104 Why Mental Health Matters with Alex Williams | Ways to improve your mental health

In this episode, Ricky interviews Alex Williams, an emotional resilience coach and registered mental health practitioner. Alex shares his personal story of overcoming trauma and discusses the epidemic of mental health in society.

They explore the importance of taking responsibility for our responses to challenges and finding meaning and purpose in life. Alex emphasizes the need for society to prioritize mental health and provides practical tips for building resilience, including focusing on the basics of sleep, nutrition, exercise, and surrounding oneself with good people.

They also discuss Alex's Three Rs framework: release your pain, take responsibility, and develop real self-belief. In this conversation, Ricky and Alex discuss strategies for overcoming setbacks and building a fulfilling life. They emphasize the importance of taking responsibility for one's own direction and adopting a resilient mindset. They also explore the idea of aligning one's life with personal values and finding happiness in the present moment. The conversation highlights the need to prioritize self-care and surround oneself with good people and good experiences.

By listening to this episode, you will UNLOCK...

• Mental health is a significant issue in society, and it is important to prioritize our own wellbeing.
• Taking responsibility for our responses to challenges can empower us to overcome adversity and create a fulfilling life.
• Building resilience requires focusing on the basics of sleep, nutrition, exercise, and surrounding ourselves with good people.
• Finding meaning and purpose in life can help us navigate difficult experiences and maintain mental wellbeing.
• Supporting Gen Z in building resilience involves validating their experiences, providing support, and helping them develop healthy coping mechanisms. Take responsibility for your own direction and approach setbacks with resilience.
• Build a life that aligns with your values and brings you fulfillment.
• Prioritize self-care, surround yourself with good people, and enjoy good experiences.
• Listen to yourself and find happiness in the present moment, rather than comparing your life to societal expectations.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background

02:50 Alex's Personal Story

07:09 The Epidemic of Mental Health

13:19 Taking Responsibility for Our Responses

22:13 Finding Meaning and Purpose

27:27 The Impact of Society on Mental Health

32:47 Supporting Gen Z in Building Resilience

39:47 The Basics of Mental Wellbeing

43:33 The Three Rs Framework

45:24 The Three Rs to Getting Back Up

46:23 Building a Life that Aligns with Your Values

48:19 Listen to Yourself and Find Happiness

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Transcript

Ricky (00:00.206)

The World Health Organization defines health as a state of physical, mental and social well-being. There is a huge epidemic of mental health out there, and I wanted to explore this issue further from dealing with my own mental health struggles over the last couple of years, and also try and understand how can we use this information to unlock the best version of ourselves. So this week, I interviewed Alex Williams, who is an emotional resilience coach and registered mental health practitioner.

from surviving a traumatic childhood led by abuse, which marked the murder of his own mother at the age of eight. He now is helping individuals to overcome those daily obstacles and hurdles and help them to deal with what he didn't have when he was young to help them understand how they can focus on their own wellbeing. It's a fantastic episode and we really deep dive into mental health and how we can apply some basic principles to start focus on our wellbeing. Now, if you haven't subscribed already,

please hit that subscribe button and leave us a review as well. It helps this podcast get shared to more people. But without further ado, enjoy the episode with Alex Williams. Alex, good to see you, mate. Welcome to Unlocked. How you doing? Yeah, really good, Ricky. Thanks for having me today. Good to have you. And obviously this is probably world first as well because obviously this is gonna be out to the world, but some exciting news has just happened for you. Yes, yes. Had my first baby. Not me, literally.

my girlfriend did but yeah, first girl came into the world last week so she'll be seven days old, 11 48 so now one of these parents who yeah people who is describing how old their baby is by days and hours so yeah but yeah it's amazing. Nice yeah yeah. Welcome to the club my friend, welcome to the club. Your iPhone or Android phone whatever will be full of every photo of the world, every angle now of your child so yes and a little girl was it sorry? Yes a little girl called Rosie yeah.

