Cold Open

Mike Harris

I just found myself in tears really. I just felt really desperate. Like there was no way out or that the way out meant me doing something drastic.

Alex Melia

Today we’re diving into the very real problem of burnout at work – and how one man sought help to get out of it.

Mike has a demanding job – but he usually loved it. He’s an energetic guy, a proud husband and father. But the pressures of work got on top of him, until eventually he couldn't function. It was a bright summer day in June this year when it all got too much…

Mike Harris

I was just losing my confidence to be able to do what was being asked of me. We're having discussions about our couldn't focus at all. All I could think was I can't do this. This is not… I've got the ability to do it. I've got the headspace to do it. I was so low on energy, so low on confidence. I just… anything that was a hurdle just seemed massive to me.

Went for drink after work with my boss, and a couple of colleagues I worked with very closely. I was really quiet most unlike me, maybe had one pint and then made my excuses and left. I was meeting a client for dinner. Ended up having quite a few drinks and had a few beers and got tucked into the wine, might have had maybe a glass of whiskey to finish off.

Went home got the train home, about a 45 minute journey. I was in tears on the train on the way home just really thinking. Things are not good. Things are not good.

Got home. My wife was asleep, it was after midnight. She woke up probably because I was making noise when I came into the bedroom and she had it everything Alright, have a nice evening. Said No, not really. Sure don't talk about it. No, not really. Yes, just talk tomorrow, put my head on the pillow and I was I was pretty much out for the count.

I slept through –and I was actually woken up by my alarm, which never normally happens. Normally, I always beat my alarm.

I felt panicky in the morning, because I knew the situation was coming to a head. I felt physically really tight, really tense. I felt very– had a heavy feeling in my stomach. This was like a real knot in my stomach. And along with those physical pains, I just felt a long way from 100% which is how I normally feel when I wake up in the morning.

Things felt really out of control. Things at home, I felt like I was really useless at home. I wasn't being a good husband and father.

I just found myself in tears, really, just felt really desperate. Like there was no way out or that the way out meant me doing something drastic.

It was around 6:30, being the middle of summer pretty much the longest day of the year. Light was coming into the bedroom, I tried to block out as much light as possible. My wife was asleep, gently nudged her and said, Are you awake, things aren't great. She could tell I was crying. We had quite a long chat there and then about how I felt. It's like the cloud’s not lifting. It's not seeming brighter. She was so supportive as she always is. She wasn't trying to fix how I felt. She just showed me a lot of empathy, validated how I was feeling. And the only practical thing she said is you are not going to work today. And you are not going to work next week. And we are phoning the GP surgery to get you signed off work.

And I guess that was it. That was me bailing out, at that time because I just could not cope with the situation. I found myself in.

Alex Melia

at that point in time, because I can relate to this at the point in time where you come home from this client meal you've had and you're feeling really low, you've had a lot of alcohol. And your wife says Is everything okay? Do you want to talk about it? And you said no, I'm fine. I'm fine. A lot of men do that. And I've definitely done that with with my family and my ex girlfriend when they say Are you okay, I'm fine. I'm fine. But they know that you're not. Why did you not want to talk that evening?

Mike Harris

I think for me, I've always been really happy to talk about how I feel. Maybe I'm an oversharer I knew we were going to have a conversation the next day. I also just think that it's about picking the right time to have important conversations. And I think there's probably a difference between not wanting to talk at a particular point and not wanting to talk full stop at dinner. Alex, what are your experiences of that? Yeah,

Alex Melia

I was just about to say that I feel I have in the past I've reacted when someone when a family member, my mom, dad, brothers or sisters, wherever I've said, Is there anything wrong and said, No, I'm fine, I'm fine. It's almost like a reaction. I've not responded to that. It's just, it's almost like subconsciously, I'm anticipating that question. And I just come back with no, I'm fine. It's just a defence mechanism for my experience anyway. But actually, I'm learning to take a more considered approach like you did, and actually respond instead of just react because you had the emotional intelligence to go, Okay, this is not the right time. I'm not saying that I don't want to speak about it at all. I plan to speak about this with you tomorrow. And I think that's, that's an intelligent way of looking at it. Now.

