In this month’s article I finally succumb to talking about mental health during mental health awareness week. It’s not about cures or fixes as such – it’s more a personal perspective that might help you yourself or in your relationships with others.

In between trying to define what mental health actually is (which if we’re going to be ‘aware’ of it has to be a good place to start) and concluding that seeking happiness is self-defeating (!) I take a look at:

  1. What I didn’t learn about mental health until my late 20s – and then forgot
  2. When talking about mental health only makes it worse
  3. The truth about all those mental health hacks and tools

Along the way I nearly got distracted into talking about the awesome novel A Brave New World – but I think I got away with it.

Enjoy the read.

Tim

 

Mental Health: Does talking about it actually help?

I realised this week that I’ve never really written about mental health. But over the years I’ve developed quite a strong view on this. And in particular about the merits and pitfalls of being open and whether talking about mental health actually helps?

Partly, this is because I believe that business coaching should never stray into therapy. My late Dad was a therapist – and a very good one. He trained assiduously and specifically to earn that title. My firm view is that therapy is a specialist field, and even the most well-meaning of amateurs can do more harm than good.

This piece is definitely not coming from a ‘I’ve got this cracked so let me guide you’ place. Rather it’s sharing a personal perspective that may help you or help you to help others.

 

What is poor mental health?

On one of our coach’s club calls recently we discussed just this and there were probably as many different opinions and definitions as there were coaches.

(For what it’s worth, my view was that it amounts to bounce-backability. I know, I’m great at English. On reflection I’d say that it’s when your mood has a negative impact on your actions.)

Interestingly, not one of the definitions entailed the word ‘happiness’. It didn’t even feature in the discussion – but more on that at the end.

 

What the absence of mental health looks like – for me

The other (real?) reason I’ve never written about this, is that I can’t say what I’d like to say without sharing my personal experiences of the absence of mental health – which is quite lame for a coach so let’s give it a go.

I feel quite strongly because I think that my experiences helped me to understand how and why talking about mental health can be great – and it can also make it worse.

I’m an emotional person. From my earliest memories, I’ve experienced ‘highs’ of emotion and corresponding moments of feeling inexplicably blue. Life was, to quote the philosopher-poet Ronan Keating, a rollercoaster.

I’m trying very hard not to use the words ‘suffered from’ for reasons that I hope will become clear and I hesitate to use words like ‘depression’ because that is, I suspect, a different barrel of monkeys.

It was simply a case that periodically I’d inexplicably find myself in a deep, emotional trough.

The interesting / worrying thing was that it got progressively worse through my 20s. The odd day turned into a regular week or two. Or three.

Granted, feeling blue is not the same as anxiety or imposter syndrome or anything else – but I strongly suspect that what I learned / am constantly relearning could just as easily apply.

 

Weakness can give you Strength

It took me until my late 20s to realise something very simple but for me quite profound: the more I supressed or denied this feeling of despondency, the worse it got. I don’t mean by a percentage, I mean by a factor.

So, I decided to go the other way and started to acknowledge it.

I tried 3 different therapists but that was a car crash. The thought of one in particular still makes me chuckle.

Then I just started being more open about it in general and therapy in particular and noticed the over time these ‘moods’ became less frequent, less long-lasting and less impactful.

 

When talking about Mental Health didn’t help

At this point you might think I was a poster-boy for the ‘sharing-is-caring club’ – but it’s nowhere near that simple.

I came to understand that sharing is great – with some very big caveats.

What I realised is the people I spoke to were roughly divided into four groups of people.

Three of these groups led to me feeling even worse – and one of them changed things radically for the better.

What I’m about to write seems so obvious to me to the point of being patronising. But it wasn’t obvious to me in my teens and twenties. And then I forgot it and had to re-learn it in my 40s. And may well have to relearn it again in the future.

Maybe it’ll help someone else spend less time figuring it out for themselves.

Or help you be of better service to someone you know.

 

The Four Groups of People

By the way, the following list of labels is not intended as a slight to anyone. It’s just an acknowledgement that in my experience, someone can be both a good person or friend and a bit crap at helping you with mental health, or grief, a break-up or even a break-in.

 

The ‘Judgy’ Ones

When I did start to open up, some people came across (to me) as a bit ‘judgy’. I just got the sneaking feeling that a tiny sliver of them felt just a tiny bit superior because I was admitting to a weakness – and perhaps even that they felt stronger as a result.

Maybe that was just me but either way it didn’t help.

It was however a real benefit, as it helped me learn for the first time how to go about admitting to a weakness without coming from a place of ‘being weak’.

And I hope it’s taught me to never treat – even subconsciously – someone whose mental health isn’t great as a victim.

 

The ‘Saviour Complex’

Some of my friends reacted by trying to ‘fix me’. Fixing something implies that it’s broken – and I didn’t like to think of myself as broken. I was just in trough.

If you really want to hack someone off when they’re truly down in the dumps, give them a load of self-help advice. Never fails.

