All On The Board: Strength through vulnerability and mental health toolkits

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0:33Kids. They grow up so fast. One day they're taking their first steps. And the next, they don't fit into the tiny sneakers they took them in. You blink your eyes and their princess dress is two sizes too small. And their dinosaur backpack isn't cool anymore. But don't cry because they're growing up. Smile. Because you can profit off of it. For real, there are a bunch of parents on Depop looking for the stuff your kid just grew out of. Download Depop to start selling. Quick favor, could you hit the subscribe button? it really helps get the show out there so that more people can be inspired by the personal growth that our guests are talking about and take those lessons into their own lives.

1:15Welcome to Wellness with Ella, the Deliciously Ella podcast. This is a podcast that aims to inspire you, to empower you, to leave you feeling uplifted. Every week, me and my guests will candidly reveal our personal journeys of transforming times of great difficulty into times of enormous personal growth. How did our guests get to where they are today? What have been their biggest challenges? What practices and habits have really genuinely moved the needle for them and how do they keep moving forward? Wellness with Ella has the simple mission of giving you unfiltered empowering conversations that give you the tools, knowledge and inspiration to transform your own life and your own health.

2:00My guests today truly epitomize what this season of the show has been about. The idea that we all struggle with our health, that nobody is immune from life's challenges, that you never know what the person next to you is going through, that personal transformations can happen at any point in our lives and that whilst all of our journeys are different, the thread that really seems to link everybody's transformation together is learning to embrace vulnerability and sharing those challenges with the people around us. My guests today are Ian Redpath and Jeremy Chopra, better known as All on the Board.

2:38If you've ever been on the Tube in London, you'll have seen their poems and their creative messages on the boards around the stations. Lots of people assume that these are written by a team of people, that perhaps it's a scheme created by Transport for London but actually the whole premise was started and continues to be run by two guys Ian and Jeremy both of whom were working on the tube and had been through incredibly challenging periods with their well-being and they wanted to ensure that no one else felt alone in their own challenges. So as they watched millions of people commute each day they felt that simple messages of hope, inspiration, honesty and clarity that you are never alone in your struggles would maybe help.

3:20They've since been seen by tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people gone completely viral with their wisdom, their vulnerability and their boards have been shared by so many people from celebrities like Katy Perry and Michelle Obama. And I was so excited to speak with Ian and Jeremy to find out how their personal experiences have led them to create this online community with such a positive message and a universal impact. And in the conversation we're talking about finding ways to connect with one another, the importance of both compassion and understanding and both of them have some really moving stories about their early lives, the experiences with their mental health and the times they've been able to provide help and support for people during their most vulnerable moments.

4:05It's a very revealing and honest conversation and I really hope you enjoy it. Just one warning though we do touch on one of their experiences with eating disorders so if that's something that you would like to skip then I would really recommend moving on to a different episode otherwise let's get into the show well Ian Jeremy thank you so much for joining us today thank you for having us thank you for having us it's so interesting because I think the whole season this is our last episode of this season we've really been exploring the power of vulnerability and the fact that we all have these stories right no all our lives are completely different all our challenges are completely different you know I do believe you can never really understand because we've never walked in each other's shoes that being said life is just anything but linear and I think we're not necessarily completely open about what that actually looks like and the power of vulnerability when we take down those walls to actually talk much more honestly about our experiences be that with physical health, mental health, grief, loss and that connection that we create as a result and the reason I'm so happy that you guys are here for the finale of this season is I feel like what you've created is the absolute epitome of that premise, this idea of community through vulnerability of sharing and of showing people that they're never ever alone.

5:30So I wondered if you could introduce yourself and the concept of all on the board, I mean for anyone who's ever been to London or been on the tube which is probably a very large proportion of our listeners they will have seen your boards or they've probably seen the memes go viral of those amazing quotes and poems that you share but will you tell us a little bit about yourselves and what you do you want to go for it yeah why not uh my name's Ian Redpath uh I used to be a very good dancer but not so much now and uh yeah myself and Jeremy he's going to introduce himself um yeah we we both work for London Underground and we started doing all on the board in 2017 and I don't know we've always been creative spirits and you know we've got our own health and mental health conditions and you know it's just a distraction as to what we're going through and then yeah it's just you know we kind of we want to get the message out there that people are not alone however lonely they feel if they are on their own there are people going through similar things and wouldn't it be amazing if we could get all the lonely feeling people in the world in a room together or in a virtual room and just say that you're not alone let's get talking you know and it's like you know the London Underground we always say it's it's one of the busiest places in the world and yet it can feel like the loneliest place you know like I was on the train today during the peak and literally everyone is on their own journeys and it's crazy to think that like we're all like you know crammed together and yet none of us are saying like hello to one another you know and And I guess, you know, that's what life is kind of like.

