Diary – Page 6 – Rant Over

Is there another way?

Today has been one of those days when you feel like you’ve been in a boxing ring for 13 rounds, everything aches but in a state of confusion and possibly concussion, you find yourself wondering how you’re still on your feet.

The sun will still rise tomorrow, the birds will still sing. It may well be a cold winters day, the kind where you could write messages in your own breath but at least that still means that you are breathing.

What actually matters in life? Is it whether you have the latest devices, whether you have a nice car on the cracked wobbly flagstones you call your drive? Is it keeping up with the Joneses, whoever the Joneses are? Is it having that job that fills you with anxiety everyday, but keeps your credit score high? Is it being able to keep the bailiffs away and service that huge pile of debt you have from chasing that desire to feel like your life is successful?

Do I still have value without the job title? Will my friends still want to meet up if I can’t buy that pint or fuel my car?

You see, right now miserable would be a huge improvement for my state of mind. I have to wear all these different hats for different people. I have to be the stable one, the mature one, the adult. I have to be the one that’s always laughing, joking and smiling. I have to be the one that can cope, the high achiever, the senior one with the answers.

In reality I’m the stressed one, the one that wants to bury my head in the sand, the one that wakes up every afternoon having not slept for the negative thoughts raging through my brain the night before, disappointed that it’s another day and I’m still here. That’s the real person under the mask. That’s not a person you want to be around.

Today was supposed to be the day I bought the things I needed to put myself out of my self-induced misery. I had already bookmarked the page for the nitrogen canister, the non-rebreather mask, and the extra strong body bag. I’d already written my suicide note.

I had a list of all the financial organisations I needed to write to. I had a list of all the people that I worked closely with whom I wanted to leave a recommendation for on linkedin. I was going to write down all the things I usually did, a bit like an instruction list for someone house sitting.

I had the names of people I wanted to write to separately to say thank you and to try to absolve them of any feelings of guilt or “why didn’t I notice”, “why didn’t I do something”. I wanted to minimise the pain as best I could but I was ready to go and I was treating this like any other holiday I had planned, in exhaustive detail, just with less need for sunscreen.

I knew the date, I knew the time. I knew the where and the how but somehow the day has passed and no money has left my bank account for those items, no order has been placed. The path had been so clear to me, I knew what I had to do and I “knew” it was the only way out but what if there is another way? What if there could be a different purpose for me?

Would it matter if I quit my job? What else could I do? Being a software developer is what I did but being a writer is what I am. Sure, maybe not a good one. Maybe the kind of writer that doesn’t know the difference between a sentence and a paragraph? Maybe the kind of writer that uses the wrong homophone every time? Maybe the most repetitive single trick pony there has ever been? Flogging a dead horse of self indulgent colloquialisms and appeals to emotion masquerading behind unnecessary adverbials? Perhaps the very antithesis of plain English and the king of exaggeration?

At this point I could pretty much write anything as all three readers have either fallen asleep, retired or opted for euthanasia rather than read any longer. Did I mention the tangents to tangents that tingle and tangle and yes, the last two words are only in there for the purpose of alliteration.

Anyway, I will stop the procrastination and return to the original conundrum. What if instead of taking my life, I took my brain somewhere else. What if I found another job or even another career entirely? I hear people do that.

But my question is how? If you have no nest egg saved up to fall back on and a Kilimanjaro of debt, how do you take that jump out of the aeroplane, not knowing whether you even have a parachute in that rucksack on your back, never mind whether it will open?

With my weight I’m very limited to what I can actually do. I have a face for radio and a voice for mime. Would employers want me if I pretend that Computer Science degree doesn’t exist and deny all knowledge of the existence of JavaScript?

Would my wife even accept it? The consequences for her of having a chocolate kettle husband that is not contributing and the risk to our home and lifestyle that comes with that are not for me to just decide on. It’s not fair, that’s not the person she married. She married a man surrounded by his colleagues in a profession he worked hard to access on the back off her support as I burned the double-ended tallow.

That’s not a fair ultimatum to put on anybody but the reality is I’m not very well right now and if I don’t do “something”, I’m not going to get better and I have an appointment with a fridge and furnace. It’s the financial anxiety, the imposter syndrome, the feeling of abject failure that are pulling me towards a self inflicted annihilation with the force akin to gravity. Something has to give, something has to change. How do you have that conversation with someone and what if she’s had enough?

It’s like watching a slow motion car crash and not being able to do anything about it, you know there’s going to be a collision, it’s just to what extent is the damage. Psychologically, that inert gas and mask combo is a much easier choice, but why don’t I seem to be able to make it? Is it just a case of psyching myself up? Will I wake up tomorrow and express checkout on that cart? Will I find that missing link, explaining which regulator I actually need and how to attach it all together? Or do we have that conversation?

I’m a man. Just talking about my feelings isn’t going to help. I’ve been talking about my feelings for a while now and stewing in my own juices hasn’t stopped the pan from boiling over. What I need is hope, an action plan. I need to know what life would be like in practical terms if I dropped 10k, 20k, 30k. How could I service the debt and still be able to pay the bills without losing our home? Swapping 3% loans for 11% loans doesn’t seem like a sensible idea right now so the old option of increasing the term by consolidating isn’t really an option.

What can I actually do? Should I dabble at technical writing? Not really my forte but the dream of knocking out a few autobiographical self help books with no qualifications other than life experience and them actually being purchased by people with real money is fanciful right now.

I need to earn a crust and as much as the thought of signing onto my work laptop itself fills me with dread right now, my employers have been incredibly understanding and flexible through the three complete breakdowns I’ve had in the last couple of years. What if the next employer isn’t like that? What if my current low energy and malaise makes it impossible to get off the ground with something new? I need to speak to somebody but I don’t know whether that’s a recruiter, a therapist, a doctor or an exorcist. Maybe all four.

Right now there is just this tiny crack of hope that maybe something I do is of value to somebody, and that I can take some meaning from this whole excrement tempest that has been the last three years.

I feel like I need to do something positive, I need to be a beacon in the darkest sky for someone else. If I can give back somehow with a few words on a page that can maybe give hope to the hopeless then maybe I’ll have some meaning again, something that keeps that mask off my face, and the oxygen to re-ignite that flame that once burnt brightly.

Banishing the imposter

I didn’t know what it was called at the time, but my first experience with imposter syndrome was at the age of 16.

High school was quite a difficult experience for me, I was different, I stuck out and I felt like an outsider and a loner. To an extent, I think most teenagers go through these kind of feelings of not fitting in. It’s partially down to the floods of hormones and learning your place in the social pack. I may have come across as a bit of a joker and a confident person but under the mask was a very shy, unconfident deep thinking young man.

There were times when I was bullied for my weight and for my nature. I remember spending birthdays secretly sobbing in toilet cubicles, wondering if the pipework was strong enough to hold my weight if I hung myself with my school tie. Alas, I never actually had the courage it takes to do it.

There were good times too and I felt a sense of belonging despite the melancholy. I somehow got through my GCSEs and got grades that were adequate enough to earn a place at college.

The difference between school and college was like night and day. I was studying Psychology, English Language and Media studies, yearning for a journalistic career path. I was part of the debating society, I was the editor of the college magazine, I was playing five-a-side football (very badly). I didn’t feel like an outsider anymore. I felt I found my place.

At the same time, I was still left with the mental scars from high school and suffered from a tremendous sense of guilt.

Each morning on my way into college I would pass a homeless man, devoid of any expression on his face as if he wasn’t even there. I felt incredibly guilty for having the opportunities I had and felt I did not deserve when other, more deserving people were out exposed to the cold, dreary climate of a northern town on the outskirts of Manchester.

Logically speaking, I knew that those thoughts made no sense and that comparing myself unfavourably to others of whom I knew nothing about was reductive and unhelpful, but it was the manifestation of how low my self esteem had become. I could not internally allow myself the benefit of doubt or self acceptance and the more things seems to go my way, the more I would need to conspire my own downfall to a level that removed the dissonance between reality and my crippled self esteem.

Eventually I stopped going into college and instead would sit on a patch of wastelands by the River Irk, staring at a big old tree and ruminating on the futility of my misery. I left college, I moved out of home, shell shocked and contemplating what to do next.

Bit by bit, I put the shattered pieces of my life back together. I found an audience for my bleak poetry and discovered that despite my inability to communicate difficult feelings orally that I could write in ways that some people found interesting. I found love and heartbreak twice and the third time lucky with the rock that has harboured me from the storms ever since.

I got a job, reignited me flame for learning, went back to college, this time in a much stronger and more determined position than before. The self-animosity was replaced with a passion for learning. I got to University, I got engaged, I learned how to drive, I lost a significant amount of weight. Life wasn’t easy but it felt like I banished the shackles of the imposter syndrome that blighted my youth, despite significant wobbles on the way.

As part of my degree, I took a placement year, recognising the importance of gaining experience. I spent more energy trying to find a suitable placement than I did on most of my university modules and it paid off, I got the placement I wanted, a company with a proud track record of retaining young talent.

