Restoring Hope to Others
By Rak Nathwani, a Wellbeing and Trauma Resolution Coach. As a former Detective working in Counter Terrorism and as a Family Liaison Officer, Rak experienced the mental health trauma that he now heals. His purpose is to restore hope to others.
“In 2013 I experienced a full mental health journey, declining from January. Life just got more challenging as the weeks passed, I was juggling way too many plates: work, home, care, finances until December 2013, when I finally succumbed to the mounting pressures from all sides and the last straw broke the camel’s back.
I broke. I fell off the edge and experienced a full mental breakdown. My whole world imploded and consequently I lost my marriage, my family, my house.
I am here to offer help and hope because I lived the journey, and I rebuilt myself. I have spent the last eight years working at Mind and in the NHS Mental Health Crisis Pathway and Wellness in an Urgent Care setting.
I now use all of those skills, learnings, experiences to offer hope – a light, a way through, to help individuals avoid descending into the dark mental hell I went to when I broke.
At RCW Veterans, not for profit Community Interest Company, we do things differently. I achieve fast and effective long-lasting results for the majority of those referred or self-referring in a ‘Content Free’ way, thus proving that there is no need to dredge up painful memories for those suffering from emotional traumas from the past - whether they experienced bullying, assaults, sexual assaults, rape or PTSD borne out of deployment in our armed forces or emergency services.
We are here to help as many as we can to regain control over their lives. We can help people learn proven strategies and techniques on how to disable and disarm their stressors and triggers and learn how to cope better with the challenges of life.
Here is an example of feedback we received from a veteran that previously engaged with my wellbeing therapies in his own words.
'I am Andy, ex-Navy and Falklands Veteran, 20 years after I served in The Falklands, I was going to take my own life, as many have done since. I was lucky and was caught in the net of Combat Stress where I spent a total of 6 weeks at a treatment centre having CBT. And for a while I was feeling positive about life, but still couldn’t talk about the war years.
Later, I paid for hypnotherapy which again seemed to work for a little while. It seems life is ok until something upsetting happens, like a bereavement or a partner’s cancer diagnosis.
I am fortunate that a good friend told me about Rak, so as I was feeling lower than I had ever felt, I thought I would give it a go.
I spoke to Rak on the phone for about 20 mins and made an appointment with him. I spent four hours with this guy, and I can’t praise him enough. I walked out of the place like a new man, back to the happy Andy I had missed for years. NLP certainly worked for me, and I will be speaking to as many ex-servicemen or women as I can who are suffering.
Rak told me he could help me in one visit, I said “If you could do that, it would be a miracle”. So well done to Rak, the miracle man.”'
My message is to ask for help before you get to the point of breaking down.
We have learned from years of delivering wellbeing solutions that positively transform lives that individuals are often putting on a brave face and if asked how they are – they say “I’m fine” – it is a mask that people wear – you only have to ask a few emotionally charged questions and the mask slips, and then the stresses that seethe just below the surface become very obvious. The situation gets further complicated because people are often too proud to ask for help or feel too embarrassed to admit to having mental health resilience issues, or they feel judged and so on. Consequently a lot of time passes and stress, pain, unhappiness is endured before help is sought.
Indeed, there are often a whole host of considerations that go through the individual’s mind, before they eventually decide to put their hand up and ask for help. At the start they acknowledge internally that they are struggling and suffering, that they feel like a drowning man/woman or they can’t see the wood for the trees.
If they get beyond that hurdle, they think will my friends understand and be supportive or will they judge me? The considerations and evaluations continue - will they feel comfortable declaring their mental health resilience struggle at work? and if they do, “will my work and my work colleagues be supportive, or will they judge me?”
All of these factors impact the readiness to engage, whether the individual feels isolated and withdrawn or has a supportive network around them either as individuals with family and friends, or as a member of a team at work.
Consequently we often see that individuals have experienced years of 'drip, drip, drain', going from being a once capable and successful individual to experiencing a steady decline in mental resilience, leading to their experiencing imposter syndrome. They wake up one morning and don’t recognise the person looking back in the mirror, feeling battered, bruised and unsupported with the words coming out of their mouths as a stream of “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Despite having distinguished careers and being well respected, they themselves often declare that they are a fraud.
