Men’s Mental Health….

TW. This is how I visit my dad.

Carved Oak Memorial Chair in Memorial Garden in Kent.

He's a seat....in a memorial garden for his uncle in our little village in the garden of England, Kent.

I've spent almost 5 years now working with clients at Mederi that are suffering with stress. I know what it looks like now and when I reflect back on my father's decline in health it started way before his diagnosis with cancer.

I see how his gambling addiction would have enhanced his anxiety around work and money. I can see how his drinking at work (ran a working man's club until I was 7) enabled the weight gain and clouded his judgement on gambling and how far he could push the betting.

I can see how losing his job and our house and us as a family moving in with my nan created a very stressful living situation for all involved.

I can see why he didn't sleep at night.

I can see him working 12 hours a day to keep shit together burning him out.

I can see how this created tension in our house for all family members.

I can see how the constant acid reflux from the irritable digestive system from the low grade stress and anxiety would erode his oesophagus.

I can see him not sharing any emotion when his mum died after his dad passing away when he was only two years old.

I can see how wanting to be everything to everyone and saying YES to every single request of him would be his downfall.

I can see his guilt and I can see his shame and I can see his incredible love for his family that kept him pushing on.

He judged how he was seen and valued by hoping lots of people turned up to his funeral and of course they did, they brought him this beautiful carved seat to remember him by but actually I wish he'd been more selfish.

I wish he had said “no” to things he didn't want to do, I wish he spoken his truth and I wish he had cried and voiced his concerns when he needed to.

I wish above everything that he would have asked for help and treated himself better.

AND this is why we at Mederi say health is not a luxury we cannot take it for granted we cannot think it's OK to just carry on with the back pain, carry on with the IBS carry on with anxiety or any other health concern.

Fight for your health, fight for your family's health!

He died the day before I turned 21 before there was good access to www if I knew everything I know now I’d have thrown every single therapy I could think of at him.

I’ll never regret any of this story because I believe in the journey, the chapters, the characters and how your book develops but my biggest wish is that we could have all been truthful and with better understanding of treating the person as a ‘Whole’.

Thank you for reading,

H x

We’ve been meeting different therapists over the last two Mederi Meet-ups so that we are able to refer our clients to qualified professionals, keep an eye out for our guest blogs from those therapists and see if they can help with your wellbeing journey.