Week 18
The Too Hard Basket
Yesterday I was 18 weeks sober. 126 days. Toady I’m 127 days sober but I’ve had a bit of shit going on that I’m planning on talking about later in the week. In general terms, my sobriety is going well. I’ve managed to identify a few areas where temptation is heightened which is a good thing, because it means I can work on it. I’ll touch on that later…
Why no one know of Paul Green’s Struggles
Last week I spoke about Paul Green’s tragic and abrupt suicide, particularly around the idea that nobody knew of his struggles. Since then it’s been reported that a select few were aware that Paul had been battling depression on and off since retiring from Rugby League as a player, some 18 years ago.
Former professional Rugby League player and close friend Craig Greenhill was reported to have said that Green didn’t want people made aware of his battles because he was concerned it could effect his ability to gain employment. My initial response was one of outrage. I thought, for lack of a better phrase, that’s just fucked! No one should ever feel afraid of opening up about their struggles to anyone. That’s the opposite of the direction we need to be heading.
Since first reading that article though, I’ve had some time to think and process a few things. I now understand why Paul felt it necessary to hide his struggles, especially given he works in the public eye, in a results driven business where people command success. As an example, Green started as coach of The North Queensland Cowboys in 2014. In 2015 he coached them to their first NRL Premiership in history. Just two years later, in 2017, Green lead The Cowboys to their second Grand Final appearance in three years without their superstar halfback Johnathan Thurston. They went on to lose that game but in his first four years Green had won a premiership and made a second grand final.
Over the next few years The Cowboys lost star player Michael Morgan due to an injury forced early retirement. Future immortal Johnathan Thurston retired as did representative second row forward Gavin Cooper. So naturally The Cowboys found themselves in a rebuilding phase. You simply cannot lose players of that caliber and experience all while maintaining that same level of performance. The team struggled over the next few years and ultimately Green was sacked in 2020.
Penrith Panthers coach Ivan Cleary was sacked by Phil Gould from his role at The Panthers in 2016. He was bought back to the club in 2019, however at the time it was rumored Ivan was let go because of his own struggles with mental health. At the time, Gould said,
"It was a very difficult decision to let Ivan go but I felt it was in Ivan's best interests as well as our best interests at that time because it was a tough year, he worked really hard, and I just felt he needed a break. I said to him, 'Take a break, don't go jumping back into the first job that comes along, and when you get an opportunity make sure it's the right club at the right time. Don't put yourself through one of those rebuilds again. It's hard work.'
The deeper you look, the more you can understand why Paul Green wanted to keep his battles private, it’s not something everyone needs to know about, it’s a deeply personal thing. The public didn’t need to know but clearly, more people should have known.
He’s not the only one…
Upon learning that Green had kept his struggles a secret I tweeted a link to the report. I was saddened to see that one of the best blokes I’ve interacted with on the site didn’t have his contract renewed at work after being honest with his manager about his mental health.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Paul Green struggled with Mental Health problems secretly for 18 years.<br><br>He asked those who knew to keep it quiet out of fear it could effect his employment prospects!<br><br>Fuck me, we’ve got a ways to go as a community/society. <a href="
21, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Mate my manager asked me on Monday how my mental health was. Told her it hasn't been the best if I'm honest but I'm still here. She didn't renew the contract and I was out of a job Wednesday.</p>— NRLSC Sponge (@Benwithnonumber) <a href="
21, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Probably the most confronting thing for me personally, is I can somewhat understand an employers thought process when considering the employment of someone with known mental health issues. From the outside looking in, it seems a no brainer. If given the choice between two candidates, one of which has known mental health issues, the other doesn’t, who are you choosing? Be honest with yourself. It sucks, but were talking about business, money, KPI’s, and other wanky corporate terms.
There’s a flaw in this logic however. One in five Australians will experience a mental health issue at one point or another in their life and that’s just the ones we know about. So if you have a team of 20 people and asked them “do you or have you ever had a mental health issue” you should get a couple of people who have. If you don’t, you are either really lucky, or you work in an environment where people aren’t comfortable being honest.
