Transcript

Darcy (Host):
[00:00:00] Welcome to "Holding on to Hope," a series that shares the stories of everyday Australians that have experienced moments in crisis and found a path to support. Whilst all of the stories shared offer hope and inspiration, at times you may hear something you find triggering. If you or someone you know needs crisis support, please phone Lifeline on 13 11 14, text 0477 13 11 14, or visit lifeline.org.au for Lifeline chat service, which is 24/7.

Interviewer:
[00:00:31] Welcome, Steve. It's so good to talk to you today.

Stephen:
[00:00:35] Thank you for having me. I'm very excited about this.

Interviewer:
[00:00:37] Life looks quite full for you now. You're a husband, dad, teacher, writer—we'll get to talk a lot about writing—and now an author as well. What does life feel like for you at the moment?

Stephen:
[00:00:50] To say that my cup is full is an understatement. I've always had this belief that life is meant to be lived and filled. We have a whiteboard out in the atrium where our kids congregate before school, and I've been putting in daily quotes. And the quote that I put in today was something along the lines of "I don't think people really fear death. They fear more not living, and not living well."

Interviewer:
[00:01:12] Yeah.

Stephen:
[00:01:13] That's something that I've tried to live by for the last few years of my life, at least. Those old Roman sayings, memento mori, memento vivere, which means, remember that one day you'll die, so remember how to live. I'm starting to teach a philosophy course next term, so I'm going to be pumping out all these Latin phrases about how to live and how to live well. So life is full, and I wouldn't have it any other way. There are some days where I come home exhausted, and due to the nature of teaching, yeah, that can be quite full-on. I teach a lot of middle school classes. It's tiring work, but I come home feeling very satisfied each day.

Interviewer:
[00:01:44] You've spoken about feeling genuine purpose and connection in your life now. When you look at where you are today compared to earlier chapters of your life, what stands out to you the most?

Stephen:
[00:01:55] I'm really appreciative of the connections that I do have, the friendships that I've established. By my own confession, I've probably not been the easiest personality to get along with. I've been very conscious of that, certainly as I've become a father, as I've become a married man as well. Socially, I just don't have time for the small talk stuff. I think it's a bunch of rubbish. But I've got to tell myself, for a lot of people, that's a way in and I've got to try to adapt myself. I'm not saying change myself, but adapt myself around that as well. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I can be read pretty well, I think. I'd make a terrible poker player. When I pick up that some of that small talk is starting to happen, I kind of switch off mentally. And I think that other people have started to pick up on that. So I've tried to become a lot more tolerant to the small talk and the chit-chat. I understand that everyone else has a story to share, and that some days I'm just here to listen. Without having that mindset, I don't think that the connections I have now would be possible.

Interviewer:
[00:02:52] When you were a kid, you've spoken about being bullied and feeling different. What was life like for young Stephen back then?

Stephen:
[00:03:00] This starts with my older brother. I don't blame my older brother, but it starts with him. He got to choose where he went to high school, and he chose a particular high school where some of his mates were going, and he went there. That was great for him. He had a tight-knit bunch of friends from year seven to year eight, before we adopted the year 7 start to high school here in WA, which ages me significantly, I've realised. I didn't have those strong connections, those same strong connections that he did. So for me, I had to start afresh. And we know that kids can be really cruel, and I was quite tall and large for my age. And there was a particular demographic at the school as well. There were Italians and Greeks, and I'm from a Maltese background. People weren't very familiar with Maltese, and I had buck teeth, I was big, and so there were a lot of things to pick on about me. And I was a victim of quite a lot of bullying, I would say almost daily, for the majority of my high school life. And it was the 90s, of course, and the one way you responded to bullying, if you wanted it to stop, you had to fight. And I fought. And there was a part out at D Block on the school campus where the CCTV cameras couldn't find us, and that's where the fights happened, and that's where many of the fights stopped as well. The difference between now and then is that with online bullying and social media, there's no escape from the bullying. Whereas I could go home, I could rest my head on my pillow, and if I had to fight again tomorrow, I could wait till tomorrow. But there's no escape for younger kids, which is why I'm really passionate about mental health and just protecting these kids from the harms of social media as well, and the potential harm it can do. The one thing that I held onto though was that I had really good teachers and good connections with my teachers, and they ultimately inspired me to pursue the vocation of teaching.

Interviewer:
[00:04:44] You can bring that experience into the classroom and into the school environment with you.

Stephen:
[00:04:48] Absolutely.

Interviewer:
[00:04:49] Very genuinely.

