The Pinned2Purpose Initiative Explainer Video

👉✅ The Pinned2Purpose Initiative Explainer Video
👉 To know more, follow:    / @pinned2purpose  

👉🌍The Pinned2Purpose Podcast is part of a new mental health initiative focused on helping to remove stigma around mental health conditions and giving people a hand-up on their healing journeys: https://pinned2purpose.com

Stigma is often based on the perception of weakness. When we reframe this and realize that people with mental health challenges and conditions are not "weak", but are in a "weakened state", perceptions change.

In 2012 at the end of a very difficult entrepreneurial journey, I was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of the Montreal General Hospital for 5 weeks. Am I ashamed to talk about this - NO - my own journey and connecting with others on the ward with different levels of intense distress was deeply human. It has proven to be a a priceless gift and I am grateful for it now.

If you had asked me anytime before if that scenario was likely or even possible in the course of my lifetime, I would have given it zero probability. But early on, while in the hospital, my doctor explained to me that EVERYONE in the world has a mental health breaking point, and I had found one of mine. This was a critical insight in coming up with the universal concept of being pinned, and framing our everyday struggles on a spectrum on manageable lifting/coping, to the point of despair if without help (a spot or a hand-up).

After my lived experience, in order to try to explain this to people, I came up with the benchpress metaphor in the video. Every single man and woman in the world, of any age, in any country, at any time, every time will have the exact same result if they can lift a 45-pound barbell and complete this exercise. To illustrate this, if they do not complete it, the result doesn't count. Every single time, when they will continue doing repetitions until the barbell cannot move off of their chest - they will find their breaking point, and they will be pinned. There are points in time when "the straw will break the camel's back" for any of us. Try it.

By reflecting on our common humanity and understanding that everyone in the world has a breaking point(s) with their own mental health depending on what happens to them and what conditions they have, we can help shatter stigma and free up people to find their voices and seek support when needed on their own healing journeys.

The metaphor of being "pinned" in the video is simple but universal. Everyone in the world is in effect trying to keep their challenges under control and away from weighing them down too much every day. The state of an individual's mental health can be invisible to the people around them, regardless of the weight they are trying to bear.

By reflecting on how each of us can - and do - get pinned at times, and thinking about the weight others struggling may be under based on their own particular issues and conditions, it becomes easier to understand how important a "spot" is before you are in trouble and a hand-up is to help avoid getting "pinned" or become unpinned.

People with mental health challenges and conditions are not "weak," but the extra load can certainly lead to them being "pinned". Stigma should have no place in stopping people from reaching out and getting help on their healing journeys, just as we all do when we have a physical issue. There should be no shame in that.

I hope this metaphor helps, and that you can use it in your own life or with others.

Geoff Moore