#158: I am not myself
When I go on a long walk in the countryside, I start to feel tired on the last mile.
Perhaps I might notice where my boot was rubbing me, or a slight twinge in my knee, I begin to feel tired.
I notice some of the feelings in my body because I allow myself too, I know I will soon be resting with a Pint in a country pub. The end is near.
As we come out of Lockdown in the UK, I am drawing on this same analogy.
I am beginning to let myself notice how hard I have found the last year. I am noticing the pain it has caused me, in missing social connections and only being able to express myself virtually.
I have already reflected a lot on the positives of the last year for me personally and now I am letting myself notice the difficulties.
Particularly when I look at how I have shown up at work, I really haven’t been myself.
I’ve been a small pixelated, grey version of myself on a screen and I haven’t been the same since.
I’ve been more “in my head” and in that I mean less present, thinking much more, distracted in meetings, unable to listen and less engaged with my team.
I have been the opposite of how I am in person.
In person I am intensely engaged with people and I am a deep listener. I am always listening, I am very perceptive to what is going on in the world around me and often notice people’s body language, conversations they are having or not having. I pick up things.
I pick up a lot of information from being around people which I believe is a great strength of mine and I have been completely disarmed of it.
Plus, when I connect in person I like to believe I am a good listener, I like to listen completely not just to the words that are being spoken, but tone of voice, intonation, body language and more that’s given off energetically.
I love the richness of full bodied human to human connection and I’ve not had it.
As a Founder too, I often find it hard to define what I do, what my part is in the creation of a new business. It’s often intangible and mysterious.
Often, I feel like my job is to emit energy, a smile, a hug, a pat on the back - saying hello, saying goodbye, asking how someone’s weekend was, really getting to know someone. Being available, being present, just being there, just being.
I love to have fun at work, I like work to be like play. I smile, I ride around on a scooter in the office, I am silly.
90% of how I like to connect with people has been taken away and I am only noticing now the impact it has had on me professionally and how I feel about it.
I have been a shadow of me, I have been the shadow of me.
A narrow part of me has been on show, and not always my best bits either as when I’m thinking a lot and when I’m in my head a lot, that’s often the worst parts of me, the most insecure parts and on a screen that’s been what has often been coming out as I’ve struggled to work out any other way to connect with people.
Early into my mental health journey I began wandering and asking myself what is the “self”? It’s a word we use so often.
“I’m looking after myself.”
“Selfish”, “selfless”, “ourselves”, “whole self to work”, “self care”.
What is the self? What does it mean for me to say I’ve not been myself? I’ve been my virtual self?
Ben, who’s our Head of Coaching and Gestalt Psychotherapist explained the Gestalt view of the self to me in that the self is fluid, ever fluctuating and our “self” is unique in every moment and is co-created in our relationships and our environment.
For example, the self I am expressing to you now is one that is co-created through a mixture of the medium (writing), the environment I am currently in (the office) and the past.
This view of the self resonates with me, rather than the more individualistic notion that we have a fixed self that we must find or force ourselves to be, this is a futile chase for perfection that in my life has never been enough.
This relational and more holistic view of the self helps me see that because of the medium and the environment I've not been expressing the type of self I am used to.
In response to the environment I’ve been in I don’t feel like I’ve been giving the world the full version of me and that’s bitter to taste.
There’s much of my old “self” that has been lost. “I want get back to my old self again” is something I've heard said by many people in the past at different times.
Seeing this now plainly, feels glaringly obvious. The world I’ve been living in, the way in which my lifestyle has changed, the way in which we have all been connecting, has deeply affected me.
I find myself concerned for the mental health impact of the pandemic as well as finding myself curious at the unexpected positive benefits too.
I don’t feel concerned for my own mental health, on the whole I believe the pandemic gave me the chance to slow down, stop and ask myself what I really want.
Now I’ve had that time, which I am grateful for, I want to express myself and be in the world which is where I’m noticing the difficulty and the difference.
Everyone will have their own relationship and story of the last year and we’ve all been impacted in different ways.
I haven’t come to any pretty conclusions and there’s still some rambling here.
I hope you may reflect on your own self, how you’ve been impacted, positively or negatively in the last year and that might teach us all something about our mental health and how unequivocally connected we all are to each other and the world around us.
Cheers,
James x
What I'm up to:
I'm reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - loving it.
I'm listening to Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin. It's great and making me think, thanks for the recommendation Soph :)
This is the last piece of Art I made (for my Mum), I sell some prints here
Here's the cover for my book!
We've published an E-book guide on mental health in the workplace for 2021, it's very very good. You can download it here.
I'm rowing 3x a week and loving it!
https://sanctus.community/welcome
Who am I?
I'm not quite sure. I'm the Founder of a Mental Health mission called Sanctus and I'm the Author of a Book; "Mental Health at Work" that's published by Penguin and out in October.
I write this newsletter about mental health, startups and my life, my journey and 8,000 people like it enough to still be here. I try to respond to everyone who emails me, it just takes me a while.