JCIP #351 - Stephen Hall

In episode 351 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked in with Stephen Hall.

Stephen is a qualified therapist and a Member of the National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society, providing walk and talk as well as online therapy for his clients. 

Based in Cumbria, Stephen is also the Founder of Stand Tall Empower C.I.C, a social enterprise which organises events and activities outside in nature and helps men step out of survival mode and reconnect with themselves and others.

Prior to becoming a therapist, Stephen had a very different career in teaching, where he spent over 20 years as a secondary school English teacher and housemaster. 

11 years ago in 2014, Stephen left teaching after having a mental health crisis. He had an identity crisis after no longer being able to do his job as a teacher, which had shaped most of his adult life, and tried to take his own life. At his lowest point, he was sectioned and placed in an in-patient facility. 

However, his mental health state did not improve and he experienced delusional psychosis.

The turning point came when he was able to access EMDR therapy, which helped start his recovery and he used it to address decades of suppressed childhood trauma. 

After this, Stephen began his recovery. He tried starting several businesses, which unfortunately failed and then during the Covid-19 pandemic, he was spending time online in several men’s groups and doing a lot of mentoring to fill the void left by teaching.

One of the men in that men’s group encouraged him to become a therapist, and the rest as they say, is history. 

In this episode we chart his professional journey across teaching, therapy and everything in-between. 

We also discuss his mental health crisis, the pain of having to leave teaching, carving out a new career and landing as a therapist, building the business, and why looking back, he needed a male therapist to suit where his mindset was and to make him feel comfortable. 

We finish by discussing how and why he operates walk and talk therapy sessions in the nature of Cumbria and North Yorkshire, and the Empower events for men to reconnect with nature outside of a traditional therapy setting too.

As always, #itsokaytovent

You can find out more about Stephen's work here.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Trigger warning, this podcast contains descriptions of suicide and suicidality, domestic abuse, and one brief description of sexual assault, which some listeners may find distressing or upsetting. So please listen with caution. Hello again, Venters, and welcome to another episode of the Just Checking In Podcast. I'm your host, Freddie Cocker, and this podcast is brought to you by Vent, a place where everyone, but especially men and boys, can open up about their mental health issues, break down stigmas, and start conversations. And each episode I check in with a special guest. We have an atta and a chat about all things mental health, as well as anything and everything else they are passionate about. If it helps that person with their mental health, we discuss it. My special guest for this episode is Stephen Hall. Steven is a qualified therapist and a member of the National Counseling and Psychotherapy Society. He provides walk and talk therapy as well as online therapy for his clients. Based in Cumbria, Stephen is also the founder of Stand Tall in Power CIC, a social enterprise which organises events and activities outside in nature and helps men step out of survival mode and reconnect with themselves and others. It operates on a sustainable pay it forward model where the profits generated through corporate events is reinvested to fund places for veterans, those working in blue light services and men in addiction recovery. Prior to becoming a therapist, Stephen had a very different career in teaching, where he spent over 20 years as a secondary school English teacher and housemaster. However, 11 years ago in 2014, Stephen left teaching after having a mental health crisis, and he retreated from life and shut down. He had an identity crisis after no longer being a teacher, which had shaped most of his adult life, and he tried to take his own life for the first time. At one point he was sectioned and placed in an inpatient facility. However, his mental health state did not improve and he experienced delusional psychosis, where he believed the medication he was being given to try and help him was actually moving inside him and all over his hands. The turning point came when he was able to access EMDR therapy, which helped start his recovery, and he used it to address decades of suppressed childhood trauma. After this, Stephen began those first steps in his recovery. He tried starting several businesses, which unfortunately failed, and then during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was spending time online in several men's groups and doing a lot of mentoring to try and fill that void left by teaching. One of the men in that men's group encouraged him to try and become a therapist, and the rest, as they say, is history. In this episode, we chart his professional journey across teaching, therapy, and everything in between. We then discuss his mental health crisis, the pain of having to leave teaching, carving out a new career and landing in therapy, building the business, and why looking back, he needed a male therapist to suit where he was and to make him feel comfortable. We also discuss how and why he operates walk and talk therapy sessions and the beauty of being able to do them in Cumbria and North Yorkshire, as well as the empower events for men to reconnect with nature outside of a strictly therapy setting, too. So this is how my conversation with Stephen Hall went. Stephen, welcome to the Just Checking In Polder. Thank you so much for letting me check in with you, mate. At this point, I'm basically mining Friend of the Pod Chris Hemings for podcast guests when he posts them on Men's Therapy Hub. So you are the latest addition to that. So absolutely amazing stuff. How are you on this Sunday morning, brother? I'm good, thank you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

A little bit chilly, but uh good.

SPEAKER_04 4:05

We have got so much to talk about, mate. Your life's been an absolute roller coaster, and it's incredible to see where you have got to today sitting on a call with me. So without further ado, are you ready to start the show and talk all about your amazing journey?

SPEAKER_00 4:17

I am. Let's go.

SPEAKER_04 4:23

Let's start your podcast, mate, by talking about your wider professional journey. As before therapy, before Stan Tor CIC, you're a teacher, specifically a secondary school English teacher and housemaster for over two decades, 20 years. So, what initially drew you to teaching? What did you love about it? And what kept you in it for such a massive part of your life, really?

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Um, what drew me to teach actually was volunteering. I finished my degree and went to work as a volunteer in Lesotho in Southern Africa, very remote mountain school, and loved it. Loved working with young people, loved teaching my subject and inspiring people through literature. So yeah, it started there. And so I came back to the UK and did a PGCE, a teaching postgraduate qualification, and then fell into kind of teaching in various schools around the UK and overseas. Partial side of it was always really important to me. That element of relationships, building relationships with young people and and supporting them through their journeys and their challenges. But then also there was a real, really deep love of literature and reading that I just had so much fun with in the classroom. Anything from being able to talk about Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales and open young people's eyes to the language around that and the humour around it, through to scaring year nines on an early evening when it was dark outside by reading Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories to them and yeah, inspiring them with gothic horror. So yeah, I loved it.

