Category: Reflection

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 11: Getting back up again

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 11: Getting back up again

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is the 11th blog in the Looking into Male Mental Health series and is going to be about getting back up again. This is going to be the last blog in the series for a short while as I am putting the series on hold for a while to work on a series about Stuttering in Mainstream Media. I think that if I put the series on hold for a few weeks then when I bring it back it will seem fresher and I will have more time to plan the ideas out and give the blogs the attention and focus that they deserve.

Getting back up again is a short phrase that seems really easy to do, however, it is not always easy. I find that the two hardest parts about getting over a mental health problem are firstly accepting you have it and then discovering how you can pick yourself back up again. It can be easier than it seems, we can make an impossible task seem easy to solve simply by thinking about it in a different way.

I have touched on the prospect of putting yourself back together in a few blogs in this series, especially in my Rebuilding the Jigsaw blog.

Picking yourself back up is a task that I struggled a lot with when I went through a poor Mental Health phase. When I was in the mindset everything seemed so pointless and I couldn’t really see a way out. This mindset is a very dangerous one to be in as I was constantly thinking negatively, hence everything else that happened in my life was perceived in a more negative light to how it would usually be.

I can remember the days when I thought that I would never break through my problems and I used to think that they would consume me. What makes the matter worse is that in my head I was ashamed at myself for not having the strength or willpower to fix the mess that I had put myself in. This all ties back to what I was talking about when I mentioned your mindset earlier on.

My mindset at this time was very negative. The way that I approached life was all doom and gloom and in doing that I simply created more problems for myself. I eventually learnt to understand the fact that if I did not change my mindset then I would eventually break. After finally learning that I needed to change how I thought about things a new thought came to me, how does someone change their mindset?

This question had me stumped for a good number of weeks until I finally worked out what I was going to do. I first started to reduce my hours in work so that I had more time to do university work and time to relax. After this, I created a basic timetable, nothing too specific but a basic guide to what I should be doing every day.

From this point then I began to prioritise the work that I had to do off the volume and the due date. As I started to do this I could see that I had enough time to complete all of my work as long as I keep a cool head and relax. Even simply getting my university work back on track started to make me feel so much better about myself. After I had finished all the work then I used to schedule in extra time to fix any other problems that I was facing. This gave me the opportunity to simply think about university work when I was doing work and then think of how to solve my other problems when I had spare time.

Cutting down on unnecessary work hours and scheduling my time better made the world of difference when it came to changing my mindset. they allowed me to relax and to get myself out of the cycle of panic that I was constantly living in. This was one way that I found to get back up again, to keep on going.

There are a million different ways to get back up again, usually, it comes down to the person. As I say in the majority of these blogs and especially in the Jigsaw one mentioned above, all of these blogs come down to interpretation. If you use a different way to get yourself through a rough time and get back up again then that is just as valid as my way. Out of curiosity if you do use a different way to pick yourself back up then let me know in the comments below.

The phrases getting back up and picking up the pieces/picking yourself up all mean the same thing. They are simply the words for when you rebuild yourself/ when you find a way to piece yourself back together again.

That is all I want to talk about in today’s blog, thank you all so much for reading! What do you all think of today’s blog? How do you pick yourself up? Do you always use the same way or does it depend on the situation? Leave your answers in the comments!

As mentioned at the start of this blog, the series will be going on hold for a little while. Even though I do still really enjoy writing the blogs for the series I feel like I need some more time to properly plan out where the series is going and how I am going to write the blogs for it. A new series called Stuttering in Mainstream Media will be replacing the usual spot where this series is until i can bring the series back again. I hope you all enjoy the series and keep reading the blogs!

Thanks again for reading. Let me know what you think – I appreciate all feedback be it positive or negative!

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Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

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James

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 10: The Brave Face

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 10: The Brave Face

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is going to be the tenth blog in the Looking into Male Mental Health series and is going to be about The Brave Face. Putting on a brave face is a phrase that is commonly used in day to day life. In this blog, we are going to be taking a deeper look into this phrase and then taking a look at the real world implications that it can have.

The term “Put on a brave face” can have several different meanings. The Free Dictionary, https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+on+a+brave+face, defines it as “to appear or make oneself seem more courageous, resolute or dauntless than one really feels”. I quite like this definition as it is easy to interpret and I believe that it defines the phrase quite well. I do have my own definition for the phrase which I think puts it in a more relatable light h however.

I like to define “put on a brave face” as a mask that we use to hide our real feelings. Even though this definition may seem very similar to the one written by The Free Dictionary, I feel like my definition encompasses a larger demographic. Like most pieces of work, however, it is all down to your personal preference. A lot of the blogs that I write do come down to personal interpretation. If you prefer a different definition to the two that I have written here that is completely fine, the points remain the same throughout the definitions, it is just the wording that changes.

When relating this to the world in general there are lots of different avenues you can take. You can apply this term to current world problems, politics, relationships or simply too personal life. The most common adaption of this phrase is when it is used in a personal way. It is very common that people put on a brave face when dealing with Mental Health problems.

