

So what we did for the next 90 minutes

was just the most beautiful radio that I've ever been involved in.

We took no traffic reports, no news reports,

we played no music,

we just had 90 minutes of people bumbling and fumbling

and getting their way through a conversation of gravity

with us in the radio studio.

There was moments --

Thank you.

(Applause)

It was impressive that so many people went,

"You know what, I'm diving in here.

I'm talking about my stuff now because he spoke about that,"

all strangers listening to each other on the radio

all gave each other permission to have a chat.

There was moments of true silence,

and silence in radio is not a good thing.

However, when you have silence when you can sort of hear the tears,

you can try to just hear them gathering

the guts and determination to say the next word.

Or you can basically hear the snot running out of the nose

and the tears running out of the eyes,

that's when you know, people are being fair dinkum,

that's when you know that they're being real.

So, fantastic.

And it made me think.

I wonder how many other people are worrying alone?

If we just opened it up on this radio show on this morning and I tell my story,

then we have 90 minutes of people going, "Me too," "Me too," "Me too,"

I wonder how many people are out there feeling exactly the same way.

So that day changed my life.

I decided to commit myself to being more honest, more vulnerable.

But even more importantly, let's get suicide prevention down to zero.

A huge call, I know, and I said it in the Australian press

and everyone gave it to me, but I don't care.

I'm going to focus on making sure that no one goes

through the type of stuff that my mate went through.

And how do we do that?

How do we do that?

That's the trick.

So for the last six years,

I’ve been running a foundation called “Gotcha4Life.”

I want everyone in the world to find someone who has got you for life.

Someone you can talk to, warts and all,

without any fear of judgment, about the truly important stuff.

Why do we keep celebrating with lots of people in parties

but we don't celebrate the stuff that's a little bit harder,

the stuff that's not so good?

Why is that the case?

So that's been the focus.

I don't know if you know the stats around suicide.

I think we're all big enough and ugly enough in here to know them.

In Australia, seven men every day, two women;

nine Australians that woke up this morning won't wake up tomorrow morning.

65,000 people in Australia try to take their own life every single year.

The number one way to die, if you’re a young Australian male,

is suicide.

Now, according to the World Health Organization, WHO,

they tell me that over 1,900 people that woke up this morning

won't wake up tomorrow morning.

They would have taken their own life.

On top of that, 38,000, nearly 40,000 people

will try to take their own life today.

1,900 people today.

38,000 will attempt today around the world.

Now, I don't know you guys very well,

but I'm sure, in the last couple of days I've got the vibe and the love

that we are all here to try and make the world a better place.

So this is not what we're going to accept.

This is a line in the sand, time to go, "No, no more."

But what can you do?

If you look at the world as this huge, big place,

it might be too big a task for you to deal with.

It might be too big in your own country.

It might be too big in your own city.

But what if we just started looking after your own village?

What if we just say, "I'm just going to look after my own people,

the people that I love and adore and I cannot imagine living without?"

Just imagine that.

In the last few years, I've been so lucky to talk to people

that have tried to take their life, but they're still with us.

Now those conversations are hard.

I feel extremely blessed to be able to be in those one-on-one conversations.

You know what comes out of those conversations?

Three things.

One, they didn't want to die.

They tried to take their own life, but they didn't want to die.

That gave me great hope.

The other thing was that they were tired, and they were in pain.

So if you combine tired and pain together,

you make a shit decision.

We all know this.

If you are not rested and you're in pain, you make bad calls.

So if we know that they don't want to die, but they've tried to take their life,

that's the hope that we need to hold on to.

That means if we can get to people

before they get to an eight, nine out of ten in terms of how they feel,

we can actually stop them making that permanent decision

based on a temporary situation.

That's what it's all about.

And that's what I want to do with you guys now, if I possibly can.

Just in the small amount of time I got left,

I want you to trust me that I'm going to put my big bear hug,

and if you knew me well, I'd be hugging all of you if I possibly can.

I'm a hugger.

(Laughter)

COVID really knocked me for six.

(Applause)

No hugging in COVID was no good.

What I'd love you to do

is just all of you, shut your eyes for me, please.

No one else can see you, so please roll along.

We're going to shut our eyes.

I want you to think of someone that you love and adore

and you cannot imagine living without.

Have you got that person's face in your head?

Do you know what that person’s name is, and have you got them locked in?

Now open your eyes.

After three, I want you to shout that person's name out.

One, two, three.

(Audience shouting)

One, two, three.

(Audience shouting)

OK, this is the bit.

Over the next two and a half days,

I'm going to be haunting you, I'm going to be cuddling you,

I'm looking after you, I'm coming for you.

I'm coming for everyone in this theater.

You need to do something for me

to that person that you just shouted out.

I need you to send them a text message.

Simple as that.

Having these face-to-face conversations, I understand, is hard.

But when we're building our mental fitness,

as already been mentioned in this session,

we have to start slowly.

So I want you to walk up to the mental fitness gym for me

and just open up those doors, and I want you to send a text.

But the words to the text are this:

“I love you, I miss you, See you soon xoxo.”

“I love you, I miss you, See you soon xoxo.”

Hopefully you can remember that.

I'll be outside if you want to get -- or ask someone,

I'm sure someone's going to remember.

What I want you to do is send that text message,

and let's just see what responses we get.

As I said, I’ll be hunting you down over the next two and a half days,

and I want you to run up to me and go, "I've got the text, here's my response."

I want other people who go, "Oh, here's that bloke,

I'm going to walk away."

I'm going to hunt you down.

And the reason I'm doing that is because I want everyone just to have

a little bit of connection with the person that is most important to you,

that person that you thought about straight away as you shut your eyes

and went, "OK, that's my person."

It's all about connection.

It's all about making sure that you look after the people

the people that are most important to you.

Work can wait.

It'll always be there, they'll always replace you.

But not these people.

I would give anything to have a cup of tea, a beer,

go to a footy match with my man who took his own life.

I'll never be able to do that.

Let's make sure that we look after our village.

Make sure we look after the people that are most important to you.

That is absolutely key.

The worst thing?

The text message gets sent out,

someone goes, "What the --"

(Laughter)

Or, "Are you drunk?"

(Laughter)

Or if a man sends it to a man,

there will be a phone call within 30 seconds, guaranteed.

(Laughter)

Or the worst case scenario?

"What's this all about?"

Well, you can then say to them,

"Well, I was asked to think of someone that I love and adore

and can't imagine living without.

I thought of you."

That's a pretty cool way to connect yourself up

with the people that are most important to you.

Thanks so much for listening, guys,

I appreciate it.

(Applause and cheers)