Gum on My Shoe

TW: Mention of rape and sexual abuse.

Monday was the start of Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK. Dressing for my day working from home I picked through my collection of mental health t-shirts. Andy “Electroboy” Behrman’s KEEP TALKING ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH tee. Gabe Howard’s iconic :): shirt. One each from Bipolar UK, NAMI, No Stigmas, and Stigma Fighters. I chose the No Stigmas one for the start of the week. I made myself a cup of coffee and turned on my work laptop. My new post for Mental Health Awareness Week would be going up on the work intranet. I’d have emails and calls through the week with the mental health and wellness team. Content and activities to plan. But what was I doing, really? Making a difference? Countering stigma? I suddenly felt deflated. Adrift. A fraud. For a moment I was back thirty-five years or so at a CND rally in Hyde Park in London, taking in the sunshine and the music, eyeing up the women in their rainbow coloured tops and faded blue jeans, affronted by the guy on stage declaring...

I wasn’t disappointed in you when your weight went up because you ate all the girl scout cookies. Although maybe it seemed that way when I suggested you throw them away or gift them to someone next time, and lectured you about average daily calories. As though that would fix your relationship with your body. I wasn’t disappointed in you when you told me you cut yourself. Although maybe it seemed that way when I said remember I’m here. Don’t ever feel you’d be a burden or that I’d be too busy or asleep. As though I can make the demons go away. I wasn’t disappointed in you when you went back to sleep after our prearranged wake-up call. Although maybe it seemed that way when I started calling a second time or a third to make sure you were up. As though your day starts better in my hands. I wasn’t disappointed in you when you told me there’s no hope, no job, no friends for you so why bother trying. Although maybe it seemed that way when I pushed suggestions in your face you’d trie...

Thursday February 7 2019 is #TimeToTalk Day , an annual event organised by Time to Change to focus attention on mental health. (Time to Change was formed in 2009 by MIND and Rethink Mental Illness , with the aim of reducing mental health-related stigma and discrimination.) Some feel that awareness campaigns trivialise the lived experience of people with serious mental illness, giving the impression that talking to someone or going for a walk can fix things, or take the place of professional treatment and support. I wholeheartedly agree that a chat with a friend or a breath of fresh air is never going to cure anyone. But I do believe—as the following quotation from Time to Change makes clear—there is much we can do to lessen the burden of isolation and misunderstanding. Conversations about mental health change lives. At the moment, too many people with mental health problems are made to feel isolated, ashamed and worthless by other people’s reactions. But talking about mental h...

By Roiben I can talk for a long time about my various conditions and disabilities and how they affect me. For the sake of those who do not know, I have Congenital Rubella Syndrome. This has led to a nice complicated list of conditions and disabilities including Type 1 Diabetes and mental illness. In this article I am discussing the fact that I class myself as Deaf with a severe hearing loss, and the fact that I have a visual impairment. As a result of congenital cataracts I am completely blind in my left eye. My right eye does all of the work so is prone to getting tired quickly. I have diabetic retinopathy and astigmatism in my right eye as well. I want to talk about five things that help me cope with these disabilities and get the best I can out of any given situation. Some are things I can do and some are things others can do to assist me. It is worth bearing in mind that disabilities are very individual and needs change from person to person. Some of these things are genera...

I am grateful to Vikki Beat for our recent conversation at Caffe Nero which led to me writing this up. It’s no secret that Fran and I spend a lot of time talking together but it took a while for me to recognise that not all conversations are the same. Different people have different ways of talking, of course, but aside from that there are distinct types of conversation depending on what the people involved need at the time. Here are three distinct types we have found useful. I’d love to know if they resonate for you – or if they don’t! Let’s talk! “My Turn, Your Turn.” This is the type of conversation that comes most naturally to me, whether face-to-face (in person or on a video call), on the telephone, or in online chat. It consists of short alternating exchanges, one person speaking for a moment or two then letting the other take a turn. It works well (at least for me) where you are “shooting the breeze”, making plans, or sharing things on a fairly surface-y level. What I had ...

Today — Saturday, May 19, 2018 — is the day of the Royal Wedding. I wish Harry and Meghan well in their life together but I brought myself out to the coast to avoid the media, and social media, onslaught. It’s just not something I feel a part of. Here at Tynemouth there is calm and space and air and sky and sea. And a bench where I can sit and write. A week ago I was also writing. Not here but in the café at the city library. At the suggestion of my boss Judith I was drafting a piece about Mental Health Awareness Week for the corporate blog at the company I work for. I submitted the article on Monday morning. It was published Tuesday lunchtime and to be honest I’ve been blown away by the response. It’s been picked up by management up to and including our CEO. I have a meeting next week with one of the senior managers to explore how I can get involved with the company’s mental health initiatives. This week has also seen me out twice socially. That’s not a typo — TWICE! Both eve...

By Roiben We all hope in today’s society with its constant rush and pressure that people can still be good, helpful and polite. That we would, upon seeing a person in need, stop like the much-fabled good Samaritan, and help. That we would hold doors open, offer to carry heavy bags and help an older person across the road. However, there is such thing as being a little over-eager to help and perhaps misguided in how to go about it. I have recently begun using a long cane. Michael Cane, my new and trusty friend, is helping me get about my daily life. I had been warned that using the cane does have its drawbacks, in attracting overly helpful people. It was still a shock to the system when it happened. I was walking a well-known route from an underground station to work. This involves crossing a few roads. I stopped at the traffic lights to the first road and prepared to wait for the lights to change. Out of nowhere a man grabbed my right arm (the arm holding the cane). He had said...

