Mentally Interesting: Bananas for mental wellbeing?

This is the full transcript of Ouch – Mentally Interesting as published on the 4th October 2021 , and presented by Mark Brown and Seaneen Molloy.

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SEANEEN - When, I would get home. If I got a withheld number on my phone I would have a panic attack because I would be so worried that this was the ward calling me saying I’d done something wrong.

DIANE - I probably got depression when I was in my mid-teens. But I didn’t even declare it – I hate that term – when I applied for the job at Business Disability Forum, even though we are a disability and mental health charity.

MARK - I built a miniature fish and chip shop out of cardboard.

SEANEEN – Why?

MARK - Let’s just stay in the podcast, eh?

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Mentally interesting; that’s what we’re calling this podcast about the things that are going on inside our heads. I’m Mark Brown.

SEANEEN - And I’m Seaneen Molloy. We’re long-time friends who both live and work around mental health. We both like thinking and talking about it too and that’s why we’re here.

MARK - It certainly is. It’s good to see you, well hear you. How are you doing today?

SEANEEN - I am well. I am enjoying the terrible weather weirdly because it feels like autumn is coming at last and we are moving through these horror show years.

MARK - Yeah, I can’t get enough of grey skies. Grey skies are the things for me. On this podcast: the mental health of major sports stars has been in the news of late. And with double jab vaccines at a higher level many of us are now being encouraged to go back to the office. Remember the office?

SEANEEN - Very vaguely. Our main theme on this programme is work, and to cement that coming up a bit later is our guest Diane Lightfoot, CEO of the Business Disability Forum. She’ll help us thrash through the latest ideas about mental health in the workplace, and she also advises businesses so she can tell their side of the story too.

MARK - And our new fun feature will be here as well, which we’ve given a very everyday language name so that everyone will understand it at home. We’ve called it maladaptive coping strategy of the month, yeah maladaptive coping strategy of the month.

SEANEEN - Yes, I can’t wait to talk that one through! If you have tales to tell about how being mentally interesting has kept your work, well, interesting, email ouch@bbc.co.uk or find us on Facebook or Twitter by searching for BBC Ouch.

MARK - So, Seaneen what’s your dream job and are you doing it or are you not doing it.

SEANEEN - Well, when I was a child my dream job was to be James Herriot. So, I wanted to be a vet and a writer. I wanted to write novels and live in a massive house in North London somewhere. I’m not doing that. I live in a small house in Belfast.

MARK - But a beautiful one.

SEANEEN - I’m not doing my dream job, but to be honest I’m doing the job which works for me. So, I have a bit of a strange work history. I was off work for five years because of my mental health, and I really didn’t know how to get back into work. It seemed insurmountable. I’d had a really bad experience when I was too ill to work, and had destroyed my CV because I kept getting sacked basically. I shouldn’t have been working but I didn’t know what else to do. So, I had this terrible CV with references which would say, ‘do not employ, completely mental, ran round the office like a nutcase, unreliable and bizarre’. So, I didn’t really know how to get back to work. So, my work trajectory has been a bit strange because I got jobs from writing my blog, and that sort of became my CV. So, I carved out my own niche a little bit and started working in mental health communications, which is where I still work. I occasionally stepped back from working in mental health, but I always return to it because it’s just what interests me. And it means there’s a bit more understanding around mental health and I don’t feel like I need to hide my experiences and my diagnosis. So, I think I’m probably in as good a place as I can be in terms of my employment. And it worked out better than I expected because basically my mental health, as well as destroying my CV, destroyed my education. I don’t have a degree.

MARK - Neither do I.

SEANEEN - I only have seven GCSEs because I dropped out of school, because that was where I had my first experience of mental illness. What about you, are you in your dream job?

MARK - I’ve got no idea what my dream job would be. Like you, bizarrely, I read all of the James Herriot books when I was about ten or 11, so I too pictured myself in a 1930s car going uphill and down dale sticking my hand up cows’ bums and stuff like that. And again similar to you I had a kind of dream that I would be a writer and I would make loads of money and stuff like that. The only drawback to that was I didn’t know how to write, and writing doesn’t make loads of money.

SEANEEN - It’s a pretty essential skill there.

