Niall Breslin

Stephen Meyler meets the musican, mental health activist and author

From childhood, everyone has stressful times, when we are faced with points in life when we don’t want to do what we have to do. For musician, mental health advocate and author, Bressie, having the tools to navigate these moments is essential. Until very recently, Irish people were shut out from gaining these skills by a national stigma about all things psychological, but times are changing. It’s fair to say the tireless advocacy of the Mullingar man, urging us above all to start talking about these things, has played no small part in that change. With The Magic Moment, a colourful storybook aimed at four to seven-year-olds, the story of how Freddie, an energetic little boy who loves dinosaurs, learns to overcome his fear with a simple mindfulness trick, Bressie is taking his mental health crusade into the classroom. “I have very vivid memories of my childhood and while I’ve been studying for my Master’s, I got very interested in how young kids navigate life. I wanted to see if I could help kids and their parents find the language to describe and navigate emotions.

For me, mindfulness has a lot of definitions and I feel it’s not just misunderstood but also misrepresented. A great way to describe mindfulness is as a present moment awareness, but really, that means nothing to a child. Mindfulness allows you to become aware of emotion and where you feel it in your body. It helps you understand these are things you can’t run away from.

For kids, when they don’t have the language to describe how they’re feeling, I feel mindfulness can really allow them to have those conversations about emotion without it being too difficult or I suppose, exposing. It gives them a way to talk to their parents and say ‘I am scared and I feel it here and the parents are able to say, well, here’s what we can do.

When you’re a kid and you haven’t started to speak, everything is amazing, everything is wondrous, but as soon as you discover language, you start labelling yourself and thinking, ‘Well, I’m not good enough.’ I think it’s important we never underestimate the power of language and that we protect kids in a world that is becoming far too difficult because they’re dealing with far too much, seeing too. When I was six, my default setting was ‘being present,’ but now, kids are dealing with so much information that it overwhelms them.

The biggest issue I had when I was younger was I never had the language, even in the 90s, when I first started experiencing quite difficult anxiety, I didn’t know what it was. I kept describing it as asthma because I had breathing difficulties and panic attacks, because we knew what asthma was and I saw friends using inhalers. The most frustrating thing for me as a teenager was not being able to turn to someone and say ‘I think I might have issues with anxiety’ or ‘I think I’m having panic attacks’, because I didn’t know what they were.

As an adult, I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder which means it’s just there all the time – I’m unsettled sometimes at night when there’s no reason to be, when I’m watching TV in bed. It’s important to distinguish that from social anxiety, when certain situations bring this unbearable anxiety, like public speaking or performing for large crowds. I don’t have social anxiety, in fact, when I’m in a crowd or performing, I stop thinking, and my head slows down. After many years of practice and working in therapy, I’m very comfortable with myself and I can happily sit by myself. Does that mean my anxiety has gone away? No, it never will, but I have the tools to cope. That’s something I wish I had learned as a teenager.

But you don’t want to talk to young kids about really difficult things because they’re not ready for that. But talking to them about how they feel is a good start, so by the time they are teenagers, they can say, ‘OK, feeling sad isn’t nice, but it’s a normal part of the human condition.’ Nobody gets through this world unscathed; we we all have to deal with some difficulties.

The biggest reaction I’ve been getting when we visit schools with the book is that you’re giving kids a physical cue to go along with their breath and their thoughts. What mindfulness does is to anchor you if you’re feeling a bit scattered or overwhelmed. With kids, if you give them a physical cue – which in the book is Freddie pressing the finger and thumb together on both hands – and get them to think a happy thought and really engage with that and how it makes them feel and where they feel it in their body. Lots of kids will say, ‘Oh, I feel it in my tummy’, and that’s a lovely physical connection to how they’re feeling and they immediately grasp that. They could be in a room full of people and they might get a bit scared, but if they’re able to do this little trick, they can settle themselves down and anchor themselves.”

The Magic Moment by Niall Breslin (Gill Books) is in bookshops now