Its okay not to feel okay - thoughts on mental health week and the military/civil service experience.

It’s okay to not be okay. A simple phrase, but one that is increasingly heard in conversations around modern society. During Mental Health Awareness Week (13-19 May) the MOD has been particularly effective at raising the issues of mental health and talking about how people feel. There has been a lot of coverage on social media and elsewhere on this critical issue.

One of the most positive developments of the last few years is the slow and steady removal of the supposed ‘stigma’ of admitting that you are not feeling great in yourself. The military is a very macho culture built on projecting an image of self-confidence, calm reassurance and trying to show that you are in complete control of the situation.

When you observe a group of thrusting staff officers in any social situation, the one thing that stands out is the sheer confidence emanating from them as a group, and how everyone tries to project out that they are in control. It is in some ways exhilarating, and in others ways incredibly intimidating for anyone who feels less than 100% about themselves.

There is a wider perception too that anyone who is in the military and who wants to go to war must be a naturally resilient person, able to cope with anything the world can throw at them. The embodiment of what it means to be tough, there used to be a culture of looking down at people who didn’t share this approach. It was emphatically not ‘okay’ to not be okay.

Merlin decoy firing over Basra - OP TELIC 

The cultural change seems to have been driven by recognition that the military are brilliant at fixing broken bodies – from the astounding heroism of the MERT teams flying into incredibly dangerous situations in HERRICK to save lives, through to the long term rehabilitation services offered by Defence Medical Services, the Armed Forces have done a great job of helping the physical recovery of so many people.

The shift needed has been to accept that the mind is something that needs to be looked after too. When deployed people see and hear things that are not always normal, and that can generate huge mental pressure and stress. If this isn’t picked up on and listened to, then people can struggle to cope with the pressure of everyday life.

The move to get people to unwind and let go is not always straight forward – while during HERRICK the armed forces did a great job of operating Camp Bloodhound in Cyprus for returnees from Afghanistan, giving them a few days to relax, paradoxically, many resented the ‘mandatory fun’. Being so close to home yet being forced to stay in Cyprus did not sit well with everyone, particularly individual returnees who often knew few if any of the people around them.

But getting the chance to decompress and slowly filter through experiences and understand and comprehend what happened and what you have gone through is really important to help your long term mental recovery. Operational tours place huge mental stress on people, both during and afterwards, and a poorly judged return can quickly cause long term problems.

Waiting for a ride at Basra Palace - Royal Navy Seaking Mk4

I recalls my first operational tour, in Iraq, as a civil servant, where I returned after 6 long months away from home. I left Basra late one night, and 8 hours later found myself on the ground in Brize Norton, had to find my own way home, and I wasn’t expected back to work for several more weeks.

Frankly, the experience of going in considerably under 24hrs from Basra where the routine of 14-16hr days for months and dealing with some challenging issues to being at home on my own in London without anyone with a frame of reference to understand what I was going through was really difficult.

This was exacerbated by suffering from stress linked to an incident in a helicopter one night during a routine troop lift that didn’t go entirely to plan. Although everyone walked away from it, the sense of helplessness and of feeling, frankly, very scared while in the back of an RAF cab that was being flung all over the sky in what felt like a very real battle for survival was something that triggered nightmares for some months to come.

When added to wider self-induced mental pressures (the classic quarter life crisis coming home to roost) then frankly this wasn’t a great place for me to be in. Relations in work went sour, tempers flared and I had an enormous sense of being isolated, alone and that no one understood what I was going through.

The one thing I wanted, craved even, was to be back in Iraq, back in Basra with my friends and oppos and back doing the job I had loved. I wanted to go back to the mortaring, the danger and the excitement because it made me feel alive and valued, and not a socially isolated individual in London who felt lonely and worthless. Being away as an individual, and a civil servant, I didn’t have any unit to fall back on, or support network looking out for me. In short, I really needed external assistance but didn’t know how to get it.

