Many of you have heard me talk about buckets when discussing mental health and I was inspired by Julia Finch’s post about the boiling frog fable on LinkedIn to share my thoughts! For those unfamiliar with the boiling frog fable, essentially if you put a frog in cold water and slowly boil the water, the frog doesn’t realise it’s getting hot until it’s too late….

As Julia notes, please don’t try this at home! The analogy is clear, if you are in a toxic, stressful environment, don’t allow yourself to slowing boil to death unknowingly! Don’t be a boiling frog!

Onto my buckets…. And you may need to sit down to marvel at my drawing skills. I’m available for commissions and children’s parties.

The way I’ve described ‘sudden’ mental health injuries to people is that in reality they are not sudden. People who have a breakdown or do something extreme like take their own life have been building up to that point for some time. We all have a bucket which is where our stresses and anxieties go. ‘Normally’ (if there is such a thing), the bucket never fills and drains gradually, discharging the stress and anxiety over time. The discharge generally keeps pace with the refilling and so, we can go about our lives.

The thing is… most of us are not ‘normal’ and we have all sorts of different sizes and shapes of buckets and taps. Some buckets may be very small but have large taps whereas some may be very large buckets with small taps.

Importantly we all have a bucket! We all have the ability to build up and drain off stress and anxiety and we can all get to a point where we are overwhelmed and the bucket starts to overflow.

So what can we all do about it? How can we help ourselves or help others who have reached this point?

Be aware of it! Build your own internal monitor for when things start to overflow. That feeling of being overwhelmed starting to rise up... Stuttering... Unable to think straight... Everyone has their own ‘tell’. Interestingly, people who have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder - without the Hyperactivity) have a smaller tap! So while primary ADD symptoms might not lead you to connect the dots with anxiety, there is a connection! There is an excellent TV short by British comedian Rory Bremner on adult life with ADHD for those that are interested.

Then think about what you can do to help it. Myself and many others find diet (cutting out refined sugar), exercise, yoga, mindfullness to be a MASSIVE help in shoring up the bucket sides or increasing the flow of the tap. But also, just removing yourself from whatever the situation is that is causing the bucket to overfill is key. Medication can help some people as well. SSRIs such as Duloxetine, Prozac, etc that your doctor may prescribe can help increase the bucket size which gives you a chance to catch your breath and start to focus on long term strategies to help. While there is lots written and said by Ben Goldacre (Bad Science) and others on the effectiveness of SSRIs, Matt Haig sums it up well in his book Reasons to Stay Alive: “If pills work for you it doesn’t really matter if this is to do with serotonin or another process or anything else – keep taking them. Hell, if licking wallpaper does it for you, do that.”

You know what helps most? Talking to people! Whether it’s a professional therapist or just your friends and families or even strangers through a blog or LinkedIn…. Just talk. It disarms things. Helps your bucket drain and reassures. It reassures before everyone has suffered from stress and anxiety at some point and more people than you’d think have suffered from mental health injuries! Talking brings it out to the open and disarms it.

When I was younger and becoming more senior at work, I adopted a technique that creates mental shields to allow myself to step out of the moment and remain objective in stressful situations. Working in financial services is not easy on the body or mind. I still use that every day and while sometimes it may come across that I don’t care about a situation and I seem TOO relaxed, in fact it’s the opposite but I’m deploying the shields to make sure I can stay focussed and objective. This only works for short term stress. Consistent stress and anxiety triggers at home or work should not be shielded! They need to be dealt with before the bucket fills up!

I have found that material changes in my personal and work life has helped significantly in my ability to manage stress and anxiety and when combined with yoga, riding my motorcycle, creative outlets and regular exercise helps me stay ahead of most issues. As someone who has ADD tendencies (oooo shiny thing!) this is even more important as my tap doesn’t drain as well as ‘normal’.

So, keep an eye on your buckets everyone! And also, don’t boil the frog!

Namaste 🙏 and remember: Real Men Cry!

#MentalHealth #Anxiety #Stress #Depression #LetItOut #NotADoctor #ADD #ADHD