Marriage and Mental Health: Surviving a Spousal Suicide Attempt

Marriage and Mental Health: Surviving a Spousal Suicide Attempt 

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Taking care of yourself is the best way you can take care of everyone else.
• The complicated grief of a suicide attempt and reconnecting with your spouse after a traumatic event
• Cari’s journey with psychedelics and how they have changed her relationship with herself and her husband 

Cari Mclean is a wife, mother, daughter, and advocate. She is here to share how her spouse's mental health journey propelled her into her mental health journey and the role resilience, love, and hope play in her story.

In this episode, Mathew, Dr. Frank, and Cari discuss how the worst night possible propelled her and her family to the best place possible. About three and a half years ago, Cari stopped her husband, Chad, from attempting suicide. It was a wake-up call for Chad and started a long healing journey for him through inpatient care, SSRIs, and all sorts of self-help methods. Unfortunately, none of it was working. Eventually, Chad started ketamine treatment, and it changed his life. One day, Chad looked at Cari and said “What about you?”. Cari realized she had been spending all of her time and mental energy managing the house, caring for their two young boys, and keeping her job. She found that she didn't have the energy for him, let alone herself. Cari says in times of stress when mom’s focus is diverted, dads often get the short end of the stick, and husbands end up missing their wives.

Her whole life, Cari says she was a “stuffer”: the strong one, the one who jumped into action when anything went wrong, all at the demise of her emotional well-being. She tried all the common paths to "self-help," but nothing clicked until her first psilocybin session. Cari notes that it’s important to understand that psychedelics won't solve your problems, but they will change the way you see your problems and show you where you need to look to find the light. For her, one big revelation was about setting boundaries around her family of origin, her parents, for her family of choice, Chad and their sons. Of course, this was easier said than done because she had always been the peacekeeper, but eventually, she was able to find a balance.

After Chad's suicide attempt, Cari wanted to forgive and forget, but there was still a distance between them that she couldn't shake. He had unknowingly and unintentionally taken away her safe space. They were trying to communicate, but they weren't speaking the same language. After some trial and error, they found healing through MDMA couples therapy. It has allowed them to finally process the events of that night and move past them. Cari says she can now see Chad in a more real way, and they are leaning into each other again. As horrible as some of the years were, their relationship is now the best thing she could have ever imagined, and she knows they would not be where they are now if they had not been where they were. It took a lot of hard work and intentional effort to come back from the depths and reemerge in a good place again.

Now, Chad and Cari are in a better place together than ever, and they are sharing their message of hope and healing through their nonprofit, Mental Joe, which helps first responders and veterans access alternative healing like yoga, TRE, and psychedelics. Psychedelics are not for everyone, and Cari tells us they were completely out of her comfort zone before. She felt like she didn't have the type of PTSD that is often talked about with psychedelic therapy, but all trauma is trauma, and healing should be accessible to all. Now, she is passionate about defying the stigmas of psychedelics and mental health.

At the end of the day, it’s all about reliance, love, and hope. You can bounce back, but being strong isn't always the same as being healthy. You have to ask for help. Love means putting in the work every day. There is hope out there, and healing is possible.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Taking care of yourself is the best way you can take care of everyone else.
• The complicated grief of a suicide attempt and reconnecting with your spouse after a traumatic event
• Cari’s journey with psychedelics and how they have changed her relationship with herself and her husband 

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• Listen on Apple Podcasts (link: https://apple.co/3s1YH7h) 
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