One Year Later: Anxiety Diagnosis, Medication & What I've Learned

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]You know I realized the other day that it's actually been a year since I started mental health medication and I thought why not do a little video just talking about that first year of actually being on and I literally have them with me the the sertraline tablets and that I decided to get on last year.

[00:00:14]I talked a lot about mental health on the podcast which you know just good game show the just good game show please go subscribe on your free feed of choice or if you'd like early access please join the patreon but we talk a lot about mental health a lot of people have gotten touch and said that me being quite frank and honest about what I went through last year you know having complete burnout trying to balance you know the work-life being all astray and you know resulting in just being an absolute mess at home you're very nervy very shaky eventually going and seeking a bit of help getting a um a few different sit-downs actually with a really lovely mental health consultant called Eve. I'm forever indebted to Eve's advice across those particular first few months especially that mixed with getting signed up to this online platform that I think the UK government does I forget the actual name of the platform but they also signed me up to that and and I would fill out these different entries every week checking in with this one person online and then also checking in with Eve in person and also having the medication as well which I'll talk a little bit about when I get there. All of that stuff was in about April to May this time last year it was just when I was figuring out what the hell I want to do you know a lot of you will know me from WhatCulture from WhatCulture Gaming you might increasingly know me from this personal in my own channel in the Just Good Game Show and all that kind of thing but back then I was you know deciding how the hell I was going to balance everything and I was in a right state like you know and I just want to describe what I went through what led to the the combination of everything what I decided to do with my life and and how things kind of went from there because like I said a lot of people get in touch and say look you talking about it me talking about things encourage them to maybe go have a conversation or maybe you know even get medication if you need it and it's resulted in you know some positive things so if anything that I went through can massively help you then I thought why not put this video together. Like I said there are plenty of other conversations on the podcast from the last year or so, but I thought why not do this this one year mental health anniversary um because it has obviously been massively life-changing. And you know, my son is now over 2 years old, but it was that first year uh trying to balance being a new dad with the the full-time career of being the head of WhatCulture Gaming and all the different things that were happening with WhatCulture's old management and the inability to at least in my head from my side get answers to various questions that I needed to be able to run that team efficiently. That ultimately created this idea or this mentality of just constant stress and the inability to you know, relax or or not turn off. Like you're always at home thinking about what's going to happen the next day, thinking about things that are unresolved. I remember when I actually sat down, which is a really good thing to point out actually, I eventually sat down with my GP where I talked to two extremely close friends which I'll not identify, um but they were instrumental in saying to me, "Hey, we can tell that the way you're talking is very shaky. I was very emotional this one time when I was deciding to sort of move away from WhatCulture earlier on last year." I remember sitting down with these two people and saying like I don't think I want to do this anymore and just I was just the you know when you you know you're going to cry and your mouth's all as if you've eaten like a ton of salt and vinegar Pringles.

[00:03:07]>> [laughter] >> You're just like, "Rar, rar, I'm going to eat something's going to come out of me." I was just an emotional wreck. I remember talking to them.

[00:03:13]And these two people um who I might eventually get identified over time. I might have probably mentioned them on the pod at some point, knowing me um but they said, "You should go back to the GP and you should say that you need help basically." Because I'd been to a GP earlier, that would have been in 2024 when I started kind of doing these mild disassociations which I again is something else to talk about um which in my case cuz they're different for everybody else. Some people I mean I'll just talk about mine. My dissociation thing was almost as if I was in a memory. Is it random things would just take me back like 20 odd years. Like if I was going through a certain like a certain smell of something, certain smell of food, certain visuals, certain combo of colors um you know, would then take me back to the last time that my brain was associating that particular um sense and all of a sudden I was in that memory. I was at Christmas 1998, you know, I was going through the front door of my parents' house or whatever it was.

[00:04:03]And that back and forth of reminding yourself you're not actually there. I mean, we're talking about split seconds of thoughts coming in and and visuals and that kind of thing. That realization of like, what the hell is going on?

[00:04:13]Would immediately make me, back then, disassociate just for, you know, a quick bit.

[00:04:18]And instill a bit of a panic attack as well.

[00:04:21]Um, in terms of, you know, a panic attack in my case being, like I said, very nervy, very shaky. Um, leading in some cases to being like, you know, to crying, to just being like, I don't know what the hell's going on.

[00:04:31]And, you know, internally you're thinking like, I know I I'm on top of this. I can I can stand up. I can get out of this. But you're also just in the moment just needing to kind of sit there and just take it in. And I at one point, my absolute lowest point was just being sat on um the floor of my son's room.

[00:04:47]Um, they weren't there.