At Uni I was confident. I knew my abilities and my strengths. I was consistently getting grades in the first class bracket, unless it was a maths based module, that was my one weakness but the working environment was different and I struggled at first but with hard work and persistence, I found a place for myself to the extent that my employers were willing to pay for me to stay on and finish my degree part time at their expense.

When you’re a junior, there is less pressure. You are still expected to contribute but more senior colleagues will work with you to help you progress. The more you advance and the more your skills develop, the higher the burden of expectation and the more room for self doubt to creep in again. I was working with some incredibly gifted people, with much more talent than I possessed and it became harder not to compare my weaknesses against other colleagues strengths.

I was still progressing, still achieving and taking on increasing responsibility. I loved working as part of a team and took great satisfaction when I felt I was making a genuine difference.

My confidence took a battering when I was moved from the big project my company was working on to another team working on less interesting work. At the time I felt this was a slight but it later turned out that the majority of my colleagues were made redundant when a business partner pulled the plug. That’s the ruthlessness of the private sector. One day you can turn up to work with plans for what you need to do, the next you’re marched out of the building on gardening leave.

Whether it was out of sentiment or just the fact that I was on a lower salary that saved me, I don’t know, but the writing was on the wall.

I had been very happy at that company, having spent seven years there and feeling like part of the furniture. I felt a strong sense of belonging and fitting in so the thought of leaving filled me with anxiety once again.

I had proved myself there, but any new employer would not be taking on an enthusiastic junior, they’d be looking for an immediate return on their investment for someone with seven years experience.

There were some quite dark times. Instead of going straight home after work I would sit by the side of the Rochdale canal with a can of lager and I’d binge eat and drink, contemplating the worst case scenario.

I got myself a few interviews and put my best foot forward. I was offered a role that wasn’t perhaps the most interesting available, using older technology but they wanted me and were prepared to pay significantly more than my current employer. It was a local company and that meant less commuting. For the first time in a long time, I’d get back some of my evenings during the week.

The job turned out to be better than I anticipated. I felt I could make a valuable contribution, drawing on my experience from my previous work. I developed strong friendships. It was very different from the old job, less of an alcohol culture but I was happy and settled.

The first few years there were probably the nadir of my career thus far. I was earning more than I had ever earned before, which meant I could treat the people I cared about.

When my wife and I bought our house, I was working part time and a student. She supported me through that hard period where I was burning both ends of the candle and it wasn’t easy for her. It meant a lot to me to be able to give something back and reward her patience and faith in me.

In 2018 she turned 40 and I was able to give her the birthday of a lifetime at the same venue as our wedding reception. It was nice to share the moment with all her friends and family.

Then there was the trip of a lifetime to New York, first class, five star hotels, Michelin starred restaurants. Very different from our normal UK breaks in travelogdes.

We got enough air miles from that trip to pay for another trip to Los Angeles in February 2020. Everything seemed to be going well. The hard times were worth the perseverance. Had I finally shaken off the imposter?

Sadly, the answer to that question turned out to be a resounding no. One of the company bosses sent me a message, asking when was convenient for a chat. When a boss wants “a chat”, it’s normally either very good news or very bad news. I wondered to myself if I had done something wrong but it turned out it was the other kind of call, an expression of appreciation for my work at the company.

For normal people, this would have been a morale booster but my brain has a funny way of associating things together. You see, it was around this time that I found out my brother in laws nursery business was struggling. He received a big tax bill and faced a winding up petition from HMRC if he couldn’t find the money the business owed, and it was a lot of money.

Only the year before he won some sort of business award so when I got that call and received a certificate of recognition, I could feel a sense of dread returning. What if what happened to his business happened to me? What if my employers were putting too much value in my abilities and I got found out? It was a completely irrational thought process, and I knew it was but that didn’t make it any easier to rebuff.

Work had opened up a second office in the city centre. They thought the location would make it easier to recruit, finding good staff is always a challenge in my sector. Whilst our original offices were perfectly situated for me, the area was not as shiny and vibrant as the glamour of the city centre.

I was asked to move over to the new offices, which meant a return to commuting on the tram again. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the best news but the new office was nice and I wanted to make the most of it.

There were some big changes underway and a new platform being built to replace our lucrative but ageing product. Change is a constant in my industry, you have to be adaptable and accept new challenges but in the back of my mind was that fear again, are you really good enough? Can you do this?

Within a few weeks of the move, COVID took it’s grip and the whole world was being turned upside down. The old office was closed permanently. We were working from home all the time.

Working from home was nothing new, but it was more like a convenient perk than a necessity beforehand. I’ve never enjoyed working from home. I like having people around me to bounce ideas off. I like the comradery. Being left alone with my thoughts was not a good thing, especially when it coincided with a lot of change and trying to learn new technologies.

Combine that with the home situation. My brother in laws business did fail and that meant a rush to sell their house to pay off creditors. I tried to help as much as I could but it became apparent that their relationship was not salvageable. I knew my sister in law and her three kids were going to need somewhere to stay. We had a 3 bedroom house, with two rooms used as a combination as office and storage space.

Her situation gave me something to focus on and we spent a lot of money trying to get the house up to a standard whereby the six of us could live together until she could find more suitable accommodation. However, after the holiday of a lifetime and birthday party, I had nothing left in the way of savings so I took out a couple of loans to pay for everything.

The loans were just about affordable, my sister in law did move in and we effectively became one big family. It wasn’t easy. Imagine three kids and two adults in lockdown all on separate laptops and tablets trying to work or attend virtual school lessons at the same time. That being said, it felt really nice to have that family around and I started to wonder whether we’d made a mistake in deciding to rule out the prospect of having a family of our own.

Work were very good to me. Mentally I was struggling and finding it impossible to concentrate on working. I had two separate long spells off sick due to stress but they kept in touch and reassured me at every step that my job was safe. Nethertheless, the anxiety was crippling.

When lockdown was first announced, the company made a round of redundancies. Nobody I knew lost their job but the fear took over.

If redundancies had to be made, who would you pick? The guys whose been off sick recently and is struggling to be productive working from home or someone else? They would have been fully justified in choosing to let me go and I was on a high salary and I worried whether I’d be able to find another employer willing to pay at the same rate, especially now that my confidence had collapsed like a soufflé that had been taken out of the oven too soon.

There was the façade of “coping” that I put on for the outside world to see, but it was beginning to crumble. I ended up taking an overdose of anti-depressants and blood pressure tablets, not as a suicide attempt but as a maladapted coping mechanism.

All those feelings of being a fraud and not being good enough or deserving of the position I was in re-emerged. I was worried about money, I was worried about my job, I was worried about losing my home and my car just as my brother in law had.

It lead to a lot of suicidal ideation. Especially knowing that my company’s death benefit would at least secure those money worries for my wife. I read through the terms and conditions several times to make sure that there wasn’t a clause that would prevent a pay out in the event of suicide. There wasn’t one.

With the help of anti-depressants and counselling, I managed to muddle through but the closer I got to a return to work, the more the anxiety built up again. Would this ever go away? Would I one day get back to being the enthusiastic one, always contributing in meetings and suggesting ideas or was this it? Had I burnt out forever?

Work will never be what it once was. The office is open again but it’s a hotdesking situation and whenever I’ve been in the office it has been mostly empty. I don’t get the social interaction and the pair working anymore, it’s not the same using video call technology. When I’m on my own I’m not on my own, I’ve got that little assassin sat on my shoulder that says you’re not good enough, that you can’t do this, that you don’t deserve what you have and that soon it will be taken away from you.

It’s exhausting, a feeling of drowning and that the more you kick against the tide, the more water you take onboard.

Fast forward to the winter of 2022 and I found myself unable to cope again for a third time. I had managed to temporarily rebuild up my confidence. I was learning again, things weren’t perfect at work but I was taking ownership of certain parts of the work domain but still the panic started to seep in again. I once again felt lost, inadequate and helpless.

I can’t quite explain why I feel so low in confidence and the self-anger has returned with a vengeance. Some of my colleagues are from Kyiv. Some have had to flee their home country to safety in neighbouring countries but these guys aren’t complaining. They’re getting on with it and here I am, once again falling apart for no particular reason.

Hyper inflation, high fuel and energy prices haven’t helped but other people are in far worse situations than I am. I can’t seem to shake these feelings of inadequacy and anxiety about work. My absence puts undo additional pressure on the rest of them and it’s not fair.

I feel this time I’ve lost the love for what once gave me a sense of purpose, and a man without purpose is of no value to anyone.

A change of scene and a new job may be the answer but the process is gruelling and I’m not sure I have the energy left for such a challenge right now. I wouldn’t employ me on current performance. I’m in a position where I’m drowning in debt even with my current salary and cannot afford a reduction but simultaneously feel undeserving and inadequate for a senior position with the pressure and expectations that come with such a role.

What happens if I move on to discover that my feelings remain the same and the spark plugs just won’t fire up? The first few months in a new job can be exhausting anyway but I find myself unable to sleep properly at night with all these thoughts racing through my head and my energy is just none existent.

I used to be the Swan that looked graceful on the surface, whist flapping under the line of the water but it’s getting harder and harder to hold that bill above the water. The legs aren’t paddling anymore and it’s just the breeze of the wind moving me across the water now.

