Mental Health Awareness Week 2024
I have seen lots of posts marking mental health awareness week and because sharing stories can be powerful, here’s some of mine.
I remember the moment I knew I needed help really clearly which is odd because everything else around the time is vague. I was sitting on our sofa at home and I was working because that’s mostly what I did then. My girlfriend Kath was talking to me and I couldn’t understand her. It was like she was speaking in a language I didn’t know.
I went to see my doctor. She was amazing. I thought I was ‘just a bit tired’ and asked if it would be unreasonable to ask for a week off. She asked me a series of questions and then talked to me about how she thought I had stress induced depression and anxiety. I was confused. I have always been fairly quiet and introvert but depressed? I’ve always been a bit shy but anxious? But as the doctor talked through my symptoms it made sense. She wanted to sign me off for 6 months. I couldn’t comprehend that so we agreed 3 months and and I was sure I’d be back much sooner.
I wasn’t. I went on a stress awareness course. It wasn’t for me. I ran lots of miles, that helped. I moved jobs, that helped for a while. And slowly slowly I began to recognise that the old me didn’t exist anymore, she’s not there for me to ‘get back to’. I began to understand that in many ways I was never going to be well again or at least the sort of well that doesn’t need to think about mental health. I had allowed myself to burn out completely and things are never going to be the same again.
Today I’m mostly fine. I can be ridiculously anxious about the most insignificant things: where can I park the car, have I really booked that train ticket, sending a simple email, going to a new venue while at the same time I’ll happily do things that might be more anxiety inducing for many like stand in a classroom full of students… I haven’t had a day where getting out of bed seems impossible for a long long time but being able to work at home for quite a lot of my time hugely helps. The pace is different, my brain gets more down time.
Because for me that’s how depression and anxiety manifest, my brain gets tired. It stops processing as clearly, coherently or sharply as it can. And as an academic that is scary. So where am I now.
The first episode (not really the right word) wasn’t related to or triggered by a person or incident- it was probably fairly classic burnout. Thereafter the worst times have been the result of bullying, micro aggressions, toxic environment and me trying too hard to cope within those environments. Yet I do still fundamentally trust people. Less so institutions. In my experience universities don’t take mental health seriously. If they did our HE landscape would look very different. That’s taking nothing away from individuals within institutions who do great work in this area.
I have always been loyal to friends and colleagues I think. I am now fiercely protective over their wellbeing, sometimes too much so. I am also fiercely protective over me and much more aware of triggers and warning signs. But I’m not patient with myself. Things take longer, work progresses more slowly and I do less than I did. And while some of it naturally comes with shifting priorities as I have got older, I am not always ok with that. I’m better but not good at not over working and I am far less tolerant of contexts that glorify busy-ness. Sometimes I get scared when my brain needs to go slow.
The thing I have struggled with most is being that flaky colleague. I have, when I’ve been at my worst, let colleagues, co-authors, editors and authors writing for me down. I’ve disappeared on people and not delivered on promises. I hate that. It also has a knock on effect that goes on for a long time. Letting people down is awful and I am not particularly good at apologising and moving on.
But I am moving on, every day. Step by step. It’s taken most of a decade and several job changes, lots of sleep, lots of running miles and lots of breathing to get to where I am now.
I suppose what I am really saying is that I’m ok. I now know my brain pretty well. I have my coping strategies and the privilege of being able to pay for therapy. I have support and I have way more good days than other days. I have my sense of humour back and the confidence to know that it’s ok to not be ok and the confidence to walk away from anything toxic without any hesitation. I’m not special so if I can do this, anyone can.
Society of Legal Scholars Day 1
I am trying the conference thing again. It’s probably better than spending the next week or so in the office with everyone around me trying to absorb the pressures of the start of term. Still I am conscious that depression has kept me on the sofa much more than I would like and that anxiety levels have been generally high. I am working on the re-set but it’s not easy. So when I set off yesterday it didn’t seem like a great idea to be heading into people and give a paper based mostly on personal experience and reflection.
Travel was a bit irritating because the trains into Bradford and then back out to Preston didn’t match at all. I sat at Bradford interchange for 40 minutes watching the world go by…. that’s another story! Then I got on my little train and pootled towards Lancashire through the familiar northern landscape. It suddenly felt important to be staying in the north. Safer, less pressured, more familiar. I watched the hills and fields come and go and longed to be out there breathing the fresh air. I went over my paper. I stared into space and then a few blokes with dogs got on the the dogs were scary and I hoped they would get off at Preston so I didn’t have to go past. I was also suddenly very aware of my own privilege, of what having a job and a secure income at a level where worrying about money isn’t a thing really means; how rare that is in these northern towns I was passing through. I felt both lucky and powerless.
Preston. I walked from the station to the hotel to leave my bags and realised that some time out before people would be good. I found a Costa coffee and had a peppermint tea and bar of dark chocolate. I like Preston. It’s real. It’s a bit of a dump of course, there’s the university and there’s poverty and not much else but the people are real, they are friendly and welcoming and I couldn’t help smiling all the time. I belong in towns like Preston (or Keighley), it feels right. I slowly walked up to the university passing huge building sites and lost in my thoughts. I registered, I bought books, I chatted to one or two people and then it was time for session 1 and my paper.
