You don’t like my puns? How cold…

I’ve had this week off whilst I transition between companies (I finally got to use the phrase “I’m in between two jobs right now”) and in my state being relaxed/nervously excited for next week, I weirdly found myself measuring the amount of daylight we’re getting. I think this is finally the week where it’s still at least a little light outside after 5pm. Although it’s now colder than it’s been all winter, the running hasn’t stoppeld on my week off. Fully donned with beanie hat, gloves, and man tights I’ve been able to take advantage by running in actual daylight.

I’m slowly and painfully learning that running the marathon is as much mental as it is physical – if not more. Balancing three runs, one gym session, one yoga session, stretching every day, on top of everything else, is something I’m finding a little tricky. I’ve always been very active but this time it’s much more difficult. It may be because of the weather (re cold and dark as balls note above), maybe because I’m training for an end goal, maybe because it’s all come at a time of personal change…whatever it is, this is turning out to be tougher than anything I’ve done before.

Recently I’ve had to revisit a few techniques I relied through my CBT period. I picked up the below through counselling, sharing ideas with other people, and the good ol’ fashioned Internet (health warning to be incredibly careful when relying on the internet; hypochondria works for mental health, too). This is simply stuff that has worked for me in the past, both in the short-term i.e. actual moments of anxiety, and longer-term techniques to help build resilience.

Hope it’s of at least some use to others out there too:

Short term:

1. Breath. In situations of stress, taking deep breaths has a calming effect, helps lower your heart rate, and send oxygen to vital parts of the brain. Deep breaths through the nose and out the mouth can help bring a sense of calm and stop your mind running off on different tracks. Properly underrated but one of the simplest techniques for respite from anxiety.
2. Grounding. Related to breathing, grounding is based on taking in elements from all your senses. What can you see, hear, touch, smell? This will help you snap back to the present and stop ruminating anxious thoughts.
3. Detached Mindfulness. Something that really helped my OCD intrusive feeling is separating yourself from your own thoughts. Each time you are faced with an anxious or intrusive emotion, distance yourself from it in your mind. I do this by imagining I’m in a cinema and the thought is projected onto the screen. As I walk up the steps, I’m physically walking away from the screen/thought, before taking my seat to watch it go by with a handful of popcorn. It’s great for reminding you that you are not the sum total of your thoughts.
4. Noting. It’s very easy to get caught up in the unease and suddenly finding yourself ruminating for hours. The simple act of noting the stress in your body/mind and letting it pass is a great technique of learning that anxiety is simply a feeling. Being ‘at peace with anxiety sounds and actually trying not to get rid of it sounds counter-intuitive but is an art which comes with practice. Anxiety is natural – you don’t have to be on guard for it and it’ll go as quickly as it’s come if you’re able to let it be.
5. Externalise. Quite literally, write down all your stressful thoughts on a piece of paper. Getting out of your mind may help reduce your anxiety simply by externalising your thoughts, but also rationalising them with logic and helps you deal with them at a time you need to, rather than constantly have it on your mind.

Long-term:

6. Meditation. I was a meditation nay-sayer a year ago, picturing cross-legged hippies chanting Kumbaya with daisies in their hair. But getting Headspace for just 10 minutes, 3 times a week is medically proven to help anxiety, stress, depression, and improve your overall well-being. This, for me, has been a game-changer.
7. Exercise. This doesn’t have to be running, swimming, jogging, or anything strenuous. Getting your heart rate elevated for short periods of time can be enough to drive positive mental strength. Even 15-minute walks, yoga, Pilates, stretching, DIY, are all proven to help. Take the stairs or get off the bus a stop earlier is a simple kick-starter for exercise.
8. Nutrition. Slightly tricky one as food is subjective to everyone, so I won’t say much about this. I try and follow the 80/20 rule – eat right 80% of the time, leaving 20% for your pleasures. Research is increasing finding that bacteria in your gut is intrinsically linked to your mental health, so making sure you’re putting the right fuel in you is only bound to help.
9. Chill out. I mean, really chill the fuck out. I calculated since the beginning of January I’ve had four days where I’ve had nothing on (bar work) – 4 out of 31 days, or 13% of the month, I haven’t been physically and mentally relaxing. That may be alright for some people but it’s not enough for me; I simply haven’t been resting. Taking stock, slowing down, and doing whatever it is that is relaxing to you is invaluable (even if that’s playing Read Dead Redemption for six hours in your boxers…).
10. Compassion. You have to cut yourself a break. We’re all unique, complex individuals with different needs to each other at different times in different scenarios. You don’t have to feel happy/positive/joyful all the time. It’s ok to say you’re not ok and you don’t have to put on a brave face. You can admit you’re human. Objectively this is probably hardest for us blokes, so ask yourself this – what would you say to your best mate going through what you are?

