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.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:00:31] Today's guest is Tim, a speaker, mentor, philanthropist, and internationally recognised leader in positive psychology and mental health. From the outside, Tim built a successful career and meaningful life, but privately he was struggling with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts for many years. Tim first noticed changes in his mental health as a teenager, with his distress intensifying after leaving school and continuing through early adulthood, including suicide attempts and periods of profound grief and loss. Despite this, he went on to build a family, a career, and a life of purpose. Today, Tim shares his story to remind others that they're not alone, that recovery is possible, and that reaching out for support can make all the difference. Well, welcome, Tim. Thanks for being with us today and being part of this whole podcast. Great to have you here.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:01:25] Thanks for having me.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:01:26] You've spent decades helping others find meaning, happiness, psychological well-being. What does a good day look like in your life right now, and what are the things that keep you grounded?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:01:39] A good day for me now is a mix of meaningful work. So I still provide psychological services in different ways, mostly through speaking and media and writing and sort of higher-level things like that. I'm moving more and more into mentoring and I guess, trying to give back, particularly to young leaders in the mental health space, but also another area that I'm passionate about, which is climate, environment, and social justice. But I'm also trying to pursue something I've never really done much in my life, which is some hobbies. I've always been a big nature lover, and spending time in nature for me has also been very therapeutic, even before I knew it was, when I was young—well, from adolescence, really. I think as a teenager, a couple of mates at school started bushwalking, and I knew I loved it. I didn't quite know that it was good for me. So I love that. But I've also started to couple that with at a very amateur level, some photography, which for me is also a bit of a mindfulness practice. It makes me sort of stop and think and look at things differently, which I'm finding really interesting. It's still very new, and I don't know if I'm very good at it. I suppose what I'm trying to learn to do is engage in activity without specific achievement and productivity in mind, which took up so much of my life. And I don't regret that. But for so long, it was about achieving goals and winning and climbing the ladder and awards and all sorts of things. And it's kind of I'm trying to let go of some of that.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:03:02] You have built that life, all those years of working and striving, that from the outside looks really successful: a family, 30-year marriage, I know how hard that is, a career built around well-being. What do you know now that makes life meaningful that you could have told your younger self about?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:03:23] I've never really been one for regrets in that sense because I didn't know any better then, and I did the best I could. And there were times when I probably worked too hard, although I think I was a relatively active and involved father and husband. I think there were times when I prioritised ostensible public success more than the internal, things that I valued, chasing a bigger practice and growth and sometimes literally awards, which, looking back now, don't really mean that much. Although the success I had led to me having the life I have now and the flexibility and freedom I have now, which, maybe I wouldn't have had if I hadn't done the sorts of things I did.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:04:05] To understand how far you have travelled, I want to go back to the beginning, and you first started noticing changes in how you were feeling as a teenager. And a lot of that was connected to your concern about the world, including climate way back then. What was happening for you internally during that time?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:04:23] This is something I spoke recently about at a sort of large national conference, that I didn't feel I deserved to be upset because I came from a pretty good background. I mean, my parents ultimately got divorced, but we had a pretty loving mum and dad loved us, even though they didn't necessarily love each other at the end. We were middle class, we had a supportive, home, a relatively stable, good education. And so when I started to feel what I now know were significant elements of mental ill-health, particularly depression and anxiety, et cetera. Well, firstly, I didn't understand it because we didn't talk about it back then. This is before R U OK? Day, before Beyond Blue, and before a lot of these initiatives, fantastic initiatives that we now know. So none of us had a vocabulary, none of us had a language. It was really very much hidden in the dark. I couldn't put words to what I was experiencing. And even if I could, as I said, I probably would have felt that I didn't deserve it because, well, I'm a privileged white male, what do I have to be upset about? I think I did experience social anxiety without knowing what it was. And then I started to experience what's now called eco-anxiety, although no one used that term then. But actually, it's the same group of people that I started bushwalking with. We started going to nuclear disarmament marches back in the day, fighting to try and save the Franklin River from the dams and those sorts of things. So even back