World suicide prevention day - Marvin Sordell.

[Tipps69]

Sorry, I’m not sure if the interview is available online to paste on to here but it’s been on SSN this morning & while his interview is to do with the topic within football, his experiences aren’t just within football, they are within everyone’s everyday life.

So much of what he says about what he had to deal with, from the way the company hierarchy deal with things to how companies there to help with depression deal with things, having to tell numerous people how you are feeling & what you are going through shouldn’t be the case, someone in that position has everything going through their own mind enough, without having to actually tell the same situation to different people up to 6 or 7 times while you’re trying to get the help you require.

Yes the country & society has come a long way but we still have so much further to go.

And yes, talking is the best therapy but having to tell your situation to every untrained receptionist / secretary isn’t necessary in my opinion! It’s a horrible place to be & I offer help to anyone I think may need it & I’ve had lots even on here that have reached out to me & I will alway be eternally grateful but we still have work to do to stop this unnecessary loss of life continuing.

[phantom]

As someone who is personally really struggling with this kind of stuff at the moment, I am currently having counselling, receiving CBT for PTSD / Anxiety / Depression I find these kind of articles really humbling to read etc, the hardest thing for me was admitting I had problems. Yeah I am not the only person in the world to have problems in life, but like the cliche about blokes I thought I could just shrug it all off. 

But am now told that they reckon my problems go back to an event back in 2010 that I never dealt with and another event at the start of 2018 just triggered everything off again

Yeah I have cried with my mates, and at first I was really worried about their reactions, but it is amazing when one of us opens up how many around us are struggling too

........................................................................................................................................................................

[phantom]

1 hour ago, Tipps69 said:

Sorry, I’m not sure if the interview is available online to paste on to here but it’s been on SSN this morning & while his interview is to do with the topic within football, his experiences aren’t just within football, they are within everyone’s everyday life.

So much of what he says about what he had to deal with, from the way the company hierarchy deal with things to how companies there to help with depression deal with things, having to tell numerous people how you are feeling & what you are going through shouldn’t be the case, someone in that position has everything going through their own mind enough, without having to actually tell the same situation to different people up to 6 or 7 times while you’re trying to get the help you require.

Yes the country & society has come a long way but we still have so much further to go.

And yes, talking is the best therapy but having to tell your situation to every untrained receptionist / secretary isn’t necessary in my opinion! It’s a horrible place to be & I offer help to anyone I think may need it & I’ve had lots even on here that have reached out to me & I will alway be eternally grateful but we still have work to do to stop this unnecessary loss of life continuing.

Jadon Sancho made headlines recently when he suggested that racism could lead to players falling out of love with football. In a picturesque corner of Staffordshire, at his home in the cathedral city of Lichfield, the news did not escape Marvin Sordell. Here was an England international making explicit the concerns that he had been feeling for many years.

"I found it quite funny and I don't mean that in the sense that it is humorous," Sordell tells Sky Sports. "It literally proved my point. I hear it asked a lot why I decided to retire. If anyone wants to know why, it's there for all to see. It's just that players don't speak about it that often so people don't know about it. Players feel like they have had enough."

Sordell decided that he'd had enough in the summer. A once promising career that twice took him to the Premier League with Bolton and Burnley and once even to the Olympic Games had come to an end at the age of 28. Racism was not the catalyst for that decision, he says, but it played its part. Just one of the many aspects of football that became too much.

"Being a professional footballer is broken into two parts," he explains. "There's playing the game and then there's the politics and the abuse that you get. There are a lot of things you have to deal with and playing football is a small percentage of it. I found that it wasn't worth it any more. Going into the football club in the morning just didn't make me happy.

"That's why I made the decision. I felt I was happier when I was doing other things outside of the game. I still love football but I want to continue loving football and the way that I was going I knew I was going to completely fall out of love with it. I made a decision to hold onto my happiness rather than continuing to take the money. I chose happiness in a way."

Sordell's happiness matters. For him, it was life and death. He is speaking upon the launch of his campaign Let's Shirt Talk, helping to raise money for CALM - the Campaign Against Living Miserably. It is being timed to mark World Suicide Prevention Day and is close to his heart given that his own battle with depression reached its nadir with a suicide attempt.

