My Address to the GAA's Inaugural National Health and Wellbeing Seminar

During the Summer of 2013, 14 of my club colleagues and I took part in an event to cycle from Malin to Mizen Head over four days to raise funds for our new club development. As we departed Donegal, leapt through Leitrim, sailed through Sligo, rolled along the roads of Roscommon and galloped across Galway over the first couple of days, we spoke amongst ourselves of how truly beautiful our country is when viewed from the perspective of the open road and the slower pace of a bike.

 We crossed through Clare and limped on through Limerick, climbed Molls Gap and descended the other side, gliding into Glengariff and finally motored on to Mizen Head. Each village and town had its differences, its own unique identity and landmarks that set it apart from all the others. However, there was one constant throughout our journey. 

That constant was the GAA fields proudly located in each and every hamlet, village, town and city we traversed. Some were new developments, pristine fields and clubhouses with the most up to date amenities for its players and administrators whilst others reflected the natural wear and tear of a busy and oft used facility, whose ball alley walls were eroded from the impact of a million sliothars as a result of the daily practice of its players to fine tune their silky skills, the same way a coastline erodes from the daily waves of the ocean. You could feel the history and romance in these old venues, the thousands of souls who must have graced these sacred grounds, performing feats of magic and bravery with their camans and feet and hands. Similarly, you could visualise the new local heroes that were going to emerge in the modern club developments and create their own history, memories and unbreakable bonds of friendships over the coming decades.

The sights of these venues heartened us and filled us all with a renewed pride and enthusiasm, knowing that we are a part of an organisation that is far bigger than us all individually but connects and binds our communities and our people in a myriad of tangible and intangible ways.  

An organisation that is owned by no one but belongs to all. An organisation that reaches from the top of Malin Head to the tip of Mizen head and everywhere in between.

 An organisation whose membership spans the ages and the sexes, where there is an outlet for the athlete and the administrator, the electrician and the engineer, the employed and unemployed, the old and the young.

It’s for these reasons and many more that there is no organisation better placed within our island to embrace the challenges to enhance the Health and Wellbeing of our members and our communities.

This area covers a broad spectrum and one of those is the Mental Health and Emotional Wellness of our people.

 Our members give a lot to our organisation in terms of effort and energy and I firmly believe we in the Gaelic Athletic Association have a sacred responsibility to these same people and the wider community to create the atmosphere and culture where people can feel the safety in facing up to their inner problems and create the support structures to help them on their path back to health.

That we can say to our people that it’s okay to not feel okay, affirm and encourage the message that it is an act of strength, courage and most of all, kindness to yourself to address your emotional difficulties and seek some assistance.

That our clubhouses, gyms, ball alleys, meeting rooms and GAA fields can become a sanctuary of support for these people the same way they did for me during my difficulties.

Over 800 people on this island of Ireland end their lives by suicide each year but in reality the figure well over a thousand. The graves of our dead from these deaths may appear to be silent but they are sending out a powerful message that is echoing loudly across our land of the internal turmoil many of our people are enduring.

 Over 60,000 are admitted to A&E departments each year with self harming injuries, the method that is used by many of our women in despair to give outer, physical expression to their inner pain, shattering the myth that our female population are more effective at dealing with or discussing their real emotional issues.

The startling reality is that Ireland has the highest rate of suicide amongst young females in Europe and the second highest amongst young men.

 But these are only the tip of the iceberg. What of our countless thousands that are living lives of quiet desperation and silent misery. The World Health Organisation says that by 2030, Depression will be the number one health problem in the world.

Let’s not just focus on the statistics and numbers for these never tell the human story behind them. These people are our brothers and sisters, our Mothers and Fathers, our sons and daughters, our friends and neighbours, our hurlers, footballers and camogie players, our coaches and Chairmen, our Secretaries and ladies committees, our men that line our fields and man the scoreboards.

It’s the 18 year old young man I spoke to during the week from Belfast who loves his Gaelic football but because of his attraction to other young men, is hurt each time a fellow teammate, supporter or coach, either unwittingly or purposely uses the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory and belittling manner and forces him further back in to his shell, denying him the opportunity to feel free to express and live this part of his life and so no longer gets enjoyment from participating and competing in our games.

 It’s the 67 year old woman in Laois who writes to me and describes the isolation and loneliness she feels since the death of her husband who was a lifelong member and officer in her local GAA club and now feels forgotten about in her local community.

