WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT …
This is a book about brains. First, it’s about my brain and how I have managed to train it like a magnificent puppy who occasionally rips up the sofa but mainly does as it’s told. It’s also about the specific things that can go wrong with all of our heads and how I think you can best handle them.
Everything in this book is based on my experiences. Sometimes good friends and family have let me tell their stories too, but mainly it’s about my head. All the things I’ve learned have kind of been learned the hard way. That’s fine, though—I think my experiences might help you or just make you feel a little bit more comfortable in your own head.
There’s a lot of content in this book that for many people is going to be confronting and triggering. You’ll probably know what kind of subjects may be very sensitive to you. Can I suggest just taking it really slowly and, if anything alarms you or upsets you, talk to someone you trust? If it feels like it’s getting to be too much, just stop reading and come back to the book when you feel stronger. I’m not going anywhere and I can wait. Good advice usually makes the best impact at a good time.
Anyway …
I thought I’d start with something that happened last week. It’s reminded me of one very important thing …
Looking After Your Head Is a Lifelong Thing. And That’s FINE.
I cried about this book when I went to the doctor. She’s lovely. I said, “I’m writing a book trying to help people manage their brains when I can’t even manage mine properly. I woke up this morning with my heart trying to rip itself away from my rib cage in panic. I’m a mess. Everyone thinks I’m coping with this. Except certain members of my family. I’ve told them because they guessed. They know me. But I’m a mess. A MESS. What if I tell people the wrong thing and, oh—I’m sorry. I’ve just broken your desk calendar fiddling with it. Sorry. SORRY.”
My doctor (four kids, really funny, tremendous boots-tights combo every time I see her) said, “It’s strange, isn’t it? We don’t do anything much for our brains. We spend hours in a gym trying to get really good thighs, yet we don’t pay much attention to our brains. What are we doing to help the thing that’s in charge of everything?”
(I’m sniffing and nodding through all of this. I can’t see the tissues.) “Sometimes,” she continued, “people come in here and they are really struggling. And I want to make them better, but I can’t always do that. All we can do is our best. We make mistakes. We are human.”
(Massive nose blow from me. I’ve located the tissues.)
I then asked my doctor if I could steal this, because it’s actually a brilliant place to start the book. She said yes and didn’t ask for any payment, so here we are.
She’s right. Most of us don’t look after our head until something goes wrong. Yet taking care of our brain is the single most important thing we can do for our entire existence on this earth, and on other planets. (I’m hoping this book will be in print for a while.)
Science and medicine move on, but some things are timeless. Before we start properly, I want to remind you of one REALLY. VITAL. THING.
YOU ARE HUMAN.
YOU are descended from apes.
YOU are part of a race that we still don’t fully understand. We understand polar bears better than we understand ourselves. That’s how weird we are.
YOU are not perfect. Sloths and anteaters are perfect. You will NEVER be as perfect as them because you are HUMAN.
You’re human. It might seem like an obvious thing to say, but it’s worth saying again. Not so long ago in the history of this universe, your ancestors were apes in trees. Yet right now a great deal is probably being asked of you that was never asked of them. There is no fossilized evidence to suggest that gorillas took exams or had to negotiate social media. There is pressure on you—at home, in education, at work, in relationships—EVERYWHERE. You HAVE to remember you are human—magnificent but flawed. Your life, like all human lives, will be marked by your strength and your frailty, by your good times and your bad times. If sometimes you find it hard to cope, that’s normal.
Give yourself a break. Really.
There are very few mistakes that are so dreadful we can’t recover from them. Bad times really do pass, and you can survive a great deal even if you are a quivering jelly wreck while doing so.
But PLEASE be kind to yourself. I will keep repeating this.
GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK.
In fact, my magnificent illustrator, Jo, can you make that phrase into a glorious coat of arms, please, that can be returned to at any point? Particularly at moments of immense personal hell, anxiety, and strain? I need it, for a start.
Thank you, Jo. You’re clever.