It is very common for people or even society, in general, to turn a blind eye to problems like Mental Health simply due to lack of understanding or situational awareness. People often hide their problems and hope that they will go away with time. This style of coping does simply lead to an increase in the number of problems with no solution being found as your head is buried in the sand.

Unfortunately, people nowadays do actively try to avoid solving their problems. This can be caused by a number of different causes. Some of the problems that cause people to avoid solving their problems include lack of time available, fear of not being able to solve the problem, lack of resources available to fix the problem and many more. When people do put on a brave phrase it can often lead to an increase in the number of problems they face. This then triggers the Rollercoaster Effect that I mentioned in the fifth blog of this series, https://sweeneysblog.com/2019/05/14/looking-into-male-mental-health-blog-5-the-rollercoaster-theory/.

We are now going to take a brief look into how this phrase can directly link back to Male Mental health specifically.  Put on a brave face can easily be linked to Male Mental Health. Although I do bring it up a lot in this series I think that a large proportion of that can be linked back to male stereotypes that have been created by society. Men are painted as people who do not need to share their problems, they are meant to be people who solve everyone else’s problems including their own. These stereotypes do much more harm than good.

It is very easy to think to yourself that if you leave a problem for long enough then it will fix itself, this, however, is not the case. It takes a lot of courage to admit that you have a problem or to admit that you need help but when you do it can make life so much better. Trying to find help for your problems is an entity that is undervalued in modern day society. Sourcing help for your problems is almost like you are breaking the mask that you put on when you put on a brave face. Breaking the cycle is paramount to breaking the cycle and is the start of solving Mental Health problems.

That is all I want to talk about in today’s blog! What do you all think? Do you put on a brave face? Does it have a positive or negative effect on your life? How can we break the cycle of putting on a brave face? How do you think putting on a brave face relates to mental health? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Thank you all for reading! Let me know what you think! All feedback is appreciated – be it positive or negative! If you have a minute or two spare please leave a rating and review on our Facebook Page! I am thinking of launching a new advertising campaign soon, let me know what you think I should do!

Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

£5.00

James

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 9: Personal Experience 2

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 9: Personal Experience 2

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is going to be about one of my personal experiences when it comes to Male Mental Health. The aim of these personal experience blogs is to show that even when you are at rock bottom there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. I myself have gone through a number of problems when it comes to mental health and I believe that by mixing facts and personal experience help present a balanced picture on what mental health really is and how it affects us all.

The self-hate/doubt mechanism is a coping technique that I first started using when I used to get bullied a lot in school. The technique itself is a very poor one that only went on to make me feel worse about myself as you will see when I go into how the technique itself works. It is a coping technique that I used when I was desperate and it is a very bad way to go about life. If anyone reading this blog does do this to themselves then I would urge them to seek help. Even talking through your problems with a person you trust is a much better form of release rather than getting trapped in a cycle of self-hatred.

The main principle for the self-hate cycle that I created was simple. I would constantly put myself down and degrade myself before others had the chance too. Even though it didn’t make me feel better in my head at the time I was just thinking that it would be easier if I put myself down, instead of someone doing it for me. This cycle was my way of not letting others hurt me, I would break myself instead of giving someone else the chance too.

Once you put yourself in this cycle it is very hard to break after you start using it. The cycle tends to get more and more aggressive to the point where you cross-examine and doubt every action you take. It is an extremely dangerous cycle which is why I wanted to talk about it. If you know anyone who is currently, unfortunately, using this coping technique or if you use it yourself then it is key that you break the cycle. I fully comprehend that this is easy to say and to actually break the chain requires a lot more work but if the cycle isn’t broken or at least reduced then you will sadly end up in a very dark place mentally.

As I mentioned in a lot of my previous blogs Mental Health is a very complicated topic. It is very very rare that the problems people face stem from one source, it is often a mixture of several sources/problems all at once. This is where the self-hate cycle becomes even more dangerous. If you adopt this technique as a form of coping when you are already experiencing problems then it starts to become too much to handle.

The phrase that I quite like to talk about is balancing the books, and it becomes ever the more paramount here. Learning to find a way of releasing can be vital when it comes to breaking the cycle of self-hate. I can’t say one way that works for everyone as there is no one way. You need to find your release and only then will you be able to even attempt to break the cycle.

I have been experiencing the self-hate cycle for a number of years. It took me a long while to recognise what it actually is and then even longer to figure out how to manage it. To put it simply it is very very hard to completely break the cycle, however, it is manageable. Learning the manage to technique to a point where you almost never feel it is vital when it comes to beating it.

That is all I want to talk about in today’s blog! Thank you all for reading! What do you all think? Have you ever experienced the self-hate cycle? How did you overcome it? What do you think leads a person to pick up the cycle? Do we need to learn how to identify when someone is suffering from this management technique?

Thank you all for reading! Let me know what you think via the comments or on the Facebook page! We are nearly at 2,000 total views, great work everyone!

Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

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James

Valleys, Mountains and the Land in between

Valleys, Mountains and the Land in between

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is going to be about an old phrase that I read in a Welsh book when I was younger. The phrase translates into English as The Valleys, The Mountains and The Land in between. I cannot remember the name of the book that the phrase was used in but I want to take a deeper look into how the phrase can relate to life in general.

I believe that this phrase has a lot of connections to life in general and think that if we can truly understand it then it can help us find peace in our daily lives. My take on the phrase is simple, I think that the phrase relates to how we live our lives. When we are having a good day then it can feel like we’re on top of the world (or a mountain?) and then when we have bad days it can feel like our mood has slumped, like we’ve gone down a valley.

river near mountains

The phrase helps portray life in a very positive way, which is crucial in modern day society. The way that I understand the phrase is that as the world has it’s mountains and valleys, we can have good and bad days. It makes the whole prospect of having different moods seem like it is part of nature, not a thing for us to worry about, a thing for us to accept.

I really like this phrase as when you are having a bad day, or at the bottom of a valley in this phrase, you know that your mood can become lighter and increase until you feel good about yourself and about life in general.

Now the one part of this phrase that I haven’t talked about yet is the land in between part. I interpret this as when you are feeling calm and relaxed, you’re not exactly super positive or happy but you are content. I think it is when you are feeling neutral and ok with life like you are the land in between a mountain and a valley.

That is all I want to talk about in today’s blog! I do have some smaller things to say before the post is finished however but these act more like announcements rather than part of the blog. Firstly I would like to apologise for the blog being later today than it usually is. This week has been my last week of exams at university and I had two really big exams to prepare for. Due to the time needed to prepare for my exams, I have not had the time to write a post as long as I usually do.

Also, I think it’s a good time to update everyone on how the blogs doing. If you are following the Facebook page for the blogs then you will be familiar with the fact that we are smashing through the milestones I set for the age initially. I am very pleased to announce that we are nearly at 2,000 total views. This is a massive milestone for the page as we have only been going for around 4/5 months! After we pass this milestone I’m aiming to hit as close to 5,000 total views by the end of the year as I can!

thanks! paper and black pen on wood surface

The last point that I want to bring up in this post is about promoting the page. I am aiming to launch another set of Facebook ads soon to try and get more people to the page. I am wondering if everyone who is reading this can possibly share the page on Facebook?

Sharing the page helps the page find new viewers who might really relate to the content. There are a few ways you can share the page. You can either do it via the page on Facebook or you can hit the share button at the end of this or any other of my blogs posts.

Thanks for reading today’s blog and I hope you all enjoyed! If you have a minute or two spare please leave a rating and a recommendation on the page! Hope you all have a great weekend!

Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

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James Sweeney

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 7: The Facts

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 7: The Facts

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is the seventh blog in the “Looking into Male Mental Health” series and is going to be called “The Facts”. Today’s blog is going to take a look at some of the facts that have been released regarding Male Mental Health and are going to be suggesting reasons for why there is a difference and how we can go about reducing it.

A newspaper article published by The Sun on the 11th May 2018, can be found here: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5911685/male-suicide-rates-uk-awareness-the-samaritans-2018/, gives us an insight into the differences between male and female suicide rates. The article informs us that the suicide rate in men is up to three times higher than female suicide rates. This statistic is really worrying and it is only the tip of the iceberg to what the article tells us.

According to The Sun, approximately 84 men commit suicide each week. This number alone is alarmingly high yet it gets even worse when we apply it through different timespans. If 84 men commit suicide each week, we can work out that approximately 4,368 men commit suicide each year. This number is absurdly high and action needs to be taken now in order to counteract this.

If we apply these statistics to the average lifespan of a citizen of the United Kingdom, which is around 80-81, then in one person’s whole lifespan there could be between 349,440 and 353,808 male suicides. Now, these facts are not intended to scare people but more so to inform them of how serious a situation this is. Even though these statistics are only an estimate, and they are taken from an article released in 2018, they still paint an unsettling image into the modern world.

Even though the figures we have calculated so far are alarming high it is still important to remember that suicide rates are still increasing. We can look at statistics all day long and see that there is a clear problem but if we do nothing to address and attempt to counter this issue then the problem is only going to get worse and worse. We need to learn from the mistakes made in the past, we need to focus on how we can grow together, not just as individuals.

photo-1499244571948-7ccddb3583f1

Change and adaptation are two of the things that humans are the best at. It’s what helps us learn from our past mistakes in order to make a better future, We need to adapt as a community to the phenomenon that is Male Mental Health. The spotlight has only recently been shone onto the crisis that we are facing and it is our job as a community to ensure that that light does not lose its focus.

It is all well and good for us to simply look at the statistics and hope everything is going to work itself out. If we do this then the number is only going to increase and increase until change and adaptation are no longer options. Steps need to be taken to try and combat these insanely high figures.

I have spoken a lot about why I think there is such a problem with Male Mental health in most of the blogs in this series. Although I mainly focus on stereotypes as the largest one there are still plenty more that arise. This is where the main problem comes up with Mental Health as a topi, although we can categorise some things as similar between different people, there are still and forever will be personal problems that are added to the mix.