Stephen:
[00:04:50] Yeah, and it's made me realise more poignantly that every kid is fighting a battle that we can't see, and we have to be conscious of that. And yeah, for a lot of kids, school is a sanctuary. It wasn't a sanctuary for me. It is now, now in my working capacity, but for a lot of kids today, school's a safe place.

Interviewer:
[00:05:08] But for you, school was difficult, so home became that safe place, that sanctuary. And when you think back to that period, what do you remember carrying emotionally that people might not have been able to see or couldn't understand what you were going through?

Stephen:
[00:05:24] I think I became quite embittered. My mother and father, they tried their best, and mental health wasn't really spoken about back then as well. We had a school counsellor, but if you were sent to the school counsellor or the school psychologist, you were an extreme case.

Interviewer:
[00:05:37] Yeah, right.

Stephen:
[00:05:38] You went there because you may have been talking about self-harm or that kind of thing. But generally having low self-esteem, feeling bad about yourself or being picked on and bullied, you were effectively taught to toughen up. My father taught me to fight back, and that worked for a while. And so I think day to day, I was just taking it one day at a time, and things did get really difficult. There were times where I contemplated self-harm, and I remember very clearly thinking about it and taking certain actions, which I won't go into, they're still quite painful, those thoughts. But remembering at the end that I had to take it day by day and that high school would eventually finish, and there'd be a new start with university and that kind of thing.

Interviewer:
[00:06:19] A new life, a new group of people around you.

Stephen:
[00:06:22] That's it, a fresh start.

Interviewer:
[00:06:23] You've said that even though life moved forward, you went to uni, started a career, a lot of that hurt stayed with you through your 20s and 30s. How did that show up for you as you got older?

Stephen:
[00:06:37] What I found is that in my professional life in particular, some of those, I think, misgivings about myself and the way people perceived me, I carried with me in both professional and social settings. So I didn't have particularly high self-esteem. I didn't think very highly of myself, and I found that I was just repeating the same mistakes, internally, externally, whatever you want to call it. And I found myself in the same rut, but I had to try to deal with it in a very adult way. Professionally, I couldn't talk to anybody about it. I didn't want to burden my wife with it. I certainly couldn't burden my kids with it, because at the time, they were very young, they were toddlers, so you can't exactly have a deep conversation about one's mental health with your toddler. I felt like I was alone. I know that in retrospect, that's not accurate, because I had my wife with me, but I was very protective of her. I didn't want to burden her with my failures, with the way that I felt, because she was carrying her own, let's call it, baggage. And I didn't want to add to that.

Interviewer:
[00:07:38] So around your mid-30s, you reached another really difficult time for you, and without sharing anything you don't want to—what was happening internally for you during that period?

Stephen:
[00:07:51] Looking at the optics of things, you'd say I had it all, I had a good marriage, family, great kids. My kids are amazing. But there was just a lot of dissatisfaction with me personally. I just didn't feel like I was reaching my potential. There was a lot of dissatisfaction with me professionally as well. Maybe not hitting the marks. I mean, I come from a very traditional mindset that there's progression. And progression means that you're doing something meaningful. Now looking back, I failed to see that even with the little that I was doing, I was still doing something quite impactful and meaningful. And I just didn't feel like I was living according to the criteria I had set for myself. And I thought, well, what's the point? It culminated. I thought about a suicide plan when I was 35 years old. I thought about that day, go to work as normal, do my responsibilities as normal, and go home to the gym. The thought of working out before ending things just seems ridiculous to me now. I wanted to try to keep things as low-key and normal as possible so nobody would suspect a thing. That was heavy. Now, that was almost 11 years ago. And thankfully, I changed my mind, but there was a good reason for that.

Interviewer:
[00:09:06] That's a very dark moment when you're questioning life. What did it feel like carrying that while still trying to show up as a husband and a father and a teacher and just trying to continue life as normal?