[00:04:49]He wasn't there. I mean, they as in my wife and family, but they weren't there.

[00:04:52]And uh and I was just sat there just like head in hands just like, oh my god, this thing is overwhelming. And um yeah, but in regards to panic attacks, that was another thing that, you know, you have to go back to the GP and try and have that conversation, which I had tried previously. The thing that I didn't know, and it's like the one thing that I want to pass on to everybody, is that at least in the UK, you need to request that time off. You need to go to a GP and say, look, I am overwhelmed.

[00:05:13]Here's all the reasons that are leading to me being all over the place and I think I could do with a bit of time off.

[00:05:18]I never knew that. I went through all of life just assuming that I would go to a GP, they would diagnose me and go, hey, you know what? You need a couple of weeks off. Let me get you like the the sick note or whatever and get you signed off. I knew plenty of people over the years who would say her who had time off, but I always thought you had to be had to be seen by someone, you know, noticeably struggling or they would to a GP, go to a doctor and say, hey, I think I know this. Like, in my mind before all of this, it was they weren't going to take that of this.

[00:05:45]It was they weren't going to take that thought they would just be like, "Well, what do you mean?" Like, you know, it was a whole thing. But no, turns out you've got to go to the GP and say, "Hey look, I am overwhelmed and here are the reasons why and I'm thinking about taking some time off."

[00:05:58]Which at the time, uh my GP Sam, who was incredible, um he was like really lovely. I had a whole bunch of conversations with him again alongside Eve, alongside the online mental health consultants.

[00:06:08]Um and uh and Sam was like, "No, let me get you some time off. Let me get you some weeks off." And that led to uh also starting medication, which initially these are 50 mil uh tablets, 50 mg tablets. I started on 25. A lot of people go higher than this. It just depends what um you know, the rebalance of brain chemicals that you need. And in my case, they started me on 25, which I think is the universal starting amount at least in the UK uh for anxiety. And um the 25 thing didn't really do a whole lot for the first couple of weeks. And it takes a bit of time to get in your bloodstream anyway. But um yeah, first couple of weeks I was still quite shaky.

[00:06:41]I was still kind of taking myself out of it. I was back and forth in terms of like I said, the disassociation stuff.

[00:06:46]Uh I didn't have a whole lot of appetite and it was just various things were just I remember Sam at one point said, cuz I was like, "Oh, how long I'll give it a couple of weeks. I'll try this for a couple of weeks and then I'll try this in a month and then I'll I'll see if I can come back and I'll try and record a podcast. I'll try and do." And he was like, "Look, you're thinking in timescales." Which is the one thing I always remember now. He's like, "You think in timescales." He's like, "Just go day by day for a bit." And uh and at the time, you know, that was was mas- massively life-changing. I mean, I'd been running WhatCulture as the head of WhatCulture Gaming for 3 years at that point as the head of WhatCulture Gaming because the new management came in. They were like, "Dude, you're doing a lot.

[00:07:18]You're head of the stamp I mean, stamp your contract. You're head of gaming."

[00:07:22]Um didn't change a whole lot about the wage.

[00:07:24]But they were like, "Hey, you got a whole lot of responsibilities. What if you were just the head of gaming?" And then before then, I was like the the lead gaming editor of the section overall even though obviously we had that wider team, you know, Josh, Ash, Rachel, Rich, Ousley, Jules of course, like, you know, plenty people who were helping out. But I was still the lead ideas guy at the you know, putting out uh various different ideas to the freelancers and all that kind of thing for years prior. My point is that I had a ton on my plate and I have I had had for many years prior. So, the time scale coming from Sam, he's like, "You're thinking in time scales. You're thinking when's this going thing going to be okay again? When are you going to be able to do this? When are you going to be able to do that?" And he's like, "Just dial it all the way back. Take each day as it comes. Know that you have a couple of weeks off for now. You can always extend that time off. Get on the medication and just see how you go." And that was life-changing for me.

[00:08:09]>> [laughter] >> That was a massive pace shift, gear shift from the way that I had been operating for my entire working life and especially in our work culture because if someone starts paying you for your love of video games, I'm just like, "Well, how much time have you got on in the day?" Like, I'll I'll write all day.

[00:08:26]I'll stay up all night till 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. I'll play as much as I can and I'll write as much as I can. And then we'll do podcasts and then we'll do videos. Like, my tenure at Our Culture predated the video channel. Like, it was it was one of my ideas to do video back in the day cuz we were just an article-based website channel and I wanted to do more news coverage and video stuff. I remember that at the time the old management, one of the bosses, his particular response to whether we should do video was, "Well, we're not rockstars." And I was like, "We don't need to be rockstars, mate. We just need >> [laughter] >> We just need to talk about games on camera."