The agnostic case for faith

As a large brained mammal, human beings have the capacity to think beyond the instinct driven survival mechanism that is still an important part of how our brains operate. This capacity has led to the ability to create complex tools modelled on the natural world around us and the ability to inquisitively ponder how and why we are here as well as rumination over life beyond our own existence.

Every civilization has created ways to codify that meaning of life in the forms of philosophy and theologies, with different theologies taking centre stage with the passing of and expansion of such civilisations.

The secularisation of modernity

In my lifetime the anglosphere has moved from a society underpinned by theological societies to more secular systems of belief although I’m starting to observe more social commentators questioning the wisdom behind the degradation of Abrahamic belief systems in the western world.

I noticed in the mid-2010s that a form of pious atheism was taking hold. Instead of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, new secular beliefs in socialism and other similar ideological beliefs were taking over and despite being agnostic, I could see that the vacuum left by organised religion was being replaced by nouveau religions that lacked some of the underpinning positive values that religious faiths had in common.

“Religion causes war?”

Some atheists would make arguments such as “if there were no religions, there would be no wars”. As someone with a fascination for history, I knew that this was a fallacious argument. You need only look at the Second World War with Mussolini’s fascist national socialism and Hitler’s racial national socialism, both very secular of mindset, squaring up against the Soviet Union’s class based socialism as well as non-secular states such as the Christian underpinned United Kingdom and the United States.

Conflict between human colonies predates modern religion. War has always been a competition for resources, of course there have been wars fought under the justification of religion but if you peek beneath the thin veneer of religious intolerance lies a deeper truth about not just human beings but the nature of survival itself.

Indeed, the most tyrannical regimes known to modern man have been secular affairs. There is no viable justification for non-theists to claim moral supremacy in terms of capacity for harm to other human beings.

“I don’t believe in anything?”

Another exception I have taken to atheist claims is that there identity is based on an absence of belief. Some of those same atheists that have claimed that they do not believe in something, have interests in phenomena such as astrology, alien life forms or the supernatural.

My conclusion that believing in things for which we do not have evidence is very much part of the human experience. We can acknowledge the things that we believe without reason or we can pretend that our beliefs are based on some special knowledge that only those that share our views have critical access to, however, in my view that in of itself is a denial of the large brained mammal that we are.

The value of faith

Whether or not you believe in an omniscient deity or not, I think there is a good argument for the value of having such a belief system that can be beneficial to those that hold that faith.

Even if it is simply a placebo effect, we can note that those with faith are more likely to recover from serious injuries rather than dissolve into a nihilistic abyss of hopelessness.

Perhaps the moral messages codified by religious texts can be beneficial in terms of the way religious followers might sometimes treat each other better? Perhaps those faiths can give meaning to events that would otherwise seem random and chaotic?

Perhaps religion can provide comfort to those that are bereaved? I remember going to the funeral service of a friend that sadly passed long before his time was due and how difficult it was to console his family with words of comfort without that common framework of hope for something beyond decaying of the flesh.

Despite my own agnosticism,, at the passing of a beloved aunty, their catholic faith and belief in a reconciliation of loved ones passed was still a comfort.

The difference between agnosticism and atheism

I should probably explain what I mean by agnosticism as it can be easily confused as a synonym for atheism when in actuality it is different.

Agnosticism is the belief that “human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist.”

My spin on it is that I believe the existence of a literal deity is of low probability but it is not something that science can discount conclusively.

How would one prove the existence of a mythical creature sure as the Loch Ness monster? Well, by finding said creature. How do you disprove the existence of the creature? You would need to drain the Loch, which would upset quite a lot of Scottish people. It is easier to prove the existence of something than the lack of existence. You only need to find something once then you can stop looking, disproving something that is meant to be omniscient and omnipresent is nigh on impossible.

That’s not to say that I believe that Nessie is in the water, or that God exists, but it is beyond our capacity to disprove something that represents that which is unknown. I’m starting to feel a little Donald Rumsfeld coming on with his famous speech.

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.
Donald Rumsfeld, 2002

Atheism is different, it is a belief that deities do not exist.

I know some atheists will reject this definition because I’ve called it a belief and they believe that it is the absence of a belief but I’ve already explained why I believe that the notion of a lack of belief is untenable.

Pascals Wager

Then there’s the Pascal’s wager argument. If I believe in a deity and I am wrong, I have lost nothing. I may have benefited from comfort and a foundation to base my life around during my lifetime. If I believe in such a deity and I am correct, I have gained the fruits such faith promised.

If I have no such faith, there is no winning position, the prize for being correct is decay. Perhaps you could say that I might utilised more of my life on things that matter to me, but I’m not sure hedonism is a virtue I’d aspire to.

Can you control what you believe?

There is certainly a case for the value of theism. However, despite being able to recognise the benefits of such beliefs, that does not mean that it is possible to believe something that you do not believe.

People do change their minds, particularly when exposed to new information but I am slightly sceptical about the convenience of changing of beliefs as a way to deal with cognitive dissonance or discomfort.

Moral superiority?

Additionally, whilst I see the benefits of faith and have disdain for those that would mock another person for having such beliefs, I also disagree that theists have moral superiority either. If you only treat other human beings empathetically and with compassion out of fear of a punishment, is that really morality at all? Nobody has a monopoly on kindness, and in fact, the message of redemption and forgiveness can be used as a get out of hell free card after committing atrocities against another person.

No human being is perfect and I see human being very much in terms of complex input-output machines. Our beliefs are the culmination of both our experiences and our biology. In fact, it’s a bi-directional feedback system with our environmental decisions (sexual selection for example) feeding back into our biology and our biology feeding into our environment (natural selection). I see the human brain as a complex computer with hormones and electrical circuitry that we have learned to mimic. We have become our own Gods of silicon children.

What is God?

If you ask me if God exists, I would tell you yes, but if you ask me what God is, my response would be different to a theist. I see God as a kind of metaphor to explain the things which we do not understand, an acknowledgement of the incompleteness of our knowledge and scientific capability. I wonder whether the stories contained within the great religious books of time were meant to be read with the understanding that they are a combination of historical counts of the latter days of the Roman Empire as well as stories passed on from one generation to the other that are not meant to be taken as literal but as a representation of what man has learnt from existence. Story telling is a powerful and uniquely human trait.

The questions that vex me around death and Christian faith

When I think about the consequences in terms of my beliefs without theism, it does lead me to some uncomfortable taboo questions about death.

If I take the Christian faith of my parents and more specifically the belief in heaven and a reunification of loved ones based on a common acceptance of the forgiveness of Jesus, what is meant to happen should they pass with faith and I pass without meeting the necessary entry requirements for such a utopia?

Are they expected to be happily reunited with only a selection of those whom they have lost? Is the permanent loss of a closed loved one not a punishment for them? Do I get a pass on the basis of their acceptance? Is there a version of whatever my soul is meant to be that they get to keep, and another version of me made to suffer for not signing on the dotted lines?

Is forgiveness of sins really forgiveness if it comes with acceptance criteria? What of those that have committed heinous acts in their lifetime but have signed on the dotted line? Will they live in harmony in this utopia? I simply can’t find a logical way to square the complexities in a satisfying way.

Nihilism isn’t the answer

My own belief that when life expires, it expires is no more satisfying. Given that there has been life of earth for a length of time I cannot even conceive of, and the number of homo-sapiens that have lived and died over that course of time, it makes a single life, even a great one that lives on through stories passed from one generation to the next, somewhat meaningless.

Against the entirety of time, does it really matter if a person lives for one year or one hundred years? It’s still insignificant, meaningless and forgotten. How can I reach a conclusion that life has value and that suffering should be endured when it is so fleeting? Without meaning, what is the point? Upon what rock can I cast an anchor to sure me against the turbulent waves? How does one escape the clutches of nihilism if one cannot in intelligent conscience lay a path that makes sense of the senseless? I can neither compel my mind to believe in a theologically driven raison d’être, nor can I escape the futility of a life without meaning.

Perhaps this is the depression talking or perhaps the depression is the result of the crisis of meaning. I yearn for a simpler existence without the intellect driving the unquenchable thirst for comprehending the world around me. Ignorance, is indeed blissful. Or if not that intelligence beyond the meagre rations slopped out in my bowl at the canteen of life leaving me entirely unsated.

The curious case of ones own mortality

Alas, I’m left to ponder my own mortality and the fact that one day I will no longer exist, as will all living things. I’ve only ever known existence. It’s a very strange thought that one day you will not exist. Maybe some of your atoms will become part of another sentient creature but the thoughts flying across the synapses of your neural highway will be no more. Every thought, every feeling, every achievement, every memory – gone forever except in the passivity of second hand recall in the minds of those that remembered you, until the process completes again and there is nothing let but the carbon building blocks that make up all life on earth.

I am reminded of the 2017 film, A ghost story. Perhaps it is in art that we can expand our lifetimes beyond our particular grain of human experience? Perhaps these words will be the only thing left behind when the inevitable process of decay occurs? Or perhaps more likely, I won’t even be yesterday’s chip paper. I became as nothing, I will leave as nothing. No children to pass on my DNA in the relay of life, the line stops here and perhaps that is a good thing?

