Sometimes Its Far From Ok Not To Be Ok!!!!

?its ok not to be ok"

I know this is a bit of a long read but try and stay with it to the end as ?my journey was been quite a long one and I truly believe that there could be some real learning from this article

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“its ok not to be ok” has become such an easy phrase to throw around " its ok not to be ok" this is said by people who have good intentions but don't always understand what it’s like to really be suffering with their Mental Health or know what impact words have on others that may be suffering.

The problem with strap lines is they mean different things to different people and sometimes people change their own perception of what it means to them as circumstances change in their lives. They also tend to be over used and lose all meaning at times.

Mental Health is the like physical Health there is such a wide range of issues that people could be suffering from. Someone who is suffering from mild depression may find the phrase " it's ok not to be ok" quite comforting but someone who is in a much deeper and darker place may not get any comfort from the phrase and it may even come across as condescending and even be damaging to them, Due to the ?mindset they are in at that point.

Do company's really care about people or are they just ticking the boxes they want to be seen ticking?

In 2016 when the UK Government started the campaign to create more awareness around Mental Health But did we open a can of worms that was hard to sustain and then when the pandemic hit and the cost of living went up it became totally unsustainable?

We created awareness and highlighted the issues, they say that every problem has a solution. We are now seeing how big the problem is and that it needs money to help find the solution. The NHS doesn't have the resources to cope in most sectors and the Mental Health sector is no different. With people waiting up to 6 months to see someone let alone get the right help. Company's struggle to help unless they have some form of private health care. Some have an employment assistance programme, this can help some but most that I have come into contact with will only give you 6 therapy sessions (there may be others out there that offer more). Then we look at sick pay, a huge percentage of company's especially in the construction industry will only give a small amount of full pay, most will pay statutory sick pay. So if you have someone that is earning ￡500 a week how can they go sick and drop to ￡91 a week. Can you imagine what that would do to someone who is already struggling, would you tell them that " it ok not to be ok" I don't know the solution myself but I would love to find someone who does.

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This article is about my own journey over the last few years, I have been very honest and open about my own struggles. I don’t want sympathy, I just help others understand how hard it can be and maybe even question yourself to whether you and your company do enough for your people.

Before the pandemic I was one of these people that would use the phrase and I truly believed it!

Let me start from the beginning of my journey to give you some background.

I went from running a scaffold company to a coach within a year back in 2015. I gave up my job to start LBS Coaching with 3 Goals:

1) To help change the safety culture within the scaffold industry.

2) To help change the safety culture within the rail industry.

3) To help change the culture surrounding Mental Health awareness.

At first this was a real challenge as I was having to work for free to build my own profile, this was at a huge cost to my family. Once I got past the first part of my journey I was flying, working for multiple big company's all in the rail sector. I was doing anything from one day workshops on behaviours or mental health awareness to building culture change programs.

I felt I was really making a difference to peoples lives helping people to understand why they do and say the things they do, in my mind making a huge difference. I was also doing a lot of workshops on Mental Health Awareness, the idea behind them was to get people talking about the subject, not try to fix people. While I was doing this I would always make myself available to anyone who might have been suffering with their own Mental Health, this was always done for free and a lot of the time at my own expense but this was very rewarding as i truly believe that I helped these people. I also would do talks in schools for free as I believe that giving back is important.

At this point in my life I was flying, my Mental Health was in a really good place, not only would I teach mindfulness but I was using it on a daily basis. My confidence was at an all time high. I had built a fantastic reputation, the recommendations that people had wrote on my LinkedIn page were mind-blowing. One of my close friends used to say Adam is bullet proof, I had so much positive energy in everything I did. At this point in my life I obviously knew that anyone could suffer with their own Mental Health but I honestly thought i had done enough to keep my Mental Health in a good place, how wrong was I!

When the pandemic hit every single one of my clients cancelled in the February, in the March we went into lockdown. The first lockdown was enjoyable we locked ourselves in and made the most of the family time the weather was good and we had food in the house all the time.

Once we came out of lockdown I still didn't have any work so we went over to Guernsey for the summer.

