Simon Lee Maryan

On Sunday 6th June I was interviewed on Great British Radio’s “Connect Forces” show by Linda Lusardi, Mike Osman and Andy Neil MBE.

I talked about my military career, my work in Human Intelligence and the Uniformed Services Mental Health charity I set up.

I go on to talk about the three occasions that I have been kidnapped and how this led to writing my second book, ‘The Immediate Care Process’, which is a self help book for emotional and psychological resilience and is available on Amazon.

This episode is a conversation with Judith Hammond who I first met in 2013 as we were on the same NLP Trainers course. Judith tals about being abused by her mother physically, mentally, verbally and psychologically/emotionally.

Judith explains how this conditioned her through her life and how she coped with this and work place bullying, abusive relationships and always managing to find the reserves to be there for her own kids despite all this.

It's a deep and emotional conversation full of amazing insight into her life and how she has dealt with traumatic experiences. I have no doubt that like me, you will gain so much from it.

This episode is a conversation with Mark Monaghan, a former Royal Navy Submariner. Mark talks candidly about his experience of leaving the Royal Navy and his struggles with the transition. He talks about how in reflection, his mental health issues began before he left the Navy and it was not identified so no treatment was given.

Mark is passionate about helping veterans deal with their mental health issues and with the transition into civilian life and manages a page on facebook called help for Veterans.

This conversation gives some wonderful insights into what it's like to leave the military and how it can affect a persons mental health through confusion over identity, purpose and direction and having to adapt to a completely different mindset and approach to work and life.

In this second epsiode I talk to Tamsin Astor PhD who talks about dealing with her youngest son being diagnosed at the age of just 2 with Burkitt's Lymphoma, whihc is a cancer of the lymphatic system.

She talks about the struggle to get her concerns heard and recognised by the doctors, hearing the diagnisis and dealing with the whole treatment process and being strong for her son, her family and herself.

She talks later about her divorce and how now, ten years on her son is clear and healthy and how they are planning a ten year celebration of him being clear.

It's a highly emotive story, hugely inspirational and I hope you get as much from it as I have.

You can find out more about Tamsin by going to her website www.tamsinastor.com

Welcome to the Mind-Matters Podcast Series.

I have some fantastic interviews lined up with people willing to share their stories that fit the objective of the series, which is to explore how people have survived challenging life events and come back stronger each time without knowing how. We then delve into what they did, how they’ve changed and any proactive steps they’ve taken to continue to deliberately develop their psychological resiliancy proactively.

This frst interview is with Stephen Finlayson who was in the British Army and then RAF Regiment and operated as a sniper in Afghanistan. We talk about his life and careers and his new move into helping kids deal with stress, anxiety and depression at school as well as his desire to do more for veterans. He showed amazing compassion for a complete stranger in his home town of Carlisle a couple of years ago who turned out to be a homeless veteran.

You can see the video of his story on YouTube by following the link below: https://youtu.be/rYw_7HZeWK4