Johnny Mercer on mental illness, grief and grit

07/02/20 • 70 min

Crisis What Crisis?

Previous Episode

5. Johnny Mercer on mental illness, grief and grit

Johnny Mercer, government minister and former Commando, talks with brutal honesty about his childhood battles with mental illness, including severe OCD. And, with astonishing frankness, he describes his brutal and heart-breaking experiences in Afghanistan where he was witness to countless horrors, not least the death of his close friend Mark Chandler. An emotional, powerful – and for those looking for crisis lessons – useful episode.
Johnny’s Crisis Cures:
1. Stay strategic: “You have your goals and they have to be realistic; but once they are set the key is to focus on those and not get distracted by the niff naff and trivia.”
2. Keep perspective: “So much is down to luck; whether it’s an accident, whether it’s your career, whether it’s war, luck has such a heavy hand to play that you have to bear everything you do in perspective.”
3. It will end: “Seize the initiative; you’re never going to be in a crisis forever... whatever you’re going through things will return to normal just stick it out.”
Full transcript available here: https://www.crisiswhatcrisis.com/podcasts/johnny-mercer-on-mental-illness-grief-and-grit/
Links:
We Were Warriors – One Soldier’s Story of Brutal Combat is available via Amazon.co.uk
OCD-UK: https://www.ocduk.org
Tickets For Troops: https://www.ticketsfortroops.org.uk
Help for Heroes: https://www.helpforheroes.org.uk
Episode Notes:
Johnny Mercer is the non-graduate who should never have succeeded at Sandhurst – but who went on to be one of the most combat experienced officers in Afghanistan. The non-voter who should never have got elected, but who is now a Government Minister tipped as a potential future PM. What’s more remarkable are the challenges – as both a child and adult – that Johnny has faced down. An upbringing in a strict religious household that almost, in his words, destroyed his mind. A childhood that led him to develop an extreme Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the management of which Johnny describes as a continual ‘work in progress.’ His approach to these crises, with the support of CBT and other treatments, was to find a greater, tougher challenge to focus on. That came in his three Afghan tours during which he risked his life almost daily. But it also left him confronting visceral grief when his close colleague and friend Mark ‘Bing’ Chandler was killed instantly as they fought side by side. I found Johnny’s methods of coping in these extreme situations compelling. Accepting and embracing that luck plays such a huge part in crisis situations, understanding and accepting your limitations as well as your potential and, perhaps most powerfully, remembering always that courage is just as contagious as fear.
Stream/Buy 'Allies' by Some Velvet Morning - https://ampl.ink/qp6bm
Some Velvet Morning Website: www.somevelvetmorning.co.uk

Next Episode

6. Victoria Milligan on tragedy, survival and human spirit

Victoria Milligan’s life changed forever on May 5th 2013 when a boat trip in Cornwall with her husband Nicko and children, Amber, Olivia, Emily and Kit, then aged four ended in horror. Thrown into the water at high speed, their boat circled back on them, killing Nicko and Emily. Victoria lost her leg and Kit was seriously injured. “In a moment,” she says “I went from a perfect life to becoming a widow, a bereaved parent, a single parent and an amputee.” In this episode Victoria, who is now training to be grief therapist herself, explains how she coped with a multi-layered trauma, and ensured that she and her children not only survived but thrived carrying the memory of Nicko and Emily with them into a new life. A true testimony to the power of human spirit.
Victoria’s Crisis Cures:
1. Small achievable goals. Don’t plan too far ahead. That has massively helped me and still does every day.
2. Find your mantras. Mine is: “We are good enough”. I try and start every day by saying that to myself, however I feel. Don’t wake up and tell yourself you should have got more sleep, or I shouldn’t have drunk so much. And I start the day positively through exercise. That works for me.
3. Self-care is key. We are all natural care givers but we have to make sure we put enough time in for joy and happiness. If we’re not in a good place emotionally and physically we’re not in the right place to look after others. Being a little bit selfish is not a bad thing.
Links:
Victoria’s website: www.victoriamilligan.co.uk
Child Bereavement UK: https://www.childbereavementuk.org
Cornwall Air Ambulance: https://cornwallairambulancetrust.org
Julia Samuel: https://juliasamuel.co.uk
Full transcript available here: https://www.crisiswhatcrisis.com/podcasts/victoria-milligan-on-tragedy-survival-and-human-spirit/
Episode Notes:
We’ve talked a lot already about self-pity in this podcast. But no-one would blame Victoria Milligan, even now seven years after the accident, if the first words she uttered were ‘Why me?’ But it was clear, in the first five minutes of our conversation, that they are not in her vocabulary. The total lack of self-pity was, for me, one of the defining features of this podcast. The strategies she deployed to make sense of the senseless, as she puts it, were another. Dealing with just one of Victoria’s tragedies would be devastating. Tackling them all is unimaginable. But it’s through recognising them all as separate individual challenges that have to be broken down and dealt with using different tools and emotions that has enabled Victoria to cope. Taking one day at a time, how being kind to yourself will allow you to take care of others and the fundamental importance of finding the right way to manage your pain. That there is no manual for grief. Victoria rejected therapy when it was first offered. “All I wanted was Nicko and Emily back and no therapist could do that, so what use would they be?” she says. But overtime she came to understand the enormous value of grief counselling to help her through the loss of her child and her husband and to come to terms with her injuries. That she now wants to put all that she has learned to positive use as a therapist and writer herself - to find a positive from her tragedy – speaks volumes. A heart-breaking story told by an inspirational woman.
Stream/Buy 'Allies' by Some Velvet Morning: https://ampl.ink/qp6bm
Some Velvet Morning Website: www.somevelvetmorning.co.uk