Sordell on his suicide attempt

“I hope there is never the case of a player taking their life. I mean I almost was that player but I hope there isn’t a case like that. I just took a lot of tablets. I can’t even remember what they were, they were just in the cabinet. And I counted them out and thought that’s probably enough and just swallowed them all and went to sleep. It was literally just after I brushed my teeth, I was in the bathroom for some time and just did that and went to sleep. I didn’t know what to expect, I woke up in the morning and I had a horrible stomach ache but I’d woke up and I just felt like a million times worse for waking up.”

"Emotionally, it was such a big part of my life," he says. "Looking back, it is strange because it doesn't feel like it was me. My life is so different now."

That new life is an exciting one. There are big plans for his new production company. Sordell speaks enthusiastically about the "powerful stories" that they are planning to tell on film and television. There is his writing too. A book is planned and poetry remains a big part of his life.

"Writing is what saved me essentially. It is how I got things off my chest. It is how I was able to express my emotions, by pouring them into my writing. It took the weight off my shoulders. If it were not for writing I would have been buried underneath it really."

The problem is that not everyone has that outlet.

"That is the reason why we wanted to do this campaign," he says. "For men just to have this discussion about mental health and emotion is something that is not common. We want to give people the opportunity to have that conversation. We want to get people talking because football is a tough crowd to get discussing emotions, feelings and mental health.

"It's funny because football is such a uniting sport. People have so much passion when talking about their clubs but when talking about themselves, they are closed and don't want to have that discussion. It is just about dangling the carrot for people. Some people might ignore the conversation and just want a shirt. That's fine. But it might help someone."

Sordell has the wider public in mind but given his own experiences he is keen to stress that it should be no surprise that footballers can suffer from mental health problems too.

"There are a lot of people within the game who feel similarly to how I did," he insists. "They are being told that this is the game and this is what you have to do if you want to survive in it. In any other industry, there are stories that I tell people and they say it just doesn't make sense, that it should not be allowed and they wonder why anyone would accept it.

"But who can you complain to and who is going to care anyway? Nobody wants to hear about how difficult life is as a professional footballer because you earn good money and you don't work long hours. It is a dream job, they say. Get over it. Toughen up. So players don't discuss how they feel during their careers because it is only going to be held against you.

"The money around now means footballers are under more scrutiny than ever too. Players are very much aware of what's being said on social media. They see it and they hear it. It is just about being respectful really. A player may have not played well but to say they are a disgrace? It's just a game and they tried their best. Those things are difficult to defend."

For Sancho, these challenges are ongoing. For Sordell, those particular problems are behind him now.

Retirement was not the end of his adventure though. It was a new start.

"It is a bit strange stepping off by myself into this world without any experience and without any knowledge of what is going to happen, but things are starting to happen," he says. "I am enjoying the different things I am getting up to in life. It is exciting to be doing something I like and something that I am passionate about. I feel a lot of freedom."

LINK TO HIS INTERVIEW

[Ronnie Sinclair]

41 minutes ago, phantom said:

As someone who is personally really struggling with this kind of stuff at the moment, I am currently having counselling, receiving CBT for PTSD / Anxiety / Depression I find these kind of articles really humbling to read etc, the hardest thing for me was admitting I had problems. Yeah I am not the only person in the world to have problems in life, but like the cliche about blokes I thought I could just shrug it all off. 

But am now told that they reckon my problems go back to an event back in 2010 that I never dealt with and another event at the start of 2018 just triggered everything off again

Yeah I have cried with my mates, and at first I was really worried about their reactions, but it is amazing when one of us opens up how many around us are struggling too

........................................................................................................................................................................

I started CBT two weeks ago for similar issues - initial observations are mine goes back 30-odd years which was a big surprise / bombshell.  I thought talking to a complete stranger about this stuff would be awkward but it isn't

[Norn Iron]

Well done Phantom and Ronnie for posting.

I'm sure there are many on here who will take encouragement from what you have said.  Counselling is no longer a stigma. How we used to scoff at the Americans for having therapists. No longer.

We can go to a physiotherapist if we have a bad back but can't go to a therapist for instance if we have bad episode(s) from our past still haunting us?

Football for me has at times been my lifeline. I felt accepted being part of a tribe. It was my escape. It got me through the week until Saturday.

Well done Marvin Sordell for going public.

Well done Marcus Trescothick for going public as he's not only a top sportsman who reached the ultimate in playing for England but is also one of us, a City fan.

If Marcus and Marvin can get help and then help others by talking about the ex-stigma, and they were players then so can we as fans.

Keep going Phantom and Ronnie. You're good eggs and no doubt will help others on OTIB now and in the future.