I think this is a key area where we as society can grow. I work for a company that offers a free, outsourced employee assistance program. I have never used it, I have always sought my own help. I do however know many people who have used it and heard great things about it. I do my best to make sure anyone who starts with us is aware of the service and to periodically remind the team that it is there to be used and that there is no shame in using it.
I hope that one day the attitude towards employees with mental health issues can change to bee seen as an opportunity rather than a hindrance. I believe there are people out there with issues that their employer are unaware of. I don’t think it will ever be possible to have a team of 10 or more and not have at least one employee with mental health issues. I think if you can find one person in the group willing to open up about their experience, you should nurture that. See if they will work collaboratively to encourage others to seek help should they need it. Firstly, because it’s the right fuckin’ thing to do. Secondly though, it’s in a companies best interest to help their staff. They are an investment. treat them as such. You don’t buy a new work car and refuse to service it. Allowing mental health days, providing EAP services, encouraging open and honest dialogues are all things that in my opinion will create a greater workplace environment for staff. This should result in greater productivity and even a greater willingness from staff to do that little bit extra when needed. I can’t see how anyone loses out of an arrangement like that.
At the end of the day, these issues are not going away. As we move further and further into the technological age, I can only see stress levels rising. With email on our phones and people working from home, we’re getting closer and close to essentially being “on-call” all the time. I know that in my role as an operations supervisor for a construction company, that’s how I feel. It doesn’t matter how many contact hours I work. Due to working from home and constant emails, in a lot of ways it feels like we never truly knock off and whilst it is our own responsibility to manage our own welfare, an employer has duty of care to do the same. Often people who are struggling have lower self esteem, so if given an opportunity to flog themselves at work in the hope of getting a metaphorical pat on the ass, they’re likely to take it.
If you don’t know what your company offers in terms of looking after the mental health of their staff, ask the question. Make a suggestion. Just about all of us have to work, most spend over a third of our day at work, longer than most of us sleep for. We need to do what we can to make our work environment a better place.
What else can we do?
Last week I had a strong focus on how do we make ensure people are aware that there is help out there, that it was easily accessible, there’s no shame in seeking it etc. It was The Hello Sport podcast of all places that made me realize there is another way we can do this.
Tom Birmingham mentioned that he was at a gathering of some kind when he overheard an exchange that went roughly like this.
Person 1: “How are ya mate?”
Pesron 2: “Yeah mate, I’m good, how are you?”
P1: “Yeah I’m good, mate. Tell me how your mental health is going”
Tom mentioned the exchange was nonchalant. It wasn’t a situation where two people took themselves away to a dark corner and hid from people. They didn’t whisper. Just an upfront yet non confrontational question one friend asked another. Why can’t we make this the normal? What if someone asked Paul Green this question, in this way the day before his death? I’m not saying he would definitely still be with us, but he might be?
I like the idea of this just being a normal, every day question. If someone you know breaks their arm, next time you see them you’re to say, “how’s your arm”, right?
This is simply normalizing the conversation.
My friend Tim wrote a great article about how he tackled his own mental health issues. It’s an easy-to-read, step by step guide of how he went about getting the help he needed. I’ve been through the same process myself, but it’s so well articulated byt Tim that I thought it’s be better to just share it.
What else can we do to help bridge that gap between the help and those who need it the most? I’d be keen to hear your thoughts.
The Too Hard Basket
I’ve heard a lot of different strategies people use to control their anxiety. I am big on using the emotional and logical brain tool. It comes from a great book called The Happiness Trap. It’s where you understand that you have two brains. Think of them as twins, but more Arnie and Danny DeVito than Josh and Brett Morris. They are the opposite. One of them is measured, practical, logical. The other is a fuckin’ maniac. When I find myself in a particularly anxious state, I remind myself that this is just my emotional brain taking the wheel of the car for a little while. Doing some donuts in some farmers paddock somewhere. It’s stressful, but he’ll get sick of it soon and he doesn’t know how to get home. So once he’s done doing donuts and he’s ready to go home it’ll be over. He’s not good with practical stuff, so he can’t remember how to get home. So He’s going to have to let the practical brain back in the drivers seat to get himself home.