Yeah, this could be who knows Rosie might listen to this one day in the future the very first time you did a podcast when she's born Yeah, well, you know that I was I have been thinking about I think what am I putting out into the world now that my girl Is gonna see and yeah, this might be I'll say to her one day You only seven days old when I recorded this so hopefully you've learned something from it. It's not terrible advice, but I'm sure we could make well. Well, yeah, thanks mate for coming on really interested to talk about this You know

Ricky (02:22.498)

the epidemic of mental health and how I remember as a kid, it wasn't much about this. It was just like book your ideas up son, get on with it. We don't really talk about feelings in this household. But before we dive into it, because I think we're gonna go into quite a lot, I'd love to hear just for the listeners, tell us a little bit about you and tell us a bit about your personal story. So I'm Alex Williams. I am, my background is a...

registered mental health nurse for 19 years now. But I also on the side am a speaker and emotional resilience coach. I mean, essentially, it's all the same thing. It's just I use different tags depending on different environments. I mean, yeah, my background is 19 years working in the NHS clinically, which working with people with severe and enduring mental illnesses, assessing, treating, signposting, kind of just find general support.

helping people to recover from the things that essentially knock us down in life that can affect our mental health. From a personal perspective, what I add in with my speaking and my coaching aspect more so is that I share my own trauma that I went through. When I was a kid, I grew up in a domestically abusive household. This is following my mum and dad splitting up.

My dad had an affair, so my mum fell into an abusive relationship. Witnessed a lot of domestic abuse, especially around him beating up his own children and they were kind of threats towards me and my sister, which my mum managed really well. But by the, when I was at the age of eight, I was kind of living in this household, sleeping kind of in a way you don't realise this is stuff sort of going on. Very naive. It was the middle of the morning, police burst into my bedroom.

And I, I'm going to be honest, Ricky, I was, I was, I feel for my mom because I was a nightmare when I was a kid. But I think probably in retro, when I look in hindsight, it was probably because the environment I was in, but I was, you know, I just misbehaving a lot and stuff. So I kind of was like, well, these police, they might be here, you know, because I thought police were just there to arrest bad people. I thought maybe I've done something wrong and they're here to nick me. And when they were taking me down the stairs in my pyjamas and they put me in the police car, took me to this police station.

Ricky (04:45.878)

and my sister was with me at the time. That's kind of what I thought was happening. I just had no idea what I was about to walk into. But then these police sat me down and said, um, your mum's dead, Alex. To me and my sister. And obviously I didn't know much at the time, but then a couple of days later from watching the news, I found out she'd been killed by my stepdad. So then my world kind of went from being a very, well, it wasn't normal because of the environment I was in, but.

what felt like, you know, I had a mum, I had a dad, I had grandparents, I was at school. It felt to me relatively normal, but then to be suddenly the kid who everyone else has got a mum, I haven't. And she hasn't just gone like, you know, through something not normal, but you know, like an illness or something like, she's been killed by someone, you know, who I was living with, and she was in the room next door to me. So my world kind of changed in that sense. And, but...

Speaking about, you know, mental health and like you just said about how we used to get taught to just get on with it That was kind of how I was raised immediately following that situation And you know what on the outside I grew up in an environment where I had money. I had lots of money You know, my dad was a successful lawyer He basically his way of raising us was like right I'm gonna send give you everything you need financially You know materialistically big house loads of land

stuff like that. So from the outside, it looked like almost we've fallen into a dream scenario, given what I've been through. But that kind of attitude of, well, you just need to get on with it. You know, we didn't really ever speak about it. We never spoke about what happened whenever we were, I was upset about anything. It was kind of like, you just had to get on with it, be grateful for what you do have because I've been given all this stuff. I should be happy. So really all that kind of emotion.

and grief I was experiencing, I just stuffed it all down. Stuffed it all down and in a way, I thought I was being resilient, you know? But really I was just people pleasing. I didn't want, I wasn't sharing what I was really feeling with my dad and the environment I was with because I didn't want to upset them. So I wasn't really being resilient. I was just suppressing and repressing what I was going through. But I wasn't mentally unwell, you know? I was just cracking on with life. You know, I was good at football. I messed around at school, but I wasn't in the worst situation. And I kind of...

