Podcast Transcription (Edited)
Welcome to this podcast.
This is a really difficult thing for me to start, set up and talk about because this podcast is about dealing with the challenges of mental ill health. So recently, ironically on my birthday, I found myself at my doctors asking for help because I had been planning to take my own life.
This wasn’t just a knee jerk reaction to feeling low and waking up one morning feeling bad and thinking I should end it all. This is the build up of probably a lifetime of challenges and problems and my inability to face up to them and deal with them properly. This is particularly true over the last couple of years for a variety of reasons which I will go into eventually.
But for now, just know I was at that point where I felt the only option was for me to take my life. I’d researched ways I was going to do it and had even identified the way.
Over the previous six to eight weeks, it had been brewing. I had been ruminating on it. I’d been feeling worse and worse. And then it came to the point where I could see no other option, no other way out than to take my own life.
And so it was on my birthday all this happened.
However, I realised that probably wasn’t healthy for me. And what stopped me from actually taking that step was a couple of things.
First of all, because it was my birthday, my ex-wife called me. We are still really good friends and she rang me up just to wish me happy birthday. We had a conversation about my birthday of course, but because of the stigma I attach to being in the situation, I didn’t tell her how I was feeling.
Of course when we were together, she knew I had depressive episodes, but we’ve been divorced for a long time now. So our contact is always me being upbeat and happy. We had this conversation about the fact that I didn’t sound too good because I had a bad chesty cough at that time.
She said something along the lines of:
“Oh, you should have told me. I’d have come down and looked after you and made sure you’re okay.”
When she said that, all of a sudden I felt this huge amount of love, in a friendship way from her. It really touched me and reached out to a part of me that was being hidden, being suppressed, I suppose.
That connection made me realise that I was loved and that someone did care for me. After the phone call ended, I was still in bed, and I cried. And the reason for that was because I realised I couldn’t do it to her. I couldn’t take the ultimate step because of the pain and suffering it would cause her.
I also received a present from another friend of mine that was just the most ridiculous present you can imagine. It was a dinner plate. I’m laughing now because it was just one of those things that was typical of this friend of mine. The plate was decorated with rainbows, fluffy clouds and a pink unicorn with this quote on it:
“Always be yourself unless you can be a unicorn”.
It just touched me and I can remember getting quite upset because of this second genuine expression of love and affection. It is the most ridiculous thing and is a reflection of my crazy friend’s character and interests that was sent to remind me of her and her way of looking at the world. [DISCLAIMER – I am not a pink unicorn kind of guy – quite the opposite!]
Through these two seemingly innocent acts of kindness, affection and indeed love, I realised I couldn’t put these two special people through the pain of someone they’re close to ending their life. It wouldn’t be fair on them not knowing why or how or whether they could have done something about it.
And so that morning I decided I needed help and rang the doctors’ surgery for an appointment. I didn’t even know who my doctor was. I have never been in the five years I have been registered with them.
I found this extremely uncomfortable because you see; the thing about admitting that you’ve got a problem is you have to admit you’ve got a problem. For some people that’s easy. But for me it’s not. And the reason for that is because my whole self-esteem and self worth has been around how well I do things and my achievements.
I’ll explore more about where that comes from later on. But the admission of having a problem is not something that I’ve readily done over the years. And so to pick up the phone and ring the doctors and ask for an appointment; and then have to explain to a complete stranger why it has to be an emergency appointment – that’s a huge step for me to have done that.
However, I realise I had to because I was on the verge of taking my own life.
Also, I think I find myself in this limbo existence where I really wanted to take my own life but I didn’t have the courage to do it. I feel trapped where I don’t have the courage to face up to life and deal with the challenges that are thrown at me yet I don’t have the courage to end it.
Maybe that’s a good thing and as I sit now and reflect that probably is a good thing. But it’s a very, very difficult thing to admit that.
So I rang up the doctors’ surgery, I told him what I wanted and they said they’d ring me back. Normally if you ask for a routine appointment it can take days or even weeks. But when they rang back I was given an appointment for an hour or so later.
I went in, saw the doctor and that kick started a whole train of events, which I won’t go into now. I’m going to share that in a later episode.
That’s the situation I found myself in just a few weeks ago.
Now, the reason why I was in that state was the combination of many things. I’ve had these challenges over the years, I’ve felt down, I’ve had a depressive episodes, though in the early days I was never quite sure why. It’s taken me almost a lifetime of contemplation, reflection, study and reading to understand what the problem is.
Fundamentally I have a problem with low self-esteem, not feeling good enough and feeling that I just don’t deserve and that I’m not worthy. This has its roots in the way I was brought up. I learnt or at least linked in my mind as a child that the only way I can be accepted and loved is through my achievements.