then, there were concerns about the environment, and we were very concerned. I guess I grew up in an era where there were the same concerns about whether the world could continue as we knew it. Well, in the early days, I suppose it was quite exciting in a way. It was sort of almost fun, if that's not strange to describe it as that. But I think very quickly I started to become disillusioned when nothing was changing. Governments didn't seem to be paying attention, in the same way they're not now, I suppose. Didn't seem to be paying attention to the science. Policies didn't seem to be changing. What started as quite, I suppose, inspired activism, I guess, relatively quickly grew to learned helplessness in a sense. Although, again, I didn't have the vocabulary or the insight or even the emotional intelligence maybe to know what was going on. But very quickly, combined with a number of other factors, I started to become quite depressed about the world, really.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:06:38] I hadn't heard that term, eco-anxiety, before. Do you want to say a little bit more about it for others who may not have heard?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:06:45] The term has been used particularly in recent years, although as a phenomenon it's been around for a long time, but concern about the environment, anxious about the future of the world because of climate change, [unclear: environmental activities]. So particularly the younger generations, it's very, well, again, it's more prevalent in their vocabulary anyway, but even some of us older people experience it as well.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:07:08] There's a detail in your story that's really striking, and you reconnected with an old friend recently, and she told you that people used to refer to you as "sunshine" when you were younger. What does that tell you about the gap between what you were feeling on the inside and what was happening, how you were portraying yourself externally?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:07:27] That was a few years ago now, but I'd forgotten it, totally forgotten it. I was probably, trying to think how old, 15, 16, roughly, give or take a few years around then. And that was when my mental ill health was probably just starting to really ramp up a bit. And it was also when I started, without realising what I was doing, to compensate with alcohol, particularly, and a few other substances. So I was starting to feel increasingly uncomfortable in my own skin, particularly, and particularly in social situations, uncomfortable about many aspects of my life and life in general. But I suppose what that, when she reminded me of that, and it really was a surprise because I'd really forgotten that, it reminded me of how good I was and how many of us get very good at putting on a brave face, and that the face we show the world can be quite different to what we're feeling inside.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:08:20] Yeah, that mask of.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:08:22] The mask that we all wear. And I, like many people, was exceptionally good at that, which isn't a good thing.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:08:29] And after leaving school, less structure, other things intensified for you, drinking, sleep difficulties, feelings were building. Can you describe what that period was like and the feeling of alone, being alone with all of that?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:08:44] One of the things that doesn't, I don't think gets talked about enough in these discussions is that you can feel happy and sad at the same time. You can be excited and anxious at the same time. Things can be great and terrible at the same time. So I probably should preface this by saying I had a lot of fun. It was, leaving school at, well, 18, I guess I was, 17 or 18, like many of us did back then, moving out of home relatively quickly, some travel, a lot of very active social life, lots of live music. So it wasn't all darkness and gloom. There was a lot of fun, a lot of excitement, a lot of adventure, a lot of mistakes in that as well. But there was, again, a dark side lurking behind that. But I don't want to overlook what were good things. And again, I didn't realize at the time, but leaving school, moving out of home, which were all, again, in a way, exciting, positive things, also brought with them a lack of structure, as you mentioned. So I didn't love school, but I didn't hate it. But what it provided, again, was structure. It provided almost compulsory activity because we played sport. It provided compulsory socialisation because you're just seeing people every day. And I was living at home, so we had at least a reasonably healthy diet and some constraints on our activity. But once that was taken away, and again, by my choice to sort of leave that, for me particularly, the lack of structure, the lack of physical exercise, well, not the lack of socialising, but the change. And I've referred to the drinking a few times. It was all totally normal in my peer group. Young men of my generation, we just drank a lot. And for most of my friends, it wasn't a problem necessarily. But for me, for whatever reasons, I do think that contributed. It helped me in the sense that it covered up my social anxiety and in a sense, helped me manage in the short term my depression. But it certainly wasn't helpful, medium to longer term. And then came significant sleep problems and really bad insomnia for a long time, which then exacerbated depression, et cetera. So again, I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back, there were really, I guess you'd call them lifestyle factors that went from reasonably good to almost totally absent. And yeah, that was particularly unhealthy for me.