Simon Rinne · 60 min
Simon Rinne spent three decades silently battling undiagnosed OCD, depression, and alcohol dependency before burnout forced him to unmask his mental illness and transform his pain into a therapy practice dedicated to helping other men speak up.
Hear this story
Simon Rinne grew up in working-class Adelaide in the 1980s and 90s, in a testosterone-driven household of four brothers where emotion was not discussed. At eight years old, a comment from another student planted an obsessive thought that his voice would disappear forever. To check that it still worked, he began humming constantly, sometimes for hours. He masked it so well that almost no one noticed. Over the next twenty years, the compulsions spread: checking locks and appliances for hours each night after his parents separated, checking his wallet and keys obsessively at school, checking his car, checking his emails. He used alcohol to quiet his racing mind and to find a version of himself that felt more authentic, but it became another pattern he could not control. All this time, he had no diagnosis, no language for what was happening inside his head.
It wasn't until his wife made clear that if he didn't seek help, they might need to separate that Simon, at 28, finally went to a GP. He got a mental health care plan and a diagnosis: depression, anxiety, and OCD. He had lived with the disorder undiagnosed for twenty years. Over the next decade he tried different therapies, but it was burnout in 2020 that forced him to take off the mask entirely. After four months of recovery, he decided to stop hiding. He discovered mindfulness, found an online OCD community, and learned about exposure response prevention, a therapy that focuses on changing your response to obsessive thoughts rather than controlling the thoughts themselves. He left fifteen years in the public service to build Mindful Men, a therapy practice dedicated to helping men speak up about mental health and disability. Today, Simon sees his OCD, depression, and anxiety as fuel rather than something to overcome. He uses his lived experience to connect with other men and show them that change is possible.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses addiction & recovery, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • SMART Recovery Australia (addiction): smartrecoveryaustralia.com.au • ReachOut: au.reachout.com
“I remember it was one of the hardest things I ever did was to — I remember choking on the words as they came out — I said I think I've got a mental health issue.”
“Boys can't cry boys can't show emotion boys can't talk about their feelings because that's what we were told back in the 80s and 90s.”
“It is like it's a hundred percent going to happen if you don't do this this and this — and when you're living with it in your head it is so real.”
The hero, today
OCD is not about being tidy or pedantic; it is a debilitating anxiety disorder where intrusive thoughts drive exhausting compulsive behaviors that can consume hours each day. The shame and masculine culture of the 1980s and 90s meant Simon had no language to describe what was happening in his mind, so he masked it for twenty years until his wife made it clear he needed help. Simon discovered that exposure response prevention (ERP) therapy, which focuses on changing response to obsessive thoughts rather than controlling the thoughts themselves, was what actually worked for his OCD after ten years of other approaches. Burnout forced Simon to stop hiding his mental illness, and when he began talking openly about it at work and on social media, he found an unexpected OCD community and realized how many other people were living with the same silent struggle. Simon now sees his lived experience of depression, anxiety, and OCD as the fuel that drives his work supporting men, and he credits his authenticity and willingness to keep talking about it as what allows others to believe change is possible for them too.
Yes. Simon Rinne is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
OCD is not about being tidy or pedantic; it is a debilitating anxiety disorder where intrusive thoughts drive exhausting compulsive behaviors that can consume hours each day.
The shame and masculine culture of the 1980s and 90s meant Simon had no language to describe what was happening in his mind, so he masked it for twenty years until his wife made it clear he needed help.
Simon discovered that exposure response prevention (ERP) therapy, which focuses on changing response to obsessive thoughts rather than controlling the thoughts themselves, was what actually worked for his OCD after ten years of other approaches.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 00:07
Welcome to the Kintsugi Heroes podcast, where we share inspirational stories of everyday people going through different challenges and how they overcome them. Please be aware that the story you're about to hear may have moments of deeply felt emotions and personal experiences. If anything you hear has a triggering effect please reach out to someone who can help keep you safe. If you love this conversation, we'd love you to like and share it with your friends so we can continue to share more inspiration and hope to as many people as possible. Now listen up for our next hero story. And in this episode, I met with Simon Wren. A father of two, husband, and a mental health advocate and founder of Mindful Men, which is a therapy practice dedicated to supporting men with mental illness and disability. Where did it start? Well, that's what this story is all about. When he was a child, he developed OCD. But the thing is, no one actually noticed, and he was able to continue without people noticing. And he didn't realize what he had. He suffered from alcohol addiction, depression, and of course, the OCD. And it wasn't until he was 28 he finally got some help for that and was able to identify his OCD. He also went through a burnout and a breakdown. All of this has helped him to identify who he really is, helped him to create this beautiful pathway for men to get help. It's a wonderful story. He speaks about it so clearly and lovingly. And I know for those who have experienced anything like this, you'll relate. And Simon's a true warrior, and I was very grateful to him for sharing everything that he did. So enjoy this story with Simon Wren. Hello, here we are. It is another episode, and I'm here with Simon Wren. How are you doing today, Simon?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 02:20
I'm really good. How are you going today?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 02:23
I am really well. I'm very well. I'm excited, excited about this conversation. This is about you. And before we get started, I just want to thank you for coming on Kintsugi Heroes, and I just want to honor you for being open and vulnerable, brave, you know, being willing to share your story. I know it's not easy, and it's a gift that you're giving to the world by sharing a story that can help others. So I just want to thank you for that.
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Burnout forced Simon to stop hiding his mental illness, and when he began talking openly about it at work and on social media, he found an unexpected OCD community and realized how many other people were living with the same silent struggle.
This conversation includes growing up in working-class adelaide with three brothers, the humming starts at eight years old, parents separate, simon becomes the man of the house, the checking spreads to school, bags, and cars, the checking becomes a way of life, alcohol becomes a quietener and his partner tells him the drinking has to stop.
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 02:50
No, I'm looking forward to it. I really get a lot of therapeutic benefit from telling my story, and I've told it many times, but the more I can tell it, the more I can inspire other blokes to tell their stories too. So yeah, really happy to be here and share that story.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 03:04
Wonderful. Well, let's get started, shall we? I would love for you to take us back, uh, to where your story begins. I'm gonna hand the mic over to you.