MARK  -I was unemployed for ages. I didn’t have any idea about how I wouldn’t end up doing the kinds of jobs that I’d seen people around me growing up do. It sounds really stereotyped to say but I’m like two generations away from being a miner. My granddad was a miner. And in Newcastle there wasn’t that many novelists floating around going, do you know what, I’ll give you some advice about being a novelist. So, I kind of just bumbled through and ended up on the internet kind of whanging on about stuff. And by a strange set of events I ended up being the editor of a creative writing website, and everything grew from that. But it was literally a chance occurrence being noticed by someone and being asked to be a volunteer, and then turning from a volunteer into someone who was getting paid.

But I don’t really know what my dream job would have been. I don’t know what I pictured. Like, in some way, I wanted a freedom from having to be consistent every day, and I wanted the kind freedom from doing anything that would mess people’s lives up. But what I did do when I left school was I worked in social care. So, I did a really weird thing of deciding, because I’d had difficulties myself, what I needed to do most was work with other people who’d had difficulties themselves or were having difficulties. And yes, that turns out to be really, really stressful.

Then I went to university for a bit. Absolutely lost it. And then spent about three years trying to find my way back into work. I was probably the world’s worst student in that I just had no idea what I was doing. I’d been working in social care and I was just really, really tired. I was a bit older, I was 21 and realised one, everyone else was 18 and were asking me, “what did you do for your A-levels and what’s your favourite band?” and I was like, “yeah can I talk to you about what it’s like to do a care review for someone?” and they were like, “yeah, get back in your room, you weirdo”. So, I felt I was this kind of weird and haunted figure, and I just never found my footing. I sometimes think about this in terms of working life as well, I never felt like I belonged at university. And I could feel myself becoming more and more unwell, but I just didn’t have the grounding to know how to step in early enough and try to change things. And I couldn’t really express it terrifically well.

So, I ended up just in my room eating crisps, running out of money for like two years. It was awful, really, really awful. And one of the reasons why social care had been such a taxing thing was one, you spend all day with people who need your support and they need your encouragement and they need you to be there for them and consistent; and two, the pressure of that, knowing that if you do a bad job you’re making someone’s life infinitely, infinitely worse, and you’re contributing to someone having a terrible time. And that really, really weighed on me.

SEANEEN - Yeah, I totally get that. I did 18 months of a mental health nursing degree because again, it was like how can I use my experiences for something good. It was also a way to get me back into education. I did an access course which was funded by direct payments, so the mental health team set it up. I loved the side of working with people. But what I hated and what I found absolutely terrifying was that if I did something wrong it could have such a big impact. And I remember when I would get home if I got a withheld number on my phone I would have a panic attack because I would be so worried that this was the ward calling me saying that I’d done something wrong. And I couldn’t cope with that level of responsibility.

There were a lot of other things about that degree which just didn’t fit. The biggest thing really was the shift work with bipolar is a complete no-no. Basically the whole way you stay well with bipolar, or at least try to, is by getting enough sleep, and shift work just completely disrupts that. And also in my case when I was doing nursing I was taking hard-core medication which made me very sleepy, and the shift work meant that I actually couldn’t take it in the evening and wake up in the morning to go and do my shifts. So, it was just a massive storm of stuff that did not work or help. I became really unwell and had to drop out.

MARK - As I get older I realise that the majority of jobs basically are reducible down to one thing, which is doing something you don’t feel like doing at a time that you don’t feel at your best position to do it. I do a bit of journalism; people say “oh, it must be great to do a bit of journalism”. I say “no, because journalism is literally writing stuff when you don’t feel like writing stuff, more quickly than you want to always”. [Laughs]

SEANEEN - Well, that’s kind of relevant. Gymnast Simone Biles she’s been in the news for pulling out of some events for mental health reasons. And for us at work there’s a lot of gritting teeth and pushing through which happens when we’re not well, but you feel like you have to keep going anyway. And I was reading something that really hit home for me when she said that people have to realise that at the end of the day we’re humans, we’re not just entertainment.

