Mental health and Confronting challenge
Stabbing attack aftermath eased for injured Kiwi by ZUU disciplines
Steen Locke made headlines in 2015 when he was the victim of a violent attack in Melbourne that nearly cost him his life. Locke, who grew up in Rotorua, was living and working in Australia at the time of the attack but has since returned to the Bay of Plenty and is now living in Pa¯pa¯moa.
Speaking out for Mental Health Awareness Week, the memories of that fateful night in St Kilda are still vivid.
“I was out with a few friends,” Locke said. “I thinkwewere watching the Warriors game, and decided to go down to the St Kilda pier with a friend. We were just chilling out there.
“I saw a guy arguing with his girlfriend. I looked over tomake sure she was okay and they proceeded to walk past us up the jetty which was quite small.
“I looked over my shoulder and he said to me ‘ What are you looking at?’ and I brushed it off and turned back around and carried on withmy business. Next thing I know I’m getting attacked.”
Locke felt massive blows to his head and back, which knocked him over.
“I hopped ontomy feet and looked down and there was a handle of a knife sticking out of the side of me. Everything went pretty blurry then.
“I had to get my friend to put my jacket over my head because the wound was squirting out blood and proceeded to walk up the jetty about 100 metres, still with the knife sticking out of the side of me.
“I collapsed on the side of the road and woke up in hospital the next morning.”
He said as well as the obvious physical damage, the attack had a devastating impact on his mental health.
“I was always a pretty happy-golucky person. I loved going out, loved socialising, loved being the life and soul of the party. That really put a dampener on my spirit.”
He started suffering from anxiety and didn’t want to leave the house.
“I didn’t want it to ruin my social life but I’d go out and I’d just have massive panic attacks,” he said. “I’d find myself hiding in the bathroom, trying to catchmy breath. Andsneaking off and grabbing an Uber and taking off home and the boys not knowing where I was or what happened.”
While his body healed, his mental health continued to suffer.
“It got worse before it got better. So that turned into depression because I didn’t go out, I was stuck at home.
“Everyone’s living their lives and you’re stuck in your own bubble, in your mind. And it just builds up and builds up and you just keep going further and further down into more anxiety, more depression . . .”
Locke found support with a likeminded group of men, encouraging their fellow “bros” to speak out.
“You don’t want to be the guy at the barbecue that’s having a cry into his beer and ‘killing the vibe’.
“That’s the culture we were raised in, not to be soft,” Locke said.
“You run up to your old man crying and he tells you to harden up and don’t be a sook, don’t be a girl.
I guess, for all the brothers . . . just changing that notion. The bros are there for the good and the bad times.”
Locke turned to exercise to help battle depression and, as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, he signed up to a special “bros only” gym class with Primal Coach Andre Jay.
“We wanted to try to capture some of the boys coming together around physical fitness and taha tinana,” Jay said. “Being physically fit helps us mentally.
“With all the physicality of what fitness does for you. We know that it produces endorphins and dopamine and it hits you in . . . I guess a chemical balance where it starts to promote your mental health.”
Primal Gym specialises in one of the world’s latest fitness trends, ZUU.
“It’s about using your own body weight to be successful,” said Jay.
“You don’t need a big barbell, you don’t need 100kg flicking over your head. You need something that motivates you within yourself.
“Let’s say you’re on the ground and pretending to be a bear, or a caterpillar or an armadillo. These cool names that go with the ZUU movements just give you that motivation to say that ‘I was successful in a cobra’ for instance and what does that mean?
“And learning the process around what ZUU really means . . . it’s not so much the physical movements as about pushing your body and mind to understand that you can persevere through challenge.”
Perseverance is the key for Locke. His advice for anyone struggling with mental health is to reach out, no matter how daunting it may be.