It’s okay not to be okay.

Hello, how are you all doing today?

We are going to be talking about mental health and how it effects the everyday person any myself and how I have dealt with it (or not) in the last few years. So just before you carry on reading be warned this blog might not be for everyone.

I will tell you about my own person experiences and how I have tried to deal with this, some of the story’s are very personal and it has taken some really long thinking about if I would do this or not, but here we go.

Mental Health is defined as “a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being.” What does this really mean? Well I suppose it is down to a person interpretation how you look at and how you feel .

For me – it is how you are personally dealing with life, with in your head. How your feeling and what you mind starts to tell you what to do. For most people who may have issues with Mental Health, can seek out medical advise and either have some counselling sessions or medication for a small amount time, and this does the trick and they bounce back, some are not soo lucky and you have to look at people with Mental Health issues the same way you do with any other illness, they can’t help how they are feeling and they do need some extra help.

There is a huge stigma around mental health and everyone seems to shy away from it, just like any other illness, be this a long life condition or something which has a limited effect on your life, it can be life changing. Like very much life changing.

Story 1 – So I will tell you about when I was first diagnosed with FND back in May of 2019. Things we’re not great, I have lots of support but I personally could understand what was going on, for them that know me and my family set up you will know that my wife is a teacher, and in September 2019 she retuned to work on a full time basis after having the summer off, with me and my condition I was unable to work, or look after my children on my own, so while G was at her mothers, F had to go into nursey full time, while I look back this has not been a bad thing at all, she has learnt soo much from being there. This is where it starts to get hard, they would leave the house at 7:30am and wouldn’t return until after 5pm. This left me at home by myself for a long periods of the day.

I started to notice things weren’t right when the days started become one day and all rolling together, I started to think about my life, thinking that R and the kids would be better off with out me, not having me there dealing with the truly unknown that was FND. I started projecting my own life into someone else’s, I tried to escape away from what I felt like was the worse thing I was going through. I did speak with my doctor and got anti-depressants and some counselling, which didn’t happen until 12 months later, this was working to some extent, R came home from work one evening and I was stood in the living room clutching something in my arms, telling R not to take it away from me, I honestly thought I had a new born and that she was going to take it away from me, well I didn’t have a baby and it was just a small loaf of bread. Needless to say I was soo deep into a blackhole, I couldn’t find my way out, luckily I did with a lot of determination and help.

Lots of people think that men should be the strong one at home, should not be the one who has the break down and relay’s on the female to sort it all out, but look we are in the 21st century, if you think like that then I think you really have to have a word with yourself.

So we fast forward to present day – and I have been in a better place, over the last few weeks things have gone a little south with me, things have started to get a bit on top of me. Problem I have is I have buried my head in the sand with it all. I haven’t spoken to anyone, even my wife. my life seems to have come to a stand still, work isn’t go too well, and I can feel myself falling into the hole yet again, this time I am hoping that with the help of increased medication and extra help, I have started the process before it get any worse. I am in fear that I will end up back down that hole, and that really scares me. I have been signed off work for a few weeks, and R has told me I must take it easy.

Anyway that is going to be me for this week, seems like a lot to read back over, I may have sent half if not most of you to sleep.

I am going to try and do a Vlog or Podcast this coming week, would you like to see that?

Chat to you all soon

M