Why So Many Men Are Thanking An Irish Guy For Revealing A Secret They're Too Afraid To Admit
Why So Many Men Are Thanking An Irish Guy For Revealing A Secret They're Too Afraid To AdmitInterviewer: You see, the mad thing about that is like, you know, I knew the Bressie is here when I was in college and guys looking at guys like you from the outside you think this guy on a rugby scholarship, he's the jock, he's the in crowd, he plays for Ireland, good looking, big guy and all that, and you kind of assume that these guys are, they're all all right.
Interviewee: You see, that perception has to stop and it has to stop now because it just doesn't work that way. You know, mental health doesn't have a circumstance and that's the reality in this country and the thing after that speech, I got inundated with emails from men, and men just kind of saying, "Thank you," like dropping their shoulders and saying, "Finally." Like we have to wake up and understand that like a vast majority of people in this country have experienced this or dealt with it or dealt with loved ones who have had depression or anxiety. Yet we are still unbelievably shadowed by it and it just really frustrates me because it ultimately is what caused most my issues. Wasn't the anxiety, the depression, it was constantly
having to hide it and constantly have to make excuses for it, that's what caused most my...
Interviewer: After that you went on to talk about for example, you then became a professional rugby player.
Interviewee: Um-hum.
Interviewer: And like, was it your first match you bottled, you couldn't do it?
Interviewee: I think it was my second or third cup. I said it in the speech but I remember I think it was a Wednesday or Thursday. The thing with depression or anxiety is you always hope it doesn't command you; it's all in your head. It's not the idea of the panic attacks, it's when is it going to happen. Is it going to happen at a time before, you know, one of your first professional rugby matches? I remember the Thursday before when the game was in Donnybrook and anyone who's gone through a severe acute depressive stage or anxiety stage. It's just madness, it's irrelevant irrational madness goes on in your head. And it was strange and a lot of people were shocked mostly, they literally wanted to rip the skin off of my face. You know, that sounds horrific but I can't describe it in any other way and I was physically kind of hitting my head against the wall to try and knock myself out.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: So I would have an excuse not to play the match. I think as hard as that story is to hear it's the type of story you have to tell, especially for people, like why I'm speaking about this, isn't just for people who have the issues, it's for people who don't so they can get a vague idea of what it feels like. So they can become much better landing strips for people who might turn to them in the future and say, "Listen, I'm not feeling great."
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: Or, "I'm depressed." And I think that's the relationship you have to have with depression and anxiety. It has to be normalized. It's so enormous, it's probably the most normal thing in this country yet it's the most disguised thing. It's really frustrating, I don't get it, and I think people like myself and Conor Cusack are trying to speak out about it and we're being given platforms and I've been doing that speech for a year and a half.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: But we've never been given a platform to do it. And Lovin Dublin said, "Listen, I know there's a couple of chefs and entrepreneurs in this stage but I think this might work." So they gave us the platform to do it and it erupted because as I said it's just been this tension around it, this elastic band pulled back over years that's been allowed to be built up around mental health and now it's been released. People are looking for that.
Interviewer: And you know what I think was important about it is rather pricy was that a lot of people say, "Oh yeah, you know I had my problems." and I think a lot of people their perception of you would have been he had some problems when he was a teenager, right? But like, you were pretty brutal about it like you talked about
after that you talked about basically, you used the word breakdown, which is quite a taboo word for people to use. You guys said you were in London and you said basically what you had was a breakdown, yeah?
Interviewee: Yeah, I think people use the work breakdown to be stressed and rough, "You know, I'm having a breakdown, oh it's terrible." When I say I had a breakdown, like I slept in a park for two nights. I remember vividly being able to see London and I was in Hampstead Heath which is about eight miles outside of London, and I was able to see the city and I was able to see the gap between me and the city, and that was why I was there and the problem with something like that is your biggest fear is that will never go away, and that's what freaks you out because you're going, "Gee, if this is a breakdown..."
Interviewer: I'm never going to go back...
Interviewee: If this is the rest of my life, I'm in trouble...
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: And a lot of people go through that but in a vast majority of cases and in most cases, it always passes. And one of the best words of advice that I got with panic attacks, they've never killed anyone. They don't kill people, they're terrifying, but they don't kill people.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: And you know, with depression you go through acute phases of it where you can't function, you just can't function, you can't get out of bed, you can't look loved ones in the eye. That's the hardest part because what happens then is guilt gets thrown on top of it because you go, "I shouldn't feel like this, I've no reason to feel like that."
Interviewer: Yeah. You've known at all, no?
Interviewee: And that's the thing about it, that's what makes it worse sometimes because you know when someone comes up to you and says, "And what have you got to be depressed about?" and you go, "I know." that makes it worse because you just all of a sudden start kind of compounding guilt and you start thinking about yourself and then you start hating yourself because you feel like that. And that's the viscous circle of depression.
Interviewer: Yeah.
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