MARK - Yeah, it’s so weird because I really, really identified with Simone and her struggles. She was competing in the Olympics, that’s the absolute dream for a gymnast, then she pulled out and she said it’s for my mental health. The amount of on the one hand the backlash for that saying, “oh she should have had a stiff upper lip, she was letting everyone down”; but also the kind of acceptance from other people going, “actually this is a major step forward being able to say sometimes the pressure is too much and we don’t look after people”. And it’s really appropriate for Simone Biles, the idea of sticking the landing. What I find in my professional life is I end up on good days talking myself into stuff that’s wonderful, and I can absolutely do it and that’s exactly what I want to do right now. And then when it’s finally agreed and it goes to happen on the day I’m absolutely terrified, I’m absolutely worried, and I just have this deep, deep uncertainty that I can do the things on a bad day that I could definitely do on a good day. That fear of being inconsistent just dogs me hugely during working life. And I can see if you’re right in front of the cameras, right at the pinnacle of your career, that feeling of what would happen if I said, I don’t feel up to this today. Luckily, Simone came back and she won the bronze, which was amazing.

SEANEEN – Yeah.

MARK - I’ve managed to talk myself into chances of doing things and then when it’s come to it just absolutely frozen, just absolutely been unable to carry through on the stuff that I’ve agreed. And it feels horrible and it feels embarrassing and it feels shameful. And for me my working life is often dogged with this floating sense of shame. And I kind of wonder whether it’s because, I certainly have come to the job that I do through mental health that’s why I do the things that I do around mental health, and I feel like there’s not a template for that kind of work. I don’t really know what it means to be a long-term professional who experiences mental health difficulties who also basically lives on what projects I can make up and then which projects I can make happen. So, I always feel like somehow I’m doing a bad job and I’m letting people down, even if I’m just letting myself down.

SEANEEN - For people listening I know that what Mark has been saying sounds like he’s being really, really hard on himself. And he is. I’ve worked with Mark for over a decade and I know that he doesn’t let people down and he’s absolutely brilliant, hence why we do a podcast together. Because I love him and I think he’s a wonderful person and also wonderful at work.

MARK – Aw thank you.

SEANEEN - And the reason I didn’t really interject is because loving and knowing Mark for a long time I know he’s a pretty self-deprecating chap, and so am I a lot of the time, and it’s kind of how we operate. But yeah, Mark you are being extremely hard on yourself here. And if I’ve learnt anything about work and mental health over the years one of the big things is you need to cut yourself some slack and give yourself a bit of a break, as hard as it is to do.

MARK - It is that, but it’s also the fact that I sometimes feel like in some ways our generation of people moving from mental ill health to doing lots of stuff that maybe wasn’t open to people 20, 25 years ago it’s very hard to find someone who can guide you in that. It’s very hard to find someone you can look at and go, actually they have got useful things to tell me about the world of coming to your job through doing stuff on the internet, coming to your job as someone who’s always been open about their mental health. So, I find it’s sometimes hard in working life not to have a work mum or work dad or work auntie or uncle you can kind of turn to that’s actually, no you’re doing all right, you’re doing fine. Because the difficult thing is you always compare, well I always compare myself to people who don’t share the same difficulties, and their working life is different because they don’t share those same difficulties. So, I am quite harsh with myself because I don’t really know what the baseline is.

SEANEEN - Well, I can be your work mum and tell you that you’re doing fine.

MARK – Oh thank you.

SEANEEN – You’re doing well.

MARK - Thank you. I’m not cleaning my bedroom, I’m telling you that now. [Laughter] Don’t look under that bed whatever you do!

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This is Mentally Interesting from BBC Ouch. Our guest on this podcast is Diane Lightfoot who herself is mentally interesting and works as the CEO of the Business Disability Forum. The BDF is an organisation that supports businesses to recruit and keep hold of disabled staff, including people with mental health difficulties, like us. So, I’d like to extend a warm Mentally Interesting welcome to you, Diane. Hello.

DIANE - Hello. Thank you very much Mark, that’s a very, very nice warm welcome.

SEANEEN - As a bystander it looks like you’ve kind of aced the whole work thing with mental health difficulties. How have you done that? What’s been most helpful?

DIANE – Do you know, I think for me work was what saved me. I would say I probably got depression when I was in my mid-teens. I didn’t get a diagnosis until my mid-20s when, to be fair, I actually went to the doctor about it. Because I hadn’t done that before. It was interesting hearing you both talk; I started struggling probably towards the end of school. I’d always been very motivated, very academic, but then it dropped off. And I managed to keep it together for my A-levels, and I was saved by the fact that I’m good at exams. I didn’t do very much work in the two years but managed to do intensive revision and then spew it back up onto the exam paper and then it all fell out of my head, but I did all right. Then I went to university and I had no confidence at all, and I went from this small and very structured environment to somewhere that was huge and unstructured. And I’m saying all this with the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, more than that. And what seemed like a great thing, having a very flexible week, very little contact time, was actually so bad for me. I can remember that we pitied the engineering students – I did music – because they had nine to five Monday to Friday, and we were like, “why did you choose that?”. Actually it meant that there was no structure, no support mechanisms and suddenly needed to self-motivate, suddenly started comparing myself unfavourably to everyone, it was hierarchical. And I totally withdrew, had no confidence and then developed a fairly serious eating disorder, stopping short of hospitalisation, because in many respects I’ve always had that kind of sensible gene I guess.