British Psychological Society guidelines for psychological interventions to help male adults

The workings of our minds has always fascinated me, why do we do the things we do? How does the biological and the psychological interact?

Naturally, I have a particular interest in male psychology, especially around mental health and therapy but I have been very dissatisfied with the assumptions and approaches that have become predominant in the field for some time. Too much of the messaging is ideologically driven rather than evidence based.

If men are depressed, that must be something to do with “the patriarchy” or “toxic masculinity”. If only men cried a little more, and talked about their feelings, all the problems would magically disappear and they’d stop killing themselves. The fact that the less stoic society has become, and the freer men have been to express their emotions, the higher the suicide rate has gone just seems like an inconvenient fly in the ointment for this kind of world view.

In this murky sea of anti-masculine sentiment there has been a few beacons of hope that some psychologists are actually approaching the problem without the usual gaslighting and victim blaming of men. For example, reading “The way men heal” by Tom Golden was a real eye opener for me. As was Warren Farrell’s seminal work, “The myth of male power“. Closer to home in the UK, I’ve been keeping an eye out on the excellent work by John Barry and Martin Seager at the Centre for Male Psychology.

They have recently published a new set of guidelines for practitioners for helping men in terms of psychological intervention and it is everything I hoped it would be. You can read the full guide (it’s not actually a long read at just 6 pages) here.

I would like to highlight a few key parts

“Most counselling and therapy approaches are designed around the traditional assumption that direct emotional exploration and verbal expression within a personal face to face therapeutic space are essential conditions for psychological change and improvement. This general assumption within the culture of ‘talking therapies’ is, arguably, more suited to how women in general deal with their problems than how men in general do (Morison et al., 2014).”

This ties in very well with my experience of therapy. I’m not saying that this is not useful, for some people this works well, but for others, the face to face, eyeball to eyeball experience can feel uncomfortable.

I could never quite put my finger on why that was until I read Tom Golden’s book. If you think about how men bond, it tends to be shoulder to shoulder, not face to face. What does it mean when another man squares up to you and looks you directly into the eye? It means conflict.

I’ve spoken recently about how I’ve found Andy’s Man Club, a peer to peer support group far more useful than traditional therapy and guess what, the groups are arranged in a circle, it’s not eye to eye, it’s shoulder to shoulder.

“Men seek therapeutic help significantly less often than women do (Addis & Mahalik, 2003), but this has been attributed primarily to characteristics or deficits in men (e.g. stubbornness, stoicism) themselves rather than to characteristics or limitations of the therapy models and services.”

“Talking therapies should not be the only option, although men can and do talk in the right
setting. Action-oriented and community approaches should also be considered, including
due consideration of culturally appropriate settings.”

“Group and community approaches where men can identify with others like themselves may
encourage rather than deter help-seeking.”

“Problem-solving and action-oriented approaches will have, on average, greater
appeal for men.”

Again, I couldn’t agree more. We always here people talking about why men engage less with help and always come to the conclusion that the problem is men. We never ask whether it is the environment we provide for therapeutic intervention that could be part of the problem.

It’s not realistic to expect male nature to bend towards the kind of environments that we are used to providing, it’s much more positive to consider how we could provide additional services that work for men on men’s own terms. This could be peer to peer support groups like AMC where men feel more at ease talking, or it could be men’s sheds or team sports, writing clubs, music clubs etc etc.

The focus on an activity can be very therapeutic, it doesn’t have to be about talking about feelings. Men will open up when they’re ready and when they’re in an environment that makes them feel comfortable.

I remember attending the Conferences on Male Psychology in 2017 and one of the speakers was Kevin Wright, a psychologist that dealt with patients with post traumatic stress disorder, often ex-servicemen. His trick was that instead of asking the men about how they felt, he asked them to tell him their stories.

When he asked about their feelings, often he would get blank responses but by telling their stories they found it much easier to verbalise, and the feelings flowed with the stories. Another trick in his arsenal was to get men to write a letter, maybe to a colleague who had died or to a partner. The purpose was not for the letter to ever be sent but for many men (and women), it’s easier to write about these things rather than talk about them. I’ve always been in that camp and I use this blog as a form of self help therapy for exactly this reason.

“Therapy for men and boys, as for any demographic, should be based on empathy and
respect for the identity of the client within the human spectrum. Therapy models that
take a positive and empathic view of masculinity are likely to be more attractive and more
effective for male clients than therapy models that take the critical stance that masculinity
itself requires reform and change. Of course, ‘masculinity’ in this context should not be
defined narrowly or rigidly, and the client’s own experience must be paramount, as with
all therapy.”

This is the really worrying issue for me about the state of modern therapeutic interventions. The industry has been completely hijacked by an extremely narrow perspective of male psychology that sees useful characteristics like stoicism and competitiveness (they call it aggression) as “the problem”. Someone starting from that perspective is never going to be able to offer genuine empathy to a male client. Worse than just not helping, they may actually make men feel even more lost and misunderstood.

Don’t believe me that this is the case? Take a look at the American Psychological Associations Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Men and Boys. It completely denies that any biological differences exist between men and women, therefore coming to the conclusion that masculinity itself is a social construct. In reality this is not a guide for treating men and boys, it’s a guide to intersectional feminism and is completely inadequate to support the adoption of therapeutic support for men.

“There are gender differences in the presentation of mental health problems. Taking depression, perhaps the most common diagnosis, as the primary example, there is strong evidence that men are more likely than women to express depressed mood indirectly through ‘acting out’ (e.g. aggression, risk-taking, alcohol or substance abuse) than through direct verbal means (Whitley, 2021). Using traditional clinical measures, men appear to have lower rates of depression, but this could be because they do not self-report their feelings in the same way.”

On occasions when I’ve brought up the issue of suicide, and particularly the number of men committing suicide, it often triggers a defensive reflex argument of “yes, but women try to kill themselves more” or “women self harm more” or “more women get depression”.

That argument really annoys me because it sees mental health issues as a competition or zero sum game where if we acknowledge men’s suffering, we’re taking something away from the recognition of women’s suffering.

It doesn’t have to be like that. I am always very careful to talk about “suicide” rather than “male suicide” because to me it does not matter, what chromosomes the person taking their own life has, every life is precious and suicide ripples right through the pond. One of the biggest indicators for suicide is having experience of suicide in your social circles.

One of my uncles committed suicide and I also lost a female friend to suicide in 2018 and both these events have had an impact on my life. It is important to understand some of the psychological differences between men and women on aggregate because the events that are more likely to trigger suicide and the best course of action for prevention can be different. Having said that, I think women too are also let down by the one size fits all approach for clinical intervention. I would love to see more peer to peer support groups for ladies too.

That’s a slight side rant, but in terms of the “more women have depression” or “more women self harm” or “more women attempt suicide” arguments, I think there is a flaw in that reasoning. How do we know when someone has self harmed, attempted suicide or has depression? We know when they present to a clinician. We also know that men are less likely to do that so in reality we have no idea how many men and women out there are struggling with depression and not presenting and when men present with anger or addiction, it can often mask the underlying cause so we treat it as an addiction instead of depression.

This is similar to the way that autism in women is under-diagnosed because women tend to be better at masking the symptoms. We need to get better at recognising that men and women will often present differently with the same underlying conditions so we can better treat the hidden problems behind the facades presented.

“Suicide risk is on average significantly higher in men. This means that psychological practitioners when assessing and formulating, need to be mindful of the potential and archetypal gender specific issues underlying these differences which may include: (a) relationship break-up (b) family breakdown and loss of access to children (c) loss of employment or the financial capacity to provide for/protect the family (d) shame about failures and loss of capacity to control events or provide for loved ones. In assessing suicide risk in men, it is important for psychological practitioners to look beyond the talk and verbal expression of the male client where shame might prevent a full disclosure of the extent of despair.”

I think this paragraph is the most crucial piece of advise for any mental health professional or doctor. If we want to prevent suicide, we need to recognise that relationship break-up, separation from children, loss of employment, debt or a sense of a loss of purpose are major risk factors for suicide with men and we need to make sure we sign post men to the right kind of services and support groups whenever these risk factors are identified.

Maybe we should be giving divorce solicitors cards for groups like Andy’s Mans Club? Maybe we should be reaching out to employers and stressing the importance of these factors and train mentors on how to provide mental health first aid? It shouldn’t be left down to occupational health, HR departments, or token employee assistance hotlines. We need to treat it the same way we do with first aiders and fire wardens.

“Some research suggests that in coping with distress, although women on average want to talk about their feelings, men on average would prefer to ‘fix the problem’ (Holloway et al., 2018). Men may prefer an active problem-focused approach where they are given specific information about strategies to improve mental health (Sagar-Ouriaghli et al., 2019). Men are more likely to be on the autistic spectrum and more likely to have attention deficit issues, both of which will impact communication (Chheda-Varma, 2019; van Wijngaarden-Cremers, 2019) This means that psychologists and psychological practitioners must be prepared to step outside the box in finding ways of attracting men into settings and approaches that might be good for their mental health. If talking therapies are ‘not the only fruit’, then traditional clinical interviews are not the only way of assessing mental health needs. Practitioner psychologists can help lead the way in using community approaches rather than traditional clinical settings to reach out to men who may be vulnerable, rather than waiting for them to seek help. This could involve connecting with men in places where they might feel less exposed, safer, more at home and more willing to talk.

