Men's Mental Health - Nick Shepherd

It’s only recently that I have become comfortable in discussing my patch of poor mental health from a few years ago. For those that know me, I’m often seen as positive and outgoing and people around me are surprised to hear about my experience however, as a colleague once reminded me, nobody is immune to the dark times.

The difficultly I’ve always faced with my experience is I had no particular trigger which was making me feel the way I was feeling – there was nothing obvious I needed to change or action. Back at the end of 2014, I felt like a constant black cloud was hanging over me – whilst I’d push myself to do the things I usually would, the smiles and the laughs which came with it would be a complete act. An act which was becoming more and more tiring to keep up.

Over that Christmas, I took accountability to reach out to my Mum on how I was feeling, who promised to get me the help I needed. I’ll be honest, it took me 2 months to accept the support as I wanted to try and pull myself out of it on my own accord by continuing to try and push myself to do the normal things I was used to in the hope things would get back to normal. But in the February, after some dark thoughts were pushing their way through, I accepted my family’s helping hand. I undertook 2 months of counselling which helped me to offload a lot of the problems I’d been keeping bottled up to myself and they helped me to come up with coping strategies – by the end, it genuinely felt like a cloud had lifted and I was a completely different person again.

Thankfully, I’ve never been remotely close to the place I was 7 years ago by taking accountability to recognise how to take control of my own mental health. I can notice the triggers for something which might bring me down and take myself for a long walk or to the gym, as keeping active really helps my mind. Whilst being around people can really help when you’re feeling low, I’ve learnt to appreciate my own company just as much – a long drive alone really helps to clear my mind too. Something which is key to me is recognising when something might make you feel down, allowing yourself to be frustrated or upset briefly – if you can do something to change it, change it – if you can’t, then try and move on!

A smile can really mask so much. The picture alongside this post was taken the day before I reached out for help the second time when I was hurting so much inside – reaching out to those around you to see how they’re ACTUALLY doing can mean the world to some people and can be the lifeline they actually need.

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