Sometimes the most powerful thing a person can do is ask for help and then, one day, offer it to someone else.
Steve knows that journey better than most. After years of living with undiagnosed depression, navigating the breakdown of a marriage, the loss of a close friend, and redundancy after 25 years in the events industry, he finally found his way to counselling. It changed everything.
What began as a search for his own middle ground became something much bigger. Today, Steve is a qualified counsellor himself supporting others through the very struggles he once faced alone.
This is his story, in his own words.
“I didn’t know I was depressed and it is only when I look back that I can now see that my ongoing low mood and my diagnosis for dysthymia (persistent depression) was the reason for my life feeling so hard and difficult to deal with.
I had got to the point where I couldn’t continue in this way and went to see a counsellor but I was a very long time in making that move. Like so many men I was of the mindset ‘just get on with it’ but it just all got too heavy.
I was referred to a GP and with the help of anti-depressant medication, which eased the extreme lows I was able to find some middle ground that allowed me to embark on counselling support and a way forward.
I can see now how my depression contributed to the breakdown of my first marriage. I experienced another life blow, losing a friend of almost thirty years who passed while still young – I was devastated. I subsequently faced redundancy after 25 years of working in the events sector as Covid hit.
Over time counselling has helped me so much – it has also given me tools that I can use, I can now help pull myself out of depression without sinking too far. I still marvel at how much relief it brings to talk to someone without editing yourself.
How many of us feel unable to answer the question ‘how are you?’ honestly. It’s almost as if in the act of talking you are listening to yourself and hearing what’s really going on for you, and what you are feeling.
It was a safe space to explore and reframe my interpretation of life’s events and my own thinking. I think that accessing how we feel about things is particularly difficult for some men – it’s a skill or like a muscle which we just were not taught how to use; there is so much in our culture still that makes it unacceptable to appear anything less than strong or ‘manly’. It takes courage and strength to face what we don’t understand.
My redundancy gave me the opportunity to dramatically change my life direction and I embarked on training to become a counsellor myself. I had been helped so much that I wanted to be able to help others. Now here I am a qualified counsellor supporting both men and women.
I see so much relief, particularly in men when they feel safe enough to be fully themselves, that they are not alone, that there is support for them. I feel we need to be more open in normalizing counselling for men.
I hope that in sharing my experience that it is part of that openness that we all need so that we can easily share “I went to my counselling session today” as part of any conversation. Now that would be real progress.”