My Mental Health Struggles & How I Overcame Them

My Mental Health Struggles & How I Overcame Them

Today’s society is full of people who struggle with their mental health, sadly no one can be exempted. Over time, some people who had their fair share of mental health difficulties, eventually have discovered how to deal with them. On this episode of The New Helix Experience podcast, Tim Frey shares about My Mental Health Struggles & How I Overcame Them.

You’ll Learn:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Social Anxiety

Resources:

Connect with Tim on Twitter and Instagram

00:00:00
Hey guys, thanks for checking out this episode today. I’m talking about my mental health struggles and how I overcame them so, and that’s a little bit of a taboo topic, especially in the men’s realm.

00:00:11
So that’s why I wanted to talk about it and broach the topic. So I’m going to talk about anxiety, depression, social anxiety, and what will people think of me?

00:00:20
So we’ll get into anxiety first. So I’d say the first time this ever became apparent to me before I get into this need to say that most people don’t know they have anxiety, they wouldn’t classify it as anxiety. I didn’t understand what this was until someone else explained this to me or.

00:00:37
But I was training this pro soccer player, actually, the first one I ever trained. His name is Scott Neville and I was doing a preseason prep programme for like 8 weeks with him.

00:00:51
I was so nervous, so anxious about, like, ******* it up and doing a good job with this guy that like, literally made me sick.

00:00:58
Vomit before he would come and train with me at my gym at the time, and it was like it just it got really intense.

00:01:06
Like I would just like feel sick during the session because I was so worried that I was going to like mess this session up.

00:01:11
I guess that’s a good thing because like you know.

00:01:13
How much someone?

00:01:14
Would care about that. Then I used to get this all the time when I first transitioned from like.

00:01:20
Small group training to larger group training and 20, you know like 12 to 18 people in a session is like what would they think of me?

00:01:28
What if I mess up the class? What if someone gets injured, which is like constantly like just, you know, doomsaying the worst possible scenario in my head about what could go wrong in that?

00:01:36
Situation and like these were probably like a year apart. At that time, I didn’t know where it had come from and what the cause had been from it, but like, you know, after a few years I did identify that is like anxiety around that.

00:01:51
So the way I’ve dealt with this anxiety and the way I do now is I write it down.

00:01:57
So I’ll write down exactly how I’m feeling. The issue is when you just let **** swell in your head so much that it just becomes a problem.

00:02:05
A lot of people don’t get out of pen and paper and just simply write it down like what is the situation?

00:02:10
Well, I’m nervous about training this pro athlete. What’s the pros? If it goes well and what are the cons if it goes badly?

00:02:17
So I write down pros and cons and everything I’m feeling about this specific situation that I’m feeling anxious about, and you need to identify what anxiety is for you.

00:02:25
I’m not here to tell you what that is. I need you to identify that for yourself. Then the second tactic I used to deal with.

00:02:32
In specific situations is to visualise being past the event. So for this example of main training, Scott Neville.

00:02:40
You know, it was on a Saturday morning, 8:00 AM at visually visualised Sunday morning at 8:00 AM. And like, how it felt if I would successfully do the session or train him and everything went well. So, you know, Scott would be stoked. He’d tell his friends.

00:02:55
I’d get more referrals. Everything would be fine and then I’d visualise if it went bad. And The thing is, when you visualise it, it actually goes bad.

00:03:01
It’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be. It’s always way less doomsday than, you know, like the world melting, injuring $1,000,000 athlete.

00:03:10
Like all those types of things. So it’s never as bad, and the thing you need to.

00:03:13
Do here is just get it out of your head.

00:03:16
Next time we’ll talk depression. I think it’s probably more common these days than you think for me, I probably only had this twice was bad was the first one was post breakup of my longest relationship that I had.

00:03:32
I think I was really cut up about it. I didn’t really realise at the time, but I didn’t speak to another girl.

00:03:37
For eight months and I think I was like 20 at the time. So not speaking to a girl for eight months at 20 years old is is quite a lot.

00:03:44
It was just like, really.

00:03:45
Dark days like tired all the time. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I didn’t want to talk to any.

00:03:51
It was just a rough time and then the second one was post COVID. So we had that huge lockdown.

00:03:57
Well, not huge. It wasn’t huge for us, but nine weeks and then we had to do a price rise at the gym. And I remember, like, members were going crazy about it. My and my phone was blowing up consistently.

00:04:10
Throughout the whole period, people were like sending nasty messages, nasty emails, saying nasty things online, and that was the time where you’re like, I’m trying literally as hard as I can with this situation, like putting my best foot forward and it’s still not good enough. And that kind of led me into a bit of a spiral there.

00:04:29
Both those times where? Yeah, probably equally as bad. It just felt like terrible. But the way I deal with these things now is I think about like the polarity of the universe.

00:04:39
So every good time has an equal and opposite bad time and every bad time has an equal and opposite good time. It’s good to know that when you’re having a really **** time.

00:04:48
In life or in a situation, good times are.

00:04:51
On the other.

