SOBOR's Story - Let's Talk About Mental Health

How I faced depression.

The days are getting longer, the long cold winter slowly fading away.... spring is less than 60 days away... 50 to be exact.  Thank goodness.  Last week was Bell Let's Talk Day and it could never have been more important.  Mental health (and I am not an expert), although not a pandemic or even an epidemic it is a massive issue surrounding society today.  Mental health is talked about a lot, on social media, in the news, at work and in schools, but the on-going stigma and challenges of mental health, regardless of the cause, the type, the challenge have been ramped up throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns.

But this is not a post about Covid.  Nor is it a post about anti lockdowns, or anti government initiatives to deal with crushing the curve or flattening the curve. That is for another day and should be done in retrospect when we are out of this mess.  This is a post about sharing the effects of chaos, pressures and the inability to escape the everyday.  In short, it's me saying its ok to feel this way and it's ok to ask for help.  Our challenges, our struggles, our issues regardless of what you call them, are all important and I believe that one of the ways we get people to talk about their issues is by sharing.  Below is my mental health story.  My challenge and how I overcame.

So my story is about me 8 years ago.  I was lost.  On the surface everything was right.  Married to an amazing woman, three kids and 5 years into the real estate business.  I was starting to find my way and I had just been nominated to the board of directors of the Niagara Association of Realtors®.  That was on the outside however, appearances were deceiving.  In my mind, which at the time tended to work overtime, and not in a good way, my marriage was troubled, my career was struggling and it seemed like everything around me was falling apart.  In hind sight, now, writing this, it wasn't.  It just seemed that way.  

It felt like I had no answers, none.  I was going through the motions, trying to find a way to fix something that I had no idea how to fix, especially since I didn't actually know broken I actually was.  I couldn't believe for a minute I was falling apart on the inside.

Remember from the outside, throughout all of this, everything seemed fine.

When people talk about their demons, I totally understand that.  I was my own demon. Now for me, I had a couple of moments of realization that something was wrong.  Unfortunately the first moment, I didn't recognize until months later.  But the second was when I had that a hah moment.  I can vividly remember both interactions and the strange thing was, they both happened in back to back days.  

The first was pretty clear.  I woke up to get ready to go to day one of our strategic planning session at White Oakes Resort and Spa (shout to a great location for corporate events).  My wife Sue and I were fighting again, and she finally said to me I needed to have a conversation with someone.  Now to this day Sue knows me better than anyone in this world, (sorry mum) and if she said it I should have paid more attention.  I didn't, I shrugged it off, she was after all nuts and wrong.  Looking back, I had it all wrong.  I couldn't admit that I needed help.  That was until the next day.

The second moment came at the same event on day two.  Except this time, it wasn't my wife that noticed.  It wasn't Sue telling something that I refused to hear.  It was a colleague.  Someone who is now a close friend, someone who was only an acquaintance at the time but most importantly, someone who saw what I am sure everyone around me was seeing.   This was someone who was kind enough and strong enough to tell their story to help me.  Those 10 minutes in the hallway while we were on a coffee break were the 10 minutes that saved me.  Now to this day I still have no idea what this person saw, what I said, if anything or what triggered that conversation.  But I can't stress enough how it saved me, from myself and my path of destruction.  

The eye opening part that came out of that hallway conversation was me finally admitting there was something wrong and that I did in fact need to talk to someone.  After all, if others were noticing, I must have been missing something.  And I was.  My friend gave me the number of an amazing person, someone to talk to.  Which is actually the point of this post.  Talking.  Talking to someone.  Finding someone who you can trust to not judge, someone who will listen and just as importantly someone who cares.  The hardest part of this step was admitting you need to make the call.  And it wasn't easy.  It took me days to call.  The challenge was real.  When I did make the call, I booked an appointment for weeks away, I after all still didn't recognize what was wrong.  I knew something was wrong, I just had no idea what it was.  

I remember sitting in the hallway outside of the therapists office freaking out, thinking about leaving.  I actually started get quite anxious just sitting there and I hadn't said anything to anyone yet.  Then the point of no return.  A complete stranger came out to take me into his office and we sat down to start talk about me.  Which I find much easier today, but at the time was very very difficult.  I don't want go into great detail here, other than to say that a few conversations with a therapist, led to months of conversations and guidance on a path to fixing what was wrong.  And believe it or not, I wasn't that broken.  I learned tools to get me through that period of my life that were bleak and depressing. I also learned how to cope if things started to come back to the surface.  The guidance and support simply put gave me the tools to learn, to cope and to know when I needed to take a step back.  Six months later, I felt like I was capable of dealing with any issue that showed itself.  Occasionally I look back but not go back, to refer back to remind me to have the strength to move forward.  And all of this because like I said, I was broken, someone cared enough to check in with me and I had the courage to take the step to get help, no matter how hard it was.

Like I said I am no expert, but can only share my story in hopes that anyone who reads this, finds the strength to talk and not give up.  Even now as I'm writing this post, I look back and wonder why it took me so long to make that first call and why I couldn't see the need?  Whatever the reason, it was thanks to someone having the courage to put their story out there to support me that I was able to get better.   If you or anyone you know is struggling, pick up the phone, call someone, I guarantee you have a friend like I didn't, someone who will help you.

Stay safe, stay healthy.

Steve.