When we returned we went into the winter lockdown and this is when my Mental Health started to really deteriorate, not that I noticed it at first. I did have some work at this point via zoom, I had taken on a role for a very well named company that I will not name. I had a role as a manager for a peer support network. The idea behind this was to create a team that would be there for people who may be suffering with issues due to the pandemic. This was going well and I had been given a 12 month ?contract. “Its ok not to be ok” was one of our biggest lines that we would use. I was about 14 weeks into the role when my mental health took a real turn for the worst, this was when I first started to have thoughts about taking my own life. Only once was I close to actually acting on these thoughts. I was in a real mess one night and I drove over to see my mum and let out a lot of emotions, on the way home I found myself closing my eyes as I was driving around the M25 just for a few seconds. I can only thank god that I never had an accident as I could have hurt others and that would have been a weight that I don't think I could of carried. One of the things I would tell people in my workshops when it come to suffering with their own Mental Health was to find someone that they trust to talk to. This was the point when I knew I needed to tell someone how bad I was, I sat my wife down and told her everything. This was the hardest conversation I have ever had to have! So now when I tell people to find someone they trust to talk to I'm very open and tell them how hard this conversation can be but also tell them that things start to become a bit easier (not fixed) once you have the conversation.

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I was very lucky that my wife had private health care through her work, we got in touch with the priory hospital and I was admitted within a few days. My stay was 31 days long and I was diagnosed with depression. (Later I found out that this was a wrong diagnosis)

When I came home I felt like I was in a better place I had medication both for depression and to help me sleep, I was well rested and ready to come back to normal life again. When I contacted work I was told that they didn't need me any more as the team had done ok without me. At this point I could have probably put up a fight as I had a contract that still run for over 6 months, but I didn't have that fight in me. Remember the role was to help people who may be suffering with their Mental Health. " its ok not to be ok" this was the first time that I had seen myself that it was just words and a way of ticking boxes as they didn't seem to care let alone take it in to consideration that I had been suffering with my mental health and what impact this news may of had on my recovery.

The next 18 months work started to pick up and I was getting enough to get by, but my mental health wasn't right but I had become better at hiding it. One of the things that I noticed at this point was that I stopped picking up the phone to friends and family, only talking to the people that I had to work wise. My mood was up and down so every now and then I would talk to friends and apologise for being rude and not taking their calls, I would also thank them for trying and would ask them to please keep trying, if I don't pick up as it means I'm low. They were very supportive at first, but they did give up in the end. "out of sight out of mind" this wasn't their fault, I think its just something that happens, others lives are still moving and they forget you fast, this means the loneliness becomes a reality but its self inflicted. The only thing is when you are low you don't care.

In the summer of last year I only had one client that was regular work. This was online as we were working from home if you could again. At this point I withdrew again but this time I think subconsciously I didn't want anyone to notice so instead of withdrawing to my bedroom like I did the first time round I would just sit in the garden on my own. This was when I was probably at my worst Mentally as I started to think of some really crazy things.

I had a pad and pen and started writing about the divide in humanity. I have never gone back to read this stuff so I have no idea how delusional it was but one day it came to me that I had worked out the devils plan, at this point I sat in my chair and prayed to god. I asked him did you make me sick so I could work out this plan? At this point I looked up into the sky, it was a clear day, blue skies as far as I could see apart from 3 clouds above me that spelt out the word Y E S. I know now that this was a psychotic episode due to a huge bipolar low.

At the time it was a very euphoric moment, I truly believed that god had spoken to me. Over the next few days this idea got worse and had more detail. I then had the thought that I was the messenger and that Tyson Fury was the warrior and that he had been given the same message and I needed to go to Morcambe Bay to see him (no coincidences that boxing is one of my favourte past times and Fury is one of my favourites at the moment) I told my wife and friend about my message, I had no shame in what I was saying to them as I truly believed it was real and when they tried to reason with me I would say " its ok I understand that you don't understand and that's ok. At this point I went to the church to talk to a vicar about the situation, she told me that people do get messages from god, this reinforced my belief. I came home and told my wife what the vicar had said, she didn't believe me so we went back the next day together and my wife told the vicar about my mental health, she still stuck with the fact that she believed that people do get messages from god but to think about my Mental health as well. I then started to get scared that the devil knew that I knew his plan and that I might be in danger. This was when my wife convinced me to contact the hospital again, this time I was lucky to find a much better psychiatrist than the first time, I was admitted again to hospital this time it was like a county retreat in Sussex. I got a lot of help and support. This is when I was told that I had been mis diagnosed with depression the first time round and that in fact I had bipolar and the medication that I was taking wouldn't have been helping me and could have been making me worse. I have now also been diagnosed with ADHD so I have a real double edged sword when it comes to my mental health. Now that I understand my diagnosis I can look back in my life and see moments in time that i have been low or made wrong choices and see that my Mental Health has always had its ups and down but never as bad as when the pandemic hit. In the past I just didn’t notice or understand what I was going through.