I’m going to do “good,” “bad,” and “ugly” emotions in this book. It’s important we are honest. I’m giving myself a massive break and assuming at least ONE person reading this might know exactly where I am coming from. I hope it’s you, and you get something from it. I hope it’s something that helps the part of life you’re currently traveling through feel a little easier. I’ve broken the book down into different chapters so, like a private beach in Malibu that only YOU are allowed to go on, you can dip in and out at your leisure.
HOW THE HELL ARE YOU? NO. WHO THE HELL AM I?
How are you?
I don’t mean in the “Yes! I’m fine, I’ve got a brilliant weekend coming up if I can just get everything done and isn’t this rain awful? I blame global warming” kind of way.
I mean how are YOU really? What’s going on inside?
As you can see from my doctor’s visit, I’ve got quite a lot going on at the moment, and you may well be thinking, how can THAT help ME? Good question.
This is my introduction as to why I think I might be qualified to help anyone, and it isn’t because I think I’ve got ALL the answers. I haven’t.
I haven’t got a psychology degree either. My experience with the psychiatric profession has been solely as a patient. Not always a good patient either. I once tried to throw a typewriter at a child psychiatrist. I haven’t always wanted help, even though I needed it. If I’m being honest, my life has been full of some quite spectacular failures and some truly epic errors of judgment. I’ve made an utter DICK of myself frankly. And my head. Oh, this head. It’s been a mess. Some days (see doctor incident) it still wants to be, BUT …
It’s because of ALL this I might be able to help.
I’m writing this in a shed 10,500 miles from the house I used to HAVE to stay in. The house I was trapped in by anxiety, crippling OCD, jibes about my weight, my own sabotaging thoughts, and a head and body that REALLY seemed to HATE me. For years and years, my emotions were on a constant “self-destruct” setting.
At sixteen years old, I was in a psychiatric ward after a complete nervous breakdown. I should have been doing what I perceived to be “normal” stuff—like going to parties and doing hot stuff with hot guys. Instead I was doing exercises with mini beanbags and group therapy sessions with people twenty years older than me.
Luckily, therapy has evolved a lot since the mini beanbags, and the counseling I’ve had as an adult hasn’t involved anything cushion-related at all. Unless I’m holding one to my tummy for comfort …
(I do this ALL the time. Apparently, this is because when we were apes the stomach was the most exposed part of the body. If you do that too, you are not being weird. You are just protecting yourself should you end up in the rain forest again. See? Our brains are a completely baffling milkshake of evolution, experience, and other stuff that we can’t really explain.)
When I was younger, I was REALLY ill. I didn’t know my conditions had a name then. I just thought I was EVIL and I was being punished. I thought I was the Messiah, or the devil, or at least someone who had complete control of world events and the careers of musicians. My brain screamed awful thoughts at me. I’d see someone I loved and my brain would flash an image of them dying horribly or having really nasty sex. I’d punish these thoughts by self-harming. I thought I could prevent wars by checking the front door thirty-six times. I was medically obese because I self-medicated with things that became issues in themselves. Like a crap sponge cake, I added layer upon layer of problems. I soothed my crushing anxiety with chocolate bars and intravenous toast with half a tub of cheese spread per slice. All this was going on while I was trying to finish school essays AND while the “child” psychiatrist was encouraging me to draw my life “as a garden with an unsupportive trellis.” I think that’s when I tried to throw the typewriter. It was too heavy, though—this was before lightweight MacBook Pros, which are a lot easier to use in anger.
To the outside, however, I was a big grin. A sack of silly. This was partly the real me and partly a way to mask the fact I felt dreadful. Unhinged most of the time. I was MUCH worse than I was telling ANYONE—including the medical staff. I didn’t really come clean about how I felt or what I thought for YEARS. I was too scared to. Scared they’d lock me up forever or put me in prison or take me to be part of a secret government scheme to test drugs on. You can tell already that I was REALLY into catastrophizing.
Catastrophizing is a terrible thing. It’s what psychologists call “thinking traps.” There’s a few of these. The mind can get stuck into ways of thinking very quickly. For example “all or nothing” thinking, where everything in the world appears completely black or white, or “confirmation bias,” where we find evidence to support our beliefs and ignore any facts that may contradict them. (This is what my mom does with her theory on ghosts!)
