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Howard Cooke, acting president of The Scooty Fund (TSF), shares his experience with his mental health journey in the latest episode of the Scoot podcast.. “I’m not the typical person if we’re trying to box people (into stereotypes)”, he says of the oft-perpetuated view of what anxiety or depression looks like. Howard’s positive and outgoing demeanor hides the anxiety that snuck up on him, and in his words, “my journey with mental health started before I knew it started.”
During a high school trip to Europe, the then-high school senior began suffering from anxiety so debilitating that he didn’t want to leave his bed. Howard began suffering from anxiety attacks which left him feeling disconnected from his own life: “I could do everything {before} and all of a sudden, I was getting left behind.. I would go to class, come home, and lay in the dark room.” The Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, 5th Edition defines a panic attack as “a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause.” Once it became clear Howard was unable to attend his post-grad religious mission, his church assigned him a doctor to “fix” the problem. Perceptions of mental health were often conflated to “fault or illness” in Howard’s spiritual community, he says. However well-intentioned, the notion of “fixing” can lend the impression that a person’s mental health is a finite problem to solve, rather than a lifelong endeavor. Cooke remembers wondering, “How do I become perfect again? How do I fix this? How do I make it go away?” Seeing self-care as a form of self-indulgence led the youth to embrace medication as the only solution rather than one dimension of healing. It was “pills on pills on pills,” Howard explained to Scoot podcast host, Claire Calfo. “Because that’s how you fix an illness right? It became a science experiment. I should clarify that (medication) can be good for some people but I cannot just take a pill and have this go away.” College was punctuated by breaks and periods of very real turmoil for Cooke, who landed a demanding job after graduation. Pressure from all sides came together in an incident that left the now young professional on an ER table with a punctured lung. “I’ll never forget looking up and seeing all this concern on peoples’ faces. The part that stands out is when I went to the bathroom and {looked in the} mirror.. I don’t recognize that person,” says Howard. Embracing this moment of clarity shifted the TSF board member’s beliefs around mental health to this day. “I have a therapist who totally switched the narrative. ‘These parts of you are not things you should try to fix, they’re things you should listen to. They’re telling you something important’.” Taking in feelings or intrusive thoughts as information instead of ammunition proved to be instrumental in Howard’s journey with his own mental health.. He credits activities like meditation, writing, and exercise with combating his anxiety. “You have to recognize when you get that feeling, and you can’t panic. In my opinion..you just have to sit with it. (For example), writing I call a mind or brain dump. The first page makes no sense but as you keep writing further along the thoughts become clearer,” Howard shares. The path to healing opened another opportunity for Cooke in The Scooty Fund. “I found TSF through Tara Nielsen. We bonded through our dark humor because of our mental health journeys. I saw a post on Instagram and here we are 2 years later.” When asked what drives him to continue this work, Cooke refers back to his early struggles with self-consciousness. “I was so nervous I was going to lose friends because I was the ‘weird kid with anxiety or mental health issues’...because I’m a burden or different. All of a sudden there’s a place where I can talk openly and gain friends,” he finishes. Howard’s goal in his work with TSF is “to help advocate and normalize issues of mental health with my (now) best friends. When I get onto a Scooty Zoom call, I know we’re going to do some good today.” As host Claire Calfo introduces each Scoot episode, TSF is focused on creating “a culture where empathy and connection are the norm.” For more insight on Howard Cooke’s story and work, you can listen to his interview on Scoot, wherever you listen to podcasts. Here is the Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/69Spgo1zry87RKQ1gSVix0?si=nzYNBQ9oTze0dGyR0WETIQ Learn more about our organization: http://www.scootyfund.org. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. You can also follow Howard Cooke on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howardcooke/
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