#19 | Part 2 Tom & Joe - Work Place Mental Health & Bipolar Disorder Chat + Mental Health Awareness Month

Previously in part one Lights that can affect anyone at any time. Even if you're in a board meeting, you could literally just crash for no reason.

You're thinking why we started talking, the cameras rolled and I literally was just like. The next one I wanted to come onto was staying on the topic of Mental Health Awareness Month. Do you know anything more on bipolar disorder, or is that quite a new thing?

We've never discussed it before, before but it's coming up a lot at the moment. No, never.

So I was looking into a lot of bipolar things before this and bipolar disorder affects about 2.6 percent of the us population and is often misunderstood as just mood swings rather than a serious condition involving extreme mood episodes. And it just comes back to a point as well of 2.6 percent of the us population has that. How do you kind of spot these things again? And it's just how do you and you see it a lot. I see it all the time in the news at the moment, with things like bipolar disorder coming up, all those new studies coming out on bipolar disorder. Coming back to our point, is is doing this and a lot of people listening to this. Some of them might have bipolar disorder. What advice would you give to these people from our point of view, who don't think we have bipolar disorder you never know, but from what we're clear of, we're pretty sure we don't. What advice would you give?

yeah, on the outside in, yeah, I think, I think it's so easy to sit here and say get tested for it and go to the nhs and go to a local gp and get an answer for it, because the waiting lists are extraordinary. But I feel like if you do think that someone you know or you do have that, unless you can afford to get privately treated and you can contact someone like you know, dr mark rackley, who'll be able to give you the answers and go down that testing route that we spoke about.

If the advice I would give is to first of all watch our episode with dr mark and then and follow his page, and because he goes really in depth about the individual topics like that and he'll have a whole hour episode just on bipolar.

So I feel like that's probably the best thing. Um, and, subjectively, I think all you could say is to go get tested if you feel like you are suffering or you know someone who is, and just really be there for me, an open soundboard for them, to be there for you if they do need you, because it's really, really hard. Um, because I think the whole thing with bipolar is you just don't know what you're going to get from them. You know that it's like what you had the other day, but on steroids it's such an extreme, uh, change to I don't think I know anyone who's got it not that I know of anyway, because, like you say, it's so hard to know.

Um, so I would have met someone, I'm sure, down the road who has but we are lack of understanding of it and awareness where it's only just coming to light. Like you say, in the US the studies are massive, but in the UK we have no. You know, there's no studies that I can see on there that for the UK. Anyway, I'm trying to find some, um, yeah, a lot of things there's tons of US things the.

US are just ahead they are everything in literally in every aspect, like whether it's business, whether it's conducting studies and stuff every study I look up is always about the us population is is this and this?

I'd love to find some like new uk stats that we can actually relate to having living in the uk. I wanted to come on to point of um. Actually on the bipolar side is I've never had it. Uh, I know someone that does have it, I won't say his, her name. Simple changes.

We talk about this all the time, whether that's researching into things. I think the most important thing people feel like they don't have time to do things, but it's when you're feeling good can you go and research it more, can you understand why you're doing certain actions? Can you listen to a podcast while you're feeling good to understand yourself better? And once you start to understand yourself better, this is what I did with adhd. This is what I did with my anxiety battling through everything I've gone through with, uh, the depression side of things when I was 17, 18, coming through that I started to fully understand myself and I think this is a massive problem people face. Is they kind of just brush it off and they think things are going to get better? I'm a big believer in you have to actively go and sort these things. If there's a problem, figure out what that problem is.

Go see someone like a Dr Mark in our example. Go listen to a podcast, listen to a specialist. Watch a YouTube video five, 10 minutes If you watched one YouTube video. A podcast, listen to a specialist, watch a YouTube video five, ten minutes. If you watched one YouTube video a day, if you're feeling good, that was five minutes long. By the end of the week you have six, seven videos that you've watched that you now know yourself six, seven times better.

That's a really good point. It really reminds me of a comment that was made on one of our last videos we had with Elliot. So for those that don't know, the wave wrangler who we had on a couple of weeks ago now, which aired two weeks ago, which was one of, if not my favorite episode we've done so far, because just how smooth the whole thing was.

He, just he was an absolute genius he just spoke so well, he was way too smart. It was really cool, like, and it was an engineering degree it's fast, but that's it.

