Read the full transcript of Jake Tyler’s talk titled “”I’m Fine” – Learning To Live With Depression” at TEDxBrighton 2018 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
JAKE TYLER: Wow. Hi. Alright. How’s it going? How are you feeling?
That shouldn’t be up there yet. Okay. How are we all doing? Awful. Awful.
Not you. What you did was absolutely fine. I’m talking about the torturous engagement tactic that I just used. I hate that when the person comes out and they start doing the thing, and they ask the whole room, a whole room full of people at the same time how they’re doing. Because the only thing you can really say in response to that is like, “Ah,” or whatever you just did. And that is an appropriate answer to how you’re doing.
In any other situation, you know, I could be shopping in Woolworths in 1994. And then I’d go up to, I’d see a mate in there looking at the Furbies, and I’d be like, “Hey, Gordon. You know, how’s it going?” If Gordon just turns around and goes like that, just howls at the strip lighting at the top like some mad, citified nineties wolf, I’m going to think, “What a freak,” and just turn around, leave my basket of pogs there, and just walk off. But, yeah, when people ask me how I’m doing, I say I’m fine, generally.
Living with Depression
I think that’s what everybody does. But for me, that’s not a real appropriate answer either because for me, it’s a way of deflecting the question. It’s like a reflex. And deflecting that question is something I’ve got really good at because a lot of the time I’m not fine. In fact, I live with depression and deflecting people away from what’s really going on with me is just what I do.
When you get really convincing at pretending that you’re okay, people just assume you are. Much like a lot of you thought there was nothing wrong with me when I first came out here. None of my friends, family, anybody knew anything was wrong with me until maybe a year and a half ago when I decided to tell them. I’ve been secretly living with dark thoughts and self-loathing for, you know, most of my adult life, and saying I’m fine and not addressing it and not letting anybody in is just a bad move, you know. And the more things that have happened to me over the last year, the more I’ve sort of realized that it’s like putting a plaster over cancer.
You’re not dealing with anything. Last April was the worst time for me. I was living with a feeling I can’t even describe. I still can’t. I have to now, obviously.
But if I was to choose one word, it would be something like “overwhelm.” I remember lying in bed one morning and I was overwhelmed because I was trying to remember what feeling happy felt like, and I couldn’t remember. And I thought there’s no point in living if I can’t actually remember how to be happy anymore. I’d had suicidal thoughts before as everyone who suffers from depression surely does. But I always knew I’d never really go through with it because of the pain and, you know, everything that would be caused to people that were close to me is, you know, what a great deterrent that is.
I just couldn’t do that. But that morning when I lay in bed, depression had completely taken over my thoughts. It manipulated and it lied its way into making me think that ending my own life wasn’t just best for me, but actually it would be best for everybody. Because that is what depression does. It overpowers you. It takes the wheel and it steers you away from everyone and everything you love, and it takes you down a dark tunnel. And when you’re in that tunnel, it hugs you and it tells you that this is where you’re supposed to belong.
I called my mom that morning but it wasn’t because I needed help. I thought I was beyond help. I called her because I thought that day I was going to take my own life and I called her to hear her voice one last time.
Not only does my mom love me, I think, she knows me better than anyone and also she’s a mental health professional and I think by the tone of my voice the kind of things that I was saying, she knew something really serious was up and the love I heard in her voice, she managed to bring me back for a second. And in that second, she suggested that together we get me some help, and that’s kind of all it took. I went to my GP the next day and I did something I thought I’d never do. I told someone I didn’t know what was going on inside my own head, and after a little conversation about depression, he asked me a question I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked myself. He said, “Do you actually want to die or do you just not want to feel like this anymore?”
I thought what an important distinction to make because when you’re in that fog, you cannot, you can’t ask yourself questions like that. My depression doesn’t hit me like a sledgehammer out of nowhere, and neither does it leave with sudden relief like waking up from a nightmare. It creeps in and then it creeps away again. It’s like taking a painkiller for a headache. You don’t know the instant your headache’s gone. You just realize it’s been gone a while.