These traps can snare your head. Catastrophizing is a nasty one. It turns a small issue into something HUGE and makes situations seem completely unfixable. It’s a broken express escalator of bad thoughts that takes you from the top floor and plummets you to the very bottom. The worst scenario is ALWAYS the one that you are convinced is going to happen.
For example:
8TH FLOOR I’ve got my English exam on Monday.
7TH FLOOR I am going to get into the exam room and know nothing.
6TH FLOOR I am going to sit there for hours and have to fiddle with my pen and know nothing.
5TH FLOOR People will stare at me as I fail.
4TH FLOOR I am going to fail and I won’t be able to get into college.
3RD FLOOR I am going to fail and I won’t be able to get a job.
2RD FLOOR I will probably end up having to do something really dangerous for a living just to pay the rent.
1ST FLOOR Something so dangerous I will be horribly injured.
GROUND Or die.
BASEMENT I’m going to fail my English exam and I’m going to die. Everything is a mess.
My life was full of that type of thinking. I felt like I was ALWAYS falling and failing.
The reason I’ve told you all this is that I want to tell you one very important thing.
It’s ended up OK. I’m OK.
I had to find ways to cope and ways to get better. The truth is, I still have to use those methods sometimes. It’s not unusual. Everyone has mental struggles they have to learn to deal with. I did and I do. I want to share my brain with you. Not because I think I have the magic wand of INSTANT MIND RELIEF. I’m not a miracle worker. I just think I “get” some head stuff and what I’ve learned along the way might help you to enjoy YOUR life a bit more. I think I might be able to suggest some ways to make YOUR life a bit better. And YOU matter. You matter to your friends, to your family, and to us all. You probably have no idea what you are capable of.
BUT I’m not a doctor, and doctors, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists are by and large lovely people who don’t deserve to have any writing implement of any description thrown at them. That’s why, if you’re feeling ill, or if you are slightly suspicious that your brain isn’t working as well as it should be, OR you are just curious about how to keep your brain healthy, I want you to go and see your doctor. I STILL DO when I feel bad, as I have proved! There’s ZERO shame in it. I PROMISE they’ve heard it all before and much, MUCH worse. And if you don’t like the first doctor you see, ask to see another. Just please go. Don’t waste years like I did, and then see something on The Oprah Winfrey Show and realize you’re not Satan but actually someone suffering from a mental health problem. What a waste. Learn from my mess. Go and see a professional. We’ve got one here in this book actually—Dr. Radha (aka Dr. R.). She will be sharing her years of experience and her amazing skills in this book too. She’s the sort of doctor I wish my teenage brain had had access to. She’s kind, she’s clever, and she GETS it.
For my part, let me spill my guts and fill in what some people call the “treatment gap” a bit. That’s the space between you feeling bad and you seeing a doctor.
All this is just how I see it and how I’ve experienced it, so please cut me some slack. I don’t always come across that well. I’m fine with that. For me it’s another way to make sense of what I’ve experienced and to give my past mental health problems a bit of a silver lining. Mainly I’m doing it because I hate the thought of another Rae/Ray stuck in a dreadful head place that they can’t get out of. That’s how I felt, but there was a way out. I just needed help to find it.
Not everything here may be relevant to you, but spread it around if it’s not. If it doesn’t affect you, I can almost guarantee it affects someone you know. Mental health problems are not rare, and they don’t discriminate. Mental well-being and keeping our brains healthy, resilient, and in a good place is relevant to us ALL. You will help everyone if you spread this message on.
Now, I want to start with two universal things that I think everyone should know.
Aircraft Emergencies and the Best Piece of Advice You’ll Ever Get
I’m a geek. I was a geek before it was trendy to be one, and I had to practice in secret. Apparently I’m on some sort of spectrum (I reject this—see “How to Wear Your Diagnosis” later).
The truth is, I’m a plane spotter.