Ricky (07:09.662)

live my life like that but I didn't really ever know what I wanted to do with my life. You know, I kind of in underneath all this, this kind of seed that I never really, this wound that I never got to look at kind of became this kind of weed within me that I wasn't aware of where I was kind of, oh I've got a murdered mum, yes I've got this stuff but I'm damaged, I can't really do anything and equally I've got a dad who I just want to impress and please him as best I can. So I kind of the that...

that light within me that kind of had this curiosity to explore and try new things in the world, kind of just dampened out. So as I got, as I left school, left sixth form, I didn't really get any good grades because I just was messing around and I didn't really know what I wanna do in my life. And I fell into mental health nursing, which it turns out was a good thing. But people asked me, Alex, why did you become a mental health nurse? Why did you get into mental health? And I was like, well, they paid me to do it and I had nothing else to lose.

you know, and it wasn't a lot of money, but it was a bursary and it was good. So I was like, wow, this is great, you know? And I thought, well, if I do fail, then it doesn't matter. You know, I've got nothing to lose. And it turns out I loved it. And I was one of these people on my three years training where you have loads of different placements and different clinical settings and environments. You learn loads of stuff, you know, about biology, the psychology, social aspects, trauma, all this stuff. And it was amazing. And I come out and I was like, oh, this is good. But.

behind all that while I was helping everyone else, you know, doing all this stuff, my kind of that unaddressed wound and wounding I had growing up was kind of still there eating away at me and I, although my life again, feel like it felt like it was going good, that kind of wound would come unraveling like romantic relationships and stuff like that where I'd never been with anyone horrible, but like when things went wrong, it was almost like my life fell apart. It was like, I just felt awful.

I just felt like I was losing my mum, I was losing my dad, all these kind of relationships I had growing up. It was kind of almost, again, I wasn't aware of this, but that was what was happening. But when I got to the age of 34, 35, I had my own house, so I was engaged. It kind of felt like I was finally achieving something. You know, I never had any aspirations in my life because of what happened to me. I believed I just couldn't ever achieve anything meaningful, so to actually feel like I was

Ricky (09:34.006)

had my own house felt like, you know, you've done something with your life, Alec, you've, you've beat your trauma. But then that all fell apart. And then I went from having a house. I went from, you know, having this amazing, well, felt like an amazing relationship, it wasn't, but you know, it felt like it was at the time, um, to absolutely nothing. And that was the final kind of tipping point for me where I suddenly was like.

it made, I felt suicidal, I was making plans to end my life. I was like, who, you know, I felt like it didn't matter because I felt like no one around me, there was no one around me really, my mum was dead, my dad's relationship with him, it was conditional on me being who he wanted me to be and you know, the person I loved at the time didn't want to be me anymore. So I was like, well, I don't feel like it don't matter, I feel like I'm unlovable on top of that because no one, none of these people around me are with me anymore and also I just felt like I wasn't good enough because I couldn't.

I wasn't achieving anything, everything I felt I had, I just felt like it was nothing. So I was like, what's the point? I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be here anymore. But I mean, I don't believe, it's hard because it feels like one of these light bulb moments to me, but around the time, and this coincided with the work I was doing in mental health and leads me to do a lot of what I do now, is that at the time I was seeing so many people who were going through

awful things and you could kind of predict who was going to have a mental health challenge because of what was going on around them. So it wasn't like there was they with a problem, it's just like all this stuff's happened to them so of course you're going to feel awful about life, you're going to feel awful about yourself. But I was like wondering like well, what if we were taught how to respond to these things growing up, you know, education isn't the best, we know it can improve but there are good things about education but one thing we don't really teach is resilience, we don't teach...

how to get back up when life knocks us down. We literally get told, we go to school, we do our best if we get a bad grade, we kind of get put in a lower set of academic ability, and we start internalized. No one goes, oh, by the way, you might better go up. They kind of go, well, that's who you are, and this is what you're gonna be, and this is all you're gonna achieve, kind of, you know, not directly, but that's kind of often the message, especially when I was at school, what we got told. So I remember thinking, well, what if we could teach people how to do this?

Ricky (11:55.714)

how to approach, what does it really take to keep it really simple? But how can we overcome these setbacks? So that was already going on in my mind at the time I was really feeling low. And I didn't want to go down the traditional mental health route. Because as much as I think it gets a bad rep mental health services, it isn't like it's often portrayed in media. I equally knew that I wasn't going to get probably what...