Maybe It’s Not Just You

I want to start by asking you something.

Have you ever actually stopped and questioned how you feel?

Not when something terrible has happened. Just generally.

How do you feel?

It’s quite a hard question when you really think about it.

Because most of the time someone asks us and we say…

“Yeah, I’m good.”

I do it.

But what does “good” actually mean?

Are you sleeping properly?

Can you concentrate?

Do you look forward to things?

Can you sit and watch the television without thinking about six other things?

Do you laugh?

Do you feel like yourself?

That last one has become quite important to me.

Because for a while, I didn’t.

Now think about the word health.

What comes into your head?

Eating properly? Exercise? Going for a run? Blood pressure? Weight? Going to the doctor if something doesn’t feel right?

We understand physical health pretty well.

You don’t have to be ill to look after it.

Now I’ll put another word in front of it.

Mental health.

What did that make you think of?

Depression?

Anxiety?

Someone struggling?

A breakdown?

Medication?

Maybe something completely different.

But I wonder how many of us naturally went somewhere negative.

I probably would have.

And I’ve become a bit fascinated by the word mental itself.

Because outside conversations like this, how do we use it?

“That’s mental.”

“He’s mental.”

“You’re going mental.”

It’s not normally a compliment.

But when we’re talking about what goes on inside our heads, we don’t normally use the word mental at all.

We say:

“I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“My mind won’t switch off.”

“I need some peace of mind.”

Why do we instinctively use the word mind?

I don’t know.

But it’s made me wonder whether, in everyday life at least, I’d find it easier to think about Mind Health.

I’m not trying to rename mental health.

I’m definitely not qualified to do that.

I’m just questioning whether the words we use change how we think about it.

Because we all have a mind. So surely we all have mind health.

I’m no expert on the brain either.

Far from it.

But what we do know is that the human brain is ridiculously complicated.

It’s doing thousands of things all the time that allow you to think, remember, move, react, feel, make decisions and basically be you.

There are electrical signals, chemical messengers, hormones, different areas communicating with each other, feedback between your brain and the rest of your body.

Sleep affects it.

Stress affects it.

Exercise affects it.

Illness can affect it.

Hormones can affect it.

Our experiences affect it.

Medication can affect it.

And probably a whole load of other things I couldn’t begin to explain.

I think this is something I fundamentally didn’t understand.

I knew the brain was complicated in the abstract.

But when it came to my own brain, I think I treated it as though I should be able to control it.

Feeling anxious?

Stop worrying.

Overthinking?

Stop thinking about it.

Feeling low?

Do something you enjoy.

Stressed?

Go for a run.

And sometimes those things absolutely work.

But not always.

Because apparently my brain didn’t come with an on/off switch.

I checked.

Think about a car.

Take a spark plug out of the engine.

Is it going to run exactly the same?

Probably not.

You wouldn’t stand there shouting:

“Come on. You’ve driven perfectly well for the last ten years. Try harder.”

You’d want to know why it wasn’t running properly.

And you also wouldn’t assume that putting more petrol in would fix the missing spark plug.

Petrol is good for the car. It needs petrol. But petrol doesn’t fix everything.

That’s the bit I think I’d missed.

Or make a cake and leave out an ingredient.

Putting more of another perfectly good ingredient into the bowl doesn’t necessarily fix it.

Take the fuse out of a plug.

You could polish the kettle.

Descale it.

Fill it with the finest water money can buy.

Tell it how much you believe in it.

It’s still not boiling.

Obviously we’re not cars, cakes or kettles.

Although some mornings I probably have the intelligence of a kettle.

But if simple systems need different things working together, why would we assume something as complicated as a human brain can always be put right by doing more of one “good” thing?

And this is where physical health confused me a bit too.

I’ve run.

I’ve exercised.

I’ve been on holidays.

I’ve done things I enjoy.

Those things are good for me.

I absolutely believe that.

Sometimes running gives me a release that very little else does.

But I think I’d absorbed this idea that if I was physically healthy, exercised, got outside and tried to think positively, I should be able to sort myself out.

And when those things didn’t completely fix how I felt…

well, what was left?