So, I got through it. I got a 2:2. And it’s only again with the benefit of talking about it in my job now, a couple of years ago, that I’ve stopped seeing myself as a failure. And I thought actually, I survived that and I got through it with no support. No one ever asked me anything was going on or if I was all right. I lost more than three stone. And you can’t see me so you don’t know that that’s relevant, but I’m 5ft 2, so it was quite dramatic. Now I think god, you actually finished your degree, so I completely reframed it.

But for me work was a revelation because it was structured; everyone called each other by their first name; it was much less hierarchical, it wasn’t like you’re a first year, second year, third year. I think Mark you were saying about being 21 rather than 18.

MARK – Yeah.

DIANE - It just didn’t matter anymore, it just didn’t. So, for a while I was quite well. And then I did struggle again and I saw a doctor and I got diagnosed, and after a couple of false starts got an antidepressant that worked for me, which I’m still on after a couple of attempts to come off it. I don’t know why I did that. And I didn’t tell any employer though for another about ten years. I remember begging a doctor’s receptionist to take my antidepressants off my prescription so I didn’t have to declare them on a medical questionnaire for a job I didn’t get. I also managed to get a job despite not showing up for an interview; I just couldn’t face it. And then it turned out there was a crisis in my current work so I used that as the excuse for not going to the interview. It was true but it was convenient. And fortunately for me they were so impressed at my work ethic they invited me for another day [laughter] when thankfully I was feeling better.

SEANEEN – Impressive.

DIANE - But actually the day I should have gone for my interview I was a mess. I could not, I could not have done it. And I think actually getting older has given me better coping strategies. I then went to social care organisations, and I also wanted to be a vet when I was young, the James Herriot so we’re very similar.

MARK – That’s a strong desire.

DIANE - It is a strong desire. But I didn’t even declare it – I hate that term – when I applied for the job at Business Disability Forum, even though we are a disability and mental health charity. And it wasn’t until I was speaking at a mental health conference a few years ago, and all the speakers were talking, very well meaning, about those people with mental health conditions. And I got up at the end and said, “this isn’t about them and us, it shouldn’t be about them and us, and if it is I’m one of us”. And the amount of people who said to me afterwards, “god that was brave”, and I thought it didn’t really feel it because I’ve got this position now where I can.

So, I try and use it for that basis. I try and talk about it to make it feel okay for other people. But yeah, work kind of saved me really.

MARK - What do businesses tell you they struggle with when they’re employing and supporting staff with more serious mental health difficulties? I’ve got a diagnosis of bipolar 2 for instance, which I think is on the serious side. What do organisations tell you they have trouble with and what advice do you give them.

DIANE - So, employers often think of mental health as being something problematic because they usually don’t know that someone has a mental health condition until at best they are starting not to cope, or at worst are really unwell and potentially in crisis mode. So, one of the things we talk to employers a lot about is around how you can encourage people to tell you that they have a mental health condition before that stage, and to identify any triggers or barriers that can be removed to help keep people well in the workforce as often as possible.

You shared, Mark, your diagnosis of bipolar 2, and I think a lot of employers when they think about mental ill health they will think about workplace stress, they will think about depression and anxiety; but there’s often much less understanding and awareness of more severe enduring and also fluctuating conditions and how to support people around those. I think it was Seaneen mentioned not being well enough to work, and for some people actually thinking about cutting down what they’re doing or awareness of redeployment as a reasonable adjustment is quite often not there for employers. One positive that we’re seeing as well is that line managers are getting much more confident around awareness and talking about mental health, but often don’t really know what to do in terms of practical support.

So, we did a survey for one of our members earlier this year and the awareness piece and talking about wellbeing and company level initiatives was pretty good, but they didn’t really know what to do around adjustments or how to have a conversation or know what practically they could do to support someone. So, I think there is still a bit of a gap.