It’s Galway hurler Niall Donoghue who thrilled thousands in this venue less than 18 months ago on All Ireland Hurling Final day with his hurling skills and bravery, yet now lies cold in a grave in Kilbeacanty after ending his life through suicide last year. I visited his grave on the outskirts of Kilbeacanty and it brought me back to how close I was to doing a similar thing myself. As his cousin Niall McDonagh and I knelt and said a quiet prayer, the heavens opened and hailstones hurtled from the skies and Niall’s final resting place reminded us both of the absolute finality, utter tragedy and immeasurable loss that suicide is. We visited his home place, I sat, spoke and ate with his beautiful but broken hearted father Francis who would gladly trade every medal and achievement his son ever attained to just have him walk in the door again each evening.

My travels around Ireland over the last few months, giving talks to schools, sports clubs, Mental Health organisations and meeting with individuals has exposed me to the carnage that depression, addiction, suicide and unhealthy levels of stress and anxiety is causing throughout our land to our people, our families and our communities.

The cacophony of screaming and distress, mostly silent or behind the masks we each wear daily, largely goes unheard and unseen.

Each day I receive e-mails, letters or phone calls from people that are struggling with their Mental Health and many are from people who are suffering in silence. They endure this daily and nightly misery on their own, carrying the burden of despair and fear because of the stigma and taboo that still surrounds this issue in our country.

Our health and Wellbeing committees can do much to break down these taboos and stigmas and help to end this killer silence.

    A man was walking along a deserted beach at sunset. As he walked he could see a young boy in the distance, as he drew nearer he noticed that the boy kept bending down, picking something up and throwing it into the water.
Time and again he kept hurling things into the ocean.

As the man approached even closer, he was able to see that the boy was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time he was throwing them back into the water.

The man asked the boy what he was doing, the boy replied,"I am throwing these washed up starfish back into the ocean, or else they will die through lack of oxygen. "But", said the man, "You can't possibly save them all, there are thousands on this beach, and this must be happening on hundreds of beaches along the coast. You can't possibly make a difference."

The boy looked down, frowning for a moment; then bent down to pick up another starfish, smiling as he threw it back into the sea. He replied,

"I made a huge difference to that one!"

So it is with us in the GAA. We can and have to make a difference for the person that is in reach of our hand. We can make a difference for the boy in Belfast by ensuring our venues and fields are places where all can feel welcome to play no matter the colour of their skin, the God they pray to or whom they choose to love.

We can make a difference for the 67 year old woman in Laois to ensure that she doesn’t have to feel she is isolated and alone and forgotten about.

We can’t make a difference for Niall Donoghue, his life has ended but we can and we have a responsibility to those many others experiencing inner turmoil.

The Persian poet Rumi says ‘Yesterday I was clever and I wanted to change the world, today I am wise and so I am changing myself.’  We have to be wise and innovative and creative and brave in transforming our culture within our organisation in how we view and value ourselves and those around us.

No matter how technologised our society becomes, the cravings of the human soul and spirit and heart will never change. The inward yearning of each human being to be valued and appreciated for their own unique and sacred presence, the desire to love and be loved, the need to belong to something outside of themselves has and will always be at the core of each individual we encounter.     

By being imaginative and courageous, our Health and Wellness committees can help to promote that environment where the above needs can be met so that first and foremost, it’s the presence of each individual in our association that is valued above all else, that it’s the richness and fullness of our people’s inner lives that is far more important than the richness of our Treasurer’s accounts or the fullness of our trophy cabinets.

 In that atmosphere of respect, our members can emerge from the protective shells that we all build around aspects of our true selves and so be able to live far more healthier and fulfilled lives and where those in distress can feel the necessary safety and support to be able to break their silence and begin their journey back to wellness.

I genuinely find the modern GAA player to be a phenomenal species. Driven, disciplined, committed, loyal, supportive, broad minded. They go out on a field and for 70 minutes play a warrior’s sport with ferocity, passion and fire. When the game is over, I don’t believe the current generation of players are leaving their warrior spirit on the field until the next game.

They are carrying the mantle of it with them in to their dressing rooms, training fields, homes, workplaces and communities.  They are evolving into warriors of the soul and spirit.

They are determined that the issues that are affecting them and their teammates are not allowed to be hidden, silenced and not spoken about like times of old. They are passionate about showing solidarity with their teammates and are willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other, whether it be with issues like addiction, unhealthy levels of stress and anxiety, sexuality or Mental Health.

We in our Health and Wellbeing committees need to tap into and build on that spirit.

My journeys and experiences of the last number of months have exposed me to stories of terrible tragedy, pain and darkness and I have shed a lot of tears in that time.