Another one I have heard of is The Joker. Similar idea. When having anxious thoughts you keep calm enough to remind yourself that it’s not you, it’s The Joker playing tricks on you. These aren’t my true thoughts, they are The Joker. The Joker is an idiot, go away, Joker. At first it sounds ridiculous, but try it. it works.
You may have realized this already, but I like analogies. Is it because it starts with the word “anal”? Dunno, maybe? But I thought of this one the other day and a couple of mates liked it, so you might too, if you don’t, stuff ya.
There’s a “return and Earn” in Queanbeyan, NSW, just outside of canberra. Similarly to the videos below, you take your empty bottles and cans there to get your 10 cents back per bottle/can. At Queanbeyan there is a spinning roulette style table, with a pitch in the middle. You pour you bottles/cans onto the table. As it spins they line up on a conveyor belt and they are taken away. They go though a scanner which identifies if they are plastic, green, brown or clear glass. Along the conveyor belt there are actuators that knock each bottle/can onto a different conveyor, depending on if it’s plastic or what colour glass it is. These next conveyors take each type to their own larger bin. Essentially separating them all for you.
Sometimes though the scanner fails to identify what the bottle or can is. These are pushed into a separate bucket. Often the they are damaged, misshapen or old and faded. The attendant has to get this bucket and manually process the contents along with any other maintenance to keep the machine running efficiently. You still get paid for them too!
Why the fuck am I talking about this?
Simple. My brain is the machine that sorts all the bottles and cans. My thoughts are the bottles and cans. Most of the thoughts come through, they can get scanned and are appropriately allocated. Some are irrelevant. Don’t matter at all. Some are slightly important but won’t stress me if I come back to them later. Some are more pressing and are dealt with appropriately. Even the more urgent ones are dealt with automatically. So what about the bucket of rejects? That, is The Too Hard basket. My brain can’t process them all in it’s own. These are the difficult thoughts, thew ones we don’t want to face but have to. It needs my intervention. I am the attendee. It’s my job to ensure the machine keeps running as normal. But I don’t like processing the rejects. It’s smelly and gross. Things are much easier when the machine just works as it should. If I’m lazy and don’t stay on top of everything though, the Too Hard Basket will overflow, back the conveyor up, and shit the whole thing down.
We need to find a means of maintaining our own processing machine and emptying our too hard basket regularly. The less often we do it, the harder it is to do. It’s important. Because no matter what happens, the bottles and cans are always going to come and some of them are always going to end up in that too hard basket. Sometimes we’re going to get a perfect run and none will end up in The Too Hard Basket. Sometimes we’re going to get a bunch of fucked up old stubbies off the side of the road, all covered in mud and shit, they’re heading straight for the too hard basket. That is not within our control. So we have to find ways to keep emptying it.
How do I empty mine? I’m still learning. So far though I’ve found my sobriety has helped me a lot. Writing these blogs helps. Exercising with mates. Talking to people about how I am feeling and what I am thinking. Engaging in conversations about these things.
How do you empty your Too Hard Basket?
I will have to keep looking for other ways to empty The Too Hard Basket as life goes on and things change, but I’m happy to do so, because as I’ve said before about other things, it’s much better and easier than the alternative.
Be kind to each other this week.
Cheers Wankers.
X
People like analogies for different reasons... and you come up with some rippers!
I’m a big fan of the emotional driver vs the practical driver analogy and it’s amazing the power it can give you by just sitting back and enjoying the doughnuts as best you can.
And every time you take back the wheel, you’ve got another example of being able to ride it out, which should make the next experience more bearable.
Keep thinking about these things the way you are mate, you’ve got a unique perspective and a way with words that’s helping me make sense of the world just that little bit more.
Thanks, JN 😉