7:00But we want to, you know, get the message out there. You know, no one's ever alone. And, you know, we may be in, you know, different boats, but we do face similar storms. And, you know, let's get through it together. Yeah, I mean, we're lucky that we work in a team on the underground, not all on the board. It's just us on all of the board. But for our day job on the underground, we work in a team that allows us to work all over the network, which is why, even though there's only two of us, our boards pop up everywhere, because we'll be working a different place every day. And that gives us the opportunity to kind of like write different kinds of things for different places.

7:33Sometimes changing the name of a station just to make someone laugh or sometimes writing about the event that they're going to just to extend it a little bit, you know, make it a bit more fun inside the journey that they're doing on the underground. And we've just taken that opportunity, I think, to write things and just put the message out there and connect people, as you're saying. And yeah, the communication thing has always been a big, big thing for us because I think before this, as you say, we are creative spirits, but we've never had the outlet before now to kind of put our things out there.

8:05You know, it's all been inside us or on pieces of paper at our homes or whatever. And we came up with this idea one day in 2017. We were just working and we thought, oh, let's write a little silly poem about the event that was going on in the O2 that time. and then instantly people were taking selfies with it and smiling and you just you could see straight away oh wow that worked that actually did something because actually before that there was just a board that was saying keep right on it and it was filthy and it people were just ignoring it they just walk wherever they want to walk and just by putting a little poem on there that was a bit of fun it changed the demeanor of people completely you know that yeah they're going to an event that they want to go to but you could see that they were just trying to get there it was functional right it was just getting there and then yeah we broke into that and found a way to get into um into that headspace and break them out of it and say oh you're here now everything's going to be good and then it was a few months after that that we kind of came up with the mental health stuff um writing about what we go through and that stuff was a whole other whole other thing it kind of really exploded into this bigger we can really change things now we can actually make things better for a lot of people there are people suffering all kinds of things out there and they feel alone um and i think it was just just before we was writing our going to start our second book we were we were trying to think about how do we want to approach this and we want it to be a companion because that's what we're trying to do sometimes we're trying to be a companion for people as they're coming through that space and we said what's our core things that we do on the board we realized it was um as you say make people realize they're not alone to be kind to themselves and to be kind to each other and like I think the world would be a better place if we did all those three things all the time.

9:51Before we sort of rewind and start to understand what inspired you to want to open up that vulnerability and share what you'd both been going through I'd love to know is there one or two boards or messages or poems that you've shared that have resonated the most? Do you know what? The first one that springs to mind is the board that we wrote about endometriosis. Yeah. And it was just, I mean, because what it was, I mean, like my wife really gets bad periods, yeah. And we was looking into it and it was like, no, this is more than sort of bad periods, symptoms. We was like looking into it and me and Jeremy was researching it.

10:30And we just came across this condition, endometriosis, that we'd never heard about and was like my god people go through this you know and it's like we kind of like done a bit research on it wanted to put it on a board and then we was thinking you know why despite looking like we're in our mid-20s you know we're in our 40s and that yeah you know it's like it seemed bonkers for two you know men in their 40s to write about endometriosis on a board and you know and yeah i think that's one of my proudest moments you know I mean, I love doing all the, you know, the concert balls and the fun balls and, you know, like celebrities come down for, you know, selfies and stuff.

11:05But yeah, it's just that kind of did resonate with a lot of people. And, you know, it's... That's always the one that always comes to my mind. Purely because we do a lot of research when we're writing about conditions, unless it's something that we both go through ourselves. And obviously we don't go through endometriosis. We never heard of it before. And we had to do a lot of research. And it was a really tricky one because you're looking and you're thinking, right, there is a lot of stuff to unpack and put on a board. But we do have to do a board. It's one of the most pain, it's on the list of one of the most painful conditions on earth.

11:38And it's very common. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And very few people know about it. I mean, if you say the word endometriosis to someone in the street, they're going to think you're talking about, you know, some kind of plant or something like that, maybe. Or some, you know, osmosis or something like that. But they're not going to think that that's one of the most painful things around. um so we had to do that and um it was really tricky and then when we put it out and it got this massive response i mean it's quite it's been a universal response still to this day because some of the other boards you put out about conditions you get this massive response of thank you and that's perfect but then you get other people who challenge certain parts of it and say oh you got that wrong um and then we kind of look back at it and try and but then it kind of gets people talking about the condition yeah that's the point isn't it it's all about breaking down those barriers isn't it and removing the stigmas and yeah and it's exact which is why almost circling back to beginning instead of so keen to talk to you guys about this is exactly that is that we go through so many things and we don't talk about them and i think it's writing them down and sharing them with those four million people and everyone online every single day to highlight the fact that people are going through this and to be aware of it and conscious of it and it's it's incredibly powerful and i'm sure as you're saying it makes people feel very seen yeah it's just kind of trying to make the invisible visible you know it's like we don't know what one another is going through i remember telling someone that you know i've got ulcerative colitis and they're like oh yeah i get that and that was kind of comparing it with their ibs sort of thing or that they had been out of curry the night before oh i had what you had last night and it's like well no you didn't really it's like do you know what i mean so it's just like you know it's just like let's talk about our conditions you know get them out there it's like you know you you may be on a train and you may see some youngster you know not getting up for for an elderly person and it's like well there could be a reason why they're not getting up you know they could be having chronic fatigue chronic pains and you know sometimes they get sort of dirty looks on the train it's like well you're not getting up for that person but they may want to get up but physically they they can't get up you know it's just uh i've had it before you know people looking at me and i've been going through such chronic pain chronic fatigue i want to get up for someone giving me a seat but I physically can't you know it's uh it's just understanding one another and you know being more empathetic and stuff you know it's absolutely yeah as you said the world needs a a lot more of that yeah you know I mean we do try to make people laugh occasionally that's how all on the board happened actually we were we were writing a tv sitcom at the time yeah on you know while we were standing there and then we started um I don't know how we ended up with getting from that to talking about Craig David's songs but I think it was just because the crowd were coming We were singing Craig David.

