#oktosay

It is said; that the first step in solving a problem, is admitting you have a problem. This statement can be applied to all of life’s issues. However finally admitting something to yourself can be easier said than done.

Sometimes there is a catalyst that sparks the admission.

For a friend of mine, it was when his partner saw his bank statement and saw how over drawn he had become in such a short space of time. His problem he hadn’t admitted – online gambling. He  had become obsessed by spinning an online roulette board, and placing bigger bets each time to claw back the losses which had originated in small 50pence stakes. He was lucky, it was £500 and something which didn’t cut a huge hole in their life. She was able to stop the problem before it ran out of control. However the trust had been demolished. He then had to fix things piece by piece. Out went the smart phone, all financial control handed to his partner, and in response for her forgiveness, he agreed to attend a Gambling Addiction group. Once there, he was shocked to see how things could have gone. There were men who had literally gambled their life away. Men who had literally lost it all.  He saw men who had turned to drugs and alcohol when they lost their home, their wife and their kids. Men who had attempted suicide and were there through desperation and a last call for help. He knew he had to learn from this. And he has done.

But why is it that as men, we only ask for help when it is too late?

When I first had the urge to write something down, it was I too was struggling with a problem that I couldn’t control. I was feeling low and felt compelled to tell a story. It was the story of my uncle and his struggle with Anxiety and Depression, which culminated in him taking his own life. Forever In Our Hearts.

Little did I know, or was really ready to accept that it was my way of dealing with my own anxiety and depression. I was deflecting what I was feeling in my own life, but needed to release some tension, and instead I opened up by telling someone else’s tale about their feelings.

I had named my son after my late uncle, who had taken his own life back in 1993 when I was only ten years old. The name wasn’t in tribute of the act he committed, but instead a representation of the love that I felt and still feel towards the man. However, after naming my son after him, I had inadvertently opened a wave of emotions, which had made question aspects of my own life.

I had felt a lot of anxiety regarding impending fatherhood before the birth of my son. Was I ready?  Were we as a couple ready? Did I know enough about myself and life in general? Would I be good enough? Would I let him down?

I was expecting a Lion King moment, where I would be beaming with pride and raise him aloft and present him to the world.  In my mind; I had created an anticipation of the wave of emotions which would consume me as soon as he was in my arms. But that didn’t happen. The initial emotion wasn’t the expected euphoria.

It was fear.

I think this was due to the dramatic nature of his arrival into the world. For hours upon hours nothing had really happened in the labour ward. So much so, that my partner and I were taking a nap, when we were woken by the sound of alarms and midwives and medical professionals filling the room, with an underlying sense of panic, with the instruction that our baby needed to come out immediately. In what seemed like a blur, he was out, my partner was high as a kite, there was a lot of blood, and before I knew what was going on, he was in my arms looking back at me.

I was calm for the early days, and felt immense pride in introducing him to family and friends. But soon I found myself very low and mentally beating myself up. Self-doubt and anxiety over shadowed the joy I should have been feeling. To pin point things, it would have been low self-confidence, money worries, stress, job unhappiness, family differences, negatively comparing myself to those around me, all compounded by a level of tiredness I hadn’t experienced before, making me unhappy and making me feel like I was failing as a man, and let alone a dad.

Time passed and I turned my mental state around and good things came my way. We are now 5 and half months pregnant again, our son is a happy two year old, and I am feeling positive for the future, but still in my mind is the fact that I could drop back down to a state of depression, that outwardly no one around me would predict.

I think all dads have these feelings, but as men we simply don't talk about them. We bottle things up. Getting things off of your chest, even if it's trivial, certainly helps.  Anyone can be affected by mental health problems, and admitting that to yourself does not make you any less of a man. Opening up to those around you can really make a difference. Quite often it is the people you would not consider label as a depressed, who are mentally beating themselves up day after day. There are literally hundreds of people in the public eye, who have battled inner demons. People that you would never expect. But they are exactly that. People. Humans. We are all human and all go though lifes ups and downs. The key is not let the downs consume you to a point of no return. To a point where you see no resolution apart from a final one.

It is great to see this exact issue being tackled by charities such as CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) and the great campaign Heads Together and the #OktoSay hashtag formed by Princes William and Harry to flag mental health awareness. You would never think members of the Royal Family would be depressed. But if you take away being a royal and all that comes with it, Prince Harry is a normal man, who suffered a huge loss at a young age, which has had a long term effect on his life. It has taken lots of courage for him to admit this.

 It seems the stigma is being removed from talking about your problems. With the members of the Royal family getting involved, it helps raise the message to a wider audience, which can only be a good thing.

If you are feeling low, reach out to people. If you see someone is not themselves, then open the conversation. They may reject it, or they may just open up and get a load off of their mind. It only takes a simple conversation to help people out.

https://www.headstogether.org.uk/about-heads-together/

https://www.thecalmzone.net/2017/03/progreenfreddieflintoff/

https://www.headstogether.org.uk/support/

It's a f**cked up world that we live in...