Examples of such community settings where less formal assessments and gateways to help can be achieved are: Men’s Sheds, barbers/hairdressers, sports clubs, men’s support groups, fathers’ support groups, employment support groups, male-friendly helplines. There is some evidence that although most clients prefer one-to-one therapy, men like working in groups more than women do (Kiselica & Englar-Carlson, 2010; Liddon et al., 2019) and that male-only groups might work better for men than mixed-sex groups (Seager & Thümmel, 2009). These community approaches will often take an action-orientated approach, where men will engage in sports (Abotsie et al., 2020) or work together on a project (Morgan et al., 2007).”

You can’t always fix people’s problems but you can help equip people with finding practical steps they can take so that they don’t feel hopeless and helpless and that there is a path out of the current situation. It’s very important for men and women to feel useful and that they have a purpose in life and it can be very disorientating when something happens that makes them feel inadequate.

Talking therapies are one tool we have in the toolkit and for some men and women, they will help, but we need other tools too.

Men, on average, are less comfortable in clinical settings and we need to find ways to take the support out into the community. Andy’s Man Club does an excellent job with this using facilities like football stadiums that are already familiar and comfortable for men.

There’s nothing complicated in this set of guidelines and there are no magic bullets when it comes to mental health issues. The current environment makes for challenging times in terms of keeping up with demand and I think community led groups following these guidelines can play a critical role.

There will always be men and women that decide that life is not worth living and I think those numbers will always be higher amongst men because of the sex differences in terms of testosterone and it’s role in risk taking behaviour, but I would like to see less ripples in that pond, more lives saved and better services to support people suffering from mental health problems.

We can start by listening to men, even if the way they are communicating is not the way we would expect them to communicate. Empathy and compassion is key.

If you are interested in Male Psychology, I would also highly recommend the The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. You can find the details here. It is expensive but Palgrave often have it on sale if you look out for offers.

Why Andy’s Man Club works for me and may work for you too

The other day I came across this post on facebook asking about “why AMC works for you” and it’s something I really thought deserved some deep thought. This is why I think AMC has helped me, and if you’re a bloke in the UK, it may be able to help you too.

Accessibility

There is no long waiting list to join AMC. It’s completely free and available to any man that wants to come along over the age of 18. It’s there every Monday, except Bank Holidays 7pm until 9pm.

It doesn’t matter if you turn up every week or just when you feel like you want a chat, the doors are always open and you will be greeted by very friendly facilitators who know how daunting it can be to first walk through those doors.

You can’t get that on the NHS. There’s often a long waiting list to access mental health services and your sessions are limited but AMC is different.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t use those services as well but for me personally, I get far more out of the peer to peer format of AMC than I have from traditional therapy but everyone is different!

Is AMC only there for guys with big problems?

It doesn’t matter whether you want to talk about how you stubbed your toe on a table, burnt your toast or lost your keys that morning or whether it’s something really big like bereavement of a loved one, an addiction or breakdown of a marriage. If it matters to you, it matters.

Sometimes when I attend I’m inspired by the courage of the other guys that join us, it really puts my own problems into perspective but nobody is judging you. Nobody is comparing, we’re just a peer to peer group of other guys providing a safe environment for you to get whatever it is you want to talk about off your chest, even if that’s nothing at all and you just want to come along and listen, that’s absolutely fine too. There is no compulsion to talk, no problem too small, every voice matters!

Privacy

We don’t have a whole bunch of complicated rules at AMC but the one important thing we always say at the beginning of each meeting is that what is said in AMC stays in AMC (a bit like fight club but without the violence).

We need to provide an environment that is safe for people to talk, often about very difficult personal problems so it’s crucially important that privacy is respected at all times. AMC won’t ask you to fill out a contact form with all your details. You just turn up on the night and you can have the confidence that whatever you say won’t be repeated elsewhere.

There are a few topics we don’t talk about. We don’t talk about what medication is right for you, please talk to a medical professional about these kind of questions because we’re not experts. We don’t talk about politics or religion because these issues can be divisive and AMC is a supportive environment, however you can talk about how things are affecting you.

“Men don’t talk”

When men’s mental health issues are brought up in the public discourse, I often hear about how men don’t talk and it’s always been a bit of a bugbear of mine. I know people mean well but to me, it sometimes comes across as a stick to beat men with as in if only you men would talk about your feelings the way ladies do, maybe you would have better mental health.

To me that’s just not helpful. It’s asking the wrong question. It shouldn’t be why don’t men talk but how do we create environments that make men feel comfortable so that they can open up.

Sometimes it can be really hard to talk about these issues to friends or family because you don’t want to be a burden. You might be the type of guy that other people come to with their problems so you need to be strong for them.

AMC recognises this. Every week, thousands of men from all different walks of life, different ages and different locations across the country come together and they do open up and talk. AMCs moto is a positive one, “it’s ok to talk”.

The clubs are often in locations that men already feel comfortable like football grounds, but don’t worry, everyone is welcome, no matter what your thing is.

It’s non judgemental, it’s supportive. Complete strangers become friends and we look out for each other. There have been times where guys can’t get to a meeting because of transport issues and another member of the group has picked them up. Sometimes we socialise, whether it’s crazy golf or a pub quiz or just a couple of guys meeting for a coffee. It’s hard to express how positive and compassionate the environment is so I can only suggest people try it for themselves.

What should I expect?

I first attended AMC after seeing a poster shared on facebook. It was a Monday afternoon, I was in a bad place mentally and just thought I had nothing else to lose and I think the fact that I didn’t have long to think about it helped.

I parked up and sat in my car for what seemed like an age.. I could see a few guys in AMC hoodies with the big ok emoji sign on the back and I just didn’t know what to expect.

Was this for me? I don’t really like talking, not about personal things anyway.

I nervously approached the guys in AMC hoodies and they were very friendly and made me feel at ease. I went in and sat down. The seats were arranged in an oval and I deliberately took a seat not too close to anyone else.

I went in with a sense of fear and trepidation. I walked out feeling like someone had just taken the weight of the world off my shoulders. It was a powerful experience. I couldn’t make it every week but I noticed that the weeks I couldn’t come that I missed it, I always felt better when I came and that is not just my story, at the start of each session everyone introduces themselves and why they are here and for so many of us it’s just become part of our routine. Monday night is AMC night and we look forward to it.

If you’re sat there at home and thinking about whether AMC is for you, my suggestion would be just go and give it a try. It might not suit everyone, and if you don’t like it there’s no obligation to go again but so many of us started with the exact same kind of feelings about it, you’ve got nothing to lose in giving it a shot.

The format revolves around five simple questions:

How has your week been – for the life of me I can never remember what’s happened in the last week even though I know the question is coming
Name a positive from the last week. I found this quite hard at first, I tended to focus on the negatives but this question actually helped me reframe things in my head. There is always something positive, even if it’s just I made it through the week and am sat here at AMC now
Anything to get off your mind. It doesn’t matter what it is, this is your time to talk. When you have the ball (yes, we pass a ball round), it’s your time to talk and nobody will interrupt you or tell you what you should do. We’re here to listen, not judge. After you’ve finished sometimes other members will share encouragement or share their similar experiences. It’s amazing how often people can relate to what you’re talking about, it makes you feel less like you’re the only person with that problem.

The last two questions change every week, they’re normally a bit less serious like “if you were a film character, what character would you be and why”.

It’s that simple, grab a free brew (not alcohol) and a biscuit, introduce yourself, five questions. Make friends and share the weight of the load on your shoulders. No judgement. No forms. No special handshakes or rituals. It’s ok to talk and it’s ok to just listen if you don’t want to talk too!

If you want to give it a try and you’re in the UK, find your nearest group here – https://andysmanclub.co.uk/find-your-nearest-group/

The things that people say

Yesterday something peculiar happened to me. It all started off quite jovial. The night before, a couple of friends and I from Andy’s Man Club participated in a local pub quiz. It’s something we’ve been doing every week for a couple of months now, it’s a nice social activity, the only social activity I have on a regular basis and since I’ve been doing it, it has helped lift my mood and give me something different to concentrate on than the misery of super morbid obesity, depression, anxiety and existential angst.

Surprisingly, we actually managed to finish top for the first time this week. We’ve finished second a couple of times but there are a couple of regular teams that participate in lots of pub quizzes that are much better at it than us, but it was a low scoring night and we got a bit of luck.

The prize was a certificate and a voucher that could be spent at the pub but it expired in 6 days so we couldn’t use it at the following weeks quiz so we decided we would come down and have a meal there the next day (Monday) before our Andy’s Man Club group.

So, yesterday we were enjoying our meal and catching up when a lady walked in the pub, carrying a carrier bag in one hand and went to the area where the sauces were kept, next to our table. She picked up a bottle of ketchup and pointed out it was empty and put it on our table. I got the impression that she was lonely and possibly had learning difficulties. I don’t mean that in an unkind way but it was unusual behaviour.

