Paul Schiernecker

Tag: Mental health for men

  • Goodbye Blue Monday.

    “Dwayne heard a tired voice from somewhere behind his head, even though no one was back there. It said this to Dwayne: Oh my, oh my.”

    Not my words but those of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, a man who looked so much like me as a young man that I can’t be entirely sure one of the pair of us didn’t time travel. So it goes.

    Today is Blue Monday, reportedly the saddest day in the Gregorian calendar. I looked into it. I wanted to understand the maths behind it. I wanted to see their working out. It turns out that there is actually a formula for it:

    [W + (D-d)] x TQ

    M x Na

    W = weather, d = debt, D = monthly salary, T = time since Christmas, Q = Time since failing our New Year’s resolutions, M = low motivational levels, Na = the feeling of a need to take action.

    Now I don’t know about the rest of you but I hate maths at the best of times, let alone when I am working out when it is going to make me the saddest. The truth of the matter is that I haven’t failed my New Year’s Resolutions, I feel more motivated than I have in a long time and am already taking action. I refuse to be dictated to by a formula. I am not a baby.

    Instead I’ve taken today to read, listen to Father John Misty and eat good food with good people. It’s cold out there, I needed my cockles warmed (or the Veganuary equivalent). Please take the time today to give yourself a big hug or to tell someone close to you that you love them. I’ve just messaged my mum to let her know.

    Tonight I’ll go to the gym, meet a friend for dinner and if I’m lucky watch The Avengers (2012) before bed. I hope you’re able to fill your time with good things.

    If you ever need any help with dealing with this absolute shithouse we call life then my contact details are on my page.

  • I’m not brave.

    Firemen are brave.
    Malala Yousafzai is brave.
    Lightning McQueen is brave.
    I probably shouldn’t compare them. Only one of them managed to purposely lose the Piston Cup championship and still put Radiator Springs back on the map.

    Last week I published a blog post about my mental health. It was pretty personal. It dealt with some dark shit. It featured a picture which included my nipples.  That’s not brave to me.

    The thing about mental health, and no, I don’t want to be someone who is solely known for speaking out about their psychological well-being, is that it is the same as physical health. It’s intrinsically linked. It’s all in the same body. In my case, it’s all me.

    When someone has an accident, and breaks their leg, they aren’t brave. It’s just something that happens. They talk about it and people sign their cast and in time they get better and it’s something of an anecdote. They might feel twinges of pain in the same area. They may even break it again as there’s a pronounced weakness there, but there’s nothing brave in them telling others that they have broken their leg.

    It’s okay to ask me about my injuries. I’m open to conversations about it. Others might not be so it’s always best to tread lightly and gauge the reaction.

    That aside, I am so grateful to everyone who took the time to read my post last week. The comments and messages I got as a result were incredibly overwhelming. The more I can do to encourage others to talk about mental health then the better I am doing as a writer on the subject. The private messages I received from friends who I didn’t know were going through hard times were incredibly touching and I remain completely available to anyone who wants to talk anything through.

    You are not alone in this and I am not going anywhere.

    Thank you again for your displays of affection,. My little blog didn’t know what had hit it.

  • Sad face and silk sheets. 


    This photo is a year old today. I only know that because a part of me knew I would get better and therefore kept note of the date. I don’t know if you can tell but this is me at a real low. The lowest I had felt in a very long time. I got so ill that I had to go and stay at my dad’s, in the spare room. I was 29 years old and I felt like I had ruined absolutely everything. The days were dark. I couldn’t see a way out. I wanted to die.

    Most people won’t know about this. They know I suffer from depression and anxiety because I try to make it known but it is often hard for people to understand just how consuming, overwhelming and encompassing it can be. I am very much a victim of wearing the painted on smile. That’s why I talk about it. Talking makes it better. A problem shared is a problem solved and all that jazz.