14:16That's what I mean. Craig David was coming through and then we thought, what songs do we know of Craig David? And we started singing really badly some of his songs to each other. And we thought, oh, well, let's make a little parim out of it. It was a really short one, but just there you go. Because it was offering sort of directions to the O2, but kind of incorporating his songs as well. You can imagine walking away to the O2 and it won't take seven days to get there. Blah, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, it was good. But people often ask us, how do we go from that to the mental health stuff that we've gone to?

14:45And it was just because it was just a natural process for us. We're just writing about what we like and the things that make us tick. And we just came up with that at that time. And then we started to realise, why don't we write something a bit more personal? And for people to be honest with one another, it's because a lot of people kind of look at these perceived perfect photos of people online. They're like, why can't I have that? but they're not seeing what's going on kind of behind the scenes and behind the lens and stuff. It's like everyone is going through their own sort of dramas and problems.

15:22And were you both always open and comfortable talking about it? Because I think having a bit of research on the both of you, it seems like you've both gone through some real challenges, both with your mental health and your physical health. I'd love to understand a little bit more about how that informed this desire to kind of break open the conversations and share that vulnerability but within that I'm curious did you always feel really comfortable talking about how you felt I know my experience like it took me so so long to talk about my health and be open about it yeah I was terrible at that um I went through my whole teens like literally from from the first uh few months of secondary school right to through university I was like a silent person just kind of hovering around and it was bad really really bad and what prompted that I mean I probably already had bad self-esteem I think before I went to secondary school but you know you're so young you're just you're just making it through right um and then uh in secondary school when you I mean everyone probably recognizes you go to secondary school especially if it's one that's away from where you would have been locally you're going to have no friends.

16:33You're going to have to, everything completely brand new. And I went secondary school and I had no friends and I was really bad at making friends anyway. So, I made one friend on the first day. It was a boy where we were in a queue for lunch and then someone bumped into him. He dropped all his coins on the ground and he started crying and everyone was just like walking past him. And I decided to stop and help him and we became friends. And for the next three months, we became inseparable. We were just like everything together and it was really weird because I was this person that nobody liked and I was like a social outcast and he was probably the most popular person in school suddenly and yet we were together all the time and it was just I think a day before we were due back to go to school after the Christmas period in the local newspaper there was a report of a fire in a house and he had sadly died and I only got note of it from that newspaper report when I was at another friend's house and um the my friend's mum had told me and i remember in that i still remember that moment she told me and i just kind of like did this thing where i kind of pretended like you know i don't know what's kind of going on i don't know if that's real or whatever and i went to the bathroom locked the door and i just like completely just went like tears and everything like that but silently and i think that was where things happened with the silence because I cried really heavily but they had no idea that I was doing that cleared my face with the water from the sink and I walked out and then never talked about it and then when I went to school the first thing that happened was of course everyone knew that we were inseparable and they were all the other kids as they do they'll come around you at the dinner table asking oh well how did that this happen and so on and so forth did you cry someone said did you cry and I actually said no you know and I and I remember that sticking with me and throughout my school years thinking oh why did I say no you know I felt really bad about that and um and and I think that just affected me really deeply it was you know I guess it was childhood trauma to a certain extent right um and everything just became really internalized because it was a defense thing for me so I just went through my whole teen years like that and and I then had um I then developed an eating disorder.