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 03:13
Well, where I am right now, so about to turn 40 in a few months, so I'm starting to feel old. I'm losing my hair at a rate of knots. I'm a husband and a dad. I've got 2 little kids, one's 6, one's 3. We live up on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but we're not from the sunny coast. I was born in Adelaide, and I'm glad, like, you've asked me to go right back to the start because I think as a social worker that I am, context is really important to understanding who we are, how we develop over time, and then who we become in our later years. And so I grew up in the '80s and '90s in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. For anyone who's not familiar with that environment, it's very working class. There's lots of pockets of welfare and lower socioeconomic, you know, people living in those kind of conditions, social housing. Like, Mum was a cleaner, Dad worked at the council, so we weren't, you know, hugely wealthy family. Like, we're just an average or lower middle class family, I guess you could call it that. I grew up with 3 brothers, and this was in a time before, you know, the internet and social media and all this type of stuff. And so my understanding of the world around me was influenced by this environment that I grew up in, and, and the boys around me and the testosterone-driven household that I was in. And, and, you know, we played Australian Rules football and we did athletics, basketball, soccer, all the sports you can think of. And the more physical, the better in our family because we love, you know, wrestling around and, and, and smacking into each other and seeing how we can— what we can get away with, essentially. And, and, but it's probably around 8 years old that my story really starts, and I developed what's called obsessive-compulsive disorder. And for anyone who's not sure what that is, it's obsessive compulsive disorder, is an anxiety condition. It starts with an obsessive thought which can be quite intrusive, can be quite distressing, and the only way to alleviate that thought is to perform a compulsive act or a compulsion. So that's the C in OCD, or a behavior, if that, if that makes sense as well. And then it becomes a disorder because you're doing this for over an hour a day, and it's quite a traumatic process. It's quite an exhausting process. It's not something that you kind of do in 5 minutes and you're done with it. So to give that some context, when I was in the schoolyard, another friend of mine— or not a friend of mine, a student— said to me, Simon, if you stop using your voice for more than a minute, you're going to lose your voice forever. And so this created an obsessive thought, an intrusive thought in my mind that I thought was gospel. I, I thought that was going to happen. And now most people would just go, yeah, that's just BS, that's not going to happen. But for me, I actually did think it was going to happen. And so in order to alleviate the distress that came with this thought that I could not get out of my brain, I had to perform a compulsive act. And that was, for me, humming to myself. So every minute I would do like a small minute hum, like a, um, to check that my voice is still there and that my voice box was still working, because As an 8-year-old, you know, growing up in Adelaide, growing up with that, in that boys' household, playing sport, my voice was, you know, a critical part of growing up for me. It was how I expressed myself. It was how I, you know, fought back against my brothers. It's how I played sport and, you know, had people pass the ball to me and so forth. And the thought of losing my voice, it just petrified me. And so I did that for about 2 years. This humming thing to myself all day every day, but nobody ever, ever said to me, Simon, stop humming, stop making those noises. So I think I did a pretty good job of masking it. Um, I did it to myself all day every day. I'm not sure really what I did at nighttime because I, you know, obviously went to sleep, and I wish I kind of had the brain power to go, oh yeah, you don't do this at nighttime, so that's not actually a reality. But I didn't. I, I was like, nah, this is, this is, this is going to happen. And so did this for about 2 years, and then over, over the years it grew into something that's morphed into what I still live with today as an almost 40-year-old. Um, and for me though, it was undiagnosed until I was 28. And so from 8 it started, you know, I did that humming thing for 2 years, did a lot of other things like counting and checking and, and so forth. Um, but yeah, 28 was when I finally got, I guess, the inspiration to go and get help and take off this, this mask of what I call mental illness and actually ask for help and kind of put to bed as well, not just the mental illness component of me, but also this masculinity thing that developed from those early years of growing up in that environment, playing those sports, testosterone-driven household. That reinforce the notion that boys can't cry, boys can't show emotion, boys can't talk about their feelings, because that's what we were told back, you know, in the '80s and '90s, whether it was our dads, whether it was our brothers, whether it was our friends at school. I remember being at school around 10 years old, and I saw my best mate crying in the schoolyard, and I feel shameful saying this, but I went up to him and I went into that automatic mode, and I said, mate, you've got to stop crying. Boys don't cry. You're not allowed to see— people aren't allowed to see you cry, because boys don't do this. And I'm so thankful for my mate because he said, Simon, I can cry if I want to. And what this did was planted a seed that took a long time to grow internally for me, that recognized that all the stuff that I had learned through my environment of what masculinity is maybe wasn't necessarily the truth and reality of what life is like for a guy. Unfortunately, it's what many guys go through. You know, many guys grew up in a similar environment where they were told not to show emotions. They were told to suck it up, carry on, or they were influenced by media like the movies that I was talking about before, you know, Terminator, Die Hard, all that type of stuff. They were influenced by music, influenced by what the news would say, even the commentators on the football, you know, on the football that I watched, or watching WCW wrestling or WWF wrestling and all this type of stuff. You know, this is what we consumed in the '80s and '90s, and so we, we bought into it. Um, and unless you're in an environment that openly— where males were openly talking about their emotions and feelings, it's not something that you did naturally. And so you bottled it up, and I bottled it up for 20 years. And then eventually I used alcohol, for example, to keep bottling it up and suppress it down even further, or to deal with it when it did bubble up to the surface in terms of anger or disagreements or anxiety or nervousness or stress. Or depression as well. Um, but yeah, I'm so glad that, you know, eventually I did get the help because then since then I've been on— it's like 11 years ago now— on a bit of a journey of self-discovery on therapies and medications and different types of ways of healing. And now I'm at a point where I can— I just have taken off that mental illness mask and I live with it on my sleeve. My heart is on my sleeve and, and I'm really passionate about telling this story because I hope that other guys can see me talking about it or hear me talking about it and go, you know, if Simon can do it, I can do it as well. So yeah, that's where it all started and kind of a brief overview of how I, you know, getting help as well. But there's a lot of, you know, turbulent waves along that journey as well that I'm happy to share as well.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 10:58