Yesterday I asked myself and colleagues around me a question – are we, as the social media generation, desensitised from shocking and gratuitous violence?  I think as a majority, we probably are. Well I certainly am. And in my opinion that is down to the way coverage is shared via social media.

I have various forms of social media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. Each serves its own purpose. When I learnt of the shooting of Alton Sterling, I logged into my Twitter account. With literally a few keyboard strokes, I saw video footage of two murders on my Twitter feed. It saddened me, but I certainly wasn’t shocked and moved to a new level of emotion that I probably should have been. And I blame that, not on movies and video games. But the sharing of REAL time news on social media.

The two separate videos were the murders of two black men by US police officers. I used the term murder as in my opinion that is what it was. No doubt about it in my mind. No other term is required or can be justified. The officers that killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile murdered them. 

The police officers seemed to be a fit of rage and hysteria in the aftermath of pulling that trigger. It was almost as if the gun in their hand and uniform on their body gave them a sense of power that they were invincible, and as soon as the sound of the bullets leaving the chamber stopped ringing in their ears, they snapped into an understanding of what would happen to them from now on. 

Their lives will be turned upside down and those of their families. The split second it took to murder those men will impact those around them forever. But that is nothing in comparison for those who lost someone in that action. Children will never have their daddy back, and that is unacceptable. The US police needs to seriously review the types of people they are hiring, as they are engaging their firearms before engaging their brains. 

This morning I woke and the top trend on Twitter was #Dallas. When you see a place name trending, you know something bad has happened. And it has. In what appears to have been an organised revenge attack on police officers, resulting in eleven officers shot, five killed, and an unconfirmed number of members of the public have been shot at a #BlackLivesMatter protest in the city. Once again, events have been captured on film, and shared online. In one video which has been shared virally, we have seen the execution of one officer, who was killed doing his job. And again I wasn’t shocked. The cold hearted execution of a police officer doing his job should have moved me. But we have seen it before. 

But yesterday isn’t the first time that we have witnessed such atrocities, and certainly won’t be the last. But in recent times, I have learnt about these incidents via Twitter and Facebook. In the past weeks we have seen the mass murder in the Orlando nightclub, and although mass footage didn’t come out, individual messages and heartbreak were shared internationally on social media.

In August last year, videos flooded social media of the murders of news reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward. These videos had been filmed and released by the killer himself. The videos were shared instantly and spread like wild fire globally. They became viral. Millions of people saw the horrified look on Alison Parker's face as she literally stared down the barrel of a gun. Whether they wanted to or not. The image was shared and publisized around the world.

In yesterday’s murders, the attack in Dallas, and the murder of the news team last summer, we have witnessed someone taking human life without thought or compassion. We have seen the last moments of someone’s life, and in some videos even seen their last breath.  

And although truly heart-breaking when you think of the impact of the action upon the individuals, loved ones, families, friends, co-workers etc, we as members of the social community still share the videos on social media, with no thought of who may see it. 

Acts of violence, murder and terror attacks are part of the world we live in, but we have a duty to share the news responsibly. Social media gives everyone a voice, but in my opinion we have a responsibility about how we use that voice. There is an argument that people can share the truth on social media, the truth as it happens, compared to a filtered and censored version we may often get from the media news outlets.

We are a generation who have been brought up on violent movies, violent video games and global atrocities being shown on our screens. We are a generation who know that gratuitous violence is just a few clicks away should we want to see it. We are also a generation who have been brought up with modern cameras, smart phones, body worn cameras and live streaming. When something shocking happens, you will often see a crowd of people with their phones out filming the activity. The ability to film what is actually happening is there to prove the actions that are occurring,  which has never been more evident than in the murder of Philando Castille, who’s partner filmed and broadcasted live on Facebook the aftermath of the Police officer opening fire on him after he reached for his driving licence. In that ten minute Facebook live video, we saw the moment he passed away and her remarkable calmness and willingness to comply with the officer, as the officer seemed to become hysterical. 

Desensitization to a subject suggests a lower level of emotion in response to something you have witnessed. 

I would describe myself as an emotive and passionate person, yet with all of the things I have seen recently, with the additions of coverage of huge events over the years such as: 7/7, 9/11, Sandy Hook, Columbine, and not to mention the countless violent or abusive videos random Facebook friends have liked or shared, I would certainly say that I view things with a lower level of emotion towards them, compared to how I would have felt in days before social media. I am sure I am not alone in feeling that way. 

I seem to be tweeting the same thing quite often now days : "Its a fucked up world we live in."

My thoughts and condolences go out to the families of all of the people who have lost their lives in recent events. RIP.