00:04:51
Side of this and I think like the the point here is you need to develop consciousness around what are the good times and what are the bad times.

00:04:58
You need to enjoy the good times for the good times and you need to know that when you’re in the deep, bad times that good times are coming.

00:05:04
It’s just always ups and downs. It’s everything equals out. So if you think about it like another context, it’s like hangover where?

00:05:14
Like being drunk is, you know, can be the absolute greatest and then full the absolute hive of being drunk and having the best time ever. You’re gonna have an equal low bad time the next day with a.

00:05:26
Hangover hangover is the complete polar opposite to the height of being drunk, and once you kind of understand that like everything has a price and there are bad times that are associated with good times, kind of changes your outlook on that and and everything. It’s just developing consciousness.

00:05:46
So we’ll talk social anxiety for me when I had social anxiety, it was post like the partying days.

00:05:55
So I’d say for me, the partying days were.

00:05:57
Heavy partying. Those if you know what I mean. Wink Wink, 23 to 25, where you’re going out. Getting funked up like a lot 3 four times a week.

00:06:08
And then all your experiences and interactions with people besides work are like in a ****** ** state. So you don’t really know what you’re saying or doing.

00:06:15
And it’s all kind of like.

00:06:17
A little bit jumbled and then you stop partying and then you’re still going out, but just not to the same degree and you kind of just start, like overthinking. Like, am I saying the right things? Am I talking to people?

00:06:31
Is this different when you’re not drunk? Like are you still having the same amount of fun? How are people viewing me?

00:06:38
Is it weird that I’m not like funked up? I’m not on drugs, I’m not drinking alcohol like, you know, all these things.

00:06:43
You start thinking about and it becomes like a little bit uncomfortable to be out in social situations because you’re so used to it being funked up.

00:06:51
So how I dealt with this one is I would start small. I’d probably just like stuck on up for coffees with friends catching up with.

00:07:00
You know, slowly going to events where there are more and more people and they’re kind of built into it just like you would like a gym programme getting out there and just going full sand and getting out to a nightclub sober is not the most comfortable thing.

00:07:12
And obviously, a lot of people don’t do that for a reason. But, you know, starting small and then building up into this is the key with social anxiety.

00:07:20
And then last one, I think most people can agree with.

00:07:23
What will people think?

00:07:24

OK.

00:07:26
And that’s online and in person. Is this huge, like, not anxiety, but like thought and and like, maybe negative feelings about, like what people think of me in certain situations?

00:07:37
So for me this is started in school. I remember in grade school like early school, pre primary and then high school a little bit. I had a German heritage.

00:07:46
And I would get bullied quite a bit. People would call me Hitler and it was like the cool thing to call me Hitler at school.

00:07:52
I probably got called it like 10 times on occasion, but from that point I still remember like Oh my God, do people actually think I’m Hitler or like, you know, what do you think of me that really started?

00:08:02
And then one time I remember this, I think this year 9 some kid called me Hitler and I broke his nose and and his friend and yeah, like they called the cops on me.

00:08:12
Expelled all.

00:08:13
Things, but from that point no one called me Hitler again, so maybe that’s a way to.

00:08:17
Deal with bullies.

00:08:21
Another like situation here is that Diamond Head blonde still do? Funny enough, got like trolled and bullied for that badly.

00:08:27
And then I get trolled online still constantly. I remember a couple of years ago I got like super in shape.

00:08:35
That was pretty lame. Like 10% I put.

00:08:37
Up my like before and after photos on Instagram and I had like a couple of dudes.

00:08:42
They message me and they’re like you’re still fat. You look like ****, you know? Like, why would you put that online? You meant to be a coach. And you’re like, out of shape, so.

00:08:50
I think like those experiences really sit with you and then you start, like, overthinking and overanalyzing everything you put online.

00:08:58
But how I dealt with this was I would realise that people would see me from their tiny point, their viewpoint, and I guess that just comes down to like consciousness as understanding.

00:09:09
What people are going through, why they’re saying certain things and what the motive is behind them saying certain things and the other thing you need to realise about consciousness and what people think about you is what they don’t like about you is what they don’t like about themselves.

00:09:24
The faults they see in you are the faults they see in themselves, so people are going to point that out.

00:09:28
Someone says I’m looking a little bit fat. It’s because they think they’re a little bit fat. If someone says you’re a bit of a kind of like in this certain situation, it’s because they recognise that certain situation in themselves. So you need to not take these things personally.

00:09:44
So anxiety, write it down. Visualise it being past event event depression, understand that it is the polarity of the universe.

00:09:53
There are like chemical things that go wrong here, but if it’s like a situational depression in my point of view, like you need to understand that things are going to be OK and you’re.

00:10:03
Going to come out of this.

00:10:04
Social anxiety start small, do uncomfortable things and then slowly build up and then just caring what people think about you. It’s just you need to understand that it’s from their tiny view.

00:10:16
What they don’t like about you is what they don’t like about themselves. Let me know if you got some value from this podcast a little bit different than my regular podcast talking about mental health, but I think it’s an important topic to broach and.

00:10:28
Talk about with you.