18:52So I don't know what it's called now, actually. I haven't looked up what it's called now, but at the time I think it was called EDNOS, which is like eating disorder with no obvious symptom, where it's not bulimia, anorexia, anything like that. It's just different. It's just you have an eating disorder, clearly have an eating disorder, but you don't have a diagnosis that's really quite um direct and um I went through my whole teens and I was extremely um undernourished basically by the time I left school and I was I'm lucky to be here to be quite honest with you and it wasn't until I got into my early 20s where I had this moment just this weird moment of clarity where I woke up one day and there was this sunlight coming through and I just realized I'm going to die basically they just heard these words in my head and it was really clear I mean I'm sure everyone's kind of had this day where you just like everything feels really really ridiculously clear you can feel the air you can feel the dust everything like that it was like that it was just for for that day but it was enough to kind of kick me into gear realizing that and and from then I started to try and kind of find a way back but I still probably I would say I didn't get into talking about my my issues until probably like 30 even i mean you know so we're talking from the age of 12 until 30 i was really bad at talking i would never be sitting here talking like this or writing things on the board or putting things out in podcasts or interviews or books or anything like that back then no way even going back you know 10 years ago when i first came on the underground certainly probably wouldn't be talking like i am now so all in the board has really helped me to do that to kind of come out more and be able to do this um i'm i still have social anxiety i still you know i can still feel those little shakes that you get inside you that no one can see um the sweaty palms and all that kind of stuff um but one of the reasons why i do things like this is because i want people to realize that you know that's how much of my life was you know so difficult purely from not talking about the things um yeah i mean like i'm really good at defending you know myself from certain situations but then you don't experience so many things because of that so it's such a powerful example as you said of the fact that we keep so much inside of us and you can be interacting with people all day you might just walk past them but it might be someone you bump into in a coffee shop or a colleague or someone you're sitting next to on the underground or on the bus or on a plane or just in your life and you have absolutely no idea exactly that they might have you know 10 20 years of kind of trauma that they don't want to talk about and I wondered when you started opening up and you started writing on the boards did you suddenly feel almost this like release this pressure off that you felt other people were then opening up to you and saying I've been through this maybe it's something similar or something kind of very different but equally challenging and you realize wait a second I'm completely normal because it's completely normal to have these fluctuations yeah you know what it was because as I say it was such a long period of my life it became ingrained as a characteristic so when we started doing those boards and as you say people were opening up themselves and sharing it and commenting and so on I was I guess I was gaining strength from those as you say but it was a very slow process because we were still wearing masks for the first three years we were anonymous for the first three years so it's like you're kind of coming out we're not really with all this stuff you're still behind a mask um and uh and yeah it was it was probably like when we took the masks off that was really hard uh because it kind of then goes back you know you're completely baring your soul yeah it's now yeah actually i'm the one who's been saying some things you know you're the one who's been saying some things um and we we end up going through an imposter syndrome period as well where we're kind of like what do people really expect us to be did they expect us to be who we are and and not knowing that fills your head with all kinds of silliness it's like you're never going to know that and everyone's going to think differently about you and it doesn't even matter because as Ian said we've only ever cared about the words we're putting out not about what who we are um in terms of that and even though we're gaining from it we gain strength from it and and it does help me to you know speak out uh we never we never made it about that um and so that was that was it's ups and downs you know but then life is right you know your mental health struggles don't just go because you had a realization you're gonna have things that change because it's just the organic nature of the way chemicals work in your brain and the way the world is you know this is a different room but we're talking about the same stuff and yet i'm realizing certain things right now that i didn't realize before i might forget something today that i'll remember tomorrow it's yeah it's just one of those things but you have to figure out you have to come up with tools that kind of help you to navigate those tough parts to get to the good parts you know um yeah yeah definitely do you know yeah it's just getting getting it out there the importance of talking you know i mean it's just um like um i i used to have problems sort of expressing how i felt and I'd write it down on a page and that was a way of getting my feelings and emotions out there and I remember showing someone there was like oh this is a bit dark isn't it but it was kind of like it was therapy for me it was just getting all my negative thoughts and feelings on a page and like I've still got them in my wardrobe and it kind of like it's evidence to me that you know I survived that moment you know and that's what I was going through in that and I think as time has gone on you know I've realized that talking about your problems and you know again getting it off your chest you know don't suffer in silence it it does make you feel better you know i mean it's just um you know the more we talk you know the better we feel you know just the light and the load you know you haven't got to carry the weight of the world on your back you know you can share it out with others you know and did you have a moment with each other i don't know i i don't think i've read about this like when you first met each other were you kind of honest about everything you're going through or did that build up and then you suddenly had this it built up didn't it it built up but the funniest thing is the very first time he doesn't remember the very first time we met it was actually we were on a duty and I remember it being a really hard shift and I was with some of our colleagues from our team and then he come walking past and I was like oh who's that I ain't seen that person here all shifting oh that's Ian he works in the SRT as well and I was like where's he been all this time I thought he was a skyver I thought like he's taking the mix I was like what's that about where's he been we've been like slugging off here all this time.

25:46I was doing my makeup. No, he was actually helping out. He was actually doing the job in another part of the station. And then our manager put us together because she said that everyone keeps talking about how we're both creative and coming up with bonkers things and all that on the gate lines. We should do something together. And she started putting us in shifts together and we were just standing around talking like this and coming up with ideas. we came up with all kinds of ideas some crazy stuff and then yeah I think we were just in the middle of conversations he remembers the first time that he met me but I don't remember the first time you wouldn't remember that you wouldn't remember that because he was doing the job I think I was on my way to the toilet and I was quickly high and bye weren't it I can't remember when I finally found out about your condition I think we just literally just told each other.