As I have talked about in a number of blogs, identifying your limit is crucial as one of the main factors in tackling Male Mental health. Learning when enough is enough and what your limit is can save your life. Valuing the fact that life is about equilibrium, a balance can allow you to gain valuable insight into how you can grow as a person and not overwork yourself.

When I originally started writing today’s blog I was going to talk about a lot more statistics, however, after I wrote the first few paragraphs this quickly changed. We as a society often focus too much on statistics and they are often used to distract us from the actual matter at hand. However, that is not what I wanted for this blog. I wanted to use real facts that have been calculated and released to really show how important the topic of Male Mental health really is. The facts that I use are used to back up my points, not to distract people from them.

That is all I want to talk about in today’s blog. I have been holding back on doing this blog for quite some time as it is a very serious topic but it is one that I need to talk about before going further into this series. As for the future of this series, the polls that I ran last week have shown me that people do like this series and do want more blogs in it. I will be doing a few more personal blogs into my battles with mental health in the upcoming weeks as well as different theories and ideas that I can think of into how to tackle the global phenomenon which is Male Mental health.

What does everyone think of today’s blog?  Do the facts surprise you as much as they surprised me? Does seeing the facts make you want to try and combat them? If so how do you think we can combat them? Are changes being made? If so then are these changes enough? Let me know what you think in the comments or on the Facebook Page!

Thank you all for reading today’s blog in the Looking into Male Mental Health series! Let me know what you all think! I appreciate all feedback, be it positive or negative!

Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

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James Sweeney

Change – A small word with a big footprint – James Sweeney

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 6: Rebuilding the Jigsaw

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 6: Rebuilding the Jigsaw

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is the sixth blog in the Looking into Male Mental Health series and is going to be called Rebuilding the Jigsaw. Today’s blog is going to look at how we can learn how to put ourselves back together after going through a rough time and is also going to act as a summary for the series so far.

When you hit rock bottom it’s often hard to see how you can pick yourself up and put yourself back together again. The sense of desperation and isolation can make you feel like you will never be able to be the same again however it is not the case. There is always a way to rebuild the jigsaw that is ourselves however sometimes it is harder to find.

Now as I think in a very theoretical way I like to compare how we rebuild ourselves to how a person might make a jigsaw. There are hundreds of ways to solve a jigsaw, the same can be said about some problems that we encounter. A few of the more common ways to solve a jigsaw puzzle involve starting with the corners, finding 2 random parts that fit together or by simply trying to recreate one section of the original puzzle and working from there. I mention these because it can easily relate to how we can go about solving our problems.

The way we solve pour problems is individual, there is no right or wrong answer for how to solve a problem. Some people find avenues such as counselling and therapy help them out greatly, that is not to say that if you do not find counselling helpful then you are wrong, it is all down to what works for you. From speaking to a few friends it is clear to me the large diversity of solutions to problems. Some people like to talk them out with friends or family, some like to create songs or poems, some people write blogs and some people do a lot of exercise to name but a few.

The point of the blog is not to tell you which way you should use to help solve your problems, but to simply focusing on the actual rebuilding process itself. I am thinking of doing a very deep blog series into rebuilding your mind in the future so I am going to be careful f how much detail I go into at this point. The human mind is an extraordinary entity, one which no one truly understands. The mind is capable of getting over problems, it is just down to if we as individuals can get over them.

The process of rebuilding yourself can be a very interesting one. A common phrase which you would hear a lot if you look into mental health is that you only really understand true pain if you have gone through it and come out on the other side. This comment is often criticised due to the perception of what pain really is. Pain is a word that has different meanings for different people, some people have very high pain tolerance levels whereas others don’t. Little things may affect people greatly or may have little effect on them, it is all down to the person. This just goes to back up the point that rebuilding yourself is a common goal that people try to achieve but the way that you do it is completely down to the individual.

We as people need to learn how we put ourselves back together again and then have to learn how we can adapt that into our lives. This topic can be seen as a very general topic about Mental Health as a whole but I think that it fits in with how the series is going very well. The rest of the blog today is going to act as a short summary of what has been covered so far in the series.

Mental Health is a topic that is only recently getting the attention it deserves. The purpose of this series is to look into Male Mental Health and see how we can begin to help people who are experiencing Mental Health problems. The main reason that I believe that Male Mental Health is as bug an issue that it is today is down to stereotypes. Stereotypes have been the cause of a lot of very large problems throughout history. The main stereotype is that men are too touch to talk about their problems and should be able to handle all of their problems by themselves. This stereotype has no merit in my books, I think it is completely ridiculous.

In the personal blog that I posted for this series, I went in depth about how one bully tried to break me and how they slowly began to break away at me. this blog wasn’t posted as an attack at that person, it was posted to show that even though someone can break you, you can always put yourself back together again. If I do more blogs in this series I will do more blogs going into my personal experiences with mental health as well as more theories that I have made in order to help me understand what mental health really is.