SPEAKER_04 6:05

We're gonna discuss this in depth later in the pod, mate. But in 2014, you had a severe mental health crisis, and after taking some medical advice from your GP, you resigned from your housemaster role, you left the school, you left teaching altogether. Just take me back to that decision and how you felt about your career, having been in that job for a huge part of your life, and this identity crisis that you had basically in the weeks, months, and years afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Yeah, it was a really, really difficult time for me. I left teaching because it was definitely the right thing at the time. I was I was really stressed. And despite the fact that I loved my job and I loved what I was doing, the environment in which I was working was quite toxic and poisonous. And my response to that was to just work harder and harder to the point where I was working 18 hours a day trying to prove a point that that I could do the job perfectly, that nobody could pick any flaws in what I was doing, the way that I was working, and it just wasn't sustainable. And so it got to the end of a really busy Michaelmas Christmas term, and I just fell apart and couldn't continue. Went to the doctors and my doctor knew me really well. She also knew the context in which I was working, and she said, You've got to quit. You can't do this any longer for your own health. And so I did. I handed in my resignation letter, resigned from the boarding house, and was signed off work. So I then went through quite a difficult period where I was still living in the boarding house. My family were still living in the boarding house, but I wasn't really doing that job. And then when I tried to go back into teaching again following September, I was having panic attacks in the classroom. My teaching had never been an issue before. I had loved the work that I was doing in the classroom, and yet I just couldn't do it anymore. So it was a difficult decision, but I decided I had to, I had to leave, and so I resigned from the post. And I went through a period of real disconnection, because I guess that my identity was so tied up with being a teacher that I didn't really know who I was or what I was doing. And also I felt really isolated because of course when you're teaching, especially in a boarding school, your friends, your community are all around you, and if you're not part of that anymore, then it's very easy to lose that sense of of identity. And I think especially for men, we well, I guess it's not just men, but we ask each other what do you do for a living. We talk about ourselves and we talk about our jobs and our roles as if they are the only part of a life. And yes, work is a massive part of everybody's life. We spend a lot of time in work. It's not everything. And I hadn't realized that, I hadn't really picked up on that. So it took me a long time to disentangle that. And I think what happened as a result was that when I went into starting my own businesses and running my own businesses, I very much took that same mentality into it. And so I would drive myself really hard in order to prove that I could make a success of something and that I could be something again. And so with each business I went into, that became my new identity.

SPEAKER_04 9:52

It sounds like in these kind of two different parts of your life, you're trying to prove people wrong, right? And then you're internalizing that in a negative way. When did you prove yourself right?

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Um That's a really difficult one. When did I prove myself right?

SPEAKER_00 10:17

I guess that there are little ways in which I've proven myself right consistently in in surviving I think and overcoming challenges as I've met them in not giving in to an internal sense of failure that I guess was so fundamental to my drive, that sense that nothing I ever did was going to be good enough. And so I guess proving to myself that actually I can stand up again and I can move forwards and I can get through these challenges that life throws at us, and then use that to support other people.

SPEAKER_04 11:13

Well, you mentioned standing up again there. Let's come on to this big part of your life now, which is stand tool therapy. And when you were becoming a therapist, or even should I say, before you became a therapist, we're in the COVID-19 pandemic at this point, it's 2020. You've joined a few online men's groups, you're doing a lot of mentoring, specifically with military veterans discharged from the army, young boys in the foster care system to your massive credit. How did the former help you find community and connection again, and maybe the latter fill the void that teaching had left in you? And how did it lead to what you're doing today as a therapist?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think what it did was it gave me a sense of purpose again, because I before COVID had folded a business, and so that kind of sense of who am I again was something that cropped up. And so I guess working with young people in the care system, that was me feeling actually if I can work with these teenage lads, I can support them in a way I can be a consistent male influence in their lives. And so, yeah, that sense of purpose, that sense of community, that feeling that I could support these guys one-on-one was really important. And then working with veterans, I guess because I'd had PTSD, I understood what it was like to really struggle with simple day-to-day tasks and simple day-to-day situations, and that traumatic events from the past could take hold to an extent that you became trapped in them. And so I I think that it really helped for some of those guys who were struggling in that transition between army life and civilian life, especially for those guys who felt disconnected from the military. It was really helpful for them to work with somebody who wasn't from a military background. That was really valuable because it helped me to recognize that I could again use my skills for the benefit of other people and support other people.

SPEAKER_04 13:30

It was in one of those men's groups where one man encouraged you to become a therapist, mate. Just tell me back to that session and that conversation, which would essentially change the trajectory of your life path once again and get you to where you are now.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

It wasn't just one session. It was something that kept on cropping up on a week-to-week basis. This time I hadn't been in work for a while. I was volunteering and I was mentoring, and I was really struggling to find that right job and that right role. I'd applied for various things and not got jobs. I was getting particularly frustrated with my mental health history coming up, and my having to explain and justify the period of time that I'd had out of work and just seeing the impact that that had on people. And I would come off on an interview, knowing that I wasn't going to get a job because I could just see it on people's faces. And so these frustrations were coming up on a week-to-week basis. And one of the guys said to me on a call, you should be a therapist. And I just went, nah, no, can't do that. Not happening. And then they asked again in another week. So I started looking into it, looked at the fact that I didn't have a psychology degree. And so that was my justification for no, I can't be a therapist. But they kept on sending me, it's almost like they were ganging up on me. Peer pressured you into it, yeah. Peer pressure. Yeah. They would keep sending me links to, oh, look at this course. Oh, oh, have you seen this course? You don't need a psychology degree for this one. And so I got slowly worn down to the extent that it's like, I guess I could begin to see that this was possible. And that becoming a therapist was something that I could find value in. So I came back onto a call one day and said, look, I've applied.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Happy now?

