You can do this

What can I do to help…

I wish I could help more…

Have you tried…

All phrases almost guaranteed to cause rage, tears, blind panic and nausea in someone who has long since lost the ability to help themselves. The Trivial Pursuit pie questions of mental health. Our constant search for answers in our head is usually what has broken us so additions to the list, however well-meaning, isn’t always helpful. Just to make it interesting though, stunned silence in the face of our pain is problematic too. We want to you to shush and we also want you to have all the words – piece of piss really.

For the purposes of this blog, we’re going to have to be us/me/I – the broken and you/them – the not broken. I’m assuming that you don’t have a mental health problem and your brain is perfectly functioning. If it’s not the case then that’s some next level shit that I wouldn’t presume to be able to make reasonable suggestions about except to say when I’ve hunkered down with a fellow broken person we still seem to like a good fucking whinge like the rest of the world. And chain-smoking.

Read things and talk to us about it – Mental Health is a booming industry – blogs, apps, classes and for the deeply retro – books (the ones with actual pages that you can drop in the bath). A word of caution though, while it’s an industry it’s an unregulated one so there is a lot of trash talk out there but it’s a place to start.

For example The Mighty website, for all it’s clickbaityness, can at least start you with some of the words. If you don’t know if it applies (and if you really don’t then you need to start further down the pack) then use it to open real life conversations with things like – “I read this thing…maybe this is how you feel”. If you send me a link via Messenger with a question mark I will burn you with fire. Even if you’ve picked up on something completely irrelevant like a fear of rectangles, it’s an opening. A small window onto a world that, for us, says I’ve tried to do some of the thinking for you today.

Also those books you keep buying me – you can read those too – there isn’t a pre-requisite that says you have to be mental to read them.

Talk about yourself – Apparently this is a no-no when done incorrectly – if someone is pouring their heart out you are not to say “Well a similar thing happened to me”. What you can do is find the right moment to talk about what scares you, what makes you feel sad or hopeless. Us guys on the other side feel like we’re alone with what’s in our heads, and that no-one else possibly feels this way (Don’t worry we beat ourselves up for being self involved already). It can help level the playing field here if one or two so-called normal folk popped up to say sometimes I want to cry about this thing. It’s not the mundane shit we want either – the First Bus service gives me the shits as much as anyone but we’re subsumed by bigger feelings than that so you might need to dig a bit deeper.

Personally I find it a release from my own constant internalizing to listen to other people’s problems but I’m a help junkie so if I start smacking a vein while you’re talking about your deepest hopes and fears maybe change the topic for a while.

Watch us – I have no objections to people watching me sleep but this is more the none creepy form of observation. We don’t necessarily notice when things have gone tits up so we might need you to do it. I’m top of a Strava league for lack of personal hygiene when the going gets rough but at no point has anyone told me honey, you need to take a bath, or even better run one for me (Having just written this – I realize this would be an absolute fucking game changer). No, you aren’t fixing the myriad of broken emotional pathways in our brain but you are carrying a little something for us.

Mental health problems come with physical as well as emotional symptoms – our self care skills will generally be non-existent so if we have a headache then our field of fucks about taking a Paracetamol will be barren. Force feed it to us like we’re a cat if you have to.

Fight us  – That’s right – it’s ok to have a square go with someone with mental health issues. Clearly pick your battles, and do it nicely but it’s ok to point out that spending £94 on a pair of pole dancing boots to make me feel better is maybe turning off taps on the Titanic. You should obviously add that buying a £65 pair is much more reasonable. We might want to stab you in the heart with said boots but there’s a chance you’ll make us realise that someone gives a fuck.

Doggos – No regulation needed but dogs or pretty much any animal doing dumb shit on the Internet will always do it. Another personal favourite is Twitter accounts that show the world isn’t always cesspit of misery – I’m currently obsessed with The Museum of English Rural Life. They’re good people.

You won’t always get it right but that’s ok, you just taking a swing at it will mean everything to us.  There’s a line from the West Wing (which should also be on the list of things you can do to help) that has always struck a chord with me –  You don’t have the power to fix everything. But I do like watching you try.