When I come out of the priory hospital this time I was in the best place that I have been in a long time both mentally and physically, but it was within a week of being out of the hospital that I found out that the client I had been working for didn't need my help anymore, was it just bad timing or was this because they knew about my issues who knows.

I am now in a good place with my mental health as I'm on the right medication. I feel its like i have just woken up from sleep walking through the last few years and what a mess I had made in this time. With a lack of work I had been spending erratically (a typical symptom of bipolar)

I had got myself in huge amounts of debt, I have been very lucky to have most of this wiped out due to my Mental Health. Over the last nine months or so I have picked up some work but nothing like before the pandemic. I have started to understand the highs and the lows that I still go through. I seem to get my highs when I'm at work, the feelings and emotions I get from being on a stage lifts me up for a few days at a time, but where work isn't the best at the moment I do still fall into the lows. I still have very limited contact with anyone outside of my house and I find I have very little drive to look for work or write something like this. Even when I do reach out there doesn't seem to be much work around is this due to the pandemic, the rise in energy prices meaning that company's just don't have the money to have external people to come in and do workshops, is it because company's are struggling themselves and safety and mental heath have taken a bit of a back seat and they are more focused on getting the job over the line or could it be that I have been very open with my own Mental Health and company's have lost trust in me? who knows!

When I hear the phrase " its ok not to be ok" it just makes me think that we still need to do a lot when it comes to Mental Health Awareness.

Is it ok if you find that nothing matters, if you feel like you have let everyone down. If You can go days without washing, sleeping or eating. If ?You can go weeks without talking to anyone or even leaving the house and in some instances you may not even leave your bed. if You can have thoughts of taking your own life, if you lose belief in yourself and people around you.

With all this in mind I would say that I'm still very lucky as I have a loving family and support from a therapist and psychiatrist through one of the best hospitals in the UK and have access to all of this for free as my wife has insurance through her work. I have a diagnosis and I'm now on the correct medication, I understand both my bipolar and ADHD symptoms and know what triggers to look out for.

How many others out there don't have support, don't have people around them, are relying on a broken NHS for help, don't have a diagnosis or in my case may get the wrong diagnosis, don't understand what they are going though, cant see the triggers and some have no way of talking about their issues so just keep them inside? How many people cant talk about their Mental Health in work because they cant afford to be off sick or are worried what impact it will have on their work life and the relationships in and out of work. Whether we want to admit it or not there is still a stigma surrounding Mental Health, it has got better over the last few years but its still there in the underbelly of businesses?

Going on all the above I have shared with you today, tell me now that "its ok not to be ok" because sometimes its not ok not to be ok! In a lot of circumstances company's using the phrase do so just to tick boxes in my own opinion.I believe that ?Company's should be more aware of what they are saying and the impact the words have on people who might be suffering.

With the rise of mental health issues since the pandemic and the suicide rate going through the roof, especially in men and even more alarming the stats on the construction industry when it comes to people taking their own lives. How many company's can really put their hand on their heart and say they do as much as they can, how many of you reading this know that you only tick the boxes that need to be seen to be ticked? (you will know who you are as soon as you read them words) If so what could you do different for your people.

?If I have learned anything from this experience then it is that no matter how good you or someone that you loves Mental Health is today this can change almost over night, so if you have the power or influence within your company to make a difference then do as much as you can to ensure your people are not only safe in work but also Mentally.

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I wonder how many people will actually get to this point of the article as most wont even have the time to read let alone really care.

If you are reading this and you are suffering yourself and want to talk to someone who has been through the issues then please send me a message. I would always be open and honest with people and try to help you to get the help you need.

Adam Hillaby?