That is all I want to talk about in today’s blog! Thank you all for reading! What do you all think? Are we still enjoying the series or would we rather it be finished soon? I will be running a poll on the blogs Facebook Page, Sweeney’s Blogs (you can find it by clicking the link in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page), to see what the overall verdict is. How do you rebuild yourself when you have been knocked down?

Thank you all for reading and I hope you have all enjoyed! Let me know what you think in the comments below or via the contact page! All feedback is appreciated, be it positive or negative!

Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

£5.00

James

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 5: The Rollercoaster Theory

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 5: The Rollercoaster Theory

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is going to talk about The Rollercoaster Theory, a theory I have created, and how it links to Mental Health. We are then going to take a closer look at how this theory links directly with Male Mental Health and the steps we can take to try and reduce this theory’s effect on people.

The Rollercoaster Theory is one of the many theories that I have created to help visualise how stress and mental health problems can directly affect us. In my experience of creating theories I often find that they are a hit or miss area. What I mean by this is some people can easily relate to them and it can help them understand the thought process of people whereas others who don’t understand them or don’t like them find them useless.

When I first made this theory I made two possible explanations for it. In this blog, I am only going to be going over one of the explanations but if it receives a good response then I might do a second blog going into the theory a bit more.

The basic premise of the Rollercoaster Theory is as follows: We, as people, are the cars in the rollercoaster. The problems and obstacles that we face in life add to the height in the rollercoaster. If we do not find a way of releasing these problems then we slowly go higher and higher up the rollercoaster track. As I have brought up in the past with previous blogs and my balloon theory, everything has its limit. It is this principle which applies to the Rollercoaster Theory as well.

If we go through life no sorting out any of our problems but more so just keeping them going in our lives then we are eventually going to reach the peak of what we can handle. This is the peak of the rollercoaster, it’s from this that we start to go down the rollercoaster, or downhill in real life. This downhill spiral eventually reaches the bottom and then the rollercoaster starts again. This theory could quite easily be called the Hill Theory as the concept is the same however visualising it as a rollercoaster adds to the scale of the theory and it makes it easier to remember.

This theory helps us visualise mental health in a simple and easy to understand way. It helps show us how mental health can make our mood go up or down similar to a rollercoaster and how if we leave our problems to accumulate until we can’t handle them much longer then we will collapse and start going downhill, down the rollercoaster, faster and faster.

Now it goes without saying that the theory can relate to anyone regardless of gender however we are now going to take a look into how the theory can relate to Male Mental Health in more depth. The classic stereotype of men being able to handle all of their problems by themselves and being too proud to talk about their problems links this theory to male mental health perfectly.

The way in which the stereotype leads to people keeping their problems to themselves adds to them climbing up the rollercoaster. The more isolated people become often leads to the more problems they face. These problems if not handled correctly act as a catalyst and propel people up the rollercoaster at alarmingly fast speeds. This causes people to face the downhill turn of events much faster than they usually wood often relating to people struggling severely with things like stress and mental health issues.  This is but one of the examples of how this theory links back to male mental health and it shows that steps need to be taken to get people off this rollercoaster cycle.

That is all that I want to talk about in today’s blog! I would talk about the theory in more depth but I do not want the blog to be too long or for it to drag on. If anyone wants me to do an individual blog on my Rollercoaster Theory then let me know and I will start working on it!

Thank you all for reading today’s blog in the Looking into Male Mental Health series! What do you all think? Does the Rollercoaster Theory make sense to you? Do you think that the Rollercoaster Theory links to male mental health well? Do you have any theories or ideas that you use to visualise mental health? How would you get someone off the rollercoaster cycle? Let me know what you think in the comments or by getting in touch with me!

Thanks again for reading! All feedback is appreciated!

James

Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

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Mo’s Room – Poem

Mo’s Room – Poem

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is going to be a poem I wrote about an old counselors room that I used to go to. The idea of the poem is that the room is like a safe haven where you can go and simply let go of your problems. I wrote the poem in a style that repeats the last two lines at the end of every verse/stanza.

Here’s the poem:

A place to go when you’re happy or sad,

An escape to go to when you’re stressed out or mad.

If you’re feeling stressed and have an impending sense of doom,

When people judge you and just assume,

When your heads a mess and you’re out of zoom,

Take a minute out of your day to go to Mo’s room,

When you’re stuck in a cycle of anxiety and gloom,

To restore your confidence to allow you to bloom,

Take a minute out of your day to go to Mo’s room,

A place to go when you’re happy or sad,

An escape to go to when you’re tired or mad.

If you’re having problems talking to your family,

Or you might be suffering financially,

If it’s prime exam time or you have anxiety,

And you feel your life running rampantly,

A group who would help no matter who you were,

Who would help you see clearly if your mind was a blur,

A place to go when you’re happy or sad,

An escape to go to when you’re tired or mad.