She then sat down on the table next to us and was listening to our conversation as if she wanted to get involved and make friends. She was at this time with a man who joined here, clearly someone she knew.

It was towards the end of the meal, we finished and paid, then went outside. By this time the weather had taken a turn and it was raining. The other two lads were smoking so I stood and chatted with them under the shelter outside. The woman came out and approached us again, asking one of my friends if they had a spare cigarette, and he politely declined, she then walked further into the car park.

I heard her mumble something about “fatties” but I didn’t hear the whole thing, I was chatting with my mates. Then she began talking louder, directed at me asking “how much do you weigh” and “how many stones”. It was not like this lady was on the thin side herself. I just ignored her, but she kept repeating herself, not taking the hint that I was not interested in engaging in conversation with her.

When I was a young boy, I was very shy and sensitive. You would probably describe me as a “mummy’s boy” but having had a weight problem almost my entire life, I grew a thicker skin. I had to, it was the only way to survive. I’m used to street harassment. I’m used to people shouting insults out of vans as they go past. I’m used to people in fire stations calling me names as I walk past, ironically, on a walk to boots to get myself weighed following another week of trying to lose weight. I wrote another article about how I used to dye my hair bright colours as a deflection technique, as I’d rather people stare at me because of my hair than my body.

I’m not trying to sound like a victim or make you feel sorry for me. It’s just the reality of being super morbidly obese, you stand out and the majority of people will treat you with respect, but others won’t. It’s not pleasant but often those people have got their own insecurities too.

I try not to let it get to me. Sometimes it does, for example when it comes from young children because it’s not malicious, they’re just saying what they see. It hurt a lot when it came from my own nephew but there’s a lot of water under the bridge and I love him to pieces, he is a fantastic young man.

There was a time when a prostitute picked me out as a potential customer when I was at a private work party, I didn’t realise what she was or what she was trying to do at the time, but our HR lady protected me but the thought that she singled me out, probably because of my size and the thought I might be desperate, made me feel very icky inside.

The truth is though, nobody can hurt me based on my weight anywhere even close to the way I feel about it myself. Believe me, when your head is full of thoughts of how many men it would take to carry the weight of your coffin, or how big that coffin would need to be or how they’d need to send you to a special zoo incinerator to have you cremated, there is absolutely nothing more painful than those thoughts. “You fat bastard” doesn’t really cut it.

Actually, the experience yesterday wasn’t a negative one at all. I put it down to her having her own mental health issues and it was like water off a ducks back but what made this such a positive thing for me was that my friends got really angry with her and fought my corner. I don’t think that has ever happened before, not because people are bad, but most of the time the comments come when you’re on your own. It was such a nice feeling that these guys had my back and that it actually upset them more than it did me.

After going to the AMC group, we went back to the pub for a bit and had some really good, honest personal conversations and it was really nice. It’s difficult to be open and honest because it puts you in a vulnerable position. I think to an extent we all wear these masks, like an exoskeleton to protect the mushy fleshy bits inside that are easily damaged but sharing that load, learning to listen and be compassionate and empathetic and share the truth that sometimes life is really hard is such a great thing. It takes some of that weight off your shoulders and makes you realise that however much it feels like you’re the only one going through this stuff, you’re actually not alone and have more in common than people than you think.

Andy’s Man Club has been a really positive influence on my life. I still have ups and downs and the downs can sometimes feel inescapable, terminal even. I will always have mental health issues and I will always be fighting a battle against food addiction but I know now I’m not on that journey alone and that there are people out there that understand me and willing to share this imperfect experience we call life together.

Checking My Privilege

Those that know me well know I absolutely detest the idea of “privilege” as it is used in social justice circles. I hate it because it’s divisive, it reduces human beings down to some kind of hierarchy of victimhood and it doesn’t reflect the reality of life, that actually nobody has an easy life.

It’s often used in a way to talk about race or sex, assuming that someone with white skin automatically has an easier life than someone with darker skin or assuming that men automatically have easier lives than women.

Fighting fire with fire doesn’t work

It’s just another form of discrimination and I don’t think you can tackle genuine issues of discrimination by replacing it with more discrimination. I would rather think of people as humans and listen to each individuals own stories, sharing and trying to understand each other as you would be surprised how much people have in common with each other.

Each person has their own blend of experiences, some good and some bad. I agree that some get shorter straws than others in life, I’m not going to pretend that we’re all equal or that equality is even possible or desirable. Equal rights, yes, equal outcomes can only be achieved through tyranny and I’m not a fan of tyranny, no matter how good the intent behind it is.

A little humility goes a long way

Anyway, I want to talk about the times in my life where things could have been very different. I think we should be humble and grateful for the things we do have in life rather than try to compare ourselves against what we assume everyone else has.

Born on a fluffy cloud

Lets start with the fact I was born in a wealthy country, at a time where medicine and science were very advanced. Just surviving childhood alone wasn’t the norm in history. There has not been a great plague, there has not been large scale famine or war on home soil during my lifetime. Sometimes I think that life has almost been too easy for millennials like me so we create our own problems in place of existential threat.

I was born into a family that wanted me. My mum was told she was unlikely to be able to have kids after a previous ectopic pregnancy meant she lost one of her fallopian tubes. I was their miracle. My dad was always part of my life. That makes a huge difference. Both my parents worked, both were nurses. We were not wealthy, sometimes my mum would work a day shift in a nursing home then a night shift as a paediatric infectious diseases nursing sister, exhausting herself just so that we could have a better childhood than she had.

There were piles of presents at Christmas, we had a car, we had holidays in the UK, not every year but most years.

My siblings and I were all born prematurely but we were healthy. Asthma, skin conditions and allergies aside. It’s easy to take these things for granted but some people are not so lucky.

I was also fortunate to be born with a natural inquisitiveness about life and intellect. I’m far from high in the intelligence stakes, but my brain has served me well at times and opened doors that might not be open to everyone. There are also doors that would never be open to me, like sports, despite my love for football.

Play your cards right

Life is about playing the best cards you are given to the fullest. You don’t get to choose those cards but there is no point whining about how unfair life is, just do your best. That’s all you can ask of yourself.

Teenage plight

I had a very tough time with depression and bullying through my teenage years. Weight was a problem from an early age, I was only 5 years old when I was on my first diet. Unfortunately that is a familial trait. I’m not using that as an excuse. It’s still up to me to do something about it, nobody else can fix that for me. Some would say that it’s a privilege to be able to be obese, not poor enough to physically starve to death.

When I was 16, I was fortunate enough that my parents allowed me to have cable TV in my bedroom. It was the beginning of the digital age. I found a service where you could play games and interact with a community, buying virtual flowers, sharing poetry and stories to a communal library.

Discovering the opposite sex

I used that outlet to express myself and suddenly I was getting messages from the opposite sex. I was a very shy kid in person and had it not been for this kind of service opening up a new world to me, I probably would have become what people unkindly call an “incel”, a man that doesn’t have the qualities nor confidence to attract a partner, but someone that yearns to be understood and have that human experience of not only being loved, but more important for men, having someone to give their love to.

I learned a lot about women from that site. I went through one relationship that didn’t work when it crossed over from the fantasy of the online world to real life but then I met a second girl that completely took my heart.

I was 17 things weren’t great at home and I yearned for my own space, a place for my head. I quit my A-levels due to depression, I had no direction, I felt lost. I went to the local social housing office and within months was offered my own flat.

A young lad today would not even be allowed to apply, the government changed the rules and put a minimum age requirement on social housing. I was also able to get Incapacity benefit and housing benefit to support me through that dark period that I wouldn’t qualify for today and even if they were, there is so little social housing now and such a high demand for it that I would have been waiting years. Timing is everything.

I lost my virginity to that girl. I had something to live for. My aunty arranged a temporary job for me, it was just filing and stuffing envelopes but it started to trigger my interest in life again.

Things started to go down hill after a while with the girl. We used to call each other everyday and talked for hours but then I started to sense distance and I felt very lonely and fearful of losing her.

Self harm

I started drinking to self harm. I was never interested in drink before but I went from being teetotal to drinking a 70cl bottle of Smirnoff Export vodka, hoping I’d knock myself unconscious. I’d mix it with taking small overdoses of painkillers, not enough to kill but as a way to release the pain I was feeling inside. I used to press blades against my skin but for some reason I just couldn’t do it, which made me angry at myself for being such a coward.

One day I ended up taking an overdose of aspirin at work, 38 tablets and ended up passing out. I don’t think it was the tablets that did it but the stress.

I ended up in hospital, being forced to swallow liquid charcoal. Afterwards it felt like a relief, like all the pressure building up inside me had popped. I was in shock, it was almost an out of body experience but it was over.

If I had taken that overdose at home or if I had chosen another method like hanging, that might have been where the story ended. Maybe I didn’t really want to die. Maybe I just wanted the pain to go away but it could easily have ended differently.

Shutter island

I spent two weeks under section in hospital. It was an awful experience. I sat in what felt like a cell with the door open and a member of staff sat in staring at me at all times with the fluorescent lights shining. How the hell they expected me to sleep in that situation is beyond me. I got angry. I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine and took my chair out of my cell and sat next to them and stared at them, see how that made them feel.