Bonus technique: seek help. Deserving of a line of its own. My absolute #1 regret is not having sought help sooner. It’s no exaggeration that my CBT saved my life; without it, I can’t be too sure where I’d be. Having completely lost four good years to OCD and anxiety, I wish I was more open and honest about my mental health earlier and got the help I needed sooner that I had. Getting help is extremely accessible as well. It doesn’t need to be face to face; it could be phone, Skype, remote CBT, online courses, even group therapy.

The adage remains – you’d go seek help for a broken leg, so why shouldn’t you for anxiety, stress, and unhelpful thoughts? Go speak to your GP if you feel like you need to as it could be the best thing you’ve ever done.

****

The last couple of months have been tough, and the next three are going to be pretty intense. Between now and the end of April, I’ll not only be changing jobs, but changing companies altogether (the first time I’ve ever done that), gearing up for a lot of travelling during said new job, planning my mate’s stag-do (Scott if you’re reading this, I’d prepare your liver now), planning my own wedding (to my wonderful, amazing fiancée Emily), and preparing for, raising money for, and running the London Marathon. Not doing things by halves…

Being honest I had written another blog which went into a ton of detail about my personal experience with obsessive thoughts and compulsions. But revisiting old wounds has led to a few set-back, so I decided not to share it. I want to look forward with positivity rather than backwards with a weird mix of nostalgia, grief, and fear. I hope some of the above tools help people more than my cathartic stories down memory lane.

All of those techniques are scientifically proven to help. They have been interrogated with research, patient pilots, studies, consultations to help people when they fall into ill mental health.  Awareness is increasing, but without quality research, we can’t explore other avenues to understand mental health and the ways we can prevent what one in four of us fall into.

I’m running the London Marathon for MQ; please give generously to their amazing cause here.

I’ll buy you a beer when this is all over!

Food Glorious Food…

Turns out 24miles is actually a really long distance. Having just run my first 10 miler, the realisation that what I had just run is only 40%ish of the marathon plagues my mind as I manoeuvred from ‘Warrior Stance’ to something called ‘The Pigeon’ during my post run stretch/yoga routine. But even though my legs burn more than the time I got Nando’s sauce in my eye, I feel an undertone of pride after I realise I’d just run the longest I’ve ever run before – and technically proper training hasn’t even started yet.

That feeling of achievement is something I’ve chased throughout my life, and it’s always been quite structured. As you move through childhood and adolescence, the milestones of accomplishment are fairly clear. Get your GCSE grades. Get your A-levels. Get to university. Spend the next three years of your life trying to win a variety of drinking games. Finally, graduate. If you’re following the ‘standard’ route through life, the first 21 years of your life are signposted with pristine clarity.

And then comes working life. The rungs of the ladder start to disappear and you find yourself going through some reverse metamorphosis – you were a big fish in a small pond, and suddenly you’re a minnow in a gigantic ocean. What people don’t tell you about working life is just how grey it is. There’s no black and white, no correct direction, and no sense of knowing if what you’re doing is the right thing. There’s no structure to follow, no agenda, and nothing to point you in the right direction. But I was still chasing that feeling of achievement through framework.

***

So I, subconsciously, started to look for structure outside of the main threads of my life. By the time I had graduated and got a job in 2012, I had been going to the gym for a few years and been doing it quite well (as well as anyone who’s diet consisted mainly of cereal, pizza, and Fosters for the previous three years). I’d kept that gym habit going. But, for some reason, I decided I wanted to lose weight. I’d never struggled with weight in my life, and at the time I was around 80kg – in the perfect weight range for someone my age, height and muscle mass. However, the quest to find achievement via structure in my life turned me to the very ill-thought goal of losing weight.

I downloaded MyFitnessPal, which to this date is probably one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. Having done extensive research on calories, diets and something called ‘intermittent fasting,’ I set my caloric limit to 1,200 calories a day. For context, that’s the amount doctors provide to comatose patients. It’s absolute bare minimum your brain and organs need to simply operate.