Low flying and high adrenaline - When I
took a Puma into Baghdad's Green Zone

It took the well-timed intervention from someone who recognised I was struggling to suggest I go away and find some support in the MOD welfare system. But at the time the MOD didn’t really do support for civil servants and it was incredibly hard to find any docking point in the system to try and talk to someone. I eventually found a part of the welfare service who were a bit confused about how they could help me, or what they could do to help. After a fairly unhelpful chat, I never heard from the again. Over time I gradually returned to something approaching normalcy, although I still found myself frustrated and wishing I was back on tour.

I next deployed a few years later to Afghanistan, this time as a reservist, where I was working in a fairly challenging role. What was notable was the sense that the moment I walked down the  aircraft steps onto the runway at Kandahar, and smelt the air, I felt that I was back in my element. The stench of smelly diesel fumes and portaloos is, for me at least, the trigger for ‘campaign memories’.

My HERRICK was far less eventful, but notable by the much stronger emphasis on mental resilience, although again as a reservist, there was a sense that no matter how good the regular support network, you always felt a bit of an outsider compared to the strong bonds of a regular unit. But this time I knew in myself the warning signs for what to look out for when I returned, and that I knew to raise my hand early now and not hide away in silence.

It also highlighted the differences of deploying when you have someone else to care about, but also the challenges they face when, particularly as the wife of a reservist or civil servant, the support network did not exist to look after them. When my wife heard I was writing this article, she asked me to say how challenging it was to be the wife of a deployed individual when she knew no one in the system and had no support or places to get help from. While the policy may have been there some years ago to offer support, the practical implementation of it was lacking. It is almost certainly better today.

View from a Puma - downtown Baghdad...

I don’t for one moment think or claim to have PTSD. I do think and feel strongly though that we need to encourage an open culture of talking to people about our experiences and saying openly how we feel and why we feel that way. There is nothing wrong with saying ‘I’m feeling confused because I miss being on tour despite the fact that I hated parts of being on tour’. I utterly loathed vast chunks of my last tour – outside of these theatres, when I felt unhappy, lonely, isolated and often genuinely depressed – all I wanted to do was get it over with and get home. 

Yet, despite this, I still feel a hankering to get back on a ‘proper tour’ and all that this entails – the long hours, the risk, the rigour and the danger. There are times I miss the adrenaline that comes from going outside the wire, knowing that even in a relatively benign environment the risks were still high. Oddly I still feel a fraud in some ways - my HERRICK was benign and low risk at a time when the Army was suffering appalling casualties down south. 

I miss the unconventional life and the way the surreal becomes routine. I don’t miss but can’t ever forget watching the coffins of young service personnel being loaded onto aircraft to begin the long flight home at sunset in Basra Air Station. But most of all I miss the people.  It gets under your skin and you love to hate it but later hate that you miss it.

There is nothing wrong with talking about the bits you miss, why you miss them and coming to terms with this. It’s an essential part of the mental recovery process. For me, I’ve learned that the best way to handle this is to try to talk openly about how I’m feeling and tell people when I’m having a bad day. I’ve learned that I can be physically utterly fine, but I’ll sometimes have days where something utterly minor will trigger me into feeling depressed, low and extremely frustrated with myself. Its not about having flashbacks or triggers – its just that sometimes we all have days where we’re not feeling ourselves.

Waiting for the helicopter to depart out of the Green Zone

I’m not afraid to talk openly and honestly about my experiences, and why they made me feel the way I did. I’m also open to recognising my mental strengths and weaknesses, and spotting what works for me and what would make me very unhappy. I realise now that being on tour and coming back from tour gave me the mental arsenal required to spot behaviours that had always been there, but which I didn’t know how to cope with. Going on operations didn’t make me mentally frail – it just made me recognise the behaviours that had always been present and what to do about them.

I also recognise that its easy to be hard on yourself and spot failings that no one else sees or recognises. Yet, I’ve also learned that the same people telling you ‘don’t be so silly, of course that’s rubbish’ will often admit to having similar experiences themselves. We all face inner battles to come to terms with who we are, and we need help to sometimes fight them together.