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:10:56] So that period sounds really dynamic, lots of fun stuff going on feelings of depression building highs and lows. What was it like trying to navigate that, trying to find the balance that you could live with?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:11:11] Well, I didn't for a long time because, again, we're talking about the dark ages. These conversations wouldn't have happened.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:11:18] No, nothing like it.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:11:20] So the first time I tried to harm myself, tried to end my life, I was admitted to hospital, and they discharged me with nothing, no referral, no advice.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:11:31] Just see you later.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:11:32] Basically just see you later, literally, which in hindsight was, it's quite shocking, really. But back then, it was just probably what happened. And again, my parents tried to help as much as they could, but they were lost. And the GPs we tried to see were lost, and even the psychiatrists and the psychologists we tried to see at that stage. So eventually, I did get some help, but it took a long time. It took several attempts to find the right professional, and thankfully, I did. But the other thing, probably I think the biggest thing that helped me back then was finding my purpose, I suppose. So one of the other factors I haven't talked about is I was totally lost in terms of life direction. Again, like a lot of people, I don't think it was that unusual, but for me, when I left school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I did reasonably well academically, so I had choice. I could have done multiple things, but I didn't have a clue. But luckily, I fell into psychology. I had a vague interest in human behaviour, but I didn't know what that would lead to. So I was quite lucky in a sense that I decided to study psychology. I had a few detours along the way, but eventually, I got through it, an honours degree. But even then, so even when I finished my fourth year in psychology, I still had no idea. Undergrad psychology is pretty broad. There's lots of ways you can go, which is great, but also difficult. And then I still think one of the luckiest moments of my life, one of those turning point epiphany moments was having a discussion with one of my tutors who I must have had a relationship with although I can't remember why or whatever. She recommended that I apply for the clinical master's program.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:13:13] Right.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:13:13] I'd literally finished my honours. Applications closed in like a week. I hadn't even thought about post-grad studies, but I did it, and somehow, luckily, I got accepted. And when I came back and started that, that was just fantastic.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:13:29] You found your place?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:13:30] I think I remember literally within weeks just thinking, this is what I want to do.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:13:34] Yeah, wow.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:13:34] This is what I can do, what I could be. I kind of almost felt like I was home. It was amazing. Finding that direction was a massive—it was for the first time in my life, I kind of thought, okay, I think I know what I can do.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:13:46] I've got a path.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:13:47] And I'd never had that before. And that made a massive difference. I still had some pretty dark days and some down periods, but the next decade or two were actually, very stimulating. And then I went on to do a PhD, and so it was very stimulating, and I was achieving a lot of success, and I was doing really well and loving doing well, feeling like I was helping people at the same time. And so that next period, again, it wasn't all smooth sailing, but there was a greater sense of clarity in who I was and what I could do, I suppose, which, again, for me, was really, really important.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:14:20] And one of the things that brought all of us complete uncertainty and concern was COVID. And at the very beginning of that period, you lost your mum. Sorry to hear that. Someone you'd grown increasingly close to. That kind of grief, especially in those early isolation periods, that can be profound. How did you get through that time? What was going on underneath for you?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:14:44] It was very difficult. As you said, it was the early days of COVID, so it was already unsettling. And again, this was the very early stages of COVID. So I think the biggest thing then was the uncertainty and the unknown. We didn't know what was going to be.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:14:56] How long is this going to be?