Dean's Journey of Healing and Hope

Laura from Like Minds recently met with Dean, a former military man who returned to the UK struggling with anxiety and depression, to learn more about his experiences with Healthy Minds.

​His journey from feeling isolated and unwell to finding community and healing through Healthy Minds is both inspiring and deeply moving. Laura captures Dean’s path from becoming a dedicated volunteer and eventually reclaiming his life through work, family, and a renewed sense of purpose.

Dean was in the military for 22 years and then lived in America for a time. He was away from his family, suffering badly with anxiety and depression and emotionally unwell. On returning to the UK, he sought help at his local GP practice. He was almost turned away but at the last moment was recognised as someone who needed immediate support and a doctor saw him that day. This doctor led him to a psychologist, and it was this psychologist who suggested he try a few sessions of talking therapy and then a couple of peer support groups, one of which was run by Healthy Minds. 

He had become a person who would take to his bed for 2 days to recover from feeling unsafe. He was socialising with people who didn’t have his best interests at heart, people who liked to push his buttons and use the reaction for their benefit. He wasn’t well-resourced to manage this or to make choices that served him well or protected him and he felt on the outside of everything. ​

Dean tried these peer support groups and found the group run by Healthy Minds to be particularly comfortable and welcoming. It was a drop-in group, in those days run on a Monday, and it quickly became his second home. 

He feels it was good for him because he could be himself, he was among 'family' here which really mattered at a time when he wasn’t seeing a lot of his own. At the Healthy Minds group, participants were not only welcome, but nurtured. The volunteers sat with participants, brought them into the conversation and made them feel they belonged.  

Dean ‘put his hand up’ to become a volunteer at this drop-in group in 2021. He felt good to give something back by investing his time and energy in nurturing a sense of belonging for other people. He was a walk leader on Walks for Wellbeing and volunteered at both social drop-ins, in Todmorden and Halifax. Dean isn't someone who feels naturally skilled at talking to people, but he learned to invest what he knew, his lived experience, his need to be made comfortable. He set about offering other people exactly what he had so badly needed only a few years previously.  ​

Dean was a dependable, welcoming, key volunteer at several groups for 3 years. He had got to the point where he was volunteering as much as 4 days per week. At this point, he felt perhaps he could take on some paid work. A referral to Newground Together took him through only 3 interviews before he got a full-time job. 

“Empathy is your superpower and your weakness. It’s important to learn to say No!” 

He feels that volunteering taught him to value himself and his ability to work with people, particularly those who have had a difficult time. He learnt he was not there to try to fix people but to listen whilst they learned to see their own problems. ​

He is now a caretaker for 2 high-rise buildings, as a member of a team of 4 that look after Together Housing buildings in Calderdale. He has a new home and a full-time job and his 2 daughters are back in his life. On top of this, he treasures his granddaughter Marlow and is a very active granddad. When I spoke to him, he was excited to be expecting his first – of many years – pay packet. 

He still feels he needs to offer himself a reason, an errand, a purpose, to leave his home and he misses the drop-in, but it means a lot to him that he is so missed. He imagines he may use his annual leave to come and say Hi and will be a volunteer on weekends when he can. He has no intention of leaving his second family. 

Dean leaves us with this wisdom “Empathy is your superpower and your weakness. It’s important to learn to say No!” ​