Everywhere I go though, I also see the seeds of hope for our present and our future. There is a growing momentum amongst our people to see and embrace change in how we are within ourselves and with each other. There are more of us realising that the dogmas and ways of old are no longer acceptable and more again are beginning to find their own voices and throw off the shackles of repression that have manacled generations of our people.

 There is a voracious hunger amongst our people for knowledge, guidance and support in these areas. Again, I see a major role for our Health and wellbeing committees in these areas.

I also get great hope and inspiration from the initiative shown by Dessie Farrell, Siobhan Earley and the other staff in the GPA. Their energy and enthusiasm for progress, their appetite for work, their awareness of the needs of their members and the support structures that they have built and continue to build to facilitate the progress and growth of their player’s inner and outer lives is an example to organisations the world over.  

The GAA has enriched my life in a myriad of magical and wonderful ways. I still get great satisfaction and enjoyment from competing and playing hurling as I currently near my twentieth year of adult hurling with my club in Cloyne. There was a time however where it looked like I mightn’t make it to a fifth year.

I know from my own experiences that without good Mental Health and Emotional Wellness, there is no health and no capacity to truly enjoy the experience and reap the intangible benefits of being a player or a member of our magnificent association.

 The development of better facilities, the advancements in our coaching standards, the growth and increased use of sport science have all helped to improve the lives of our players and administrators but they mean less and little to a member that is gripped in the tentacles of depression, whose life is filled with unhealthy levels of stress or anxiety or is afflicted with gambling, success, alcohol, sport, drug or work addictions.

It’s why I truly feel that the work that we have been tasked with in our Health and Wellbeing committees could be the most important work that any GAA committee has ever been assigned to undertake.

The challenges confronting the members we represent are vast and complex but our island’s wider society has always looked to the GAA to lead the way in rising with and embracing the difficulties of our times. In some areas we have succeeded and in others we have failed.

More than ever, our people need us to lead the way and be the beacon of light and bedrock of support to empower them to be able to deal effectively with the various Health and Wellness issues they are experiencing.

Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism once said:

‘This existence of ours is as transient as Autumn clouds
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance,
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
Rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountain.

We have stopped for a moment on our cosmic journey to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share, to play hurling, football, camogie and to manage our games.

This is a precious moment, but it is temporary, as the lives of Donal Walsh in Kerry, Cormac McAnallen in Tyrone and many others have shown. If we can share this moment with caring, lightheartedness, authenticity and love, we will allow the opportunity for each of us to live with freedom in our minds and joy in our hearts and create a far better world and sporting organisation for us all to live, work and play in. And then, and then, this moment will have been worthwhile.

The National Health and Wellbeing Committee is genuinely looking forward to working with you all in a joint effort to ensure that this moment, this time and our era together will be a worthwhile experience for all of our members and communities in both our inner and outer worlds.

I wish you all well on our continued journey together.

Depression is a friend, not my enemy.

I still remember the moment well. It was a wet, cold, grey Friday morning. I rose out of bed having had no sleep the night before. Panic attacks are horrific experiences by day, by night they are even worse. As I drove to work on my trusted Honda 50, a group of my friends passed in their car heading to college. They all smiled and waved and looked so happy. I smiled and waved and acted happy. I had loved and excelled in school but it was the same with my hurling, it was the same with my friends, it was the same with my family, it was the same with the people of Cloyne, it was the same with life, I had lost interest in all of them. Losing interest in people was the worst. Where once I would have felt sadness at seeing my friends heading to where I had always wanted to go, I now didn’t. Something much larger, deeper, darker had taken hold of my mind and sadness, despair, hopelessness were not strong enough to survive alongside what I was feeling.

They say something has  to crack to allow the light in. At about 11am that morning, I finally cracked. I couldn’t do it anymore, all my strength at keeping up my pretence had gone. I curled up in the corner of the building and began to cry. One of the lads working with me came over and he didn’t know what to do. I asked him to take me home. The GP called to my house and prescribed some sleeping pills and arranged for me to be sent to the hospital for some tests.

I spent a week there and they done every test imaginable. Physically, I was in perfect health. I was diagnosed with suffering from ‘Depression’ or in laymans terms, that awful phrase ‘of suffering with his nerves’. I had never heard of the word before.