I realized I was feeling better, when I was out walking the dog one day, and I realized I’ve walked the thing 12 miles. And everything just… Everything I just… And I was perfectly happy doing that. And it just felt good. You know?
And this sounds weird, but everything looks normal again.
All the colors look how they should be because depression kind of lowers the saturation on everything for me, and everything just looked good. It just felt good. It was like the part of my brain that had conked out six months before had just spluttered back into life and all these… my excitement and motivation and appreciation of beauty, all this sort of thing, it suddenly started to come back online. And I was beginning to remember what feeling happy felt like.
The Idea for a Journey
And I put it all down to the walking. I put it… Well, not all of it. But I put it down to being outside and making that first step into talking, you know. And I had an idea. I went into town straight away and I bought a map of Great Britain.
And I sat frantically circling all the parts of the country that I thought would inspire me to stay outside the whole, you know, then just to kind of keep this good feeling going. And, I thought in turn if I document that, then I might inspire other people who’ve been through what I’ve been through to get outside as well. Once I’d circled all the bits of Great Britain that I wanted to see, I put a big line through them all and this route appeared in front of me. I’m like, “Yes. I’m doing that. I need to do that.” That was the easy bit, obviously. The hard bit wasn’t getting myself match fit, which was really hard. You should have seen me. It wasn’t researching and sourcing the kit I needed.
It wasn’t plotting my route to the end. It was telling people what I was… not so much what I was going to do, but why I was going to do it because it meant coming clean finally. All these feelings I’ve been so ashamed of for so long, all this stuff that I thought compromised who I am as a person, I had to tell them all. It was the worst thing I ever had to do and the best thing I ever did. The response absolutely floored me and I couldn’t believe the amount of people that were going through the same kind of thing I was going through.
And all of a sudden I realized that this was important. This is something I really, really have to do. The name I gave my 3,000 mile hike around Great Britain was Black Dog Walks. 6 Weeks later, I stood at Brighton Pier and just started heading west. All I had on me ironically were the things that I needed to survive.
The Journey Begins
In a week, I’d reached Bournemouth. In a month and a half, I’d reach Land’s End. And at this point, it was all about promoting exercise and being outdoors as a way of managing mental health and raising money for the Mental Health Foundation. But by the time I got up to Wales, I’ve been gone for so long the thing had turned from a challenge into a lifestyle, where I would… I’d found a way to live in the moment. Serendipitous encounters with strangers and being immersed in nature all the time.
And having the feeling like you’re living completely in the moment is like gold dust to a depressive. By the time I’ve made it into North Wales, climbed Mount Snowdon and come back, I was getting messages from people all over the country. And I couldn’t believe how open people were being about their own experiences, and how much this was connecting with people. And I know it’s something really really interesting. A lot of people who got in touch with me hadn’t actually told anyone else.
I was the first person they were telling, and they just like, “No one… no one else can understand.” And I remember having that feeling as well, because everything in my life led me to my depression, that awful feeling. You know, the situation I’ve been in, the people in my life, the decisions I’ve made, Everything has just reached that one moment. I thought how the hell is anyone going to understand that? And every… that was the thread that was running through all these conversations I was having with people.
They were like, “No one’s going to understand me because I’ve been through this, this, this, this, and this.” And I realized it’s not… that’s not what we should be talking about. It’s the feeling itself. Because depression is huge. Like, it’s the biggest, most inclusive club in the world.
Like, anyone can join. It’s evolving all the time. But its biggest trick is convincing everyone who’s part of that club that they’re the only member. Isn’t that clever? And everyone thinks that their stuff is the worst.
No one’s ever had it as bad as me and all the guilt that goes with that and everything. But that’s because we’re talking about the wrong things, we start talking about the feeling itself, then people can get on board with that. People know what that’s like and that’s when things turn into a community.
Mind Over Marathon
Last November, I experienced the true nature of community when I did this. We’re involved in a BBC documentary where I and nine other people with mental health problems decided to tell our stories to the nation and run the London marathon together.
