Bored of hearing about mental health?

Me too. And I’ve been going mental for months now, just starting to come out the other side. 

Why did I get ill? We. Don’t. Know. And I’ve been sending myself around the bend trying to work it out. Could it be a cumulative response to the perfect storm?

• Hormones – hello perimenopause - a main contender, having experienced the previous joys of post-natal depression and intense PMS.
• Helping a close relative recover from severe depression.
• Genetic vulnerability (see above)
• Previous meds are no longer working.
• Solo parenting two teenagers with their own challenges.
• Maintaining a long-distance relationship with four children between us.
• Existential crisis: Thank climate change, war, social media…
• Trying to balance self-care whilst simultaneously being available to everyone who needs me.
• Previous trauma – a dramatic word, I know, but most of us have it.

And why could other people seemingly cope with the above, but I couldn’t? Was I broken? 

Is this a midlife crisis? Or, as Brené Brown would say, a ‘mid-life awakening’? 

Living with challenging mental health

There have been days where I’ve simply slept and slept, days where I’ve been frozen for hours in anxiety, days where I’ve thought I was making it up, and days consumed with guilt for not being enough of a parent, partner, daughter, friend, or facilitator. 

And yes, I tried:

• Changing my diet
• Yoga
• Cold water swimming 
• Talking to people I trust
• Therapy
• Different meds
• Speaking to a menopause specialist

And they do help - my personal faves for instant relief are cold water swimming and yoga. I am also very fortunate to have brilliant friends and family; sometimes, I wanted them to stay and never leave me, and other times, I wanted them all to go away because it’s all so overwhelming, and everyone has a different suggestion as to what could help. 

‘Different things work for different people’. Well, that’s annoying. Why can’t the same thing be the answer for everyone, and then we’d all know what to do?! We live in an uncertain world.

How can this help you?

So why write a blog about it? How can this help you or people you know? Well, it might have been said so often it's got cliché potential, but it’s so that you or others don’t feel alone. 

Maybe someone else will read it and think: ‘That’s me, or ‘That’s my sister/friend/boss’, and then that person can know it’s not just them. You might read it and think what a load of self-indulgent twaddle, but I’m learning that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Being trapped in your own head is an incredibly lonely experience; having dark thoughts that you’re ashamed of can make you withdraw, and then when things are so bad that you’re not capable of conversation/social events/work, before you know it you feel like you’ve forgotten how to ‘be’ and don’t know how to get back ‘in’ the world…

The most helpful thing anyone has said to me is: ‘This Will Pass’. Just like pregnancy, you can’t stay that way forever. If, for whatever reason, that’s not an appropriate analogy for you, think of it as mental constipation. It will pass…eventually. And it is passing. I’ve seen others recover. I know it’s possible. There is always hope, even if it’s disguised as sh*t. See, I haven’t lost my sense of humour… 

The Laughology team has been a constant throughout, and now I’m starting to come out the other side; they’re helping me FLIP my ‘wonky thinking’. But before that, just knowing they were there was a massive anchor, and we’d all prefer to be called a ‘massive anchor’, wouldn’t we?

If you’d like us to support your team with their mental health in the workplace, contact our Doug - doug@laughology.co.uk - so he can talk you through your options. You can also find loads of helpful stuff on our Mental Health and Wellbeing Free Stuff page.

Kerry Leigh is one of our most experienced and sought-after consultants and facilitators, having joined Laughology in its infancy. She’s a professional comedian and compere and was the child star of the Operation board game TV ads. She has a talent for quickly building rapport with any group and is a captivating trainer and host.