Me.

Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough.

Maybe I should be more positive.

Maybe I needed another holiday.

What I didn’t understand was that looking after your physical health can support your mind enormously without necessarily resolving everything that’s happening within it.

There isn’t one lever marked FEEL BETTER.

I really wish there was.

For me, I knew something wasn’t right because I didn’t feel like myself.

I just couldn’t work out where I’d gone.

I started doubting myself constantly.

I’d say something in a meeting and then replay it.

Did that sound stupid?

What did they think?

Should I have said something different?

Am I actually good at my job?

Does everyone else know something I don’t?

What happens if I get this wrong?

And because my family is incredibly important to me, thoughts about work don’t necessarily stop at work.

What happens if I fail?

What happens if I lose my job?

What happens to everything we’ve worked for?

One thought can travel quite a long way if you give it enough road.

And then I discovered something even more exhausting.

You can worry about worrying.

That’s quite a talent.

From the outside though, I was functioning.

I came to work.

I went to meetings.

I made decisions.

I’d make jokes.

I’d go home and be a husband and dad.

If you asked me if I was okay, I’d probably say yes.

But I didn’t feel like myself.

The confidence I’d had in myself wasn’t there.

I questioned everything.

Things I enjoyed didn’t always feel the same.

And I was tired.

Not necessarily the kind of tired that going to bed early fixes.

Just tired of my own head.

Something happened at work that I’m really grateful for.

People gave me permission to say that I wasn’t okay.

My boss supported me.

Our HR team supported me.

Nobody treated me differently. Nobody made me feel weak. Nobody made me feel as though I’d suddenly become incapable of doing my job.

They listened.

They checked in.

And they encouraged me to do something rather than just keep battling through it.

I’d spent so much time asking:

“What’s wrong with me?”

Talking about it allowed me to ask something slightly different:

“What’s actually going on with me?”

That sounds like a tiny difference.

For me it wasn’t.

Because one question sent me back into the cycle of blaming and doubting myself.

The other made me curious.

And eventually that curiosity, and the encouragement I had around me, made me take action.

I’m very glad I did.

There’s probably a lot that HR teams do that most of us never see.

I certainly didn’t.

Now I’ve experienced it from the other side.

The best way I’ve found to picture some of this is like a tank.

We all have things that put something back in.

Sleep.

Exercise.

Friends.

Family.

Laughing.

Going outside.

Doing something you actually enjoy.

Running sometimes does it for me.

And there are plenty of things taking stuff out.

Work.

Money.

Responsibility.

Deadlines.

Poor sleep.

Change.

Fear.

Family worries.

The email you absolutely didn’t need to read at nine o’clock at night.

Usually we put some in and take some out.

But what happens if, over months or years, slightly more comes out than goes back?

There probably isn’t a dramatic moment where a warning light comes on.

You just slowly adjust.

A little less energy.

A little less confidence.

You enjoy things a little less.

You worry a little more.

You doubt yourself a little more.

You don’t suddenly disappear.

You just gradually get further away from yourself.

Until eventually you think:

I don’t really feel like me anymore.

So you put something back in.

You go for a run.

And perhaps you feel better for a while.

You have a weekend away.

You get some sleep.

You take a holiday.

All good things.

But if your tank has been draining for months or years, a cup of water doesn’t necessarily refill it.

And perhaps, and this is the bit I didn’t understand, it’s not always just about putting more in.

Sometimes you need to understand why it’s draining.

Is something happening in your life?

Are you under sustained stress?

Are you sleeping properly?

Is something physical contributing?

Do you need to talk through what’s happening?

Do you need professional help?

There are lots of possibilities.

Which is why “just exercise”, “just relax”, “just think positively” or even “just take medication” are all too simple.

Human beings aren’t simple.

In my case, one of the things I eventually did was speak to my doctor.

And medication became part of my story.

I was nervous about that.

I think somewhere in my head, taking medication made the whole thing feel more serious.

It raised questions for me.

What does this say about me?

Am I going to feel different?

Am I going to become reliant on something?

Shouldn’t I be able to sort this myself?

I’m not going to stand here and tell anyone else whether medication is right for them.

