Feel Good 101_The Outsiders' Guide to a Happier Life Read online

  Listen to me: you are not alone. Whilst your depression is unique to you, and no one can live inside your head and truly understand what it is like being you, millions of people are living with the same condition as you at any given moment. You are not weird, you are not being silly or being dramatic – if you believe you have cause for concern, then run with it. Fight for your happiness, unashamedly and without fear. If you are young, living at home with your family, and too frightened to tell them that you are worried for your mental state, you can tear out the next page as a last resort and leave it with your parent or guardian:

  Hello there

  Your kid needs to talk with you. They are feeling scared and overwhelmed, and are possibly suffering from depression. This note wouldn’t be left with you unless they believed there was serious cause for concern. Your child is not being dramatic or stupid – depression is becoming increasingly common in teenagers and young adults, and can start without warning. Your child has left you this note because they want to talk to you about how they’re feeling, and seek help in order to no longer feel as low as they do. They trust you, and need your understanding, kindness and support. Please do not dismiss their feelings as ‘being young’, or lash out at them. Being angry at them for confiding in you won’t make their situation any better. Your kid needs you right now. Please go and talk to them and give them the support they need.

  As far as my own fight with depression goes – will I continue to have depressive cycles for the rest of my life? Will they go away if I choose to fade away from the Internet? Who knows? In the meantime – yes, my depression inhibits my life. It affects my relationships and creative drive, but you know what? As cheesy and as clichéd as it sounds, I am not defined by my depression. I am fortunate enough to be able to tell myself how temporary these feelings are whilst going through the worst of it – others may not be so lucky. If you think you may be suffering from depression, please seek help from a professional, and don’t keep it bottled up out of fear of not being taken seriously. Fight as hard as you can until you find someone who will listen and be willing to help you. The battle will be more in your favour when you have an army behind you. Seek help, stay strong, fight back, and remember: you are not your illness.

  Self-Harm

  When I first laid out my plans for the topics to be covered in this book, I knew this one would be one of the most challenging. However, it is because it is still so difficult to talk about self-harm openly that it is important that I – and we as a society – do talk about it. For as long as I have been alive, and for many decades before that, the topic of self-harm has been considered taboo. The idea of someone taking out their frustrations and despair on their own body is still perceived as a relatively new concept, when in reality, it has existed throughout history. Do not misunderstand me – whilst I wish to stress that people struggling with self-harm should be loved and accepted, self-harm can be extremely dangerous and must be treated. If you are contemplating harming yourself, please take it from me – it is never the answer, and it will never benefit you. If you are considering self-harm, or have started to selfharm and wish to seek help with stopping, please, I beg you, call one of the helplines listed at the back of this book. You are not a disappointment or a let-down for suffering from it, and you are definitely, definitely not alone. There are millions of people around the world who self-harm as a coping mechanism, and whilst I don’t believe it is an answer to anyone’s problems, I do believe it is time we end this stigma of shame and embarrassment. Self-harming is common, and on the rise, especially in young adults. It should be talked about in schools so that self-harmers aren’t made to feel bizarre or stupid, and far more support should be given in terms of school counselling. Self-harm shouldn’t be swept under the rug as though it isn’t a problem – it should be addressed as the rising problem that it is. In the meantime, however, please talk to a trained professional, who will not judge you or perceive you as weak or stupid. There are alternatives to starting this terribly addictive habit that can affect your health for the rest of your life. I believe in your ability to take these alternatives. All progress can only be made one day at a time. It will be tough, and temptations will be hard to avoid – but have faith in yourself and your own strengths. You are stronger than you think you are.

  When it comes to having a friend who is self-harming, the advice I give can really only be loose-fitting. I do not know your friend, nor do I know their parents or their situation. In some circumstances, it might be best to tell your friend’s parents – however, in others, that could make your friend’s situation a whole lot worse, considering the stigma that still surrounds self-harming. What you absolutely cannot do under any circumstance is keep your friend’s habit bottled up. Even if your friend has trusted you with their secret, it is not your burden to bear, and it is unfair of them to confide in you and make you feel as though you are helpless. Unless you are a trained professional – you are not a trained professional! You are not equipped to carry such a heavy burden, especially if you’re of a young age. You cannot be expected to be the only person your friend has to turn to.

  When I was fourteen, there was a girl I sometimes sat next to in class who didn’t have a good home life. I will not divulge the specifics of this information out of decency, but one afternoon I noticed that the sleeve of her blazer had risen up. In the small gaps between the countless bracelets on her arms, I noticed those telltale red marks. As soon as she saw me looking, she pulled her sleeve down, looking away from me and furiously scribbling into her textbook. I said nothing, but from that moment on, I knew, and she knew that I knew. She never truly opened up to me about her situation, but one afternoon, I whispered to her, ‘I just want you to know that if you ever want to talk, I’m here.’