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah, you're happy now. I'm doing an introduction to counselling course. It was actually a really late application for a course which was, I don't know, it was about to begin a couple of months later. So I did the introduction to counselling course and did it over a period of six weeks, and then realized that that was in the summer that I needed to get onto a postgraduate course in the autumn. And again, it was very late in the day. And so I was into interviewed, put on a waiting list for it, and then accepted a place. So when it came to it, it actually happened really quickly. But there was a lot of procrastination beforehand.

SPEAKER_04 15:59

During your training, mate, you told me off air that you secured three placements to learn and develop. And these were male-dominated settings. Most of the men were in recovery from addiction, from a variety of vices, right? Everything from gambling to alcohol to drugs, all those other things, right? I imagine these were real sink or swim moments. And despite the fact you had worked in teaching, you had worked with kids who had mental health challenges, you know, being away from their parents for two, three months at a time is a mental health challenge in itself, right? How do you think you did looking back? And what was that experience like to be basically in a real sink or swim moment?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Um I felt really at home in those environments. One of the placements in particular, in two different locations, was an addiction recovery service that prior to my arrival hadn't had any therapeutic offering within the service. And so I went to them, I approached them and said, I'd like to do a placement here with you guys, I'd like to set something up. And they trusted me to do that. They trusted me when I said, I don't think this is gonna work this way or this isn't the right way. And so initially, when I started, they allocated people to me. And I said that that's not gonna work. These guys need to want to come. They need to be able to feel comfortable with coming to therapy and to trust. So I said, I'd like to approach it differently. And they said, Okay, well, what are you gonna do? And I said, I'd like to do is just be around these guys. And I remember that I'd been reading Bessel van der Kok's The Body Keeps the Score. And at one point in there, he talked about seven touch points in building trust. That really struck a chord with me that if these guys were going to feel comfortable to open up to me, if they weren't going to view me as an outsider from the outside world, then I needed to be around them and build trust. They lived in an old converted hotel and they had their group sessions in another building elsewhere. And I sat in the reception area on the stairs and just chatted to them as they walked past, stood outside as they were smoking a cigarette, and I just chatted to them about anything and everything. I went into group sessions on a few occasions so they could see me within that environment and shared a little bit about my own journey with them in there. And over a number of weeks, just built up a level of trust where they could just see me as another human being. That felt important was that I wasn't coming in as an expert who would tell them what to do, who would come with all of the answers that I was just another man, just another human being. So that's what happened. They started to come and say, actually, I'd like to work with you. I think I did a pretty good job. I didn't always get it right. I made mistakes. I took things very much to heart, especially when there were similarities in one guy's history with mine. It was quite a tough learning curve at times to not take on and hold that energy from somebody else. But it was an important part of that learning journey, and I had some really good support around me.

SPEAKER_04 19:33

Like you said, mate, you're an outsider to them. You're an outsider to this wider mental health conversation at that time. And then now you start dipping your toe into it, right? You're seeing how these men interact, especially these men who've gone through severe mental health crises. When you were engaging with them, when you had the trust from them, what did you learn about the way that they engage with therapy, other therapeutic methods, and most importantly, why they weren't engaging with the traditional way the mainstream thinks they should fit into?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

I found it a really, really challenging at times to work within that more traditional setting of how therapy is and how therapy should be. So I tried as much as I could to break down the barriers and just come across as a human being rather than an expert. But for me, I didn't like being in a room feeling trapped, feeling confined. I wanted to approach things, approach things differently. And I guess that harks back to what I was doing during COVID with the mentoring. When I first started doing the work with SAF for the Armed Forces Charity, we were meeting in a coffee shop. And that's really difficult. When I had PTSD, the guy I'm working with has got PTSD triggered by sounds, smells, loud noises, hyper-vigilant. I couldn't sit with my back to a door and didn't feel safe with my back to a door. He didn't feel safe with his back to a door. So you'd get stuck and you'd get caught up and not make a lot of progress. And then suddenly, when COVID hit, we were expected to work outdoors. And so we would go for a walk instead. And that showed me how much the change of environment, the change of situation, the walking shoulder to shoulder rather than sitting face to face, the forward movement of walking helped to guys to make progress and helped to shift things. And that's what I wanted to replicate within the therapeutic environment. But I couldn't because I was doing my training, and it's not the way in which that approached. So I guess whilst I was doing my training in those settings, I had to do everything I could to just break. Down those barriers and break down those four walls and build trust. But I did feel as if I was very much as if I was being constrained and held back.

SPEAKER_04 22:10

I want to talk now about Stand Tall and how you've built your therapy practice and your new livelihood. How did you go about it? And I think I know the answer to this question, but what was the inspiration behind the name as well?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Um As I said, I knew right from the start that I didn't want to work in a therapy room. I didn't want to rent a room and work in that way. I wanted to work outdoors as much as possible. But when I first set it up, because I'd worked in addiction recovery backgrounds, because of my own trauma history, I wanted to work within trauma and addiction. And so when I first set it up, it was actually called trauma and addiction therapy. But what I realized was that that name in itself had become a barrier. And that guys didn't want to be associated with that label of trauma or addiction. That even though that might be underlying their issues and that might be why they were coming to me, there was a disconnect there.

SPEAKER_04 23:14

They didn't want to be seen as being broken.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Didn't want to be seen as being broken. And so it was something that I was reflecting on and okay, well, how do I make this shift? I need to rebrand. And Stand Tall actually came from another guy on another men's group, actually, a guy who I'd been at a retreat with, a friend who is English but has lived in California for a long time. And he would call me Stan Tall Hall. That was his reflection on what he saw of me and the way that I had come through adversity, that I was able to put stuff behind me and then stand tall again. It came about from a shift that happened during that initial retreat that we met on. That by the end of that, because of the processing that I'd done, I was standing taller. And so again, it was one of those things where he talked about it, he talked about me in this way, and I was pushing it aside. I didn't want to I don't know what was holding me back. Do you think it was cringy or something like that? Or a bit cheesy? Yeah, there was a little bit cringy. It didn't actually help that he kept on telling me that he was going to get caps made with stand tall hole written on them and send them to me. So it probably was that it felt a bit cringy. But actually, I guess through talking with some of these guys about how they saw me, my strengths, my skills, and recognising. I did a course with Connor Beaton on how to work with men as well. And as part of that, it was recognising actually this is where guys want to be. This is what they want to see. They don't want to be associated with being broken. They want to be seen as strong. They want to be seen as uh Empowered. Have hope. Empowered. Yeah. And actually, yeah, that's then where the whole idea of Stantol came about, and then the empower part as well.