As each day passed, I felt a sense of pride and achievement as I followed my routine, tracking what I had eaten on this forsaken app and reaching no more than my 1,200 limit. I found myself feeling even more pride when I ate even less than 1,200, hastening the amount of weight that I lost. I started to go to the gym twice a day and ended up burning as much as I ate – so my calorie intake was netted out to absolutely nothing.

During October/November in 2012, I lost 10 kg. That’s 22lbs, or 1.5stone, in about 5 weeks.

The problem was I had found my structure, and with it, the sense of achievement I was craving for day in day out. I was so oblivious and blinded by this fulfilment, this pure numbers game fed my lust for self-attainment. What I didn’t realise was what it was doing to me mentally. This lifestyle, even temporarily, was completely unsustainable. I had so scientifically planned the things I was going to eat for that day that anything that disrupted my diet, and therefore my beloved balanced structure, threw me off the rails.

All the things that should be eaten in moderation and as part of a balance diet (cakes, chocolates, pizzas etc.) were totally shunned from my life. But when I inevitably failed at avoiding the glutenous treats, I branded myself as I went over my calorie target.

So I binged. My best laid plans for the day had gone out the window and all of a sudden, I was out of control. “I never eat these sorts of things,” I tell myself. “It’s alright, I’ll make it up tomorrow with the numbers.” I would eat all (and I mean all) the things I wasn’t “allowed” to eat as my whole cherished structure fell apart.

I went through a cycle of cutting my calories to a dangerous level through the week, and hitting the inevitable binge on the weekend, helping myself to 6,000+ calories a day leaving me feeling ashamed and guilt-ridden. The binge days would make me put on weight and bloat, so I’d cut even more calories through the week, only to binge even harder when the time came. I had ironically found the structure I was looking for – it’s just that it was physically and mentally significantly harming me.

This was all happening during a time when my grandad was ill in hospital. It meant I was going back and forth between Leicester and London, helping myself to a binge-fuelled weekend when I was back home. Those feelings of guilt and anger overshadowed the attention I should have been giving to my grandad. He and I were extremely close, and not giving him the care and love he should have received in his final days is a regret I will live with throughout my life.

***

Luckily my relationship with food is infinitely better now. But binge eating has left me with a scarring emotion – feeling out of control. During a binge, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop. Ever 20 or 30 minutes, I’d have to eat something and I simply couldn’t control it. The inevitable ticking timebomb would leave me opening the door to my OCD.

Obsessive compulsive disorder thrives on lack of control. I knew what I was doing was hurting me, but there was no control over it. And by naturally equating being out of control to being harmful, my attention turned to typical OCD thoughts – what else couldn’t I stop myself from? What if I harmed myself, or someone I loved? What if this lack of control drives me mad? Binge eating had unwittingly left me exposed to intrusive thoughts – which everybody gets but nobody can control. And ultimately, in October 2013, I had my first intrusive thought which would serve as a catalyst for more (which I’ll leave for another time).

This was difficult to write. As a man, it’s been conditioned that we shouldn’t get eating disorders. Men should a healthy relationship with food and shouldn’t worry about their weight, or calories, or the way they look. But we do. Our relationship with food entwines into our lives in so many ways, it’s hard for our minds to have a simple connection with our diet.

Our brain works in such enigmatic ways, we haven’t even begun to understand how we can prevent us falling into poor mental health. Eating disorders, OCD, anxiety, bi-polar, schizophrenia, depression – whatever it may be, this generation can be the first that unlock the mysteries of why one in four of us are adversely affected by our mental health.

To donate to MQ, click here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chirag-runs-the-marathon

Off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off…

I knew something was wrong when I noticed myself noticing something.

In 2015, I lived a mere 10 minute walk from work, and every day I passed the A1261. On my journey going in at 7am, and coming back at 7pm, I’d slow down near the busy dual carriage way, just to see how fast the cars were going. I figured if I was going to throw myself into the road, I’d want to make sure I didn’t fail at taking my own life – like I thought I’d failed at most things. After numerous days and mental calculations, I clocked the cars were going somewhere between 60-70mph; definitely enough to make sure I don’t wake up in a hospital with no arms or legs, or a vegetable, or unscathed – which at the time would have been the worst option. I knew something was wrong only when I realised I was thinking about taking my own life.