26:39Yeah, we just opened it up about it. I think we just realised that we're both very similar in how we see the world, like in terms of that kind of caring for people and caring about others around us. And it just became really easy to kind of say, oh, that person's a caring... You know, you just get that aura around people. And you felt comfortable to share your stories. And this is what gets me. It's like, you know, why should it take bravery to ask for help? why should you be brave in coming out about who you are? You know, I mean, we should talk about it like we chat about the weather, you know.

27:12How does it affect anyone else? You know, it's kind of, we want to like smash stigmas and break taboos and stuff and just, you know. Generally, that's what we do now. We get customers who come up to us on the underground all the time asking us questions, obviously like the directions are here, directions are there. But sometimes they come over to you and you think that's what they're going to ask. And they say, oh, you do the boards, don't you? And it's like, oh yeah, we do. And then that you can see the nervousness and it's like, just pretend you're asking us for directions. It'll work out. You'll be able to say what you want to say because that's who we are now.

27:45We just want people to be able to come up to us and say whatever. Give us a hug if you want to give us a hug, you know, give us a high five or just, you know, away from a distance if that's easier for you, whatever. But don't feel like you can't, you know, come talk to us. Do you know what? It's brilliant when people like we may get recognized once a shift, maybe twice or three times. yeah but when they come over to you and say oh could i get a selfie with you we're always up for selfies and hugs you know i mean it's a good feeling isn't it you know it's good it'd be nice if that became like a community thing like if people were able to just do that but you know it is it is difficult you can understand why it is it's very different scenarios right you can't just go and hug up anyone you can't just go and do that with anyone you can't open up to absolutely everyone but um there are but unfortunately that translates a lot to people in their own groups where they they're not doing that with the people they they they know that they can they just don't feel that they can um yeah it is important because i think in my case with my eating disorder the thing with eating disorders is you become really good at hiding the fact that you have an eating disorder even though you don't know you have an eating disorder because i was you know i was still a child and a teenager but you don't know that you've got a disorder you just think this is what you are and i was wearing like clothes that would just be baggy and you know no one could see how i was and so on it was it was it was destroying communication it was like you know blocking communication and it's and i'm i'm incredibly good at that um and i'm constantly fighting that part of me saying that's not helping you that's not helping you at all start talking more you know i don't think i've ever actually talked this much about that period actually until just now thinking about it um we've written about eating disorders and i have mentioned it in in the books but not to this depth you know and there's so much it's ridiculous a long period of life you know and it affects so many things um yeah those are informative years you know going through all of that um i mean when i went to university actually i wasn't someone who lived in halls so i didn't have a community i would actually just drive from home to university in the home like that so it again gave me the opportunity just not to talk to anyone you know you go to lectures you sit there you don't say a word in the seminars the teacher points at you and you say the most simple answer so you don't have to say anything more and then the attention goes to someone else you just find these ways of not talking and I think there's a lot of people out there now more than ever because of social media they can say things on social media but not in real life and they feel like that's them talking but it's not really you know because it's too controlled you know you've got to be willing to just open up and let things flow and do you feel a sense of freedom in a way now that you can speak so yeah this is a really weird sensation right now talking like this hey what's up y 'all kelly clarkson with wayfair my favorite thing about the holidays decking out my whole house it's not a competition but if it was well i'd win the season with Wayfair.

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31:43yeah like this this is a really weird sensation right now talking like this because um it's just it's as i say it's a ridiculous amount of stuff and you can't write that on a board you can't write that even i mean you could write in a book but it would it would it would have to be a really big book you know um and talking is is so so much more because all those little pauses in what i'm saying you know all those little intricacies in the things i'm saying you can't translate that any other way than just talking i mean that's why we can talk that's why we've got voices i know i always think it'd be it's really interesting experience if anyone's listening say they're on the tube or the bus or maybe they're in their office surrounded by a group of people if everyone just sort of stopped and then like actually offloaded you know what was going on you know when people are like how are you and sometimes you're like I'm great and you really are great and sometimes you're like I'm actually really having a bad day you know this happened that's happened I'm worried about this I'm worried about that you know big stuff small stuff but we're all like yeah good good good fine fine fine and I would love this moment if like the whole world stopped and everyone just was completely honest about what was in their brain what they were thinking what they were feeling and obviously as i said you'd have an absolute split where some people genuinely are feeling really really great yeah but probably a lot of people are worrying about a lot of things and i wondered if everyone said it out loud at the same time how many people would say the exact same thing as each other fantastic you know i mean because like you know we all kind of ask each other out of politeness i guess like how are you doing yeah and then not to be a burden or waste the other person's time oh yeah i'm okay yeah it's like if you ask are you really okay like the second time you know they might genuinely say yeah you know i'm fine but it's just yeah to be open and honest and yeah that'd be brilliant i think it would be like there would be poetry in the echo as you say everyone would be saying a lot not everyone but there would be a lot of people saying the same thing and there would be a there was there would be a sense of harmony in that moment and it's almost you know as you were just saying jeremy it's like what you were going through with your eating sort of created this extreme sense of loneliness but it's a loneliness that can be fostered by lots of other challenges you know be it physical illness mental illness grief but probably feeling very similar feelings of trying to make yourself invisible not a burden or feeling like you don't fit in and again it's it's just those sensations being so universal and ian i was wondering what your experiences were like kind of getting to this point and this point of saying i want to break down the barriers i want to share Yeah.

