I’d been carrying around so much trauma
FOOTBALLER TROY DEENEY TELLS ABI JACKSON ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF THERAPY AND HOW GOING TO JAIL TAUGHT HIM THAT HE IS NOT INVINCIBLE
TROY DEENEY experienced an unexpected side-effect after starting therapy.
“I did quite a few sessions and what I realised was, I kept sleeping really heavily afterwards. I used to sleep four hours a night through my 20s, and now I’ll get nine hours, I’ll be sleeping like a bear,” says the Birmingham City FC captain.
Troy asked his therapist at the time why that might be happening.
“He said it was just weight coming off. Your body’s going to have all this weight it’s been carrying, and now your mind’s going, ‘Oh, we can relax’.
“I didn’t understand why I was so twitchy and ready to go all the time,” adds the footballer, who grew up in Chelmsley Wood, just outside Birmingham, and has been in and out of therapy for over a decade. “It was because I was carrying around so much trauma.”
This trauma is something Troy explored in his 2021 memoir, Redemption: My Story – about growing up with abusive father Paul Anthony Burke, the complicated emotions that followed, and how doing 10 months in jail in 2012 for affray – after a night out ended with a violent brawl, ultimately led to him turning his life around.
“I lost my gran, granddad and my dad in the space of 15 months, three of the five people that raised me, which led me to start drinking and lashing out,” he recalls.
It coincided with his football career taking off, which Troy says was a case of: “Boom – I’d gone from having £180 a week to having £5,000 a week.
“I’m from nothing, we were just scraping by, like a lot of the country is at the moment, and it led me into a really weird place of everyone telling me I was doing things right, but I was really struggling.
“Going to jail made me realise that A – I’m not invincible, and B – it forced me to talk to a psychologist.
“I was 21 and I’m 34 now, so I’m 13 years deep in, five different therapists, four different ways of doing it, but each one of them has worked for me at certain stages. That’s why I’m in a better position to be able to talk to people now, from a place of lived experience,” he says.
Talking about mental health and the importance of providing boys and men with the tools and space to deal with things in a healthy way is something Troy has become passionate about.
He’s now teamed up with Nivea Men on the second phase of their Strength In Numbers campaign.
Earlier this month, Troy and Birmingham City FC’s Jobe Bellingham, brother of England star Jude, lead the brand’s first Head Skills Academy training day with 11 grassroots players, in partnership with men’s mental health charity, Talk
Club. A survey by the brand found 44% of the male respondents had never opened up to someone else about how they are feeling – something Troy hopes to see change. “If I’d had Talk Club around when I was 21, I probably wouldn’t have gone to jail,” he reflects.
Something he’s keen to emphasise is that talking therapy isn’t a magic pill that works overnight.
“The best thing I can say to people is it doesn’t happen straightaway,” says the athlete and father-of-four (Troy has two kids from a previous marriage and two with his fiancee Alisha Hosannah).
“It’s a slow process, trust the process. A few people go and have one session and say that didn’t work for me, but you’ve got to give it time, you’ve got to be really
open and vulnerable. That’s the hardest part.
“Just being vulnerable in a space, you know – this is me, these are my weaknesses, this is what I’m scared of, is what actually makes me more powerful, I believe, over time. But for someone just starting out, it is daunting.”
It’s not all about what goes on in therapy, though. For Troy, it’s been about a lifestyle change, and looking after his mental wellbeing is embedded in daily life now. Something he shared in the Head Skills Academy was how if he’s “having a bad day, I purposely play Call Of
Duty, the shoot ‘em up game, which I’ve learned gets all my anger out. I limit myself to an hour, but I have
that hour of just me, or I read books which are completely out of my comfort zone.
“We also have a rule that 6.30pm is dinner, that’s when all the phones go away. Football and business and
work has stopped, this is our time,” Troy adds. “We all get so consumed in phones, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of Instagram or YouTube – you start off watching basketball and now you’re watching someone give birth!”
The Nivea Men survey also found nearly half (47%) of the respondents believe playing football is a chance to bond with friends, while two-thirds say it improves their mental health and 45% say it’s a great way to strengthen male communication.
“I think [sport] has a huge role. In terms of kids playing at a younger age, it gives people a sense of pride, community, even the uniform [gives a sense that] we’re all the same. And fitness, getting out and doing something – because it’s so easy to sit at home and complain.”
As for the role it’s had in his own life: “It’s given me a foundation to learn and taken me outside my comfort zone in regards to travel, because before football, I’d never left Chelmsley Wood,” Troy reflects.
“It’s exposed me to psychologists, mental training, it’s allowed me to understand what the body needs in terms of nutrition, all of these things the average person wouldn’t get unless they spent a lot of money, and money is tight at the moment.
“So, I think it is our job as athletes, like we’re doing with this campaign, to implement tools that an everyday person can take into their own life.”
Being vulnerable... is what actually makes me more powerful
Troy Deeney
Nivea Men Head Skills Academy is part of the second phase of Nivea Men’s Strength In Numbers Campaign. See nivea.co.uk/ strengthinnumbers for more information