Thanks, Simon. Take me through back to— so you were 8 and you did this for a couple of years, and then how did that translate to bottling emotions? Can you just— because it sounds like there's a number of things that you went through, and, and I guess I don't like the word suffer from, but it's being— you were challenged by. Can you take me through that connection and then how it actually played out in life for you as a child, teenager, and a young adult?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 11:32
So I guess like the bottling it up component of it is first me learning that it wasn't okay for a boy to talk about things. And so when it started happening, I didn't know how to talk about it. I didn't know this was a mental illness because mental illness discussions weren't something— or mental health wasn't discussions that you had in the '80s and '90s. Definitely not in my, in my circles, not at my school or anything like that. And so I didn't know what was going on inside. So the first few years was just me trying to slap a Band-Aid on it by humming and checking my voice was still there, but then also thinking that I was, I was weird or was doing something that was— if I talked about it, I'd be laughed at and ridiculed. And so that was the bottling up thing. It was, it was around trying to appear normal to everybody else and not let my guard down. And I did this so often that it felt like everyone could see me doing this, but in reality, I don't think anybody saw me doing this. And so when I got through that 2-year period and eventually just kind of stopped doing the humming thing, but then when I was about 12, 13, 14, Mum and Dad separated, and me and my little brother went with Mum and to live with Mum. In the same neck of the woods. Um, but yeah, we had to go out and rent a house, and Mum had to buy all the secondhand furniture. And I remember coming home and having all of our stuff in black garbage bags that we just crammed into the car, and that was it. We didn't know what was going on or anything like that. Um, and then all of a sudden, I felt like I became this man of the house, because back in the '80s and '90s, you know, you go around to people's houses and there'll be a man of the house, it's the dad. You know, and they're the ones who might be sitting there drinking a beer after work, or, you know, they're in their blue singlet and their stubbies, you know, their short footy shorts and stuff like that. And maybe they're having a smoke outside, and there's this big persona of what a man looks like and the man of the house. And, and, and if the kid's mucked up, like, he would throw something at you or yell abuse at you or whatever. And he was kind of like this intimidating figure, but he was a protector. And so when I became this, I put it on myself to become this man of the house in, in with Mum. And, and because, you know, Mum hasn't— is deaf, and so like, you know, at the nighttime when her hearing aids aren't in, she couldn't hear anything. Like, you know, she'd go to sleep. And so particularly nighttime is when my obsessive compulsive disorder went to the next level and to something that was quite distressing. And so because I was this man of the house protecting my mum, protecting my little brother as well, who was a couple years younger than me. I spent 3, you know, 2, 3, 4 hours a night checking that the house was locked because I developed this obsessive thought that if the— if a window was open or a door was unlocked or something, someone's going to come into the house, steal our stuff.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 14:38
Could—
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 14:39
they could kidnap us because we're pretty small kids. They could hurt us, they could murder us, they could do all of those things. Um, and then addition to that, I felt like if there was an appliance on in the house, an iron, the stove, the door of the fridge was open or something, it was going to also catch on fire and burn us all alive, essentially. So these are two obsessive thoughts that came into my mind. As a 13-year-old who felt like he needed to be a protector of the household and the man of the house. And so what I would do is I, when everyone was in bed, I would try to go to bed myself, but then I'd go, no, I've got to go check everything. And so I would go systematically throughout the house, every window, door, even the curtains had to be pulled to a certain, you know, so that nobody could see in and stuff like that. I had to make it as difficult as possible for these make-believe people to come into the house. And so I would check, check, check doors, windows, um, I'd even go outside checking gates in the middle of winters, freezing cold or pouring down with rain. I'd be out there checking gates in the middle of the night, just 13-year-old. And I did this all in silence. Again, it was all in the dark. Nobody knew I was doing it. Mum went to bed, she didn't know I was doing it. My brother was in sleep, he didn't know I was doing it. You know, I'd do the check once, and then I'd go back to bed, and my brain would say, Simon, did you really check that window? Or did you really check that door? And I would— and it would tell me that I didn't, or that it would tell me that it— when I walked away, the, the most minuscule wave of air that came from outside might have unlocked the door or, or the window, or the fact that I went and checked the door might have unlocked it in the process. And so I would be constantly up and out of bed doing this checking, and, and then also with the stove and the iron, making sure that they weren't touching something, that they were unplugged from the wall because they, they could catch on fire and all this type of stuff. And it got to a point where after doing this for so many— for so long and a number of years, every night without failure, like, I, I was exhausted. I became exhausted. And this is where depression started to come in. But again, we didn't talk about depression. It wasn't something that we knew how to talk about. So again, it was bottling it up. It was me trying to essentially outthink a, a disorder that is based purely on thinking, if that makes sense. Like, I was trying to outthink something that is destined to think and make me think. Um, so that was happening as well. And then it manifested into the daytime as well. So I'd go to school in my school bag, and, and I'd be constantly checking my wallet and phone and keys were there. So I eventually got a phone, but but at the start it was my wallet and keys. So I'd have that in the front pocket of my bag and then I'd walk 10 meters off, you know, out of the car or even in the car on the way there. Mum would be driving, I'd be checking my bag constantly. Have I got my wallet in there? Because that's got my address and my identity. And it, you know, when I got a job eventually, I had my bank card in there and then now I've got 500 cards in there. I don't know what's in there. And my keys, because if they got my wallet and they got my keys, then they've got— they know who I am, where I live, and they can access the house. Just petrified of this happening for the same reasons as the locking of the house as well. And so I would check, and then I'd lock— I'd close my bag, the zip on my bag, and then I put it back on my back, or I put it on my lap, or on the floor, wherever it is. And then my brain would say, Simon, are you sure you checked this part of it? Is, are you sure the keys are all on the key ring perfectly so they're not going to fall off and you're going to lose that key? Or, or in the process of checking, did your keys or wallet, and then eventually phone, and then eventually work pass when I became an adult and started working, did that magically fall out of your bag in the process of you checking? Or then in the process of you checking, have you now ripped a hole in the bottom of your bag So that's fallen out of your bag. So then I'm now checking for holes in my bag as well. And this is constantly, all day, every day, um, you know, through school, high school, university, work, career, you know. I'm now 40, I