SPEAKER_04 25:15

Amazing, mate. And it rolls off the tongue as well. It's great branding too. Before we talk about empower events, you told me a story of fair which I really wanted to highlight about one male client who was proving a bit difficult to unlock and maybe didn't have the trust levels to a high enough degree yet, and he couldn't be supported in an indoor setting. And you used a method you called pre-therapy to help him, which I'd never heard of before. Just unpack this for me, mate.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

Yeah, pre-therapy is also known as contact work. It was something that I was doing, we had to research a form of therapy as part of the course. And pre-therapy came about from inpatient settings and working in Europe with individuals who were seen as being out of contact and difficult to engage with. And recognizing that just because somebody is non-responsive, because they are in psychosis, for example, it doesn't mean that there's not a human being in there alive. And so being able to make contact with them helps them to move through and reconnect with the world again. So this guy that in particular was a young man who was hearing voices and he really struggled in group. I'd seen him within the 12 steps program and in groups, and how he would be consumed by these voices and he would start shouting things out, and that he would struggle to sit still, struggle to stay concentrated within a session. And so it was another case where the guy running the project said, Well, if it's not going to work with him sitting in a room, how else will you approach it? And so actually, because they had to walk from where they lived to where they had their group settings, I said, let's use that journey as part of our therapeutic process. And so what we did was we walked through a park and we used pre-therapy or contact work. And what that was doing was mirroring his experience. So if he was looking at the flowers, I would just mirror back, use his name, and that he just was looking at the flowers. If he was laughing, I would mirror that he was laughing. If he had sped up or slowed down, I would mirror that in my walk, but also I would make reference to that's what was doing. When he shouted out whatever the voices were saying, I would mirror that back. And so over time, what you're doing is building trust and you're building connections with them by saying, I can see you. I can see your experience. And I am mirroring your experience. And what that does over time is it breaks down that disconnect that they feel from society. And with him, over the course of the 14 months that we worked together, we were slowly able to unpack the voices that he was hearing and start to challenge the voices that he was hearing. And he stopped hearing voices.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

That's incredible, mate. How did you feel when he had finally disclosed to you that those voices had stopped?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

I thought alive, so alive. And just recognising that had absolutely transformed his life. And for him to realise that that was why he had turned to drugs as a coping strategy to try to put a lid on what was happening and that he didn't need to do that anymore.

SPEAKER_04 28:50

Last year you also set up some events and you called them events rather than the retreats, and we'll discuss that choice of language in a second. And you ran a test event first through Stan Tall for guys in addiction recovery back in September 2025. So what was the feedback you got from these events and why'd you call them that in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah, these events were outdoors-based. I'm very lucky that I live in Canberra. So we ran an event on the shores of Coniston, and it was around building men's mental fitness. And so what we did was used connection to nature, connection to the outdoors, spending time in the woodland and in the forest, heading out on the walks on the fells and through the woods, doing bushcraft experiences, doing breath work connection and qigong practices, and also cold water immersion. We came together, built fire, cooked over the fire, sat around the fire and had conversations around that. But for me, this test event was really important to understand how guys interacted with that and what they felt worked for them. Well, the feedback that we got was incredible, that these men were able to find space, connect with nature, connect with each other and connect with themselves, and giving them some skills, giving them space to do that, and then giving them some skills to take away, that they could do challenging things like get into cold water and overcome their fears, that they could shift their nervous system state by focusing on their breathing. And so for some guys it was just having that opportunity to walk in nature and really pay attention in the present moment to the sounds, the smells, the sights close up, further afield, rather than just walking through somewhere. But for others, it was having those direct skills to take away to help them to manage challenging events and to shift their anxiety, state of anxiety, into a place of calm and rest. Yeah, so I think if the combination of events worked really well, or combination of activities worked really well for them. As far as calling them events rather than retreats, I think that often there is a sense amongst men that retreats are not for them.

SPEAKER_04 31:24

Bit fluffy, bit hippy-dippy, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Yeah, a bit like that. And also there's this association with the word retreat, which is to step back, to give in. And I think so. Language is is really important. And to recognize that whilst not everybody will associate a retreat with weakness and stepping back, for some it does. And if that stops them from going on it, then we need to change the language. And considering that the groups that I wanted to work with were the guys in addiction recovery, guys in blue light services, and veterans. Well, if you're looking at veterans, if you're talking about a retreat, you're talking about failure. You're talking about giving up your land, and that's not going to work. So that's why they became events. And that's also where the name and power came in, because this is something which is giving you the power to change the things in your life that aren't working and to move on to be the man that you want to be.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

Yeah, it's an excellent choice, mate. I can agree with you more. Let's reflect on your professional journey, mate. So, first of all, what's been your proudest achievement on it so far?