Mike Harris

Maybe I say a lot of it is learned. And we learn through, you know, several years of supporting our daughter, and we always wanted to understand how she felt. And the more we asked her at the start, the harder it was for her to actually communicate, we had to learn for, to let her come to us. And sometimes that she, she didn't come to us, she went to go to her therapist or a friend. And that sometimes is quite difficult. I think my wife found that really difficult with both our daughter and with me that she wants to help. That's what moms do, that's what wives do, they want to help. And, you know, for a long time, my daughter didn't seem to want her help. And if I ever say, now, I'm fine, don't worry about it, I think, understand that she can often feel like that's rejection for her. So I'm trying to be mindful of her feelings, because she was so supportive, and has been is so supportive with me. But I just know that you get the best conversations when, and probably the best outcomes when actually, the person has something to say, says it in their time and space. And, and also, I think, as well, because it was a big drinker for a long time. And then, you know, really rained back on the drinking, I also know the clarity of thought you get when you're not drunk or semi drunk. I just didn't feel I'd have a quality conversation. At that point, I think you're sure you'll know how it is that it's not the same things you want to but actually, you want, you want to be in full possession of the facts. And you want to be able to come at this in a difficult situation in his karma frame of mind as possible. I was chewed up, I was upset when I came home sometimes, for me, you know, have a drink or make you a bit more lucid, but I think it's a very fine line. And I think it's a very small amount of alcohol that is beneficial. And then it becomes unhelpful.

Alex

It's interesting. You talked about oversharing. Being an oversharer as a man, stereotypically you're probably in a minority

Mike Harris

I've always had that attitude Better out than in I'm a big crier, you no cry or anything football, films, reading a book, the news. And I've always felt that was, I guess, a good thing a good outlet. I never want to make people feel uncomfortable around me. But how this interesting thing that I think about, you know, when people say sorry, when they're crying when they're self taught about the conversation we're going to have and it's gonna make me feel emotion, I thought, What do I do if I start crying in the chat to Alex and I thought one thing I'm not going to do is I'm not going to say sorry, I'm not going to apologise for

my emotions. Because I feel what feel and I've been through some difficult things that make me feel emotional, but I'm not going to say sorry for it. And it's it's that I don't know it's a British thing of like, oh, crikey, I

want to don't make feel awkward because I'm crying and it's like all that's you know, mentioned do that. That has been something I think has always been a positive for me as being, you know, ability to talk ability show my emotion sometimes. show too much. Sometimes I say too much. And definitely the as I have learned to, to have a better relationship with alcohol and drink less, actually realise the quality of my conversations with people is better. Definitely took me years of drinking too much to know, what was the right amount. And for some people I you know, sadly, they don't ever find that equilibrium

Alex

How did you feel when you opened up to your wife? Pretty much the majority of the times people say I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. I feel so relieved. Is this this sort of this lightening of the load sort of feeling? But how did you feel?

Mike Harris

I yeah, I did feel lighter. Interesting. And I've got some notes here, I've got a journal, looking at June the 19. Here, so two days after, and I think I was about to start, by luck, or by coincidence, start working with the therapist in the week that I assigned myself off work. And she asked me to, I guess, come to her with a bit of background of, you know, how I was feeling. And I've written here, I feel really emotional, but I can't seem to really let it all out. And that was very much one of the things we talked about in therapy was this, having gone from feeling like I could cry on demand, if you like, to, I spent six months, really struggling to cry, and I think that contributed to this buildup of pressure, the feelings for the cloud wasn't lifting, because sometimes it can be as simple as you know, if I'm in a bad mood, or if I feel stressed, or feel sad, you know, I do various things, you know, might go and play golf, the cloud might lift or my have a cry, cloud might lift, it just wasn't happening, I was trying to press the reset button, talked about it quite a lot, you know, just I was looking for a silver bullet. And whether that was a little silver bullet of having a really good cry, or a big silver bullet of finding something that would just turn, but you know, get the clouds go away. You know, and it just, it just wasn't happening. And I think in you know, in hindsight, what I needed was that time off. And what I needed was to go and work with a professional, go and work with a therapist, which I did for two months,

Alex

I was curious to ask you, because my first time of having a counsellor, was last year, probably May, June 2021. And I started off with these feelings of anxiety and depression, but also this big forgiveness and holding grudges, you know, so she told me to write letters to these people that you know, that you wouldn't never send. And also, I wanted to have conversations with these people as well. So after two to three months, I felt a lot better. But I'm just curious, where were you at the beginning of the two months, and where were you at the end, like if you almost went from a to b, where were the problems at the beginning, and then how you were feeling afterwards with with this counsellor,