I was sent to see a psychiatrist in my local day care hospital. I was 19 years of age in a waiting room surrounded by people much older than I was. Surely I am not the only young person suffering from depression, I thought to myself. There was a vacant look in all of their eyes, a hollowness, an emptiness, the feeling of darkness pervaded the room. The psychiatrist explained that there might be a chemical imbalance in my brain,  asked me my symptoms and prescribed a mixture of anti depressants, anxiety and sleeping pills based on what I told him. He explained that it would take time to get the right cocktail of tablets for my type of depression. I had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. Something deep inside in me told me this wasn’t the way forward and this wasn’t what I needed. As I walked out a group of people in another room with intellectual disabilities were doing various things. One man had a teaching device in front of him and he was trying to put a square piece into a round hole. It summed up perfectly what I felt had just happened to me.

I now stayed in my room all day, only leaving it to go to the bathroom. I locked the door and it was only opened to allow my mother bring me some food. I didn’t want to speak to anybody. The only time I left the house was on a Thursday morning to visit the psychiatrist. When everbody had left  to go to work and school, my Mother would bring me my breakfast. I cried nearly all the time. Sometimes she would sit there and cry with me, other times talk with me and hold my hand, tell me that she would do anything to help me get better, other times just sit there quietly whilst I ate the food.

Depression is difficult to explain to people. If you have experienced it there is no need, if you haven’t, I don’t think there are words adequate to describe its horror. I have had a lot of injuries playing hurling, snapped cruciates, broken bones in my hands 11 times, had my lips sliced in half and all my upper teeth blown out with a dirty pull but none of them come anywhere near the physical pain and mental torture of depression.  It permeates every part of your being, from your head to your toes. It is never ending, waves and waves of utter despair and hopelessness and fear and darkness flood throughout your whole body.  You crave for peace but even sleep doesn’t afford that. It wrecks your dreams and turns your days into a living nightmare. It destroys your personality, your relationship with your family and friends, your work, your sporting life, it affects them all. Your ability to give and receive affection is gone. You tear at your skin and your hair with frustration. You cut yourself to give some form of physical expression to the incredible pain you feel. You want to grab it and smash it, but you can’t get a hold of it.  You go to sleep hoping, praying not to wake up. You rack your brain seeing is there something you done in your life that justifies this suffering. You wonder why God is not answering your pleas for relief and you wonder is he there at all or has he forgotten about you. And through it all remains the darkness. It’s as if someone placed a veil over your soul and never returned to remove it. This endless, black, never ending tunnel of darkness.

I had been five months in my room now. I had watched the summer turn into the autumn and then to Winter through my bedroom window. One of the most difficult things was watching my teammates parade through the town after winning the U21 championship through it. That was the real world out there. In here in my room was a living hell. I was now on about 18 tablets a day and not getting better but worse. I was eating very little but the medication was ballooning my weight to nearly twenty stone. I was sent to see another psychiatrist and another doctor who suggested electric shock therapy which I flatly refused. It was obvious to me I was never going to get better. My desire for death was now much stronger than my desire for living so I made a decision.

I had been contemplating suicide for a while now and when I finally decided and planned it out, a strange thing happened. A peace that I hadn’t experienced for a long time entered my mind and body. For the first time in years, I could get a good night’s sleep. It was as if my body realized that this pain it was going through was about to end and it went into relax mode. I had the rope hidden in my room. I knew there was a game on a Saturday evening and that my father and the lads would be gone to that. After my Mother and sister would be gone to Mass, I would drive to the location and hang myself. I didn’t feel any anxiety about it.  It would solve everything, I thought. No more pain, both for me and my family. They were suffering as well as I was and I felt with me gone, it would make life easier for them. How wrong I would have been. I have seen the effects and damage suicide has on families. It is far,far greater than anything endured while living and helping a person with depression.

For some reason  my Mother never went to Mass. I don’t know why but she didn’t go. It was a decision on her part that saved my life.

The following week, a family that I had worked for when I was younger heard about me being unwell. They rang my Mother and told them that they knew a clinical psychologist working in a private practice that they felt could help me. I had built up my hopes too many times over the last number of months that a new doctor, a new tablet, a new treatment was going to help and had them dashed when he or it failed to help me. I wasn’t going through it again. My mother pleaded to give him a try and eventually I agreed. It was a decision on my part that would save my life.

After meeting Tony, I instantly knew this was what I had been searching for. It was the complete opposite of what I felt when I was being prescribed tablets and electric shock therapy. We sat opposite each other in a converted cottage at the side of his house with a fire lighting in the corner. He looked at me with his warm eyes and said ‘I hear you haven’t been too well. How are you feeling’. It wasn’t even the question, it was the way he asked it. I looked at him for about a minute or so and I began to cry. When the tears stopped, I talked and he listened intently. Driving home with my mother that night, I cried again but it wasn’t tears of sadness, it was tears of joy. I knew that evening I was going to better. There was finally a chink of light in the darkness.