34:16Do you know what? It's just, um, but over time it's, um, you know, it's like I used to be a train driver. I had a young girl jump in front of my train. It completely messed me up. And, um, you know, I was scared of the dark for about a year. I couldn't have the lights off. You know, every, every time I shut my eyes, I'd say, because what happened, it's like our eyes met just as the train hit her and she smiled. So I was kind of left with that image. Yeah. And it's, um, uh, and it just messed me up big time uh subsequently like recently like last year the girl got in touch with us i mean this is like over 10 years later i was under the impression that the girl had died so so i was carrying that kind of you know it was like you go through all the emotions you're like you're glad that you survived that situation you feel guilt you think of a family you think of what she could have been could i've done anything more and then to to have the girl like send us an email 10 years later and jeremy said to me do not read the email you know it's just gonna you know but i've kind of like uh you know i i've forgiven her and i'm glad that she's alive and you know um you know and i'm glad for her family but it's something i can never forget you know i mean i remember having counseling at the time just after it happened and um you know the counselor said uh you know if you know if she was here and she was in the room with you what would you do and i said i honestly couldn't tell you whether whether i'd hug her or what i want to hear you know my head was in that place you know it's just um yeah just so messed up but over time with counseling you realize the importance of talking you know i was kind of trying to protect my own family by saying yeah i'm okay i'm okay but just by bottling it up inside and just yeah i was really beating myself up it's like you know why am i protecting my family they're they're people that i love that would do anything for me and i can you know talk to them and they're there to help you know unfortunately some people haven't got those people in their lives but you know there are people out there that will listen there are organizations you know that's kind of what what me and Jeremy want to do use social media for good you know we share sorry we see people sharing sort of comments and sort of making friends with one another you know over certain like boards that we put on about mental health and it's like just to see that connection it's like oh wow you know I thought I was the only person going through this you know so I think Like, you know, since my late teenage years, you know, having anxiety attacks and, you know, I've just realized the importance of talking and to getting it out there.

36:43And, you know, Ella, if I said to you, you know, I go through this and you might say, well, I'll go through that too. And then we can know that we, you know, we're not alone. And, you know, you could share your techniques on how you, you know, deal with yours and I could share mine. You know, it's just important. Sorry, talking is so important, you know, it really is. however you do it you know by you know putting how you feel on social media or you know i remember like um like uh i think it was last year it was um you know jeremy's talking about his eating disorder i've i've had this uh sort of problem for seven years it's like um a fear of choking and it and it affects me so like you know if i go out to restaurants you know i'm kind of like hiding the food and just constantly worried about choking on food and it's affected my diet so much and I was sitting at the kitchen table and my wife was on the sofa and I just had food dribbling out the side of my mouth like a baby and I was making all these gargling noises and I'm like, I'm so fed up with this.

37:45So I just wrote down on a piece of paper, I'm going through this. Is anyone else going through a similar thing? And it kind of went viral. You know, we put it up on social media. It wasn't a board or anything. It was just me asking for, not asking for help, but just saying if anyone else has, you know something similar going on you know and and subsequently i ended up on this morning sort of uh with the the speakmans and they were talking me through it and you know it was it it was something that they could never cure overnight but it was just nice to know that i wasn't alone and it has improved i can now go out to restaurants like you know social occasions you know and i've just realized it's like because i was like literally if we was all eating food i'd be the last to finish but i wouldn't finish it and my food would go cold and just you couldn't eat at all and I was always like hiding food under napkins but now I just order smaller portions and just realize you know when I've had enough I've had enough I haven't got to beat myself up about it it's just nice being with other people you know it's uh yeah so talk talk talk you know did you feel you're living in a kind of cloud of fear in in some ways yeah yeah big time yeah big time yeah and it's just you know it's it's kind of like I was always trying to protect other people but just like by saying I'm okay you know it's like you know you know putting a brave face on things but why put a brave face on things you know it's just um and did you think this is something just I found that in my own life because that's what I did for a really long time yeah we'll just like draw away from people and just give them like a very surface level like yeah fine yeah um you know even with people you're very very close with that actually it's like really counterproductive And it took me a long time to understand that and change because it's incredibly difficult.

