RISE (CHAPTER. 2)
Written by Andi Bazaar, Co-wrote by Timothée-freimann Schofield | Nov 12, 2022
Depression is a common mental disorder worldwide, more than 264 million people of all ages suffer from depression — it is a major cause of Morbidity worldwide.
Mental health for men is a serious thing and we suffer a lot. To all the guys out there who is suffering from mental health, this is for you lot!
Trust me, as a guy I know shit gets hard. You are constantly putting on a brave face to cover the pain you’re going through from your family and friends, you don’t want to feel "weak or vulnerable." You would rather suffer alone then face potential "embarrassment."
Your family is backwards, they will not understand. Your boys probably won't take you seriously (most of them) and you do not feel like talking to a girl, men suffer differently — you do not feel like girls can relate and I fully hear that to a different level
You trick yourself day in day out that shit will change, then you find yourself experiencing the exact same thing day in day out. Shit feels like it is on repeat, you are drowning in it and yet you still feel like you can not reach out to someone.
I will openly admit it my uni experience combined with everything else has been a madness, my mental health has fluctuated so much that I can't even recall how I felt yesterday. I have had nights where I've been fuelled with anger, sad, emotional, sensitive, numb.
You'd feel like you are alive but ur not living, like you're trapped in your own mind and there's no escaping the doubt, the negativity that dwells inside and I just want to get this out there, things will get better. Your worst enemy is your mind and it’ll eat away at you.
You will feel like you're worthless and yet you'll feel so fucking lonely because you can not open up about your problems, you'll dwell on the smallest of shit until it is all over and sometimes and you'd just wish it will all end but let me tell you something.
Talk about it, it's a cure, it's a blessing. If you feel ashamed, make an anonymous account, DM me. Do not suffer alone and do not lose to yourself.
Life is mad hard and the expectations on us men are so high that sometimes we feel that we can't match them, but remember this:
- Yes we are men, but we are human.
- We suffer, we hurt.
- We see negative shit about men on a daily on the timeline.
- We sometimes feel condemned, you are not alone.
Open up to ur boys, you would be so surprised on how supportive we can be. We need to bring each other up as friends!
Allow yourself to feel, to hurt, to cry. It is ok. You're not any less of a man for crying to somebody, allow yourself to embrace it all and allow yourself to exist "be human." Reach out to loved ones because the last thing anybody want is for it too get too much and it's too late.
Life is a lesson and is also like a tunnel, at the end of it all you will see the light even if it's pitch black right now. Every rough spot becomes a piece of th past and you’ll mine through the tunnel that much stronger, there is so much of life worth living so don't give up!
But please, be gentle on yourself. You're human before you are a man. If you need to talk to anybody, please just go.
- Don’t have no regrets.
- Do not allow it to become a situation where it’s too late.
- Reach out, your not alone.
- So many stories could be exchanged.
- Vent to someone.
The last 2 years has tested me and pushed my barriers, and I won’t say I am 100% but fucking hell, I am so much stronger. Head up kings, y’all got this!
Just remember, your problems will not fix overnight. It will be a hard battle, one step at a time you'll get there. Your problems might not go but you'll learn how to cope, how to deal with it until you finally overcome these problems. It'll be okay I promise you and don't give up!
Ever since I have come out about my mental illness publicly, I have received immense love and support. For those who missed it, I suffer from clinical depression and high functioning anxiety and I am not afraid to share my story.
One stigmatized belief is that a mental health struggle is a sign of weakness, this conflicts with the idea of an athlete as an example of someone who is in optimal health but I have been in therapy for one year now and am being treated by my brother Dr Oliver Schofield
Beyond valid physical challenges, I often face pressure, standards and expectations. Further, I am tasked with the need to balance my personal and professional life. Therefore, just as anyone else, athletes are susceptible to a variety of mental health struggles.
It doesn't simply being sad and unmotivated, the symptoms of depression often have a way of infiltrating everything, from smallest, most unsuspecting details of life, to biggest, most significant aspects of life. Trying to explain this often feels like trying to hold onto water.