[00:08:57]So, whatever. But, but yeah, that was massively life-changing and being able to then try and just go, "Okay.

[00:09:04]Let me have a few weeks to myself. You know, I'm still a dad, still looking after my son. It was still during the time where he was ill pretty much every day. So, various times he was supposed to be in nursery, he would just end up with me, but it was kind of nice because we got to just hang out on the beach and just kind of you know, take things slow in the house and do whatever. And ultimately, it was that shift onto the medication where they they bumped me up.

[00:09:23]First couple of weeks on the 25 mil didn't do anything.

[00:09:26]They bumped me up to 50, which is what I'm still on. And these are 50s. And I'm also an absolute psycho cuz I don't I don't do them in like row order. I just pick whatever's to hand, mainly cuz my son wakes up at 5:00 in the morning. so I tend to just grab the the pill packet and go, "Which one is it?" Um but yeah, getting on the 50s, and then about a week or so passed, and that's where things were like, "Oh, there's a clarity here.

[00:09:47]There's a calmness here. There's an ability to think through every individual thought that was missing for the last, well, at that point I realized it had been missing for a good few years." Um and that started to really help. And so, again, one of the main reasons to do this video is just to say that what worked for me was uh going down the medication route. It was getting on the sertraline. Um trialing the 25s, going to the 50 mil, and I've been on that ever since. You know, the the doctor said was always like, "Okay, the standard dosage for this stuff is about a year, and when you want to come off it, we'll knock you back down to the 25, see how you go, and then knock you off it altogether." Which I haven't gone back down yet. Like I said, this is I'm pretty much almost to the week about a year in uh on doing this. But um but yeah, massively massively helpful. It's also worth saying that it hasn't been, you know, smooth sailing the entire time. Like, you know, you still get stressed, you still get overwhelmed, you still have a whole bunch of different things to juggle. I mean, many parents already know this, >> [laughter] >> even if you don't have a recognized anxiety or something that's been diagnosed in that regard. You still have a ton of random stresses and improvised days that go with being a parent. Um but it's just, you know, it it's just worth describing the reality of what it's like being on these tablets or what it's like, you know, having anxiety. I think it's an interesting I mean, you see this for me, I think it's something that if I didn't know about beforehand, like it was so educational to just steer into it, which is always my golden rule as I talk about loads when it comes to presenting stuff or doing something on stage or whatever it is. Just steer into the thing that's worrying you. If I'm trying to present a video and I can't think of a name, I'll probably just say, "What the hell was the name of that thing?" And then it'll just it'll come to me, or I'll be able to steer around it, and I'll come back to it later, and then you can make a joke about it, or whatever it is. Uh my golden rule in life is just steer into the thing that is worrying you. And I should have done that for years prior. But, like I said, every now and then there'll be something, cuz I've had a couple of times where cuz I have to reorder the tablets every month, I had a couple of times where I missed the the date to do that. Like I would remember later on in the day. Like busy life, you know, you're balancing work life stuff.

[00:11:40]And I would remember too late to get the order into the pharmacy and I couldn't The other week I did it where I I'd completely forgot to order stuff by the the Friday. And it was like a It wasn't the most recent bank holiday, but it was a previous one. And either way, it meant that I was off my tablets for like 5 days. And on that fifth day, it was like the day just before I could get them again. They'd been ordered, but I couldn't pick them up for like a good few days. And it was crazy how much my body was reverting back to what it was like before, where I was being I was quite shaky. I was kind of all over the place in terms of like focus, like I still have I have more memory issues these days in regards to stress. Like I'm always thinking of different things that need doing for this channel or for WhatCulture, cuz I still freelance for them, or different sponsorships that I should chase, different ways to make sure there's enough money coming in. I could go on and on, but I still have those anxious, you know, related thoughts to stress and how much they are sort of intertwined. Um but yeah, body kind of went back to being you know, like quite shaky. And I got a couple of nosebleeds, which I wasn't expecting to happen. It's not like I was consciously freaking out, but it's like when you have that lack of that medication, again, it's worth knowing if you're going to go on to this stuff that you do need to maintain the dosage. Like you do need to maintain the like the dosage in the time frame that they that you've been given. As best, you know, to your ability as you can. And in my case, like I said, I missed them for a few days and all of a sudden my body was like, "What the hell is going on? All these all these different things are all underneath here." And I was like, "Okay." Like that was a bit eye-opening as to like if you're going to get off this stuff again, you need to go back down from 50 to 25 and then back down to zero. You can't just go cold turkey, which is obviously a a known thing, you know, they tell you that when you start getting on this medication. But but yeah, I just thought I'd put this video together because I'm quite happy that I've been able to do this for a year. I do feel way better than I did [laughter] just over a year ago when I was in the absolute worst of it coming out of the previous Christmas going into the beginning of 2025 and and just feeling all over the place like an absolute mess. And I've been in touch with tons of you in the community on the Discord.

