By Michael Jones – Holistic Wellbeing Coach and Trainer
Firstly, I want to say hello to you all. Some of you might know me as the co-host of Carrie-Ann and I’s podcast “I Don’t Know Much, But”. Yes it is I! Oh he of the dulcet tones and face for radio!
If you are a listener then this blog won’t be a surprise to you. If you’re not a listener… what have you been doing!? Shame on you! I joke of course. If you want to find us we are available on the usual platforms.
When I was offered the chance to write this blog for MBBA there was only one topic that I could start with because it ultimately led to meeting Carrie-Ann and all that has ensued since. I guess we have both started a journey (see what I did there? Clever huh!).
What I wanted to write about first is something that’s not uncommon these days and it happened to me. I got a mental health diagnosis in middle age. Let me tell you how it happened. I had been working for a year or so at that point with someone who is a very dear colleague, friend and mentor to me. Her name is Emma and she is a mental health professional. We had been linking up on various mental health projects, she as the professional and me as the tutor. She would create and feed into the content and I would present it in my manner. It was, and remains to be, a wonderful partnership. So, some time had passed and it was just before Christmas about seven or eight years ago. We were walking to a nearby pub for a Christmas carvery to celebrate the year and head off for our well-deserved break. As we got near she said something to me. “Mike, I hope you don’t mind me asking, and please don’t be offended, but have you been diagnosed as being on the spectrum?”
“Autism?! I replied puzzled. “No, why?”
“Well” she said, “you exhibit all the traits. “
This floored me. I cant be autistic. I’m a tutor for a living. I meet people, I’m open and gregarious. To be honest though, my definition of autism was pretty much based on the Dustin Hoffman performance as Charlie Babbitt in that brilliant eighties movie ‘Rain Man’. If you threw a bunch of straws at my feet there’s not a chance I’d be able to count them. However, I would be really annoyed with the mess you had made! No. Absolutely not. I can’t be. That’s when she explained what Autism was and how it’s a spectrum condition, and how some of the behaviours I had exhibited align with the higher functioning end of the spectrum. I was super organised, I had an incredibly retention memory for facts (usually the random and obscure facts… great for a pub quiz.. I’m for hire!), I could be prone to frustration when I saw things that in my perception were incredibly obvious but other people didn’t get. Those are to name but a few. She explained that often with neurodiversity there is a co-morbidity; a secondary diagnosis if you will. This things like to hunt in pairs! It was this that got me thinking.
I was born on the early seventies. Yes, I know, I look amazing for my age! Neurodiversity wasn’t on the radar back then. I was the smart, geeky kid. The brain box. I was the scientist but also the arty one. I had an incredible eye for detail. When the other kids in primary school were drawing mum with a triangle skirt and single stick legs protruding from the corners, I was drawing anatomically correct. As much as I was bright though, I also struggled to read. At the age of seven I could barely read a word. Looking back now I think I could, but I just couldn’t overcome a mental barrier to get the words out and I didn’t know how to articulate this. As far as I and anyone else was concerned I couldn’t read. Then one day, my favourite primary school teacher Mr Adlard, brought in a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and my world was turned upside down. He read it to us and I was transfixed. Transported to the mind of Roald Dahl and all his wonderful creations and I was an addict. Hungry for more, something unlocked in my brain. So began a love for the written word and the adventures that lay within. It was so voracious in fact that by the age of nine by reading age was now that of a fifteen year old. But still it wasn’t picked up on in school as it would be now. I was happy, learning, making friends so leave him be seemed to be the attitude. With hindsight, and this is totally personal to my experience, I think in a way it did me a favour. Back then, to be labelled with a condition was a trajectory downhill. It was remedial classes that would have been followed by bullying and all sorts. That was the seventies and eighties though. I hope it’s different now.
