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Dancing in the Rain; International Women’s Day & Mental Wellbeing – guest blog by Lou Harris #HWBAssociateNinja

Dancing in the Rain; International Women’s Day & Mental Wellbeing – guest blog by Lou Harris #HWBAssociateNinja

Posted on by hwbinspiration

This year’s International Women’s day focused on “An equal world is an enabled world”. 

I was delighted to be invited to speak about Anxiety and Recovery at Manchester’s Cross Government International Women’s day event on 6th March which focussed on health and wellbeing.  It was a privilege and an honour to hear from so many inspirational women. These included Daisy Smith, Head of Performance Analysis and Modelling at Highways England, Alison McKenzie-Folan CEO of Wigan Council, Tessa Lewis, GP and NICE fellow and Rachel Copley, Health Transformation Team Leader at DWP.  

Thank you to all the amazing women who attended the event and to everyone including Daisy for your feedback, it has given me the courage to write my next blog… so here goes

#IWD2020 #eachforequal

Learning to dance in the rain

13.9% of the population will experience an anxiety disorder at any given time, Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders than men (Mental Health First Aid England).

However, recovery from mental illness is possible and very likely. Recovery means different things to different people. Nigel Henderson, President of Mental Health Europe’s notion of recovery personally resonated with me “It isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s learning to dance in the rain”. Recovery is much more than the absence of symptoms.

The mental health continuum can help us to understand this notion. Initially, people described the state of mental health as being on a continuum from mentally healthy to mental illness (medical language).  The favoured approach is to now think of two continua on a different axis.  The second axis (social language) can be described as minimum mental wellbeing/fitness to maximum mental wellbeing/fitness.

Image courtesy of togethertolive.ca

This model allows for people who have a diagnosable mental illness and who are coping well with the illness (for example they may have good coping strategies, a good medication regime, supportive friends etc) to have positive mental health. They have “learned to dance in the rain”.

There are many factors that can influence the recovery journey including:

  • Availability and access to treatments such as medication or psychological interventions
  • Having supportive social networks (colleagues, family, friends)
  • Playing a meaningful role in society (for example through education or employment opportunities)
  • Lifestyle (including eating well, exercise and sleep)
  • Stability (including home and financial)
  • Acceptance and control (focussing on what you can do)

Some other important features of the recovery journey can be described by the acronym CHIME (connectedness, hope and optimism, identity, meaning and purpose and empowerment). 

I like to think of my own recovery as a journey because it isn’t for me a linear process, I have had setbacks and I honestly don’t know when and if I will reach a destination. However, through increasing my knowledge of mental health and wellbeing and understanding of myself I  too have  “learned to dance in the rain”.  This has involved many of the factors listed above including:

  • Professional support – my GP has been amazing; she has given me choice and control over my treatments acting as a professional partner in my recovery journey.
  • A caring network of family and friends – who have increased their own awareness and understanding of mental health and walked beside me on my journey. They have helped me to set new goals and aspirations and pursue them.
  • Redefining my goals and aspirations which includes writing and talking about mental health and wellbeing which has given me a purpose and a new drive and passion 
  • Lifestyle changes – including exercise and eating healthier and growing new skills to support my wellbeing
  • Control – which has been fundamental to my recovery. Control over my treatment, control over finding ways to help myself and my wellbeing (CBT has been instrumental) and control over how and when I choose to work which enables me to cope with the symptoms of anxiety. 

However other factors can impact on a person’s recovery journey.  Nearly 9 out of 10 people with mental health problems say that stigma and discrimination have a negative effect on their lives. People don’t recover in isolation, social inclusion (i.e. being involved with society)  is key and through increased understanding and discussion of mental health, we can help to reduce the inequalities experienced by those who have a mental illness. 

So, let’s make mental health everyone’s business and take personal responsibility to look after our own as well as the mental health of others #eachforequal

Want to find out more about anxiety, ideas around how to look after your own mental wellbeing, or how to raise awareness of mental health within your organisation here are some suggested links below to help you get started or to share with others:

Information about anxiety:

Your Mental wellbeing:

Workplace Mental Health and useful Resources to raise awareness:

Image courtesy of http://www.togethertolive.ca/mental-health-continuum

Time to talk – guest blog by Lou Harris #HWBAssociateNinja

Time to talk – guest blog by Lou Harris #HWBAssociateNinja

Posted on by hwbinspiration

Thursday 6th February is ‘Time to Talk’ day, so it’s an excellent opportunity to choose to talk about mental health. Talking about mental health is really important because it has the power to change lives. There is a dedicated website with loads of great resources, hints and tips on how to start a conversation, which you can find here.

