HOW’S YOUR HEAD? (NO COMPLAINTS)

cheap, cheap attempt at a rupaul’s drag race joke for mental health awareness week. shame on me. but seriously, how’s your head?

i do feel that we as a society are talking more about mental health at the moment, which is awesome, but perhaps not enough and not to as many relevant people as we should.

let me explain - we are getting better at telling sympathetic people that we have issues, but we’re still too worried about telling everyone, particularly the ones holding power over our livelihood like bosses, employees or even significant others. because maybe we feel that, once we open that can of weakness we can’t close it.

so, having an awareness week feels like not enough, but at the same time a great attempt at making a concerted amount of noise. Because people like me, for instance, can chip in with our unsolicited 5 cents on the matter.

from a middle-aged man point of view, i know we all have anxieties. some of us are better at managing them, others are better at hiding them, and some are better at ignoring them.

I ignored anxiety for most of my life purely because i didn’t know that’s what it was. I just chalked it down to ‘a shitty day’ and moved on.

then when i learnt about anxiety and was able to put a name to my woes, i became great at hiding it. again - put a brave face on and carry on with your day. nobody ever dies of anxiety. Spoiler alert - they do.

the final stage for me was to learn to manage it. having good people in your life is crucial, so the first housekeeping task is to ditch the toxics. then find stuff that truly gets you to live ‘in the moment’, at least for a few hours a week. i couldn’t do meditation, it’s way too loud in the attic of my head, but i found that physical exercise, particularly climbing, do the trick for me. because with climbing, if you are not in the moment you fall off the wall and hurt yourself, so there’s a very real and constant incentive to let it go of unwanted thoughts and focus on the next move.

my modest, ‘take it or leave it’ advice is this - don’t ignore it, don’t hide it, let it all be out there and find something that makes it ok for it to exist. I have no problem admitting I’m an anxious person. I wake up anxious, and i work on getting on with my day controlling it, not being controlled by it. no one important around me has an issue with that, in fact they are supportive and helpful because, after all, they have their own anxieties to live with.

it’s certainly been harder recently with job search frustrations, the threat of financial insecurity, the fear of failure, but talking to people about it all really helps.

so, again - how’s your head?