#23: I pushed my fingers into my eyes.
The duality of mental health at work.
I sat on the step and sobbed. And I didn’t know why.
OK.
Or not OK?
Is that the question?
Well, with the passing of an all-over-too-quickly Mental Health Awareness Day this week, hopefully if you’re not OK, you’ll now have the message that that’s OK.
In this edition, I’m going to weave together a couple of anecdotes about my own experience of poor mental health, how they impacted me at work and at home, and a few things I did to help overcome it.
This has the potential to be more of a tome than a blog, so strap in.
The TL;DR?: Poor mental health is shit, but it can come good.
Driving home from work one evening. 2012. It’s about an hour and a quarter’s drive, so plenty of time to reflect. I searched through my iPod and put this song on.
Artistic impression 👆 | Despite best efforts I couldn’t locate the picture from my c2012 iPod/in-car Parrot hands free kit.
It’s a very uplifting song for me if I’m in a bit of a mood. I’d had another shitty day.
The company I worked for was going through a cost-based restructure that I was assisting with from the HR side, but sadly it meant me losing my already small team of two.
So what was a pretty strategic and senior-level business partnering role had now gone back to full time hands-on recruitment.
I was bored as fuck, and to make things worse, one of my internal clients had a habit of hiring great people only to lose them within weeks - which meant lots of rework for me in an already difficult market.
A few days later, sat at my kitchen island with my laptop, I took a call.
“Ewan’s left” they said.
It was as much as I could do to stop myself from hurling my iPhone 4 into the wall, go green and split my trousers. I should have seen the signs then, to be honest.
But I didn’t. I dutifully held it together, remaining professional, and tried to sort out the problem.
This is the duality. When it feels like the world’s going batshit crazy around you.
And then trying to come across at work or at home, or with friends, as if everything is “normal”.
What ever the hell that is. You wonder if it’s in your head or if it’s real. Is it me?
Does that make it a quadrality?
Another jolly drivetime favourite 👆
I was also dealing with a 6 month-long house renovation, living inside a snagging list that looked more like a the receipt from a month’s Tesco shop.
It was too much.
Around the same time we were due at a Jubilee street party. I’d spent all morning writing up a list of snags because everywhere I looked - there was another.
My wife was making a picnic and asked me to sort out drinks.
I cracked.
I’d have struggled to answer correctly if she’d have asked me my name.
I sat on the step and sobbed. And I didn’t know why.
I’d tipped. Completely unexpectedly.
I took a week off after that. Did some decorating, did some sleeping, did some walking, did a lot of thinking.
Got my head back. Not straight away, but over time.
I’d had enough of the commute, and the rise and repeat job. A few months later I’d left and gone contracting.
It breathed new life into my confidence, I gained many new skills and built a great network of friends and colleagues that are still with me now.
Fast forward 7-8 years and it all came back.
The stress of a job with one of the biggest companies in the world became too much.
I returned from a week’s holiday to a stack of emails (yeh aren’t I popular etc), some of which, to my stressed and depleted brain, questioned some things I’d done or said, or perhaps not done.
It’s a bit of blur to be honest.
I was at breaking point but I didn’t know it. Camels and straws everywhere.
I was on my sofa, again with my laptop.
There’s a big back story that I won’t burden you with, but I sat there thinking I needed time off.
But if I take time off now there’s no way I’m gonna hit my much needed “hit the bar” performance rating in January!
Then, it was like that bit in San Andreas when the Hoover Dam breaks.
I was rocking like a baby, and crying like one too. We’re told not to cry, but you know, fuck it. I’m gonna. And I felt better for it.
The decision was made for me.
I’d already sought counselling but we hadn’t quite seen this coming.
I spent the next three months trying to rehabilitate myself….
I reconnected with drawing and art.
I sat in silence, listless.
I played guitar.
I cried.
I slept.
👆 Some scribblings I did to try and grapple with what was going on in my head.
I dropped and tripped over things.
I tried to keep on top of my personal hygiene.
I looked for (and received) support from friends, family, and ex-colleagues.
I apologised. A lot. I thought I was moaning all the time, putting on other people.
I woke up most days with a headache so bad that you’d think I’d had 10 pints the night before.
My shoulders felt like bits of wood, rock hard, painful.
I found 64 million Artists on Facebook and Instagram and did their January Challenge (big plug, check them out) which helped me by giving me a daily focus.
I proved to myself that was capable of doing small, directed tasks every day for a month.
And being creative ones, my synapses were jumping for joy.
The feedback I received on my quick artistic efforts gave me a huge lift. More than those giving it could’ve ever realised.
Eventually I came round.
I left that job and after a few weeks more, I started helping others who were miserable in their careers. I listened to them. Supported them.
I asked questions so they could remember what they were good at, helped them craft CVs and rebuild the confidence they needed to get out and find a new job.
I helped them reconnect with themselves, and see qualities and capabilities they’d either forgotten about, or that had just become so day to day or undervalued that they didn’t realise just how good they were at it.
And Phil Sterne Writes CVs was born.
That was the metaphoric light at the end of a quite hideous and dark tunnel.
I’d gained a sense of purpose. Control. Helping people. Using creative skills.
Being myself, not some pandering corporate wanker.
Well, that was cathartic.
I guess the message is to talk to someone. Get help.
Find creative ways to process it.
Even if you think you’re not creative. You are.
No one in a meeting at work says “OK - can all the people who aren’t creative leave now, the rest of us have some ideas to come up with”, do they?
All I know is I look back on those periods and know that I wouldn’t have done the next great thing had I not experienced the diabolical stress, anxiety and depression that I did.
So there we go.
Phil
In the socials…
Been a busy couple of weeks online so here’s some morsels that might just help you:
Here’s a short video I posted to help normalise feeling anxious.
Here’s one about that Sunday feeling, and steps you can take to deal with it.
Here’s a LinkedIn Live I did crammed with solutions to the big 3 mistakes you’re probably making on your CV.