Sort Your Head Out: Mental health without all the bollocks

Product Information

For more information, see penninghame.org. Penninghame offers a sliding scale of fees and bursaries may also be available.

Find out what classes are available in your community and sign up for something that takes your interest It feels good to give. Giving your time can be very rewarding and can connect you to your community. Research shows doing an act of kindness every week boosts your mood and increases your wellbeing! Covering his complex upbringing, fast paced career, struggles with addiction and recovery, and detailing lessons he’s learnt along the way, Sort Your Head Outis Sam’s startlingly raw, compassionate and hilarious account of why opening up is the first step to sorting your head out. The beauty of Penninghame isthat it isn’t just about the week’s experience. You’re given practical tools to take into everyday life that will help you live more honestly, creatively and authentically. In the weeks following, I noticed my life shift. My home life became more harmonious, I had far more clarity about my work, I found a visionfor my future that felt exciting and possible and my bouts of depression seem to have been booted into touch.

Join our email club...

Then I did something that was pretty alien to me. I started to own up to the fact that I was struggling. I went to a group called Andy’s Man Club where blokes meet every Monday night for a chinwag about life, all the shit it can throw at you and all the beauty that’s to be found in it too. It helped. I started chatting to mates about what I was going through and the things I was worried about. I was stunned by their empathy. Next, I started writing about this sort of stuff. A couple of articles in the newspaper about my own little struggles: the drinking, the anxiety, the childhood stuff I’d never quite shaken off. I’d been writing for years but never with much honesty about myself. I like making people laugh and found it was easy to use humour as a means of distracting from self-reflection. Be in the moment. Whether you're sharing a coffee with colleagues or talking with friends, being aware of the present instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future is good for your wellbeing. Regular exercise and eating a whole food diet is encouraged to maintain our body's optimum health but what about our minds?

I feel it works because it’s so intense, so focused and stretches over a week. Knowing you don’t have to ‘gather yourself together’ to face the world at the end of an hour’s session gives the psyche the freedom to let go and allow the tough stuff to surface. My three previous books were: Get Smashed - The Story Of The Men Who Made The Ads That Changed Our Lives (Sceptre, 2007), Night Of The Living Dad (John Murray, 2009) and Mad Men And Bad Men (Faber, 2015). Regular physical activity has been proven to have a positive effect on your mental health and wellbeing. This doesn't mean you have to run a marathon; there are lots of other things you can do to keep active! Sam knew he needed help – the problem was that he thought self-help was for hippies, sobriety was for weirdos and therapy was for neurotics. It was only when he began to open up that things got better and better. Now he’s written this book to help others do the same."It is an intense course,’ agrees Butler, ‘but thereare very few dangers, as it’s planned and paced around each individual – everyone participates to the degree they wish.’ He adds that it may not be suitable for some people with mental health issues, and everyone wanting to take the course has an interview witha course leader, and completes a questionnaire before admission. I am still very much a work in progress. I still overdo it sometimes. I still say yes to things I shouldn’t. I sometimes fill dead evenings with chocolate and make myself an espresso at 8 p.m. at night because . . . I don’t know why – it’s just something to do, innit?

Eventually, there was a collapse. There always is. Since then, I have rebuilt my life in a simpler way that is easier to manage. It's important to stay in touch with friends and family, especially if you're feeling down. Even if it's just having a chat over a cuppa, talking can help lift your mood. But when he reached his thirties, work, relationships and fatherhood started to take their toll. Like so many blokes who seemed to be totally fine, he often felt like a complete failure whose life was out of control; anxiety and depression had secretly plagued him for years. Turning to drink and drugs only made things worse. Sam knew he needed help - the problem was that he thought self-help was for hippies, sobriety was for weirdos and therapy was for neurotics.I have spent years as a broadcaster both in radio and TV. I have hosted numerous shows on BBC 5Live, BBC London and talkSPORT and presented documentaries for BBC Three and Channel 4. From 2016-2018 I hosted the drive time show on Talk Radio, covering the Brexit referendum, two general elections and the 2016 US Presidential Election, live from Washington DC.