Through my early 20s, I was (and sometimes still am) plagued with unwanted and intrusive thoughts that scared me to the point where I was terrified of myself. Thoughts that had no objective backing and that I knew were untrue. But in the moment when my mind was rushing faster than those cars approaching the Blackwall Tunnel, the anxiety that I may harm myself, someone, or something, in situations that could and would not transpire, felt too much. Sometimes these feelings would last seconds, hours, or even days (my longest anxiety attack lasted from Saturday to Wednesday). The feeling of being out of control, of never getting any better, and of never being able to get back to the person I was just a few years ago led me to believe there wasn’t much point in living my life anymore.

These thoughts stopped me from doing the normal things a 20-something year old should be doing. I’d avoid most social situations under fear it would trigger intrusive thoughts, leading to broken friendships or missing out on new ones. At work, I’d try not to make it obvious I was constantly second guessing every conversation I had or email I wrote. My physical health took a toll when I purposefully lost 10kg in 45 days (more on that wonderful episode later). Ultimately, the thoughts and feelings I was having brought an immense amount of fear, guilt, shame, self-loathing, the need for reassurance, and a feeling of being totally lost in your own mind.

After those suicidal thoughts, and two full-on mental break-downs (one that led me to the hospital A&E to speak to the on-call counsellor – another story for another time) I decided I needed to seek help. After some amazing CBT therapy, and as-amazing information on Mind’s website, I found the diagnosis I was looking for. I have primarily cognitive obsessive-compulsive disorder, or pure OCD, or pure ‘O,’ with a helping of generalised anxiety. It’s incredibly hard to describe exactly what this is in my own words, so I turn to the world’s best diagnosing machine (Google) to provide a description of pure OCD:

“Persistent and uncontrollable thoughts, images, impulses, worries, doubts, or fears, often intrusive, unwanted, disturbing, and interfere with the ability to function in day to day activities”

The information here covers it well (I’ve pretty much had every type of OCD thought listed there). About 70% of my condition is pure OCD, the rest of it is good old-fashioned physical OCD.

The good news is I’ve made it through some very difficult times. I can’t say I don’t still have to check the oven is off 8 times (whilst saying the word ‘off’ each time), the hob is off 8 times, and make sure the tap is off (not just by switching it off, but by physically kneeling down so I’m at eye-level and can see no water coming out, again repeating the word ‘off’ 8 times). I still have to reassure myself that that unwanted thoughts are normal in everyday life and that I’m not a horrible person who should be locked up (writing this blog and having to find sources/definitions has not been great for the ‘needs reassuring’ symptom). But I’ve felt more freedom in the past year of my life than I had done for the previous five. I’m extremely lucky to have had amazing support systems to help me through some dark times – the ability to talk openly and freely about my OCD and anxiety is probably one of the best (and most cathartic) coping mechanisms. But none of it could have been possible, not least because of those closest to me coming to my rescue (you don’t know it, but believe me you did), but also my and I therapist exploring exactly what the cause of my OCD is…

There are numerous campaigns imploring us to talk more about our mental health, which has helped so many people that I know. We need that to continue. But without it sounding like a horrible pun, we also need to put our money where our minds are. We need to find the causes of mental health, just like I’d found the cause for my OCD. Talking about it isn’t all that we can do – we can fund, research, explore, analyse, examine, and review the causes of ill mental health to one day prevent the distressing feelings, illnesses, and disorders that one in four of us suffer from every year. If we are ever to beat the increasing feelings of anxiety and depression, to more serious mental health disorders, more funding is needed to understand the questions of what, why, and how much better. We can prevent not just a loss in the quality of our lives, but the loss of lives full stop.

I realise how ironic it is that I’m blogging about mental health whilst saying we should be doing more than just blogging about it. So I figured I’d lead by example by running the Virgin Money London Marathon 2019 in aid of MQ. Their mission is to take it one step further by conducting first-hand research into how we can improve our metal wellbeing. Progress in researching our mental health is lacking, and MQ’s work is beyond doubt the best way we can prevent or cure mental illnesses.

Over the next 6 months, I’ll be shamelessly asking you to donate money for this amazing cause, but will also write about my experiences with mental health – some of which in detail that people close to me may not have known before, and some of which will make me feel extremely vulnerable. The idea isn’t totally cathartic; although it will give me some much-needed motivation to run 26.2188 miles (the extra 0.2188 makes the whole distance look much harder), but hopefully help anyone who has ever been in a similar situation. It’s time we stop telling ourselves that “things will get better,” and time to take more action.

In the meantime, if anyone has any spare running shoes I can borrow, that’d be great…

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chirag-runs-the-marathon