SPEAKER_00 32:41

I think probably setting up empower. When I ran the test event with a mate of mine, it was because we wanted to run a well-being event for men. And it wasn't meant to be a CIC. It was meant to be an opportunity to run events through an events company, corporate events, and potentially then be able to run events for guys who wouldn't be able to afford to go. But then that realization that I could set up a company, community interest company, which had social enterprise at its heart, and to fund that by running events for corporates and use the profits from that to run events, free events for guys in addiction recovery, blue light services, veterans, and then potentially moving forwards, other groups of guys who are struggling, those working in the construction industry, those working in the agriculture industry. And to do that by bringing guys together who've already got a combined identity, a connection, that helps to reduce the barriers to entry because there are other guys who look like me, other guys who've got experiences like talk like me. They understand they talk like me. They're using the same language. So for me it felt really important that actually when we're running these events, we're running them for groups of guys who've got that similar background. And so I think, yeah, the proudest thing for me was setting up Empower CIC and to recognise that this has the potential to do something really powerful. I guess being a teacher by background, there was always going to be a point where one-to-one work wasn't enough for me, that I wanted to work with groups again. And so this is my opportunity to do so. And yeah, we'll get there. It's a tough journey, yet, sort of applying for funding and getting all of the paperwork in place, but I'm feeling confident that it will happen this year.

SPEAKER_04 34:47

I hope so too, mate. As a final question before we move on to your mental health journey as well, what has this wider professional journey taught you about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 34:58

It's taught me that I need to look after myself first. That I am fallible, that I can't just keep on driving myself forwards all the time, and that I need to give myself space because the consequences of burning out again are too great. And so I need to have things in place to look after myself, have practices that work for me, but also to physically take time out and to look after myself so that I can support other people. So Wednesday last week I could have sat at my desk and worked on a funding bid, but I didn't. I took the day out, got the dog, got on a paddleboard and went up the lake and spent five hours paddleboarding on the lake. Next month I'm taking nine days out and I'm going and walking one of the Caminos to give myself some space. And so I think that's what it's taught me is that I am not infallible, that if I am going to support other people, I need to practice what it is that I preach. And that means taking time out.

SPEAKER_04 36:19

We've talked about your amazing professional journey, mate, and stand tall and empower. Let's go deeper and talk about your own mental health journey. So I ask all my special guests on this topic this question first. Take me back to early life, teenagers, and looking back, were there any early mental health experiences? If any, who's the Stephen We Meet here?

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Um Stephen We Meet here, I guess, is a man who was shaped by his early childhood trauma. I was at a male domestic abuse conference on Friday. And it was an emotional an emotional day.

SPEAKER_04 37:00

I saw your post about it, mate. Really great, really loved it.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Thank you. It brought up a lot for me. So I am a man who grew up in a household where domestic violence was there before I was even born. My mother was very violent physically and emotionally, and my father left when I was very young as a result of that. He thought he was doing so in order to protect me. And the reality was that all of that anger that she directed towards him, she redirected towards me. I survived that experience by escaping. I used to go to a tree at the bottom of the garden and climb the tree at the bottom of the garden because that meant that she couldn't get me. But it was also my place of safety, feeling safe in the crook of the tree. But what it meant for me growing up was that I learned to dissociate, to disconnect, to switch off from emotions and to just bury those feelings and those emotions. And I felt that growing up, I did everything that I could in order to get things right. So working hard, trying as hard as I could at school, getting the best results, getting the best grades was my way of trying to avoid the worst of my mother's wrath. For the first time, I stood up to my mother for the first time when I was 18, and I didn't go to university to do the degree that she wanted me to do. I was supposed to go and study law, and I didn't. I decided that I was going to go and study English instead. And as a result of that, I was thrown out of home. So I had to learn to survive on my own. Luckily that was at a time when the grant system still existed. So at least I had a grant to live off, and I was very lucky that I had parents of uh a friend who uh had a a flat that I was able to live in whilst I was studying. But that very much shaped the way that I am today, because for effectively 40 odd years I buried that trauma. I also buried an incident that happened whilst I was at university where I was sexually assaulted. Something that I didn't talk about, didn't reveal to anybody, and just pushed aside and hid in the same way as I had everything that had happened in my childhood.

SPEAKER_04 40:05

We've both gone through a lot of trauma in our lives, mate, and we've both had to suppress that trauma to survive, right? I had to work through it through nine years of therapy. I did EMDR like you did, and we'll discuss that in a bit. And through that therapy, I uncovered that I created this protector, right? This subconscious protector that kept me alive, that kept me going through school. But it was holding me back as an adult, and I had to learn to relinquish that. And similar to you, when I was 18, my I guess mental health awakening finally came to the surface despite all the trauma I'd gone through. And I describe it many times on this pod as like putting a mentos in a Coke bottle, right? You've suppressed all of this to survive, and then suddenly something switches and everything comes out. Maybe you're in a safe space that allows you to do that, etc. So when did that switch flick for you and how did you deal with it when it did?

SPEAKER_00 41:00

That switch flicked for me in the, I guess what was a completely unexpected situation. So it was the time when I left teaching. And effectively I had it was a toxic environment in which I was working. There was a bullying in the workplace which had taken place, and I guess it was being in that situation which had had a link back to the way that I had been treated growing up, impacted my defence structures, and so it was survival mode, dig in, carry on, push through until I couldn't anymore, until my body just said, you're not doing this. And I think I spoke to you before about this. There was an incident where after the end of term I was in the supermarket and I couldn't I was looking at the milk and couldn't work out what size milk bottle to buy, and I literally collapsed on the floor of the supermarket and burst into tears. That was the switch. Because what that did was opened up everything else that had happened in the past, but at that time I didn't have the means or the mechanisms to explore it. Well the language, mate, many men don't. I didn't have the language, and I was absolutely terrified. And so I I went into a completely dissociated state of just internalised and I I collapsed into myself. And the idea of going through sort of therapy, I remember sitting staring at my phone because I was expected to take a phone call from first steps and to have a conversation with somebody. I how could I have a conversation? How could I explain to somebody what was going on for me? Because it wasn't just one instant in the supermarket, it was everything that had happened through my childhood. And so not having the mechanisms, the means, the language to be able to talk through that and the I just I I became an empty shell. That was really difficult because even when I did have therapy for the first time, it didn't help me to unpack what was going on. I still couldn't understand what was going on. It helped me to deal with the immediacy of the situation. It allowed me to return to teaching in the September. But the fact that I went back into the classroom and I was having panic attacks was evidence to prove that it wasn't working. The fact that I was going through episodes of suicidality meant that it clearly wasn't working.