It was very hard to tell the difference between the patients and staff in that place, other than the ones that would howl like hyenas. I was depressed but I wasn’t crazy and this was no place for an 18 year old. The staff were quite discouraging when I told them I wanted to get back to work. They would tell me work wouldn’t take me back. It just made me more angry.

Anger management

Anger isn’t a bad thing, it depends how you use it. It made me determined to prove them wrong. I was back in work within a few days of being released. I then found out that my girlfriend had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a form of blood cancer and I felt quite guilty. I didn’t know at the time but when I look back at dates now, it turns out she was also cheating on me with another partner. I don’t blame her, it just wasn’t ever going to work out between us. I was very sensitive, she was very young. I will always be grateful for that first relationship, you never forget your first love but it led to better things for both of us.

Fate?

If it wasn’t for that break up, I’d never have met my wife. She was my agony aunt on that same site I met my previous two girlfriends on. It was nearly a relationship that ended before it begun. Cable & wireless shut down the site very suddenly due to a lot of grooming that was happening on there. Luckily we had exchanged email addresses by then. If it happened sooner, we would have had no way to contact each other.

20 years later and my wife and I are still together. Life has not been easy, it never is, but we’ve been through it all together. How many people out there are lonely and yearn for the kind of stable, loving relationship that I’ve been lucky enough to experience?

Plenty of other women would have given up through the dark times but she hasn’t. She’s seen me at my best, she’s seen me at my worst and she’s still here. Still my rock.

On the job

My temporary job kept getting renewed, 3 weeks at a time, then 3 months. Before it came to an end an opportunity came up for a full time role at the same employer in a call centre. I was still a shy kid. I hated answering the phone even at home but I got the job and I was one of the first people in my training group to start taking calls. The job was an inbound, knowledge based call centre and the training reignited my passion for learning.

I worked a condensed working week, 4 days in and 3 days off and it gave me the opportunity to go back to college and do an access course to get myself into university. It was not easy. By that stage my mum was very ill with depression and I had to give up my flat and move in with her or the doctors wouldn’t release her. I was part time boyfriend, part time carer, part time student and part time working.

It was a lot to juggle but living with mum meant I didn’t have to worry about rent, so it helped me afford to reduce my hours and work allowed me to go part time. It helped that it was an 0800-2000 7 days a week call centre. I worked 10 hours on a Sunday and evening shifts to work around college and I could still just about get by financially. Today that same office isn’t open at weekends. If I joined now, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to go to college. I’d be trapped in a job rather than a career where I was stretching my mind.

Educating Jon

I excelled at college, got all the credits I needed to get to Uni. I lost 10 stone on a special diet and I learnt to drive all at the same time. There was a scary moment. Our college work was kept in a portfolio in college itself, under lock and key but the cabinet was unlocked during lessons.

A student that hardly ever turned up decided to steal my portfolio. Without that evidence of my work, if the invigilators had selected my work for inspection, I could have lost my place at Uni. Luckily the guy wasn’t the brightest. He handed in a couple of pieces of work he stole from my portfolio. Unfortunately, he didn’t check under the cover sheet. One of the pieces was hand written, with my name on it and had been submitted under exam conditions. He was chucked out and I got to go to Uni to study Computer Science.

I sometimes struggle with maths. I’m fine at the basic stuff but not to A Level standard. Most people studying Computer Science are good at maths but what I was really good at was analysis. I got most of my grades through uni by avoiding the maths as much as possible.

It took me seven years to complete a 3 year course. Juggling looking after my mum and uni and work really took its toll and I found myself completely burnt out half way through the second year. I couldn’t concentrate. I was sat in an exam and just about wrote my name. The suicidal thoughts were back with a vengeance. I just couldn’t cope. I took a year interruption to studies then six months in I slipped a disk in my back and ended up in agony, unable to walk.

A pain in the back and side

The doctors just blamed my weight and would try to refuse me pain killers even though they could see I couldn’t even get up the stairs to see them and they had to change rooms. They just blamed my weight. It all came to ahead one morning when my back went into spasm. I ended up on morphine, gas and air in an ambulance screaming in agony. I remember a female doctor examining my prostate, which was completely humiliating.

I ended up in a bed next to Moors Murder victim, Keith Bennett’s mother Winnie Johnson. My mum was busy chatting away with her rather than talking to me. It was very surreal. It took months for me to get back to walking normally again.

At that point I didn’t think I was going to be able to finish Uni. I looked into alternatives, short courses that promised a job at the end of it but Uni granted me another interruption of studies. It was hard. I had to repeat the module I failed and I had to repeat another module that spanned both semesters as it was partially group work. I had to make friends with a new cohort but I somehow got through.

I knew that it was going to be really important to get experience in the industry. I spent more time and effort going to careers fayres, writing tailored CVs and cover letters than I did on most of my uni modules. I applied far and wide and consistently was getting to the second round of interviews.

I got a couple of knockbacks from roles that sounded really interesting but I persisted. One job I applied for were looking for 2 candidates, one role was more about programming, the other more design based. I got a really good vibe about the company, it was a place where many of the permanent staff started as placement students. I didn’t just want a year experience, I wanted a job at the end of it, and this was definitely that kind of place. My skillset better suited the programmer role but they’d already picked the candidate for that but my enthusiasm won the day and I got the role.

Knocking on the door

I spent seven years at that company. They even paid for me to finish my final year part time whilst working full time with them. I’m very grateful for the opportunity they gave me but I also want to point something out. You may well think how lucky I was to have an employer like that, and you are right but it didn’t just happen, luck doesn’t just fall on your lap. It happened because I made it happen. You have to knock on doors, and if you knock on enough of them, one or two might open. If you give up you will never know what could have been. I think I need reminding of that message and how I got where I am from time to time when I feel like giving up.

There are so many other little forks in the road in my life where things could have been different. We like to think that we’re in control of our lives but chance plays such a big role, one wrong turn, one mistake and it could all be very different.

Don’t take anything for granted, it can be taken from you at any moment. Don’t envy those that appear to have more, you don’t know what they went through to get there and you don’t see the pain behind the veneers we all hide behind. Life is too short and it’s too cruel not to be kind to each other and listen to each others stories.

I am nothing special, I haven’t had a particularly difficult life yet still I have a story to share and the more I listen to other people’s stories too, the more humbled and inspired by the strength of everyday ordinary people.

The thoughts that haunt me

When I allow my mind time to think, it tries to destroy me. It’s like living in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, where I become the ghost of Christmas future.

I day dream about the aftermath of my own death and it’s vivid, as if I’m looking back on something that has just happened.

I find death hard to contemplate as an agnostic person. I can’t quite get my head around no longer existing, no longer having thoughts and the world still going on without me but I know it will. I find myself like a moth to a flame, incredibly attracted to the idea of no longer existing anymore. No more mental torture or suffering but at the same time haunted by my own ghost.

I imagine the scene.

My wife comes home from work and puts the keys in the door but the house is empty.

My impression still on the couch but she feels so lonely.

Photos on the wall, but none of me but everything around her reminds her of me as she weeps and the sound is echoing and she makes her meal for one, 20 years and it’s all gone now.

No car on the drive way and the cats still look around for me, they know that something is not right.

She goes to bed alone and turns the fan on, because the chill reminds her of me and she talks to me as if I’m still there, blaming herself and I can’t break through to tell her it’s ok, tell her I loved her, tell her she was everything to me. The tears she cries for me, I already cried when I was here. They’re all on her pillow as she lies close to me.

But time doesn’t stop for her, she goes on. She takes comfort from someone else, as she begins to rebuild the pieces, her heart learns to love again and she starts to forget me. Another man in her life, another ring on her finger. She takes down the mementos that still linger and I can’t complain because I gave it away, no one was there to save me on that day, some lives are just meant to end tragically.

Making sense
Of the senseless
A defence for the defenceless
A pretence
For the pretentious
An offence
For the offenceless

A window in time
A candle is burning
The wind blows it out
The world is still turning

A fog of doubt
Was I too lazy
Was I just wrong
Or was I just crazy

Hope for the hopeless
Help for the helpless
A friend for the lonely
A prayer that is endless

I tried to do right
I tried to fight this
But it was too bright
I was too lifeless

I take it back
I start from the beginning
Go back in time
When was I winning

A penny for thought
A final retort
I do what I ought
Do not distort

The chill in the night
The tear on your cheek
The knock on the door
The feeling your weak

The dirt and the soil
The trouble and toil
The spring on the coil
As I lay down

Not going to get up
This is a set up
Can’t talk cos I’m fed up
And I’m scared

The fear and the passion
Love under ration
Hoping for traction
But no interaction

I slip away into the night
No more energy, no more fight
A mind that has faded
A soul that is jaded
A piece of me traded
For peace in me raided
An end that I aided

Imperfect perfection
That fear of rejection
There ain’t no protection
From my mind

And as I was goaded
My faith was eroded
Washed out to sea
Drowning inside

Rules made to be broken
Truths meant to be spoken
I’m just a token
And I’m spent

Can you forgive me
Will you forget me
Do you regret me
In your life
I loved you wife

Under Siege: Dealing with suicidal thoughts

Dealing with suicidal thoughts is nothing new to me, I’ve had them at least from the age of 11 and depressive thoughts from even earlier than that. It doesn’t get any easier.

