I’m trying to be the best role model for my boys
WHEN I left home at 17 to go to university and study PE, I found the isolation very difficult.
Everyone was socialising but I felt out of place and went from being a confident social person to anti-social.
I was plagued by self-doubt and began questioning my own ability as my confidence took a battering.
When you have low self-esteem, you start having self-destructive thoughts. It escalated until, aged 18, I dropped out.
Finlay was at university. I thought he was having a great time, in stark contrast to my life back home in Lanark where I considered myself a disappointment and a dropout.
Mum encouraged me to see a GP who sent me away with medication which I never took thinking, with typical male bravado, I’d be fine.
Between 18 and 24, I was living with depression.
I had a job in a leisure centre, was engaged to Angela and we had a baby, Jason, who is now nine, so there were lots of good moments but I always had a nagging at the back of my mind.
Angela knew I beat myself up and that I had black days.
Normally I found something to pull me out of the blackness but that became harder to do and irrational thoughts began to over.
My depression came to a head at 24 when I tried to take my own life. It was almost a snap decision, catching me and my family unaware.
Fortunately my parents found me in time. From there it was almost like wiping the slate clean.
I could finally look actively at recovery and acknowledge my anxiety and depression.
Cognitive behavioural therapy helped me separate the nonsense going on in my head from the rational stuff. Then I found a counsellor whose action plan was taking a day at a time.
We met every day and would look at the positives from that day. Then we’d make the spacing longer, meeting every week, setting mini goals and identifying the positives.
I began to use physical exercise to help me burn off my frustration and when we found out Angela was pregnant with Lucas, now three, it was further inspiration to get fit and I took up bodybuilding.
Now I’m just trying to be the best role model I can be for my boys and I’m enjoying what I’m doing with bodybuilding.
It’s taken me from someone who was 20st and couldn’t look in the mirror to putting myself on stage in front of thousands of people and feeling comfortable.
Young people put so much pressure on themselves and when you leave school, you think you only have one road to go down, such as university.
But that road can be whatever you make it. I think the pressure I put on myself was the starting point of a slow but downward spiral.
Actively making sure your mental health is in check is important.
I think if you don’t, you can leave yourself open to having some form of mental health problem and if you’ve had it before the chances if it happening again are a lot higher.
Now I try to make the most of every day and try to inspire other people to do the same.