Toby Cummins

Probably “not” someone like me

​​Perhaps it's the combination of being an extrovert, a compulsive over-sharer and an inveterate FoMO-er that makes debilitating anxiety seem unlikely for "someone like me". Maybe it's the straight, white, male, middle-class, middle-age, middle-England privilege that makes crushing depression seem unpredictable for "someone like me". Undeserving of attention or amplification, maybe. I can understand those assumptions.

I'm not a psychologist, a therapist, I don't work "in mental health" and I don't have any more insight than the next person with their own very personal experiences with anxiety and depression. I have an ostensibly unlikely, but apparently very common, tale to tell. And having told it, no, broadcast it a few times -  I offer ears that can listen. I have a small platform from which to positively raise awareness, create normalcy and maybe give a bit of hope to the next "someone like me". That's all I'm claiming to offer. It might help another human a little and that has to be a win, doesn't it?

In the late summer of 2014, somewhere in my mid-thirties and somewhere out of pretty much nowhere, I became enveloped in a full on depressive anxious breakdown. I didn't see it coming and I am pretty sure no one that knew the "confident, successful, dependable" me did either.

A combination of work and family stresses had progressively taken me to a place where my brain just stopped working. I was managing no more than two hours sleep a night for several months and if you live with that for long enough you just stop functioning. On pretty much any level really. And I couldn't see how I got there, let alone how I would get out again.

I was trapped in an awful constricting spiral. And then I reached my rock bottom. Less extreme than many I’ve met and discussed this with since, but for me, at the time, it was devastating. Sat in a meeting at work and I realised the people in it with me were just staring at me - unable to fathom how a successful leader in their business could barely remember what day it was or why we were meeting. Thankfully, one of them was my boss and she saw the signs and got me out of there. Fast.

Having pulled the ripcord and taken extended time off work, I'd then spent 18 months getting to know my mind a lot more clearly. Through a brief period of enforced rest, some pretty mild head drugs and then a chunk of CBT therapy and very slow rehabilitation - I began to understand why I felt like I did. What caused the torturous loops that spiralled in my mind and hopefully how to deal with them. I learned techniques that have helped me suppress my anxiety and to stay on top of my depressive tendencies since. Mostly.

Around this time, I was cycling more and m​​ore. Not ​​fully as therapy, but​ a little bit I suppose. I rode mostly​ as a means to calm ​or obfuscate ​my mind. I’d already been suckered by the endorphin-bug a few years earlier and was pretty regularly wrapped in lycra by this stage. I’d spend roughly 200 hours a year on my bike and friends and colleagues often​ asked i​f​ the time in the saddle was great "thinking time"​ - chirping how it must be a great place to strategise and plan. Frankly, bollocks. 

When I am on my bike, I think about three things and three things only - “Don't die”; “doesn't that look pretty” (I live and ride in the stunning Lakes and Dales); and “what shall I call this ride on Strava”. Not much else. And that's always been the aim. When I am pushing the pedals I am not thinking about the stresses of my normal life - of parenting three children, of being leader or a lawyer, of ways to be a better husband, of my friends and their families, or even what TV I should watch next. Perhaps more importantly it’s not a time for the kinds of dangerous negatively swirling thoughts that had completely taken over my mind in 2014. “Cycling isn't therapy”. Maybe not entirely. But it’s part of mine.

And it’s through cycling that I have met so many like-minded people. I don’t just mean the interest in two-wheeled adventure, I mean people who’ve discovered weaknesses in their minds - fault lines that they soothe through our shared pursuit. Many of them are extroverts too - unpredictably afflicted and blindsided by it. Many who have brushed with suicide, addictions and much more life-threatening scenarios than my own. Many I would never have thought might be hiding those awful and consuming toils under their helmets, if I hadn’t been open about my own struggles. Many who are essentially just “someone like me”.

I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a therapist. I don’t work in mental health. I don’t have much more to tell you than my story. But now that you’ve heard the gist of it, you should know that I’ll listen to yours too. And that might be the first step you take in fighting the slow flat or even a sudden pinch puncture in your brain. I might not be able to help, but we can try. And if we can do that together, out on the road, you might just help me think of my next ride title along the way.

A note from Nick.

When I returned to the UK and settled in London I was still very troubled and not very open. Tobes was one of the people who helped me, always there for chat laps, my first real experience of riding and talking, actually talking. Opening up became easier thanks to Toby and a handful of others.

Thanks mate, eternally grateful.

Nick