It comes in waves, sometimes very suddenly and without warning and sometimes I don’t even know what the trigger is. It’s overwhelming and exhausting, not just for me but for the people around me that care for me. It’s not something I can hide very well as my brain goes into a shutdown mode to protect me from actually causing any irreversible harm.

There are various emergency helplines that they give you to ring when you’re in “crisis” but at that point in time, I don’t want help, I want out.

The rational case for Suicide

Suppose you have a terminal illness and prolonging your life would only mean a painful, undignified death, would anybody want that for themselves? Some people want to cling onto life for as long as possible for the benefit of their family and loved ones but actually watching that traumatic experience play out sometimes just delays the grief and adds to it. Nobody likes to think of their loved ones last days as suffering.

What about chronic conditions that aren’t going to get any better? Do we have the right to choose our time? Do we have a right to choose dignity and a peaceful exit? No matter when you die, your loved ones will still go through the grieving process, death is the only certainty but uncertainty itself. Is it more selfish to force someone to stay alive against their wishes or to choose death on your own terms?

The benefits of faith

These are not easy questions and will be heavily influenced by what you think happens to you after you die. If you have a faith, you may fear eternal consequences or you may even believe that paradice awaits. If you believe that we simply cease to exist then that could be more reason to cling on to existence or it could be your desired outcome. It’s much easier on those left behind if they have faith and believe that they are going to be reunited with you. There is no comfort in the idea that you simply cease to exist. For this reason I admire people with faith.

There is a logical case for faith, Pascal’s wager. If you believe in God and you are right, there is a reward for such faith. If you don’t believe and you are right, there is no reward but there is a consequence if you are wrong. People with faith tend to recover from illness better, it might be a placebo affect of believing your prayers will be answered, but even so, if the outcome is positive, who is to argue with that?

I think belief is part of the human experience whether you’re religious or not. I’ve not yet met someone that doesn’t have a superstition or theory about something in life that they cling onto without evidence. The absence of official faith is often replaced with other ideas, many ending in “ism”. If there is a vacuum, it will be filled and not always for the better.

Signing out on your own terms

I digress, back to the original topic at hand. The closer I get to 40, the stronger and more compelling the thoughts of signing out on my own terms gets.

Old age isn’t for me. People my size don’t get to old age and to be perfectly honest, I don’t see that as desirable either. I don’t want to die from a horrible condition where you are fully alert mentally but trapped in a body you no longer have any control over. I also don’t like the idea of being mentally incapacitated but continuing to live. Nobody wants either of these things to happen to them and many people, even younger people have to live with these kind of conditions and I think they’re incredibly courageous and I get angry at myself for being so weak willed that despite my relative advantage in life, I still feel this depressed when perhaps I have no right whatsoever to be complaining about my lot in life.

Ironically, that guilt doesn’t cajole me into making the most of the advantages I have, it cements my sense of unworthiness. It’s like there is a marksman in my head trying to kill me, but it isn’t another person, it’s me, shooting arrows at my own shadow.

I think to myself that I’ve got further than I expected, given I was taking overdoses of painkillers at the age of 15. If you told me then I would get to 40 and that I’d have learnt to drive, got a steady job, been to university, lost weight and put it back on again several times over, that I had a wife that loves me, I probably wouldn’t believe you but here I am.

Best years behind me now

I may have achieved nothing noteworthy but perhaps more than I could have expected to and when I think about what remains of my life, I imagine that I’ve my best years are already behind me.

At my weight I’m at a very high risk of a stroke or heart attack. You might say stop catostraphising Jonathan, it might not happen, don’t concentrate on the worst possible outcome, what were you saying about self fulfilling prophecies before?

You might be right but I’m also a realist. I don’t think pretending that everything is going to be ok is a good strategy either. I need to either back myself to beat this, which I’ve consistently failed to do through the first 40 years or I can take control in a different way and go out on my own terms whilst I still have full capacity and dignity. Is it not better to go out at the top? Retire early whilst I still have a career, not carers, being a comfort not a burden?

The burden of caring

I know that the people that love me will want me to carry on but and would be devastated should I pass but I also know how hard it can be watching someone you love slowly (or suddenly) deteriorate as I have seen with my own mum. It takes its toll on you physically and mentally coping when someone is constantly in and out of hospital. It chips away at you from the inside and sometimes, you just want it to end.

That sounds horrible and must make me a bad person but I remember the day I registered for Uni. I was a mature student, at the age of 21 and instead of spending the day out drinking and making friends with my new cohort, I spent the evening in A&E after my mum had taken an overdose.

The hospital was full of freshers that had too much to drink and injured themselves but I was stone sober. It wasn’t the first trip to a hospital to visit my mum and it certainly wasn’t my last, but it stuck out in my mind. Part of me felt angry that I was there when I should have been focusing on my own life and part of me felt very guilty for having those thoughts. How selfish could I be, thinking about myself at a time like that?

My wife must have the same feelings towards me from time to time when depression takes over. Not again. Why me. Should have chosen someone that isn’t as mad as a box of frogs. Mum had no control over her illnesses and neither do I. Unfortunately this does seem to be a hereditary fate. Mums demons are my demons but I don’t have children to live for and I don’t have her faith to fall back on either but on the plus side that means the curse won’t be passed on to another generation.

Right now I’m coming out of my most recent episode of crisis. I’m not at immediate “risk” but I can make no promises about what the future will brings but then who can? We don’t know what is around the corner, maybe things will change for the better? Things don’t improve passively, you have to make them happen.

I’ve lost just under one and a half stone since the summer, it’s not a lot, I’ve lost more weight than that in a single week with other diets before but it’s slow and steady this time. I am in a race against time with my own mind but I’m still in the race. I haven’t given up yet.

I may have to wait another 3 years for the weight loss surgery that I think will give me the best possible chance of an improved quality of life worth living for but it feels very much like I’m walking the green mile and part of me hopes that the phone will ring and there will be a reprieve whilst the other half just wants it to be over. I’m tired boss, as the famous quote goes.

The danger of self fulfilling prophecies

A self fulfilling prophecy is where you believe something is true to the extent that you actually make it reality, whether it was true initially or not.

They can be positive or negative, for example, entrepreneurs often have this unmovable faith in their own ability that defies the constraint of the qualities of their ideas and their sheer determination to keep trying eventually leads to success. “Fake it til you make it”, so to speak.

Negative self fulfilling prophecies can be very destructive, here are a few examples I observe on a regular basis.

Dating

Some people believe that they are unattractive to other people and it can lead to behaviours that make them less likely to succeed in the dating world. Confidence is attractive, there are some very attractively atypical looking people in this world that are very successful in the dating world because they know how to make people laugh and feel at ease. Others approach prospective dates as if they’re entering into battle, arming their shields ready and expecting to be hurt despite being blessed with considerable desirable features.

Maintaining Relationships

Even after the initial stage of forming a relationship, sometimes people can sabotage their relationships because they fear rejection so much that they become clingy or constantly seeking validation to the extent that it’s exhausting to be with that person.

They doom their relationships with constant accusations that show the other person that they don’t trust them. There are constant tests, checking phones and controlling behaviour.

Job Interviews

As part of my roles over the years, I’ve interviewed a number of people. Some enter the room with their head held low, already convinced that they’re not going to get the role. There anxiety becomes so strong that they can’t express the skills they actually have, leading to the result they expected in the first place.

Fear of getting sacked

This is one that I am struggling with myself at the minute. I suffer from imposter syndrome and convince myself that I am inadequate at my job and that it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out and get sacked.

The fear can be so paralysing that it stops me from actually doing my job, which in turn is much more likely to lead to me losing my job than if I was my old confident, bubbly self.

Where do these prophecies come from?

Often these fears we have are grounded in past experiences. If you’ve had a string of disastrous dates, or struggle to get any dates at all, if you’ve been cheated on or even cheated on a partner yourself in the past, you’re more likely to have trust issues.

If you’ve applied for job after job and keep getting knocked back it will eventually knock your confidence.

It could also be partially down to your personality. Some people are naturally very optimistic, others aren’t. I admire optimistic people, I wish I could be one but it’s one thing to identify a negative pattern of behaviour that is causing you problems, it’s an entirely different challenge to actually change it.

Sometimes these habits can be like security blankets. Even though they’re harmful to your future wellbeing, holding onto them can protect you from further emotional pain. If you don’t think you’ll get that job, you will be less disappointed when you don’t. If you think your date is going to be a disaster, then you’ve lost nothing when it is, more than that, it has re-enforced your world view. If the way you view the world is wrong, it puts emphasis on you to change your outlook rather than on being a helpless victim with no agency to change things.

How do you unlearn a deeply embedded habit?

I really wish I had the answer to that. It’s something I’m struggling with myself on multiple fronts. Just having the self awareness of the situation doesn’t seem to be helping me to change it and the longer it goes on, the more exhausted I get with myself.

I know the answer is to take small baby steps. You can’t expect Rome to be built in a day but it does feel like I take more steps backwards than forwards, and also that I’m running out of time to turn things around too.