The only cure for life is life

| A talk by Phil Pearl, "The Madness of Happiness".

by Anna Westerberg

According to Phil Pearl, the only way to good mental health, is to work on it. Phil believes there is a gap in traditional therapy, where it fails to fit the purpose for men. His mission is to fill that gap with his LDN talks.

Phil Pearl laughs a lot, the kind of rugged laugh of a chain-smoker, sudden and unexpected, but also big, loud and contagious - even when the topic is of a darker nature.

“I used to self-harm,” he says. “The teachers would whip me with sticks. Beat a kid for self-harming.” Hardly a barrel of laughs, but Phil cracks up and the café rumbles with his laughter while he shakes his head at the absurdity.

As a child in the outskirts of London, Phil did not know he would grow up to be an inspirational speaker on mental health, but he knew he was different. His father had a retail shop and Phil would watch people all day, fascinated with what they were doing, and how and why they were doing it. He asked existential questions to try to find out who he was, or where he was.

“I knew I was in there,” he says. “Working out this sort of theory of mind is one of the earliest memories I have. You know if you are different. And the weirdness of that. We humans are so primitive.”

Being different in a small place in the 1970s wasn’t easy. “I had peroxide hair and too many earrings. The one on the top of my ear would make people sick. Being different could get you killed.”

In fact, he almost was. Six guys picked on a friend and Phil stepped in. “I got it worse, which was inevitable, but…” The assault had an impact on Phil who moved in to central London “to find the other weirdos”.

“Life is about discovery, go and confront it, look it in the eye."

| Portrait, Phil Pearl.

A waitress brings Phil his coffee. “Is this soup?” he asks her and points to the large bowl in front of him, brim full with black coffee. “You don’t have normal cups?” He takes a sip. “Fuck. Going to hammer the caffeine today.”

Right. He also swears like the sailor he once was when travelling the world in his late teens. “In my LDN talks I say ‘I swear a lot, but remember I can’t upset you unless you allow it. I’m not responsible for your feelings. You are.’” He laughs, “I’m not what they expect. They like their mental health people to be nice people.”

“Anxiety is the default position of humanity.”

That is the basic message of Phil’s public talks. Taking back control of your emotions, thoughts and behaviour. It’s based on existentialism and cognitive behavioural therapy, CBT, as a way to handle life. It’s not the things that upset you but your attitude towards them. “It’s as simple as that,” Phil shrugs, “and that works very well for men, they tend to engage with this rationally rather than emotionally.”

But in general Phil thinks the therapy concept is archaic and outdated. “Fifty minutes, fifty quid a week, same time, same place. Does that fit with modern life? Have young men got fifty quid a week to spend on that?”

Phil is critical towards an “overly diagnosed” and “overmedicated” society. By medicating our painful emotions we risk missing out on personal valuable learning opportunities. He believes in preventative mental health, to understand the purpose of one’s anxiety, depression, control, confidence, adaptability and meaning. Human nature.

"Anxiety gets you to leave your comfort zone."

“Depression and anxiety are gifts,” he says. “They’re there for a reason. They’re emotional signals that tell you something is wrong and that you need to make a change. They bring you back to yourself. It’s evolution,” he says. “Anxiety is the default position of humanity.”

Phil believes in adaptation as a way to handle anxiety and negative emotions, and the purpose of his LDN talks Fight Club and Mental Toughness is to teach this to men. You learn from anxiety by adapting to life-changes. The adaptation process comes out of the anxiety. Anxiety gets you to leave your comfort zone.

“All comfort zones become uncomfortable in the end,” Phil says. Anxiety, depression and grief are inevitable parts of life, and the way you deal with it is by adapting to it. Accept that life can be stressful.

“Exam-stress is not a fucking disorder,” Phil says and emphasizes his words by knocking on the table with his knuckles, splashing the coffee. “It’s life, it’s natural and it will pass.”

His talks are looking to fit the purpose where Phil believes therapy fails. If men thought therapy was fulfilling they would go. “Men express emotions through behaviour. They do talk about their emotions, they do cry, but they do it differently than women.”

“Would you like another coffee?” the waitress picks up the empty coffee-bowl. “Yeah I’ll have another full pint,” says Phil. “Can you put it in a normal cup this time?”

“The key to good mental health is, just like with physical health, you got to work every day.”

Phil is a no-nonsense kind of man. He doesn’t mince his words, but he also doesn’t victimise, and he is reluctant to labels. “Labels stick. When you try to de-stigmatise you often do the opposite. Labels stigmatise.”

Having gone through trauma himself, his experiences have brought him insights he wishes to share with other men, to prevent them from going into depression when life hits them. After the beating that put him in hospital, he suffered from PTSD and IBS, and was a “bundle of nerves” who went from a hyper-confident young man to being absolutely shattered. Eventually he didn’t want to leave the house, but his friends persistently dragged him out, and that is how he managed to get on. “The key to good mental health,” says Phil, “is, just like with physical health, you got to work every day. Every damn day”

He has got the confidence of someone who has been through the worst and knows that he’s able to get through it. “The trouble with anxiety and depression is about perspective. Trauma doesn’t necessarily mean you will get PTSD or depression, or you may, for a while. But you know what, you will get better. You will get better.” He warms his hands on the giant coffee cup. “Life is about discovery, go and confront it, look it in the eye. We often need someone to help us do that, but that’s the only cure," he says.

"The only cure for life is life.”

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