Managing Our Mental Health

This is part two to the episode where I spoke about how mental health doesn't discriminate. Bad mental health can affect anyone, which is why its important that we know how we go about managing our mental health.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Therapy Guy.

It's great to have you listening and I

appreciate you spending the time with us today.

What I'm going to talk about is the

second part you that mental health doesn't discriminate.

A couple of episodes ago, I spoke about my own

mental health and I gave you a sort of brief

overview of how anyone, including therapists like ourselves, can experience

negative or mental health at times and how we can

all struggle in mental health doesn't discriminate? Yes.

Against anyone.

It doesn't matter whether you're rich or

poor, old or old or young yes.

It doesn't matter what job you have or anything else.

It can affect us all at different times.

One of the first things I would love

to say to you, really, I really appreciate

all the amazing feedback I got.

It was a really difficult episode for me to record and

I was quite nervous about how people would receive it.

But I've been amazed at your feedback and I really appreciate

you taking the time to listen to what I had to

say and for taking the time out to offer me some

support and sort of thank me, really for being honest.

I'm really pleased that it could help different people.

And my aim with all of these podcasts

is that it encourages people to open up

and have honest conversations about their mental health.

I'm hoping that will enable you to talk to

your friends, your colleagues, your family members, and obviously

learn for yourself about the services that are available,

but also to accept that we can have and

live with poor mental health.

We can exist, we can manage it in different ways.

Just because somebody has had a period in a

time when they've been struggling, it doesn't mean that

it has to affect the rest of their lives

or stop them from being who they are.

My mental health and what I

experienced, it didn't stop me.

I mean, obviously it did for a

while, yes, because it was quite overwhelming.

But if you look at where I am today and

it hasn't been easy, I appreciate it's taken a lot

of hard work and effort and it still does, but

it didn't stop me or define who I am.

If you've been given a diagnosis or a label from

a medical professional, it doesn't have to define you.

It doesn't have to stop you engaging in

what it is you want to do.

Obviously, your mental health can make things more

difficult, it can make things more challenging, it

can make some days seem long and tiresome.

But what I'd encourage us all to do, including myself,

is to try to find a way through that, try

to find a small step that we can do that

can help us at that particular moment, at that time.

I don't tend now to worry about what's going

to happen in five year or ten year plans.

People ask me quite often what my hopes

and dreams are for the future, where I

want to see my businesses going.

And I really struggle, as I

said before, to answer that question.

What I want to do and what I really

want to concentrate on is living, enjoying my friends

and family, my children, as much as I possibly

can and give them something back.

You got to remember that people don't really remember

what you give them, what you buy for them.

If you think of me, if I like it, do I remember

what I got for Christmas when I was ten years old?

Or do I remember the birthday

cards that people have given me?

Or the presence is I can't say that I do

quite a lot unless it's something obviously really big.

What I do remember is how people made me

feel and that is both positive and negative.

If you come into my life and you have a positive

effect and you make me feel some warmth and happiness and

love, then I'm going to remember that if you have a

negative impact on me and once again you'll remember that.

So please, for yourself, remember it's the feeling.

It's time.

I say to my children, and they do get

frustrated me at times when they ask what I

want for my birthday or for Father's Day for

Christmas, I never say I don't want anything.

Now that can be quite cliche and quite

classic appearance, but I really honestly mean it.

What I want and what I really want is just their time.

Yes.

So I don't want something that's going to cost

them any money or cost them to lose sleep

this night or thinking what to buy me.

I want to spend time with them, I want to

have that conversation, I want to have a coffee or

a walk, just something simple, something that we can remember

and something that I can make myself feel connected with

one of my children or all of my children and

friends and family at that time.

Things don't have to cost a

lot, those superficial things don't last.

The way you make people feel and the way

you feel about yourself, that lasts, that's what matters.

I still have days where I struggle and I

have to take care of myself and I'm just

a normal person, the same as you, me.

We all have good days and bad days.

What I try to do now, what I encourage you

all to do, is to keep talking, to keep communicating

with people in whatever way you can, to accept that

if you're having a bad day, it can be just

a bad day, just a bad morning or afternoon or

evening, whatever part of the day it is.

It doesn't have to define your day, your week.

Phrases I hear quite a lot in my practise

are it ruined my day, it ruined my week,

I've had a terrible week, et cetera, et cetera.

And when we start to dig a little bit more,

and I do do this myself, for myself, start to

actually break it down and say, how many days of

that week have you actually had ruined?

Yes, it's rarely all of them.

There's normally some times and moments when things haven't

been as bad, when that week hasn't been as

ruined, or you did sleep okay, or you managed

to speak or go to work on time.

That's what I ask you to look for.

I ask you to pay attention to.

That's what I do.

I look for different things that help me.

I look for the times that I see

the things that mean a lot to me.

So, for example, if I spend some time with my

daughter or my son or my grandchildren, if I go

for a walk with my wife, it means a lot.

It can help me just feel better.

One of my things that I rely on the most is

when I walk on the beach or next to the sea.

It's something that really rewards me.

There's just something about it.

It may seem quite corny or whatever, but

I can actually feel myself relaxing as I

walk along that water's edge for you.

I don't know what that is.

Finding it, looking after it, trying to do that

as much as possible, whether it's exercising, whether it's

watching TV or reading a book, doesn't matter.

What works for you works for you.

