My life changed when I started having an open conversation about mental health. All organisations should follow suit.
I wanted to share some insights from my keynote seminar ‘Talking Anxiety’. I had OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) as a child, which morphed into GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder) as I got older.
I was driven by high anxiety and nervous energy – a survival mechanism – through education and into my professional career.
The bi-product of these conditions was low self-esteem, a lack of self-confidence and a strong desire to ‘people please’ – seeking my accountability, value and worth in the opinions and reactions of others. To the outside world, however, I was ‘successful.’
It can take the same energy to destroy us as it does to act as a catalyst to go forward, to be ‘successful’.
Now, it’s easy for me to spot the reasons why people get to the point of breakdown, burnout, meltdown. You can only run for so long before you stop.
Firstly, masking: we try to be what people want to see in us and what situations demand of us – we don’t show them our real selves!
Secondly, ‘recovery’ time – we fill up our diaries with work, then fill in any gaps with our family commitments – but where do we feature in our own lives?
There should be a piece of your day diarised to decompress, recharge, and recover, to enable you to go again strong tomorrow.
In the UK, we have a problem with self-care. We often label it as selfish; we feel guilty when we prioritise ourselves above anything. However, you need to put your oxygen mask on first to be able to help other people.
It was only through my experience that things shifted for me. I decided to stand up and speak about my experiences of mental illness and mental health at a networking event.
After I finished my first talk, everyone gave me their support. What truly changed my world was when they started sharing their stories of abuse, grief and adversity back to me – people I had known for years, but never really ‘knew’.
Essentially, people just want to be heard and understood.
Vulnerability can be our superpower – yet for most, it remains the one thing we fear.
I believe that the most vital engagement tool we have in promoting positive Mental Health and raising awareness is our lived experience. For me, ‘lived experience’ is the vehicle that takes organisations and individuals from the problem of mental health to the solution.
Unless you get engagement, absolutely nothing changes.
Engagement, combined with active signposting and getting good at knowing how to signpost people to solutions, means we can help people. We want to inspire people without the burden of trying to fix them.
Unless you are a medical professional, people aren’t coming to you to be fixed. They are coming to you to be heard.
We need to clearly define the difference between mental illness, which requires professional help, and mental health, which we all have, good or bad, like physical health.
The ‘inspirational’ part of what I do is just that: increasing awareness, motivation, but also introducing personal development techniques so that we can create a positive impact on our mental health every single day.
The message I want to leave you with is this: keep it simple and keep it human. There will be no ‘one size fits all’ approach to helping people through our current experience – global conflict, national mourning, creating a post-pandemic ‘new normal’, the cost of living crisis – everyone is having a different experience of life – personally and professionally.
Try to avoid generalist approaches to fully engage people, engage with people on their terms – not yours – how would they want to be approached?
To forge deeper relationships with people, use vulnerability as your superpower; to get more from them, give more of yourself – you will achieve a faster, stronger & greater depth of conversation and relationship than any superficial message will ever achieve.
Allow people to feel what you are saying, not just hear what you are saying.
Authored by Nick Elston. Nick is one of the leading inspirational speakers on the lived experience of mental health, a transformational speaking coach & award-winning mental health engagement strategist. Nick writes for many industry publications, delivers his work globally & features on worldwide media. www.nickelston.com
TePe made a donation by purchasing PAUSE for Mind boxes for all our staff in the UK to boost their mental health in return for Nicks valuable time (pauseformind.org.uk). Mind.org.uk has a wide range of information and support on offer, available to everyone.