So because it, coming back to what you just said, is people that get told, like elliot did, by the doctor, he'll never be able to exercise again at the age of 27, being when he's playing semi-pro rugby. He's a fitness fanatic, he loves the gym, that's his life. Right, being fit and healthy and active in his sports were his life. And to be told by a doctor that he couldn't do that again, he was a bit like no, but because of his engineering degree, he wanted to question that and he wanted to sort of like prove the doctors wrong almost and really look into. Okay, if I can't do this, maybe I can try CrossFit, which you think is the complete opposite of what you should be doing. But now he's the fittest he's ever been with a pacemaker. He only rode 3000 miles across the Arctic.

If he can do it at 27 with a pacemaker, he's saying anyone can do it without one, if that makes sense. So to answer your question, I feel like it's about almost forcing yourself to read into what it is. You've been told by someone. So if you have had a diagnosis of, of whatever by a doctor, physician, physio, don't necessarily think they're wrong, but you know. Study what, what's into it. Get to know your heart in elliott's case.

Get to know the mechanics of it and again it helps break it all down it helps having a you know, a degree in mechanics and everything else, but don't limit yourself by what someone's told you. You can push yourself and go go further and do more than what you may be told you do, because not to wrong and out doctors, but they're always going to err on the side of caution and say you shouldn't do something because it protects their back if someone wants to go wrong down the line and elliot is living proof of someone who's been told not to do something and he's proved everyone wrong since then and he's gone and done something which so few people have done in this in in in the world. Right, like to do solo rowing 3 000 miles, miles in the atlantic.

It's outrageous, it's ridiculous.

All with a pacemaker on his own, solo, and someone told him five, six years ago that he wouldn't be able to do anything like that. You know you'll be careful going for a run and he's now done that. It's like okay. But then someone has to want to go out and do it and want to again not say they've proven them wrong, but maybe to sort of I'm going to prove you, push the limits and see what I'm capable of and I'm going to go out and research that and, like you say, watching YouTube videos or podcasts or contacting a Dr Mark or really putting the research in, because you'd be amazed what you actually can do and doing it while you feel good as well.

For sure, this is the problem I find with my ADHD is a lot of people, for example, I should say nine to five job. A lot of people will work at nine to five job, obviously be a bit anxious throughout, like their boss would shout at them or this needed to be done. There's a deadline.

Yeah.

But for me, I will go extremely high with my work and then I'll go extremely low where I'm like looking at the screen and I'm like, oh, yeah. I feel awful. I can't think, and it's just knowing that's gonna come yeah, it's, it's, there, it's like I can't control that.

I know that. But when I'm feeling good, I'm gonna go go go because I know my body. And when I'm feeling down, I'm not going to feel guilty, I'm not going to beat myself up about it, I'm going to accept that that's part of my brain, that's who I am and I'm just going to park it. And as soon as I start to feel good again, I'm going to go straight back and work, work, work. I think that's effective that's spot on.

But I also think that works again twofold. I think if you know that's coming and you know you've got this sort of low coming on, whether it be due to nutrition or energy levels or lack of exercise that day, or too much exercise that day or too much staring at a screen I think for those that listening or watching this is, if you do feel that low, like tom experiences in his workplace, I feel like if you know that's coming on, take a break, take a step back, go for your walks, which obviously we're really hot on going out and experiencing nature get away from the screens, and this is something that you and I talk a lot about, which probably we need to practice a bit more on yeah, assuming we're doing this.

Yeah, it's it's the, it's the, and we're doing this for good right. We're doing this to sort of make awareness, but I feel like technology is a killer, like it's so bad for us for the long term. It's taking regular breaks. It's so hard because 99.99 of our lives is all through technology.

Everyone you know. Everything you know is just on this, it's all accessible, it's scarily, like even someone, annabelle, like you know who yeah who his life was against that.

She now has to experience it through COVID and she had to do life online. And what kind of stuff. But, I feel like if you are like Tom and you need and that's why most people need breaks you, know, take a step back from the work, separate yourself and have something completely different. Whether it be yoga or meditation, breath work in Jamie's case, or just going for a walk without your phone, without your headphones disappear for 45 minutes to an hour. You can come back to it and it's um.

It's about knowing yourself a bit more I think it's like a bit more of an understanding and taking ownership of your, uh, your mental health. I want to stay on the workplace for, uh, obviously this is coming out for mental health awareness month. Mental health in the workplace, in my opinion, is something that's in the corporate world, something that's pretty, pretty low the levels of how people actually look into these things, which is fair enough. You're there, you're there to do business.

You have to make money. You're there to you know, feed your family, pay off a mortgage. You're not in a way, as rude as it sounds, a lot people aren't there to take care of people's mental health, that's not their goal.