Our ex-armed forces community put their lives on the line throughout their deployments and careers and yet often when they leave the armed forces, they feel like they are an afterthought or an inconvenience rather than receiving the follow up mental health support they deserve, to help them deal with what they have seen, experienced and lived through. To make peace with absent friends who never made it back and the whole painful issue of living with survivor guilt, nightmares, anger issues or reliance on alcohol.
Ask for help – before you risk breakdown. I have had hundreds of conversations with veterans who admit that when they first went through that traumatic event on deployment, they were reticent to put their hand up and ask for help. They thought the backlash and fallout of that action would be that the rest of their section may look at them and ask will this person have my back when the proverbial s##t hits the fan? So, they said nothing – grin and bear it - till the end of the tour with a 2-hour input on PTSD after which they were asked “Does anyone in the room have PTSD?’ Well, in a room full of your colleagues, friends, section, company – no-one, actually puts their hand up and says “Yes, me.”
So, then they are off in the world of Civvie Street and back to their homes and families. And again, the pressure to say nothing arises because overall our ex-forces personnel are ‘“rough and tough and proud beasts.” They have to and want to be strong for their families or just won’t ask for help straight away through pride or because saying it out loud might just make it worse – accepting they have a problem.
A large amount of time usually passes before that struggling veteran actually puts their hand up and asks for help. On average 13 years go by and then the hand shoots up – but now it is not to ask for help – more to say, ‘I am crumbling and just about to break’, and this really is too late in many instances.
Firstly, if they want help today and call for a GP appointment, chances are there will be a long wait, often leading to anger outbursts, lowering moods, over reliance on personal coping mechanisms such as alcohol, or drugs or prescription drugs. Moreover, when they finally get that GP appointment, they feel like they have that ‘golden ticket’ from Willy Wonka, they think, ‘I’ll get in front of that doctor, and they are going to sort everything out’.
Alas they get in from of the GP who says “you have ten minutes and you can talk about one thing!” Well people are complex beings. They might be juggling finances, relationships, workloads, time pressures, not to mention sleepless nights, anger issues, pain issues, survivors’ guilt and traumatic upsetting imagery that replays in their minds and pervades their thoughts. This influences their actions and behaviours which often leads to them spiralling out of control.
Invariably SSRI’s (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) feature in these conversations with their GP, in a bid to mitigate the low and depressed mood, then a referral for IAPT – Improving Access to Psychological Therapies or the equivalent (current waiting time to access these services can be 6 weeks, all the way up to 9 months) and we have seen veterans who could not wait that long and went off and did something horrendous.
So let us educate people, veterans, their families, our communities, to recognise their symptoms and get their hands up sooner – to ask for that help before they are ready to break, because then there is a chance to make an improvement in their headspace. They can find help, to learn strategies that can shift their mindset and resolve some of those problematic issues that are deeply embedded and had been suppressed for so long.
To have a clear out of the issues that are past their sell by date, so that the individual has a chance at a fresh start, combined with coping strategies and techniques and yes medication if necessary to then move forward and reclaim their lives – to flourish and yes, I’ll say it – to enjoy life!
Because life is too short. Make it your mission, every day, to be better than you were yesterday and live your life to the full. None of us know how long we have got, and when the grim reaper arrives, you cannot say “it’s not convenient today, come back in a couple of weeks’ time while I get my affairs in order” it just doesn’t work like that.”
My parting words are – if there are people in your life that matter to you for Pete’s sake tell them, hug them, let them know, be the bigger person, offer the olive branch, let bygones be bygones, be kind and live good lives, aim for the stars, tick things off your bucket list - because life really is too short not to. I was never born this wise, I had to break in order to get here, I am now in the best mindset I have ever had and I help people avoid going the dark place I went to."
Rak Nathwani
Rak@rcwveterans.co.uk
www.rcwveterans.co.uk
www.futurecreationassociates.co.uk
