“Welcome to the contents of my head” - a reflection during Mental Health Awareness Week

“Welcome to the contents of my head”, says Tony, played by Ricky Gervais, in the dark comedy series After Life, on Netflix.

The contents of my own head mean that most of what I’ve watched for the last few months has been at the darker end of the spectrum: crime drama with all the murders involved; re-runs of Spooks; and so on. I’ve taken the odd break – some online Shakespeare from the Globe, the recent Eurovision replacement show (high brow, low brow!) – but generally I’ve found I’m more comfortable with stuff that engages with the mess and pain of the world, even if in exaggerated TV drama form, than anything too cheerful or light-hearted. It’s a barrel of laughs, down here in my slough of despond, you know…

After Life is a bit different. Certainly dark and embracing the messiness of life, and heart-breakingly sad at times, but also laugh-out loud funny. The sight of Tony’s gut-wrenching grief following the death of his wife brings me nearly to tears, and I recognise in it the disabling effects of deep depression, when the basics of life don’t seem to matter any more, and getting a grip on the washing up is an achievement worthy of a medal. And then the comedic moments pick me up in their arms and swing me up again in a swoop of laughter.

“I just want to be out of pain”, says Tony – and he does whatever momentarily dulls the pain or distracts from it. And what we see is that he acts out the things most of us don’t dare to do. In my worst place, I, like him, was ridiculously irritated at times by the ordinary actions of other people. Unlike him, I think I just about managed to keep that hidden (though I apologise if it snuck into view occasionally…). We see Tony lashing out verbally at a street charity collector, so cleverly that we wince and half laugh at the same time. We hear his outbursts of anger with his dad, who lives with dementia and forgets every day that Tony’s wife has died. We see him being grumpy and offensively rude to his co-workers - again very cleverly and funnily so, if also rather swearily. I confess, I rather envy his TV-world freedom to give into his urges to rant and rave, insult and offend.

But as well as seeing his “let it all out” behaviour, happy to inflict pain on others because he is in such pain himself, so we also see the impact of his suffering on those around him. They are helpless to help him. And we meet his unlikely new friends, who can look though his pain and see the good in him despite it all: a drug addict, a sexworker, and an older widow he meets at the cemetery.

What redeems the series from an excess of darkness and hopelessness is the moment when our strange hero starts to turn a corner – when the simple and obvious wisdom of those around him starts to break through the noise of his pain. He apologises to the care worker he insulted. He gives a gift to the postman who has been on the receiving end of sharp words. He starts to see the pain of others. His conclusion? “You can’t not care about things you actually are about. Even though I’m in pain, it’s worth sticking around to make my corner of the world a slightly better place.” He starts to smile a little more.

After Life is a mix of the grittily, messily real, and also of the slowly unfolding happy ever after. It does it very cleverly. Of course we want that resolution and redemption, but we don’t want it to come cheaply. It’s why the series appeals to me – I don’t want cheesy happiness that doesn’t connect with my darkness, and nor do I want darkness with no chink of light.

“Welcome to the contents of my head”. I guess most of us have a rather ambivalent relationship with the contents of our own heads, that mix of conscious and subconscious thoughts and emotions that bubbles around in the cauldron of our brains, producing here a healing salve, there a toxic potion. Love and joy and hope, wonderful creativity, logic, analysis, invention, dreams and dares on the one hand; and on the other, pain, doubt, anger, fear, and darkness so deep we can’t reach the bottom. I, at times, seem to be taken over by thoughts that head off in multiple directions, down rabbit holes, up dead-ends, round in circles, sparking and roaring and scaring and bounding along, colliding and conflicting and driving me to distraction. Depression sent my emotional reactions completely out of whack: I was ridiculously annoyed by things that were trivial or which upset me by merely, neutrally, existing; and utterly numb towards things that would normally move me to leaping joy or streaming tears. My head seemed quite a foreign land for a while.

But most of us, unlike Tony, keep most of this extraordinary and mad stuff to ourselves. Sometimes we even keep it from ourselves. It’s just as well we aren’t all Tonys, or the world might become intolerable, with all our pain spewing out regardless – we wouldn’t all have a script writer ensuring we bumped into just the right person to bring us just the right insight at just the right time, to help us recover. But if we keep it too battened down, hidden from ourselves and not processed with safe people or in safe solitude, we both miss the joys there are to be had, and we let the toxins fester.

In this mental health awareness week, we’re encouraged to be aware of the contents of our heads, whatever mix of joy and sorrow we find there. We are reminded that it’s ok not to be ok, and that it’s good to seek help when we need it. Sometimes, as in my case, we need others to help us realise that we aren’t ok. And while asking for help isn’t easy, it was for me the essential turning point. In this blog, you are finding out a bit more about the contents of my head. My hope is that in doing so, you might be prompted to be aware of the contents of your head, too, and to tune in to what’s going on inside for you, and what might help you out of the dark places when you find yourself heading into them. (If that’s a bit presumptuous, just enjoy the cake and glimpses of the outdoors that also feature here.)

And, dear reader, be grateful that the more messy bits of what’s in my head are saved for my nearest and dearest, and my horse and cat! Yet more is known only to God. I am grateful beyond measure for friends and family who have loved and supported and prayed me through this time; and I struggle to find words for the One who knows me better than I know myself, and yet loves me relentlessly; who is always willing to sit down on a bench with me, as it were, and smile gently at my ramblings, raise an eyebrow at my grumblings, and hold me tight as tight when I cry.

After Life’s Tony thought his life was over after his wife’s death. He only hung around to take care of the dog. But he found that there was life to be found, even after the life that he had lost. My life now is life after burnout. I’d like the life of a few years ago back, if I had the choice. I am frustrated in the present, and anxious for what the future holds. But I am where I am, and this is still life. The theologian Miroslav Volf has said, “To live is to hope, and to hope is to expose oneself to fear—fear for things we love and therefore hope for. If it is true that fear follows hope, then it is also true that as long as we fear, all hope is not lost; in fearing, we are still hoping.”

Or more simply, if you’ll forgive the cliché, where there’s life, there’s hope.

I hope that you find hope this week, in the midst of the strange circumstances we are living in, and whatever the contents of your own head. God bless.