Guard, de Jag has hands-free! Liveline 25/8 going forward.

Roger_007 wrote: »

There can be only one topics for Joe next week. It’s not the Dublin lockdown, it’s much more serious than that:
President Higgins dog has died!


Ticks all the boxes?

ButtersSuki wrote: »

Dis fellla is damaging to my mental health:

https://www.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/speaking-out-about-mental-health-isnt-easy-but-its-worth-it-rtes-eoghan-mcdermott-on-his-own-positive-healing-experience-39542676.html

Speaking out about mental health isn't easy, but it's worth it ' - RTÉ's Eoghan McDermott on his own positive, healing experience

RTÉ's Eoghan McDermott (37) found speaking out about his mental health struggles to be a positive, healing experience. He shares his reasons for doing so, how people reacted, and some words of encouragement and solidarity for others who are suffering now

Eoghan McDermott, who went public with his mental health struggles in 2016, finds running and sport essential tools for maintaining his wellbeing
Eoghan is an ambassador for the European Week of Sport 2020. Sport Ireland is calling on you and your family to get out and #BeActive between the 23rd - 30th of September. For more see www.sportireland.ie/europeanweekofsport
Eoghan McDermott, who went public with his mental health struggles in 2016, finds running and sport essential tools for maintaining his wellbeing

I spoke publicly a few years ago about a difficult time in my life. Things got on top of me for a period and self-harming became a problem. It was a destructive time that came out of nowhere really because I was in a pretty good place work-wise. I was 27 and my life must have looked pretty rosy to anyone looking in from the outside. I was fronting a drive-time radio show with what was then the brilliant Xfm in London and things were taking off.

But I was also coming out of a long-term relationship, nothing bitter or acrimonious, but a change in my life that I couldn't properly process and which had a profound effect on me. It was a level of emotional difficulty I hadn't experienced and I didn't cope with it well. If there are seven stages of grief, ultimately ending up at acceptance, I probably got stuck on number three or four for too long. I couldn't move forward. I was withdrawn, retreating into myself and struggling to process being in a big new city, weighed down by a tonne of negative feelings.

Embarrassed


Honestly, I was embarrassed that I was struggling like I was. Doesn't everyone go through break-ups? Why should I have so much anguish? One day, I picked up a scissors and simply raked it over my skin. Why that day in particular? Who knows. It was just an act of destruction borne out of all that negative energy and dark emotion. It was something I would do several times over a couple of months, my mind addled by a concoction of anger, embarrassment, fear and anxiety. It isn't my favourite subject or something I'm too fond of recalling but it's a period of my life I've reconciled myself with. I talk about it now to help others. My first step to a clearer mind, to a healthier thought process, was simply opening up to someone, just plucking up that little bit of courage to say out loud what had been eating me up inside.

Eoghan is an ambassador for the European Week of Sport 2020. Sport Ireland is calling on you and your family to get out and #BeActive between the 23rd - 30th of September. For more see www.sportireland.ie/europeanweekofsport
Eoghan is an ambassador for the European Week of Sport 2020. Sport Ireland is calling on you and your family to get out and #BeActive between the 23rd - 30th of September. For more see www.sportireland.ie/europeanweekofsport
As it happened it was a random chat with a like-minded Irish guy in London. Straight away, the clouds began to lift.

A few years ago, I went public with what I'd been through. How it came about was a journalist asked me why I'd gotten involved with helping to launch the Darkness Into Light run for Pieta House. I responded by telling the truth, that it was because I'd seen my Mum do some work over the years with families who had been affected by suicide, but it wasn't the full truth. So I put together a video on YouTube and I told my story, the whole story. Was it scary putting that information out there into the public domain? You know what, by the time I did it I'd long since reconciled it in my own head. It was a chapter that had thankfully passed, something I'd been able to get on top of, and I could almost philosophically look back and reflect on how I ended up getting there, how I got out of there and what I'd learned from it.

Terrifying

So I felt comfortable enough to do that and, to be honest, duty bound too. But yes, there was that brief moment when I was about to hit 'submit' on the video I put together where it was a little bit terrifying. But you know what, by and large people appreciate when you show a vulnerability and they want to help. That's what I found. The response was positive, warm. People were kind. Hand on heart, I wouldn't say there were any real negatives from putting my story out there.

I'll never forget a conversation I had with a producer in RTÉ around that time, a very personal conversation. We got on very well and we were always very open with each other. She said to me pretty straight, "Don't ever forget it's easy for you, you can tell your story and you have a platform to tell it. You'll be lauded and they'll say, 'You're brave' and it'll become almost like a positive aspect to your biography." The point she was making was that for people who don't have that platform, it's not necessarily always the case that the reception they get is what they hoped for.