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:14:57] Is it really bad? Is it not bad? How long is it going to go on? What sort of impact? There were shutdowns, and as disruptive as it was for me, and I think a lot of people, the not knowing, the uncertainty was particularly difficult. And I think what it, for me, also it heightened a health anxiety that I'd never really, I think maybe it had been lurking there, but you know, I became, I was very anxious about it. I think, again, like a lot of people, but that was quite heightened in me more than I would have thought it might have been. And then, yeah, for mum to die, several months into that. And as you said, we'd always been close, but I think in the last, that last decade or two, we'd become closer and closer. She lived down the road, I lived not far away geographically. And because I was self-employed, I had a lot of freedom and flexibility. I mean, she was pretty independent, so she didn't necessarily need my help, but we spoke almost every day. I visited regularly, and we had, I think, a really wonderful, fantastic relationship. So to lose, I'd had grandparents die, but that's different, because, I guess there's that step removed. Not that I wasn't sad when grandparents died, but mum was just that step a lot closer, a lot more intimate. So that was my first significant grief, and it was exacerbated by the complications of COVID and all that. I was very seriously grieving for well, for months and months, if not a year or so, I suppose. And then I'm sure people out there have grieved as well, every anniversary, birthday, Christmas, all those sort of significant, the first one of them particularly is particularly difficult, when she's not there for my birthday or Mother's Day or those things. That was a very difficult period, made a lot worse because of all the other shit that was going on.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:16:42] You've worked with different kinds of support for yourself over the years, counselling, psychiatry, eventually a clinical psychologist using CBT. Not all of it felt like it helped. I think that's a really important thing to talk about. It can take a while to find what works for you. But what was it about that final try, that final relationship that felt different? And what did it give you that the earlier stuff you tried couldn't?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:17:10] I think that's a really important question, really important point. We encourage people to get help. We encourage people to reach out and call Lifeline or go to the GP, which is fantastic. But what we don't often talk about is that that first person, whoever it might be—and I'll just say mental health professional, because obviously, there's a range of expertise, et cetera. But that first one may or may not be the right one for a variety of reasons. And it's not necessarily that that person is bad. Sometimes it's not about the expertise, it's just about the fit, because it's a very intense relationship. It was the third attempt that I'd made to reach out until I found the right one. And I've spoken to lots of people for whom it has taken three, four or five attempts. Maybe that person wasn't good, maybe they weren't the right style, but sometimes, again, it's just like, sometimes it can be a bit like dating. And you don't always marry the first person you're interested in.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:17:59] You just got to play the numbers, right? You can play the numbers game.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:18:01] A little bit. I think you need to stick at it for a while and give them more than one or two sessions. The first two people, I'd say, weren't quite right for different reasons. Not terrible. The third one was a clinical psychologist. Her expertise was CBT, cognitive behaviour therapy. And I'm not saying that's right for everyone, but for me, at that point in time, it was just what I needed. Some practical skills, that were relevant and applicable, that would make a difference here and now. And thankfully, she was, well, I think she was excellent, and I think she literally saved my life.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:18:32] Wow. Something else you've tried is to write a letter to your friends explaining what was going on for you and what you'd been carrying. What made you do it and what happened when they read that letter?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:18:45] I didn't speak about any of this for a long time because no one spoke about it back in those days. In the very early stages, I guess the main reason would have been stigma, with a strong element of me not having the vocabulary, me not even understanding it enough myself to be able to talk to other people about it, but I didn't have the vocabulary. There was a lot of stigma. People just didn't have these conversations back then. And I suppose the biggest change in my life in that regard was when I started to support an organisation called batyr, a youth mental health organisation who specialise in smashing the stigma. They send young people out to talk to young people, sharing their lived experiences, but with a strong element of hope and optimism and how you can get through it. I fell in love with that idea, and I was, well, initially on the board and then supported them in a number of ways. And I thought, well, I'm supporting them. I should probably do this as well. And I did want to let my friends know beforehand. And so I decided to write a letter to say, I'm coming out. This is what happened. I want to let you know first. I wrote basically a short version of my story. What surprised me, and it still surprises me, is how surprised they were. A couple of people didn't respond at all, which is telling. A couple of people responded with sort of jokey humour, which, again, I think is sort of a way many of us cope with things. But probably the strongest response was, why didn't you tell us? We didn't know.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:20:06] Yeah.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:20:07] Now, that surprised me because, again, I'd been admitted to hospital twice and multiple other examples of what I would have considered serious red flags and serious warning signs. It reminded me again of the mask that I must have been wearing and how good I must have been. So I don't blame them necessarily. I didn't let them know.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:20:27] You were very effective at pushing that all down.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:20:30] I think, and again, I think many of us are, and that's why I like to talk about it now.