These people helped me realise that my real fear was being seen as broken or weak – as my identity. I think in those days subconsciously I viewed people – and myself in those terms. Asking what people ‘were’ – deep down. A bit like a dodgy onion, I was worried that deep down I was flawed.

If you’re the hero / saviour to others, what does that make them?

 

The Drama Kings & Queens

The 3rd group were the ones who over-dramatized it. Reacting with horror and mentally going through their rolodexes (rolodexi?)  to rustle up an emergency intervention group.

#PRAYFORTIM

I’d end up calming them down and reassuring them it was all going to be ok. Well, who doesn’t love a bit of irony?

When you go through periods of despondency, it feels permanent. The last thing you need is a friend acting like that’s what they think too.

It taught me to not be part of the problem when friends come to me.

 

Finding my Mental Health Tribe

If these were my only experiences of opening up and talking about mental health, I’d now have switched over as a paid-up member of the ‘stiff upper lip’ club.

“Life’s hard – get a helmet.”

But, along the way I found 2 or 3 friends who were just great.

They never judged, or tried to fix me, nor dashed off a quick #prayfortim message on their socials. (Let’s be honest, this was way before the internet and they’d have had to write a letter rather than a post). They just listened and waited just long enough to take the mickey.

Over time I realised these periods became less frequent, lasted less long and were less impactful.

I freely admitted my ‘weaknesses’ and felt bullet-proof for many years. Until I forgot the lessons, bought into my own vanity and had to relearn them all over.

 

Life is a Mirror

I guess if I’d found a half-decent therapist at the time they’d have helped me understand sooner that the judgement and catastrophising of others wasn’t the problem – it was doing that to myself.

 

How to Help Others

If you really do want to be someone who those in need right now can turn to, that’s my take on how to serve them best.

One: Ban the Judge. Find that tiny sliver of your character, buried deep down in the darkest recesses of your ego, that enjoys being ‘the strong one’ – and stamp on it. I’m not preaching by the way. I get it too sometimes, very faintly.

Two: You don’t need to fix it. Just the act of allowing someone to open up and express their emotions without fear of judgement will reduce them – without you needing to give one single shred of ‘advice’.

Three: Dial it down. Making it a big thing only serves to help it become a bigger thing. Erratic mental health involves a loss of perspective. Whilst no one opening up to you will thank you for pointing that out, they’ll realise that on their own much, much quicker if you’re not reacting like their world is ending.

And if that’s not enough, gently help them seek out professional help.

 

Fit people still get injured and catch colds

This is the biggest thing I’ve learned about Mental Health since becoming a Business Coach.

I remember having a B.F.O. (Blinding Flash of the Obvious) that ‘mental health’ was a limited and binary way to view it. The only choices seemed to be ‘healthy’ or … not. I found it much more constructive to think in terms of ‘mental fitness‘. To my mind it introduced space for a more nuanced way of looking at it.

In that space, there are a load of things you can do that will – and I mean will – lead to better (important: not perfect) mental health. To become emotionally fitter.

In no particular order of priority: sleep, learning new things, stepping out of your comfort zone, making promises and keeping them, exercise, positive human interactions, meditation, affirmations, purpose, diet, hydration and getting outside into the sun and fresh air will all improve your mental fitness and emotional resilience.

So, you can imagine my confusion when I was doing all of these things and still woke up one day sliding into an emotional pit. It was like the time I tried to teach my labradoodle to solve a Rubik’s cube – ‘baffled’ doesn’t come close.

So, what is the answer?

 

Let go of Perfect and Aim for Better

There’s a tiny, little bit of me when I see an influencer posting a curated meditation pic of themselves at 5am that thinks ‘I bet if I snuck up on you next month, you’d be in your trackies watching daytime repeats of Come Dine With Me whilst eating Cheerios out of the packet’.

Scratch that. I don’t like to be snide – nor do I wish them ill – because whilst it’s fun it doesn’t sum up what I really think.

What I really think is that you can do all of these mental health ‘hacks’ and still wake up feeling blue. Or anxious, or like an imposter or whatever your flavour.

And that’s ok. It’s just a thing. Denying it will only make it worse and deepen the hole you’re in.

As will dismissing all of these tools as influencer-quackery.

We’re human beings not happiness automatons. We’re wired-up to experience the whole gamut of emotions and that’s exactly as it should be. Thinking in binary terms like ‘mental health’ can lead us into emotional cul-de-sacs.

Striving to be permanently happy – to be in the perfect mental state all the time – is I’ve come to suspect, futile at best and self-defeating at worst.

Being constructive every day – now that’s worth striving for and it’s a gear you can access even in a foul mood.

And if you manage that, I bet you’ll get more than your fair share of happy days along the way.

 

Best regards,

Tim

P.S.  If you’d like to talk about this 1-to-1 – regarding you or your team – get yourself booked in for a complimentary call: