My Dinner Time

Dinner time with children can be a real test of patience. I think anyone who has kids, once they get past the baby phase, can attest to this statement. It’s a pretty universal truth, that by the end of the day, attention spans and fuses are shorter than they had been a few hours earlier.

I’m someone who enjoys making a nice meal. I’ll take time during lunch if I’m working from home to start something cooking like a pulled pork or bolognese sauce. I really want my kids to grow up to have a healthy appreciation for food. Things like where it comes from, how it gets to our table,  how to make tasty meals and importantly how to sit down and enjoy a meal with people. Not to go full Anthony Bourdain, but I do believe that food is the window to culture and people.

I was also raised in a house where table manners were important. It’s something I’m grateful for. It’s something that my Dad especially instilled in us as we were growing up and there have been countless times in my adult life that I’m really grateful that he did and that I knew what to do. It’s also always been a time of connection, people pause and sit together and I really want that for our family. To sit down together and connect in between the hectic after school activities and bed time it feels like a nice window of potential calmness and togetherness.

The problem I have with dinner time is that in our house it’s usually quite fraught. Someone doesn’t like what we’ve made, even though they’ve never tried it. Or they aren’t hungry because they spent the preceding 30-45 minutes eating snack food. Or they just won’t sit at the table because something over in the lounge has suddenly become unbelievably interesting to them. For some reason this gets to me at dinner time, more than any other meal.

Breakfast is usually a staggered affair based on when different members of the family wake and also done while getting ready for school etc. and lunch is either done at school or on the weekends in between activities. So dinner most of the time feels like the only chance we have to sit down as a family and share a meal. But, like I said, it seldom plays out as the civilised affair I hope it will.

I find it frustrating and depending on where my head is at after the working day, it can for lack of a better term, bum me out. I’ve made something I think is delicious and that I know they would like if they were in the right frame of mind, but they won’t try it. Won’t even consider giving it a go. Then they leave the table as they suddenly remembered that they need to go to the toilet, or they have homework, or the toy that they never usually play with has suddenly become the most interesting thing in the world. It’s pretty easy to get worked up.

I try to remind myself that, just like me, by the end of the day, the kids are pretty zonked too. But sitting down and sharing a meal is a key life skill. Eating with good manners is a key life skill. Appreciating different cuisines will open so many doors and allow them to be a bit more comfortable in places and situations that are foreign. However, after a day of school or daycare they sometimes don’t have it in them to do that, and that’s OK. It’s normal. But that doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating for me as a parent who put effort and love into the dinner I make for them.

That’s an important point. I think food is an important love language for me. I’ve always enjoyed making nice food for my wife. I love the way she responds to it, how it makes her feel and, for me sometimes that’s the easiest/best way I can show her my love and devotion. By pouring my time, energy and love into something that she’ll enjoy and that nurtures her. I guess I’m probably trying to do the same with the kids too. That’s asking too much of them for that to be interpreted as such though. I read somewhere recently about expecting kids to be mind readers and how that leads to misinterpretations and misunderstandings. If I want them to understand the love aspect of the meal, I have to explain it to them in ways that they’ll understand without getting frustrated.

We try to do a thing every night over dinner where everyone in the family says what their favourite part of the day was. I like it because it seems to elicit a better response than the time-honoured parent/child interaction of ‘what did you do at school today?’ - ‘I don’t know’. But it also gives us a chance to practise some gratitude too. So I feel a bit sad that when dinner doesn’t play out as I hope that we sometimes miss out on this too.

Anyway, I know this is a universal thing. Kids have been exasperating their parents at meal times for as long as we’ve had dinner tables! But letting it impact your frustration levels and overall headspace is a choice. It’s how you frame it to yourself, not in a sense of lowering expectations, but in the sense that not every meal will be perfect but the effort remains the same. I have days when I don’t nail it, when I make the thing they devoured last week and this week it’s ‘disgusting’ and it pisses me off. But I always try to come back to the fact that those life skills I mentioned earlier are a long game. They don’t need to have them nailed by six or eight or whenever. We’re chipping away at it, so that one day down the road, they’ll be out there experiencing the world through food and it will have all been worth it.

My Parenting Over the Holidays

There was an ad that used to run on TV in December, I think it was from the Tindall Foundation. The gist of it, was that the most valuable thing you can spend on your kids at Christmas is time. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, especially over the past few Christmases as my kids get a bit older and start to get caught up in the consumerist side of the season. 

Christmas can be a tight time financially for parents. Buying presents, planning some kind of summer holiday (for us in the southern hemisphere) and all the special christmas food can really add up. I keep coming back to that message from the ad though. All of those things that add up are really just excuses to spend time with your loved ones over the holiday. Piling financial stress on top of the organisation it all takes feels like it can only detract from your experience. Which in turn makes you less present for your family during what’s supposed to be ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ as the song goes.

Another thing I have been thinking about when it comes to spending ‘time’ with your kids is the presence of devices. Phones, tv and ipads etc. can be a great distraction, or way to create some quiet time, but they can all become a substitute for the attention and focus we should be giving each other. I’ve been thinking about a 2023 tweak to the messaging of the ad. It’s something along the lines of “the most valuable thing you can give your kids this Christmas is your attention”. Not just your time, but your attention and presence during that time.

That’s one of the reasons we really love the beach. For one we are out of the house and away from those distractions, but you’re also in an environment that requires your focus. Kids need supervision and to be taught and reminded about water safety, so you have to be present with them. I really love watching their water confidence grow over a summer and seeing how they progress every year with their swimming and knowledge of the coast line.

But screen time is pretty inevitable, so at the risk of contradicting myself I’m going to try to present Christmas movies in a positive light. I’m usually pretty anti the kids watching movies etc. when the weather is nice outside. However, we found that watching Christmas movies can be a really nice palate cleanser to the consumerism of the season. Lots of Christmas movies actually stress the importance of time with family, the spirit of the season and all that. Which we found really helpful this year. The kids would finish watching the movie and then go off and play really nicely with each other. 

I think watching it together with them also can help with that feeling of needing to buy all the things. It reminds you as a parent too that your kids don’t actually need all the toys. They know how to have fun already. I found the movies really refreshing and a reminder that a great Christmas is so little about the presents and so much more about the people. It’s not what’s under the tree that’s important, it’s who’s around it.

My challenge, and something I’m sure many of us could do with reminding of, is to remember this next December. Trying to invite less stress into the festive season and focus more on making the time we spend together focussed on what’s really important. I think I’ll set a reminder in my phone for next November 30th to read this again to myself!

For now though, I think everyone should give themselves a pat on the back. It can be a really hard time of the year for a number of reasons. There’s nothing wrong with taking a moment to appreciate the effort you put in for your children, family and friends over the last few weeks! Ka mau te wehi!

My Year in Review

It’s been quite a big year for me and I’m reflecting on what’s happened in 2022. Personally I had made some pretty big strides with my mental health by the start of 2022, but I still wasn’t confident enough to talk with my wider family about what I was dealing with. Let alone anyone else.

Record scratch, fast forward to the end of December, and I’m writing this having given a presentation on mental health and self talk to two separate groups of 100 people about my mental health in the last month or so.

But I’ll rewind again to the start of this year. I had built version one of Dadpression. I think I had three modules and four stories on there and not much else. I’d been sitting on that simple version of the site for about four months. I’d thought a couple of times of how I might announce it, but had never really come close to doing so. If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t even know if I really wanted to share it at that stage. It was a good idea and I knew it could be helpful to others, but I almost wanted someone else to do it so I didn’t have to.

Anyway, one morning in February something came over me. I don’t know what changed, maybe I was feeling confident about where I was at with my mental health, or just exasperated with sitting on this thing and doing nothing with it. But I did it, I put it out on social media and my family and friends did the rest. I honestly haven’t regretted it for a second since.

Lots of my friends and family have asked me since, “were you worried people would come to you with their problems?” And I honestly was, in fact it was part of what had stopped me sharing it. When I wrote anything I always included a note about talking to someone, ideally a professional, if you’d experienced anything like what I wrote about. I think that was one of the main things that weighed on my mind, would people interpret it as me being a wannabe therapist.

But I needn’t have worried. I did have loads of conversations with people, some I knew well and some I hardly knew at all. But everyone was supportive, empathetic and if they wanted advice it was on engaging with therapy or what some of the books I’d been reading were. In fact I think I’ve had more real, vulnerable conversations with people this year than I have in my previous 37 trips around the sun. 

Almost immediately, I also started to get asked “what do you want to do with it?” I hadn’t thought about that. I was more focussed on whether I could ever let anyone know about the thing rather than my grand plan for it. I still don’t really have a plan either. Like I said before, I’ve started doing some speaking which I enjoy doing and I think I’d like to do more in that arena. But in terms of what Dadpression is, I haven’t gotten much further than a place where I share a few stories and exercises around parenting and mental health. Which I’m fine with. If it turns into something organically, that’s great, but I’m not going to force it. 

I’ve had my ups and downs this year. There were points where I definitely felt if I didn’t have a good exercise regime and was drinking I could have easily slipped into a bad headspace. But I’ve also continued to work on my self talk, my gratitude and my meditation/breathing too. It all adds up. If I’ve learnt anything this year, it’s that there isn’t one thing, it’s all the little things that add up. That point has been continually reinforced to me. All the things I’m doing are moving the dial slightly in the right direction.

And so that is my take away from this quite momentous year. The little things add up, and there is no substitute for doing the things that are good for you far more often than you do the things that aren’t. I’m not really one for new year resolutions, but if I have something to take into next year, it’s that. Keep doing more of the little things that make you happy, and less of the things that don’t. 

I’ll finish off by saying a massive thank you. Practicing genuine gratitude has been a big growth area for me over the past year or so. I’m genuinely grateful for every single view of the site (10,000 and counting!) and for every single person who I’ve talked to this year who has given me nothing but positivity about what they think about Dadpression.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year, signing off on a pretty momentous 2022!  

My Life in the Middle

I’ve started having conversations with my doctor about coming off my medication. Medication was never the long game. It served a purpose for me, but now that I’m getting closer to it becoming a reality, I’m getting a little apprehensive. I think it’s mainly a worry that I’ll slip straight into depression, which will be a real kick in the guts for me. Especially after all of the work I’ve done in therapy, going sober and getting a pretty solid exercise regime. I’d be gutted to be faced with the fact that ultimately it was the meds that were the most help. I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the case, or that at least the science and data doesn’t back that up. But it’s a lingering fear.

The question I’m asking myself as a result of that fear is, why do I want to come off of the medication anyway? The honest answer, is that I don’t have one solid reason. I’ve read that they (scientists etc) aren’t sure what the implications of long term antidepressant use are. So there’s a bit of a worry there, but my take has always been that if I felt I needed it, I should be taking it.

The main thing, is that I find my life right now is lived very much in the middle. At the start of this round of depression, a couple of years ago, this was the aim. So it seems strange to now find it being the reason I want to stop medication. But, like the title of the story implies, my life stays pretty ‘in the middle’ most of the time. The best way I can describe it, is to think of a spectrum one to ten. With one being absolute despair, and ten being unbridled joy. I spend my life these days in the four, five and six regions of that spectrum. I’ve cut the three, two and one out, but at the expense of eight, nine and ten.

Now, like I said, that was the whole idea. To try to avoid finding myself in the low numbers. To balance myself out so that I didn’t ride the roller coaster of my emotions. And, for a year or so, that was great because that was exactly what I needed. It gave me a break from being in that fight or flight mode. The mode where my brain started narrowing my field of vision and impacting my memory to save space for the constant fight it found itself in. I needed that, and it worked. But now, I’ve reached a point where either those low numbers are far enough in the rear view, or I’m starting to really miss the high numbers. Probably it's a combination of both.

I’ve had many times over the last six months or so where people have asked me if I’m alright. Because I’m being quieter than they are used to me being. Which is true, I’ve noticed it as well. I’m not as animated, or as creative as I usually am. I actually think my writing is worse too, or at least much harder to get out. I’ve settled into this zone of avoiding lows and highs and the neutrality of it is creeping into everything I do. I think I’ve got to the point where I feel like I’m missing the highs enough to risk the lows.

Part of me thinks that this is a really selfish desire. My wife and kids don’t need me at one, two or three again. I think I’ve been going pretty well in my relationships with them as a result of being more level. So I worry about risking that too. Is it selfish that I want to feel the highs of the really awesome things they do? I keep going round and round in my head on this point. Shouldn’t I just be happy with where I’ve got to and not risk that?

The thing that is both reassuring and concerning at the same time, is that the journey with medication is so specific to everyone. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, or at least it’s less tangible. There is no scan you can do, or a test you can run to see if the infection is still there. It’s up to the individual to gauge where they are and make the best decision they can for themself at that time. Like I said, it’s reassuring in the sense that if I feel like I should at least explore the idea. But concerning in the sense that there is no tried and true method. No one can tell you that this is the path to follow for success.

There’s another reason I want to come off my medication which isn’t related to my mental health. Ever since I went on the medication, my urine flow has been pathetic. So much so that I got worried about it and went to the doctor and eventually to a specialist. So for my troubles I got a finger up the bum and a camera down my willy. Only to be told it's one of the lesser documented side effects of the medication I’m on. I’m more interested to see if I go back to normal and how quickly. Plus my wife and kids can hopefully stop complaining about how long it takes me to go for a wee!

But joking aside, I know I’m going to do it. It’s more a case of debating with myself whether now is the right time or not. But to be honest I know deep down that I’ll be ready whenever the time comes. I’ve never been in such a good position with all my other tools. Writing, being sober and having a pretty solid exercise routine along with the tools I developed in therapy mean that I know I’m in a great place right now.

My Dad Guilt

I’m writing this from a very comfortable hotel suite in downtown Toronto. I slept in until 930 this morning for the first time in years. Then stumbled out onto the street to find a coffee, before returning to read my book and rest my back. Yes, I’m at the stage of life where a long flight renders me immobile for a few days after. Getting old is no joke!

But the reason I’m writing this is because coupled with the amazing feeling of freedom and the love of exploring a new city, is the guilt I feel being away from my kids. I’ve watched quite a few talks recently and ‘Mum Guilt’, which for those who aren’t familiar is the feeling of guilt or worry about making mistakes with their kids, but quite often entangled with working. I’m feeling a bit of ‘Dad Guilt’, which is less driven by societal pressures. But if you’ve read the rest of my site, you’ll know that a lot of my stresses and triggers have come from trying to carry an even load of the parenting weight. 

I initially didn’t think I was going to be coming. My wife started a new job recently where her focus is largely on the Canadian market. She had an event that she wanted to attend in Toronto and I was going to be at home with the kids while she went for the week. But then we had my parents over for dinner and my wonderful mum suggested that she and my dad could have the kids and I should go too. Secretly, I was hoping they would make this offer, but I wouldn’t have asked. So, we looked at the options for me to go too and given the lead time we had to book, it wasn’t too expensive. Lucky me!

We are incredibly fortunate to have my parents as support. The relationship they have with the kids is amazing. The kids love them, and like grandparents do, they shower the kids with attention, unwavering love, and other things (ice cream and chocolate mainly). So my guilt isn’t about anyone feeling put upon, or an uncomfortable situation. In fact, I’m sure the kids would opt for the situation to be permanent if given the option!

The guilt comes from a place of me passing the burden of my responsibilities to someone else. I really struggle with it, like I’m sure lots of people do. Having someone do something that is ‘my job’ feels like I’m asking too much of them, no matter the size of the task. This is definitely linked to my inability to be kind to myself (which I’m working on). But the idea of people doing things for me still feels uncomfortable to me. If I don’t feel like I deserve someone to help me out, why should anyone want to help me? Even with my family, people who love me. For example, I resolved pretty early in my adult life that I didn’t want to be a financial burden on my parents. I couldn’t bear the idea of them working to fund my lifestyle/dreams. Now that I look back on it, that resolution came from an extended period of depression, but it’s become part of my core values I guess.

Anyway, I started writing this so that I could work through it myself, so that I can enjoy this trip without the guilt. I know my kids are fine, I know my parents love spending time with them and I know that I deserve some time to recharge my batteries. I just need that message to work it’s way through to my subconscious too.

It just so happens that on the plane on the way over I watched the ‘Treat Yo-self’ episode of Parks and Rec. For those not familiar, the episode centres around two of the more fun loving characters having a day where they treat themselves. But they end up taking their more serious and reserved colleague who struggles with the concept of ‘treating himself’ for no real reason.

Like I said, on an intellectual level, I know that I deserve a week to ‘treat myself’. It’s been over three years since I’ve been overseas, and other than the odd night away or sleepover with the grandparents it’s been 24/7 since the start of Covid. I mean, we went into the first lockdown with three kids under five years old. I think anyone who parented through the pandemic is in need of some kind of respite or time off. But somewhere deep in my subconscious is a voice that says “Someone is doing something that you should be doing”.

What am I going to do about it? I’m going to head out and meet an old mate I haven’t seen in ages for lunch. Tell myself I deserve it and enjoy where I am, without the side order of guilt. Treat Yo-self!

My Rejection

This is something I wrote a while ago. But I had a conversation with a colleague at work about how we deal with rejection the other day and thought I should finish it off. 

My head is in a bad place right now. Every thought and interaction I have is shrouded in negativity. The worst thing about it is that I know I’ve brought myself to this place. I’ve kind of stood by and watched as I dragged myself down. It’s a path I have trodden before and even though I’ve worked hard to recognise it, I sometimes still find myself trudging down it making myself more and more depressed.

My main cause for starting to go down this path on this occasion is the bruising of my ego. I think when I’m in the right frame of mind I can handle a bit of constructive criticism. But when it lands on things that I think are fundamental to who I am as a person it can be a bit harder to deal with. Those criticisms feel more personal, they bring out insecurities that I have about myself and inevitably I get a bit defensive.

The bruising of my ego has come from a couple of rejections and disappointments. More specifically I’ve allowed myself to be consumed by the validation of other people. As I’ve learnt over the past wee while, attaching my happiness to others' perception of me is a sure fire way to disappoint myself. Especially when I allow that perception to rattle what I see as the foundation of who I am as a person. It feels like, you don’t just like that thing I did, or the way I did it. You don’t like or even love me as a person.

I’ve noticed how I follow a certain pattern after rejection too. I go searching for instant validation from some other external source. I know on an intellectual level that I should be focusing on my own self worth. But my first reaction is to try to find someone else to say ‘Na, you’re all good mate’. It’s not helpful to me and leads me into conversations I don’t really want to be having.

I’m sure we all struggle with some version of this. Rejection is horrible. It hurts whether it’s the first time it’s happened to you, or it’s happened a number of times. You might get better at processing it and dealing with it. But depending on the situation and where the rejection comes from, it can slip past even the most solidly built walls of defence. The tools you’ve developed to deal with a certain type of rejection might be completely useless and redundant when you are dealt a different kind entirely.

Like I said before, it’s made me pretty defensive. Which makes me want to throw shade on anything anyone talks to me about. Everything is glass half empty and the tone to all of my thoughts and the things I’ve been saying is negative. Which in itself only serves to make me feel worse. I’m thinking negative thoughts and putting negative energy into the world as a result. It becomes a nice little self fulfilling prophecy. The only thing I can get out of anything is negativity. I think it’s great that I have learnt to recognise this and catch myself in the act, but I am also frustrated that I didn't catch it earlier. But being negative, about being able to stop the negativity that came from a negative response is a vortex I really don’t want to go down!

I’ve been thinking about whether opening myself up like I do with dadpression has made more more resilient or whether it’s actually opened me up in ways that I didn’t have to deal with before? Am I now beginning to see the reality that being an open book and sharing how I think and feel can have an impact on me in ways I didn’t predict. Seems a bit unfair to me! But I guess it is all part of the human experience and something for my ongoing personal growth.

So I guess at the moment, I’m probably a little bit more fragile than usual. Which in itself is a representation of my growth in that admission. But it’s also a reminder that progress isn’t linear and that I can fall down the old pitfalls if I’m not vigilant about which thoughts I give my energy to. And with that reminder to myself, I’m off to work on some breathing techniques and practice some gratitude for all of the amazing things in my life I might not have been giving enough attention lately.

My Six Month Check In

As of today it’s been six months since I first shared this site. What a six months it’s been. Six months and one day ago, there were a very small handful of people who knew I’d had panic attacks, anxiety and depression. Yesterday, I gave a talk and ran a workshop to 100 or so people at my work about mental health and the way we talk to ourselves. So, I think it’s fair to say that a lot has changed.

I’ve had so many positive and wonderful comments and conversations with people as a result of putting dadpression out into the world. I’ve talked to people I’ve known for years and years about things we’ve never talked about before. I’ve also had people I’ve never met share my stories to their networks saying that they think it’s important and worth reading. All of it has been humbling, inspiring and has ultimately reminded me that people, at their core, are lovely creatures.

I want to share some reflections about those conversations and also some reflections about myself too. Basically, what I’ve learnt about myself in the last six months.

Firstly, the conversations. There are so many people out there, that we all know, that have battles with their mental health in one way or another. You cannot exist in this world and not care about someone who (at some point)  goes through a tough time. So the first reflection is, it’s never the wrong time to check in on the people you care about. And, if you are the one going through it, it is never the wrong time to ask for help.

One thing that has really amazed me about the conversations I’ve had, is the breadth of experiences. I’ve talked with people like me who have been in very dark places, who have experiences with medications and long therapy journeys. I’ve also talked to people who haven’t had personal experience, but have loved ones who have struggled. They said they were grateful for the site opening up a conversation and maybe providing some insight. 

The second thing I’ve been reflecting on, is that everyone has their own story to tell, but we all care about hearing the stories of others. I didn’t expect this element. Opening up has shown me that people want to talk about mental health, but we find it very hard to know if the space is right to do so. We, as a society, still have much work to do in this space. But every time I’ve begun these talks with people, we’ve learnt about each other and our understanding has grown. My takeaway is that we all want to talk, we just haven’t communally accepted that it’s OK to do so.

I’ve also been really touched by the people (some who I haven’t talked to for years in some cases) who have reached out to check in on me personally. Like I said at the start, six months ago there was a very small number of people who knew that I might need to be checked in on from time to time. Having people message or call just to see how I’m doing never ceases to give me a massive boost for the rest of that day. 

So my third reflection is that we shouldn’t ever underestimate the power of checking in with someone. Them knowing that you care can turn their whole day around. So if you are umming and ahhing about calling someone, just do it. It always means so much to hear from someone and to know that they thought about you. Our attention is one of the most powerful things we can give to others.

What have I learnt about myself? The first thing is that I’m not unique, there is nothing special about me. I could view that as a negative, but I don't. Because I spent so long worrying that no one would get it if I talked about it. That people would look at me like ‘what is this guy on about?’. Finding out that lots of other people have had similar experiences has been incredibly validating for me. And there is something really amazing about having that weight lifted off my shoulders. I don’t have to walk around worrying about people finding out. I get low, I get anxious and sometimes make mountains out of molehills. Big deal. We all do it to a certain extent.

I’ve also been reminded that progress and growth is not linear. I have had some lows since I started the site. I’m not ‘fixed’ and never will be. I’m still a work in progress, as we all are. Just because I started sharing my experiences and stories, it doesn’t mean I’m immune to those things happening again. 

I’ll be honest, I had moments where I started to congratulate myself on a job well done. As if I’d passed some test or gained some form of qualification by sharing this stuff. But in reality, all I’ve done with the site is share some stories and some of the tools I’ve learnt along the way. I still need to call on those tools myself, regularly. 

Finally, I’ve been reflecting on how far I’ve come. From the confused teenager who didn’t know why he couldn’t sleep at night, to the lost 20 year old who had no control over his emotions. Or even the first time dad beating himself up for not getting anything right. I’m proud that I’ve not stopped working on myself. That I am recommitting every day to myself and my family and friends to treating myself with kindness and spreading that out into the world. I’m also proud that I can say I am proud of myself without squirming too much! Personal growth huh? Who knew?

My Clever Kid

So, I wrote this for my eldest daughter. I wanted to explain to her what I’ve been writing and sharing. Like me, she likes to sit with things and write them down too.

I want to write you a letter/story about the website that dad has made. It’s a bit funny that lots of people have read it and that it’s made me a little bit famous. But it’s about things that happen in all of our brains. About worrying. About wanting to be a good dad and about how all of us think thoughts that don’t help us from time to time.

As we grow up, everyone of us figures out our own way to deal with the things that happen to us in life. For every single person that is going to be different. That’s because no two lives are the same. When you’re born, where you live, and the first time you experience things will be different. So our brains have to make their own way of handling the experiences we have as we grow.

Now, these ways of handling the things that happen to us will be the way that works at the time. That way of acting may stop being the best way to react in future. But our brains build a pathway. What happens is that once we have that pathway, we follow it every time we find ourselves in a similar situation. Like when you’re a baby, you don’t know that if a ball is coming at your face it’s going to hurt if it hits you. The first time it will hit you in the face. So in future you have an automatic response to put your hands up and protect yourself. Our brains do the same thing with emotions too.

As we grow up, sometimes we find that that pathway we’ve made is not that healthy for us. It can make us sad, or worry about things, or angry when we respond in that way. But we’ve done it so many times that it’s hard for us to not react that way. I found I was like that, so I went and talked to a special brain doctor who helped me to change the way I reacted to situations. I learnt some healthy ways to react and built new, better pathways. By healthy, I mean ways that are better for me, both in my body and my brain. Just like eating a vegetable, instead of eating a chocolate biscuit. Except it’s for my brain and my feelings.

I made my website because lots of people either don’t know that you can change those pathways, or are too scared or shy to ask for help. So I want people to see what it has been like for me and to give them some tips to get them started. I used to be a little bit embarrassed by it myself, but I’m getting better at realising that it’s just who I am and I want to grow as a person so I can be a better Dad to you kids.

One thing I want you to know is that I love you more than anything in the world. All of the stories I tell about my worries and times I’ve felt sad are either because I love you and care about you, or because my brain pathways were working in a way that wasn’t helping me. It was never because I didn’t love you, or think you are the most important thing in my life. In fact nothing makes me happier than you, I love you and your sister and brother more than anything in the world.

In fact it’s because I want to be a better person and a better dad for you that I wanted to try get better at these things. I want to be able to teach you healthy thinking and how to look after yourself. I only started sharing it with other people once I had made a bit of progress and was feeling a bit more confident in myself. But I started doing this because I love you and want to be the best I can be for you, and for myself.

So I share stories about being anxious, and sad and angry, because I don’t want to pretend that I don’t have those feelings. We all have those feelings. I want our family to be able to tell each other about how we feel because we love each other. I share them with other people (dad’s especially) because when we were little, it wasn’t as common for people to talk about their feelings.

I love you, and I always will. If people ever talk to you about dad’s website, you can tell them (or just tell yourself) that I’m learning and sharing all of these things because I love you and your sister and brother and want to be the best possible dad I can for you all. If I can help another dad (or anyone) too, then that's great.

Here’s what she came back to me with a few days later….

Dear dad, I sometimes have those feelings too and that's OK. So should I tell you if I have those feelings? Or should I not. But how do you change those pathways? And do others get those feelings too? I love you too and Mum , Bella and Henry. But sometimes I feel angry with them. Is that ok? But what happens at school when I get angry I usually just walk away. 

My feelings sometimes just get out of control and I get angry. Or sometimes when I'm having fun people who are angry run into our game and hurt people. What should I do? And what am I supposed to do if someone else gets angry at my  friends? Should I not tell them to control themselves or leave my friends alone? 

Are my feelings important? Or are yours just important? Should I tell you my feelings? Do I tell you my pathways? Or should you share your pathways? But everyone is important to me. Here are some feelings I have thought about: Happy, Sad,Calm,Angry and tired. Here are some paragraphs about those feelings.

Firstly, I feel happy for people and I sometimes just feel happy enjoying myself. Happy means enjoying yourself and having fun. It also means Happy for others when they have done something you are very proud of.

Secondly, Sad. Sadness everyone has it sometimes. But it is when you are hurt or maybe when someone hurts your feelings. Sadness is a good feeling that makes you know what happens when you are not ok. 

Thirdly, Calm. Calm is when you are relaxed. When you are angry, breathe and you will feel calm again. You will never always be calm.Even when you want to but you just can't.

Fourthly, Angry. Angriness  is when you can't control yourselves. People get it all the time. But they always find a way to get calm again. I get angry too at times. But I'm not sure if you get angry sometimes? 

Fifthly and lastly, Tired. Tiredness is when you need a break you're tired. That's what happens when you get to bed at night time. I also get tired at school when we do too much for me. 

Are those feelings correct? If they are, I will be so happy. Feelings are important for you and me and everyone in the world should care about feelings sometimes.

My takeaway from this, and I hope yours too, is that it’s never too early to start talking to your kids about feelings and mental health. We should be doing it just as much as we do about making healthy food and exercise choices. Kudos to all the parents out there who are having these conversations already. And for those who aren’t, the best time to start is now!

My Lowest Moment

So, I usually put a bit about how if this resonated with you to talk to someone at the end of these. But this one is about suicidal thoughts and I want to make that super clear from the get go. If that makes you feel uncomfortable in any way it’s probably best to skip this one. This is actually the first thing I wrote as part of this whole idea of writing things before I talk about them. Anyway, it might be a tough thing to read so please go in with that understanding.

I also want to be clear on this point too. I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I’m sharing this because I know there are people out there who have experienced something very similar to this and haven’t had any help. I’m explaining what happened to me the best I can, so that someone else might realise they need to get help.

Ok, with those things in mind here we go…

This is one of the few memories I know I’ll have with me forever. I know that, because I can put myself back in that spot so easily and see, hear and feel everything exactly as it was.

I’m standing at the sink in the kitchen at my brother and sister in law’s house, in Cambridge. I’m washing dishes. The TV is on quietly because the kids are being put to bed. It’s still light outside. My hands are in a pair of pink rubber gloves that are too small for my hands. The water is very hot and when I have my hands in the sink for too long the gloves start to stick to my hands. I’m alone in the kitchen.

I’d been having what I know as panic attacks for a month leading up to this point. It was a combination of work stress and the fact that, in my mind, I wasn’t as great a father as I had planned to be. I’d gone into fatherhood thinking that I would do half of everything. But that isn’t the case in the early months. I can’t breast feed and our daughter didn’t like a bottle. I spent most of the day at work and evening bath times always ended in her crying and I couldn’t understand why. There was nothing I could do to help in so many situations.

I had built up an idea of what I was going to do as a father. I wasn’t getting to do any of it. Worse than that, I wasn’t able to nurture my daughter in the same way that my wife could. It wasn’t 50/50 at all, not even close and I felt useless.

I’ve always been prone to anxiety and depression. I always expect far more of myself than I do of anyone else. I hold myself to higher standards than I do other people. Then remonstrate with myself when I fail to live up to the unattainable. It’s a cycle I have lived with for as long as I can remember. I put pressure on myself over and over and over again, until I finally crack. Usually this manifests itself in the form of panic attacks. They are a combination of tightness in the chest and an animal instinct to flee wherever I am. As well as heightened breathing, sweating and heart rate. It’s a case of triggering my fight or flight response through entirely internal forces.

Anyway, on the night I was describing at the start, something different happened. I was standing at that sink when all of a sudden a feeling enveloped me. My wife, my daughter and the world would be better off without me around and that I should just disappear. It wasn’t a panic attack, in fact it was the exact opposite. I was so calm and it was crystal clear to me that I was utterly worthless and should cease to exist. I stood there, staring out the window with my hands in the too small gloves. I was overcome by a feeling I’d never had before. I was completely out of my own head and body. As if I’d already disappeared and felt warm and cosy in a way I can’t really describe. I’d finally ignored what my brain and body was trying to tell me enough times that my body and brain gave up on me. I had been warned, and now things were being stepped up.

After about 10 seconds or so, I came back to myself. I picked up where I had left off with the dishes and went about the rest of the evening as if nothing was wrong. As I said before, I’d been through the cycle before where it had culminated in me cracking. This time it had felt as if I’d completely broken. There was no panic. No sore chest. No anything. Numbness. A resignation to the fact that my existence was worthless. The world, my world, would be better off without me in it.

I went about the rest of the evening on autopilot and went to bed. That night I don’t think I slept at all. I lay there rooted to the bed. Petrified of getting up, petrified of myself. I was in the room with my wife and baby and I think that saved me. I considered getting up and out of bed a few times, but knew that if I left the room, I wasn’t coming back. That thought seemed to hit me. It reminded me that even if I didn’t feel of use to them, I didn’t want to have a negative impact on them. That tiny voice of reason in the sea of worthlessness is why I’m here to write this. Being in that room, anchored to them.

When we returned home to London, I told my wife that I had a really sore chest and I went to the doctor. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her about the specific experience. My excuse then was that I didn’t know what it was. My excuse up until I actually confided in her, was a combination of shame, guilt and not wanting her to be worried about me.