SPEAKER_04 44:01

Those episodes unfortunately got worse, mate, and in 2014 you made your first attempt to take your own life, and I'm using the word first here because there was a couple more after that. If you can, just take me back to that day, obviously go into as little or as much detail as you want, and how you felt after you had tried and survived and the Steve and we meet in that moment in time.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Um I didn't feel and that was the problem. I certainly wasn't thinking straight.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

There was no plan, there was no letter, there was no none of the the signs of somebody who's suicidal. I just didn't want to exist anymore, and so I wanted to find a way of getting out of that situation of just escaping this huge weight that I felt. Yeah, it was a huge emotional pain, and I didn't know any way of moving through it and shifting through it. So I found myself in a situation where I had a rope around my neck and I was in a squash courts in order to take my life, and I remember standing right on the edge, and then I had this vivid image of my two kids, of my son and daughter. Just this look of innocence on their faces, and it was enough to shock me into I can't do this, how could I do this to them? And so I stepped back and went home and didn't tell anybody because I felt such huge shame that I could have got to that point and again didn't have the language mechanisms in order to explain it. And so I just retreated again.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

A year later, you make another attempt to take your own life in 2015.

SPEAKER_04 46:43

You're forced to tell someone about being suicidal, you get some immediate support, but unfortunately it doesn't work, and you become suicidal again. Just tell me about the Stephen we meet at this moment in time and reflecting on it, mate, what would have helped you in that period, given what we've just discussed?

SPEAKER_00 47:03

The Stephen that I was by that stage was somebody who had left teaching, had set up his own business, but I'd fallen into the same traps of working really hard, associating myself with the business and the work, and so had got to a place of burnout again. And effectively because I had recognized that I had to fold the business, that it wasn't going to work, that through circumstances there were technical issues with what I was trying to build that made it impossible to work in the way that I'd planned and been working towards. And so effectively I got to a stage where all of those plans for the future, the means by which I could provide for my family, were no longer going to happen. And I'd spent a huge amount of money in trying to build something which wasn't going to happen, it wasn't going to come to a fruition. And so I yeah, I became suicidal again. And I think once again, what Stephen needed at that point was somebody to show him that you're not a failure, that you're not flawed. Somebody who would have given me the means to explore those patterns and why I fell into those patterns, and somebody who would help me to find a level of trust that I could actually open up about what had happened in my childhood.

SPEAKER_04 49:02

After those attempts, you are sectioned in 2016, you're placed in an inpatient facility. However, this wasn't the start of your recovery, but a continuation of this darkness, unfortunately. You experience psychosis, you believe the tablets you are taking are poison, believing that they are literally moving inside you, affecting you, corrupting you, moving through your hands like a kind of scarab in the mummy. Was this your most difficult moment, mate?

SPEAKER_00 49:34

Yeah, I I think it was It was the most difficult. Before that, I'd never experienced any psychotic episodes. It was a breach of trust and confidentiality that led to my being sanctioned. And taking medication that was not helping me at all. It was causing these problems. I didn't have any access to outdoor space, to fresh air. I couldn't go for a run, I couldn't exercise. I was in an environment where there were lots of noises, lots of people screaming, shouting, would struggle to get sleep, but just felt trapped. And I was desperate to get out of that situation and get out of that place. But yeah, my world just closed in and all I could see was this medication that I believed was moving.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

Um Yeah, that was a terrifying place to be.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

I want to talk about hope now.

SPEAKER_04 50:52

And the first turning point on your recovery comes when you received, as we spoke about earlier, EMDR or eye movement desensitization reprocessing therapy. I've spoken about it many times on the podcast with guests and my own experience of it. It was life-changing for me. I know it's not life-changing for everyone. You've got to be ready for it. It sometimes just doesn't work for you, even if you are ready for it. But it sounds like when we spoke off air, it was life-changing for you too, mate.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Why was that?

SPEAKER_00 51:21

I think it was because it gave me the first opportunity to unpack what would happen to me. Nobody was forcing me to recount and retell my story. And of course, we're not looking at a single instant trauma. So it's not like it was I say just, it's not like it was just looking at the sexual assault. It was looking at a number of traumatic incidents over a period of time. So it was very complicated and and really protracted. But the fact that it started by creating a safe space. It started by having somewhere really solid to come back to.

SPEAKER_04 52:15

Happy place, like Happy Gilmore. That's what I called it.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

For me, for me, it was the mountains of Lesotho. So it was a place that I had left, I'd escaped to after I'd finished my degree, and it's where I found my love of teaching. And it was a place right up in the mountains with this most incredible view all around. Literally, you couldn't see anybody, was quite desolate. I sometimes describe it like the Highlands of Scotland, but without any rain. So if you imagine what the Highlands would be like if there hadn't been any rain for sort of 18 months. So there's no greenery there, but you've still got the same sort of land.

SPEAKER_04 52:58

So storm away, basically.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

Well, yeah, yeah, you could say that. Um but I had a safe and secure place that didn't have any negative connotations associated with it, and that was somewhere that I could come back to. So I think having that as a solid foundation then meant that I was able to go into these experiences from my past, but come back to them again, and to be working with a lady who was very, very gentle, very softly spoken, very patient, and really intuitive, really in tune to how challenging it was for me to go back and relive and re-visualise these experiences from my childhood. It was powerful. It didn't solve everything. But it gave me the means to start on that journey of recovery.

SPEAKER_04 54:07

We spoke earlier in the pod about the importance of helping men feel seen and your role in doing that for the boys you taught, for the men you worked with in the military, and the men you work with now. Was the MDR the first time you felt truly seen as a person, mate?

SPEAKER_00 54:28

I think there was a a situation before then where I felt seen. I was given the name of an acupuncturist. Wonderful man who helped me to see light again. I remember coming out of a session with him quite early on. He was wonderful. I'd go into his rooms and it was on the side of a hill, lovely views of the Lake District, and he would there'd be two chairs looking out of this window, not face on. So we'd both be sat looking out of this window in an alcove, and he'd go off and make a cup of tea. And then he'd come back and we'd sit and drink tea, and he would just take time to listen to what had been going on for me during the course of that week, and then I'd go and lay down and he'd do the acupuncture work on me. And I remember very early on coming out of a session with him and putting the radio on and just whistling the whole journey back. And I realized when I got home that I hadn't whistled for ages and that something had shifted during that session. So there's something about him and the way in which he worked, and and something about the power of the acupuncture and releasing something that was being stuck that just allowed me to feel that freedom.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

Yeah, it was really powerful.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

It's really interesting you spoke about light and colour there.

SPEAKER_04 56:18

And one of the biggest takeaways that I had when I did the two separate rounds of EMDR was that once it had taken me out of my victimhood mentality, it allowed me to release my childhood protector, sorted out my attachment style, all these other things. It literally felt like the wool had been lifted over my eyes and I could see the world in full technicolor, is the phrase I often use. Do you share any commonalities with that, mate?

SPEAKER_00 56:48

Yeah, absolutely. It's really common that when you're in that dark place, the everything becomes muted, that you become desensitized by things. And and for me, it was one extreme or the other. It was either I was kind of dissociated to the extent where everything was grayscale, or I was responding. My other way of responding to that threat was that hyper-vigilance.

SPEAKER_04 57:17

Yeah, almost hyper-arousal. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

So that absolute hyper-arousal where everything is turned up to the max. And so it was those polar opposites. It was almost like a seesaw that I was living. And so for me, it was that place in between where I don't have to be living in grayscale, where I don't have to be reacting to everything. So I was able to live in this middle ground is really powerful.

SPEAKER_04 57:48

We're both survivors of abuse, mate, and something which I struggle with sometimes. And it's funny, you spoke earlier about kind of practicing what you preach, right? Sometimes I have to really do it myself, and I struggle to, and this is the one thing that I do still struggle with sometimes is giving myself credit for how far I've come. Do you think you've done that, mate? Giving myself credit or enough, I should say.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

No, not not enough. Okay. No. The guys that I'm part of a man's group with at the moment call me out on it quite consistently. I'd struggle to take praise. And yeah, I was forced to call not long ago to what I would do is look away from the camera and make myself small again. And I got called out on it. And it was like, sit up. Stand tall, mate. Stand tall, look into the camera, and you are going to hear this, what I have to say to you about you. It was a case of either you do that or you go and get that tuber that's behind you and you play as a tune on the tuber. It's one or the other. You've got no choice, mate. So yeah, I I recognise I'm not very good at doing that. I'm not very good at recognising yet. That's that's a word that I use an awful lot with my clients. Yeah, it's not that I can't, it's that I am on that learning journey.

SPEAKER_04 59:16

You're getting there. I'm getting there. Before we reflect, mate, who's the Stephen we meet now, today, sitting here versus the Stephen who is in the depths of that crisis?

SPEAKER_00 59:29

Um I guess the Stephen that is here today is somebody who has uh much more awareness, self-awareness, emotional insight, who is able to be vulnerable and sit with his vulnerability. Somebody who is also I'm holding myself back in saying this, somebody who's also really strong.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:02

You are mate.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

But also somebody who's who's been given a freedom, who's been able to let go of a lot of the demons from the past. I can now sit with my back to a door without feeling hyper-vigilant and feeling danger. And that's something that's been very new in my life. About 18 months ago that I was first able to do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:31

Amazing, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

Um But also I'm somebody who can yeah, who can feel joy and childish enjoyment in things again. Somebody who climbs trees, but for a different reason.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:46

Let's reflect now on your mental health journey. So you've just told me what it's taught you. So ask this final question now before you move on to our mental health chat. If you could go back and talk to that Stephen who was climbing up the tree, hiding from his mum, the Stephen who was burned out from his job as a teacher, the Stephen who was crying in that supermarket, couldn't buy a pint of milk, or the Stephen who was in that inpatient facility experiencing that horrific psychosis, what would you say to him, knowing what you do now, if anything at all?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

I would say I'm here for you because I think that in all of those situations that was a little boy who felt very alone and so to just feel that he wasn't alone.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

That would have been powerful.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:00

We've come to our final topic of conversation on this amazing podcast, Stephen, and it's one I try and have with all of my special guests if we have time. It is a general natter and quickfire chat about our mental health. So, firstly, how was your mental health out of 10, mate?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

Out of ten, I would say it's probably an eight.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:20

What age were you when you became self-aware of your mental health and you realised that the feelings you were having weren't physical and they were actually in your mind?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:29

Probably 40.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:32

And was it a Eureka moment, like I describe with Gru and Despicable Me, or was it a gradual process?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

It was very much a gradual process.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:41

Can you remember the first or the most important conversation you've ever had with someone about your mental health? So, who was it with? What did you say, and how do you look back on it? Did it feel like the stereotypical big moment and weight have been lifted, or on the other, something quite easy, natural, and normal to do?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

Um I think that probably that first conversation was with that ENDR therapist. And I think it felt both easy and difficult. There's no polar.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:16

Yeah, I was exactly the same.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:19

Yeah. Yeah, funny one that, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:22

You spoke earlier about triggers, mate. So what other triggers have you found in life that affect your mental health? It could be things people say to you, it could be a sound, sensation, smell, taste, or have you not figured all of them out yet either?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

I don't think I have figured them all out. You're right, it can be any one of the senses at any one time. And I think for me, it's not so much trying to figure out the answer of this is the trigger, but being able to find my place of balance afterwards. So recognising I will be triggered by different things at different stages. Sometimes it can be an expected sort of conference I was at was a phrase that somebody used that took me back immediately to a phrase that my mother used towards me. And it was three words used in a particular order, and I recognized straight away what was going on for me. My jaw tightened, my gut was starting to churn, my legs started shaking. And recognizing that my inclination there to just curl up and make myself as small as possible was an understandable response, but that I didn't have to follow through with that, and that I could shift my state out of that, that I was safe in that room, in that environment, and I could ground myself, breathe, and then come back into the present moment and away from that three, four-year-old Steven.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:05

