The Art Of Going Easy On Yourself

August is nearly here…and the team at Seas The Mind know that some crew may be mentally struggling by now.

The Med. It’s a hectic season!

For those whose Med seasons started early, or who rolled straight out of exhausting winters, or who are realising they are not on great boats, by this point the wheels could be coming off. It is quite possible that some crew haven’t had a day off in weeks or have maybe had just one or two. It is actually the most natural thing in the world to find this extremely hard to deal with and to find yourself feeling low on some days.

Throw into the mix some work politics, no escape from your workplace, some disrupted sleep, or prolonged lack of it and we have ourselves a recipe for a mental struggle. Something I have noticed though is that we yachties are very good at expecting far, far too much of ourselves. In part it’s because the crazy hours and the lack of any guaranteed days off are so normalised in our industry. A lot of us have carried the burden of the ‘if you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen’ mentality for a long time. It is very easy to lose all sense of perspective and start to wonder why on earth we are finding it tough at all. We are, quite commonly I believe, too hard on ourselves.

Joining the dots between feeling low and working too hard

I have lost count of the times a yachtie friend has regaled me with a long and colourful story of their season so far, which has usually included lack of sufficient time off, lack of sleep, often lack of any ability to get ashore, no exercise, extreme stress, incredible demands from a rotating cast of guests, and sometimes for the interior crew even a lack of daylight and at the end of it they’ll say something like ‘I’ve been feeling really rough recently and I can’t figure out why’.

The answer is usually as glaringly obvious as the red wine stain on the main deck cushions, and if I tentatively suggest that anyone would be feeing below par in those circumstances I’ll get the rebuttal: ‘Well the rest of the department/crew are ok so why am I not?’ What’s wrong with me?

My answer is often: ‘Nothing at all. Your body and your mind are telling you they’ve had enough!’

Another answer is often: ‘Erm, have the you seen so and so? The rest of your crew are definitely not ok!’

Admittedly, on the odd occasion there may be a more direct answer. I might say brightly ‘that’ll be the alcoholism mate!’ or ‘perhaps it’s your severe untreated anxiety and depression!’ or ‘maybe it’s because you’ve been living solely on ginger and turmeric for three weeks!’ Far more commonly though my friend is a perfectly well-adjusted person struggling to adjust to conditions which are not remotely conducive to good mental health.

The question is, what can we do about it? May I put forward a radical idea here… maybe go easy on yourself?

It’s easy to put pressure on ourselves

The art of Going Easy on Yourself is an art I have never mastered – but I am giving it a good go nowadays after learning my lesson the hard way. For some of us it does not come naturally! A lot of us are very hard on ourselves – it’s why we are good crew.

We have high standards; we expect a lot from ourselves and others and in many ways that has served us well in our lives and our careers. It can drive us to achieve great things academically, in sport, to travel and leave our comfort zones, in looking after ourselves and others… but when we don’t temper that with a bit of kindness and self-compassion (or to be honest, sometimes some plain old realism) we can end up having expectations of ourselves which are simply too high. We can end up berating ourselves for being – dare I say it – human?

When the workload is insanely high and prolonged as it is often on a yacht, we can start to expect machine-like qualities from ourselves: ‘I know I’ve done a 14 hour laundry shift every day for the last 4 weeks, haven’t spoken to any loved ones or done anything I enjoy, but I’m being paid aren’t I? I’m on a superyacht! I should be HAPPY!’

The ‘shoulding’ problem

It’s the ‘shoulding’ that’s a problem. We ‘should’ all over ourselves. In the midst of utter carnage sometimes, the captain screaming at someone, our radio calling us in a million different directions, guests asking for a thousand different things, the hot tub breaking down, the tender crashing into a quay, the galley alarm going off we’ll think ‘I should be ok with this, I should be FINE’.

Actually no, it’s fine not to be fine. We are human. Yacht work is hard. Let’s not compound the hardness by perpetually beating ourselves up for not coping better. Believe me, the hundreds of different crew who have come through my courses now have shared the same story in different versions over and over again. We know we are blessed to work in an exciting, travelling, colourful industry. We are grateful for our healthy salaries. We take pride in our jobs AND we also sometimes find them unbearably hard. Sometimes we are utterly miserable. These things can all be true at the same time.

Sometimes we are just sad

Working in the mental health space I am one of many who has fought long and hard for mental health issues -actual illnesses and disorders- to be recognised and destigmatised. But I also think there is a benefit to sometimes stepping back and assessing our situation and realising we may not be depressed, or anxious at all. There is a whole range of distress-signals our bodies and mind send us without being considered mentally ill.

We may have done all the adjusting to a situation we can do. We may actually be in the midst of an awful season. Or on a really toxic boat. Or we may hate our boss. Sometimes we might just be unbelievably, frikkin’ tired. Sometimes we, and our brain, are not the problem. Sometimes, we are not mentally ill. We just need a break or a new job. Sometimes we are just sad. We may be harming ourselves irreparably – and possibly setting ourselves on the path to a mental illness – by forcing ourselves to continue in a place that just makes us miserable.

On the other hand if you are throwing brazil nuts at yourself at 5am shouting ‘I need the selenium to make serotonin! It’s just neurotransmitters! I heard it on Steven Bartlett! If I just eat enough nuts I’ll be FINE!’ – chances are we are now in the realm of mental illness, and that too is OK. Help is at hand. We can and do recover.

Taking a step back

Either way, if we can step back, go easy on ourselves and try and dispassionately assess where we are without all the judgement and self-flagellating we can figure out what we need. Maybe we can push on until the end of the season and then just take the mother of all holidays. Maybe it’ll all just be fixed with a 15 hour sleep, a burger and a day on a sunlounger or a ridiculously long bike ride. It may be that no, we need to quit our job and check ourselves into rehab. Or get onto the world’s strongest antidepressant. Or have some intensive therapy.

All these things are possible. None of them makes us a failure. Sometimes we need a break or external help or sometimes we are just having a really, really crappy day. One thing I have definitely learned though is that none of these things is helped by beating ourselves up and telling ourselves what a loser we are for having any kind of negative feelings at all. Crew work can be really hard, and recognising that is ok. It’s ok to not be ok. If you’re in any doubt as to whether you could do with a bit of Going Easy on Yourself, ask yourself what advice you would give to a friend who was in your situation and feeling the way you feel.

Chances are it’s a lot nicer than your interior monologue.

For more information about Seas The Mind, go to the website here: https://www.seasthemind.co.uk/