MARK - What’s a reasonable adjustment and how would you explain it in the context of a job.

DIANE - So, a reasonable adjustment is the horrible term under the Equality Act 2010. We tend to talk about workplace adjustments. And it is a change to how, where or when somebody works or the equipment they use to mean that they can do the job as well as possible. So, for somebody with a mental health condition, and this is going back to days when we were in offices, if you have a hot desk policy it is a reasonable adjustment to say that someone being very anxious not knowing where they were going to sit could have an exemption to that policy and have a fixed desk. It also would be reasonable to say that someone that struggled with a lot of noise and distractions could have a quiet area or low lighting.

The other one which I think is very relevant in this weird hybrid world we’re working in is just travelling at different times and avoiding the stress of travelling at rush hour that can cause a great deal of anxiety and also be physically quite difficult for people with mobility issues.

MARK -Yeah.

SEANEEN - I also have bipolar disorder. This is like the bipolar podcast.

MARK - High five.

SEANEEN - High five. [Laughter] Very high five, hyper manic five. So, I’ve got bipolar disorder as well and it does mean that my health fluctuates quite a bit. And there have times at work when I haven’t been very well, and it’s really hard to stay in work when you’re not very well. Around those times my ideal week would be having the space to go to appointments, like psychiatric appointments and therapy. Often when I’m not well I need more rest and would need to work shorter hours. Usually when I’m sick as well some new medication’s been chucked into the mix, and the side effects especially when you start medication can be really hard core, make you sleepy, make you hungry, make you dopey, make you bashful, [laughter] make you every single one of the seven dwarfs. So, if I need all that to carry on and work really is an employer going to give me that flexibility? Is it reasonable for them if those adjustments were totally non-negotiable for me to stay in my job?

DIANE - Well, as you probably expect, reasonable isn’t an absolute term. It’s nice weaselly legal language. But there are various tests that employers can do to see whether something is reasonable. So, the first thing would be whether it actually removes the barrier or solves the problem; which clearly it would as you’re self-advocating as an expert in your condition.

The trickier ones are then impact on others. So, would you not being there mean that there was undue pressure and stress on other members of the team. But if you know that you’re going to be going on new medication then actually something that can be put in place that means that it’s copable with in that period of time. I think Bipolar UK talks quite a lot about advanced statements: so knowing that you’re going to need some support can mean that you can plan much more easily. There’s obviously the cost implication, and also just whether it will affect the rest of the service being delivered. So, if your core job can still be done another way by someone else without there being detrimental impact and without it costing the moon, then yes it absolutely can be.

So, it has to be done on a case-by-case basis, but the more you can plan and the more you can know your own needs and how you work best then the more chance of success I would say.

SEANEEN - Yeah, those adjustments are there but it often depends on your line manager. So, one manager can be completely open to things like advanced statements and reasonable adjustments, and you don’t have to go through any onerous checking. But then other managers are not and would say it was unreasonable.

MARK - Because it kind of depends on whether your manager likes you and values you sometimes. Because you can have a change of manager who decides, oh not on my watch, not getting away with that.

SEANEEN - Pretty much, and that’s been my experiences in past jobs. I’m going back to work in January after maternity leave with a new manager and I’m really anxious about having to have that conversation again.

DIANE - I often say you can have the best policies and processes in the world but they live or die on the relationship between the employee and the line manager, and the trust and confidence there is to ask for what you need, and to know that you’ll be well received and to get it.

So, practically I think sometimes it’s about line managers being empowered and knowing what they have licence to change. And the reason I say that is I sometimes hear things about very junior managers and then have to remember that if you’re operating in very narrow confines then you need to seek permission. So, we need to make it okay for people to be flexible and think about the job that needs to be done, and not necessarily how or where or when or by whom.

Some of the things around different managers, so some of the organisations we work with have a passport system so that if you’ve agreed with one manager that you can have a certain set of adjustments, whether it’s an advanced statement or adjustments you need all the time, then they say if you move within our business or if you get a new line manager then you automatically get those same adjustments; you don’t have to go through it again, you don’t have to ask for it again. And it positions it away from being something that is a favour and effectively having to, I talk about this around mental health, kind of come out over and over again to different people. And that’s exhausting. So, if you can remove that and just make it this is what I need to do my job well, then that can make a massive difference.