I will share the worst symptoms of depression people typically don’t talk about in hope to deepen our understanding and uncloak the misunderstanding that leads to the creation of shame and stigma.
The black hole I feel in the core of my being, it sucks in life, motivation, concentration, etc. To use another metaphor it’s drowning in the the ocean in the middle of a tempest.
When I’m having an episode but I’m not so far gone and part of my rational mind is still present telling me there’s no reason to feel the way I do, yet the dark part of my mind still won’t release it’s grip.
Feeling numb and that feeling of unreality, I can see and take my surroundings in yet I don’t feel a part of it like a dream sequence. So many people but at that moment, they mean very little.
Dissociation, being so depressed and just gone so consumed that you are no longer yourself. It begins to feel like you’re first person in a video game or movie, you have no emotional connection to reality because you’re not there. Literally just existing feels impossible.
Not knowing that something is wrong in the early stage, and hurting other people with your behavior not on purpose of course. As a consequence, they accuse you of many bad things that are caused by the illness you couldn’t really control. People make many mistakes out of fear.
I think it’s anger, agitation, irritability and that feeling of having no self-control. I hate when the intensity gets to a point where you can’t hold it in anymore and you fly off the handle over a super small thing because you can’t regulate this emotion.
When all the symptoms mix, that awful combo of a lack of concentration, exhaustion and apathy that makes your brain stay in what’s like "the dial-up tone phase" of waking up for extended periods of time.
You can’t think straight can’t form proper sentences don’t know if you want social interaction or be isolated, don’t enjoy what I usually would but don’t have anything else to do -can’t focus on work when I have it. It’s like I’m just there and useless cause I can’t function right.
If you have made it this far in this article and can relate to me lets talk!
It is important to remember that no matter how much you are struggling or how overwhelming your symptoms may feel you are never alone and you are worthy and deserving of help.
Recognizing the prevalence of concerns and the risks of unchecked mental health problems, seeking help is crucial. Treatment has turned my struggles into a passion and my mission for mental health advocacy is a higher calling than any of my sporting achievement.
Last week I finally got round to reading this best-selling psychiatry book from 1983.
"Psychiatry now recognises that the serious mental illnesses are (diseases) in the same sense as cancer or high blood pressure (people) suffer from a (sick or broken brain)"
"The somatic therapies used most frequently are medications and Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) because these diseases are considered to be biological in origin, the therapy is seen as corrected a biological imbalance." — Boom, right from the outset!
"Mental illnesses are not caused by bad parenting or bad spousing, just as the patient is relived of guilt about his symptoms so are his friends and relatives." — Free pass for abuse, neglec, and all kinds of social injustice then?
"The brain is the source of everything we are, it is the source of everything that makes us human, humane and unique. It is the source of our ability to speak, to write, to create, to love, to laugh, to despair and to hate." — Hmmmm.. not sure about that one.
"Benzodiazepines enjoy wide spread use because they have only minimal side effects and minimal long-term risks." — Didn't age well.
"Mental illnesses are due to disruptions in the normal flow of messages through brain circuitry and these (breaks) in the brain can occur in many different ways, the nerves forming command centres may become illness wear out or die. The wires may loose their insulation."
"Some neurons may in a sense become (overheated) and send or receive too many chemical messages, short circuits may occur so that new connections are formed that should not be there or command centres may become disconnected from each other." — Utter, tosh!
"The psychological or social terms used to describe these (breaks) are metaphors used to describe biological processes that we are just beginning to understand." — No messing about: all is but metaphor for biology.
"Schizophrenia is due to overacting transmission in the circuitry of the brain that uses dopamine, the neurochemical abnormalities can be corrected through treatment with neuroleptics."
"There may be two main subtypes of depressive illness: (one due to norepinephrine deficiency and the other to a serotonin deficiency in the brain.)" — Paging Dr. Pies
"During the next several years, the understanding of neurochemical mechanisms underlaying anxiety will continue to evolve and we will begin to understand this important human emotion in terms of chemical processes occurring in the brain."
