My mental health journey

There are a number of ways you can improve your mental health.

Go for a walk, I beg you, its beautiful out. I take pictures of flowers, nature, views and ducks (there are lots of ducks in my town)

I walk 12,000-18,000 steps a day, today I’ve walked “only “ 13,900 steps. That’s based on going on regular walks.

I walk because it helps me decompress. In truth I live a somewhat stressful life and the answer to almost everything is stress relief.

Eat right, I try and incorporate as much fruit in my diet as possible. I am a grownup yet still hate greens (never conform!) I notice when I eat sweets the first couple of “Hits” are fine, then you are essentially kept in a “sedated” state where you are more relaxed but then you need to keep eating sugar or you end up craving and anxious. I don’t keep sweets in my house, because if I want to eat sugar, I need to make the conscious walk to Tesco to go and buy it.

That point right there is important because I believe the key to mental wellbeing is distinguishing between pain and suffering. And blocking pain is a hugely dangerous thing.

In physical health you only ever temporarily block pain receptors to go through an acute treatment (English, you only numb yourself when you are having a short term medical treatment) yet with mental health people often develop “crutches” to help them cope.

One of the reasons I want to “get out of the rat race” is because every boss I have ever had that is a finance professional same as me has a “crutch” Some its overt and others its covert. I’ve had 2 bosses addicted to either Coke or Diet Coke (the drink!) one who had a really bad audit and took up smoking and several with drinking problems. When I say drinking problem, I mean, regularly blackout drunk and has to work out where he has been via his bank statements. I just don’t want that to be me. And sugar for a long time has been my crutch.

Which is why its important to feel pain. If you numb yourself constantly you don’t understand what is causing you pain, and then pain becomes suffering.

My pain is that my job is stressful. People get very funny about money. When they’re not getting what they want fast enough, they turn nasty and ugly and bullying very quickly. I’ve had it several times.

The most funny example of nastiness at work, was when someone at work was given a taxable benefit, now the thing about a taxable benefit is that you have to pay tax on it. (clue is in the name) anyway, the person must have forgotten about the taxable bit and at the end of the year had the tax deducted by the Finance manager. They raised absolute hell. They accused the finance manager of “Taxing them out of spite” which whilst I recognise that bullying is wrong and intimidation of this poor man is wrong, I found the phrase hilarious.

It is physically impossible to “tax someone out of spite” Tax is an objective truth. You are either eligible to be taxed or not. No emotions involved. Especially not spite. And the Finance Manager of a company didn’t have any major sway in government to change the law to “tax the man out of spite”. Finally, if the man did tax you out of spite, then that means you did something to cause that spite. What did you do? No one in finance just picks a name out of a hat of the person who’s life they are going to ruin. Finance people have feelings too and if he’s using the tax system to punish you, you must have done something really bad.

Anyway this has made me think about my own mental health journey.

It started when I was very young and my mum was signed off work for 3 months for stress.

She explained to me she wouldn’t be going to work for a little while because she was sick. I looked at her and thought to myself (possibly even said out loud (sorry mum)) “You look fine.”

Then when I was 13 I moved from London and “the black community” to Hampshire, which was stressful, but also lonely and isolating, I lost all my peers, all my friends. I didn’t socialise at all and because my parents are from West Africa, they thought that was a GOOD thing.

Then I was a teenager with GCSE’s. We need to have a separate blog post about that one. Just rest assured it was an extremely difficult situation and I got through it “By God’s grace”

Then there was A levels. Despite the traumatic situation of my GCSE’s I got excellent results, and I thought I could replicate that with my A Levels.  I couldn’t. It was a whole new world of pain, thanks to Maths AS and Chemistry A level. I bombed. I had depression the entire time. At one time I was suicidal.

As I bombed my A levels I lost my university place and was faced with moving to a strange town called Egham with my parents and no friends, I was extremely isolated with only a boyfriend for company (will explain why people need multiple levels of friendships in another blog post. 1 person cannot be your everything it is safe to say.)

That alone was 19-22, I spent 3 lonely years with no peers=more depression. Completely undiagnosed at this point.

Then I got married at 22 from a state of depression and moved to my in-laws house. Queue stress because I immediately bought a house the next year and spent the next 3 years doing it up. All whist moving up in the career ladder. This is what is known as high functioning depression. My body was used to the stress.

When we completed the house, my ex-husband didn’t even give me 6 months off, nope, he started cheating because the house project was complete and he had nothing better to do. Come back really serious depression and suicidal thoughts.

Then I filed for a divorce and got a new job from the one that was terrorising me to… a new one that the CFO took an instant dislike to me and started bullying me. I didn’t left after 3 months. All whilst depressed and anxious (that anxiety was the single worst thing I’ve experienced in my life, utterly debilitating)

Then, with no job and no husband, there was Lockdown 1 and a pandemic hit. Yet I got a job after 6 weeks and started jogging and managed to crawl my mental health into the best it had ever been. Then work had me back to working insane hours (20 hours on weekdays, 16 on weekends) and I was stressed because my ex husband became a nasty entitled piece of work. My parents were breathing down my neck, but because I’d had 6 months of good mental health, I bent, but I didn’t break. I survived that horrendous time (I actually to this day don’t know how)

But there was a price to be paid. By April of 2021 my body was broken, 5 months of extreme stress, not enough sleep had wrecked my body. I had chronic fatigue, Carpal tunnel and my body was showing the stress through my fingers swelling up.

Then in May 2021 my dad got sick. He passed away in July 2021 and I buried him in the August. Yet no depression. I told my life coach who I got only a few weeks before, I was determined to feel pain during this horrendous time, but not suffering. To this day I have been true to that.

Grace and Courage.

Annetta Mother-Smith.