Conversely, what positive tools and methods do you use to improve your mental health or help you feel better? Which ones have worked, and maybe which ones that you've tried but haven't?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:15

I've used different tools at at different times that work for me. For me, often it's finding those things which are not necessarily rather than seeing them as a tool, seeing them as a bridge, recognizing that kind of connection between the mind and the body, between holding on to something and getting caught up in it and being able to let it go. And so for me, some of the things that I do around that are cold water, almost on a daily basis. Either get into a lake as I did this morning, or river or waterfall. Did 52 waterfalls last year, or the cold plunge in the back garden. So being able to do something difficult and shift that gasp reflex back into a place of safety where I can continue. On my breathing again. And it's how I start my mornings doing something difficult. Breathing. Exercises, EFT tapping exercises have worked at different times in my life. I now do qigong on a daily basis. A 20-minute or 30-minute Qigong practice just helps to ground me and come to a place of balance. That's really important for me.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:24

What is the best book, or as I call it, mental health Bible you've read for your mental health? Now it doesn't exclusively have to be mental health or self-help related. It can be fiction. And if you can't think of a book, album, TV show, any piece of popular culture, mate.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

Probably the that book is one that I've mentioned earlier, Bessel Bandicals, The Body Keeps the Score. And the reason for that is that I listened to it first of all as an audio book, but then had to go away and buy the book because I found myself stopping in the car and rewinding and replaying and jotting down notes. Because it was the first book that I read that I was able to go, I get it. I understand now why I react like that, why I behave like that. I understand where these triggers are coming from. And it's okay. So it kind of normalized my experience and I didn't feel broken.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:22

Yeah, it's a funny one that because I've spoken about it a few times on this podcast. It was the first book review I ever did because I was recommended it by a lot of people. I read it. There's a lot of things that are good in it. There's a lot of things that I disagreed with heavily. For example, he uses graphic descriptions of abuse from interviews. I was a big, big no-no for that one. But yeah, lots of good things in it. And my views on that book are more nuanced, I think. But I can completely see why people enjoyed it for some of the reasons about trauma. I had a friend called Duncan Craig, amazing man, runs an organization called We Are Survivors, and he said the body keeps the score, but the mind keeps the receipts. And that's always stuck with me.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:04

Like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:06

Speaking of mantras, if there was one in life that summed up your mental health, mate, what would it be and why?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:16

Live curiously.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:20

For me, curiosity is so important because it helps us to see there's always possibilities, there's always options, there's always another way of looking at it. So if we approach what we're doing, when I approach what I'm doing with curiosity, it helps me to reflect. When I look at the actions of somebody else, and I do so with curiosity, it stops me from narrowing down on my perception or my instant perception of what it is that's happening there. So yeah, curiosity.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:03

What do you love about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:07

That curiosity. And climbing trees. Yeah. The fact that I am able to live my childhood now and reclaim my childhood. Regardless of what anybody else thinks about it. I was climbing up a tree a couple of months back, and family walks past in the woods. Mum, daughter, and grandmother. And the daughter looked at me up the tree, looked at my dog, sat at the bottom of the tree looking up at me, and turned to her mother and went, Mummy, why's that dog not up a tree? Oh, I love that. And of course, the mother, as she was walking past, and the grandmother were coming, she didn't talk about the man up the tree, did she?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:55

Oh, that is so good. I've got one final question for you, mate, and it's been an absolutely incredible podcast. You can answer it any way you want. What more do you think we have to do to ensure men from all backgrounds, all classes, all walks of life feel comfortable and safe in opening up about their mental health issues or just their general mental health or mental fitness if most importantly they want to do it?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

I think we need to provide different spaces for men where they can feel safe to open up spaces that work for them, that give them options. There's no one size fits all and so therefore we need to be more adaptable in the way that mental health services are offered to men in providing spaces that work for them. And there are some amazing, there's some amazing work that's happening out there. Everything from men's walking groups.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:03

I've interviewed most of them.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

Absolutely. Uh men's sheds, men's pie clubs, men's yoga groups, men's swimming groups, and the men's talking groups and men's talking circles that exist. If there's only one thing that's available to somebody to support their mental health, and that is CBT or talking therapy through the NHS, it's expecting men to behave and act in a particular way that might not feel right for them, that might not feel safe for them. So the more opportunities, the more variety that helps a guy to see they're somebody that looks like me, they are somebody that talks like me, they are somebody that walks like me. The more that's happening, then the more we can help guys to start to explore what's going on for them and their actions and their behaviours.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:08

And as my previous guest and my good friend Mel Bradley says, find your one size fits one for men, not your one size fits all. I like that. I like that. Steven, it has been a pleasure, a privilege, an honour. Thank you so much for coming on the Just Checking In podcast and talking to me, brother.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:25

Thank you, Freddie. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:32

Well, that's all we've got time for on this episode of the Just Checkin' In pod. A big thank you to Steven for being my special guest and for letting me check in with him. I'll put some links to where you can find out more about Stan Tall and follow Steven on social media in the show notes. As always, thank you to all the vendors who've tuned into this episode. Remember, if you've liked what you've heard, I'll sign us off by saying give it a share on social media by tagging us at VentHelp UK. We are very close from 1,000 followers on Instagram, so that'd be great if you could help us out on that. Tell your friends, family, or work colleagues about us and spread the word via word of mouth. Or if you're feeling generous, write us a review and give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and help us out with the algorithms. If you like what we're doing and want to support us even further, you can go to patreon.com slash ventshelpuk or make a one-off donation to our PayPal. All of those links are on our link tree. That's linktr.ee slash vents helpuk. We hope to check in with you again very soon. And remember, guys, it is always okay to venture.