Tiramisu Your Life How I fought my depression with dessert

[Applause]

tiramisu

is an italian coffee soaked sponge cake

made up of three layers

coffee cream vanilla sponge and espresso

and i believe these layers are critical

in the fight for overcoming depression

two years ago when i got pregnant what i

was expecting was very

different to what happened in reality

all i had known was what pregnancy was

supposed to be like

when in reality at one month pregnant i

lost my job

at two months pregnant i was homeless

at three months i was in hospital with

pneumonia

at four months i couldn’t afford to eat

at five months i almost lost my parental

rights

and at six months i ended up single

wanting to kill myself

after my baby was born i was rejected

from getting into my chosen university

for the second time i managed to get

into another university

but failed the end of your exam

i tried to start a dessert business but

i just couldn’t get my tiramisu right

the chocolate was always too runny the

sponge was too thick the coffee flavor

was too weak

eventually i gave up and ended up seven

thousand dollars

in debt

so after the pregnancy from hell in a

string of failures

how do you think i was feeling pretty

awful right

wrong all it did was make me more driven

and ambitious than

ever i decided i was not

going to be defined by my failures

i learned how to channel my energy and

developed the ability to turn rejection

into motivation

i realized the solution to my happiness

had been in front of me

all along i took my tiramisu

back to the market after having

persevered with a new recipe

and it sold out in 45 minutes

my hardest recipe became my best

i realized i had to tiramisu my life

the first layer in the tiramisu is

connection

which i remember as the coffee cream

i was about two months pregnant sitting

in my car on the side of the road

wondering where i’d sleep the night

it should have been a time of glowing

happiness

but i’ve been staying at my boyfriend’s

friend’s house who had just come home

and told us that we had to be out

as well as physical needs we all have

psychological needs as well

depression is a response to our needs

not being met

we need to reconnect with ourselves and

those around us

now there are two parts to this being

connected to yourself

i.e knowing and believing in your core

purpose

and being connected to those around us

being connected with your core purpose

can be one of the hardest things to do

one way to reconnect with who you really

are is to ask yourself this

if money were no longer an issue what

would i be doing with my life

secondly it’s about reconnecting with

those around us

a study by relationship charity relate

found that in the uk alone

one in ten people doesn’t have a single

close friend

that’s an estimated 4.7 million

lonely people

social scientist renee brown found that

being lonely can affect the length of

our life expectancy

similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day

during the culver 19 lockdown in new

zealand calls to mental health helplines

through an increase by 25 percent

during my pregnancy i was eventually

invited back to the family home

and that’s when i realized that the

first layer in the tiramisu

is connection i remember this as the

coffee cream

because without it it wouldn’t be a

tiramisu

you see depression lies to us it says

things like

there’s no point talking to anyone

nobody cares about you

you’re just a burden to people

but feeling socially accepted is a basic

human need

if you feel like you’re not being

welcomed somewhere then find somewhere

that does welcome

you and if you feel like you don’t have

a place anywhere

i can assure you that you do you just

haven’t found it yet

the second layer in the tiramisu is

mindset and perspective

i remember this as the vanilla sponge

i had a meeting with my accountant to go

over the numbers for my startup

they lead me into a room with shiny

glass doors and leather chairs and a big

board table

and as i sit down they start entering

all my numbers into their system

and it becomes evident that my business

is not viable

as i looked up at the screen i have

never felt so stupid in my life

how could i have gotten it so wrong

but almost as if i was throwing a

lifeline from god the next day

i was finally offered a place into my

dream university

as i stared out my window that night i

realized

failure is a mindset

you haven’t failed until you have

accepted failure

as your reality

i decided that just because my business

wasn’t going to work

at that time didn’t mean that i’d failed

one closed door had opened another and

it just wasn’t the path for me

at that time

this is how i realized that the second

layer

in the tiramisu is mindset and

perspective

i remember this as the vanilla sponge

because that’s what holds it all

together

now i get it it’s easy to say switch

your mindset

i know as well as anyone you know you

know i don’t expect you to hear this and

instantly feel better and likewise

changing your mindset is not something

that anybody expects you to do alone

i’m fully aware that there’s a school of

thought that depression is actually a

chemical imbalance in the brain

that simply needs drugs to fix

now i’m not a doctor or a psychologist

so i’m only talking from my experience

but when you’re that low down

antidepressants can really help to bring

you up a little bit

and hopefully what i’ve learned will

help bring you up the rest of the way

and keep you there

in terms of mindset i believe that two

of the major causes of depression

are a sense of failure

or a sense of powerlessness

a study by the norwegian institute of

public health found that young men with

no history of a previous mental disorder

were taking their own lives

they found that the young men had

exaggerated the importance of success

thereby developing a vulnerability to