    It was only thanks to the incredible people in my life that I was able to get through those dark days. I had panic attacks at work. I spent my weekends and evenings in bed. I struggled to do anything but I knew I had to. I was a functioning depressive. I got through the days but I was not living, not by a long shot.
    I didn’t feel comfortable in my own home. Nobody else felt comfortable with me being in my own home.

    I was fortunate that my dad had a spare room. He knew that at some point, in his own words, “one of his boys would need it”. He still refers to it as Paul’s Room. When I had an operation in November, I ended up there again.

    I packed the things I would need and I stayed at my dad’s while everyone did their absolute best to pull me through, when a lot of the time, I was loathed to try and do it myself. I owe those people my life.

    So, what’s the point?
    Why am I telling you this?
    It’s because it is important.
    Suicide is the number one killer of men between 25 – 40.
    For far too long, we have been made to bottle up our feelings, to stiff-upper-lip our way through difficult situations and it’s toxic and it has to stop. That’s why I am sharing.
    So what can you do?
    You can do what the people around me did.
    They asked what they could do.

    A friend at work took me aside and told me that she didn’t personally understand what I was going through but that if I felt comfortable explaining it to her, then she was happy to listen, and maybe, it would help. That olive branch got me through another day.

    A lot of the time, I didn’t have the answer. People were there for me when I needed them and even when I pushed them away, I knew it was at my request and that they would be ready and waiting when I was able to talk. It’s a hard thing to get your head around, for all concerned.
    Just listen to people.

    There are some things that help when you feel that low, even when you think they aren’t going to:
    · Get outside
    · Eat
    · Drink plenty of water
    · Watch old films
    · Stare out to sea
    · Tell people you love them
    · Create something
    · Destroy something
    · Pet a dog
    · Read “Reasons To Stay Alive” by Matt Haig

    While on the subject, Reasons To Stay Alive became an incredible source of strength for me. So much so that when I felt better and one of my friends was feeling low, we met for lunch and I gave him my copy. For over an hour we talked about the misunderstandings that come from friends and family when your mental health is bad and what we could do to combat it. We have a project in the pipeline as a result.

    There are so many people around you who are in a very similar head space, even if your twisted melon wants to make you feel like you are completely on your own.
    Fuck it, talk to me if you can’t find anyone else. I’m all ears.

    So, here we are. A year on from the sad face and the silk sheets. What’s happened since?
    Well, I took a trip to Asia to forget about everything.
    I shaved my head.
    I came back and realised I was still me and I was going to have to deal with that.
    I lost weight from depression.
    I threw away or gave away a lot of possessions.
    I got a few more tattoos.
    I lost my dignity in a strip club in Krakow.
    My anti-depressants flattened any sensation so I switched to others which made my hair fall out.
    I gained weight from anti-depressants.
    I tried being vegan.
    I took up meditation.
    I tried being gay.
    I joined a gym.
    I became an uncle.
    I bought a freezer.
    I remembered what it was to love myself.
    I got my creativity back.
    I’ve managed to get a lot of the flying monkeys off my back and day-to-day, I feel pretty good.

    That’s why I am able to look at that picture, and know that I am well and truly on the other side of the lens.

  • Citalopramstagram

    Hey.
    It’s okay. It’s just me. Don’t mind me.
    I just wanted to let you know that you’re going to be alright. There’s a lot of bloody awful stuff going on in the world but you’re doing really well.