I went through a few examinations, I even got to the point of having an ECG on my heart. But once that came back clear, I had to admit what was really going on. First to myself. Then I talked to the doctor about the fact that I had experienced anxiety and panic attacks before. I got some medication to help relieve the physical symptoms. But the most important thing I did was get back to having sessions with a psychologist. I talked through the things that I’d found stressful. Both at work and about being a new dad and worked on some coping mechanisms. These were things I’m sure I’d been through before with other psychologists, but it was so great to re-learn them.

Through all this process I was asked a number of times if I’d ever thought about harming myself. I never said yes. I didn’t know how to explain what I had felt at that time. I was scared about triggering some alarm, scared of being hospitalised, sacred of myself too. So I just said no. But through my therapy, I began to see things a different way. I regained some of the perspective I’d lost and learnt to forgive myself a little.

What have I learnt? That I need to start being a bit easier on myself. To be OK with, and understanding of my own limitations. Also to set my expectations a bit lower and to be realistic and honest with myself. Being happy with what I have, rather than focusing on what I’m missing out on. I’ve also learnt that I need to put things in place to manage my mental health. Getting outside and exercising enough. Identifying and talking about what is making me stressed. Often this is more about being honest with myself. In fact a lot of what I’ve learnt revolves around that. Being honest with myself in what I’m feeling. In what I’m struggling with and what I’m capable of. I’ve got the tools to manage my anxiety. I just need to know when I need them and the only person who can help me with that, is me.

It took me over 3 years just to write this down, let alone talk to anyone other than a psychologist about it. My hope is that no one keeps this to themselves out of shame or fear. So, if you have ever experienced anything like this I can’t encourage you enough to talk to someone about it. It’s going to be one of the hardest things you ever do, I can’t lie. This is about as tough as it gets. But getting it off your chest is so important. But you’ve got to start the conversation.

My Work Stress

The last few weeks at work have been a bit stressful. In the grand scheme of work and life stress that I’ve experienced it’s pretty minor, but it got me thinking about how it can permeate from our work life into our personal life. Especially these days, given that there is no physical separation of work and home for many of us. So this is a reflection on how work stress has impacted the rest of my life previously, and what I’ve learnt about myself that helps me to deal with it now.

I won’t go into any specifics as I know there are a number of people I have worked with (or still do work with) who read this. I’m just going to talk about general periods of stress and how they have impacted my life outside of work. As you will see, I’ve learnt that most of this stress is of my own making and in a lot of circumstances, the case of a loss of perspective on my part.

Anyway, here we go. I got my first job managing people and was loving it. I was a natural at the softer side of management, the more informal side of things. I was using all of the great skills I had developed coaching. I felt like I was creating an environment in the team that was supportive, safe and fun. It was all going well until I needed to do more of the formal things required of a manager. I had thought I was ready, but a combination of my anxiety and my need to be liked by people made it a real struggle for me to be the ‘manager’. I felt like I was out of my depth and that everyone could tell I was crap at the job. These days you’d call it ‘imposter syndrome’, but back then I just felt like a fraud.

That was happening at work, then when I’d go home I’d be fried from trying to simultaneously be liked by everyone and manage people. I had a short fuse, I’d be quick to anger about minor inconveniences and would always feel like I had a tight chest, or that one was coming. It made me not ‘present’ outside of work. I was worried about getting found out so much that I spent all my time wracking my brain for how I could fix or get out of the situation. So much so, that I would not listen in conversations with my wife or when I was socialising. It wasn’t a good way to be.

As I’ve been writing these down, they have all followed a pretty similar trajectory. It’s actually been quite interesting for me to look at. I have three cases in my life where I felt like work stress has gotten the better of me. Writing them down here has actually helped me to realise that they all follow a pretty familiar pattern. So I’ll save you the stories and jump straight to what I’ve learnt. Some things I’ve discovered about me from doing this exercise, and if you’re like me, this might ring true for you too.

All of my work stresses ultimately boil down to me worrying about letting someone else down, or someone thinking less of me. That’s it. I don’t actually stress about the work itself. It’s about the way I am perceived by the people involved that has driven me to significant stress. I think it’s why I’ve been able to catch myself lately when I feel the beginnings of getting stressed at work.

A great deal of this has come about through the realisations I’ve had about myself in therapy. My way of dealing with ‘real’ conversations was to deflect them. It frustrated my wife, the way I’d deflect important conversations, until I learned how to speak about my feelings with her. But at work, I would either put them aside, then build up resentment and frustration at someone who didn’t even know I was frustrated. Or, I would side-step a tough conversation, so that person would still like me. Then spend the following weeks or months knowing that inevitably that would come back to haunt me. In the almost 20 years since I finished high school and started working, that is essentially the sum of the problems I’ve had. It’s bizarre to think about it like that, it’s so simple. 

Obviously, at the time it’s not. I lost perspective on the occasions where the stress got to me. I thought everything was a huge deal. I got sucked into that ‘imposter’ mindset and it gnawed away at me until I was a big ball of stress.

So, what have I learnt?

Some of the things I’ve been working on from a personal perspective, have been really beneficial in my professional life too. Taking a pause and re-routing that ‘imposter’ and panic response has been very important. I actually think working from home in the ‘post-Covid world’ has helped with that too. It’s easy to feel put on the spot in person. But meetings are well scheduled, so you know how your day is planned and you can mentally prepare a bit better, I think anyway.

But here are some of the main changes I’ve made that I think are helping me a lot

1. I’ve realised that other people's stress and how they deal with situations are outside of my control. I can be supportive, but I can’t carry any sense of responsibility for them. We all have to process things from our own perspective, our own way.

2. I can only control the things within my sphere of influence. There are many elements outside of my control (especially in a large organisation) that I can’t carry stress or guilt about as there is nothing I can do about them.

3. I own my mistakes as soon as I realise I’ve made them. Just as I’ve learnt to forgive myself for not being a perfect person, I’ve also done the same for my job. I’m always learning and don’t have all the answers. I used to keep those things secret and never acknowledge them to anyone else. I’m far more comfortable with people not thinking I know everything now. In fact, it’s a relief!

4. No one else thinks about your work performance (or yourself) as much as you do. This is the most important one, I think. Releasing my ego and recognising that everyone has their own perspective and deals with the same things I do. They aren’t thinking about what ‘I’ should be doing better, most likely they are like the old me and thinking it about themselves and what they should be doing better. 

With those four pieces of perspective, I’ve found it easier to be a more supportive colleague when deadlines are tight. I don’t see myself as the ‘main character’ anymore. I’m part of a larger ecosystem, one which I try to fill with positivity and support. I control the elements I can and forgive myself and others when mistakes are made. I think it makes me better at work, and it allows me to be me and present with the people I love when I’m not.

My Sober Year

Today marks a year sober for me. I’m not perfectly clear on how I feel about it, hence why I’m writing things down to work it out for myself. The one thing I’m fairly certain about is that it’s one of many changes I’ve made in my life over the past 18 months that have added up to a positive improvement.

The last time I had a drink was with the dads from our kids daycare. We went down to the brewery a few doors down from the daycare. Haha, that doesn’t sound great when you think about it. But it’s not as bad as it sounds. I had a decent number of beers, had a good time chatting with a few old mates and a few new ones. The night was fine, that’s not why I stopped drinking.

I woke up the morning after with a bit of a hangover. But what I mostly woke up with was the crushing pain in my chest of anxiety. I’ve written about this in my piece about my relationship with alcohol, but the short version is, I had conditioned my body to associate a hangover with having something serious to worry about. Whatever it was that morning, I’m not sure. I was in the midst of a prolonged depressive episode and was on edge a lot. But I just thought to myself, I can’t do this anymore. Actually it was more like, if I do this too much more something bad is going to happen.

So I decided that would be it. I talked to my dad about his father (my grandad), who also gave up alcohol. It somehow gave me the confidence that somehow, genetically, I had it in me to stop. But to be honest, I didn’t find it that hard. We’ve still pretty regularly had beer and wine in our fridge and I still have bottles of whiskey sitting on the shelf. This being said, I think I was ready for this. I had committed to making changes in my life. If this had been a few years ago, it would probably have been a different story.

The one thing that was very noticeable within the first few weeks was that I lost weight, fast. I dropped about 10kgs and have kept it off. My wife says she could see my face changing as I lost weight. It probably wasn’t just the drinking, I was exercising more too. But it was noticeable how quickly I dropped the weight once I stopped the beer.

Other than the weight though, I don’t think there is any one thing that I can pinpoint as a direct benefit of being sober. I obviously don’t get the morning anxiety hangover, but I still get anxious from time to time. It’s being sober in conjunction with the tools I’ve developed that help me manage it. Which I think is part of the reason for me sharing lots of this stuff, is that there is no silver bullet or life hack. It’s about making the healthy and best choices for yourself.

As a result of this anniversary coming up, I’ve been asking myself ‘now what?’. My honest answer is still that I’m not sure. I’ve thought about trying to have like one beer or a whiskey a week as a treat and trying to repair my relationship with alcohol. Unpicking why my body serves up anxiety with the hangover and trying to re-route that response. 

That’s been a theme of my therapy, re-routing. If there is one single thing that I’ve done in therapy it’s that principle of re-routing. The pathways we’ve built up for responding to things are changeable. The way we do things now is not always the best or healthiest way to respond. We can recognise and reprogramme those responses (with a great deal of focus and effort). My decision now I guess is whether attempting to re-route my response to alcohol is more important than the other things on my list!

Anyway, what I think I’m saying about being a year sober is that there isn’t anything profound in isolation. Not drinking in and of itself wouldn’t have got me to a better headspace without everything else. It all adds up though, and I’m glad I did it. Mainly because it signifies to me, my own commitment to being the best version of myself for me, my family and my friends.

My Sick Kid - A different perspective

Writing that piece about when our daughter was sick last week really opened the floodgate for me. I’ve found I’ve got more to say about it, so I’m going to talk about it through a slightly different lens now. I’m leaving out some of the details about the situation as those aren’t my story to tell. Maybe one day my daughter will share her version of events as she remembers it. I’m going to talk about it from my perspective of how things unfolded and some further reflections.

Just before my eldest daughter's third birthday she started getting a bit sick. She would vomit occasionally, would have trouble going to the bathroom and generally just not be one hundred percent. We took her to the GP a few times, they did a few tests, but in general it seemed to be clocked up to just the general random sicknesses that kids get.

One Friday afternoon I went to do the daycare pick up and saw her running around with her friends, she was doubled over with a sore stomach chasing them round. My wife and I agreed we wanted to go and get someone else to look at her as we were sure that the GP was missing something. So we took her to the After Hours clinic on Saturday morning.

We get in and start talking to the doctor. Going through how long it's been going on, the different symptoms and what we’ve done before. We start by doing the same urine tests to check for infection we’d done before and we begin to lose hope that this trip is going to end with any answers. 