  She never did talk to me about it, but the pressure I felt to tell an adult about what she was doing was immense. However, I knew that if a teacher told her parents, there would be consequences for her. I felt as though any action I could take would hinder her, not help her. As far as I know, I was the only person in our school who knew her secret, and I felt powerless to help her. I know how it feels to carry a burden. It is always going to be a delicate situation, but you cannot allow yourself to carry someone else’s secret if it is having an impact on their mental health. With the situation she was in, I feel fortunate that she didn’t do something drastic. I cannot imagine how I would have coped knowing I could have done something to prevent that eventuality.

  However – just because she got through her ordeal does not mean that everyone in a similar situation will. If you feel as though a friend might attempt to commit suicide, you absolutely must take action, and tell an adult, be it a parent or a teacher. The issue with self-harm is that a teacher, counsellor or doctor would most likely attempt to alert your friend’s parents for safety reasons. Even if this doesn’t have repercussions for your friend, your friend may feel as though you have betrayed them. Truly, it is a horrid situation to find yourself in, and I would beg you not to carry that burden alone. It is not your responsibility to keep such a big secret when it could potentially end in tragedy. Call one of the helplines at the back of this book and speak to a trained professional – ask what advice they would recommend. In the meantime, try to convince your friend to seek help, such as from a counsellor or doctor, or even a helpline if they are scared of their parents being alerted, and also let your friend know that you are there to support them if they need assistance in getting help.

  Do not allow yourself to become your friend’s sole confidante – it will take its toll on you as you feel more and more responsible for your friend’s safety. Tell them that you are there for them whenever they need to talk, but urge them to take steps in order to stop self-harming. Invite them out on weekends to get them away from their home situation and keep them distracted from their thoughts, and don’t get frustrated if they initially refuse to seek help. Telling someone about something that society shames you for whilst admitting to yourself that
you have a problem is terrifying, and not something that can be done without a lot of mental preparation. Be there for them, promise to support them without judgement, and I wish you and your friend the best of luck.

  I lost contact with my school friend a long time ago, but I do know that she is now studying to become a teacher, and spent some time travelling. She is always smiling in photos. She looks genuinely happy and healthy.

  3

  Life Is Unfair

  (and so are people)

  The Janis

  Okay, important requirement for this section/life in general: have you watched the movie Mean Girls? You know, the 2004 classic, otherwise known as the greatest film of all time that defined a generation and provided us with a plethora of timeless catchphrases such as, ‘You go, Glen Coco!’

  If you haven’t, shut this book and go and watch it. Not just so that you get the reference in the heading of this section, but because your life will immediately become eight hundred per cent better.

  Right, okay, you’ve watched it! Good stuff! Oh, Janis Ian, how I love you. You are a raven-haired, oversized-jacket-wearing, punkloving comeback QUEEN. In every school you have the people who could fit into one of the many cliques from that film – the jocks, the nerds, the ‘plastics’. I filled the role of Janis Ian. A blackhaired, Green Day worshipping loudmouth who would give as good as she got – and I was just as unpopular as she was.

  Throughout my secondary school, I was ‘the goth’, ‘the emo’, ‘the dirty grunger’ that even kids four years below me would shout abuse at in the corridor. My school life was plagued by bullying from kids in years above and below me, and I was often alone in class and at break. Combine my music taste and personality with the fact that I wasn’t exactly all that particular about my personal hygiene (puberty was definitely working against me with the extra sweat and oils), as well as the fact that my family couldn’t afford a spare school blazer so the one I owned often smelled pretty bad – I didn’t exactly have my choice of friends. My later years at school were spent trying to fit in with groups of kids that were already cliques of their own, and none of them seemed particularly interested in allowing me in. Over the course of five years of secondary school, I attended a total of one party, one sleepover, zero after-school clubs and was a constant source of entertainment to a girl we’ll call Rachel.

  Rachel was our Regina George. Absolutely everyone that I knew in my school seemed terrified of her – she was physically imposing, and even the girls who would act as her ‘backup’ when she went to stalk her latest prey knew better than to get on her bad side. Rachel had no time for short, smelly ‘goths’. Needless to say, I was Rachel’s favourite target.