still do this type of stuff from when I was 12 or 13. And, and again, this is all bottling it. I bottled it all up because I didn't know how to talk about it. It felt really weird, it felt really stupid, and And it's funny because when, when you talk about mental illness, and I think back to the humming thing, it often sounds so stupid when you talk about it or you write about it or you post about it on social media. But when you're living with it in your head, it is so real. It is like it's 100% going to happen if you don't do this, this, and this. And particularly for OCD, because you have to do the behaviors to alleviate the anxiety from the obsessive thoughts. And I love sharing all these stories, these intricacies about OCD, because when you think about OCD and when people talk about OCD, it's often quite a trivialised condition. So I'm not sure if you've ever been in a workplace or at a barbecue and someone's like, "Oh, my OCD is killing me because this thing's out of place," or "My OCD is killing me because," and this was a classic one in the workplace, "because this PowerPoint presentation hasn't got a full stop at the end of this sentence." These aren't— this isn't OCD. This is just people like who are pedantic about things being neat and tidy. OCD is, is a debilitating condition. There's, there's people that, you know, that there's a lot of jokes around washing your hands and OCD, and there is an element of washing your hands in certain types of OCD. So if you have what's called contamination or germ OCD, you might wash your hands a lot because you have this fear that if you touch something, you've now got germs on your hand and you've you're either going to die or somebody else is going to die as a result of this germ getting passed around. It's not just because you like clean hands, it's actually because you have a fear, this overwhelming fear that something bad is going to happen. And to the point, you'll be washing your hands where these people are bleeding, they've got cuts all over them, they're like, their skin is just withered away because they wash their hands so much. It's like kind of like when, when COVID happened, we're all using, um, hand sanitizer and we're all getting cracked hands and all this type of stuff. It's that to the nth degree. And so, but it's not for everybody. It's like, I don't do that with my OCD. And I— and if you come to my house, it is a mess because I've got two kids under 6, like, who are 6 and 3. I don't care about things being in place. Like, that's not my version of OCD. But it often trivializes to those two things. Or yeah, these PowerPoint presentations, or these emails, or whatever it is, you know, having a full stop missing, or someone's overused capital, capital letters or something like that. And so I love sharing this, this OCD, because it's so much more, you know. There's, there's germ OCD, there's harm OCD. There's people that think about that if they hold a knife, they're accidentally going to stab someone. They don't want to, but the obsessive thought is that they can't alleviate is, I'm going to stab someone if I hold this knife. So what they do is they, they might avoid knives, or they like lock knives away They don't have any intention to hurt anybody with a knife, but they do this, you know. There's others where, like, you know, there's ones around religion, there's ones around ethical— your own personal ethics, there's ones around identity, and, and there's even ones around pedophilia. And, and I say the word pedophilia because I, I didn't even know this one existed, but I was talking to somebody else who, who's trained in OCD therapy. And they were sharing this thing, and it made me think of a lot of parents, actually. And there's this concept around, am I a pedophile because I take my child to a public toilet? And it's the perception around what other people think of a grown man, like, say, for example, me taking my son to a public toilet. And most parents would go, yeah, that's just a parent doing their parental duty. But someone living with OCD, particularly pedophilia OCD, might think everyone thinks I'm a pedophile. So then what they do, they avoid taking the child to the toilet, you know. And this is how debilitating it can be. There's people that lock themselves in their rooms for 4 or 5 years because they're trying to avoid all the things, the triggers, and then the responses that they have to do to alleviate. And so, so yeah, that's, that's when I went through this during, particularly from my teenage years, and this lasts until 28 years old before I finally got help. It was me trying to outthink it, trying to figure out a way that if I think about it and think about it, try to rationalize it in my head, it would go away. I'd solve the issue, I'd— so I would solve my problems. But in reality, what it did is it just fueled it more. I never got it out of my head. And, and then it— so I turned to alcohol to bottle it up even further because alcohol would, would help me slow my brain down. Because an OCD mind, it just races so quickly. Like, if you feel like you're thinking a thousand thoughts every second and all at once, and you're trying to solve 10 problems at once at the same time. And then it becomes more complex when you become an adult, and then you've got adult things you've got to deal with— mortgages, work, social lives, kids, all this type of stuff. And, and it becomes more and more challenging as you go unless you can get help. Because there is help available. But it took me a long time to start to realize that. And, and the complicating thing about OCD, and I think this kind of matches what I experienced, is that they call it a silent condition because it takes on average someone around 15 years from first symptom to first treat. And now mine was 20-odd years. And in fact, mine, I didn't actually get treatment for OCD until I was in my mid-30s, so it's probably even longer. Because my initial treatment was focusing on depression and anxiety, not the OCD, which is probably the more prevalent issue that I've had to deal with since I was 8 years old. And so yeah, it, it got to a— it was a long time of balling it up, trying to outthink of it, outthink it, trying to be the man of the house. And now I'm a man of the house now with my family, but it's probably not until the last 4 or 5 years when I started studying social work, and then started doing exposure response prevention for my OCD. And I found mindfulness, that I started to let all these guards down and take off all these masks and start to realize, yeah, what my mate told me when I was 10 years old actually makes a lot of sense. And I wish I'd, I wish I just did something with that at 10 years old, not at 28, and then not at 38 as well, because You know, it's taken mental illness for me to really understand who I am. It's taken mental illness for me to actually take the mask off and to show my authentic self as well. Sorry for the interruption. This is Ian Westmoreland, the founder of Katsuki Heroes, and thank you for listening to this story from one of our amazing heroes. Our mission is for these stories to provide hope and inspiration to people experiencing life challenges and to also educate the broader community on how best to provide support. If you would like to help us to continue to produce more hero stories and cover more adversity themes, we would welcome all donations. These can be made via our website kitsukiheroes.com.au. The donate function is at the bottom of the home page. We'd also I welcome any feedback. You can email me direct using ian@kintsugiheroes.com.au. Now let's get back to the story.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 26:36
That is so interesting, Simon. What, what a fascinating, yet obviously a long and frustrating journey that you've had. I got a couple of questions. One is, did anybody notice, like when you're at school, did they notice you doing this? And what do people say?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 26:57