We get back into the room and sit down with the doctor. He says something along the lines of, this has been going on too long and I don’t want to send her home until we know what’s going on. If you ever read this, I’ve forgotten your name now Doctor, thank you so much for what you did that day. He sends us down the road to the hospital and I sit in the x-ray room with her as they take an x-ray of her midsection. They also do an ultrasound too, but the paediatric doctor is busy at the time and we don’t talk about the results with the technician.

Anyway, it’s night time by now and we get admitted into the children's hospital. We agree that my wife will stay overnight and I’ll go back to my parents where we've left our one year old daughter. I say my goodbyes and sleep tights and then hop in the car and drive home. It’s been a long day and I’m pretty knackered from never really relaxing at any point.

I get home and our one year old is already asleep. I’m a bit bummed out, it’s late, but it would have been nice to have a cuddle and do bed time. I start debriefing with my parents about what has happened in the day, how we got from after hours to hospital etc. when my phone rings and it’s my wife. She’s scared, in tears.

“They’ve found a lump in her stomach”

“What? …….. What kind of lump?”

“They don’t know yet, the doctor just came by and said they found a lump in the scans they did”

“Oh shit. Umm. OK, I’m coming back to the hospital”

I mumble something to my parents about a lump in a stomach and half run, half lurch to the car. I honestly should not have driven. My head was doing a million things in that moment, and focusing on the road wasn’t one of them. But I get back to the hospital, find my way to the room. My daughter is sleeping in the hospital bed curled up with my wife. There are tears streaming down her face as she strokes our baby's hair. We have the same conversation about three times. The information remains the same. We try to squeeze new meaning out of it, but there isn’t anything for us.

And so begins what is still to this day the longest night of my life. We convince ourselves she has a tumour, or some unusual cancer. What else is in there other than this one lump? Around and around. I’m lying on the reclining chair next to the bed. My wife and daughter are in the bed. We don’t talk, but we’re both awake. There’s only so many times we can have the same conversation about the same two lines of information we know right now.

I thought I knew what it meant to be truly powerless. But I had no idea. Not until I was on that reclining chair. Knowing that there was absolutely nothing I could do. Making deals with deities I don’t believe in and asking the universe to do anything else, anything but this. But nothing happened, we were still stuck in that hospital ward not knowing what tomorrow would bring.

The long, sleepless night finally over, the paediatric doctor came to see us again in the morning. He told us that he wanted to do an MRI scan that day to get a good look at the lump. So now, the long night turned into a long day. This is the bit I seem to forget about stays in hospital, the long periods of time where you are alone with your thoughts. You remember the moments of action, the x ray, the consult with the doctor. But usually that’s less than 10% of the experience. The rest is waiting. Which, while painful waiting around to find where you’ve broken your arm, isn’t quite the same as sitting around wondering what the hell is growing uninvited in your three year old.

We wait all day, nil by mouth for our poor little girl, for our turn at the MRI scan. We decide given how scary the machine is and that we can’t be with her, she should be under general anaesthetic. She’s getting over it, just having turned three, being starved and forced to wait in a hospital room is a pretty hard sell. My wife and I are both getting to the point of exhaustion too. We’ve been on edge for almost 24 hours now. The nerves are frayed and like I said, the mind starts to go to dark places about what's going on. But the day doesn’t pan out well for us. We were about to go in at one point when the doctors get pulled away to an emergency. It felt like all that could go wrong would.

Eventually, around 5pm we are wheeled down to the MRI scan area. My wife is allowed in with her to be with her until she goes under with the anaesthetic. She’s asleep and my wife is ushered out of the room and we sit alone in the corridor outside……… waiting.

I have no idea how long it took. If you told me now it was 5 minutes, or 3 hours, I would probably believe you. We sat in the corridor for a while. We hugged, we cried, we gave each other reassurances that neither of us could guarantee.

The doctor eventually came out and called us into a little office off the side of the CT area corridor. He told us it was good news. It wasn’t a tumour, it was a cyst. A rare infection that they don’t see very often. Where the base of the umbilical cord doesn’t seal off properly after birth. I think we were both so exhausted that we didn’t know how to react. We were obviously relieved but there was still surgery to be done, he told us. 48 hours ago we thought this was just some daycare bug, now we were talking about an operation to remove a cyst the size of a mandarin. 

They pushed through with the surgery as she was already under general anaesthetic. It went as expected, they told us. They removed the cyst and confirmed that there was nothing else in there.

We settled in to a decent stay at the children's hospital. I think we were there for about a week. They do their best to make it as good as they possibly can for kids and families, but you don’t want to be there. Over that week we found out that our daughter would need another surgery in a couple of months time to finish the job. In the meantime she would need to be on antibiotics to make sure the infection didn’t come back. 

She was obviously too little to have pills, so they gave her a syrup. It was disgusting. The only way we could get her to have it was mixed with ice cream and chocolate sauce. So she went two months where she ate that every day. We didn’t mind, she deserved a treat after the horrible and scary experience she’d been through.

I learnt a lot about her through it. She’s tougher than I had given her credit for. The doctor told us how painful the condition can be. The thought that she was in pain for an extended period before we got it sorted hurts me so much. I felt terrible for all the times, before we knew what it was, we told her it would get better and to not think about it. She’s also incredibly resilient. I think after the operation she bounced back quicker than we did. She was so noticeably better without the pain in her stomach that it was mostly a challenge to keep her chilled out to let her operation wound heal. 

It makes me reflect that it's a really hard position for all of us. We wanted to protect her, to fix and cure her. But even at three, she was already brave and strong and exerting her independence in some ways. The role of advocate for your child is a hard one to play in this context. It’s easy to think they are too young for any of it. But our natural human springs of will and drive are already there. She was already capable of so much more than I thought. 

The part that’s really hard is the communication. Trying to tell the doctors what the problem is when you’re not sure whether what you’re describing is accurate. You feel like you’re giving mixed messages and sometimes contradictory symptoms. Then being on the other side of things, trying to tell your child that something probably painful, like an injection etc. is coming but for a good reason. You feel pulled in every direction and like you’re not doing a particularly good job of any of it.

It seems like you are thrown an insurmountable challenge when you’re at your weakest. It’s easy in those moments to think that life isn’t fair. That this sort of thing shouldn’t be happening to me, and us. But the flip side of that, is that you find strength in places you didn’t expect it. Watching my daughter handle everything, and bounce back almost immediately at every turn gave me more resolve than anything else. Knowing that someone I helped create and have raised can be that resilient gave me the ability to access my own reserves of resilience.

I also should give a huge shout out to the kaiako at our daycare. In the weeks after our daughter went back to her normal routine they would set up the doctors kit at daycare and allow her to role play. She would do operations on her friends and talk through things. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that was her therapy. She couldn’t sit with a therapist and talk through her feelings and experiences. But she could role-play them out and put herself in the position of doctor, nurse and patient to work things out for herself. So thank you to our wonderful kaiako who supported our daughter and us through that stressful time.

It’s been about four years since this happened. I don’t think anything else in my time as a parent has shaped my view on what’s important in life to me. At the time I was involved in a start up, pouring everything I had into building the company and product up. We had just secured a big school and they had my number to help with implementation. I got a call sitting in the hospital about to go into surgery, and I took the call. I stepped them though the problems they were having and helped them get up and running. 

A couple of days later I reflected on that, I had no separation between work and home life and hadn’t thought twice about taking that call. I’ve become so much better about drawing that line. My kids and my family come first. I’m lucky now to work in a place that has a great culture and attitude towards work/life balance. For me, that’s pretty much the number one priority over all else. I’m not earning as much as I could, but I’m working four days a week and my attention is where it needs to be.

Nowadays people at my work think I’m ultra-relaxed about everything. I probably am, but that’s only because I look at things through a lens of how important things really are in my life. A bit of pressure to get something delivered in time is nothing compared to healthy and happy kids. I also focus more on celebrating and empowering the people I work with, not focusing on the tasks. Because for me, it’s the people in my life that matter. The things we do, work on or talk about change, but the relationships we build are what is important to me now.

If you’ve ever experienced anything like what I’ve written about here and haven’t talked to someone about it, I can’t recommend doing so enough. I was carrying so much anger and shame from this that I didn’t even realise it. I had a dark cloud over my head for months until I got back into therapy and began to unpack it. If you’re not ready for a therapist, try someone you know and trust. If you think I’m one of those people for you, please reach out.

My Sick Kid

Just before my eldest daughter's third birthday she started getting a bit sick. She would vomit occasionally, would have trouble going to the bathroom and generally just not be one hundred percent. We took her to the GP a few times, they did a few tests, but in general it seemed to be clocked up to just the general random sicknesses that kids get.

To cut a much longer story short, it wasn’t that. She had a growth in her stomach that was causing her a great deal of discomfort and impacting her bladder. My wife and I spent what I can only describe as the worst and longest night of my life waiting to find out what the growth was in hospital. It turned out not to be cancerous (which is what we spent all night preparing ourselves for) but would require a couple of surgeries and a long series of medications to sort out.

I could talk about the specifics of what happened to her. But what I want to talk about is how I dealt with it at the time, what tools I’ve developed since and how I’d hopefully deal with it now. Because, like I’ve said before, hoping that bad things won’t happen in life is not a sustainable way to live. I’m hoping that what I’ve learnt will help me when tough times arise, and maybe they might help you if you find yourself in a similar position.

You think you are your child's guardian and protector. But when it comes to illness, unless you work in the field, you are way out of your element. You can do nothing to help. It’s incredibly demoralising and emasculating. Your mind is saying, I want to prevent you from coming to harm, but now we are face to face with it and all I can do is stand aside. Let someone else who you don’t know take charge. Knowing that the one who can help your child get better isn’t you, but some stranger, is hard to take.

Now that might sound like ego talking. But there is something more animal and innate about it. As a parent, it’s not about you. You love your child more than you love yourself. Handing over the role of key protector to someone you don’t know is scary in a primal way. How can you trust that they want the best for your kid. It goes against every natural instinct you have to pass your child into the care of someone else when they are vulnerable.

Now we are in a very fortunate position, our sister in law is a paediatric nurse. So we often would call her to discuss what was happening and get her opinion on things. But for most people, that isn’t an option. But to be honest, even with that, having a child in hospital with an unknown illness is just about as nerve wracking an experience as you can have.

I have dedicated a session or two of my own therapy to this topic. Hence why I’m writing about it. I want to share my own reflections and some coping mechanisms I developed out of those conversations.

One of the big things I did was blame myself for things that were out of my control. I found that I was beating myself up about not preparing my daughter for something that I didn’t even really understand. So not only did I feel useless for not knowing what was coming myself, I’d see her scared and uncomfortable and in my head that would become my fault too. It was a brutal cycle. Living in that state of anxiety and self-blame for an extended period catches up on you. It drove me inside myself. I couldn't support my wife the way I wanted to, because I couldn’t get out of my own head for long enough. I spiralled downwards.

What this meant was that I wasn’t the best version of myself. Not for me. Not for my wife, and certainly not for my daughter. What I know now, and if I ever find myself in this position again, I’ll make sure that I take time to recognise my own headspace. The only thing I could really control was how I reassured and supported my family. As well as being a measured and thoughtful intermediary/advocate for my daughter with the doctors. To do this I’ll use some of the activities in my modules. The obvious one is an anxiety audit. With so much going on, taking time to understand what you can control and impact will help you, and in turn those around you.