They're there to get in, get out and make sure they can provide for their family, and that's fair. Fair enough in some extent. But I think with a lot of people, especially in these tough corporate jobs, what would you say would be good things for businesses? So there could be ceos listening to this, there could be business owners and this is something that obviously only a business myself it's like, honestly at the forefront of my mind for anything is like how can we I make everyone feel good, likewise with you?

like, how can you make people feel good? The people around you so everyone can work better. When it comes down to it, what would you say to these people?

who are in awful working conditions first of all, you shouldn't be in one like if you're in a dead-end job. You know, I understand that everyone has to make money, especially nowadays. I feel like that's that. I lasted probably a month in the city. I absolutely hated it and I know you and I are very different in that sense. You like the hustle and bustle, you like the. You know the early morning commute in and the busyness of it. That's for me. I really can't. I can't cope with that. I can't cope with this or the hustle and bustle and being crammed into a train. I hated it. Not many people like that, of course no, I don't like the train.

No, no, not people like the train bus only yeah, no, for it's, it's tricky, I hated it and for me, the sacrifice of not making as much money far outweighed the the anxiety and depression I depression I had as a result of being there. Whereas if you are one of two people, you're the one, a person who's like, screw my mental health, I want to make money, I want to go in there and just cash out, go big. Fine, if that's the one you want. If you want to do that, you're sacrificing quite a lot to be able to do that, in my opinion, or you're the kind of person who's not going to be affected by a lot. I was the complete opposite of that. I was like the money I, I just get out of there. I hated it. So, to answer your question, if you are a ceo or you know, md of a company and you want a happier workforce, it's exactly that create a happy environment to work in, because what you put in you get out. So if you invest in a happier workplace, whether it be investing in therapists, for example, for the building people to go to and have a check-in in their working day, or if it's online on online, one and more companies are investing in on-site or in-person or online therapists for their workforce, partly because it ticks a box in case someone does anything silly, or reckless in the workplace, perfect it's huge, and you know, and that is where companies are going right slowly but surely they get, they're getting better I feel,

like the big companies are doing it more than maybe the middle ground ones. Um, because the big, the big guys want to be seen to be doing the right thing for a lot of time, but that's fine. If they want to be seen to be the right thing, they are doing the right thing. So happier workforce often creates a more productive one, and they want to work for the company and work you know the hours and put the graft in. So I feel like creating a happy environment where everyone is on a level playing field, being treated well. I mean, that sounds really obvious.

It doesn't happen.

It doesn't happen and you hear so many stories of that. So I'll be very, very interesting to those who are listening and watching this if you've ever had an experience where you either have been treated well or badly obviously not naming the companies and stuff, of course, but what your companies that you work for, have worked for, have done to implement better mental health across the workforce, because companies are starting to change, maybe in the last 10 to 15 years, maybe less than that, where companies are starting to invest in whatever it might be and obviously I'm not in that field, you obviously are more than I, so you work in an office building which looks pretty cool to work in. I guess when you're we works. Yeah, I'm just in one of the. What are they? What are they doing there? We?

work is. I know the actual sort of business model behind WeWork. If, if you're into that stuff, um, they're in quite a bit of debt. But the actual office scenario so for me, being an entrepreneur, it's incredibly lonely, it's just it is. It's very lonely, um, you're not around a lot of people, you're dealing with a ton of stress and arguably, everything at the end of the day comes down to you performing, organizing the right team, so on, so forth. There's a lot of stresses that come with it and I think we works great, because I was felt quite isolated working at home, not all working in a coffee shop, like I wasn't meeting anyone.

I go into, we work, it's full of like-minded people, uh, it's full of, uh, full-on businesses as well. So people working for businesses, but one of the most important things, and this is so minor. And for the full-on businesses as well. So people working for businesses, but one of the most important things, and this is so minor. And for the people who don't like dogs out there, then this one's not for you, but actually having dogs in the office to make you feel better. And the dog's running around. I don't know why I walk in. I'm like, oh, random, random dog which is always in the office, and its owner.

I've just like become mates with the owner it's just like things like that, just like so nice subtle things someone bringing a dog in or you know, being able to go out on nice walks, especially now it's sunny outside, and being in the environment where I think I'm almost I've said this to you all the time, so I'm almost slightly autistic in a way like I need things perfectly on time. Things need to be here, here, here and here, and with my ADHD brain, where I'm also very like spontaneous and other things, it's like a very weird mix.