Stephen:
[00:09:21] Looking back, I don't know how I managed, but I still managed to get through it. There's a quote that I remember from Winston Churchill, and he said, "If you're going through hell, keep going." And that to me seemed really hardcore. I thought, that's really tough. There are days where we do feel like we're going through hell, and that kept me going. I thought, I mean, what's hell? I mean, what I went through by comparison felt small. And if I could keep going through that, then I felt like I could conquer almost anything. I'm a believer. I think maybe by the grace of God that I was able to push through. Maybe like I was back in high school, just give it one more day, one more week, one more month, one more year and just see what happens. But it was actually the kindness of a stranger, after I left the gym that day, that changed my mind completely about things. I remember walking out and the Nova Casanovas, the people who go outside places and give away freebies and all that kind of thing, they were outside. And I thought, oh, maybe I can get a free hat or something. I didn't get a free hat, but anyway, I remember walking out and I just finished my workout and I was in my powerlifting days. I was huge, for lack of a better way to explain it. I was lifting some pretty heavy weights. I still feel pretty strong now, but I couldn't do those weights now. Well, maybe I could. Believe in yourself, Stephen. I could, I could. Age is just a number. And I remember walking out and the guy who was working with the Nova Casanovas said, "Dude, you are huge." And I remember my ego was huge. My head just exploded. I thought, yeah, yeah, I am huge. And he said, "Do you want to have a photo for the website?" I said, "Sure, sure thing." And he asked me to flex and I flexed. And he said, "Dude, your bicep is bigger than my head." And it was. Looking at the photo, it was. I wish I'd saved the photo. It was on the Nova website for years, but they've since taken it down. After the photograph, he turned around, shook my hand, and he said, "You have a good day, brother." And I remember walking to my car feeling like I was walking on clouds. And I thought, well, he's paid to be nice, but I felt a real genuine kindness from him, that he was really sincere, and he really wanted me to have a good day. I sat in my car for about half an hour thinking about how I would have a good day. And I remember that I still had about eight hours left in the day, including sleep. All right, go home, have dinner, enjoy the company of my wife and my kids, and try again tomorrow. And I decided that, you know what, I've got a lot more tomorrows ahead of me, and I want those tomorrows for me. My philosophy since then is that when I talk to someone, I want them to walk away from me feeling better than they did before coming to me. And I've really tried sincerely to do that.

Interviewer:
[00:12:04] You've said that opening up to your wife and telling her what was going on for you was one of the bravest things you've ever done. What made that conversation so difficult to start, and what changed once you finally let someone in?

Stephen:
[00:12:18] I didn't want to make my wife feel as though she had let me down. Because we're meant to be each other's rock, right? I was trying to protect her from that. I had to remember that we took marital vows for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Those are literally our vows. And I didn't want to hurt her with how much I was hurting. I always knew I could trust her. But when I started opening up, she started to understand me a bit more as well. And by articulating how I felt, I started to understand how I felt. And that dovetailed into seeking counselling and getting proper professional help as well. I don't think I even went into great detail about what was going on—but I just let her know that, yeah, things are tough at the moment. I have had these thoughts, and we should probably have more conversations about them.

Interviewer:
[00:13:02] And she heard you, and you did have more conversations.

Stephen:
[00:13:05] And what I realised is that she was always prepared to hear me. I just had to be ready to talk, and that was the big difference. And what I've learned since then is that there are lots of people out there who are willing and prepared to listen, but sometimes people just aren't ready to talk.

Interviewer:
[00:13:19] Well, now on to motorbikes.

Stephen:
[00:13:22] Yeah.

Interviewer:
[00:13:23] Motorbikes have become much more than a hobby for you. And you shared this really powerful analogy that bikes complain before they brake.

Stephen:
[00:13:32] That's right.

Interviewer:
[00:13:33] They give you warning and let you know what's going on. And you've said mental health can be similar. So can you talk a bit about that? What you've learned about recognising those warning signs in yourself?

Stephen:
[00:13:44] I have written a book about it. I'll just put that out there. The impetus for writing the book was the crossover between motorcycles and mental health. And when you pick a bike, I'm a firm believer that the bike that you ride reflects your personality. There are sports bikes, there are scramblers, there are dirt bikes and all that. They match your personality. I've got a cruiser, because I just love the feeling of the open road and just being in control of the ride. When you buy your bike, you ride it and you get to know it very intimately. You get to know how the throttle feels, you get to know how much clutch you need to give it as well. You know when to put your toe on the shifter to change gears and all that kind of thing, how hard you need to pull on the front brake. And then you start to notice the sounds it makes as well—when the bike is functioning well and when things aren't right. A little while ago, I noticed a particular sound coming from the bike, so I would turn down the music playing in my helmet, and I tried to listen out for that particular sound, like a slight whirring sound. And I thought, that doesn't sound right. It persisted, it didn't go away by itself, none of this stuff really does. So I took it into a mechanic, and there was an issue with the air filter. I realised that, well, if I hadn't picked that up, it could have caused more catastrophic damage down the track. Now in the end, an air filter is a very simple piece of paper-like material. But if you don't replace it, it affects the functionality of your motorcycle. And then I had this epiphany that we're the same.

Interviewer:
[00:15:07] We're the same.

Stephen:
[00:15:07] We're the same. We get to know our bodies, we get to know the way our minds think very well as well. And sometimes it's very easy to ignore the warning signs, to ignore signs in general. We can't just pop ourselves open and change an air filter. We're a lot more complex than that. We have to have a conversation. We might need to seek professional help. We might have to use somebody else as a sounding board to get to the bottom of what's going on. And we're not even talking about the physical problems. Like if I stub my toe, I might get a bruise, and there's a physical sign for it. But if my mental health isn't great, then there are signs for that as well. And your body will complain before it breaks, just like a motorcycle. I've also learned that maintenance is cheaper than repair. So we want to keep our bike running well, so you maintain. You clean the chain, you degrease it, and you re-lube it. You change your air filters regularly. When the chain wears down, you replace your sprockets and your chain. For yourself, you need to check in some way, somehow. You need to find those connections, you need to find those people that you gel with as well. You need to do self-maintenance. Sometimes it might be self-maintenance, sometimes it might be people doing maintenance on you. It just helped me crystallise and clarify what mental health meant to me.

Interviewer:
[00:16:16] As a father now, your experiences have also shaped how you approach conversations with your own children. What do you hope they grow up to understand about emotions and asking for help or doing the maintenance?

Stephen:
[00:16:30] Any parent is proud of their kids. I'm really proud of my kids. We have very open conversations in my home about how we're feeling. I also know that my son, he's 18 years old and as they say, a chip off the old block. He finds it very hard to hide how he's feeling, because it manifests physically. I'm the same. And he's my mini-me, he got it from me. He's been that way since day one. So I can tell when something's up. I've got one son and two daughters. With my son, I can have a very forward and frank conversation with him about how he's feeling. And usually he's pretty forthcoming. But I also know how to respect his space as well. And so the conversation might go along the lines of: all right, son, I know you're going through something at the moment. If you want to talk, I'm here. Otherwise, take your time, and when you feel like you're ready to open up, I'm here. With my daughters, I have to navigate a little differently, and I don't think that's even a men are from Mars thing, women are from Venus thing. The emotions just manifest differently because of their personality. My middle child, she's in year 11, and she's been getting exams back. And one of the exam results didn't meet her particular expectations, and she found that quite overwhelming emotionally. In the past, I would have fobbed it off and said, it's no big deal, try again next time and all that. But I had to remind myself that I've got a daughter who sets really high expectations of herself. This would have been devastating. Even though objectively it was still a very good result, it was devastating to her. And so, she started to cry, and I asked her, do you want a hug? And I gave her a hug. And then there's oxytocin, the relationship hormone. As soon as we had that physical touch—the hug—she started to open up about how she felt. And I thought, yep, that's how we navigate things differently in our household as well. With my son, it's usually a drive to our favourite burger stop, and we have a conversation. He's in the front seat, I pull out of the driveway, and then the conversation starts in the car. And by the time we get to the burgers, there might be a bit more chit-chat about things in general when we're biting into those burgers, and a bit more chatter on the way home in the car. That's our cone of silence. You remember the show, Get Smart?

Interviewer:
[00:18:32] Oh, yeah.

Stephen:
[00:18:33] That's our cone of silence. That's our safe space. The conversations can happen organically, I find, in different places, but for each of my kids, I've got to approach the chats about mental health and how they're feeling very, very differently. We can't take a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with mental health with anyone, especially our kids.

Interviewer:
[00:18:51] You've focused on men's mental health as well, and you've spoken about how direct questioning can feel more like an interrogation than a conversation for men who don't often open up. Instead, you've found connection doing shared things, going for a ride, obviously, with your interests, grabbing a coffee, doing something side by side. Why do you think those more natural moments can make such a difference?

Stephen:
[00:19:17] More recently, I've felt comfortable with the idea of sharing my feelings with a stranger, like a counsellor or a psychologist. In the past, it hasn't always been that way. So it's always been with people that I really trust that I've been comfortable speaking openly about how I'm feeling in that capacity. With strangers, however, it's very difficult to open up one-to-one, and for a lot of men, it can feel like you're being interrogated when you ask them questions like, how are you going, or things like that. Because I think there's a layer of suspicion there as well. Why are they asking me these questions? What do they want to know? What do they want to know about me? Are they trying to work out my weaknesses? What's going on there? Is there an ulterior motive? I've found that with riding, in particular, just talking about bikes, when you start a conversation about a bike, it'll slowly dovetail into another facet of life. One moment you might be talking about—

Interviewer:
[00:20:11] Your air filters.