Communication and connection is hugely important too. I was certainly guilty of not sharing some thoughts and feelings with my wife. I can see how that could evolve into a problem over time. Don’t stop talking with your partner. You are both incredibly stressed, adding a feeling of isolation to that is not helpful. The same also goes for your child. They pick up on everything. Watching you pace up and down, knowing that something is making you stressed but you not telling them anything is also not helpful. I get the idea of trying to ‘be strong’ for your child. That’s what I thought I was doing. In reality, what she needed me to be was to be honest. Acknowledging my fear (obviously shared age-appropriately) and the situation as a whole is important. In a similar position now, I would communicate far more openly with everyone around me.

This is helpful, but to be honest, the first thing you need to do is breathe. This is something I didn’t do at the time. I remember the tightness in my chest from the anxiety being unending. But I hadn’t yet properly learnt how to use my breath to deal with those feelings and symptoms. So instead everything I was doing and thinking was coming from a position of high anxiety. My thinking couldn’t possibly be clear and I couldn’t reassure anyone else with any sense of conviction. The skills I’ve developed, and I encourage everyone else to develop, are around your own physical ability to calm yourself. Breath is the best way to do this. Practice it now, so it is there for you when you really need it.

There are also a couple of practical things about being in a hospital that I also learnt. The first, write down your questions for the doctors. You get a very minimal amount of facetime with them and it is easy to get flustered and feel rushed. So doing a bit of prep before they appear is always helpful. The second, you will spend a lot of time sitting around waiting. In fact, that’s pretty much most of your time. How you spend that time will impact how you react when things start to happen. It feels like down-time, and you should certainly take time to switch off, but some of it should be used on things like the exercises I’ve mentioned. Like I’ve said in other pieces I’ve written, you’re also role-modelling this for you child. They are worried too, it’s very unsettling for them. Building up coping skills with them is of benefit for them too.

It’s still hard remembering this time. Occasionally my phone will pop up a ‘memory’ of a photo of my daughter in hospital, and it still knocks me. But with time and personal growth, I’ve processed things in a way that (hopefully) makes me better equipped in the future. I hope that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation this might be a little help to you too. It’s about as scary and anxious a time as a parent can have, and we all need help if we find ourselves in that position.

My Real Talk

I touched on some of these thoughts previously in other stories, but I’ve been thinking more deeply about it since then. I’ve been having real conversations with people this year. It started before I went live with the site. I think it’s all part of the confidence I needed to share in any way, shape or form. Up until then, I’d made some real strides therapy wise, especially about my internal conversations. But only in the last 4-5 months or so have I translated that to my conversations with other people. I’m more confident in who I am, less ashamed of my feelings and aware that I’m not alone.

So, like I said, I started having real conversations with people. I had gone 37 years answering the question “How are you going/doing?” with a standard response of “Good”, or “Well, thanks, and you?”. It fell out of my mouth without even consciously thinking what I was saying. Even with people I should have felt comfortable telling I wasn’t fine, or good, or well. For so long I had kept so much of myself, to myself. It was really hard to undo that part of my psyche.

But now I have started it’s amazing the number of people I’ve had real, genuine connections and conversations with. People who had no idea that I was having these experiences, and were going through something similar. As well as people who suspected I was, but didn’t know how to start a conversation about it. Both of these circumstances have led to me understanding and connecting with people on a far deeper level than I have before.

It’s funny, the thing I was scared about putting the site live was that people would get in touch and ask me to be their therapist. It’s why I try to stress the need to talk to a professional so much in my stories. But that hasn’t happened at all. Mainly, it’s people who want to share their experiences, check in on how I’m doing, or even ask about ways they might be able to help with Dadpression. It’s amazing what sharing and being genuine with others can bring to you. People have been telling me I’ve done something great by sharing this stuff. But to be honest, I feel like I might be getting just as much out of it as well. I’ve gotten to know the people in my life a whole lot better and I’ve loved every conversation I’ve had.

When I said I’ve been thinking about it more, it’s mostly been about how everybody genuinely wants to know “how you’re going?” when they ask that question. It’s just that in most cases, we’ve all become so programmed to replying with a platitude that we never really find out. We want to keep things at small talk, sometimes for fear of catching the other person off guard. But mostly because somewhere in ourselves we’re saying that the other person doesn’t really want to hear how you actually are. What I’ve been thinking about, is how wrong that is.

If you’re friends or even acquaintances with someone, most of us actually care. We’d want to know if you weren’t doing well. It doesn’t take anything from me to know that you’re a bit stressed with work, or kids, or whatever. What it really does, is start a real conversation. Not about the weather, or a sports result. But about your real life, the one that I actually care about.

I know I have caught a few people off guard with my responses this year. I stopped defaulting to ‘good’, unless I actually was feeling good. It sometimes takes people a second to realise that the conversation isn’t going in the traditionally accepted direction. But none of those people I’ve caught off guard have stopped talking to me. If I was tired, or stressed, or low, they asked what’s going on, or why that was. We talked about things that were happening in our lives.

When I'm depressed I get very good at pretending. Those standard answers are the shield I keep between myself and the world. They keep the conversation light and moving on, ideally with the attention not on me, or my feelings. It’s really hard to confront, but ducking my problems only gives momentary relief. I don’t have to talk about it at that moment, but I know I eventually will. My challenge to you if you’re feeling like that, is to answer some questions honestly. See where it might take you.

For those of us who are feeling in a better head space, I also have a challenge for you. If you genuinely think someone is feeling low, or anxious try to ask some better questions. “How’re you doing?” is easy to dodge. It’s a gimme really. So try a different approach. “I’ve noticed you’re a bit quiet (or low), what’s up?” Something that acknowledges that something might not be right can give the other person permission to discuss what they might be too shy or scared to do otherwise.

It’s not always time for a deep and meaningful conversation. I’m not suggesting we all spend all day diving into our emotions at every juncture. But we can do better than the status quo. Give it a go, ask and answer some questions truthfully. Especially with people who care about you. If you feel like I’m that kind of person for you, I’m here for a real talk too.

My Bravery and Shame

I've had lots to think about since I first shared dadpression. Today I want to share something different. Not a module with exercises, or a story of my experiences. Today I’m sharing my thoughts on what the site has brought up. It’s about the comments I’ve received and the conversations I’ve been having since I made this site public.

It’s about the words that have been used. In fact, it’s about two words. ‘Brave’ and ‘shame’. It’s about what those two words mean in the context of mental health. But more than that, how society continues to treat people who battle with their mental health.

I’ve had loads of people comment on my posts, message me, or call me about dadpression. Lots of wonderful, supportive words that have made me proud to have the friends and family I do. You’ve also empowered and inspired me to keep talking and writing, which I love. 

One of the words that has been coming at me a lot has been ‘brave’. That I have been ‘brave’ for sharing my stories and opening up to people about it. Receiving compliments is right up there for things that make me most uncomfortable. But something about being called ‘brave’, wasn’t only uncomfortable in my usual way. I was uncomfortable with what it meant. What it was saying about us as a society.

The Mirriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘Brave’ as “having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty”. There have certainly been times when I have been brave in the face of anxiety and depression. But as far as I see it, publishing a website trying to help people shouldn’t count as bravery in that context. If you don’t agree with me on this now, I’m hoping you might by the end.

Now this is not a dig at anyone who told me I was ‘brave’. Not at all. I thank you all for the support. It’s about how as a society, we have built this mindset that someone needs to be brave to share these stories.

In my attempt to come up with an answer to the bigger societal question, I had to start with my own personal thoughts. Why did it take me so long to share this? That site was sitting there for six months before I told anyone about it. I wrote some of those stories years ago. I've had heaps of opportunities to talk about my experiences.

So I started thinking about what the opposite of brave is, the absence of bravery. The most common answer you’ll find is cowardly. I think this is the root of my problem with being called ‘brave’. It’s the implication about what is happening in bravery's absence. Do we really want to imply that people who aren’t ready to talk about their mental health issues aren’t brave? Do we think those people are cowardly? I don’t think we do. In fact, the support I’ve received since I shared dadpression has convinced me otherwise.

It got me thinking about something. We are all empathetic when it is an individual. Someone we know. But somehow at the societal level, the attitude shift still hasn’t happened. There is still a fear and a wariness about going outside trusted circles with this topic. But I think we all understand that there is a significant stigma that exists here.

I’m sure most of us have heard the expression ‘the coward’s way out’. You won’t be surprised to learn that I despise this saying. But if you’ve never heard it before, it’s an incredibly unsympathetic way to refer to suicide. This attitude continues to exist, and it’s this ‘bravery’ mindset that gives birth to such a term. For those who haven’t experienced depression, it’s and attitude that stigmatises those who do. And for those with depression, it alienates and silences them. Fear of the ‘other’ becomes the problem, and it dulls our compassion for them.

I’ve been reflecting on why I hadn’t said anything about suicide, or suicidal thoughts too. I wanted the site to be a positive resource for people, I told myself. The site was there to share a few tools for how to navigate common pitfalls, and that was it. It felt like maybe a step too far for what I wanted to achieve. But as the weeks have passed. The more I’ve been called ‘brave’. The louder my own silence has become.

And it’s that silence that has got me writing this. Because another term I don’t like, but is far more accurate, is ‘the silent killer’. And I have been asking myself, why do you think no one talks about it? Why do you think we stay silent? I kept thinking about bravery and cowardice on a continuum. Where I might have been at different points in my life. That led me to the other word I mentioned at the start. Shame. Because we’ve all been taught that we should be ashamed to be a coward, right?

That word, shame, it also came at me a lot. This time, from the people who were identifying with what I was saying. I knew exactly what they meant when they said it too. I’ve felt it. The shame and guilt of going through a significant depressive episode or suicidal thoughts, is something that anyone who has been there, will know. So, I threw that in the tornado of ideas that were spinning around in my head.

One thing that people have asked me is, what do I want to do with this website? What’s the ultimate aim here? I honestly don’t have an answer for that. But while I’ve been reflecting on bravery and shame I’ve stumbled across something to work towards. It’s contributing to the de-stigmatisation of talking about mental health. For this, in my opinion, we need to talk about mental health and illness as we do for any other illness.

Now, for this next part I’m going to need you to follow me on a couple steps of logic. But I promise you, I have a point to make.

Starting with this as our premise. As a society, on some level, we are comfortable with treating depression and anxiety as an illness or disease. It seems we have made a lot of progress on general attitudes towards this in the last decade or so. You can go to your doctor with it, you can get referred to a specialist. Seems like it’s part of the general field of health. With me so far?

In fact, it’s not just part of our conversation about health. It’s big business in the health sector. The global anti-depressant drug market accounted for $13.75 billion in 2016, and is estimated to reach $15.98 billion by 2023*. So, pharmaceutical companies are perfectly happy to treat mental illness as a disease like any other.

