‘White Boy’ with a personal tale of ‘the system’, and the amateur who changed his life.
Editor’s note: The article was first published in November 2025 in The Psychologist, the magazine of The British Psychological Society
I remember the moment it all started. One night, after a seemingly fairy-tale childhood, a wave of sadness and anxious foreboding swept over me. It was a feeling I was not able to talk about or process. Before I knew it, I was in ‘The System’, at the age of 12.
Over the next 30 years, I bounced around the walls of that system. I believe I experienced everything a person can. I ‘enjoyed’ a wild ride, all the opposing emotions – inspired, upbeat, and high on life, completely oblivious to the fact that the search for the solution had become the problem. I was diagnosed with six mental health disorders, sectioned and detained against my will on three separate occasions. I suffered exhaustion through frustration, and became chronically depressed and suicidal.
As a teenage boy I dreamed of a bearded, God-like figure, who would listen to me, help me understand myself, and help me to launch like a paper plane, gliding through a happy life. As the cold, hard reality of the mental health system closed around me like steel jaws, this dream figure lived on in my mind.
As an adult, finally emerging from between those same steel jaws like some awful second birth, I find myself blinking into the light again. I wonder if I ever had a mental disorder at all. Could it be that I had just been a bit anxious, a bit raw, and that was just a part of the normal human experience? Was the whole chaotic horror of my engagements with the system ever necessary? And what happened to the bearded guy who could have put this in its proper place three decades ago?
As I ponder over God, I’m also pondering, in confused awe, the untrained amateur who saved me – by reaching parts of me the professionals never did.
The support of amateurs
The amateur has no beard… no God-like characteristics whatsoever, in fact. He playfully refers to himself as ‘Brown boy’ and to me as ‘White boy’. He instantly felt that I was in a nosedive, and was reluctant to get involved. I believe I got lucky because in his attempts to escape, Brown boy accidentally saved me from suicide. I’ve made a record of it in the form of a book, Nosedive – An Unconventional Rescue, as my contribution to help others stuck in broken parts of the system (and, the professionals).
The experience has left me wondering about the life I’ve lost. What remains of me certainly isn’t what I used to be. I wonder about the things Brown boy said and the way he said them. For sure, he saved me, and for sure he’s made me feel better about myself. But I have very little idea how or why his approach worked – that’s something I continue to think about.
The metaphor that does come to mind is that of someone attempting to lay down a picnic blanket in a typhoon. Me, in my suicidal state, being the flappy blanket and Brown boy being the trepid picnicker. Some of his success came from him using one sturdy rock at a time to pin down one corner of the blanket at a time. The rocks, for example, were him insisting time and again that I ‘Smile’, that ‘Anxiety is natural’, that I ‘talk to my parents’.
What I do know is that I was born into a society which overrates mental health support from trained professionals, and which undervalues support from untrained amateurs. For the sake of teenagers like the one I was, this needs to change. Historically, informal mental health support was passed from generation to generation within the parameters of culture. Now, it has fallen by the wayside in the competitive rush to pursue a valid belief in the excellence of science.
Teenagers have a natural need for support. In my case, my needs were beyond what my loving parents could provide. And, I feel it may be the same for others. There is a genuine need for a support system that works – one which supports the teenagers (and their families) in our society as it is. I’m hoping that my insights and thoughts might create a moment to change the ideology upon which the system works.
The professionals agree they can’t agree
I’m no longer suicidal – thank god. I am, however, left contemplating why my deterioration took place; why my parents who I trust implicitly and love dearly let it happen; how the society and systems around me facilitated my descent; and what it is about my nature which underlies everything.
It’s true for me that the solution became the problem – and, I’ve now realised the providers of the solution already know that for some people the system is failing them and having a negative effect. It makes me feel like a bigger fool than I probably am, but they’ve known since long before the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I was shocked and surprised to learn that one of the only things the professionals have agreed on is that they can’t agree. This is one reason why they haven’t been able to make meaningful changes. What continues to baffle me is that these very same professionals managed to fool my parents into believing they know best. They’ve gathered (or generated) enough ‘evidence’ to steadily shift the support from the domain of friends, family and relatives to themselves. They’ve plugged the void left by the demise of the Church – or, in reality, they haven’t.