  See, looking back at those times now, again with our good friend hindsight, it wasn’t even what I looked like that drew Rachel to me, but the way that I handled her confrontation. As I said, as well as being comparable to Janis Ian in our shared fashion sense – army jackets and thick pencil eyeliner to boot – we also shared an instinct to fight back whenever someone said something nasty, no matter who they were. Whenever Rachel and her gaggle of geese came up to me hurling insults, I’d always tell them in no uncertain terms where to go – which never went down well. Rachel and her gang chased me down corridors on many an occasion, threatening to knock me out for something I’d said back to her – to which I’d finally respond by running away, locking myself in the toilets and crying. For most of my school life, it was like I was universally despised – no one wanted to hang around with the smelly, uncool goth/emo kid.

  When I finally found a group of kids that didn’t mind hanging around with me (older kids in the year above who had the same music taste that Rachel didn’t dare to try fighting with – it’s hard to pick on a big group of people who are older than you), I was left in peace. Over the years, I had tried changing my style so many times in an attempt to fit in – begging my dad to buy me the latest sports backpack, wearing a short skirt with tights in place of my usual baggy trousers and caking myself in fake tan (which, oh boy, went horribly wrong each and every time), but with this group of older kids, I felt accepted for who I truly was. When I went into the next year of school and my friends all moved on to college, I was devastated – alone and back to square one, hiding in the school library which Rachel and her friends would get kicked out of if they tried to start trouble. When I finally left school and discovered Rachel wasn’t going to the same college as me, I breathed the biggest sigh of relief – at least I’d never go through bullying ever again . . . right?

  High School Never Ends

  Sad news – bullying doesn’t magically stop when you leave school. I’m sorry. It may change form, but bullying exists in all walks of life – at home, school, college, university, work – and I found this out the hard way.

  My first ever part-time job was in a shoe shop in my home town of Basildon. I was sixteen years old, the youngest you could be to get a job, and truth be told, I think I only got a callback because my CV was printed on light blue paper and stood out. (There’s a top tip, direct from me to you.) My job entailed walking around the shop floor, replacing empty spaces on the shelves where shoes had been purchased with new, unsold shoes from the storeroom out back, asking customers if they needed help, measuring (and by default, touching – ew) the feet of strangers, manning the till, up-selling cheap, shitty shoe protector spray and trying to convince customers to sign up to our email newsletter so we could reach our daily target.

  I could handle most parts of that job – but approaching customers who wanted to be left alone and asking if they’d give me their email address? Terrifying. I dreaded having to walk around handing out slips of paper with a form that asked for the stranger’s full name, date of birth, home address, phone number, email address . . . you can imagine the sheer hatred that appeared in the eyes of some customers, who just wanted to be left alone to try on a damn shoe.

  On one quiet Sunday afternoon, towards the end of trading hours, I was standing by the till with my fellow part-timer Sam, who shared my hatred of handing out these stupid forms. It had been quiet all day, and almost every customer had seen through our bullshit – nobody wanted to get inundated with spam emails filled with crappy ‘sale events’. As I was sharing my frustration at having to fill a quota for something nobody wanted, my supervisor ‘Mel’ walked over.

  ‘Why aren’t you out there getting emails from people?’ she barked. Mel had only just been given the responsibility of running the shop on her own without needing a store manager present – something that she was desperately trying to prove was a good decision.

  ‘We’ve tried, no customer here wants to do this stupid thing,’ I snapped, having put up with her new sense of self-importance for hours and unable to handle her tone any longer.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re fucking useless,’ she muttered, snatching the forms out of my fist and storming away from the till and on to the shop floor. In front of the customer service desk was a customer who had only walked into the store a few minutes before; someone we hadn’t bothered yet.

  ‘Excuse me, madam,’ Mel said loudly, glaring over at me and Sam at the desk. Mel then proceeded to loudly bark the benefits of the email newsletter to this poor woman, who by the end of it looked so scared that she would’ve done anything to get away from being hounded.

  Completed email form in hand, Mel strutted back over, slamming the paper down on the desk.

  ‘There,’ she snapped. ‘Wasn’t exactly hard, was it?’ At this point, I watched the customer slowly put the shoes in her hand back on the shelf and quickly back out of the store.

  ‘She’d only just walked in, Mel,’ I replied angrily.

  Bad idea. At this, Mel stepped forward, standing toe-to-toe with me, towering over me (that’s probably obvious – everyone towers over me).

  After a few heated words, I felt Mel’s breath in my face. Her arms were out to the side, fists clenched, her cheeks bright red. Am I about to get punched at work? Fortunately, as I felt
things were about to tip over, an older colleague came back from her break and separated us. I backed away into the staff room in tears – it certainly wasn’t the only near-fight I’d had in my life, but this was in a working environment, somewhere I was supposed to feel safe.