39:32But actually, you're trying to protect people. But in a way, you're not because you're sort of pushing them away and you're not therefore really helping them or yourself to a degree. Absolutely. And they can kind of see what you're going through, but they can't really, you know, they want to do everything they can to help. and you know yeah and did you both or either of you have a moment where you kind of had that internal dialogue of thinking okay i've been living like this for however long and and to your point there of almost like writing it down and putting it out there but saying i don't want to live like this anymore i need to ask for help and that kind of being stage one and almost like privately asking for help and then stage two being like and now actually i want to break down the barriers so that anyone else it doesn't have to go the same way well for me it's like process over time it's like sort of um receiving counseling and just um you know and i realized you know i was i was obsessively like i started obsessively talking to people how i was feeling and the incidents that happened to the point where i got to the point where you know what i don't want to talk about this anymore i'm boring myself and then i kind of realized it was kind of like you I think I'm getting there, you know?

40:47Yeah, but for me, it was like going back through that period with my eating disorder. It was I had that moment of clarity, but I don't think that came just out of the blue. I think it was building up to that in a similar way to you. I talk to myself a lot, almost like a third-person interview in my head sometimes. You're walking along, you're talking, you're like, I sound like I'm talking like in an interview in my head. And I was already going through all that stuff and talking about how inadequate I am and how much of a failure I am and all these really negative things all the time. That so many of us say to ourselves.

41:24And it was constant. And it was during that period. And because I was, as I say, I was at university, I was going back and forth, not really talking to anyone. I only had myself to talk to. But then I kind of started to get bored, like you say. You start to get bored of the negative stuff. And I don't know what it is. I must have had some kind of strength in me. And I think that was when I realized there is some strength in me somewhere because I'm still here. Despite all that negative stuff, I'm still here. So what is that? And then I started thinking about the things that I do enjoy. And I enjoy watching movies and writing stories and all these kind of things.

42:02And at that time, I was actually watching the TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I became obsessed with it. It was like the greatest thing ever. and um and the character of buffy was just like this this this amazing hero who despite all of this stuff and obviously obviously doing it all in secret she's still there and she's still fighting for the whole world kind of thing i'm like oh you know there's a bit of that going on in me as well so um you know i i i connected with that and i think it was just after it was during that period as i was watching it was just after that kind of thought process i woke up that day and had this kind of like, I guess, epiphany that I'm going to die.

42:37I need to stop this. And I did go to the doctor. And of course, the first thing the doctor did was diagnosed me with depression and an eating disorder and said, right, here's tablets, take these tablets. And I was like, so medication, right? So you start taking a medication and after about a week or so, it started making me nauseous. And that's the one thing that I hate the most. Everything is feeling nauseous. It's just like, I can deal with most other kind of things but nausea no thank you and I just literally binned them and I said right I don't like that but that I obviously need something because the doctor said I need something and I need something so what else can I do so I just found my own solution which was to start binge eating weird things that's a solution but when you were that like on the verge of I was you know I was completely undernourished um I had to I started to binge in secret to trying to help myself in that way.

43:30And it was literally one bite a day. And that became my thing. One bite more a day of a really bad pizza in a local place I knew was always open. So I'd go there after work, binge on this pizza by just having one extra bite a day. And I started gaining weight basically. And then I started doing other things like exercise. I was like, okay, let me try some exercise. And I think that was when I realized I'm actually stronger than physically as well than I realized I was because I'm able to do some of these exercises I thought would just kill me so i started doing that as well and i went through this period where actually my health got really really good i was like wow and people started noticing it and they their demeanor towards me was completely different like they weren't so abusive to me you know like random comments and things like that didn't happen anymore um and yeah that starts to have an effect as well but yeah and what do you are there tools that you do now or kind of things that like maybe just reminders for yourself or practical things that you come back to it is mostly reminders i think in the head and obviously what we do with all on the board because because when we're feeling that inadequacy or whatever we just write about it now and we're lucky that we've got that output you know we've got that that space to do that and other people don't have that but then people do have that because social media you can do anyway or people around you can talk to i've got two kids you know i'm everything i do is is for my family now you know um so i'm always visualizing them in my head you know what can i pass on to them for my lessons because they might go through similar things you know my parents didn't know what i was going through so how can i know what they're going to go through or how can i give them the tools to tell me what they're going through and you know these kind of things it's it's yeah yeah you know and it's nice just dropping little reminders out there to people it's like you know it's like you're not weak you're tired from being strong you know i mean it's just like intrusive thoughts you know it's like oh the voice in my head well no actually you've got control over that voice in the head you know you can tell it to shut up whenever you want you know it's you know it takes time but you know you you can learn to find space can't you between yourself and that voice yeah yeah i mean for a while you know it's just uh like again we work on the underground and like sometimes and it did scare me quite a bit it's like i'd be walking along the platform and because of what had happened to me it's like you know i'd get this voice going oh you know you had someone jump in front of your train why don't you do it and i'm like whoa like hold on where did that come from you know what i mean it's just and then you know over time you realize no hold on it's like it's i i can control this you know i can tell it to shut up you know if you're not gonna get on with me or entertain me or like help me out then you know just it just you don't yeah go away yeah basically it's just realizing that you know it's like perfection doesn't exist you know it's like you're not alone and um you know we all have you know you know our imperfections are just differences that should be celebrated you know it's um and am i right in saying that gratitude's one of the things that you come back to a lot as well yeah Yeah, yeah.