Stephen:
[00:20:12] Your air filters, how many teeth you have in the front and rear sprocket, what the gauge of the chain is, and then it might turn to the wife and kids and how work is going at the moment.

Interviewer:
[00:20:20] Yeah, right.

Stephen:
[00:20:21] For many of our rides, we meet at Scarborough, a popular motorcycle hangout here in Perth. We go to a store, we get a coffee, we might enjoy some hot chips, and then we find that other people who ride bikes just start coming up and we have conversations about bikes. And then these conversations might last until the wee hours of the early morning, like one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning, but that's the beauty about it. There's the whole freedom aspect about riding motorcycles, but then there are the conversations and the connections that you make as well. I remember having a conversation with a guy who was on a bike. He had a fascinating story about having stepkids and dealing with the dynamics of raising somebody else's kids and trying his best to be a father figure to them, but acknowledging that it's going to take a long time for those kids to call him dad, if at all. And that started with a conversation about, oh, what kind of bike do you ride? Oh, let's have a look at it. I like your headlights. Are those custom rearview mirrors that you have on there? Are they aftermarket? It all started from that. Inhibitions are down when you start talking about something comfortable and relatable, like a motorcycle.

Interviewer:
[00:21:19] For anyone listening right now, particularly men who feel like they've got to hold it all together and carry all that responsibility themselves, what would you want them to know from your story?

Stephen:
[00:21:29] I think in summary, tomorrow can be better than today. There's an old saying my Maltese grandmother used to tell me in her broken English: ‘Tomorrows are the yesterday we used to worry about today.’

Interviewer:
[00:21:43] Wow.

Stephen:
[00:21:44] And that helped me get through things day by day. Maybe you're having a rough day. Maybe you're having a rough week. But if you continue to feel all those deeper, layered thoughts and feelings—entertaining thoughts of ‘I'm worthless, I'm useless, I've got nothing to live for’—then maybe your motorcycle is making a bit of noise. Then maybe you need to have a conversation with someone and check in and do a bit of self-maintenance, a bit of self-care. Or maybe you need to take yourself to the mechanic and have a real conversation about how things are at the moment and take real stock about your mental health.

Interviewer:
[00:22:22] This is where I want to take the analogy. Just because you polish the motorbike and clean the mirrors doesn't mean that the engine's running properly.

Stephen:
[00:22:29] That's right.

Interviewer:
[00:22:30] Yeah, it can look great.

Stephen:
[00:22:32] Yeah, and without naming names, there are a lot of good-looking bikes out there that don't run very well. Meets happen all the time, and I think we do the same thing. We turn up at family gatherings, parties and whatnot. We might look well, but inside we might be crumbling apart. And it's only the people who really know us who can tell there's something deeper going on. There's a bit of a dark cloud hanging above that guy's head or that girl's head; there's something going on. And with the community, you start to notice when people don't turn up, because it's such a tight-knit community and everyone knows each other really well. You have a quiet conversation among yourselves: ‘Is everything all right over there?’ And people turn up and they check in and that's been wonderful. Last year, there was a bit of a struggle for me and I wasn't turning up to all the meets and all that. And I'm known in the community and there was a period last year where I wasn't turning up, and so people started to reach out to me: ‘Hey Steve, is everything okay?’ And that was really good for me. I said, ‘No, I'm just going through it at the moment. I'm fine, but I really appreciate you checking in. Yeah, but everything's fine. Please be assured of that.’ So people start to notice when you're not turning up. And even when you do turn up, they start to notice when you're just not all there completely. And that's not to say that things are crumbling apart, but there might be a little tell, like a little sign that indicates to everyone else that maybe everything's not great there. Maybe we need to do something to help him out or help her out.

Interviewer:
[00:23:51] And your work's opened the door for people to have those conversations, bypassing the chit-chat and the small talk and getting into something quite real and connected.

Stephen:
[00:24:00] Yeah, and I'm not dismissing or undervaluing the importance of chit-chat now, because the chit-chat might be the way into a deeper and more meaningful conversation and discovery about yourself or about someone else.

Interviewer:
[00:24:12] Thanks so much for sharing your story. It's so important that we hear them, and we hear them from lots of different people, including men, because we know men are really impacted by mental distress, and it's great to have you standing up and talking all about it.

Stephen:
[00:24:25] Thank you, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Darcy (Host):
[00:24:28] Thanks for listening to Holding on to Hope, the podcast. Lifeline is grateful to all Holding on to Hope participants for choosing to share their personal lived experiences openly and courageously in order to offer hope and inspiration to others. Your act of kindness makes for a better world. And remember, you can call Lifeline at any time on 13 11 14.