Imagine.

You’ve not slept well; you’ve tossed and turned, the alarm goes off but you smack it very quickly. You get up, think about breakfast and the day you have ahead. The lessons are planned, you’ve taken your time doing so. You can do your job, you’ve been doing it ages, and you’re not that bad at it.

Only there is as spikey knot forming in your gut, your heart is racing and you’ve been walking around like Quasimodo as your body’s stress response gnarls at your back and shoulders. Sometimes it hurts to breath, but you are stubborn and soldier on. You want to eat, you have to eat; yet your appetite has disappared, and nothing quite hits the spot.

You feel sick, anxious and things just keep coming. It takes a supreme effort to take a deep breath, put one foot in front of the other, to get out the door and onto the road. No idea how you will get through the day, but lots of tea will help.

All the time, you think about this being done, that being done; not wanting to ask for help, not knowing who to ask, and things aren’t just grey, but black, brown and swirly. There are very few rays of sunshine, fleeting ones at that. When you get sunshine, you hold onto it, prize every single drop.

I now know when my smile begins to fade, I can recognise the quasimodo contortion that comes from tense muscles and being unable to breath as it hurts. I know the difference between my sloping walk and my purposeful James Bond swagger.  I have slowly but surely, figured out my stress response and how anxiety can impact upon me. I refuse to let it all hold me down. There are rainbows to chase.

My allotment has helped, as has writing. Then there is the whole trained listener and trainee counselor thing too. Jigsaw pieces that over time, have started to fall together and helped me better understand my own mental health and that of others. There is just something about standing on the plot, drinking a cuppa as I smell the roses. The allotment has nurtured me, as much as I have nurtured it. I write, as it is a creative outlet; there is therapy too, to sit alongside all of this. It takes time, all of it, but I have found support, found the things that give my life colour to reduce strands of grey.

The statistic, is that one in four of us, will experience some form of poor mental health. There are further numbers about the difference in male and female health. These aren’t just numbers, these are frightening numbers.

Then there the social and cultural stigma. In some communities, the South Asian community being one of the, mental health is a taboo, swept under the carpet and talked about in hushed tones. This rather annoys me, angers me, that Mental health is not supported in a similar vein to physical health. Annoys me, that we have such negative, perjorative attitudes with blaming and shaming. It angers me, that there is a veil of both silence and ignorance.

Time to talk is making an effort to help turn this tide, there is also Head together. There needs to be further action, an increased awareness of Mental Health concerns. This is not a one-da job, this is going to take time. What we need is an impetus, a movement, of people talking, supporting one another and coming together with a common aim.

Mental health is difficult to put into a box, we all experiene it differently. It’s not easy to talk about, and makes people uncomfortable.

For futher information on the campaign.