MARK - A lot of workplaces, particularly in the kind of more new media kind of tech space love to talk about how good they are to their employees and how they increase employee wellbeing, table football and a fridge full of beer and stuff like that. But it feels like sometimes organisations like to implement things that are about workplace wellbeing and not necessarily stuff that necessarily will help anyone who experiences a mental health difficulty. I can think of examples of organisations that are, oh we’re very strong on wellbeing of our employees, and then the wellbeing programme just translates into some bananas on the desk that you’re not allowed to eat.

SEANEEN - Don’t touch the wellbeing banana!

MARK - Get your hands off my wellbeing banana, son, you’re taking too many of them. Do you think there’s a difference between supporting people who experience mental ill health and improving the wellbeing of the overall workforce in a company? And why do some employers get it so wrong.

DIANE - It’s got to be holistic. Your wellbeing bananas, I used to work somewhere where you had fruity Fridays. [Laughter]

MARK - Well, it’s always that round mine. [Laughter]

DIANE - Which is similar. There’s nothing wrong with giving people fruit and there’s nothing wrong with different apps, which can be useful in helping to identify patterns or triggers, that can be useful, or being part of a community where you can share experiences can be useful. We’ve seen some of the employers we work with provide some quite practical support, like help with budgeting and finances. Some do things like yoga and Pilates. I even heard of one that does music lessons.

MARK - That sounds terrible. [Laughter] That sounds absolutely awful. Imagine that, I’m feeling really bad at work; here you go, here’s a ukulele, sing your pain.

DIANE - Sing your pain. Oh goodness, I’ve got George Formby in my head now.

MARK - [Singing] When you’re failing at work.

DIANE - Go and clean some windows, yeah. But I think they mustn’t be seen as the thing, the excuse. And they do not remove the onus from the employer and the line manager for actually noticing and spotting the signs and acting if someone is unwell.

I also think it’s really important that employees aren’t made to feel guilty. I’ve had my wellbeing banana or I’ve had my wellbeing yoga, but actually I’ve still got depression, am I a failure? Well no.

SEANEEN - It didn’t cure me.

DIANE - It didn’t cure me. So, it’s got to be very carefully nuanced. And it’s got to be accompanied with proper support to line managers, that kind of cultural change that I was taking about. It mustn’t just be the one thing that you do.

The other as well around stuff like yoga classes and music lessons and things, that’s great but only if the workload is manageable to allow for the times to do that. So, actually if it ends up that you are doing your wellbeing yoga, I suppose wellbeing bananas you could probably do while you work, that that actually means that your working day is longer, then that’s not great either. So, yeah I’d say they have their place but they are not a panacea by any means.

SEANEEN- And how are you and the BDF advising companies on how to support staff through the pandemic, through working from home? Can people just continue to work from home if it suits them? Have you noticed a difference in attitude, are employers being a bit more open to flexible working?

DIANE - I think it varies massively. I wish there was a sort of magic answer to this. So, before the pandemic the most frequently requested adjustment was working from home. The businesses we work with most of them get it, so most of them were doing that, but not all. And there were some, I’m talking again about senior leaders, who still wanted that kind of comfort of seeing people lined up outside their office. Of course the pandemic turned that on its head overnight. But now we’re really trying to grapple with how, when, how much to go back. I can say that from the perspective of being the CEO of my own organisation. We’ve got about 35 people, so we’re small compared with the businesses we work with, but even across that group of people attitudes to transport, to risk really vary very hugely. And we are respecting that. We are making it completely optional to come in. We’ve made the office, you can’t really say COVID safe, there’s no such thing, but COVID compliant for people who people who want to come in.

And it’s something that personally I really struggle with the right thing to do, because there are clearly benefits to working from home for lots of people, not just disabled people but work/life balance, all that sort of stuff. But it can have a real negative about your world can shrink, it can be lonely, it can be isolating, you lack the social stuff.

SEANEEN - And like what you said, some people just thrive on the structure as well.

DIANE - Absolutely. And I think sometimes choice isn’t brilliant. I read something the other day that said that on average human beings make 35,000 decisions a day. And I thought that’s crazy; but then it made me aware of last night I was thinking, shall I have another tortilla chip, shall I have another glass of wine. [Laughter]

SEANEEN – Always!

MARK - If you me when you’re not feeling terrifically good, instead of making 35,000 decisions a day, you just make one and worry about the remaining 34,999 ones.