[00:13:38]People have DM'd on the Patreon, on the Discord.

[00:13:40]Always more than happy to talk about my experiences and try and suggest things that worked for me that might work for you. And if me talking about my experiences helped you in any way and even if you're just sat there going like, you know what?

[00:13:51]This this might be the thing that is my thing. There's nothing wrong with just having a little chat with your GP. You know, in the in the UK we're lucky enough to have the NHS and you can have those chats for free. And yeah, it was the best thing I ever did in regards to just sorting my head out. It's all good things. And as I said, there's a level of clarity and a level of balance to life itself that I didn't even realize I was missing until I started to address it. So, here's to you and here's to getting all of our heads together. I just thought of something else so I've I've turned this back on but that's probably why the microphone's jumping around in the edit. I just thought I'd talk about the process of kind of being diagnosed because I think that can be a little bit I don't know intimidating to a degree.

[00:14:30]You don't want to like I don't know, some people bounce off that idea of like going in and being diagnosed. Oh my god, you've got this problem and people kind of you know, you steer away from that cuz it's like, well, if I don't have to acknowledge it then I'm okay. As long as I don't know what's up with me then you know, whatever. And I'm someone who just you know, on the quicker side has grown up on medication their whole life. Like I had I'm always on the on the inhalers.

[00:14:49]I've got in like I had a really bad asthma growing up and I'm always on the inhalers. I'm on steroid inhalers every morning and night to make sure the old airwaves airwaves work as well as they need to. And I also had a whole ton of extremely bad eczema when I was a teenager. It all sorts of really it got insane. Like I had massive patches. I was like a lobster with a face. I had to go through a whole treatment process of being bandaged up like a mummy. I had to be completely covered. It was a whole thing. It lasted for ages. And so I'm I'm comfortable with what is the solution in regards to medication or thought processes or that kind of thing. Just just let me know what I need to do and I'll get stuck into it. But but the diagnosis itself was very much me sitting down um saying that I'm doing the dissociations, that I'm being very shaky, that I feel all over the place, and I'm having these, you know, these anxious thoughts kind of thing. And that conversation was just a lot of just a few bits of back and forth about, "Okay, like tell me how you got here. Tell me what you do for a living."

[00:15:42]And uh and describing the work day, uh and then the the work-life balance, and having a few questions about the work-life balance, you know, how supportive is your partner? Does it feel like you you do have support when you need to offload things, which of course I do. And um and kind of just going from there, and then me being able to say, "I think I need some time off." And then the um conversation on medication coming as an escalation of that. Like Like I said, going from 25 to 50s, but you still have to opt in to saying, like I you know, I I want to I kind of want to approach the idea of medication because obviously there's the entire mental health therapy side of things, where you look into, "Okay, breathing techniques and ways to get your thoughts down.

[00:16:17]Maybe you want to like you know, you maybe you want to take a big old sheet of paper and just write everything down that's in your mind. Every single worry, and you can start connecting them all together and be like, "Okay, I can ground this. I can make this thought real, and I can tackle it in a way that, you know, once once it's in your mind, it's just going to keep spiraling and going bigger and bigger because we don't, you know, it's no physical space up there. It's just going to It's just going to explode." So um you can just sit and do a mind map and get all your thoughts down. And uh and sometimes when you start doing that, you'll realize, you know, how many things are connected to one node that's on that new mind map that you're making. And uh maybe that'll, you know, give you the ability to tackle it.

[00:16:52]Um so there's the diagnosis side of things, which obviously I participated in that. I think if you're going to do these kind of conversations, it obviously benefits you to be quite open and honest about things. Nothing to be ashamed of whatsoever. Uh the more I've had these conversations, the more I've had mental health chats with my closest friends, my relatives, people that I didn't know went through this stuff. And I think we're all in this, you know, we're all bonded by this stuff a hell of a lot more than you might think. And uh and so yeah, it benefits you to be nice and and open about what's going on. And it doesn't matter that you don't have all the answers. Um you know, you're just trying to find them out. You're just trying to do right by yourself or your family or whoever it is. And that's cool. Um so, there's the diagnosis side of things there in my case uh led over that couple of weeks to getting, you know, an increased medication and then that started to work a lot better and then I was able to to start moving forward. I actually did record a podcast for myself in the middle of that period just to see if I could still do it, which I've never released. It was just me sitting talking about life for a bit um cuz obviously I talk for a living like I'm doing the videos, I'm doing the podcasts, and doing all sorts of different things. And I then stopped doing that for a few weeks, which is the only time that I'd stopped doing it in years, you know, since since Walkers started going on YouTube and then started doing the podcasts. So, that was a fun thing to uh to try and do as well.