We’ve got doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies all agreeing it’s a disease. Everyone who works or participates in the treatment of illnesses includes mental health. We’ve also got peoples general attitudes towards depression and anxiety accepting that too.

So why the difference? Why does bravery and shame come into it? Would you expect someone coming out of the hospital on crutches to feel shame? When you hear about a friend or colleague who has a cancer diagnosis, do we think they are brave to talk about it? We think they are brave dealing with the treatment, certainly. But we wouldn’t assume they feel shame, why should they? It’s not their fault.

When someone has suicidal thoughts or even attempts suicide, the correlation I want us to draw is with cancer. Let’s compare the two. Say you’ve been battling this disease for a while, have had ups and downs, but the treatments you’ve tried haven’t worked for you at this point. You reach ‘stage 4’ and it feels terminal. Stick with me here. Now, if you then survive, why are you ashamed? Because that’s one of the main things people say. That they are ashamed. I’ve said it and felt it too. They came up against the worst this disease can throw at them, and survived. And the overwhelming feeling is that of shame. Imagine recovering from stage 4 cancer and feeling ashamed.

And this is the point of this whole rant. That if we want to treat mental illness as a disease, we can’t be picky about what parts count. It’s all part of the whole. This is why, in my opinion, we need to think hard about whether we want ‘brave’ and ‘shame’ to be words we use when talking about mental health. Because I know lots of people who have battled with depression, who haven’t talked openly about it. None of those people are cowards. But as long as we, as a society, allow this narrative to persist, the pervasive attitude is that to speak up is to be brave and to remain silent is cowardly. Whether we mean it to be or not.

My challenge, for all of us, is to try to talk about mental health the same way we talk about health in general. Without the need for bravery, or shame. If one day we can discuss depression and anxiety in the same way we talk about a cold or flu, we will be in a much better place. You won’t need to be brave to talk about it, and you certainly won’t feel ashamed.

*https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/08/06/2074356/0/en/Antidepressant-Drugs-Market-to-Grow-Valuation-of-15-98-Billion-by-2023.html

My Tricky Brain

This is a story about how a depressed brain starts to cut back on things. Parts of your brain stop functioning. It can impact your memories and vision amongst other things. These are a couple of reflections I’ve had on the impact my own brain has had on itself.

First off, my memory…

I met people whilst at one of my lowest points while we were living in London. In the midst of multiple panic attacks and a period of intense depression. Then we moved back to New Zealand. A few years passed and these people moved back to Wellington too. My wife remembered them and they remembered us. We even talked about a specific time we hung out with mutual friends. I had absolutely nothing. Not, I remember your face, but can’t quite get your name. Absolutely nothing at all.

Now, they must have thought I was either incredibly rude, or incredibly forgetful. But the truth was, I’d met them at a time where my brain wasn’t in the business of creating memories. I was in pure survival mode when I met them. I was treading water with my mouth and nose just above the surface.

I was spending so much time focussing on my anxieties and failings that I had switched off other parts of my brain. I don’t know how much else from that period and others in my life I’ve ‘forgotten’. I guess the reason I’m reflecting on it is that sometimes your mental health feels impossible to quantify. But the absence of normal brain function feels like a tangible and measurable thing. Like I can point to moments in time where I struggle to remember things and think, ‘wow, I must have been very low then’.

Next up, my vision…

This is from a moment where I had been on new medication for a month or so.

I had a strange interaction the other morning. I had just dropped off my daughter at school and was talking to her friend's mother. After months of finding social interactions and casual conversation difficult, I was surprised to find that my small talk flowed. It was weird. For a moment I felt like my old self.

Then as I walked off down the driveway of the school I noticed that I could see out of the corners of my eyes. It was like blinkers had been taken off me. There was more light in the world and the greenness of the grass was striking. Things hadn’t looked that vibrant in long enough that I’d forgotten about it. It must have been four months or more. But suddenly, the world had opened up again.

I walked home with my head back, taking it all in. It felt strange on my neck. Like I had been walking around with a weight around it like a tie that had been taken off. I felt more engaged and connected with the world around me than I had in ages.

My next session with my therapist I told her about this. I felt a bit silly, like maybe it was some kind of placebo effect. But she took it seriously and said that it wasn’t unheard of. More than anything, I think it helped me re-commit myself to the journey I was on. We all like to feel like we’re making progress and this felt like real progress to me.

I know this is all pretty anecdotal, but I used to hear people say ‘I was depressed’ and wanted to know what that meant. I was pretty sure I was too, but no one would talk about specifics. Something in me always sought out validation and evidence that would somehow prove it. I don’t know if that was for me, or for the world in general, but it felt like it mattered.

If you’ve ever had periods where you’ve felt low, depressed, worried or whatever you’ve called it yourself. And then noticed you struggle to remember things, I recommend you talk to someone about it. It might not have been your memory or vision either, you might have noticed something else. Whatever it was, if this resonated with you and you’ve never done anything about it, there’s no time like right now. Beginning a conversation about what was happening in your life around that time can uncover some things you might need to deal with and work on.

My Coaching

I’ve been thinking a lot about the things that I really like doing. Lots of those things I do less of when I’m feeling low. Maybe caused by the lowness, or as a result of it. It seems obvious in hindsight, but it’s easy to drift into areas you don’t love when you don’t choose what you’re doing.

When I left high school, I was lost. I didn’t have a direction I wanted to go. I wasn’t super passionate about anything to study or a trade to learn. So I drifted along for a couple of years. Played a lot of Water Polo, did a few papers at university. Anything that required not too much effort, but made it seem like I was doing something.

Given I had lots of spare time and was working pretty minimal hours, I volunteered to coach Water Polo. I started with one team, then added more and more. School teams and teams for my club. I was often coaching multiple teams at once. I loved it, and people seemed to think I was good at it. It felt like the one thing in my life, at that time, that I was actually good at.

I enjoyed teaching the skills of the game for sure. But what I loved about it was the building up of confidence and camaraderie amongst the kids. I think they picked up on how enthusiastic I was about it and how I wanted it to be a fun experience for them. Like I said, for someone who was pretty lost for what I wanted to do with my life, this was an oasis of purpose for me. It was the one thing in my life I threw myself into completely.

Soon enough though, I stopped playing. I graduated university and got ‘a real job’. I stopped coaching. I missed it. But I told myself this was part of growing up. I didn’t have time for that sort of thing anymore. I needed to be earning money and doing important things like that. Not spending time volunteering to coach a bunch of kids.

It left a big hole. One that I didn’t acknowledge or do anything to replace. I don’t know if this resonates with others. But without spending my time building others' up, my own confidence and head-space suffered. That sense of purpose was not there, and neither was the sense that I had something I was good at. I found that my own happiness was linked to what I was doing to empower and encourage others. Jay Shetty would call it ‘living a life of service’.

It was some years until I got to lead people in a work environment. But when the opportunity came up, I knew I wanted to do it. The ‘soft’ skills and leadership came naturally to me. But the more formal aspects of management were (and still are) a challenge. I loved creating a space for people that was fun to be and they felt like they belonged.

I've settled on a dynamic that works for me in my current job. I’m lucky now that I get all the great aspects of people leadership without the overhead of ‘management’. That’s the balance that best suits me, for right now anyway.

I’ve said this to people who I have worked with before. If you want to learn about leadership and people, coach a kids sports team. Before kids are hardened and scared to ask ‘silly questions’ they are themselves. They are open to learning, and don’t hide emotion when frustrated or disappointed. When they lose a game they are open with their feelings. I learnt more about motivating people and how to lead them. As well as what makes people tick. By coaching 14 year olds than I ever have in a course.

I recently found a quote from the late great Robin Williams and it landed with me. It goes “I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy. Because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.” That sums up my feelings towards coaching. I was sad, lost and felt worthless and I found it so easy to throw myself into building up other people. I was doing and saying all the things that I needed to tell myself, but couldn’t.

I’ve been thinking about this because I’m trying to make positive choices. Intentionally doing things that ‘fill your cup’. I mean that in the sense of refilling your mental, emotional and physical energy. Things that make you feel good, in the purest sense. For me, that is building other people up. I’m sure I’m not the only one like that. For other people it might be something different. I’m sharing this because all of our challenge is to identify what that is and choose to do more of it.

Lots of what I’ve been working on myself is trying to be that coach version of me, to myself. I’ve mentioned negative self-talk and finding it hard to like myself. I have made strides on that front over the past year. Learning to treat myself with the same patience and enthusiasm I would someone else, is one of the biggest changes I’ve had to make. I think that’s probably something we could all be better at.

My Therapy Journey

The main reason I decided to share this stuff was to encourage others. I know how important it is to talk about experiences. I’ve been blown away by the number of people who have got in touch. So many have asked about starting their own therapy journey. Like I said, that was my number one aim. So I am beyond happy that it has given people the nudge to begin their own conversations.

Anyway, that got me thinking about how I’ve explained it to those who have reached out. I’m sure there are others out there who haven’t got in touch, and that’s cool. I thought I would put it down in writing. This is what helps me organise my thoughts and say what I want to say.

There are two main points that I have stressed to everyone I’ve talked to. So I’ll put them down first here too.

1. Therapy is hard work. I’ve started and stopped many times over the years. I will talk about that more in detail further on. It’s one of those things that you’ll get more out of, the more you put in. That means asking yourself hard questions. Also, being brutally honest with yourself, and then your therapist.

2. You probably won’t find your ideal therapist first time around. If you do, that’s great. You want to talk to someone you can trust, and you think gets you. That might not be the first person you talk to. Don’t get turned off the whole thing if you don’t ‘click’ with your first therapist.

Right, so here’s my journey. I’m sharing in the hopes that it reinforces those two points and helps someone else to stick with it when it gets hard.

I first saw a psychologist when I was 16. I was anxious and having trouble sleeping. My mum organised for me to talk to a psychologist. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I remember sitting in her professional looking office. A feeling of being uncomfortable in every way you can. I was a kid in an adult environment. She was asking me questions that I didn’t have an answer for. So I sat there for two sessions and said as little as I could. She gave me a couple of exercises to help me relax and go to sleep. But I never talked about anything that was keeping me awake, or about myself. I wasn’t ready.

A few years passed and I got to my mid twenties. I found myself struggling and lost. I had stopped playing Water Polo at a high level and had no routine of exercising to replace it. There was no balance to my life. I went for one session. I treated it like a refresher course on some ‘life hacks’. I was remembering some tactics I could use to help me deal with moments of anxiety. But not to address my anxiety and where it came from. I cut back on drinking a bit, got a gym membership and planned to travel overseas. I was doing enough to keep myself going, but not enough to work on myself.

Then we had our first daughter. I’ve written about how that hit me and brought out my anxiety and depression in other posts. I didn’t have the mental tools and approach to parenting to handle what it was throwing at me. Don’t get me wrong, I was being (and am) a good dad. But the toll it was taking on me to be ‘a good dad’ was huge. So I had a few sessions with a therapist. I opened up a bit more. But I was still very guarded. I knew I had to do more to work on myself than I had in the past, but couldn’t commit to going all the way. I evaded questions that made me uncomfortable. I even flat out lied about things that I thought might lead to uncomfortable follow up questions. Basically, I did enough to get me through and no more.