I learned at a very early age that if I was “successful” (whatever that means), then that’s the only way I could gain love. So I spent most of my life trying to be the best at what I did and have achieved a degree of success – well externally anyway. But every achievement always felt like a hollow victory. And the feelings of acceptance and love that I was seeking, hopefully at the completion of each achievement never seemed to be there.
So a fundamentally I’ve had low self-esteem as a problem and that’s driven my behaviour over the years. And what has happened is I’ve felt unlovable. I struggled to deal with emotional issues. I tend to distance myself from people; I have a massive fear of connection, a massive fear of rejection.
I realised that despite my desire to want to improve, I have a fixed mindset. Despite all of my efforts to evolve, deep down, I didn’t believe I could change.
In the past, I might’ve had depressive episodes and then I’d bounce back be annoyingly cheerful, optimistic, positive and enthusiastic. Almost to the point where I’m over compensating for the fact that occasionally I was down. I didn’t want people to know that I was suffering in that way.
And I’d be the classic person where people say, “oh, I would never have thought that would be you to sort to be depressed.”
But then over the last to three years, I’ve noticed that my mood now is generally is constantly down. Whereas before I might have not described myself as being depressed, just getting occasional episodes now, I’d probably describe myself as depressed.
I’ve noticed my enthusiasm for life has dropped off. My sense of purpose has gone. And I’ve started to feel like I’m giving off a negative energy. So I am probably subconsciously repelling people (who wants to be around a mood hoover!).
Another of the challenges I’ve had over the last couple of years is being in a very destructive relationship that caused me untold emotional and mental damage. And combined with the pressures of work and not feeling good enough professionally, all of a sudden this spiral accelerates downward.
Probably one of the most distressing parts of the challenges I face is I have both sensed and experienced a sharp decline in my mental abilities and the ability to cope and deal with things. I’m tired a lot of the time. I’ve isolated myself. I shut myself off from others because I don’t feel good enough.
I’m generally unhappy, so I give off this energy, which means that subconsciously I’m probably pushing people away because they’re not being drawn to a positive energy I used to have. And so the very thing that I feel I need – just to feel loved – my state is driving it away, which I find both sad and distressing.
It’s affected my work. If I take an objective view of my professional abilities, I’m reasonably good at what I do (though I never really feel good enough). Circumstances have meant that I was able to get the small amount of work that came to me, but I’ve never really promoted myself because I’ve never felt good enough – never felt worthy enough.
It has got so bad that all I want to do is to withdraw under the duvet and stay there. I am embarrassed to admit I have spent days on end doing just that. And that’s not got me anywhere. So now I’m at the stage where I have succumbed to learned helplessness. I know that I’ve become fixed in the cycle of not doing anything.
I have little bit of money put aside to be able to survive. But now I cannot see a way out professionally to generate any more income. I don’t feel positive about myself, or my work and on top of being terrified of rejection I am stuck.
In about six to eight months time, my money runs out and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t feel in the state to be able to go out and promote myself because of my low self-esteem. And of course all that pressure that exerts builds up and builds up and builds up exacerbating problem and making me feel even less likely to take control.
So there’s been this downward emotional and mental spiral to the point where I felt the only way out was to end my life because I couldn’t see any way out of it.
I’ve rambled on there for some time about the situation I’ve created for myself and I don’t want to bore you with the details. This isn’t about me moaning about how unhappy my lot is. This is about really explaining to myself where I find myself.
What I found is there’s this depressed mood that biases me to look at things in a negative way. I have a tendency to ruminate and think about my challenges. I allow my mind to go in an even deeper downward spiral and into darker and darker places. This affects my emotions, which affects my body, which affects my state of mind.
A big reason for doing this podcast is because basically it’s a form of self-help for me. When I express what I’m going through and I hear myself say these things, it helps. Partly because I am able to express how I am feeling which gives it an outlet, but also when I describe some of the things I am choosing to think and do there’s a part of me saying:
“You’re being a bit of a dick really, aren’t you?”
Perhaps I am.
I’m just spending a lot of time in bed, not getting out from under the protective warmth and shelter of the duvet. Because of working for myself and living on my own I can get away with it. I don’t have to answer to anyone to get up and do things every day. So I would just lie in bed and think myself into an even worse state. I know that’s not healthy.
I’ve also let my health drop off significantly. I was exercising a lot and I was in good shape but I’ve let that drift. I’ve started to let little things slip like not looking after myself. Simple things like not cleaning my teeth before going to bed sometimes because I can’t be bothered.
I’ve realised that it’s inevitable that even if I don’t take my own life, I’m just going to descend into some state where I’m not going to be any good to anyone. I have to address that and do something about it.
Starting this podcast and blog is the first step for me. What I’m looking for by doing this are a few of things.