Sometimes people don't know how to react and if you put it out there that you've got some sort of mental turmoil going on in, say, a work space, will everyone know how to react? Will it affect you negatively? Will it ostracise you? These are normal concerns for people.

Positive


That's the real positive from the work that so many people are doing, people like the Dublin footballer Shane Carthy for instance, who has been very open about his struggles with depression. Whenever I can add my own tuppence, I try to as well. The more people talk about it, the more it's normalised and then those worries that people might feel around not having a platform to speak, or to just ask for help, will hopefully melt away. It's going to be a slow burner I think but I do think we're getting there.

There's people in sport, people in entertainment, music, politics all talking about their mental health, there's podcasts about mental health, TV specials. I think there's a greater understanding that the lay person experiences it just the same as the royals experience it.

Speak up

Like I said, I'm talking about all of this for a reason - to help others. My advice to those who find themselves in situations like I was in is pretty straightforward: speak up. I'm not saying it's easy or that there are any quick fixes; there aren't. But I guarantee you that no problem was ever made worse by sharing it with someone else. I think you'll be surprised by how great it actually feels to verbalise all those emotions and share them with someone. It's your first step forward.

Letting exercise and activity into your life, or back into your life as was the case with me, can play a huge role in maintaining good mental health. That advice has almost become clichéd, a Hallmark card take on mental health - 'running boosts your mood, it shoves the black clouds away'. But it's no less true for being a cliché. It really does work and it's a drum that's always worth beating. To be honest, the realisation that getting active and doing some exercise could help my mental health didn't really dawn until after my own little struggle had ended. Getting out of that rut for me was more about understanding my own negative thoughts, how they manifested themselves and learning how to break that cycle. I don't know what you'd call it, maybe it was a bit of emotional resilience or dexterity that I developed.

It only really became super apparent to me in the last few years that sport and exercise can be so beneficial too.

As it happens, I was on the first ever Irish ice hockey team when I was younger. I can legitimately say that I played a sport at a pretty decent level and represented my country. How it happened was there was this American guy, Pete Lalor, he would have been a player in the States but he'd had an accident, took to medicine and was studying in the Royal College of Surgeons.

He took our local club team, which played out of a rink in the basement of a Des Kelly store in Phibsboro, on the North Circular Road. That rink is long gone but that's where it started for me. We went over to Sofia in Bulgaria with the Ireland team for the European Championships in 1998. How did we do? Lost every game! Some by larger margins than others. I played for three years in all and we got progressively better as the years passed, pulled out a couple of decent results. It was an incredible experience, in all kinds of ways.

Tournaments

I got to see parts of the world I never would have. The Israeli team was competing in one of the tournaments. The players and entourage had a floor to themselves in the hotel. They had armed guards with machine guns. That was my first understanding of existing in a big wide world with lots of different things going on in it, things I'd been totally unaware of.

A few years ago, the thought struck that I'm not 22 anymore. Those days of eating what you like and burning it off easily are long gone. I wasn't involved in team sport anymore and I wasn't exercising regularly. I found my weight fluctuating, my mood fluctuating, my energy fluctuating and I kind of just realised, 'Jeez, this is my metabolism slowing down, your lifestyle choices actually have consequences!' It kind of took me falling quite far out of shape to realise the benefits of being in shape. But by God, those benefits are real.

Running is something I'm relishing now and I've set myself a bit of a target. I'm an ambassador for the European Week of Sport, which takes place from September 23-30 and I've set myself a running challenge. The fastest I've ever run a 5k is 19 minutes 45 seconds. I've fallen back from that because I'm in the 23 minutes zone now but my aim is to beat my personal best. That's my goal.

Family time

The last five months have been the best family time I've spent with my Dad. Ever. We run together regularly, sometimes three or four times a week, in Marlay Park. Just 5k, then we'll go for a coffee afterwards. Exercise box, tick. But it's more than that, it's just that simple thrill of spending time with my Dad and learning more about my family, about his side of the family. Stuff I'd never have found out and stuff you just don't ask as a kid.

When I look back on lockdown and the chaos of 2020, I know running with my Dad will be a strong memory. That's the big gift I've been given. It keeps me remotely fit, not at a high level where I'm thinking about half marathons or anything, but on the straight and narrow. And it keeps my head in check too. And everyone needs a bit of that. Maybe now more than ever.






Ambassador implies a paid gig of course.