Nobody noticed ever. Okay. And it probably came up a little bit when I was— so when I got my license and I got my first car and got my P's and stuff like that, what I would do is it turned into something with the car as well. So There was a few things with the car. One of them was around this fear of the car rolling down a hill and killing everybody in its path. Um, never happened. Another one was around, is the internal lights on? Are they going to flatten the battery? Because then it gets stuck in the middle of nowhere. And this is at a time when pay phones were the thing that we used to communicate. So having to find a pay phone and, and all that type of stuff, but being stuck in the middle of nowhere was, was scary for me. Um, so all these things. And so I'd be constantly checking the car as well, as it turned into a car thing. And what I would do is I could walk away from my car up to 20 minutes or so and then have to walk back to check the car. Or, you know, I'd go into work, start a shift, and have to run out the door to check car. And it probably— when I first started dating some of my girlfriends might have gone, why are you checking the car so much? And that's probably where it first come up. But no, I just like, oh, I'm like, I don't know, I just, I just needed to check the car. And I kind of just bob it off. That was the extent of, I think, anybody ever noticing. But if they did notice, nobody ever talked to me about it. They probably, they did notice the drinking because I would drink a lot. And there was two aspects of it. One was to calm the mind down, which I wouldn't say that I was, you know, I might say I'm stressed today, I'm going to have a few beers. But another one was also to socialize, because as I got older, I became more and more introverted, and I just needed alcohol as a way to socialize. But then I wouldn't know when to stop, because I like the— I like the feeling of the slower mindset, this clarity that came, came over me suddenly, but then also the— this superpower to, to socialize. And then I'd become quite extroverted almost like my authentic self before I was 8, because Mum used to say I was quite a happy-go-lucky kid. I'd be really like a free spirit. And so this would come out, come out of me when I drink, but I'd often drink too much. And then I would then spend the next few days in another obsessive-compulsive act of, of, um, cyclical thought processes, which, which turned into distorted reality. So, and this particularly happened around work events. Well, you know, as I became an adult, go to work function on a Friday night, have a few drinks, everything was fine. But the Saturday morning, I'd wake up, and after the next 3 to 4 days, I would obsessively think over the events because my mind would tell me, Simon, you said something that you shouldn't have said, did something you shouldn't have done, um, you've made a fool of yourself, you're going to be in trouble from your manager or the director or whoever. This never happened in any cases, but my mind would be tricking me. So I try to think back on the events constantly to a point where I lost track of reality. So I'd actually lose the memory of the actual, you know, dinner or work function or whatever, and it would just become a blur. I wouldn't know what the truth is or what my brain was trying to say. And so that became quite distressing. And, and so maybe future relationships might have identified in that, like, Simon, why you keep obsessing over this night? Why are you asking me all these questions about what happened? And it's me checking constantly. This is a common theme of OCD, is checking, checking, checking, whether it's the house, whether it's your voice, whether it's your thoughts, whether it's the car, whatever it is for you. It is, it's quite a complex thing once you're living in it, but often you just sit there living in it inside your head, trying to outthink it. And, you know, the escapes are substance abuse, drinking, you know, for some people it might be aggressive behavior, you know, for some people it's suicide.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 30:56
Were you consciously aware at the time that you were, you were checking, checking, checking, checking? Were you aware of that and that others might notice? Like, were you trying to do it privately and secretly?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 31:10
Yeah, definitely. As, as like the humming thing, as quietly as possible. I almost often refer to it as like internalized humming. It's like when you, you, you make a humming sound to yourself, but you kind of do it like you close your nostrils in a certain way and you do it inside your head. Um, the, the checking on my bag stuff, I'm surprised nobody ever saw me do that because it's pretty overt. Um, people see when I was in my professional career as a public servant for 15 years and I'd have to go to a wait or work function or hit the road with a work colleague, they'd be like, Simon, stop checking, you've already checked. Your bag about 6 times before you've even left the desk, and even in the car. But they're like, but no one ever questioned it. They just— I'm just like, I'm just checking, yeah, yeah, just checking it. It's just a little quirk that I've got, not realizing it was obsessive-compulsive disorder until it was diagnosed. But yeah, it was only a few situations where people noticed. But also, I wore the mask very well, like it Mental illness is a mask that we wear and we often hide it and it's hidden away. And I think we often hide it away because we feel shame associated with it. But also for a lot of guys, it's like, am I less of a man because I'm trying to deal with this at the same time? Because I'm not perfect. Maybe like there's this, you know, idea that we have to be perfect men and masculine men and so forth. But when you're, when you're dealing with mental illness, you often feel broken and you feel less masculine and less feminine as well. I'm sure for females as well. And, and so we— but it's a constant internal battle, an internal dialogue with yourself. And we are our world, we are our own harshest critics as well. So for me to, to mask a lot of this, I turn to perfectionism. And so particularly OCD, everything had to be just right. And this was from checking the doors around the house to checking my bag was zipped, you know, just right, to checking the car handbrake was on. Um, absolutely everything would have to be just right, even to the point when I started my professional career and sending emails, an email for me would have to be just right in terms of tone, in terms of information. In terms of recipients as well. So it could take me triple the amount of time to write an email that the person next to me would write. And then what I'd have to do is I'd press send and I'd check again. I'd check the sent box that A, it went, B, that it didn't magically change in its context or content or to its recipients, because I had this overwhelming fear that it was going to do that. And then, and so I set this huge bar of perfectionism really high for myself. And it, it came to a point in 2020 when I burnt out that I could no longer hit that perfectionist bar. And it's from there that I was like, okay, something has to change. Yeah, I've been diagnosed. I know I'm diagnosed, but I need more help for this than me trying to outthink it, me trying to drink too much, me jumping in and out of therapy. I actually need to find something tailored for this because I can't keep hitting that bar. And so from 2020, it's been almost like the opposite of me being more overt with it, me telling people that what's going on as a way to show them that I am not, you know, normal in a way. Like, I have this thing that I'm trying to deal with, and for a long time I've hidden it from everyone, and I'm sick of hiding it from everyone as well.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 34:47
Now I understand what your comment at the beginning when you said you find it quite therapeutic to share the story. It makes perfect sense.
