By Jim Kerr, Simple Minds

In younger years I would find myself anxiously projecting into the future. Doing so, a chill would occasionally run through me when among other things I found myself thinking that I’d never achieve anything and that I would live an ordinary, unadventurous life.

The probable reality of that coming to pass had me SCARED. That is why I relate to the saying that you sometimes have to protect yourself from your own thoughts.
After all, it is known that anxieties and accompanying fears of the unknown that spiral out of control, can be among the worst things that anyone can suffer.
(Believe me, my initial experience in battling with ‘stagefright’ was no walk in the park.)

Of course nobody around me knew what was truly going on in my head. Back then, mainstream society was, well, let’s call it ‘backwards’ on matters of how someone might cope with what is now referred to as mental health. There was a stigma attached, therefore no one ‘spoke out.’ At least not in the macho type community I was from, where the generation that raised us still had the ( then admirable) wartime attitude of believing that the only way to survive any kind of crisis was to ‘knuckle down and quietly get on with things.’

Thankfully, through time I seemingly found my own ways (mechanisms) to deal with potentially crushing anxieties that have from time to time presented themselves.
And although I relate to the professional opinion that there are certain things you can never defeat entirely on your own – I also believe more optimistically that with ‘communication’ you can get over just about any hurdle.