When I was talking to the mental health practitioners I’ve encountered in the last few weeks, I told them I was looking for a number of things.
I was looking for hope that I could get better.
I have struggled with these challenges for a long time and their recent severity gives me doubt that I can ever change. I need to know that it’s possible to heal and ultimately achieve happiness.
The second thing I asked them for was help. So far I have not been able to do this on my own and reaching out to them was a cry for help.
So the name of this podcast and blog comes from seeking hope, reaching out for help so that I can perhaps achieve happiness. It is a record of the journey I will take as I navigate the waters ahead.
Now there’s a stigma attached to mental illness. It is not just the societal stigma – it is the one firmly implanted in my own mind.
People say there shouldn’t be a stigma and perhaps they’re right. But in my mind there is because of my low self-esteem, because of my feelings of unworthiness and that I link my feelings of acceptance in society to my achievements. So admitting I have this problem is something I’ve avoided because of the fear of the consequences. Whether that be rejection, loss of credibility or perhaps its’ existence getting in the way of developing a healthy relationship.
For that reason I am podcasting and blogging about my journey anonymously.
And the purpose of this podcast and blog is…?
Well it will serve a number of purposes.
1. Recording My Journey Of Self-Help
It’s now been nearly eight weeks since my birthday and asking for help from my Doctor. I’ve not really done anything to move forward because I was hoping that the health system in this country (I’m in the UK) would set things in motion to help me get back on track. I’ve been waiting to see what help I was going to get. It was a relief and a release for me to have the courage to admit I had a serious problem and then seek help. Rather naïvely, I’ve been waiting for the cavalry to charge in and rescue me.
That’s been a big mistake on my part.
I can sort of mitigate that inaction on my part because the extent of my challenges had pretty much left me incapable of doing anything intellectual other than binge watch Amazon Prime movies and TV shows to distract me from my suffering.
But yesterday I discovered that I’m not going to get any direct help for 15 to 20 weeks!
That came as quite a body blow. Right now I am feeling vulnerable and very fragile so discovering I am not going to get any help to heal for three to four months…. Well with the way I had been feeling, by that time, it could all be over anyway.
That was a real wake up call for me.
So I’ve realised I’ve got to go and find the help for myself. I’ve got to go and do this myself. So the purpose of blogging and podcasting is to use them as a way of gathering, collating and curating the information I find.
2. Personal Accountability
It’s about working out what I’m going to do with it. It’s about tracking and recording my progress. Perhaps most important, it’s also about keeping me accountable.
So if I declare here:
“This is what I’ve found and this is what I’m going to do with it…”
I can come back tomorrow and say, have I done it or not? And that way it’ll keep me accountable for the things I say I’m going to do.
3. Help others similarly suffering
In doing this I recognise I’m probably not the only person suffering from these challenges and probably not the only person suffering with the stigma of them either. And so maybe if I find things that are useful to me, they might also be useful to others – maybe even you.
This reason is perhaps the most important. It gives me a sense of purpose outside of myself. My work (when I am functioning normally) is working with people and helping them evolve and grow in certain areas of their personal and professional lives. So it’s in my nature to want to help others and share this sort of information with them.
Additionally, I’m going to endeavour for this not to become a pity party where I drain down about how things are bad for me. That’s just a victim mentality and that’s not going to help me (or others) at all.
Ultimately, I realise the only way forward is for me to “grow a pair” mentally, emotionally, practically and deal with these issues and the consequences of these issues. At the moment I have let my business life, my personal life and my practical life deteriorate to a point where I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much I’ve let them go.
But I’ve got to do something about that. So this is that first podcast episode and post to get me on my way. It’s been really difficult for me to do this. I felt this is a good idea and have wanted to do it for a number of weeks now. But I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. This is because I’ve been scared to face up to the challenges and go “pseudo-public”.
I know you won’t know who I am. I’m doing this for myself, but I am still feeling extremely vulnerable in revealing these feelings, revealing the challenges and opening up about my inadequacies.
But there’s also a part of me that recognises albeit intellectually, there is strength in that vulnerability. However, emotionally it feels crap at the moment. It feels awful.
So that’s it. That’s the first episode. That’s episode one.
I’m going to endeavour to podcast and blog daily about this journey. It will help me get up a head of steam and keep any momentum I achieve.
I am hopeful of the future. But I have been here before and know that with a fragile emotional and mental state of being I am still at risk. There is a lot of work to be done.
But if for some reason I fail and succumb to that which I managed to interrupt on my Birthday, then at least this will be a record that will help explain why to my family and friends
I hope it doesn’t get to that, but I feel that this is either going to be an interesting journey of hope, help and happiness or the longest suicide note in history.
I hope it’s the former and not the latter, but let’s see.
Until the next time…