When mentally well enough, I used to scrape myself up to the viewing platforms at Heathrow. Then I’d have a day of Kit Kats and nonstop aviation action. I still go to the end of the runway at Hobart airport some Sunday afternoons and sit under the flight path. I have an app where I can see all the world’s air traffic at once. I LOVE planes. LOVE them. I can recognize most of the world’s airlines from their tail fins and most plane types from JUST THEIR WINGS. No.
Don’t close this book.
Don’t leave.
Don’t go. PLEASE. This isn’t about what you think it is and we all have secret pleasures. (They aren’t guilty by the way, unless they are damaging you or someone else. Guilty pleasures are NONSENSE. They are just PLEASURES.)
I promise I won’t discuss my favorite uniform of all time (although it’s obviously Japan Airlines’ classic crane—all the retro chic), and I’ll try not to bore you. I just want to give you the greatest piece of advice about life you will EVER get, which comes from flying.
And that is …
Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others
Assuming you’re not reading this at 36,000 feet in the middle of a midair emergency, you might be wondering what I’m talking about.
It struck me about sixteen years ago. I was on a plane to Dubai, and they kept showing a safety video featuring this woman putting on her own oxygen mask before helping her sweet, angelic-looking kid. I was outraged. I said to my husband, “WHAT SORT OF MOTHER THINKS ABOUT HER OWN OXYGEN SUPPLY BEFORE THINKING ABOUT HER CUTE, TEDDY-BEAR-HOLDING DAUGHTER?!” The tiny child was probably gasping for air, like a goldfish whipped out of a garden pond by a cat, and the mother LOOKED AFTER HERSELF FIRST.
And he pointed out that that was right.
Totally right.
Because unless she made sure she was OK first, she wouldn’t be able to help anyone else. Including the people she loved the most. I was a newlywed at this point and concerned I’d married a sociopath. But I hadn’t. I’d married someone with immense emotional common sense who was inadvertently a bit bloody Zen magnificent.
I am not naturally Zen. In fact, I have created the opposite to Zen. It is Nez. I am Nez. However I have learned some of the ways of the naturally calm, and so can you.
Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others
This is exactly the same for you in your life.
You cannot help anyone if you don’t help yourself. You deserve to feel good. You need to get your brain in the best state possible FOR YOU. It’s not for your friends, your parents, your exam results, your partner, your future career as president of the USA …
Work out your motivation for wanting to be better. It could be lots of reasons, but bring it back to YOU. You’re doing this for YOU. So you can enjoy life in the best way possible and survive the bad times. This is your responsibility and, the great news is, by doing it you also help the people around you. Looking after your head is not a selfish act. It’s an act of someone who wants to survive and contribute to the world they live in.
Dr. R. says: In actual fact, a lot of the time, once you start practicing self-care and love, you will often find people around you may also start looking after themselves. Actions really do speak louder than words, and often the most powerful thing we can do for other people is to practice what we are preaching. Habits are contagious, and it is surprising what happens to the people around you when you start. Try it out and see!
Put yourself first. YOU deserve it.
Oh, and if you are involved in a real-life aircraft emergency, count the seats to the nearest exit, listen to the crew announcements, and:
Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others
Tiny anxiety management tip—a little preparation and information soothes paranoia. Too much can stoke it. A small amount is generally all you need.
Listen to the recording (it’s on YouTube) of the air traffic controller at Heathrow handling the crash of British Airways Flight 38 in 2008. If you want to hear how fantastic brains can be under pressure, that’s the bit of audio you need. Every person involved makes their mind work magnificently. All the air traffic controllers. The pilot of the crashed plane. The flight crew. The fire engine crew. The guy flying the Qatar Airways flight who was just about to land, had to abort, and “go around.” EVERYONE in that situation was human and brilliant. There is no reason that your mind can’t be trained, tamed, and exercised to work as well as theirs. Don’t be told you are limited by your brain. I was told that by a few people. It’s proved to be totally false. No one has a crystal ball about your future. Where you are now is NOT a life sentence. As previously discussed, I am naturally Nez, but I have learned the ways of Zen-ish.
Pssst! The Biggest Secret You’ll Never Get Told
Second big thing.