I’ve learned that its better to be open and honest about how you are feeling with colleagues and management and flag up when you’re not feeling okay, or if something is not working for you. Equally its about communicating the pressure you feel and asking for help to fix it. I’m a worrier, and my big weakness is that I worry constantly that I’m failing, that I’m no good at my job and that I’m a fraud while everyone around me knows what they’re doing. I often feel like an imposter in the room and worry I’ll be found out. When I’m alone and feeling low, I’ll often berate myself for not being good enough at what I’m doing, and mentally tear myself to pieces.

There isn’t any deep reason for this, but I’ve worked out with a bit of trial and error that these feelings of insecurity and worry usually trigger when I end up in jobs where I’m doing work that I’m not naturally suited for. The thing I’ve learned is to be honest on my strengths, show what I’m incredibly good at, and talk honestly about what I’m not so hot on.

Hesco Bastion decorated with Army Men - Allenby Lines, Basra

I recognise now that what I feel isn’t anything unusual, but as a society we’re perhaps afraid of admitting that we’re not always on top of our game. Particularly in the military and other cultures built on values of strength and self-confidence where a highly assertive culture and successful culture can prevent people from feeling like they’re able to express doubts about themselves.

I’ve also learned that its really important to be honest to people about how you are feeling, as the chances are they’re feeling the same thing too. I suspect many people reading this article probably have similar conversations with themselves everyday and worry about things that I worry about, but don’t feel that they can have this chat with their management chain.

If you lead, manage or work with civil servants or reservists who have deployed then hopefully this article has given you an insight into the mental experience we and our families have gone through after the deployment, and perhaps what coming home is like for us.

If you are a wider manager of people and feel this way, then remember that the team you lead is full of people who probably feel like you do occasionally. Think about whether you can amend or change your style and approach to make people feel they can flag up in an appropriate manner that they’re having a difficult day. There should be no sense of shame or stigma in highlighting that sometimes you find the going a bit tough. Lead by example in this respect.

Saturday night hop in a Merlin from Palace to Basra Air Station
It became easy to become hooked on this lifestyle. I still miss it.

Similarly, if you have a member of staff who is struggling, ask yourself whether this is because they are a right fit for an organisation with their skills, or if there is a way you can help them by shifting or tweaking their role on the team to one that plays to their strengths.  I had an experience where I was in a role that I found very difficult because it required me to employ skills that were not my natural strength – it was making me unhappy, and my performance was suffering a bit as a result.

A well-judged intervention by a management chain which had spotted that something wasn’t right, and that I clearly wasn’t happy in my role as designed meant that we could work together to identify a role which felt a much more comfortable fit. My performance significantly improved, and I became mentally much happier and more comfortable in my performance again. I will always be grateful for a leadership team that realised that work is more than about just putting bums on seats and setting objectives. Its about making sure the right bum is on the right seat with the right skills to meet the objectives in hand.

Good leadership and management isn’t just about delivery of targets or meeting quotas. Its about recognising that the people you lead are as fragile, vulnerable and equally are as amazing and wonderful as you are. This isn’t an option for everyone but if you can work with your team to identify how to link performance, role and mental wellbeing, you stand a chance of building a stronger, more resilient and more effective team overall.

This is where the Civil Service is particularly good – since the return from Iraq, it has significantly tightened up its attention on the mental welfare of deployed civil servants and ensured they are well looked after. There is a heavy emphasis on resilience and wellbeing that recognises that good teams result from looking after people as a total package. There is much to be proud of here.

It is important to recognise then in Mental Health Week the importance of having open conversations and talking to your team and friends – not only about how you feel, but how they feel too. This won’t always be easy or straightforward, but the more it is normalised and handled appropriately, the easier others will find it to open up and talk. Your leadership by example may make a major change for the better to someone else’s life.

Please, never forget to make clear that it is okay to not be okay.