And I've got quite good now at trying to

separate out my feelings with other people's feelings.

It's really difficult to start with, but I found

that I used to soak up other people's feelings.

I had to try to make them happy.

I had to be perfect.

And it's really difficult to be perfect all the time.

It's really difficult to keep everybody

else happy all the time.

It's a huge pressure on yourself.

And so slowly, over time, your own

in my own mental health was suffering.

Now I try to be realistic and rational.

I don't set out to hurt anyone

or deliberately try to upset them.

That's different.

But what I do is if I say something

inadvertently or I do something unintentionally that upsets someone,

I've sort of realised that isn't my problem. Really.

For them, that's their problem.

At that time, I didn't do

anything intentionally and it's relieved me.

This pressure, this understanding that I now

have, that I can't make everyone happy.

I can't make everybody like me.

Not everybody will like what I do, what I say.

Some people will hate these podcasts.

Some people will really enjoy them.

Of course, we'd all rather that people like us

we know rather than that we could make everybody

happy and that everyone would love these podcasts.

I would love that.

But again, being rational and realistic, understanding

that it can't always be that way,

can have quite a liberating effect.

I used to work really hard at trying to

impress someone who was really close to me.

I spent years and years trying to seek their

approval, looking for them to say, you know what?

I'm proud of you. Well done.

To this day, I don't feel that I've really got it.

But now, for the past maybe five, six

years or so, I haven't needed it.

When I recognised that what it really mattered, what was

really important to me was that I was proud of

myself and I thought that I was okay myself.

It meant a lot and it relieved me a quite

a lot of pressure that I was putting on myself

to chase after this external approval from other people.

How do you get your approval?

Who gives it to you?

Do you really give it to yourself enough?

That's why I ask you.

Something that happened to me, and I can

discuss here, is that when I was training,

I took a great deal of effort.

I had to pass, I had to be the best I could be.

I had to try and get top marks because

I had a low self esteem at that time.

I was quite negative about me and

who I was as a person.

I had almost to prove to other

people that I was good enough.

And it tied into what I was saying earlier.

I really wanted certain people in my

life to sort of say, well done. Yes.

So all the way through my training, I got a

huge amount of pressure on myself to get it right.

You ask my wife, who was supporting me

all the way through, my children that were

supporting me all the way through my training.

I would spend days, weekends after weekend, just locked away,

trying to get that assignment perfect, trying to get that

information down on paper, to get that mark that I

needed to be the best I could.

Now, again, it took a huge effect.

It had a huge punishment.

Imagine the energy and the effort that

me and yourselves are putting into this.

What happened?

Well, at the end of the course, coming

right at the very end, I failed.

So I totally messed up.

My assignments, the exams,

everything weren't good enough.

I still remember to the point now where

I got that information, to where I stood.

How I felt at that time had a huge effect

on me and it reiterated how rubbish I was.

Everyone else was right and

obviously it reinforced this fact.

That why the person that I was trying to impress

the most, why should they be proud of me?

Why should they say, well done when I'm rubbish, right?

I can't even pass an exam.

I can't pass this course.

It's going to be no good.

I know.

And I can tell you guys that I

spent quite a few days feeling really low

in myself and it was a painful experience.

I can look back and it seems a bit strange now.

I can look back and I can say it's

one of the best experiences of my life too.

I learned a huge amount about myself during that time.

I was feeling as low as I could and beating myself up.

But when I come out to the side, I really

realised that I didn't have to impress anybody else.

I was trying too hard to get this piece of paper

to actually prove to other people that I was good enough.

No one needs to do that.

What I really wanted to do was

get that piece of paper for myself.

I needed it.

I wanted to do this course.

I wanted to be trained as a therapist, because I

knew that and I know that I'm good at my

job and I give everyone who comes into my Practise

the best possible service I can give them.

So I retook all everything I needed.

I resubmitted all of my assignments that I needed to, and

I got my piece of paper, that piece of paper, lots

of people hanging on the wall and everything else.

For me, I didn't need to.

I felt quite liberated, quite free.

I didn't need to prove it.

That piece of paper is to prove

to other people I'm good enough.

I don't need it to prove to myself, so

I don't need to hang it on my wall.

I often say, if you need me to prove that

I'm good enough as a therapist, I'll come around your

house and I'll hang it on your wall for you.

Just have to think about why you

do some of the things you do.

Is there a different way you could do it?

Who are you trying to keep happy?

It sounds very corny and very cliche, I appreciate.

But without your own internal happiness, without you

doing stuff for yourself, how are we ever

going to make anybody else happy?

It's always going to end badly.

So, for you guys, I hope this helps in some way.

Try to look at what makes you happy, what

support, who does give you the support you need?

We sometimes overlook them too.

We often notice the people that are saying

things about us, giving us negative feedback.

We don't tend to notice the ones

that are there through thick and thin.

I appreciate that you've got that.

And you can also trust yourself.

You are good enough.

You can do this for yourself.

You do deserve to be happy and you

deserve to feel relaxed in who you are.

I hope you've enjoyed this podcast and I may do a

part three at some point in the next future episodes.

But for now, as always, if you've got

any questions or feedback, please let me know.

I'm more than happy to listen and talk

to you individually, but that's it for today.

Take care of yourselves.

I'm going to sign off for now and talk to you later.

Thanks for listening. The therapy guy.