Hidden Demons - Introduction to Mental Wellbeing

I stopped fighting my inner demons. We're on the same side now.

-- Darynda Jones

It wasn’t until a year after my mother’s death, kneeling alone at her graveside overlooking the sea near Brighton that I began to understand just how much she had meant to me.

I was in the early stages of my second recovery from alcohol addiction. And as I picked out the epitaph on her gravestone, rearranging the flowers I had brought, I remembered the words she had told me before her health went so suddenly downhill: “Don’t ever give yourself reason to think you didn’t do well by me. I’ve had a wonderful life and I’ll always love you.”

In her last days, those words were marred by arguments I had with my elder sister about who should do what for her, which were partly instigated by my mother herself. But until that day at her graveside, I didn’t fully comprehend how much the stories of the past we tell ourselves have such a profound effect on our lives.

Unless we face up to these stories, until we recognise them for what they are, we are condemned to repeat them.

THE STORY I TOLD MYSELF

In my case, I had told myself since I was a boy that I was a disappointment to her and my father, that my sexuality would always taint their hopes for me, that I could never “come clean” about who I was. Of course, I hid this fear away from them, and also from myself.

I was a gregarious and successful boy at school, an achiever of both academic and artistic success, but there was always this shadow side--the introspective boy who went wandering alone in the woods on the Surrey hills, who learned verses by the English romantic poets by heart, who had a secret crush on a boy at school.

So when they punished me, as my father did with a bamboo cane (he was a schoolmaster) and my mother with slaps to my legs and backside, I somehow felt I deserved them.

Even when my parents came to comfort me as I sat in the bath after one of these “disciplines”, I was more thankful than angry. Little did I know that the anger inside ran deep, even if it was well hidden.

It took me a long while to realize that much of what I was aiming for in the following year--academic success, professional recognition, a “socially acceptable” (i.e. discreet) relationship--were driven by my fear of letting down one or the other of them. I was driven towards achievement at all costs.

The result was a gnawing anxiety that I could never do enough. I was never successful enough, I was never earning enough, I was never celebrated enough. The more I tried, the more I seemed to fall back into a persistent depression, during which I resorted to alcohol and then prescription tablets. Again, I could never get enough.

Finally, towards the age of forty, I found someone who would calm me down and give me the strength to look again at my story. The results were not immediate. It took me a long while to face my Hidden Demons.

LISTENING TO OUR INNER VOICES

However, for the first time in my life I was aware of voices that lived inside me, most of them deeply negative. However, if I listened carefully I could often hear a murmur of positive voices. As my professional life took off, those Hidden Demons were temporarily silenced and the positive voices could rise to the surface.

However, the demons did not go away. After some years I left the international bank where I had a high-flying job and set up my own business, advising companies and CEOs on their communications strategies and messages for Asia Pacific. That’s when I heard the Hidden Demons again--this time telling me I was not good enough, I was not fast enough, I would certainly fail.

Then my mother became seriously ill and I sank back into a trough, trying to deny that I was losing her, travelling from Hong Kong to visit her when it was almost too late, convinced that once again I had failed her.

That moment at her graveside in Brighton was a signal that my story of the past would no longer serve me. I was beginning my recovery from my addiction. Above all, I was determined to recreate my life not on the basis of an old story, of trying to be what I was not, but on a new vision of the future.

FROM BLACK HOLE TO RECOVERY

In the following years, I developed an entirely new aspect of my life coaching business. I found a new passion helping leaders look within to gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their Hidden Demons.

Often I found my clients had allowed their past to negatively determine their future, just as I had. Only by letting go of what had gone before could they become stronger and more purposeful leaders. I found the work immensely rewarding, especially when I saw how my clients responded to new discoveries about themselves.

As I show in the Hidden Demons? Book and Method, there is a path to overcoming our fears that becomes stronger the further you travel along it. My own traditional problem of not living up to the high expectations of others is perhaps mirrored today in the “lookism” and striving for perfection of the Instagram and YouTube generations.

Projecting an invulnerable image of your self is a common affliction not only of the young, but also of older generations. Add to this a climate of social media bullying and hate speech, political tribalism, economic meltdown, social fragmentation and less support for care services, and you have the perfect mix for a mental health crisis.

RE-CALIBRATING WHO YOU ARE

In the Hidden Demons? Method, I try to show that the path to re-discovering your life and purpose starts with tiny steps. It begins with getting yourself up off the floor (almost literally in my case).

It continues in the days and weeks ahead as you seek to discover what your inner voices are telling you about your Hidden Demons, about your past, about social conventions, about your true talents and capacity for resilience--and whether you are really listening. More often than not, it’s two steps forward and one step back.

Nothing can be achieved in a day, but everyone has a path to their true self and inner strength. It won’t come from social media. It won’t come from following demagogues and false prophets.

It can come from the simplest of experiences--a walk in the forest, along the seashore, trying a new recipe or gardening, meditating, or attending virtual meetings and socials. But first of all you have to get to the starting point. That for many people is the most difficult step.

INTEGRATING THE PAST INTO THE PRESENT

In my case, I pivoted away from the fa?ade of the corporate high-flier towards a calling that could tap into my true spirit. However, the journey to self-fulfillment does not mean wholesale rejection of the past.

Many people on the path to recovery and in their introduction to mental wellbeing think that they have to do away with everything that led them to the point of breakdown. That is not necessarily true.

You may have willingly opened the door to chaos when you quit an unsatisfactory job, left a failing relationship, started a business, had children, stood up for something at work, had difficult conversations, hired people, or tried new things with very little idea of the outcome.

I found that I could re-integrate parts of my previous life and talents into my newly constructed story. I remained a novelist and author. I used my acting experience in my speaking. Above all, I channelled my love of writing into creating new books, including this one.

You can recover your life by recalibrating what makes up the real you, the inner you. You don’t have to start from scratch, even if your depression or anxiety or fear of failure makes it seem to you have to start all over.

Resilience is part of your birthright. Even if you sink to the bottom, there is a way back that still retains the essential you, the part that is not straining to live up to someone else’s expectations.

THE HIDDEN DEMONS BOOK AND METHOD?

Throughout the Hidden Demons? Book and Method, I intersperse Six Life Strategies for “Leading Your Life” based on the real you, not on the person you think you should be.

Each of the Six Life Strategies takes an aspect of the recovery process and illustrates it in some detail:

• How to Analyse the Stories We Tell Ourselves;
• Asking for Help, Comparing Evidence & Revising the Plan
• One Day at a Time – Living in the Present;
• Building a Support Team for Life;
• Listening, Observing and Being Curious;
• Creating an Action Plan to Re-Energize Your Life

With these Six Life Strategies as your guidance, you can begin to overcome the obstacles that stand in your path (and to which we often have recourse). You can stop being a victim of circumstances, or of being held back by others or whatever other “rational” stories we tell ourselves to prevent us from moving forward.

We can and must redefine ourselves. We owe it to those around us who love us or who we love, and to all those who have been associated with us in some way on our journey.

They too are part of our story, and they too can become part of our new world. If this crisis has taught us anything, it is that we have untapped stores of kindness, empathy and common humanity.

I still have moments of isolation and fear and anxiety, but they no longer define who I am. If you move forward with love and compassion, you will stop the spiral downwards, rebalance and follow a new pat--hesitantly at first, but like a child’s first steps, with ever increasing confidence and delight.

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