The session started with Caroline Strevens (Portsmouth) ‘Challenging Assumptions:revisiting the Law Curriculum’ and her paper was packed full of fabulous ideas centred around self determination, motivation, mindsets and teamwork being the answer. I do think self determination theory is useful and it can tell us something about how universities get things wrong by undermining academics and their intrinsic motivation and how we get this wrong with our students too and basically force them to focus on extrinsic motivating factors… I am not sure about teamwork being the answer. I don’t know enough but as an introvert and someone who quite likes working alone and did as a student I wonder…
Then it was me. My paper reflects on two of my publications from 2008 and 2009 both written in the 2007/08 academic year and suggests that I was perhaps rather naive then and got some things wrong, not least arguing for a time turner to make the academic job doable. Instead, I suggest in this paper, we should make better use of an invisibility cloak and marauderers’ map (I do indeed solemnly swear that I am up to no good) to help us do things our way and defend against the dark arts (of neoliberalism, managerialism , marketisation, metrics, ranking, the glorification of busyness…) I am actually really looking forward to properly writing this one up.
The third paper in the session was be Steven Vaughan (UCL) and was, as always, a treat. I love the way Steven presents, it appears easy and effortless and pulls you in. The paper was one I had heard before but that didn’t matter. Steven told us about his work on the structure of LLB programmes and in particular the core subjects. I have often asked why the core is the core. In fact I ask my students and part of me loves the fact that we don’t really know, that it seems to be a historical accident and one which we can’t rally justify on pedagogical or legal grounds. The core is the core because it’s what was predominantly being taught when the core was decided but there were other subjects in contention too. What I find utterly fascinating though is that colleagues often find it impossible to imagine something else. That when you ask them to design a law degree starting with a blank page they start with what they now understand to be the core but they can’t articulate why.
I can write about what I would put in a law degree another time but for now let’s just say I’m not wedded to the core, I wouldn’t teach in the current modular silos and I am not sure I would make anything compulsory other than a sort of legal skills, methods etc course. I see logistical argument for first year compulsory modules but I am struggling for pedagogical and legal ones. But I digress.
I had coffee, there were too many people, I briefly considered going back to the hotel but then just went to the next legal education session instead. It wasn’t a great choice. The papers were just not really my thing. The first was by Roland Fletcher (OU) about apprenticeships and I think I was tired and stopped listening properly. The second was a panel on workplace focused law degrees and while what they were doing seemed quite interesting there is something about the focus of law programmes on providing legal experience to the exclusion of all others that annoys me. It perpetuates the myth that what we do is about our students becoming lawyers and that a degree is/should be about employability. Of course I am being unfair here, they might be doing all sorts and just sharing this particular aspect. I would have liked more on the literature and context though rather than just a ‘here’s what we are doing’ sort of thing.
I went back to the hotel, dumped my bag and checked in and then went back for drinks and dinner. They were fine, conversation was easy because I was with people I knew and people I was content to just listen to. The entertainment folk singing went on for a few songs longer than I felt happy with and I was glad for some air and me time on the walk back. I slept badly. I woke early. I wondered about going for a run but it was raining cats and dogs and the bed was comfy and I felt achey. I didn’t want a battle in my head, I wanted a slow morning. And that’s what I’ve had. Nearly time for SLS Day 2 now!
Thinking Clearly
Here’s post number 2 for Mental Health Awareness Week. I just wanted to share some thoughts about what I find most difficult about both anxiety and depression. I’m sure there are other things that other people find more difficult and I do think these things play out differently for different people but here’s a little part of my story.
As an academic I am used to my brain working. I am used to being able to think, analyse, critique… I am used to being able to string sentences together and I am used to working with complex ideas. I’m a lawyer; language, words, text, arguments – that’s what I do. So for me the hardest thing about anxiety has been the panic that sweeps into my brain like a tidal wave of chaos. It turns my brain into a jumbled mess of negative thoughts and emotions and turns off my ability to process those. I’m generally a little chaotic and a lot emotional and I often have more than one thought or idea at a time and I am always working on lots of things at one but I can also sit down and map, sort, collate and connect, link and compare. I can deal with lots of information and I can do it quickly but when anxiety hits it feels like I forget how. It’s not that I get overwhelmed with too much emotions or information, it’s that I lose the ability to order it. Do you remember the bit in the first Harry Potter book where Harry and Ron have to catch a key with wings and they’re in a room full of keys with wings. Imagine my thoughts and feelings as those keys and imagine that I am usually a fairly competent witch flying on a broom but when anxiety hits someone increases the speed of the thoughts tenfold and makes me fly into strong crosswinds. It’s disorientating and frightening because I can’t hold on to a thought for long enough to deal with it. I can’t dismiss negative ones because they whizz past and I can’t work with productive or positive thoughts because they’re gone before I know what they are.
When depression strikes my brain goes quite fuzzy. I feel like Winnie the Pooh – a bear of very little brain, like there’s just cotton wool between my ears. It means that even thoughts I can hold on to, I can’t process properly. I can’t follow arguments or thoughts all that well. I don’t understand. As an academic that is terrifying. At my worst I have picked up my own work and haven’t been able to follow my own argument. I have had people talk to me and I have literally had no clue what they were saying. It’s like everything is presented in a language that uses the same words as English but they mean something different. Actually it’s a lot like having a conversation between sociologists, lawyers and political scientists – we often use the same terminology but mean something different. So maybe I’m not depressed, maybe I just do too much interdisciplinary work. (I am not being serious here – obviously. There is no way my depression addled brain could do interdisciplinary work and untangle the nuanced use of language. I can only do this when I’m well).
Because thinking clearly is so important to what I do and who I am, it’s the not being able to think clearly that I find the hardest about suffering from anxiety and depression. It also means that I often notice it coming because my ability to think deteriorates. That’s a good thing I suppose, it means I can try and stop it. More thoughts tomorrow maybe.
My Conversations 