If you need help or just a bit of support,

Maybe you’re going through trauma or an issue in court,

If you’re getting bullied an are too scared to report,

If your minds a mess and you have things you need to sort,

If a friend lets you down and left you and has fallen short,

When you feel like giving up and for your plans to abort,

A place to go when you’re happy or sad,

An escape to go to when you’re stressed out or mad.

If you’re looking for a branch that you cannot reach,

You need advice, not someone to preach,

If you don’t know what to do next, be it University or an apprenticeship,

Or if you are having problems with your relationship,

If you want advice and a helping hand,

Or you want to rediscover yourself and re-brand,

A place to go when you’re happy or sad,

An escape to go to when you’re stressed out or mad.

Thank you for reading today’s blog! What do you all think? Do you have a place to go to release? Does everyone like this style of poems or would you like a different style in the future? What do you like/dislike about the poem? Let me know in the comments or get in touch with me!

Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

£5.00

James Sweeney

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 4: Personal Experience 1

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 4: Personal Experience 1

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is the fourth in my Looking Into Male Mental Health series and is going to look into my experience with mental health. I have mentioned a few times in my previous posts that I have gone through a lot of mental health problems in the past. I am going to be going over briefly what caused these, how I learned to resolve and manage them and how I try and balance things out in life so that I do not get overcrowded.

This is the first time that I am doing a blog this personal so I am going to be extra careful in how I phrase things and how much detail I go into. This blog is going to talk in detail about how the bullying I went through when I was younger affected me and grew without many people noticing. I am going to do more blogs like this in the future where I talk about how I struggled and how I managed to fix myself but I thought I would start here.

The mental health issues that I have been diagnosed with and have worked through have been Severe Anxiety, Depression and PTSD. I had the bad luck of encountering all of these at the same time due to a build-up of several factors which I will be talking about in a little bit. It took me a while to admit to myself that I actually had problems that I needed to solve but I quickly learned that it only got worse with time when trying to beat it by myself.

There was a range of factors that led me to have mental health problems, one of the largest was bullying. Bullying has been a large portion of my life and is a topic that I feel very strongly about. I have been bullied in the past, some cases it was only short term bullying but others lasted several years and really damaged my self-confidence and the image I had of myself.

The worse bullying that I faced was by one person for around ten to ten and a half years. Looking back at it now I realise how smart the person was actually bullying me. They started out by making comments about my hair colour, my freckles and other general comments then progressed into more offensive, deeper hitting topics. After realising that bullying me with comments about my appearance didn’t really bother me they began to bully me about my stutter.

My stutter has been a condition that is very personal to me and something I have tried to control over a number of years. I get very defensive about my stutter and I try really hard not to stutter much but sometimes I just cannot help it. The way that my stutter works is that it tends to flare up when I am feeling extreme emotions. This can mean that it flares up when I’m really happy, angry, sad, excited, nervous and in many other cases.

When this bully started to bully me simply for having a stutter it slowly began to erode at the defences that I had been putting up. After this went on for a while and they saw that I wasn’t reacting to it they decided to up the level and start isolating me from my friends. This particular bully would speak to people when I wasn’t there saying that I was talking about them behind their back, a thing that I would never do.

At first, when I got told that this was going on I didn’t think it would make a difference to my friends or my social life however it all changed in a few weeks. I stopped getting invited out with my mates and I began spending more time by myself in my house. This rise in the level of bullying was when I started to realise that I was struggling. I had been bullied due to my appearance, my stutter and now my social life had started to break.

The bullying stayed at this level for a few years and then it began to increase again. Before the level of bullying increased I counted that the bully had turned around 37 people against me. I had done nothing wrong and I couldn’t understand why people weren’t speaking to me and why they were actively ignoring me. My trust in people took a huge fall at this point and I only really trusted friends that lived close to me that I had known for years.

The next level of bullying started when I was walking home from school. I began to walk home by myself after school. This was because the bully lived near me and they would walk back the same way home that I did. It was at this time that some of my older friends began walking back with me. They would talk to me as they would usually and for the first few weeks I started to think that things were going back to the way they used to be.

After a few weeks, I started to realise that everything I was saying to my friends was being told to the bully. I found out after school that after I went home my friends would tell the bully everything I said to them and it would be used against me as ammunition.  This strange reality that was happening hit me hard. I started to notice that I was becoming more and more isolated and that the people I trusted were in with the bully.

The bullying did rise another level one final time before I put my foot down. I went off school for a while in Year 11 to have life-threatening surgery where I lost 3 foot of my small intestine (I might do a blog on my medical condition in the future). I came back to school 2 months early when I could barely walk with a six-inch scar going down my stomach. It was at this point where the bully decided to throw his comment at me. They just looked at me in front of all of the mates and said: “Can I store my change in your stomach James as you’ve lost some intestine?”. This one line broke something inside me.

Everyone around me started to laugh and I thought that I was completely alone. This was one of the main factors that completely broke me. After writing this I have decided that I will do more blogs in the future like this as it is quite long now as it is, that is without me adding in more points. I do not want to make the blogs too long that the main point of them dissolves.