When I actually reached the age of fifteen there was a life event that triggered something which I now understand to by my co-morbidity. It’s called Cyclothymia and it’s a milder version of Bipolar Disorder. I’ll park that for now and go back to that morning in November nineteen eighty-seven. I was asleep in bed and awoken by a phone call. Mum went down to answer and all I remember is the guttural cry as she learned that her dad, my grandad had passed away in the night. He had been unwell for sometime and the day before had been admitted to hospital. However, we didn’t expect to lose him. He had been a central figure in my life. I had been blessed with grandparents who lived close by. My mums parents lived the closest, literally around the corner. Barely a day went by without me seeing them, I would pass their house each day on my way to school and would always pop in to say hello before I headed on my way. Before he became unwell, we spent hours in the backyard of their terraced house, feeding his pigeons. We played silly games. We had fun. But he took ill in the early eighties and struggled with his health for years. He had a fighting spirit and a thirst for life but this final bout with illness was too much. My world changed that morning but only now am I able to understand just how much. Adolescence is tricky at the best of times but it’s also the time that certain mental health conditions can rear their heads. As it turns out, with hindsight, my Grandad had also been afflicted with mental health issues. Not surprising for a man who survived being shot in the second world war and presumed dead. That story is for another day. He likely had a mood effecting disorder prior to becoming a soldier it blighted him through his life. The mood swings, the bouts of depression, the euphoric or manic highs. That’s what Cyclothymia, and it’s more aggressive sibling, Bipolar Disorder are. Mood swings that come and go like the weather. You can be happy at a funeral and be unhappy at a wedding. It doesn’t care when it shows up. It doesn’t care how you think you should be feeling. It was losing him that triggered it in me.
In my teens and twenties I struggled with those mood swings. There were days when I really thought I was two personalities. Happy and Sad. Angel and Demon. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t ask because although it affected me it wasn’t ever sever enough for people to see it. I could mask it. I socialised when I could. Although to get me to social events was a personal challenge. The social anxiety would rage rampantly and I’d be in a sweat before I left the house. But still I didn’t get help. Those early years were surrounded by red flags saying that something was off but I chose to carry on regardless. As adolescence subsided and I entered my thirties, the severity was less severe but it was there. The eponymous black dog. It would make me doubt everything. It would tell me I wasn’t worthy enough. I was faulty. It would have me catastrophise every good thing in my life. I scuppered every chance at a relationship that came my way because I’m not normal and they’re going to find out and leave me anyway. I told myself I was happy but I wasn’t. I soothed with food an alcohol. As I approached the age of forty I’d put on a huge amount of weight and drank most nights. I wasn’t in a good place and for the purposes of physical health, I decided to get fit. That’s when something occurred to me. I was getting physically fit but my moods were improving too. I had stumbled across self-care by accident. Eating right, getting exercise, sleeping properly made me feel better in my body but also in my mind. It began a journey.
So when Emma asked me that question, instead of raising the defensive barriers I became curious. I read, I studied, I applied techniques. I sought the diagnosis. I don’t need medication, but what I did need was acceptance and knowledge because in their lies power if you chose to seize it and do the work. It’s not been easy and I’m still finding out things about myself but these days I eat well, I practise gratitude, I priories sleep, I exercise and get out into nature. I’m less fixated on my phone. I no longer need constant news feed and social media like I once did.
Two other things happened at the same time. Serendipity can be a wonderful thing. I discovered Brene Brown and her talks on vulnerability and being brave. She quoted from Theadore Roosevelts ‘Man in the Arena’ speech.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Dare greatly! It struck such a cord with me. I’d had enough sitting on the side lines and not getting involved. She talked on how being vulnerable is bravery. There’s no guarantees for success if you accept vulnerability, and sometimes you’ll get it wrong or it will it will just go wrong, but you do it anyway because not doing it is guaranteed failure. To quote Susan Jeffers, and that’s the second thing that happened to me, “feel the fear and do it anyway”. You are going to fail sometimes regardless of what you do, how much you prepare or how much effort you put in. That’s just life. It’s about taking the lesson and growing stronger, smarter, more resilient. There’s a saying in the military that goes “no plan ever survives first contact”. I needed to learn that because if I wasn’t guaranteed success at that point, I wasn’t going to try.
Her book and Brene Browns writings and talks didn’t give me the courage, it made me realise by own inner courage. The bravery that was innate but which I’d never allow to flourish. So that’s what I did. I tried, I failed, I got hurt, I learned, I got better. I’m happy now. I have work I love, family and friends I cherish, and a partner I love and am immensely proud of. And I’m proud of me. Not to the point of brashness because I realise I’m still on that journey. But I’m proud that I finally said yes! Let’s do it! Let’s take a chance!
So, I entitled this piece ‘diagnosis and the end of the beginning’. The diagnosis wasn’t the game changer. It was accepting who I am, it was becoming aware, knowledgeable, empowered. It was recognising that I’m far from perfect but I’m me. That walk to Christmas lunch was the death knell for my previous life. The end of my beginning and the start of a life well lived.
Michael Jones
Holistic Wellbeing Coach and Trainer