failure

they found that the young men had valued

their perception of success so

highly that they were unable to cope

with anything less

in new zealand success is filtered

through what is known as tall poppy

syndrome

it basically means that people don’t

like to see other people being

successful

that if you are successful then you’re

somehow

showing off or even asking to be taken

down a notch

you wanna you wanna know why the suicide

rates are so high in new zealand

because it’s also a place of rampant

tall poppy syndrome

a study by the university of otago found

that 57 percent

of new zealand business owners felt as

if they’d been emotionally affected by

tall poppy syndrome

the second major cause of depression is

a sense of powerlessness

for example if someone is diagnosed with

a mental with a sorry terminal illness

or suffers a sexual assault

in these circumstances it’s not that the

person feels that they’ve failed

but rather that they feel powerless

just when i thought i was finally on the

road to success

i suffered a similar event

depression at its core is essentially

giving up

it’s thinking that our circumstances

will never get any better

no matter what we do

i had to consciously tell myself that i

would not let the event determine who i

was

you see the most important power there

is is the power of self

i had to change the thoughts i was

telling myself

when you decide that you have your own

inner power is when you can truly

succeed

so overcoming a sense of failure and

overcoming a sense of powerlessness

can both be done with a change of

mindset

finally i learned i learnt about the

third layer in the tiramisu

the espresso

one night after a busy day being that i

have stairs at my house

i decide that i’ll run up and down my

stairs 10 times between each set of

weights

let me tell you the first set was fine i

ran up

came back down into the weights second

set that was also fine

ran up came back down and did the

weights

but i got to about number six and i was

so tired

i could have felt bad about myself and

unfit

and lazy but then i realized

no i’m doing fine i had just set the bar

too high for myself i had set

an unrealistic expectation

this is how i realized that the final

layer

in the tiramisu is unrealistic

expectations

i remember this as the espresso

how does that relate to espresso i hear

you wondering

because you can’t expect to have a

powerful shot of coffee in every bite

as women we have incredible expectations

placed on us

right there’s the happy of this idea of

the happy pregnancy and happy family

all the while striving for career

success and

getting back to your pre-baby body as

soon as possible

but where do these expectations come

from

well one of the culprits of social media

a study published in the journal of

social and clinical psychology

found that by decreasing our social

media use to just

half an hour a day we have a

significantly less chance of getting

depressed

what we can sometimes forget when we’re

looking at social media

is that people always want to put their

best facebook

we start to constantly make what’s

called upward comparisons

where essentially we start comparing our

own lives to what we’re seeing

and because we have so much choice and

freedom in life

we feel that we should be able to design

our own lives

to the same high standards

one of the secrets to positive mental

health truly is

low expectations

one thing oprah winfrey said was you can

have it all

just not all at once

a little while ago an acquaintance came

around for dinner

when we asked what they’d been up to

recently they said

here’s my card it explains it better i

look down at the card

and it says author

artist creative musician

so i ask about the book

and it turns out the book is still being

written

so i asked about the artwork

and she hasn’t had an exhibition either

it turns out that she plays an

instrument in the local music group

but it really got me thinking about the

way that we present ourselves to the

world

i had also heard of another woman who at

50 was struggling to cope with the fact

that she

felt as if all she’d done with her life

was have children

i started to see a link between it all

and came up with the word

foben to describe the sense of what i

felt was missing

it’s an it’s an anagram that stands for

fear of being a nobody

it’s this idea that we need to reach

certain levels in our life

and pass certain milestones before we

have any true value

and have finally become somebody

so my question is this

if we constantly feel like we’re not

good enough

but then we get torn down when we become

successful

like what happens with tall poppy

syndrome then where does that leave us

the problem is things like lack of sleep

can become an issue

as we lay awake trying to figure out how

to get ahead or stay up trying to work

harder

and harder and unfortunately there’s a

definite link between lack of sleep and

depression

studies show that for every hour of lost

sleep levels of psychological distress

rise by five percent per hour the next

day

ultimately it is up to us to determine

what we consider success to be and

develop resilience

how do we develop resilience

one word faith believing that things

can and will get better

i learnt that when you reconnect with

yourself

and others change your mindset

and perspective and have realistic

expectations you can reclaim your own

inner power

and overcome depression

tiramisu to me represents perseverance

it represents determination

but above all it reminds me that failure

is never the end

i’m on track to finally graduate i

finally have a house that i can call

home for my child

and i’m not afraid of attempting

business again

the ingredients of my life made a

tiramisu

but yours could be an apple pie

whatever it is it will all turn out

sweet

in the end

thank you