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 34:55
Yes, and I'm a sharer as well. I'm a— sharing is caring.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 34:59
That's right. Um, I, I— one of the questions I had, and you, you almost touched on it, the answer then was how much time has this cost you in everyday life? Like checking the bag during the work day or at school and university. You know, I was just thinking, wow, how much time have you spent with all of the OCD activities?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 35:25
Yeah, well, it's, it's since probably 8 years old up until I'm, you know, almost 40. So all day, every day for that period of time. Um, you know, there's, there's, there's good periods where I'm not doing it so much and, and maybe OCD takes a back seat and depression might come in, or anxiety comes in, or there's, there's days where none of that's an issue. Um, but for the most part, it's an everyday thing. Um, it's a little bit less full-on these days as I'm older. Um, I don't know, sure if it's because I'm tired because I've got two kids or whatever, um, and my own business now. But yeah, like, for a long time, it was, it's all-consuming. It's all I thought about and it's all I lived in, and it was hard. It was, it was really hard, to a point where there was moments where I wanted to just die and just got— I just couldn't do it anymore. Um, but I'm glad I, you know, I pushed through that and, and started sharing this story. And because it is therapeutic, it's a way— I'm a big believer that the more you can share, the more, you know, it halves problems. It causes other people to come to the light and help you through that. Because, you know, I tried to balled it up. I tried to put it on my own shoulders. I tried to outthink it. And where did that get me? Undiagnosed for two, for two decades, you know, um, which isn't great. And I don't want other guys to go through the same. So that's why I share it as well, to hope and inspire guys to go, oh yes, I'm doing something similar to Simon, or I'm feeling— it might not be even the same condition, but it might be just a mental health issue, and I've been drinking too much or taking drugs or whatever, trying to deal with it myself. But Simon's saying that there is help out there, so maybe I can go get the help too.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 37:05
Can you take me to the, the time when you, I guess, realized you needed to get diagnosed? What was the trigger or the situation that led you to that?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 37:18
Yeah, so it was around 2012, so it was like 20, 28 or so. Um, probably the year before that, my, what, my now wife had kind of started prompting me, saying, Simon, You're drinking. It's all around the drinking, pretty much. Like, you're drinking too much. You're not your usual self. Grumpy all the time. You know, I can see you doing all these checking things. It was quite obvious to her, um, because we lived with each other. I think you need to get help. And for the first year of hearing that, I deflected every single time. Like, no, maybe you need to go get help. I'm okay. Maybe if you're having trouble with this, maybe you need to go see someone. Um, or I'd get to a point where I'd go, I'm just gonna not drink for a couple weeks and I'm gonna do some more runs around the block and, and try to exercise my way to, to better health. And in some cases that helped, and in most cases it didn't. I just felt back into old, old habits. But then it probably got to a year after her— I don't want to use the word nagging, but, but, you know, telling me a few times that you need to get some help, that I— it started to sink in. And I felt tired and I felt like, yep, I'm starting to develop that inner light bulb moment where, okay, maybe this is the time that I need to get help. And so I, yeah, I booked in. I think, no, she actually said that if you don't get help, then maybe you need to get out as well. So that came to mind as well. And so I thought, nah, she said it before, but this time she was pretty serious about it. And I'm like, okay, I don't want this to happen. I need to get help. And so I went to the doctors and I remember it was one of the hardest things I ever did was to— and I remember choking on the words as they came out. I said, I think I've got a mental health issue. And so I did a few questionnaires and then got a mental health care plan to go see a psychologist and started medications. Never been on medications before. And from there, that's when the diagnosis of depression came. So I knew I was depressed, anxiety to a lesser degree, but then the psychologist said, oh Simon, you also meet the criteria for obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm like, what is that? I'd never even heard of that before. Um, and that started a bit of a process of discovery, and, and, but then it also— and that discovery was 10 years of different therapy. So I've seen psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, um, I've seen social workers as well, lots of different types. A lot of it was cognitive behavioral therapy, which I didn't really buy into because it felt like homework for me. Um, but that was, I think, channeling more the depression, anxiety. But I really needed more help with the OCD, which cognitive behavioral therapy is helpful for OCD, but it's not the best thing for OCD. Um, and so there's a lot of trial and error and me dropping in and out of therapy as well. Um, but it was, it was that moment, yeah, where I think that light bulb moment where I started to go, okay, yep, something needs to change. And I often find, like, these days I'm a therapist myself, and the guys that come into therapy with that light bulb moment, they're the ones that really get the benefit because they're the ones who are willing to change. As opposed to if I got dragged there kicking and screaming, I wouldn't have taken anything in, and it would have been more deflection and more alcohol abuse and so forth over the next few years.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 40:39
Yeah, understandable. And when did you tackle the alcohol abuse?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 40:47
It's, it's been an ongoing thing. Like, it's really hard. I find Australian culture is really hard for, for alcohol use. Like, we start— because we can start drinking at 18, we generally start drinking at 15 or 16. And particularly my social circles, it was a big thing. And, and, you know, I remember saying, no, you hit— everyone's heard of the David Boone thing of you know, being on that flight over to the UK and smashing so many beers. And this becomes idolized in young bloke culture, like, oh, how much can we drink? How can we wreck ourselves? And so from an early age, it's been ingrained in my, in my life. And because it came with that, that quietening of the mind as well for me, and the socialization, you know, I guess, input as well, like, it— I just felt like it was a superpower that I had. So I'd drink and come out of my shell, but also get that relief. And so, but you know, for the— since I was 15 until now, like, it's still an issue that I struggle with. And there's periods where I can go off the alcohol. And I think as I get older and I'm a dad, I'm more mindful of it now because I don't want my kids to see me drinking all the time. And so, like, last year I had 3 months without drinking at all, and it was really great. And it actually coincided with AFL Grand Final day for me, which is that usually every year I'll just get wasted. Because it's like the biggest day of my year. It's— I love my footy. Um, like so many guys would have a day like that, whether it's Bathurst, whether it's the Ashes, whether it's the Boxing Day Test or whatever it is, if you love sport. And for me it was AFL Grand Final day, so I actually didn't drink on the last AFL Grand Final day, which wasn't too bad because it was an absolutely terrible game. It was over in the first 10 minutes. So we took the kids down to the swimming pool at the hotel that we were at, and it was actually a really good day. But it's been an on and off problem for me, and I still admit to that. And, and, you know, even more recently I've, I've been a bit stressed, and— but I think I'm more mindful now of why I'm drinking so much. So if I'm drinking a lot, it's because maybe I'm stressed. So then I have to look at the other things in my life that go, okay, why am I stressed? And then tackling those things. And then what I find from there, having the knowledge now, both from a social work perspective and also my lived experience as well, and I guess Also, the mindset that I'm in these days compared to 5, 10, 20 years ago, um, is I can cut back a lot quicker than I used to. It used to just be me just drinking a carton of beer every weekend or whatever and deflecting any issues to anybody else and not taking responsibility. So these days it's more of a mindset thing, um, but it's still an issue. And I admit that, like, it's something that I work on and I probably will work on for a while. Yeah.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 43:22
You know, the healing journey is not a straight line, is it?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 43:27
Absolutely. It's, it's, it's— I often refer to it as like a roller coaster. And often we, we could be going up and, and feeling great, and then there's other times where we're hurtling down to earth, feeling like we're about to face plant into the ground. There's other times when we're hanging over the edge, spewing our guts up, um, and then we get off and then we feel great, and then all of a sudden we're back on it and off we go again. So yeah, it's It is an intertwined, difficult process that is different for everybody. As we often hear people say, you know, how long is this going to last? I'm like, well, for me it's been 30 years. For you it could be 3 weeks. I don't know, like it's just however long it takes. Just embrace the journey, really. The more you can embrace it, I think the quicker you can get through it and the less turbulent it becomes as well.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 44:16