It’s essential that people make a personal choice about whether they talk about their mental health. I decided I would share my journey explaining how talking has helped me.

Here is a quick synopsis of my lived experience.  In essence, I was a successful leader working in Housing and Education until the age of 43, when I resigned due to severe anxiety which later developed into depression.  Talking has for me been a vital part of my continuing road to recovery. 

At my lowest times, I isolated myself from everyone, including family and friends, (which was very unlike me, I’m usually quite extravert and sociable) so my talking journey started with writing. I found keeping a diary of my feelings and experience strangely cathartic and therapeutic (I say ‘strangely’ because I had never written a diary, even as a teenager).  Writing helped me to clarify my thoughts and feelings and make a little bit of sense of the alien world in which I felt like I had entered. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I would later use my diary as the basis of sharing my lived experience with others… I will come on to this.

In some ways, I suppose writing helped me realise I needed more professional help to fully make sense of my new world (which I was increasingly becoming frustrated and resentful about).  In summary, my new world consisted of struggling to get out of bed, failing to wash my hair and put on my makeup (really not like me) and crying sporadically throughout the day. On better days taking the dog for a walk but then having a panic attack and having to quickly get home, unaware of the days and weeks that passed and panicking about when I will get better because I needed work and an income!  Yes, I needed a bit of help, so the next stage in my journey was talking to a counsellor.  The benefits of counselling are endless and can quite literally be life-saving.

Despite the emotions and pain I have gone through, counselling has helped me make sense of and accept my new world.  It has equipped me with the knowledge and skills to take back control of my feelings and emotions in a way that I can now live with my illness and navigate my new world. In reality, this has meant setting up my own business, slowly starting to take on some work and living my life again. The most important thing it has done is give me the confidence to re-engage with family and friends whom I missed dearly. Interestingly, it also gave me the courage to talk about my illness with them. Not only has this been beneficial for me (I feel accepted for simply being Lou) but it also helped them understand why I needed to shut myself away for a while and that, it didn’t mean I loved or cared for them any less. How they felt about me avoiding them was always something I struggled with.  I felt a massive sense of guilt about the impact I thought I was having on my loved ones and still did until recently when I was talking to someone about the impact mental health has on family and friends. I explained I wanted to write a blog about it because it shouldn’t be underestimated.  She said she loved the idea about a blog on the role of family and friends in supporting recovery (an interesting interpretation of what I was saying) as long as I don’t give myself a whole load of guilt about it (lightbulb moment!). She explained people who love you will simply want to help and walk beside you on your journey. Metaphorically, I realised that this equated for me to the little text or the weekly card I would receive, the phone call to my husband to ask how I was or the little presents I received. It was their way of letting me know that despite not being in each other’s company they were still all there walking beside me and I hadn’t offended them by my actions, they understood. I had never thought about it in this way and needless to say, it led to shelving my original blog idea and writing this one!

So after writing, talking to professionals, talking to my family and friends, (I also started to speak to people in the park while walking the dog) I found myself delivering my lived experience to complete strangers (maybe 25 or so people in a room). This led to blogging (you will see from the first one how much courage it took me to “talk to” LinkedIn).  As I get asked more often to share my lived experience, and as I write this post I have been reflecting “Why do I talk about one of the darkest and hardest times in my life with potentially 1000’s of others”?  Because, being honest, I find it helpful to talk, but also do it in the hope that my lived experience and blog provides hope for others. If my talking and writing can help just one other person to gain the courage they need to talk to someone about their mental health, then its totally worth it. 

Who looks out for the Senior Leaders and what can we do to support their Mental Health? – guest blog by Lou Harris #HWBAssociateNinja

Who looks out for the Senior Leaders and what can we do to support their Mental Health? – guest blog by Lou Harris #HWBAssociateNinja

Posted on by hwbinspiration

This is the question that I have been asked several times and most recently at a Health and Wellbeing Event, where I shared my lived experience. When I started to consider this, I found quite a stark headline:

“Two-Thirds of business leaders have suffered from mental health conditions including anxiety, stress and depression with work often cited as a contributor to this” – Bupa 2018

Bupa’s study conducted with 1556 global business leaders found:

  • 58% of business leaders say that in their position it’s hard to talk about mental health
  • 1 in 4 people feel less support for mental health issues since becoming more senior
  • Sufferers fear that talking about mental health would affect perceptions of their capabilities and career prospects

So, who looks out for the Senior Leaders, and what can we do to support their Mental Health? I posed this same question at the start of the year to a prominent Professor and leader in wellbeing, and he too came to a similar conclusion. He found that there was literature that explores the impact of leaders on follower wellbeing. However, there was nothing that focuses on the support that is specific to leaders.  