Back in January I posted a list of six things I’d quite like to do in 2017 . So how did I get on? 1. Volunteer with Time to Change ACHIEVED Following on from previous volunteering experiences with mental health charity Time to Change, I had a fantastic time at Newcastle Pride in July. You can read how I got on, as well as the thoughts of others who took part, in my post What Is It Like to Volunteer with Time to Change? If you’d like to get involved with Time to Change yourself in any capacity, check out their Champions page . 2. Visit a Pub ACHIEVED This might not seem a particularly challenging objective but I rarely visit pubs, apart from when my wife Pam and I are on holiday. I specifically wanted to visit Wylam Brewery at the Palace of Arts in Newcastle upon Tyne. I achieved this goal in May , finding that the place fully lived up to my hopes. I visited two other pubs of note this year. The 15th-century Kirkstone Pass Inn on the A592 Kirkstone Pass road ...

The traveller with bipolar disorder faces a number of challenges. Leaving behind proven routines and support structures, the journeying itself (especially if different time zones are involved), and the excitement of new places and opportunities are all intrinsically destabilising. Good planning including a Travel Wellness Plan goes a long way to mitigate the risks. Factoring in some post-vacation support is valuable too. In our book High Tide, Low Tide Fran and I describe how we managed our mutually supportive friendship whilst Fran was touring Europe with her elderly parents, as well as what happened on her return home. On that occasion, Fran couldn’t rest and recuperate, as she had to immediately look for somewhere new to live, pack up, and move home. Fortunately, not every trip is quite so traumatic! Fran has just returned from a ten day vacation with a friend to Edisto Beach in South Carolina: a round trip of 2,200 miles. She arrived home last night around 6 p.m. her time (11...

If you were going to write a book about your life, what would be the title? Who would you want to read it? Would you cover anything up? Would you expose an area of your life into the light? I want to lend you a story. It’s a story about life with mental illness but with none of the vocabulary you’d expect. You’ll read about depression, psychosis, mania, paranoia, anxiety and you will also read about recovery, finding being, mindfulness, healing, recovery. My favourite stories are those that you can relay to a child and the adult reader also finds depth of understanding beyond the literal narrative. Are yours? Well, I hope that The Flight of the Bumblebee does just that. In the last few weeks, I’ve added questions for individuals and book groups at the end of each chapter. I want to make it easier for you to have those ‘mental health conversations’. I find that when I have a metaphor to talk about, those chats are much easier to begin. “Have you read The Flight of the Bumblebee ? We...

My name is Marie Abanga and I am from Cameroon in Africa. Before my brother Gabriel was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of eleven, all I knew about the condition was the appellation “fainting fits”. In my country and probably in a large chunk of Africa, such fits are still attributed either to evil attacks or ill luck. There is so much taboo and stigma surrounding such cases, to the extent that some families would rather hide their children suffering from seizures than risk public shame. They simply are never sent to school, or withdrawn once seizures set in. As if the epilepsy was not enough, I learned barely two months before my brother’s death that he had also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This made sense to me because I had witnessed firsthand several highs and lows of his behaviour, but I was left speechless. I remember a blog post I did on my blog in June 2014 on the occasion of his 33rd birthday, crying out loud: “ Somebody tell me what is wrong with my brother ”. ...

I am walking home from Tescos. It’s a little after 6 pm. I go to the store two or three evenings a week for groceries, or treats. Most times I would be pressing home, to be back in time for my Skype call with Fran at 7 pm. Not this evening, though. We’ve not fallen out or anything like that, it’s just she’s out with friends all day today while she’s having work done on her apartment. We have chatted on and off. The last time was about half an hour ago. Fran: Things are going well but I am exhausted. Horizontal day tomorrow. Marty: I’m at Tescos Fran: 1.45 movie Marty: Ooo what movie? Fran: My Cousin Rachel Marty: I will have to look it up. With J? Fran: Yes Marty: Cool We met up on Skype last night at 7 pm. We went through her checklist to make sure all the preparations were done, and she carried the laptop round the apartment so I could see the progress she’s made. We usually have another call later but didn’t last night, because there was still a lot for her to do. It’s a bea...

If you avoid conflict to keep the peace, you start a war inside yourself. —Cheryl Richardson In the first of a new series of Question & Answer posts, Anna asks: “Do you and Fran ever get angry with each other? How do you deal with that?” Quoted passages are excerpted from our book . In any relationship worthy of the name there will be times when one person or the other becomes irritated, frustrated, or even furiously angry. It’s important not to imagine or pretend otherwise, or hide from it when it happens. My six year friendship with Fran has transformed my relationship with anger. I am no longer afraid. It’s not that anger is a good thing in itself, but when it turns up we acknowledge it, and are honest about what is happening. One of the most important lessons I have learned is that it is okay to get things wrong sometimes; for me to become irritated, frustrated, or angry at Fran; or for her to feel that way about me. In a relationship founded on trust and honesty, we ...