Mike Harris

the cloud lifted is the best way that I can describe it. And it actually started to lift quite quickly. In our first session, she said, I didn't know whether you need to see me or a career coach, because so many of my problems were were manifested themselves in, in work. In this, you know, my feelings of low self worth and ability to do things, it was all very much tied up in, in Word Albia. As said earlier, that was seeping into my personal life, as well. But I think even by the end of the first session, we quickly got to the nub of my situation. And she helped me understand why I was I think I the back of my mind, I knew I'd burned out through lots of stuff that gone on in my life for the you know, over, particularly over maybe the last three years running up to this shed, okay, this is what's happened you just have your battery has run down so low, to the point where your cognitive function is not working as it as it should do. That sort of opened the door to bad thoughts, shorthand for feet, you know, feelings of low self worth. I felt like that was probably what had happened. But I wasn't allowed. I wasn't allowing myself to to self diagnose that. I felt like when you're making a bit of a facet, a lot of people go through the same or more challenging situations than you've been through. You should go to cope with this and obviously, the bizarre thing was in the year prior to this, I've never there is the best I've ever felt in my life. I was felt on on top too. I wake up at 530 in the morning, full of beans, full of ideas full of energy, just wanted to get after it. And actually, in 2021, things had gotten a lot better. For us as a family. You know, our daughter was in recovery. We had a health scare, my wife had a cancer scare, which thankfully, was nipped in the bud of skin cancer. My job was really stressful. Because a lot of responsibility, I enjoyed it. But, and it was an I was really into my exercising a lot of exercise. Really, I got into CrossFit. Anybody gets into CrossFit or no, it's, it just becomes a religion. I was constantly talking to people about it, we joke people across we go, okay, you ring the bell, you know, how often have you been able to talk to other people about it today. And I got injured in the run up to Christmas. And that stopped me exercising to the level that I was, but actually worked out with a therapist that that exercise had been masking the burnout that I've been through because it'd be giving me this, you know, adrenaline rush, dopamine rush felt grey, no less potent than drink or drugs. And it did the same job of masking how I really felt or masking my situation. I wasn't deliberately trying to I think perhaps if you self medicate with alcohol or drugs, you are an element of that is you are trying to blot out a, I wasn't trying to blot out how I was feeling. But it was just unintentionally masking. Actually, the fact that I was burnt out, and you know, just we're sort of, you know, living on this sort of knife edge of achieve something started to go wrong. How was I, you know, obviously completely reliant on this, you know, crazy exercise regime and sort of, you know, wellness, you know, I thought meditating. I've really got it down on you know, nothing's gonna stop me. I'm absolutely bulletproof. You know, I'm naturally overconfident, virtue and arrogance. And just, you know, I was definitely high amount supply.

Alex

I wanted to go back, Mike to what we were talking about before with crying because I think it's a really relevant topic, when we're thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man. You mentioned something interesting, we talked about whether you cry about football, you cry in movies. It's interesting, because when I speak to friends, I speak to other men day almost happy to say, they cried during this film, or they cried during this song, or they cried tears of joy when their their children were born. But actually, I feel like they say that because it's almost socially acceptable. Or is it almost, for me to say, I cried watching Manchester United when the Champions League final in 1999. It's like, oh, well, that's what men do. men cry during football times because there just is tears of joy. It's not tears of sorrow or negativity is, you know, I'm so passionate about my team. Look how much of a big fan and supporter I am. Why do we do that? I mean, do you do that in particular? I mean, it seems like you're not fixated on this traditional form of, of masculinity of men crying these situations, but they don't cry in these.

Mike Harris

Think I probably don't have the ability to pick and choose where I cry, and to who or cry is the honest answer. That doesn't make me a better person. I think just you know, maybe I've got overactive tear ducts or whatever. But in all seriousness, if I'm going to have you know, a cry, then I'll do it. I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable, but I also feel like that's their problem, not mine. And so interested in the football thing. You know, why tears for an Everton fan, normally a frustration, but I know, seeing them fat beat United at Wembley. 1995 I was there with some of my very best friends. We beat recently they'll mate yes or no, let's not talk about that. Paul, right. Yeah. But But yeah, going back to the sort of, and the more comfortable we think we are men with our emotions, talking crying, the, the less people will become or feel awkward in those situations when people want to want to open up to you or wanting to cry in front of you. And then, you know, I know it sounds like it's a sort of very utopian vision, but I think that that outlet is so key from male mental health. All women are much better at it. Men are getting better. But there's a lot of room for, for improvement. And I think that that there is a physiological reason why people cry. And it's it was put in place by whoever created it however you believe that were put on this earth. Everything's there in your body for a reason. Appendix aside, I believe somebody believe your appendix has no use but everything else is there for a reason. It's either a warning sign or it's an indicator of something and I think when people my view is you know, if you if your ability to cry is suppressed, I don't think that is a good thing. I actually believe the more you learn about yourself and who you are as a person, you're giving yourself a better chance of happiness.