While there appears to be an overwhelming lack of literature, I found some reference to:

  • Challenging perceptions around mental health and leadership
  • Ensuring there are services available to support senior people
  • Creating mentally healthy open workplace cultures where senior staff feel able to access support
  • Business leaders sharing their own experiences which can help to remove the stigma

It got me thinking about my own experience in an attempt to try and find some answers.

As you will know from my previous blogpost (https://www.hwbinspiration.com/lived-experience-blog-by-lou-harris/), I resigned from my job as a Managing Director. I didn’t realise or admit to it for a very long time, but I was suffering from severe anxiety and had been for about two years before resigning. The organisation I left had a clear commitment to mental health, visible leadership and support services that were accessible, fast and efficient and this created a culture of openness and acceptance which helped me find the courage to acknowledge I needed help and seek support. Despite the support I received (which was brilliant), I felt I could no longer continue working as a senior leader. I was absolutely exhausted. I felt unable to shoulder the responsibility that comes with a senior leadership role and unable to continue as a good leader should protecting the mental health and wellbeing of others when my own mental health needed more dedicated time and attention. 

So why did it take me so long to do something? I was reluctant first and foremost to acknowledge that I was struggling with my mental health and secondly to ask for help. Why was this? We will all have our reasons. For me (not justified) I felt like I had to wear an “I am doing great” badge constantly. I was the leader, and people looked to me for direction and support, I couldn’t possibly acknowledge I was struggling and ask for help because people would question my ability as a leader. So, I basically tried to hide the fact I was struggling. When I did finally acknowledge and seek support and take time out while the side effects of my medication subsided and returned to work, the response was quite overwhelming. My absence due to my mental health had not negatively impacted on people’s views of my ability as a leader; in fact, it almost seemed to encourage more open conversations with my team and colleagues. I believe this was because first and foremost, they saw me as a human being. 

So, is looking out and supporting senior manager any different to what we would do for anyone else in our organisations? I have concluded that the answer to this question based on my own experience is NO. I agree that it is essential to challenge perceptions around mental health and leadership, provide accessible services, and if leaders feel able and want to disclose it can have a tremendously positive impact on an organisations culture. The organisational culture was absolutely at the heart of giving me the courage as a senior leader to acknowledge I was struggling and seek support. As we know, it is leaders who create the culture of an organisation. And so, maybe we need to pay more considerable attention to the role of Boards? How often do Boards consider Mental Health and Wellbeing? What culture are they creating for the Senior Leadership team around mental health?

Similarly, I believe that colleagues and peers can play a vital role. We often work as senior leadership teams on some of the most challenging and wicked issues our organisations face, we come into regular contact, we share experiences, and this puts us in a great position to look out for one another. So, as Board members, leaders, colleagues, peers and human beings let’s look out for and support one another, as doing so could have a significant impact on our colleagues’ lives. 

Identity and wellbeing; the impact of transition – guest blog by Wyn Jones #HWBAssociateNinja

Identity and wellbeing; the impact of transition – guest blog by Wyn Jones #HWBAssociateNinja

Posted on by hwbinspiration

Who are you, who are you, who are you?

This is a familiar chant at football matches aimed at the opposition fans and one of the few repeatable chants! Over the past 12 months, I have had cause and opportunity to reflect – who am I and therefore how would I define myself?

In the past 12 months, I have changed roles, organisation and moved from leading 60 people across two teams to be a lone worker and subject matter expert. This meant moving from a large acute trust to an independent regional role in a national organisation. At times I know I have struggled to adapt especially as my impact is less tangible and less immediate than before.

So, who am I?

Well, it’s complicated; but that helps because I am not then defined by one situation, role or “thing.” If I defined myself solely by my previous role, I would have felt even more lost than I have been.  Now in my 50’s I have developed into a runner, or at least I run regularly; so, I define myself as an old, slow runner (see previous blogs). Currently, I am hobbling around having damaged my foot, just walking in a shop! It is frustrating but it’s not catastrophic because I am not just a runner.  In my 20’s when I was not able to play rugby due to injury it felt like a disaster until I could play again. In looking back, at the time I can see that this was because playing rugby was a large part of my self-definition, although I did not know this at the time. This appears to be one of the reasons why many professional players struggle to adapt when they have to retire; the loss of identity.