46:33Basically, just grateful to celebrate every little achievement like a glorious win. You know what I mean? It really is. Just getting out of bed on some days. It's like, yeah, I got out of bed. It's like, I won't give myself a medal for it. But it's just like, yeah, you've done all right. But life's the medal, isn't it? Yeah. You're still here. Enjoying it. Yeah. I'm genuinely like, that period of my life, I shouldn't be here considering how things were going but the fact i am here is just like i'm still here this is amazing as long as i've got we've we've all we've all got a limited amount of time you know and and unfortunately these kind of things end up wasting so much of it and then you're kind of like trying to catch up but um that that becomes itself a negative thing because you're like trying to grab everything you can it exhausts you again so you've got to just like accept sometimes you have amazing things happening some days you're just too tired but you're still here and as long as you're here keep going and enjoy as much as you can, you know, everything from a cup of tea to, um, just, just being out in, in what's not raining or when it is raining, just enjoy the rain, whatever it is, you know, just try and find some enjoyment in it.

47:44Um, and when you can't enjoy it, just accept tomorrow is going to be better. You've got through really bad days before there's going to be bad days in the future. It's going to be good days in the future. Um, and yeah, the gratitude is actually with what we're doing now. I mean, here we are, you know, it wasn't until we're almost 40 that all in the board happened. So every little thing like meeting you, like doing this kind of thing, all these kinds of things that we're doing is just like amazing to us. It's like blowing our minds every single time we do this kind of stuff. It's like, how can we be, how comes we're doing this?

48:13Well, we're here because we got through that stuff and we never gave up. So if we can be here at this kind of, you know, age, having any kind of success, if you want to look at this as success, then everybody should just be willing to keep going. And, you know, you never know what might happen. you might come up with something amazing and do something amazing and just what we do come across a lot of people that have like anxiety attacks on on the tubes you know because they're crowded they're hot and you know and it's just to like you know if you could if you have an anxiety attack write down how you're feeling and next time you have one you know it's evidence to you that you got through it you know i mean it's just yeah it must be really humbling and kind of fascinating at the same time watching everyone on their journeys every day it's this like I always think it's interesting on the tube or any kind of crowded space like that to watch people go about their days and I guess I've become so interested and attuned to how people seem to be feeling and how they're interacting with one another that I've just become fascinated by watching it but you can really see people who are struggling or feeling down but the way that it is quite invisible I'll never forget I had this tube journey I was um at work in um by Liverpool Street which is in East London and my mother-in-law had been um very very ill for a year and when we knew we were reaching kind of towards the end and but obviously things turned really really quickly and I was literally about to walk on stage to do a talk I'd had the microphone on I just had one of those weird feelings to check my phone and so I did and I had three missed calls from my husband so I obviously called him back and his mum had had um she just something had turned and it was really clear that actually we'd gone from thinking we had months to thinking we might have hours or you know max a couple of days so I literally just walked out I didn't even tell anyone I was leaving and there was this whole crowd of people and I literally just walked out and it's that strange thing exactly as we were talking about earlier where you're completely numb you're completely you're like in this busy crowded like events you know 10 000 people in the space but you're completely alone in it and I walked to the tube and I got on the tube and when I sat down on the tube and it was the middle of the day so it was relatively quiet and I just had this complete breakdown and it's absolutely hysterical and I was going all the way across London to West London where my mum was going to pick me up and drive me down because my husband was already with his family and they didn't live in London I cried the whole way and no one spoke to me and it's one of those you know you have those experiences I don't say this as like sure everyone on the tube that is so nice I don't say it as a criticism but it was one of those just those moments that stick with you where you think this is so weird the world's got to change like there's something wrong with this like as in I was you know young in my in my 20s and I was there and you know I I was like dressed for work.

51:07So, you know, I clearly needed help. And no one, no one even looked at me. It was anyway. And it always stuck me as this fascinating thing of everyone going through things. But we're so scared to say the wrong thing that we don't say anything. And I think what you guys are doing of putting yourselves out there and always saying something and letting people see that every day when they're on their way to work, having those moments. It's just amazing. Do you know what? I just want to say if these microphones weren't in the way, I'd have come over and given you a hug. Yeah, because, yeah, yeah, just, but yeah, you're right.