    When I was younger I got sad. I was hella young and I was hella sad (I’m going to call that my “hella” quota for this blog post). Nobody knew what to do with me. I hadn’t seen an awful lot of hardship aside from the fact I never got Hungry, Hungry Hippos for Christmas in 1993. I had never been beaten (other than with a spatula which was all the rage at the time) and I was never molested. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t explain it. I sat with that sadness for an awfully long time. I suppose you’ve reached a point where you are wondering why I’m telling you this. It’s for me. It’s for you too but it’s mostly for me. Whenever I tell people that I suffer from anxiety, that I suffer from depression, that sometimes I see a train pulling in and wonder how long it would hurt for, they ask how. I am outwardly happy. I’ve had to learn to be. These are perfectly normal thoughts, unless you’re being quizzed by a healthcare professional in which case they draw a sad face next to that question on their little survey and carry on. I’m writing this as someone who has been in and out of some kind of therapy for more than five years, more than fifteen if you count the sugar pill homeopathy sessions I underwent when I first got the sads. I’m currently on citalopram. I’m on the waiting list for therapy again. I just wanted to write this to let you know that it’s okay. I can’t talk for people who have undergone horrible circumstances. I can’t speak on behalf of battered spouses or soldiers returning with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have never really been victimised (beyond generic school bullying (my name came under some scrutiny for not being quite English enough)). I’ve never really had a problem that couldn’t be resolved with a box of Kleenex and a cup of tea. Take that however you wish. I just wanted to let you know that even if you haven’t experienced something horrible, if you feel you are not allowed to show any kind of emotion at Million Dollar Baby in case people realise that you’re human, that it’s okay to need help and its okay to sometimes feel like you are a bit broken. It’s alright to want to do terrible things, to destroy yourself and the world around you. I don’t think that’s something that is taught. Like I said, I can’t speak for people in a lot of circumstances. I’m trying to completely understand my own privilege as I type this. Just because I have that privilege. As a man. As a white man. As a straight white man. As a straight white man living in England. As a straight white man living in my own place in England. Even with all that going on, it’s alright to be sad. It’s alright to feel emotion. It’s alright to feel like you want to shut yourself away from the world. We are taught from the earliest ages that we aren’t allowed to do certain things because they are gendered.  We, as boys, got DIY and not being able to dance, girls got a lot of accessories and all the best colours. It was also taught women were allowed to have emotions that men weren’t. Isn’t that twee and quaint and adorable?  For the longest time I felt guilty about the way I felt about things. It didn’t matter if it was social injustice (flies on the faces of kids in Sudan) or Aslan dying and rising up like a glossy yellow Jesus. That guilt runs pretty deep and I don’t understand why. What’s the problem with showing emotion? I cried when David Bowie died and I cried at Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s nice to be able to cry. It’s also nice to be able to talk openly about depression. Why do people have such an issue with it? What’s the big problem there?

    As it turns out, once you become the person who mentions it, you’re actually like some kind of soothsayer for anyone else you come into contact with. As soon as I was comfortable enough with my own mental health to start talking about it, I discovered other people had thoughts and feelings and had been waiting for someone to talk to. Why don’t we all just talk about it? Wouldn’t that be a lot healthier than sitting in the dark and rocking? When I was a kid I genuinely thought I was going to be dragged off to a padded cell in a straitjacket. If I could travel through time, one of the first things I would do,  after investing in Apple when they were working out of a garage and telling George Lucas not to put eyelids on the Ewoks, is tell my younger self it’s going to be alright, that it is okay to be sad and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s something I needed to hear at the time and as incredible as my parents were when I got that way, it didn’t help to settle the fear there was something wrong with me.

    I read something recently that said “in the forties, eighteen-year-olds went off to fight and die for their country and now they just want to talk about their feelings”. I hope the source realises they are talking about a generation who returned home from that war, if they were lucky enough to return at all, and a lot of them suffered for the rest of their days. My grandfather was born in Holland. He was in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. He saw piles of bodies at roadsides. He had to hide under floorboards from the Nazis when he was a teenage boy. You don’t think he wanted someone to talk to about that? He couldn’t. He was never the same again. There wasn’t a term for it then. He, like many men in wartime, had to suffer in silence. I know someone who toured Afghanistan just a couple of years ago and the boy who came back was not the same boy we sent off. Fortunately he’s now getting the help he needs.

    That’s why I’m offering this advice ultimately. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, or what you’ve got going on, just know that the thoughts that keep you up at night, the fears you have and the concerns you carry are entirely okay and you’re going to be alright. Look after yourself, get in touch with me if you are worried about anything and I will speak to you soon.

    Thank you.

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