You might think by this point I would have learnt that I needed to do something more. That I should be committing to trying to retrain the way I was reacting to situations. But I still have one more unsuccessful attempt to go!

We’d moved back to New Zealand by this point and I had had a few stressful experiences pile up on each other. I got to the point where I wasn’t coping. I remember having a panic attack while driving to work and then plowing on with my day. I was on a collision course with things getting out of my control. So, I went to a new therapist I had never seen before. We did ‘click’. But I still wasn’t ready to commit to the journey. I did feel myself getting comfortable talking to her though, and being honest. I don’t actually remember why I stopped going. But I managed to bring myself out of the nosedive I was in and decided that I’d done enough.

As you can imagine, all this did was ensure that the cycle would repeat. But the one piece of progress I had made was that I now had someone that I would go back to when I needed it. So fast-forward to 2021. After a year of pandemic, lock downs and general life stresses I was back in a dark place. My life was out of balance again. Poor exercise routines. Drinking too much. Generally not dealing with things in a way that was positive.

So, I went back. This time I said from the first session that I’m committed and want to open up in a way I had never done before. The difference was noticeable straight away. I was preparing for the sessions. Writing, trying to organise my thoughts in a way that I could talk about them. I was going in to say what I meant. It also helped me to be honest. In a way, writing it down made me feel more like I’d be lying to myself if I then went and didn’t say that in therapy. Does that make sense? I was holding myself accountable. I’ve changed more about my life and the way I think and react in the last year than any other time in my life. All done with intention and for positive reasons. I’m still going, almost a year on.

The reason I want to highlight this journey is to show that it’s not a case of showing up and you’re fixed. That’s not how it works. I want to show anyone who hasn’t begun, or is just starting, that it’s OK to not nail it first go. In fact, if you think you have, you may not be being honest with yourself. But I want to show you that when you are ready to commit, it can be powerful. The way we wire ourselves as we come of age doesn’t have to be set in stone. We can challenge our default settings and, with hard work, adjust them.

I want to be honest about my experience for anyone new to the journey. To me this is something I’ve worked hard to be able to talk about and now share. So the fact that I’m writing this and putting it out there is testament to the process of therapy working. That process is ongoing. That doesn’t mean I won’t have periods of my life where I stop for a while. But when I do, it will be a decision made with control and self-awareness.

My Relationship with Alcohol

Of all the things I’ve written about, this one is the one I’m most certain will speak to a whole lot of people. It’s about my relationship and attitudes towards alcohol. How it began and how it developed over time. I know there are a lot of people of my age who have had very similar experiences.

The first time I got properly drunk in (what felt like) an unsupervised environment was when I was in third form. I was with the rest of the school Water Polo team and had managed to get my hands on a bottle of Midori and some lemonade. I had no idea what I was doing. But about half an hour in I felt way more relaxed. A few more poorly mixed cups and I felt my nervousness about being with the older guys melt away. They all seemed to think I was quite funny. It was awesome.

If you’ve read many of my other stories you might have picked up that I’ve struggled to ‘like’ myself. Well, that’s really always been the case for me. Because I felt that way about myself, I projected that on to people around me. I didn’t think they really liked me. I thought they found me entertaining and funny. But they didn’t like me for who I was. So alcohol was a wonderful discovery. I could be funny and do dumb things with no worries about the repercussions. It put those feelings to bed for an evening. Everyone laughed and I was too drunk to know or care if they were laughing with me or at me. As long as they were laughing, it was great.

I carried on that way as a teenager. Overdoing it from time to time. But it helped me build up groups of friends who enjoyed being funny and doing dumb things too. It was all good, I had nothing to lose. There was no downside to doing any of this. Still too young to truly know what a hangover was. It was a victimless crime.

Then I finished high school. My first year out of school I met my now wife and got a part time job. You know, the things that are part of growing up. A lot of my confidence socially was linked to my persona when drunk. So when I first got together with my wife, I’d put on my usual routine. Try to be the life of the party. If everyone thought I was ‘classic’ that was just points on the board for me. But now, occasionally I’d go too far. Do something or say something I’d regret. Cause harm to someone who could walk away from me if they wanted to.

This was all binge drinking at this point. I was drinking to get drunk. The aim was to get myself in that place of feeling invincible. Finding that sweet spot of being drunk enough to have no fear, but not so drunk that I became unintelligible. Inevitably, I regularly went too far.

By the time I reach my early twenties I’m starting to get proper hangovers. Feeling rubbish for a full day or more afterwards. All of the things you get, headaches, still feeling slightly drunk and nauseous. But then I do a few things that really embarrass myself. So along with the hangover I get a nice side dish of anxiety too. So along with my hangover I get a tight chest and find it really easy to slip into panic in that fragile state.

By my mid to late twenties my brain and body has paired those two things up. So even when I haven’t done anything I need to be embarrassed by, I still get the anxiety. I’ve trained myself for over a decade that getting drunk means doing dumb things that I’ll regret. So now when I have a few drinks my body automatically fires up the anxiety meter. I wake up the next day not only feeling like crap, I’m also in full on self beat up mode.

So I try to cut back the binge drinking. I set myself limits on the numbers of beers I’ll allow myself. This is a really hit and miss tactic. Sometimes I’ll have just enough to drink that I get very little enjoyment from it. Then still get the full dose of anxiety the next day. My body and brain is yelling at me. Stop this you idiot, you’re going to ruin your life. But instead of taking that advice, I try to renegotiate.

My next tactic is to start drinking less in one sitting, but with more sittings. So I’ll have a few beers, but most days of the week. I’m doing less dumb stuff I tell myself. It’s got to be alright, surely. So on some nights I’ll enjoy some craft beer and wake up without the anxiety or hangover. It’s perfect I tell myself. I’ve taken control of this relationship.

But this doesn’t account for the occasional blow out. The trip away for a stag do. The time a good mate comes to visit while we’re living in London. I just have to deal with it. It’s the price of being social and having a good time. It’s the culture we all grew up in. It’s how we learnt to do this stuff. Catch up over a few beers. It comes so naturally. But now so does the anxiety the next day.

This arrangement works in the early days of having kids. A beer or two in the evening to unwind is what dad’s do right? I get asked by a psychologist how much I drink. I shave a few drinks off my estimated weekly consumption in my answer.

‘Could you stop drinking if you needed to?’

‘Yeah sure, but I don’t think it’s a problem.’

‘Would you be angry if someone asked you to stop drinking?’

*I smirk* ‘Na, probably not, but that wouldn’t happen. I don’t have a problem.’

‘Alcohol is a depressant’

*My smirk disappears.

During lockdown I start drinking every day. The days are long. Three kids under 5 at home while trying to work full time. I deserve it, right? Just cracking a cold one at 5 is what I need. Sometimes 4.30, maybe even 4. We’re just doing what we need to get through these crazy times right? Then we get out of lock down, but I keep up the tradition. My anxiety and depression now have a baseline level that I’m never free of. I’m miserable, but sometimes the only thing that can pick me up is cracking that beer. A nice little spiral of negativity.

So on the 25th April 2021 I decide I’m going to stop drinking for a while. I’m on antidepressants. It seems stupid that I’m actively taking two drugs that try to cancel each other out. I’ll give it a break for a while.

I haven’t had a drink since. Am I anxiety and depression free? No. But am I sabotaging myself every day in trying to get better. That answer is no as well.

I’m not preaching that everyone should give up drinking. That’s why the focus of this story is on ‘my relationship’ with it. I was reflecting on the fact that I had developed a negative/toxic relationship. This could be with other things in peoples lives. If you have built up this kind of relationship over time with something the challenge is to recognise and do something about it. Both the reflection, and taking action are hard to do. But on the other side could be progress.

My Insecurities

OK, this is one of those things I wrote a while ago to help me process what I was going through at the time. Our social basketball team isn’t playing this season and re-reading this has made me miss it. So shout out to the Sticky Bandits. Hopefully we’re out there next season missing open layups!

I’m feeling pretty low right now. I can’t seem to find joy in anything. Even the things that usually give me joy. I played basketball the other night with my friends. Now all I can think about is missing free throws and layups. I’m sure my friends don’t care, but I feel like I let them down. It’s social basketball for f*@ks sake!

I know I can move past that stuff. I know that it doesn’t matter. It pisses me off that I let it get me down, but I know it’s only because I’m anxious and depressed right now. Because I know I miss those same shots even when I’m feeling great!

The insecurities I struggle with most are the ones closer to home. I struggle to have any love for myself, so I begin to wonder how my wife can love me? How can my kids love me? When I’m in a bout of anxiety and depression. This is before I’ve told my wife what’s happening to me, I feel like she can do and deserves better than me. I need her to tell me that she loves me, but I don’t want to ask her. My brain scares me into wondering about what happens if she says no. She’s always been so supportive of me. We’ve been together since I was 18 years old. She knows who I am pretty well by now. But when I’m in that desperate moment, my brain tricks me. In those moments I need to know it and have it spelled out for me.

It’s hard to find words in the moment though. So I say nothing. I stew. Get more anxious. Working myself up so much that my chest gets tighter. My head gets cloudier and I can’t bear to talk about anything let alone my feelings. We have a busy life too. Three young kids, both have jobs, gym and run etc. So finding a quiet time when it’s just us is sometimes difficult.

I read into looks that I normally wouldn’t. Things that I probably wouldn’t even register. Things that may be completely in my head. All of a sudden become things that eat at me for hours. My brain is already over-active and it takes a perceived look of frustration and turns it into something serious. It’s torture. But once the spiralling starts it’s so difficult to bring yourself out of it.

My wife tells me that I’m too hard on myself. I know I am, but I think that must be how we all are, right? Like in my basketball example before, would I ever hold missed shots against someone, hell no. If I saw it was getting someone else down, I’d give them a pep talk. But when it’s me, I can’t do that for some reason. It’s like I missed some important lesson somewhere along the way, how to be kind to yourself. How to feel like you’re deserving of kindness. I don’t know how to do it for some reason.

I find it strange too. Because I don’t think I’m a needy person in general. I don’t need reassurances when I’m feeling fine. I would say I have a pretty decent dose of self-confidence. When I look at all the things I’ve done in my life, I wouldn’t have done them if I didn’t believe in myself. But when I’m feeling low and anxious those things feel out of reach. Like maybe someone else did them and I watched them on TV and stole the memory.

It’s so easy to spiral in these moments. One thing piles on top of the other. It presses down on you until you feel like you’ll never get out from under it again. I’ve written about self-talk and the same thing applies here. For me it seems to come from the same place. The struggle to treat myself as I would someone else. To be kind to myself.

So I'm working on accepting that it’s OK to miss some free throws. It’s OK to have feelings and it’s OK to sometimes need to be told that you’re loved. I’m working on treating myself with the same kindness I would someone else. Because we all need picking up from time to time and to be told that we mean something to other people.

If you have moments like these and have never talked to anyone about them, I can’t recommend it enough. I always told myself that these things were just personal weakness and to try forget them. But it all plays in to the way you view yourself. It will feel good to get it off your chest.