[00:18:00]But yeah, that was the diagnosis side of things. And then again, it's worth talking about um the different uh approaches to therapy because I think a lot of people uh in in mental almost like a stereotype of of getting, you know, mental health um therapeutic help is that idea that you're all going to sit in a circle and you know, someone's going to call on you and it's going to be like, "Okay, like you know, what's your problem?" You stand up and everyone says, "Hey, nice to meet you." and everything else. And that, you know, you can find groups that are like that. There are some there's a there's a Geordie Pride Club um that's in the northeast near where I live uh live, which is awesome. Uh but it was just those one-to-one conversations uh in terms of sitting down with even sitting down with Sam the GP because your GP will give you, you know, some mental health advice as well or they did in my case. Um but it was the online therapy. It was um keeping a diary, talking about my ups and downs, being able to have something to refer to so that it doesn't all get lost in the fog of you, you know, you're getting lost in your own thoughts and thinking that that you're not actually making any progress.

[00:18:51]When you have something to check in on and you have someone checking your progress, you know, you're talking to that person in my case every week, then you are able to chart that course and go, "Well, this is where I was a month ago saying that I've had a horrible day and then I had a nosebleed and I was crying and I was on the floor and, you know, I still got things done that day, but that was that's the one thing that sticks out." And then you're able to, you know, contrast that and go, "Well, actually I do you know, I feel a little bit clearer today. I feel like I actually was able to, you know, focus on something that felt [snorts] more constructive and I feel more like there's value in that thing that I put out." And uh and so that was one thing, but there's a lot of other techniques that are in there. Like I said, there's the mind map stuff, and there are some really great breathing techniques that I find to be very, very helpful. Um you can Google box breathing, but it's basically a um like a 4-second box um shape where it's like inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, inhale for or hold and wait again for 4 seconds, inhale and do that.

[00:19:42]Um so there are things like that that you can immediately get on top of that I found to be really, really helpful because there was an initial referral period as well. Like I'd done the GP stuff uh and I was on the medication, but I hadn't uh had anybody assigned to me online.

[00:19:55]Um so I was just kind of in like a waiting queue. And uh and the mental health consultant as well, um that was someone that was assigned to me after the first few weeks. And as soon as I sat down with Eve, she was like, "You should have been having these chats immediately." So you can always request that as well. You can always request a mental health consultant or someone just someone to sit down with and have a chat with. Um you know, it doesn't have to be paid therapy, it doesn't have to be that, you know, goodwill hunting, let's sit down and have you like lying down on the chair. It it can just be a nice friendly sit down uh with someone who really wants to help, who is, you know, schooled and educated in those ways. Um they can massively help you. So it did it worked for me anyway. And uh and those various different techniques I've I've carried forward. There's all sorts of stuff about ways to manage worry, um you know, ways to prioritize worry.

[00:20:37]There's a really good thought process um about ranking different thoughts that all come to mind and then trying to find what they call the hot thought and then be like, "Okay, we're not going to solve this problem. We're not going to solve this thought, but we are going to offer an alternative. And is that a suitable alternative?" And there's just ways to calm yourself down and think your way through these processes. Things that again were massively, massively helpful to me. So there's a lot of parts to this. There's a lot of parts to, you know, going through dealing with mental health. It's true that everybody is different, but it's obviously true that there are a ton of solutions and a lot of help is out there for you as well. So, I just thought I'd put together what I could. I'm 1 year in. It again is the best thing I ever did and I'm in a way better place today than I was before I did any of this and I'm extremely supremely grateful for the the close friends that I mentioned before for just telling me, "Dude, get yourself back in the the GP's office and request your time off and go from there." And then it was on me to seek out all the different answers and and get used to the different you know, thought processes and the different exercises and keeping on top of that stuff, you know, keeping up the diary entries, keeping on top of the the one-on-one meetings, the GP appointments, the consultancy appointments and doing all the techniques in between.

[00:21:44]So, if you're you're willing to get stuck in, then it can it can hugely help. So, yeah, just thought I'd share my experiences, but I hope you're all doing very well. I might catch you on the channel. I might catch you on the Just Good Game Show, but take care of yourself and I'll catch you soon.

[00:21:58]Goodbye.