It can be incredibly lonely being you. You look around and everyone else seems to have it sorted out. People are being hilarious on Twitter and you’re not. There are sharp cheekbones and incredible eye makeup all over Instagram. Everyone is having a brilliant time and you’re in your bedroom watching Cruel Intentions on Netflix AGAIN.
(This is all my experience, by the way.)
It’s all nonsense, of course, because the biggest secret you’ll never get told is that 99 percent of us think we’re dicks, and everyone is struggling. Fear of missing out is not a new thing. There are probably ancient cave paintings of a Stone Age man sitting at home looking sad in front of his campfire while the rest of his friends are out clobbering mammoths.
The reason I know this for definite is that when My Mad Fat Diary was published, lots of my old classmates got in touch with me. Including a woman I knew as “the Swan.” She was BEAUTIFUL. Blond. Skinny even though I saw her demolish a ton of fries on a daily basis. She smelled like the Clarins counter at Christmas and looked like MAC had gotten to her as soon as she got out of bed. She didn’t walk. She drifted by like she was on wheels. And no—you don’t get a storybook villainess, because she was smart and funny too. I loved her and I hated her because the jealous part of me made me horrible. “If only I could be like her, everything would be fine,” I thought.
So My Mad Fat Diary came out, and I got a message from her.
She wrote, “I wish I’d known how you felt, because I felt exactly the same way.”
You can imagine what my face did. It sort of collapsed. Nah. Really. Come on, Miss Gorgeous. What a load of nonsense. You’re just trying to be nice. You were the poster girl for perfect.
I didn’t write that, but I thought it. I did feel instantly bad for the bitter brain vomit, but I can tell you that. This isn’t a book about fluffy blue-sky-and-rainbow-unicorn thoughts. I have my horrid head moments. We all do. The key thing, though, is that I thought it. I didn’t share it.
I actually replied with something like, “Really? I thought you breezed through.”
The Swan replied with one of the loveliest things I’ve ever read.
She said that she wished she’d known I was struggling because we could have been even closer friends than we were. She’d also experienced those creeping feelings of hating her body and her head. She added detail that made me know it was the truth. She said she’d thought I was super cool and she loved the way I made cocky rugby players feel tiny when they gave me grief. In fact, lots of people thought I’d been a largely splendid teenager.
Perhaps I was, but I didn’t see it. All I focused on was the mess. The raging mess and the voices in my head that told me I was nothing. Where did they start? Nowhere I can remember, but they were there, as they are for many of us.
The fact is, we are all just making it up as we go along. Often, we present our lives to others through an Instagram filter, real or imaginary. Mine is naturally “Lark”—it brightens just about everything, but in reality things are duller and often darker. On my Instagram feed the other morning, I posted a picture of a rose with droplets of water on it. (It’s still there—have a look if you want to.) The morning looked like a beautiful flower. What the photo didn’t show, however, was me shouting at the coffee machine and calling it a “bloody, bloody, BLOODY useless piece of crap” and then putting my trousers on THE WRONG WAY (washing label sticking out, ahoy!) and not noticing till past 10 A.M. I just showed everyone one side of my life. Not all of it.
Everyone is a mess sometimes. Everyone has their moments. The route to every success is paved with failure—that’s nothing to be afraid of. Every life has its share of setbacks and mistakes—that’s normal.
They are nothing to be afraid of.
If you’re messing up, you are trying and you are living and you are learning. It’s something we are ALL going through from day to day. Everyone.
As soon as you acknowledge that you are not alone, and that no one has it sorted out really, the world feels … fairer. You feel less like the ugly duckling splashing around at the back of the pond while all the swans drift by. Feeling good is not a race or a competition with the people around us. It’s a journey we take, sometimes with the help of others and sometimes disregarding others. It’s what being human is about, so:
Put your oxygen mask on before helping others
Give yourself a break. I’m keeping it simple because this brain business is very complicated. We’re dealing with a bonkers place to visit. That’s why it has so many guidebooks.
Text copyright © 2019 by Rae Earl
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Jo Harrison