One of the big advantages of my new role is that I travel more, and I use the opportunity to listen to podcasts, several of which have helped me think about a range of personal and management issues, including this one of self-identity.

What I’ve learnt about me

I think one of the reasons for my struggles in the new role was that I had been comfortable in my previous one and it had taken up too much permanence in my identity. As a result, I had not prepared for a move. Having worked for 30 years, mainly in the NHS, I should have been more prepared as individual opportunities and organisational change are normally “just around the corner” and after seven years in the single organisation, a move was likely for one reason or another. It was a mistake to get comfortable, but I am human, and mistakes are allowed. I have learnt from it and I am moving on trying not to beat myself up about making mistakes. This is another lesson from the podcasts. This is not to say I have got it right; I am a work in progress, so I have to regularly remind myself that mistakes are allowed.

Multiple me

So now my self-identity is more fluid, especially in terms of my work. I remain an older, generally grumpy, mildly geekish, Welshman, husband, father, co-owned by a dog, with an interest in workforce development, sport, reading and music.  Hopefully, with rest, I will return to dog walking before adding an even slower runner back into my identity. 

Missing the Gorge; an insight into being present and noticing in the moment – guest blog by Wyn Jones #HWBAssociateNinja

Missing the Gorge; an insight into being present and noticing in the moment – guest blog by Wyn Jones #HWBAssociateNinja

Posted on by hwbinspiration

Previously I have written about the personal benefits of running and how it gives me the opportunity to reflect on life, work and other pressures.  Being competitive with myself I found I was running to go faster and then check my running app to review my data.  Looking at other people’s run data I noticed they had deliberately slow training runs and several other people were stopping to take pictures on their runs which makes following them through the app even more interesting. 

One day I went for what I call a “head run” just to clear my mind and help my mental health. For the first time I had no planned route, no target for my pace and did not listen to any music.  I really enjoyed the run and enjoyed looking around me.  It was, even for me, a slow run but I was very happy with it and whilst reflecting afterwards I was reminded of a story I found years ago online called “missing the gorge.”

The story goes along the lines of three westerners decided to walk through a gorge whilst on holiday in Thailand.  They decided to walk it in a quick time.  Whilst on the walk they pass a group of Buddhist nuns one of whom calls out to say, “you are missing the gorge.” The writer is taken aback and asks the nun what she means; he has cuts and bruises to prove he is not “missing the gorge”.  The nun says she could tell that they were westerns by the way they were rushing and asks him to sit down. Once he has sat down, she asks him to close his eyes and to listen and to smell. He slowly begins to notice that he can hear birds, the flow of water, the wind in the trees and starts to smell the plants and flowers. He notices the heat of the rock he is sitting on. 

He thanks the nun for the insight and he starts to follow his colleagues who have not stopped.  However, the nun makes a further comment which stops him in his tracks – “I hope this is not a symbol of your life!” 

For most of my runs I will choose a musical playlist to fit my mood and look to achieve a certain time or pace, but for some runs I will not have any music playing and do not have a target pace.  This can help me to listen to my breathing and think about my running technique, or I will consciously think about a work problem or situation.  However, quite often I will deliberately not focus on work, but try to observe and enjoy my surroundings.

I know I am competitive with myself and as a data geek I am a slave to my performance and reports from my running app but before or after and (very) occasionally during a run I will now stop and take a photograph and load it on my app. I realised that I became “a bit obsessed” with my times, so recently I have deliberately run more slowly, concentrating on something else and not pressurising myself to achieve certain targets. 

Adjusting and being in the flow….

For my last half marathon, I did not aim for a specific time, I tried to concentrate on the course and to enjoy myself, which I did.  I did not achieve my best time, but it was my most enjoyable half marathon to date.

I regularly participate in Park Runs and always try to take and upload a photo at each one, especially at my local Park Run so I can see the impact of the changing seasons on the woods and on the number of layers I wear; clearly I feel the cold.  

I know running is not for everyone, but we all need some time to reflect and to observe our respective gorge. I know of friends who knit and as they are accomplished at it, they can relax and use that time to reflect.  Other friends use swimming or yoga for the same purpose. 

Finding what works for you

It is about finding what works for you and practicing it.  It will not always work and at first it might be hard, but the investment of time into yourself will be worth it. Importantly I have found that you should not be critical of yourself, keep trying, everyone struggles with a new task or skill, so enjoy the experience of reflecting, learning and improving.