That’s a conversation for them and a medical professional.

I can only tell you what I’ve experienced.

I started to notice something.

Calm.

And I need to correct something I probably would have said a few months ago.

I didn’t find balance.

I didn’t discover some brilliant new mindset.

I didn’t finally become disciplined enough.

I had help.

In my case, medication appears to have been part of allowing some balance to return.

For somebody else, what helps could be completely different.

It could be therapy.

Changing circumstances.

Better sleep.

Exercise.

Talking.

Treating something physical.

Medication.

Or several things together.

I don’t know exactly what was happening inside my brain before, and I don’t know every mechanism involved now.

I don’t need to pretend I do.

What I do know is that something feels different.

And the strange thing is…

I don’t feel medicated.

I don’t feel artificially happy.

I don’t walk around grinning at trees.

I’m still me.

I still worry.

I still overthink things.

I still have bad days.

I’m still perfectly capable of being grumpy. My family can provide references.

The difference is that sometimes my mind doesn’t run away with me in quite the same way.

A thought can just be a thought.

Something can happen at work without automatically becoming a referendum on whether I’m good enough.

And as that noise has become quieter, something else has happened.

I’ve started feeling more like myself.

That’s probably the thing I wish I’d understood earlier about getting help.

I was frightened, at some level, that changing something might change me.

Instead, so far at least, it feels like some of the things that had been drowning me out have become quieter.

And underneath them…

I’m still here.

That’s why I’ve become interested in the word balance.

I don’t mean a scientifically measurable “chemical imbalance”.

The brain is far too complicated for me to make a claim like that.

I’m talking about how it feels.

Before, everything seemed to amplify everything else.

Stress fed worry.

Worry fed self-doubt.

Self-doubt made work harder.

That created more stress.

And round we went.

Now there seems to be more space between those things.

For me, that’s balance.

And I didn’t know that was what I was missing until I started experiencing it again.

For years I’ve asked myself what would make me happy.

Different job?

More money?

Start a business?

Travel more?

Find some grand purpose?

I still don’t know.

But I’m starting to think happiness might have been the wrong thing to chase.

Because if your mind is completely full of noise, where does happiness go?

Maybe I needed something before happiness.

Calm.

Balance.

Enough space in my head to have a worry without it swallowing an evening.

To make a mistake without immediately questioning whether I’m good enough.

To sit with my family and actually be there.

To laugh because something is funny rather than because I’m trying to look okay.

To have a bad day and let it just be a bad day.

That’s what I’ve started thinking of as Mind Health.

Not being happy all the time.

Not never worrying.

Not pretending everything is fine.

And not believing we can simply switch our brains into a better mode if we try hard enough.

It’s recognising that this unbelievably complicated thing inside our heads affects almost every experience we have.

Maybe sometimes we can help it ourselves.

Maybe sometimes we need someone else.

Maybe sometimes we need professional help.

The answer won’t be the same for everybody.

So I’m not going to tell anyone here what they should do.

I’m certainly not standing here as an expert.

I’d just ask you this.

Do you feel like you at the moment?

Forget whether you’re getting everything done.

Forget whether everyone else thinks you’re okay.

Forget the automatic “yeah, I’m good thanks.”

Do you actually feel like yourself?

And if the answer is…

“Not quite.”

Maybe be curious about that.

Questions to ask yourself

What’s taking things out of your tank?

What’s putting something back?

How long have you felt different?

Have the things that normally help stopped being enough?

Could you talk to somebody about it?

Because getting help wasn’t about turning me into a different person.

I wanted the opposite.

I wanted to find the person I felt I’d lost underneath all the worry, self-doubt and noise.

And I’m starting to.

Not because I’ve discovered how to switch my brain back on.

Not because I’ve finally tried hard enough.

Because I eventually accepted that I didn’t have to understand or fix everything on my own.

Maybe that’s part of looking after our Mind Health too.

Understanding that sometimes finding our balance isn’t something we do to ourselves.

Sometimes it’s something we need a bit of help getting back.

And when some of that balance returns…

maybe there’s finally enough space to feel like ourselves again.