Leaning In. This time it's personal.

I remember the precise moment that it happened.

Which isn’t always the way with these things.

It had been a year of change and challenges. Although no one thing seemed significant in its own right, small things sometimes accumulate to reveal a bigger thing.

I’d just hung up the phone from receiving news about a small thing. Staring out my lounge window into the dark of an unseasonably warm Autumn evening something suddenly broke. Abruptly and inexplicably, I was no longer in charge of my emotions. My emotions were in charge of me.

It was me that broke. Or my emotional health, to be more precise. They called it a ‘breakdown’.

Is that uncomfortable to read? I’m curious because it’s definitely uncomfortable to say.

Which is interesting because we talk about mental health a lot. And we say it’s important to talk about. We’ve dedicated a week to it. This week in fact. Yet it’s still hard to talk about.

The theme this year for Mental Health Awareness week is kindness. At the time, in the days, weeks, and months that would follow my moment of breaking, I was (thankfully) supported by a lot of kindness. These are some of the acts of kindness that made a big difference.

Firm and Kind

I didn’t immediately accept that I was emotionally unwell. My manager however did. Despite my attempts to convince him otherwise.

His point was clear. I work in a job that needs me to be 100% resourceful. And I wasn’t. He offered me all the reassurances - financial security, confidentiality, managing reputation and credibility. And then he firmly and kindly explained that I could only continue to work if a doctor said it was okay.

The truth is there’s still a lot of shame and judgment associated with people who are off work for emotional and mental health reasons. I’ve watched people roll their eyes at “stress leave”. This was uncomfortable. Plus work is also a great place to stay busy and hide from feeling the feelings.

I was not happy or grateful at the time. However, I now believe this firm and kind approach kicked off a process that would be hugely beneficial for my long-term wellbeing.

Broken Bones

I realise doctors are paid to be help us, however that doesn’t make a GP’s kindness any less significant. My GP and I embarked upon a dance where I would come in every 2-weeks trying to convince him that I was ‘fine’ and he would see through me and send me away with a sick note. It was frustrating.

The pivotal moment came when I did actually start to feel more resourceful and he still wouldn’t budge. My shame levels were running high by then and I was expecting him to relieve them.

Instead, he explained things to me in a different way. He drew a (very helpful) parallel between my emotions and my body.

For example, let’s pretend it was my back that I’d broken instead of my emotions, and I was now starting to feel better. That wouldn’t mean my back was fully healed. It would be unwise then to return too soon to a physical job that requires lots of lifting until it was strong enough.

It was the same with my emotions. Feeling ‘better’ wasn’t the same as being fully healed.

It completely flipped how I think of my mental and emotional health. I took the extra time to heal. I’m grateful for that extra time.

Being Okay

Generally in life we like to do things that are fun. We like to be around people who are enjoyable to be around, we seek out pleasant experiences and ‘positive’ emotions.

I was none of these things. I had my moments, but overall I was anxious, self-absorbed and I cried a lot.

The most wonderful thing that my friends did for me may seem counterintuitive. They continued to spend time with me, they asked me what I needed and they were okay with me not being okay.

That last bit is super important. They were okay with me not being okay.

We are wired to want to fix things and make anything we perceive as ‘negative’ or unpleasant go away. So this can be hard.

However, when we try to ‘fix’ how someone is feeling or rescue them, it can create a sense that how they’re feeling is ‘wrong’. Enter more shame, judgement and pretending.

The fact is that sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is just be okay that they’re not and to sit in that space with them.

A few years later I remember getting a phone call from a friend who had just had a horrendous late-stage miscarriage. It had happened a few weeks earlier and she’d shared the news with a few people. She told me her story. I’ve never had children or a miscarriage, so I don’t have personal experience to draw on. However, I responded saying: “I’m so sorry to hear that, it sounds like you’ve had awful experience, and although I’m sure one day you’ll feel better, right now it just sounds remarkably shit”.

She burst into tears and said: “Oh thank you SO much! You’re the first person who hasn’t tried to make it go away or made me feel like I’m wrong to be upset – it feels so shit right now!”.

It was a turning point for her in processing how she was feeling in order to heal.

I learned this response from my friends. I’d later discover this short video by Brene Brown on Empathy that sums it up nicely.

Leaning In

One of the things I’m most grateful for is that fact that I decided to ‘lean in’ and do some tough work that would improve my long-term emotional wellbeing. By ‘lean in’ I mean not avoiding what was happening (gosh I wanted to!) and not giving up completely (also tempting) but instead rolling up my sleeves to deal with what was happening. Feeling all the feelings, all the while trying to be kind and compassionate to myself.

When I started this journey I hadn’t planned to ‘lean-in’. I went down a path of seeking out therapy as a means to feel better. As quickly as possible. Why else would I do it?

A close friend would help me with another perspective. I requested help finding the right therapy and therapist for me. She made a deal with me. She’d offer me help if I agreed to continue to see the therapist after I started to feel better.

I agreed out of desperation rather than belief or understanding.

However, I now share this advice with others A LOT.

The thing I didn’t see then, but see so clearly now, is that I needed to be resourceful to really dig deep and deal with the underlying cause of what had happened. It was only after I started to feel better that I could do this.

If I wanted to be more emotionally healthy, I would need to ‘lean-in’.

I did. It was a longer bumpier journey than I’d anticipated, and it was well worth the detour.

Now

I’m grateful for these moments of kindness and for the experience I had. I learned a lot along the way about me, about empathy, about embracing & communicating feelings, about connection and about love.

I also learned a lot about fear and shame.

I’ve never shared this story in my professional life. And I notice now that I have a strong desire to give disclaimers such as telling you I’m fine now, or sharing how long ago this story took place. To help you see that it was long enough ago that you don’t need to think about it now.

Because like it or not, there is still a stigma associated with mental health and wellbeing. And talking about it, sharing our stories is hard.

As mental health awareness week ends, I wonder how we continue to open up the conversation about our emotional wellbeing. We are, and will for some time, be living in a world where we are collectively going to feel more fear about work, money and health. There are lot of factors as we enter into a new way of living at distance that could impact our mental health. How do we make it okay to speak out in a world where it feels like the risk of doing so is even greater than it was before?

I don’t have any of the big answers, only big questions. But I hope that sharing my small honest story might help us ask some questions. I hope it might help us see where we can do our own small thing that could make a big difference to someone else.

Thank you for listening. And for helping open up the conversation as we embark upon a post lockdown world.