DIANE- Yeah. so, I do wonder, and this is I’m not really talking as BDF, I’m just talking as me, whether in some cases being slightly more prescriptive but doing that consultatively and saying, if you’re got a very specific reason why you need to be at home then of course that’s fine, that maybe in some ways that would be a positive because you’ve got clarity. So, I’m not sure that not having clarity is necessarily good for our mental health. But what the right answer is I think it’s too early to see.

So, some of the organisations we’re working with are saying they’re never going to go back to Monday to Friday, nine till five; that they would like people to come in maybe two or three days a week; but that they’re not going to start mandating anything like that until every member of the workforce has had the opportunity to get both jabs. So, I think it’s a bit watch this space really. But I do think we need to respect the fact that some people are greyhounds and want to kind of leap out of the traps and get back into the office and back into doing everything before, and others are, well whatever a slow dog is, and would actually rather stay curled up and is a bit nervous.

SEANEEN - A basset hound.

DIANE - A basset hound yes. Greyhounds and basset hounds.

MARK - I am a professional basset hound.

SEANEEN - Such a basset.

MARK - Big floppy ears. Diane, thank you for that, that was amazing. I feel like we got to air our dirty laundry but it turned out not to be dirty at all; it was just nice and properly high cotton. [Laughter]

SEANEEN - Yes, thank you very much for joining us, Diane.

DIANE - Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure and a joy.

[Music]

SEANEEN - Just in case you’ve forgotten this is Mentally Interesting from BBC Ouch. Today we’re going to be trying out a new feature that we’re calling maladaptive coping strategy of the month. Sing it Mark...

MARK - [Singing] Maladaptive coping strategy of the month. That was great.

SEANEEN - So, basically maladaptive coping strategy is what your doctor calls it when you do something to make yourself feel better that actually makes you feel quite a bit worse.

MARK – Yeah, so really this bit of the programme is an opportunity for me and Seaneen to unburden ourselves with all of our terrible private, silly things that we try and do to feel better, that actually maybe don’t in the end make us feel better at all. What’s your maladaptive coping strategy of the month, Seaneen?

SEANEEN - Well, Mark, my maladaptive coping strategy of the month…

MARK - You sound like a parent talking to me. The only time anyone ever uses your name like that in adult life is when they want to tell you off. Anyway, please go on.

SEANEEN - I’m telling myself off. So, my maladaptive coping strategy is, at the moment, we all know because we all talk about it all the time, my diagnosis is of bipolar disorder, but the main thing I’ve been struggling with the last few months is postnatal anxiety. And my maladaptive coping strategy is constantly googling every single thing that my child does and questioning his development. I mean everything. I’m talking about if he moves an arm, baby moved left arm, what does it mean, and wallowing in all the Google results that suggest that he is basically not developing and there’s something wrong. So, that’s what I’ve been doing, I’ve been googling everything, feeding my anxiety monster with, let’s face it, quite a lot of misinformation and forgetting that the algorithm for Google search results is always to put the really terrible thing at the top because that’s what people are really looking for. So, that’s been my maladaptive coping strategy of the month.

MARK - It sounds absolutely exhausting.

SEANEEN - It is absolutely exhausting. So, what’s yours?

MARK - My entire life’s a maladaptive coping strategy. It probably started on 25th October 1977 and it just continued from there. I don’t know. I went away for a couple of days to Canterbury last week. For anyone who’s not been to Canterbury, it’s a very small town with a very big cathedral. And if they want to use that slogan to advertise the town they’re welcome to. It’s really nice. I got away and did some reading and did some sightseeing and stuff. But I was absolutely terrified by my train journey there and back because there were so many people not wearing masks as COVID restrictions come to an end. And I was convinced I’m going to be in this youth hostel, that looked like a haunted house, I’m going to contract COVID and that’s going to be it. So, that wasn’t the maladaptive coping strategy; going away for holidays is good. I came back and I thought what I’ll do is I’ll do a lateral flow test to see whether I have got COVID just to set my mind at rest. And low and behold it came back with a very, very faint positive.

SEANEEN - Oh no.

MARK - So, for 48 hours I was convinced I had, through my own kind of excitement to get out and explore the world, contracted COVID-19. I would never have found this out if I hadn’t done a lateral flow test to check. Because apparently it seems I’m very anxious about COVID-19 infection.