How are you it today? Like, if you think, look back on the journey that you've been on, you've obviously gotten treatment, uh, you're working on things every day, you've obviously changed careers. How do you— how have you integrated the acceptance of having this mental health condition of OCD into your life, and, and how is it today?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 44:39
Yeah, it, it took burnout to get to that point. So I've got a lot of mental health issues that I— that influenced me over time, but 2020 you know, just to give a quick overview, I was working full-time in my 15-year career, um, so 9-to-5 job. I was studying part-time master's degree in social work because I really wanted to change careers as well. I just had, I'd had enough of the, the old career. Um, 2 kids under, I think, 3 or 4. I'm not great with, with how old they are. I should, I should know better as a dad. Um, yeah, my mental health journey, family life, and COVID. So then COVID came along and and we had lockdowns and trying to navigate all that stuff. And, and I burnt out in 2020, and it took— I took— had to take 4 months off of work because I was physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually just spent. And I was like a potato on the couch. And even that hurt. Like, I actually had back pain that was caused by mental illness, and the burnout actually created this back pain that nobody could correctly diagnose. And then once I actually got better, the back pain disappeared miraculously. And so during that time, I, I really felt the need to take off my mental health mask, my mental illness mask, because before that, only therapists and my wife knew about it. Nobody else knew about it. And so what I did was, um, part of my return to work process was going to work and sharing burnout, because burnout was actually a prevalent thing in my workplace, and just sharing what it is and what it felt like for me through my recovery process, which included medication, included going to see a social worker, a mental health social worker, and also discovering mindfulness, which is what I'm all about now as a Mindful Man. And, and so what that all looked like for me, and at the same time I used that to say I also live with OCD, depression, anxiety, and I'm a man talking about mental health. And what this did, because this was in a uniquely feminine workplace, like the public service is majority is women working in the public service. So for a man to be up there spilling his guts about mental illness, it was actually quite enlivening for the people that I shared that story with. So, you know, I put a PowerPoint presentation together. I went through the symptoms and then my recovery process. And then from there, I also started social media. I started engaging in social media to say, hey, men can cry, men can talk about emotions, men can have issues that they need to talk about and they should talk about it. And so I started, started with an Instagram page, me sharing daily affirmations. And then from there, I started putting my face out there and sharing it. And people were like, Simon, I didn't realize you lived with this. I'm like, well, because I never told anybody and nobody ever asked, really. And, and so, you know, I bottled it up. I'm— I wore that mask really well. And so from there, I started to embrace more mindfulness-based practice. I'd never really got into mindfulness before, but I was introduced to it by a social worker. And then again, a couple years later, by a psychologist who was really Zen-like psychologist. He wasn't like the, this is CBT and we're going to do CBT. He's like, no, let's throw that out and let's become like monks in the therapy room, which I just loved because it was different. It was connecting with a different aspect of me internally that I never engaged with. So the spiritual side of me.. And I found it just really useful for grounding ourselves in the moment, being present, because my mind as an OCD would be either in the past or in the future, would never be where my feet are. And so I was just started embracing all these concepts. And then as my social work degree progressed and I started doing my, my, um, practice placements, I was, I was in a private counseling practice and I had my own caseload of, of guys. I think it was about 10 guys I was working with. And we just practiced mindfulness. We practiced Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. And what I loved about that was a couple things. One, it was embracing our values and identifying our values and what makes us tick as guys. And that's where I could bring in some of the— that debunking the myths of masculinity around what it means to be a man and masculine and a dad and a husband and a partner and all this type of stuff. But it also means I could start tackling this thing called perfectionism. And this is where I brought in— I found this concept, and I think it's, it's, it's really close to Kintsugi Heroes of wabi-sabi. So it's embracing the beauty and imperfection, because my life has been perfectionism to the nth degree to manage the OCDs. Everything has to be just right. So what my psychologist would say is, Simon, you have to learn to fail and learn to understand what failure feels like and embrace the failure. And so I started doing things like that I would normally not do. So my website, for example, I started— there's mistakes on my website and people said, Simon, there's a mistake here, because usually my things are pristine. I'm like, no, I'm leaving it there. This is me embracing imperfection. Like, you know, it's, it's a little failure, but it's a failure for me. Um, other things like, you know, yeah, there's, you know, in my daily life, just embracing imperfections as well, trying not to check so many times or trying to change the way I checked. And, and so by embracing these things, and through also the social media, started to become more comfortable with who I was. But then the value of social media— and a lot of people hate social media for lots of very valid reasons— was I found an OCD community that I never knew existed. So I started liking and following people that had OCD, and they introduced me— and this is all over the world— and they introduced me to this thing called exposure response prevention. Or ERP, which is the gold standard for OCD treatment. I'd never heard about it. Even though I was diagnosed with OCD, nobody had ever spoken to me about it. So I started Googling it, and actually there's not many therapists that do ERP therapy, which comes under cognitive behavioral therapy. But what cognitive behavioral therapy does is that it focuses on your thoughts and, and, and just focuses there. But ERP focuses on your behavior, so the checking behaviors or the humming or the, the checking the door, checking the locks. It's not so much on the thought, because the thought will always be there. It's about your response to the thought. And I found one up here on the sunny coast, a therapist that did that, and I started working through that. And from there, I found this way to manage the OCD and get better. And then, you know, a couple years down the track, I got to a point where I could start my own therapy practice, leave my career behind, and just put all this mess of life and learned experience through both my lived, you know, 8 to 28, 28 to, you know, 38, but also the therapy that I've been in and the social work and put it in one big pot. And this is Mindful Men now. So it's a bit— it sounds very messy, but there's a lot of method in the madness. And, and what I love about it now is that I now have a dedicated mental health and, and disability therapy service for men. Because there's not many for men around. And the idea about it is that you Google in there therapy for, for women, there's heaps of those. Therapy for mums, there's heaps of those. Therapy for kids, there's heaps of those. The therapy you find for men is usually because they've been in domestic violence situations, or they've been incarcerated, or they have substance abuse. They're specific to those issues. But I just— I— my therapy practice is more for just guys who just want to talk, and they want to debunk some of these myths of masculinity. And I can say I've lived it, I've walked in your shoes. Yes, our shoes might be different, they might fit differently, there might be some different sizes and, and different paths that we've walked on. But if you're telling me that you feel like crap, I, I know what that feels like. And in fact, just because I'm a therapist, it doesn't mean I don't go to see therapists myself, because I still live with it today. Like, it's not something that I've healed from, but it's something that I've now turned from my pain into my fuel for my passion. And so that's where I am now, is, is doing this as a social worker and leaving that old career behind that wasn't fulfilling me and living a life that's more authentic from a mindfulness-based approach. And without that mask— that mask is off now. And so I'm very active in the social media and podcasts and everything about sharing the story, because this is the face of mental illness. It's just an everyday bloke that you could be sitting next to on the bus.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 52:55
Yeah, exactly. I absolutely love it, Simon. I love how you've embraced you and you're bringing yourself to the world and you're authentic, you're vulnerable, you're open. And that is the path to healing, but it's also the path to connection and helping others to heal. And for us to— yeah, I think just part of it also is, and I, and I get this from all the other conversations I have with the Kintsugi Heroes is just reconnecting as human beings. And part of being human is actually connecting with others and reaching out, giving them a hand, understanding their pain, learning from them. That, that's, that's all part of this journey of being human. And I love how you are fully embracing that and, you know, You're, you're not— no one's perfect. There's no such thing as perfection. And, um, just accepting the humanness of us all is, I think, the goal. And I love the, the approach you're taking, and congratulations on, you know, having your own business to support in their journeys and their paths, because it's really needed. Um, yeah, I just want to congratulate you. It's just really heartwarming and, and unique what you're doing.
