Welcome to Back from the Abyss.

I'm Dr. Craig Hecock.

One of the greatest gifts and challenges of my work is that I'm allowed into my patient's lives to hear what is really happening behind their

carefully constructed outer personas. I hear their fears, dreams, regrets, their deepest wounds,

their unrelenting shame. And I've learned that everyone, everyone is struggling with something, and that's actually such a comfort to me.

I so often hear my patients comparing themselves to their clearly much happier and more well-adjusted friends and family and social media contacts and coworkers.

And I find myself reminding them that everyone has a story,

a struggle, something hidden that is consciously or unconsciously bringing them pain.

A few years ago, I was at my 25th college reunion, and I decided to conduct a little experiment,

kind of a psychiatrist experiment.

My hypothesis was that everyone there would have experienced at least one, probably more significant life trauma since graduating.

So, I slowly worked my way around the room, opening my conversation with,

So, I have this theory. I bet all of us here have been through or was going through something really, really awful since graduation.

And then I went on to tell my story of spiraling into despair and addiction after a number of

patient suicides. And my story turned out to be some kind of magic key that opened up the lock of each of my

classmate's psyches.

I heard of terrible losses and bitter divorces, unrelenting loneliness and children

with profound disabilities, deaths of siblings and best friends,

and battles with cancer and autoimmune disease.

And as I listened to each story, I found myself so moved by my classmates' resilience,

by their bravery and wisdom and compassion.

Every single person I talked to had either walked the fiery coals of despair

...