Thank you for reading this weeks blog in the Male Mental Health series! If you are wondering what this blog has to do with mental health then it is meant to show how factors can build if not acted upon and how they can lead to you struggling unless you know when enough is enough. I didn’t put my foot down soon enough which is why I still struggle with the drawback effects now.

What do you all think of this week’s blog? Has bullying affected you in the past? How did you get past it? Do we as a society need to learn to identify secret bullies? What can be done about bullying that we don’t even see? Let me know any answers you have to these questions and your thoughts on today’s blog! There will be a few more blogs like this that talk about how I learned to overcome my problems in the upcoming weeks so stay tuned if you’re interested!

Sweeney’s Blogs

Any money donated here will be put back into the business. This can be through marketing campaigns, upgrades to plans or for setting up future events!

£5.00

James

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 2: Knowing your Limits

Looking into Male Mental Health – Blog 2: Knowing your Limits

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is going to be the second blog in my Looking into Male Mental Health Series. Today’s blog is going to focus on the importance of knowing your limits and finding balance in your life which will make a great link to next weeks blog which is going to talk about the help and support that is available.

Identifying your limits can be one of the most important things to do in life. Knowing how much work you can take on and complete at one time can be a tremendous asset to have in your corner. It is often a skill that is overlooked. People nowadays often tend to take on much more than they can handle which eventually leads to them struggling with stress, upcoming deadlines and a vast array of other forms of pressure. This stress and pressure have negative effects on a persons physical and mental health.

A recent video that I shared on the blogs Facebook page, the video:https://www.facebook.com/BBCOne/videos/2559921220689156/UzpfSTM4MjA2OTI2OTAxNzgyMDo0MTQ5MzAyNDkwNjUwNTU/?modal=admin_todo_tour, gives us an insight into how stress affects our body in a number of different ways. The video just further solidifies that fact that we need to learn how much we can handle and then use that to plan how we live our day to day life.

It is a common trend that we as people tend to take on as much as we can at once in hopes that we can somehow balance it all and achieve a standard of work that we want to achieve whilst also retaining a strong and stable mental health. It is a common trend in people especially younger people to somewhat undervalue the impact that stress can have on your health. People tend to become overtaken with their work and then begin to wall themselves off from their family, friends and society itself. This is very common to see with younger men and is a reason why male mental health has become such a worrying entity in today’s society.

In my opinion, it all stems from the age-old stereotype that men are too strong to talk about their feelings and that they can handle everything by themselves. This old stereotype holds no merit in today’s society. It has become a clear sign of someone struggling with mental health problems if they begin to isolate themselves from society yet this old stereotype almost seems to encourage it.

Asking for help and or support can be one of the strongest things a person can do. Knowing that you have taken on too much at once and trying to recover from it is one of the most vital things a person can do to preserve their mental health. It’s all well and good having a lot of things to do each day but if you do not give your mind and body enough time to heal and recover then eventually you will collapse.

It is not a nice thing to say but it is a fact of life. People have a limit to how much they can handle and if this is not respected then people will struggle even more. When people learn of their own limit then it can help them plan out what they need to do each day. This allows people to be organised and will allow them to complete all the work that they need to do.

Thanks for reading this weeks blog in the Looking into Male Mental Health series! What do you all think of the blog? Do you think identifying your limit is a good thing? Do you know your limit? Is it important to notice when someone is struggling and intervene before they ask for help? As always all feedback is appreciated,

James

Being Different: Blog 4 – The Changing Mirror

Being Different: Blog 4 – The Changing Mirror

James Sweeney

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

This is the 4th blog in the Being Different series. This blog is called “The Changing Mirror” and talks about how your reflection can change over time. This blog is going to focus on hoe your personality as well as your world view can change over time and how you can adapt this approach into day to day life. 

I got the idea for this blog from a mirror in my house’s bathroom. The mirror has been in my house all of my life and is used daily. I have distinct memories of looking at the mirror throughout all stages of my life. Looking back through my memories I can distinguish the way that I felt when I looked in the mirror, what I was thinking about and how I saw the world and indeed myself.

Even though a mirror isn’t a living, breathing entity it can still act as an instrument to look through time. I can remember back to when I was five years old and going onto my tiptoes simply to try and look at the mirror. I didn’t really have an idea of how the world worked, I was just trying to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could.

When looking at the mirror over time though, you do notice that things do change. These changes can be very minor, or they can be major. Of course, as I was growing up my appearance changed. I started as a small happy child who thought that the world was positive, and no harm could come onto anyone, then I slowly started to understand more things about life and the world we live in. 

I started learning about the balance that exists inside the world, how two neighboring countries can live in a completely different way. Learning how there is a clear difference between third world countries and first world countries and how this difference is slowly changing as we progress as a community and as people. 

Furthermore, the way I think about things has changed a lot since I first started looking at it. When I first started looking into the mirror, I didn’t make many decisions, I was often told what to do and I had the majority of things done for me. As time has gone by the way that I think has changed. As I have experienced lots of different obstacles life has to offer, I have had to think things through differently.