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 54:18
Yeah, thank you. I often hear, like, you know, my mental illness or my dis— because I was working in the disability space— like, my disability doesn't define me. But I think in a way, particularly for me, it does define me, and it helps me define myself and see myself when I look in the mirror. This is me, like, and I can see it as fuel now. Like, for a long time it was pain, and even today, like, it's still painful sometimes. Like, there's weeks where I struggle Like, you know, I had a client the other day said, 'Simon, what, you know, do you, do you know what it feels like to feel depressed?' I'm like, 'Yeah, like last week I was feeling depressed about this, and I went and saw my psychologist,' or, 'I had— I've got a psychiatrist appointment coming up, and I'm going to talk to him about that.' And just that, that connection there, they can go, 'Oh, oh yeah, like you're, you're, you're helping me, but you've done it.' Like, it just builds that connection, and it's such an important thing in the therapy space is is having that connection with your therapist as well. And that's what I love about the lived experience of mental illness and disability as well, is that it just gives you so much that books can't give you. And, you know, and I, and I wear it as fuel. Like, other— I get other people, they don't want it to define them. They see themselves as being bigger than that. But for me, it's my fuel. And that's what— yeah, it just drives me every day, bounces me out of bed now. I've taken off that mask and bounced out of bed, and I do podcasts at 5 AM in the morning sometimes, talk about the story, whereas I would never have done that in my old career because it didn't have the same effect. And so me embracing it, it just gives me this, this drive, and, and I just hope other guys can come along for the ride as well.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 55:54
I hope they do too. Um, Simon, as we come into a close, I have a— I've got a final question for you. If there is someone out there who's listening to your story and they have— can identify with any part of your story that you've shared, is there something you'd like to say to them and leave them with?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 56:13
Yeah, absolutely. I think you need to find that light bulb moment where you're ready to talk about it, and it doesn't have to be with a therapist. You don't have to go into medications and all that. There's a lot of shame and stigma associated with all that. So to start with, just recognizing in yourself that maybe change— it's time for a change, whatever that change is. Maybe it's drinking too much, maybe you're eating the wrong foods, maybe you're spending too much time on tech, maybe you're just feeling down and out and all that type of stuff. So once you've recognized that, then it's finding the right person to talk to, whether it's your friend, your partner, um, your doctor's a really good thing, your GP is really good because they're, they're objective as opposed to subjective. They don't know, like, you intricacies of your everyday life, so they don't have any bias. Um, and if you can get a referral to a psychologist, counselor, or whatever— social workers are fantastic. I, I always bang on about social workers because I am a social worker. Um, but yeah, you don't have to go to a psychologist. There are other options out there. Um, or you can come see someone like me. You don't need referrals to see everybody as well. You don't— like, I have private paying clients who want to stay out of the mental health system. They just want to pay me for my time and just let me and talk. So there's different options around wherever you are in Australia and the world as well. Like, if it's some, you know, if this is going— this, see, people across the world would listen to this. And so just find who works for you, who you can trust, who you can respect, and then just start a conversation. And start where it's easy to start. For some people, that's going to the deepest and darkest trauma, but other people, it's like, oh, you're just feeling a bit down, can we just talk? And just start where it's easy. The more you talk and, and the easier it becomes, because that's what I've been practicing for the last 13 years, is talking about things. And it does get easier as you go. Now I just can't shut up about it.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 58:02
So brilliant advice to start, and that's, that's the key thing. And talk. Yeah, because, and there are people willing to listen, and like yourself, and that's, it's wonderful. There's a lot, there's a lot of, uh people like yourself that are out there, no matter where you are in the world, you listeners. And it's, uh, you're not alone. I think that's, that's the key thing that you're sharing as well, right?
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 58:26
Yeah, absolutely.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 58:28
Thank you so much for your time today, Simon. Thanks for sharing your story, explaining everything. It's been fascinating. I have a new appreciation for OCD and, and, you know, what you've been through and what, what involves and I just want to thank you for bringing light to this subject.
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 58:46
Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed having this chat again. It's been therapeutic. I feel really good now. And, and yeah, thanks so much for all the listeners listening in. I hope you've got something out of it. And yeah, touch base if you need to.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 58:57
Wonderful. Thanks. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Kintsugi Heroes. Please like and share the show to your friends so we can get this out to even more people. If you have a story you'd like to share with us, please reach out using the contact details below. And join us next week for our next hero's story. Until then, keep being you, and remember that we are all heroes in our own unique way.
Simon Rinne (Guest) · 59:30
Only when it's broken Only when it's broken. When it hits you in the middle of the night and the truth burns so bright. Only when it's broken. Only when it's broken. Take pride in those cries, it's only Only for tonight, and then you rise. Only when you're broken. Only when you're broken. Only when you're broken.
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