SEANEEN- That’s very understandable.

MARK - It is understandable. But doing one test and then getting a false positive, then doing another test half an hour later and it being negative, and then another test in about two hours and that being negative as well, then going for my PCR test at the local test and trace centre, my own anxiety about COVID-19 fed my anxiety. If I’d not done a test straight after I’d had my dinner I probably wouldn’t have got a false positive. So, my maladaptive coping strategy was implementing a much more rigorous testing regime for myself than was apparently necessary.

SEANEEN - My phone is like my anxiety weapon, it’s like the thing that makes me pick at the anxiety scab.

MARK - Engage anxiety rate.

SEANEEN - Engage anxiety, beep.

MARK - Bluetooth anxiety right into your brain.

SEANEEN - I’m trying to use my phone as a more positive coping strategy. This month I’ve also been trying to, instead of googling and being maladaptive, I’m trying to be – what’s the opposite of maladaptive?

MARK – Adaptive.

SEANEEN - Adaptive. [Laughter]

MARK - Well adapted.

SEANEEN - I’m trying to be well adapted. Yes, I’m trying to well adapt myself by using my phone as a good thing. One of the things the psychiatrist told me to do was to give my phone to Robert basically, it’s like get rid of the phone. But I’m not doing that; it’s my phone. So, basically instead of using my phone as an anxiety weapon I’m trying to use it as something that makes myself feel better. What’s actually been genuinely helpful – but some people would say may isn’t very helpful; but hey it’s my life and my phone so ha – I’ve got addicted to a game on Android called Among Us. And basically you are in a spaceship and you’re a crew mate or an imposter, hard to explain, but really fun and really wholesome as well. And it’s not like a scary game where people swear at you and you get private message abuse; it’s really sweet and wholesome. So, I’ve forced myself to become addicted to that. So, when I pick up my phone at one in the morning when I can’t sleep or when the baby’s woken me up, instead of googling why is my baby awake disability, or why is my baby awake terminally ill, I just open up Among Us and I try to use that instead. It’s been genuinely helpful. It’s redirecting my phone attention away from the awful stuff.

MARK - Sounds lovely.

SEANEEN - What about you, have you done anything that helps your brain at all?

MARK - Well, I built a miniature fish and chip shop out of cardboard.

SEANEEN - Okay. [Laughter] Why?

MARK - Let’s just stay in the podcast. I’ve been building miniature things because miniature things are exciting. I’ve been building little buildings out of card.

SEANEEN - How miniature are we taking? Like miniature fit in your hand or miniature like if you were my height, 4ft 9 you could walk in and get cardboard fish and chips?

MARK - Yeah, basically that’s what I’ve done: I’ve built a cardboard fish and chip shop, and I’m now sat outside the test and trace centre I can see through my window offering people toy fish and chips. No, it fits in the palm of my hand.

SEANEEN – Ah.

MARK - And apparently I like little miniature things because scale is really exciting. I like things that are too big and things that are too small.

SEANEEN - The classic comedy trope.

MARK - Yeah, people who order things from the internet and it turns out they’re either the size of a house or microscopic. It’s literally just to keep my hands busy. There’s something about just doing something that is ostensibly completely pointless that doesn’t refer to anything else. It’s not part of my life goals; it’s not part of the outside world; it’s got nothing to do with COVID-19. It’s just something that keeps my hand and attention busy for a period of time. And then at the end of it what I’ve got is, for better or worse, a cardboard fish and chip shop. [Laughter] It’s just like playing a computer game except you don’t enjoy playing it and you end up with a physical fish and chip shop at the end.

[Music]

You can send us your maladaptive coping strategies or the stuff that you actually do do that actually does work by emailing us at ouch@bbc.co.uk.

SEANEEN - This has been Mentally Interesting from BBC Ouch. There are hundreds more disability and mental health conversations on the feed. And if you subscribe to the podcast using BBC Sounds or your favourite podcast service new episodes will arrive on your device like magic as soon as they’re published.

MARK - You can also listen by asking your smart speaker to play Ouch from BBC Sounds. And you can also tell your friends about us with your mouth or by any other medium by saying, “have you listened to Mentally Interesting from BBC Ouch?

SEANEEN - Thank you very much for listening and we’ll chat to you again next month. Bye.

MARK - Looking forward to it. See you. Bye. Terrible at bye-byes.