I have learned to take more responsibility in my life. I now know how to look after myself, how to cook, how to clean and even day to day things like how to get a job and how to work. These jobs have required me to adapt however they have not made who I am change. That is the important part. Despite changing how I view certain things in life, the person that I am has not changed.

The unique things that I do are still unique to me. The things that make us different from other people are just as important as the things that we have in common with others. Life is all about finding an equilibrium between the differences and the similarities that everyone has. Being Different is nothing to shy away from, it is something to embrace. Just as I have seen changes when I have looked in the mirror, I have also seen similarities. This experience can be adapted to many other aspects of life. 

It is often useful to evaluate the changes that you see when you look back at your life. What were the changes? What affect did it have on you? Was the effect positive or negative? Did changing the way you see certain things change you as a person? Let me know your answers to these questions through our contact page,

Thanks for reading this week’s blog, I hope you enjoyed! Evaluating your life at different stages can be a very useful thing to do, it allows you to see where you have gone wring and what you have done right in order to make the right decision going forward. If anyone has any feedback on the blog, please let me know. All types of feedback are appreciated, if I am doing something that you do not agree with then the only way, I can change it is if I know!

Thanks again and please get in touch if you have any questions, 

James 

Poem – Looking into the Mind of Mental Health

Poem – Looking into the Mind of Mental Health

James Sweeney

Looking into the Mind of Mental Health is a poem that I wrote back when I was going through a rather rough patch with my own Mental Health. The poem takes a look at some of the thoughts that can go through your head when thinking of Mental illnesses such as Anxiety, Depression & PTSD.

Here is the poem:

Looking into the Mind of Mental Health

My depression is at an all-time high,

I’m not sure how to fix it, I don’t know why,

Is it worth solving, is it worth a try?

Do I just stop or go to bed and lie?

How do I escape this cycle of self-hatred?

This self-torture mechanism I have created,

When feelings are difficult to be translated,

When all you want to feel like again, is elated.

My anxiety is at quite a high peak,

My mind-sets darkening, turning bleak,

My positivity’s slowly draining, like a boat with a leak,

Is it worth saving, or is my mind too weak?

How do I escape this cycle of self-hatred?

This self-torture mechanism I have created,

When feelings are difficult to be translated,

When all you want to feel like again, is elated.

I’m worried that my PTSD will come back,

Then my social and work life will slack,

One person left alone like a wolf without a pack,

When life gets tough is it worth the hack?

How do I escape this cycle of self-hatred?

This self-torture mechanism I have created,

When feelings are difficult to be translated,

When all you want to feel like again, is elated.

What if the bullying happens again?

Will I cope? Or break like I did when I was ten,

This fear I’ve got, my childhood is the stem,

I’m lost for words, can’t put words to the pen.

How do I escape this cycle of self-hatred?

This self-torture mechanism I have created,

When feelings are difficult to be translated,

When all you want to feel like again, is elated.

Hope you all enjoyed the poem! Let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day!

James Sweeney

A Grandmother, Mother and to all a Friend

A Grandmother, Mother and to all a Friend

James Sweeney

This is a poem I made for my Grandmother, when I found out that she had Alzheimer’s Disease. The poem is a very personal one for me and can also be located on my Alzheimer’s website, Don’t Forget Me. The poem acts a nostalgia train for me going through my life and the memories that I share with my Nana.

Note: Cap is a nickname that my brother made for my grandfather 🙂

A Grandmother, a Mother and to all a friend,
A person who would inspire you to the very end.

For a person who did so much for so many,
If she needed help she would try not to ask for any,
A nurse for years and a sister to her ward,
If you ever wanted to go for a walk she would be first on board,
A strong lady who could walk for miles,
Would take you up and down the aisles,
A Grandmother, a Mother and to all a friend,
A person who would help you to the very end.

For a Nana who devoted her life to Cap,
She could make a killer bacon bap,
A devoted wife, partner and the very best friend,
The two together were the ultimate blend,
A woman who would help no matter who you were,
Who would help you see clearly if your mind was a blur,
A Grandmother, a Mother and to all a friend,
A person who you would admire to the very end.

For a Grandmother who would go for walks down the beach,
She would always share advice, never to preach,
For all the walking we did on the rocks,
She never thought to comment on my very weird crocs,
For the rock pools we would look for all day,
A task that would need us to go all around the bay,
A Grandmother, a Mother and to all a friend,
A person who would guide you to the very end.

For a woman who could make the very best scone,
Any memories of her will never be gone,
A kind patient and incredible baker,
She would not even tell me off when I was a troublemaker,
A lady who could make the tastiest teisin lap,
She always would let me steal Caps cap,
A Grandmother, a Mother and to all a friend,
A person who would inspire you to the very end.


Thanks for reading my poem dedicated to my grandmother, my best friend, my hero. If you would like to let me know what you thought of the poem, please drop me a message in the comments or through our Facebook page. Although my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s has stole the memories from her, they’ll never take them away from me!

Thanks for reading & I hope you have a lovely day!

James Sweeney