Initially, I thought it was just going to be a, you know, something about mental health and endorphins and all the things I’ve been trying to sum up within the walk, but as it went on, I realized that running was the backdrop and it was more the community and the achievement and all these things that running led to that were having a real positive impact on my mental health. Movement is the words my coach Chevy, who’s that guy, uses instead of exercise, I think. I still don’t quite know how his brain works and that’s why I love it. But movement sort of isn’t just about exercise. It’s about moving forward.
It’s about progression. It’s about working on yourself physically and mentally and being there for other people. But being in the documentary, I mean, I was communicating by, you know, doing the walk before through video blogging, but I had the kind of safety net there of talking about it for, you know, talking into my phone on my own and having the luxury of being able to trim out some of the waffle that some of the stuff that I thought wasn’t necessary later on before I posted it as a video blog. What Mind Over Marathon told me to do or forced me to do even was to put an unedited version of myself out there. And that’s when I realized what a great leveler talking about your mental health openly is.
Nobody’s above anyone else in that conversation. I think a lot of how we present ourselves is run by ego and status, and I think a lot of that, it governs how, you know, the things that we do and what we say. The discussion about mental health seems to suspend all that and it levels the playing field, and that’s great because it’s a reminder that really we’re all on the same team. We all have mental health and the more we learn about each other’s, the more we learn about our own. Whether it was talking to one of the guys, my coach, you know, Nick Knowles, Prince Harry, you know, I don’t know if I’ve got a picture of Prince Harry actually.
Oh, yeah. I totally do. So when we announced that we were having our first child. That’s libelous. That didn’t happen.
I didn’t impregnate Prince Harry on the set of Mind Over Marathon. It’s important that you know that. But I love this picture because we do look like mates and then we look relaxed. That’s because I’ve had… I’ve been lucky enough to have… look, Will, probably probably in the background there. We’d had this conversation, this fifteen minute, twenty minute long conversation.
I was asking him how he was doing. He was asking me how I was doing. It was real. We’d leveled it all out, like and I didn’t feel beneath him. Prince Harry fell on top of him.
That stops now. That stops now. And breaking down the invisible barriers that society creates for us, barriers which make us question our place in the world, it’s just good for everybody. Talking about mental health is what’s best for society because deep down everyone craves human connection.
Continuing the Journey
The walk’s still going on. I came down from Inverness. I’ve walked over 2,000 miles. And after this, I’ll be heading back up there to finish it up. I’ll be up to John O’Groats and then head back to Brighton. Hopefully, finish sometime this winter.
So I’m not going to finish on that because it’s not done yet. I want to finish on something that I have achieved and something I’m proud of, because I want to show that in the face of depression, people can achieve big things and that’s a powerful thing.
A Powerful Conclusion
This is something I wrote, the day after I ran the London marathon and a year after I lay in bed that day about to kill myself. As I approach the marker at mile 26, my body begins to feel heavy. It feels like with every step that I take another layer of clothing goes on.
By the time me and Poppy march past the Houses of Parliament, I feel like I’m wearing a suit of armor, and then we run. The last point two miles is harder than the 26 before it. It’s almost impossible. 800 meters to go, 600 meters to go, 400. I feel like I’m running through water.
200. The crowd’s cheer snaps me back into reality and I realize what’s happening, where I am, and what I’m about to do. I reach out and I grab Poppy’s hand and do my best to hold it up, but I’m so weak I could barely lift my own arm. Our feet pound the road in unison, both knees strapped up as we finally cross the line in five hours and fifty-two minutes. And as my pace drops and I begin to walk, I feel strangely calm.
I glide over to the people that have been there with me over the last six months. As I watch them cry and hug and congratulate, I take a step back and I make a promise to myself. That whenever I feel worthless, whenever I feel worthless, whenever I feel alone and ashamed of the feelings I’m feeling, I’ll play this moment over and over again in my head until it goes away. Because the feeling I have right now, I don’t want to die. I want to live forever.