So when it comes to work, the way I get stress less and the way I'm happier is if things are on time. I think, being clear with with people so example, as a business owner, I can talk from that point of view is being clear with the people that are working for you. Being like this is what we need done. This is a timeline, listen. If you're stressed or if this is going on, let me know and we can work around it, rather than being like I need this on my desk tomorrow. Do it or you're fired. It's actually like giving people room to be creative. Have a bit of freedom If they are struggling mentally. Being like listen, mate, I massively respect you for telling me. Thank you for that. Get it done and let's say that's out on another day and then we can work from there.

If you need a hand, I could put so and so on yeah on with it as well, and I just think, having that sort of environment of a community of people who actually massively care about their mental health, around going to the gym or going on runs and actually trying to better themselves, not just lying in bed all day being lazy and you you know with the people you work with as well as, like you know if someone's being truthful about their mental health and if they really are struggling and they're doing everything in their way to kind of keep going and push through it and they're not just being, in a way, lazy yeah with it.

It's you have to massively sympathize with them, and I think this is where a lot of the proper companies go wrong. Is they're just like I don't care?

yeah, get it done. They're disposable. Just a number to me exactly. They're so sad. Yeah, there's a number on a shirt or there's a foot in the door. They're easily replaced.

I remember when I had my notice in in that job, I worked for five minutes out in the city. It was for a sports hospitality company and I basically handed my notice and the guy was like, okay, there's the door and I'll get someone in. Like that, like it was, it was so I could have been about to, you know, throw myself out the window for all he knew, or, like, you know, we're in front of a train. I was so low and depressed when I left and I hated it and I was so in really dark place at the time, and that wasn't because of them, it just contributed to that as well.

The life, the life of london, just didn't work for me at the time and I could do it better now. But, um, and he was like, okay, see, like don't have to sign anything, there's a door. He didn't even know my name. It was. It was crazy and there are people out there now who might be going for the same thing and I'm really, really curious, like I said a minute ago. For those listening and watching, for you know, comment below or reply to this in the stories and say what's your job, big, small, whatever in between? How have they or not made changes to benefit and better the mental health of the people working for the company, whether it be vending machines or an hour's extra break, or they put a gym in the office or that kind of thing to do that?

I know it's gonna be very curious, would be cool, really curious you've got to talk about the investment side, like how much money is it, like how much money does your company bring in, if you want to go into all that stuff but at the same time, little things like that just go a long way.

Yeah, exactly, it does go a long way like having you know if you can go out 15 minutes of fresh air, like, for example, my girlfriend. She works for, uh, the nhs, she's an nhs physio. She messaged me yesterday being like didn't get my lunch break today. Couldn't even eat her lunch because it was so packed and she didn't get another break to go out and do things, so working solidly from eight till four, no lunch break, and had like 10 minutes to like waft down her lunch. It's just, it's stuff like that it's like cool it if it happens.

Once you know things happen things happen but if it's happening over and over and over, how? How are you supposed to make a nice environment for people to work in, for people to wake up in the morning and be like sick? I'm excited to go to work.

I'm excited to see the dog at work, I'm excited to go for a walk, I'm excited to see my friends for lunch, I'm excited to be in a company that actually cares about me, and that's the whole business side of it is just finding that's very hard to do. But I think if you are a big business out there, bringing coaches on who can be in and around the office, bringing people in to do talks, whether it's releasing a podcast like this, whether it's for helping people with their mental health, all these little things are just very simple to do Not easy to produce, but very simple to do and will make such a massive difference in the workplace. And I really hope that sort of Mental Health Awareness month actually does take into account a lot of corporate things, because I feel like corporate stuff somehow doesn't make its way into mainstream media.

That that much. For example, I won't out the bank, but a bank that works opposite my office laid off 10 000 employees two days ago and it's just like all on the phone at once you're all gone it's like it's things like now.

That's 10 000 people who have mortgages to pay, who have this, and obviously it's a job, that's that, it's business, it's how it works. But it's like what are these 10 000 people now doing? Well, how are they feeling? How's their mental health going? That that's the way I think about things is just. I could be wrong. People could be listening to us being like oh, shut up, tom yeah, but that's the way, that's the way I do.

Yeah, probably, it's probably a business has been like you're. You shut up, you're an idiot no, no, I'm generally curious, and if there are comments as to the on the contrary, then do let us know hey guys, tom here.

We hope you enjoyed part two. If you do enjoy these videos, please like and subscribe to the channel. It helps us massively.

Here's a bit of what you can expect to see in part three people you can see day to day who are just so stressed to the eyeballs and you really worry about them looking back at it now.

Do I want to be 50? Burnt out, destroyed my relationships in a way.

That's what a lot of people do, I feel like, with therapy. For me it was just giving myself the tools to be able to cope with myself better, but also other people.