 Therapy is a challenging experience. It’s not easy baring your soul. When you sit in front of another human being and discuss things you have never discussed with anyone, it can be quite scary. Paulo Coelho says in one of his books that ‘A man is at his strongest when he is willing to be vulnerable’. Sadly, society conditions men to be the opposite and views vulnerability as a weakness. For therapy to work, a person has to be willing to be vulnerable.  Within a week, I was off all medication. For me, medication was never the answer.  My path back to health was one of making progress, then slipping and making progress again. It was far from straightforward.

 I had to face up to memories I had buried from being bullied quite a lot when I was a young kid. Some of it occurred in primary school, others in secondary. It was raw and emotional re-visiting those times but it had to be done.

 A lot of my identity was tied up with hurling and it was an un-healthy relationship. The ironic thing is that as I began to live my life more from the inside out and appreciate and value myself for being me and not needing hurling for my self esteem, I loved the game more than ever. I got myself super fit and my weight down to 13 and a half stone. I made the Cloyne Senior team and went on to play with the Cork Senior hurling team, making a cameo appearance in the final of 2006. It is still one of the biggest joys of my life playing hurling with Cloyne, despite losing three County finals and an All-Ireland with Cork. Being involved with the Cloyne team was a huge aid in my recovery and my teammates gave me great support during that time.  

 I went back to serve my time as an electrician. I went to college by night and re-discovered my joy of learning. I work for a great company and have a good life now. I finished therapy in 2004. I have not had a panic attack in that time and have not missed a day’s work because of depression since then.    

I came to realise that depression was not my enemy but my friend.  I don’t say this lightly. I know the damage it does to people and the lives it has wrecked and is wrecking so I am only talking for myself. How can you say something that nearly killed you was your friend? The best coaches I have ever dealt with are those that tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. You mightn’t like it at the time but after or maybe years later, you know they were right. I believe depression is a message from a part of your being to tell you something in your life isn’t right and you need to look at it.  It forced me to stop and seek within for answers and that is where they are. It encouraged me to look at my inner life and free myself from the things that were preventing me from expressing my full being. The poet David Whyte says ‘the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else’s’.                 

 This is an ongoing process. I am still far from living a fully, authentic life but I am very comfortable now in my own skin. Once or twice a year, especially when I fall into old habits, my ‘friend’ pays me a visit. I don’t push him away or ignore him. I sit with him in a chair in a quiet room and allow him to come. I sit with the feeling. Sometimes I cry, other times I smile at how accurate his message is. He might stay for an hour, he might stay for a day. He gives his message and moves on. He reminds me to stay true to myself and keep in touch with my real self. A popular quote from the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is ‘a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step’. A correct translation of the original Chinese though is ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet’. Lao Tzu believed that action was something that arose naturally from stillness. When you can sit and be with yourself, it is a wonderful gift and real and authentic action flows from it.

 Many, many people are living lives of quiet misery. I get calls from people on the phone and to my house because people in my area will know my story. Sometimes it is for themselves, other times it is asking if I would talk to another person. I’m not a doctor or a therapist and anyone I talk to in distress, I always encourage them to go to both but people find it easier at first to talk to someone who has been in their shoes. It is incredible the amount of people it affects. Depression affects all types of people, young and old, working and not working, wealthy and poor.

For those people who are currently gripped by depression, either experiencing it or are supporting or living with someone with it, I hope my story helps.  There is no situation that is without hope, there is no person that can’t overcome their present difficulties. For those that are suffering silently, there is help out there and you are definitely not alone. Everything you need to succeed is already within you and you have all the answers to your own issues. A good therapist will facilitate that process. My mother always says ‘a man’s courage is his greatest asset’. It is an act of courage and strength, not weakness, to admit you are struggling. It is an act of courage to seek help. It is an act of courage to face up to your problems.

 An old saying goes ‘there is a safety in being hidden, but a tragedy never to be found’. You are too precious and important to your family, your friends, your community, to yourself, to stay hidden. In the history of the world and for the rest of time, there will never again be another you. You are a once off, completely unique. The real you awaits within to be found but to get there requires a journey inwards . A boat is at its safest when it is in the harbour but that’s not what it was built to do. We are the same.  Your journey in will unearth buried truths and unspoken fears.  A new strength will emerge to help you to head into the choppy waters of your painful past. Eventually you will discover a place of peace within yourself, a place that encourages you to head out into the world and live your life fully.  The world will no longer be a frightening place to live in for you.

The most important thing is to take the first step. Please take it.