Express your Self

Headmaster’s Routh Assembly Address
Monday 1st February 2021

Link to video recording: Express your Self 

As you may or may not know, today is the start of Mental Health Week in the UK. Which seems timely, given how we are all feeling at the moment. However, it does rely on us all having a shared definition of what those words mean. We can probably all agree on what a week is. But what, exactly is “mental health”? Certain phrases are suffering badly from overuse at the moment, and that is one of them. Like most cliches, it is an important concept. The problem is, it gets tossed into conversation so often, especially in these stressful days of lockdown, that people lose sight of what is being talked about.

The clue is in the word health. And the obvious parallel is your physical health. If you are suffering ill-health, we all know what that means. Your body isn’t working the way it should. Not operating at its peak.

When the problem is cured, either by you caring for yourself or by medical intervention, you become healthy once more. None of us like ailments that prevent us from using our limbs or senses or organs as we would wish. Sometimes that is outside of our control; we have a pre-existing condition or have been in an accident. In other cases, it is our own choices that make us unhealthy. Smoking or drinking or eating to excess, perhaps. And, of course, there are also differing degrees of health problems. The implications of catching a cold are far different from those of developing cancer.

The point is, we all strive for physical health, so that we can use our body the way it is designed to be used. And to improve our chances of that, of keeping our body healthy, we all know what we should do feed it and exercise it. That is a lesson we all learn early in life.

I grew up in a large family, in a fairly poor area. In the same street, there lived three brothers, with whom we used to play. Roaming the neighbourhood after school, we were one big, rag tag gang. However, these boys (I won’t name them in case they Google this and sue me) these boys could not have been more different from us. My siblings and I were hardly world-class athletes, but we were all fairly active and, as our mother was a dietician, we ate pretty healthy food. These boys, not so much.

One was the puniest human being I have ever known. He wasn’t just skinny; kids come in all shapes and sizes and being thin wasn’t such a big deal. But he was more than thin, he was emaciated. Like a frail, wizened old man in a 10-year-old body. The reason wasn’t hard to fathom. He ate yogurt. And before the health freaks get mad at me, there is nothing wrong with yogurt. In fact, it is very good for you. But that is all he ate. Just yogurt. Morning, noon and night. The only thing that varied was the flavour.

It was like he never got past the baby food stage. Refused to eat solids. Unlike his older brother. Who ate anything. Anything and everything. The only condition seemed to be that it had to be patently bad for you. Fried food, processed food, candy, fizzy drinks. The Clague kids were allowed a lone biscuit when we got home from school. He had a box of iced doughnuts waiting for him.

He thought that he ate a perfectly balanced diet, covering the three essential teenage food groups; sugar, fat and salt. Needless to say, he was large. Again, not such a big deal, we are all sorts of shapes when we’re young. But he was also permanently unhealthy. Lank hair, greasy skin, huffing and puffing like an asthmatic ox.

Always breathless, but at least he was breathing. I was not so sure about the youngest brother. He was lazy to the point of being comatose. If we played football, he was always goalie because it required least effort.
In fact, his preferred defensive strategy was to lie down across the mouth of the goal and sleep. We cycled everywhere when we were kids, but he insisted to his parents he didn’t want a bike; it was easier if someone doubled him on theirs. His greatest talent in life became conserving energy and avoiding exercise at all costs.

I should stress that I didn’t dislike these kids. We played together for years as children and my brothers and sisters and I were by no means perfect either. Nevertheless, it was an early lesson for me in how diet and exercise can shape your body.

In exactly the same way, what you feed into your brain, and how regularly you exercise it, shapes your mind. Back, then, to what that phrase “mental health” actually means. Health, remember, is when something works as it is supposed to. Mental means what’s going on in your head. Your thoughts and feelings, ideas and emotions.

Therefore, good mental health should be about your mind doing what it is designed to do. Allowing you to be yourself. To like yourself. Express yourself. And to do all that, you need to be able to understand yourself. We learn how to put on a plaster or take an aspirin. Why not learn to heal our happiness too? That is why I think some people have lost sight of what good mental health is.

Having good mental health doesn’t mean never feeling unhappy in the first place. Or angry, or lonely or frustrated. Our brains are designed to feel a range of emotions, including the negative ones. That’s why there are more emojis on your phone than just the smiley face.

In the same way that our nerve-endings are designed to feel pain as well as pleasurable sensations. Or our stomach can make us feel nauseous as well as satisfied. Your body has warning devices to get you to pay attention when there is a problem. So does your brain. Which is why trying to completely avoid negative emotions is not what is meant by good mental health. That is like switching off the fire alarms in order to prevent fires.

Good mental health is about doing to your mind what you should be doing to your body. Feeding it a diet of healthy ideas and exercising it regularly by thinking for yourself. What did the three brothers teach us? Don’t just feed your mind intellectual baby food, day in and day out. If all the stimulation your brain ever gets is TikTok and the Kardashians, is it any wonder you might feel frail?

Likewise, don’t live on a diet of toxic brainfood. Scrolling through endless depressing news feeds. Focussing on things said about you on social media. Swallowing the bitter words of trolls. That sort of negativity will poison your mind the same way junk food poisons your body.

If you want your mind to work the way it was supposed to, feed it the good stuff. Re-read nice texts from friends. Make your screen saver happy holiday photos. Play only music that lifts your spirits. If things get really desperate, try losing yourself in a book (paper things, bit bigger than a phone, no screen – you will have seen them around).

And then, once you are feeding your mind a healthy diet, remember to exercise it. I’m not talking quadratic equations every night before bed (although if that’s what floats your boat, go right ahead). Just don’t be mentally lazy. Especially now, in these tedious days, without many of our usual stimulations. Be curious. Google stuff that intrigues or irritates you. Add things up in your head, not your phone. And be creative. If ever there was a moment to dabble in poetry or painting or piano-playing, surely it is now? With time on your hands and nobody watching? Express yourself.

Do all that, feed and exercise your mind, and you are well on your way to good mental health. You will still feel bad occasionally, that’s natural. If you don’t feel frustrated, a little down, maybe a bit lonely right now, there probably is something wrong with you. But take those emotions as an alert that you need to do something. YOU need to do something. It is your mental health.

If it gets worse, you may well need some extra help, and that’s fine. No different than going to a doctor if an infection doesn’t go away after treating it yourself at home. And you know that there is plenty of help right here, even if it is by Zoom or phone at the moment. Your Tutors, Houseparents, the Pastoral Team, and our own Wellbeing Nurse, are all available to you. Mrs Henderson is a great resource for you all.

However, the best thing you can do is strengthen your own mental immune system in the first place, by feeding your mind well and stretching it often. Do that this week. Then use you brain for the reason you have it – to express yourself. Express your Self.

On that note, have a happy week.