Sharing Stories to Save Lives - A Conversation with Kristen Harootunian
Every so often, you meet someone who not only inspires you but gives you hope for the future. We were so lucky to get the chance to sit down with Kristen Harootunian, a Penn State graduate and a Young Adult Speaker for Minding Your Mind. Kristen speaks throughout the U.S., sharing her personal story through early childhood trauma, addiction, mental health, and how to practice positive coping skills. Being a young person in recovery, Kristen proves that it is never too early, or too late, to get the help you need.
LDC Wellbeing: Can you tell our community about your work and how/why you decided to pursue this work?
Kristen: Deciding to pursue this work really happened by accident, but I like to call it “right place right time”. At the time, I was 18 with about a year of recovery under my belt, and Rebecca Bonner, the head of The Bridge Way School at the time, asked me to speak on a panel talking about the importance of recovery high schools (The Bridge Way School is a school for kids who are in high school but also wanting to be clean). I spoke on this panel and shared a little bit about myself, and I ended up speaking alongside that panel with Carl Antisell, who worked with Minding Your Mind at the time. Little did I know I was about to dive headfirst into not just my career, but my passion. Shortly after graduating from The Bridge Way School, I started my college career at Penn State while simultaneously speaking with Minding Your Mind.
The work that we do within the community is something that is hard to put into words because the best way I can describe it is magical. The fact that we have so many amazing speakers that talk about their stories in a very informational, vulnerable way helps the audience, regardless of age, open their hearts and not only identify with the struggle, but start to believe the solution can apply to them too. Even though I stand on stages and in classrooms, I feel like I’m talking to each person individually because everyone is touched in one way or another because we all have experienced pain and hardships.
LDC Wellbeing: Why is mental health education so important?
Kristen: Mental health education is so important because just like how we need to take care of our physical health, we need to take care of our mental health as well. Not everyone (I would say the vast majority) does not seek help until they are in a crisis -- which doesn’t need to get to that point. Everyone should have a basic knowledge of how to ask for help, how to help a friend, how to spot warning signs if we are going down the wrong path or a friend is, and how to intervene.
LDC Wellbeing: What first steps do you recommend for someone struggling with mental health or substance use and who wants to get better?
Kristen: The first step is to ask them, “Do you want to harm yourself?”. There is a myth out there that if we ask someone this question, we will put it in their heads and make them want to do it. The opposite actually happens -- when we call out the elephant in the room we are able to break that barrier and give them the opportunity to be truly honest about how they are feeling. We create a safe space for them. If they say yes, we listen to them and give them space to talk without judgment and use phrases like “Thank you so much for trusting me with this information”, or, “I’m so proud of you for opening up. Can I help you get help?”. We can either bring them to a crisis center or dial 911 to get transportation to a crisis center.
If this person is ready to get help, we can help them look into inpatient facilities, intensive outpatient, therapists, and support groups. If that becomes too overwhelming, there is a page on the Minding Your Mind website that has a list of many resources.
LDC Wellbeing: In your bio, you say you learned to “replace negative coping skills with positive ones,” can you share some positive coping skills that you use?
Kristen: There are many positive coping skills I’ve learned about along my journey, but it took trial and error. The very first positive coping skill I developed was writing/journaling. There was a time in my life when I spent a substantial amount of time in a crisis center, and I was scared to open up about my internal dialogue because it seemed ‘too scary’. What I ended up doing was I sat with two girls who were journaling, and I brought my journal and my pencil and joined them. The first few times we journaled in silence, but after a few days, we started sharing our poetry, and drawings and realized we had more in common than we initially thought. One of the girls told me she can’t say what she feels, so she gives her journal to her therapist. I took her lead. That is how the stigma started breaking for me, among other instances.
LDC Wellbeing: Much of your work is devoted to breaking the stigma around mental health and substance use disorder. Can you share more about this? What one important message would you like to share with our readers about these stigmas?
Kristen: The work that I do alongside Minding Your Mind is so monumental in breaking the stigma because we have such diversity within our organization. I never thought I could be someone who could struggle with substance use disorder because of the way that I looked or the way that I grew up. That right there is problematic thinking and distanced me from getting help. Substance use disorder and mental health disorders run in the family, it’s a balance of nature and nurture. I grew up in an upper-middle-class household in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania but little did people know I was caring for my mother who battled an eating disorder and substance use disorder. She lost that battle by suicide on December 6th of 2009, I was eleven years old. I told myself for years I wouldn’t struggle as she did, but it was only a matter of time before I started walking in her footsteps. No one knew, because the stigma was so oppressive and silenced me for many years.
LDC Wellbeing: Anything wise you would like to share?
Kristen: I am undeniably grateful for the support I did receive along the way from friends and family. On February 10th, we celebrated 8 years clean. I still go to 12-step meetings, therapy, and journal, speak on podcasts, and am a college graduate from Penn State University. It’s important for people to know that just because I am in recovery does not mean I do not struggle. Having gone through many traumatic experiences in my childhood and adulthood years still affects me -- it’s the tools I have today that lessen that pain.
I am a full-time speaker for Minding Your Mind, and if you are interested in learning more please visit our website: https://mindingyourmind.org/. Also, to continue my passion I am currently writing a detailed memoir about my childhood and teenage-hood, sharing candid stories about my journey. My hopes are to give my memoir to libraries at the schools I speak to across the U.S. to help break that stigma (To follow my journey check out my Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/kristen.harootunian/). Suicide is a permanent ‘solution’ to a temporary problem. There is nothing too big or too small that we cannot get through alone.