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:20:35] One of the messages of your story is that depression and anxiety are not roadblocks. You can build meaningful life, career, family. When you look back at everything you've built, what would you want someone who's in the middle of all of their experiences to know, to hear from your story?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:20:55] I don't think my story is special necessarily in that regard. But I don't think we hear these stories enough. We're talking a lot more about mental health, which is great. We're talking a lot more about reaching out and asking for help. And you see the image that is often used is someone sitting in a dark corner with their head in hand. And I think what it overlooks is the reality for the majority of people. And I'm not saying that's not relevant for some, but for the majority of people, they're out there walking the streets, going into offices, sitting next to you on the train, sitting next to you in work, et cetera. The majority of people with mental ill-health are functioning and getting on. It's hard, and we can't see it all the time. And so I suppose that's why I think it's important that I talk about it is to help those other people feel not alone. Because, again, the majority of people with major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, are functioning. Maybe not as well as they'd like, and maybe not as well as they could do. But what I'd like to say to them is, good on you. Well done. It's hard to get out of bed some days. It's hard to get into the office some days. It's hard to make the kids lunch or to clean the house or whatever it might be. But if you're doing that despite mental ill-health, then you're a bloody soldier. And it's just, it's admirable and inspirational. Now, that doesn't mean it should be hard forever. If we can alleviate that, obviously, we want to do that. And I've had greater and lesser success at different stages of my life in lessening that. For most of us, a DSM diagnosis doesn't have to be a life sentence. It doesn't have to stop you still having success, still living a good life. You can have the distress and the success at the same time. Now, again, if we can reduce that distress, great. But we can still function and sometimes function very well at a very high level. And that can include happiness and joy despite mental ill health.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:22:45] You felt at one stage you were the only person in the world with those experiences, and then you found out that you weren't. There were many other people, the people sitting next to you on the train, people going into the offices. If someone is listening right now and still believes that they're the only one, what would you say to them directly?

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:23:03] Well, I'm at least one other person out there. But there's obviously a lot more than me. And that's why these podcasts and the messages that Lifeline is trying to tell, and messages of hope, are so important. And I think, thankfully, today, social media gets a bad rap a lot of the time. And it should do. There's a lot of problems with social media. But I do think there's a lot of good. And one of the good aspects of social media is in this area of mental health where we can now go to certain pages, to certain websites, and see these stories, hear these stories. I think it's a lot harder now to feel you're all on your own. And that doesn't mean there are other people out there with exactly what you're going through. Because, again, we are all different. And my story is my story, and my experience is my experience, and yours will almost certainly be different because you're a different person. But we can go to the statistics, and we know for a fact there are millions of people just in Australia. There are hundreds of millions of people all around the world who are experiencing some sort of depression, some sort of anxiety, whatever your particular mental ill-health issue is. And on the one hand, that makes me sad that there are so many people suffering, but on the other hand, it makes me feel less alone. And I think that's reassuring. And it's been really hard at certain times in my life to experience the darkness and distress, but it was exacerbated multiple times when I thought I was the only person. And knowing that I'm not, knowing that there's some sort of connection there, I suppose, and knowing that those other people are out there functioning and getting through, that they're doing good, that helps a bit as well.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:24:41] And that they may have found the right support for them at that time.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:24:45] Exactly.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:24:46] Thanks so much for being here today, Tim. Really appreciate it. It's wonderful to have your story shared so that someone could connect and say, yep, I hear it, that's me. I can find my path too.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:24:58] Well, I hope so. Thanks for having me. And if they don't connect to me, listen to one of the other podcasts, watch one of the other episodes, or again, there are many, many other sort of similar ones out there. And again, I think that's fantastic. The more of these conversations we have, the better, the less likely people are to feel alone, the less likely they are to feel hopeless and helpless. We can do it. We can get through it. And we can get through it better together. So that's what's great about these things is the connection that comes from that.

Carla (Interviewer):
[00:25:23] Terrific. Thanks so much.

Dr Tim Sharp:
[00:25:24] Thanks for having me.

Darcy (Host):
[00:25:25] 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.