Talk of suicide prevention has been on the rise for some time. And yet, in reality, despite all the caring talk, no one seems to have the time or the capacity to really give a damn. The effort and money has instead been absorbed in the creation of statistics tables recording and reporting incidence of suicide. And, a lot more money on restating timeless wisdom under the use of new labels to make it sound like new discovery. I have moments when I don’t blame the professionals and look instead towards the establishment. I also have longer moments when I struggle to forgive the professionals, as they are the ones providing the establishment with the say-so and the instruction. It often occurs to me that if the King and the government and the administrative facilitators wanted to design a system to keep me under their feet – they probably wouldn’t be able to design a better one than the current one.
Addicted to ‘comfort’?
Post-recovery, looking back, forlorn, on reflection, I was a normal teenager: curious, adventurous, anxious and clueless on what ‘being human’ entailed. I was also clueless about humanity in general. Although everything felt wrong as I was sucked into the system, I was too clueless to truly understand the danger and the sheer insanity of what was sucking me in. I have to confess that I’m undecided if I allowed myself accidentally, unintentionally, unwittingly, possibly under the direction of my loving parents, in an act of misguided love on their part, perhaps as a virtue of their privilege, to become addicted to ‘comfort’ – but, I am considering it.
Instead of exploring my options, discussing the anxious thoughts and the lows with other stumbling teenagers, I was sent to individuals who earn a living from judging me, classifying me, and ‘fixing’ me. It was only, at my very lowest point, that I met someone who had seen through the façade of our mental health systems, someone who had been forced to find his own way back up. He was the only other person I had met who had experienced this same system, rejected it completely, survived and flourished.
In essence, he showed me all the things the trained professionals had been trained to show me but weren’t particularly good at. It could be that the process of talking sat on a park bench with a friend allowed me to envisage what the professionals had been attempting to convey without success. It could also be that the professionals really weren’t very good at their job – I toggle back and forth between both possibilities. My amateur friend also pointed me in the direction of the things required to live the good life. He showed me love, kindness, sympathy, empathy, compassion and friendship like no other. He explained the importance of Psychological Safety and Positive Psychology like no other. He had realised Psychological Satisfaction for himself, and he showed me how he did it in a subject-specific way using the topic-specific banter of a layman.
I reached out to him because I felt he had the experience to judge my situation without judging me. That’s exactly what he did. He changed my life by changing my understanding of the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry. He changed me by changing my understanding of what ‘mentally well’ actually feels like. He wasn’t constrained by regulatory or political burden. He dealt with me from his heart –not from a textbook. That said, my friend relied on the very same concepts and theories as the professional, only he framed them differently. The professionals were desperate to command me and for me to obey them, and yet my friend who didn’t want to be involved got deeper into my mind quicker.
One of the problems I faced in professional support is that of the intricacies of communication, as highlighted by Steven Pinker in his book When Everyone knows That Everyone Knows… Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage. With professionals not saying what they mean, and hearing what they want. No end of projection, assumption, suggestion, inference; whilst mistaking – by accident, intention or ignorance – personal conviviality for sincerity of purpose.
Towards self-development and enlightenment
I still yearn to be listened to… because although I’m generally less anxious and I’m no longer anxious about the affection and affirmation I still crave, I am still deeply anxious about regression as an ever-present threat.
I still yearn to understand my nature… because I have a desire to enjoy what remains of my life. For those of you who might be thinking, ‘if he wants to understand his nature there are plenty of good books for him to read’, I agree, there are. For example, I found The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters to be an excellent book. It’s reasonable and logical, it’s well written. It changed my life and made me feel as if I understood myself better. But, almost immediately after I finished reading it and as much as I understood the chimp, the human and the computer analogies, I was back to being myself – easily overwhelmed.
We need a system that champions prevention and delivers the information and knowledge through the formative years, as opposed to the current system which is failing to resolve issues retrospectively. I was keen and diligent, I read books to pass exams and for entertainment. I remember having class debates over Robinson Crusoe and An Inspector Calls. But Nosedive – An Unconventional Rescue is the kind of book I wish I’d been forced to read and discuss with my peers and with my teachers (and, perhaps, even with my parents). We should be encouraging reading for self-directed personal development and enlightenment. Perhaps that’s the key to a society of empathic and compassionate amateurs who can make a real difference beyond ‘the system’.
The writer of this blog wishes to remain anonymous. He also co-wrote the book ‘Nosedive’ An Unconventional Rescue.