Soda on fighting depression, impostor syndrome and not giving a rat’s about what anyone thinks
When media personality Mark Soderstrom trained with Fitzroy or the Crows, he never felt he belonged. Now he’s opening up about how he finally learnt to not give a rat’s.
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Twenty blokes are sitting upstairs at a restaurant in Adelaide.
There are a few beers and the odd wine, but it would be wrong to say the booze is flowing freely.
The conversation is relaxed. There’s a few laughs here and there.
This isn’t some exclusive men’s club, but a group of blokes, some well-known, some not, who have come together to talk about men’s mental health, in particular depression and suicide.
It’s been organised by the Breakthrough Mental Health Research Foundation and the reasons are pretty straightforward. Nine people take their own lives in Australia every day. On average, seven of those are men.
And that needs to change.
Before formalities start, the conversations are stimulating, engaging and more than a little enlightening.
How have you struggled to return to work after an illness?
How have you coped with impostor syndrome?
How would you react if your child was gay?
Have you noticed a change in the way you and your mates talk about women?
Have you noticed how different it is these days when we speak about Aboriginal issues, compared to our dads … and how good is Indigenous Round?
How are you dealing with depression?
One of the blokes on the table looks around, pauses mid-sentence and says: “Don’t you reckon it’s pretty amazing that we’re a group of blokes sitting around talking about these kind of issues. Could you have seen this happening 10 years ago?”
“I couldn’t see it happening five years ago,” says Mark Soderstrom as he grabs a microphone and takes a seat at the front of the room.
Soderstrom, the popular Channel 7 commentator, former radio host, fireman and league footballer, went public with his three-decades’ long battle with depression last year.
The story was published on AFL Grand Final day when he was going for a run around Perth’s Swan River. He didn’t know what to expect.
“But my phone lit up,” he says.
“So many people came forward to say they’d had the same feelings, the same experiences.
“A lot of people you’d never expect. And I’ll never name them.”
A few weeks later he was walking past the late Neil Kerley at a lunch at Adelaide Oval.
He expected Kerls to give it to him.
“He looks at me and goes, `Oi, come here’,” he says.
“And I took a deep breath and went ‘okay’.
“And he goes, `I read your story’.
“And I think, `Oh no, he’s about to rip me.
“And he goes, `Good on you lad. Stay strong. You’re bloody going to get through it’.”
Soderstrom’s story bears repeating, and he tells it in the hope it helps others.
His younger sister Rachel went into a downward spiral of bulimia and mental illness linked to childhood trauma (she has since recovered and speaks openly about the experience).
When Soderstrom, now 52, found out in his 20s, it felt like a thousand kicks to the chest.
He felt grief, pain and guilt, then came anxiety and insecurity.
All he’d ever wanted since he was a kid was to play AFL footy at the top level (he played 125 SANFL games with Sturt, Glenelg and North Adelaide).
A talented junior who grew up in St Kilda, he was drafted by Fitzroy. From the outside it must’ve looked like all his dreams had come true.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
He’d glance around the training track at the likes of Gary Pert and Paul Roos and feel ridiculous. He didn’t belong there. Someone, somewhere hadn’t woken up to the fact he was a fake.
“So I’m training with all these guys and I’m just thinking how bad is this recruiting team that they’ve actually picked me to train with these guys,” he says.
“I loved that I was about to get the chance to live my dream, but I hated it and felt sick every time I had to go and do anything.”
Delisted at the end of the year, he was invited to train with the Crows as they entered the AFL.
Initially over the moon to potentially have a second chance, it wasn’t long before the old feelings resurfaced.
Instead of the Fitzroy legends, he looked around the track and saw the likes of Chris McDermott or Tony McGuinness.
“Everything to me was, if I could do anything that was okay and successful, it was an absolute fluke, or the other people were useless,” he says.
“And then if I did anything bad, it was absolute confirmation that I was terrible.”
Impostor syndrome followed him everywhere.
To his next job, his next public function, even when he walked into a room, even when he was topping the radio ratings. Anxiety would follow and bouts of depression.
There are times he still feels like a phony, he’s just getting a whole lot better at dealing with it.
“I feel the one thing I wanted to do in my life is have an AFL career,” he says.
“There are times I still feel like I’ve haven’t achieved anything my whole life because I couldn’t do that. I still feel like that now.
“I love the game. But I hated playing because of what it did to me. That’s the truth.”
A turning point came when he started talking about it openly. He then started listening to a podcast by Ben Crowe, the high-profile mindset coach who works with the likes of Ash Barty, Pat Cummins and Soderstrom’s good mate Travis Boak.
“He said the moment that you accept that you’re enough, you can start to live your life,” he says.
That realisation alone was life changing.
“I never, ever thought I was enough,” he says.
“I had to be a better footballer, a better person. I had to have the highest ratings on radio, get the highest ratings on TV. I had to do this, I had to do that.
“But I was missing everything else. When I started looking at it I realised I’d probably done some okay things, I just needed to give myself the chance to enjoy it.
“So now I’m enjoying it. And I don’t care. I accept I’m imperfect. I’m never going to be perfect. So I stop worrying about expectation. I think I’ve removed any measurement on feeling good about myself.
“I was always looking for that external recognition and I couldn’t even recognise myself.
“And now in the past few months I can recognise myself, so I actually don’t give a rat’s anymore (what people think).
“And it’s the best feeling I've ever had.”
Soderstrom doesn’t want people to think he is special. Nor miserable. Nor spouting new age mumbo jumbo.
He’s none of those things. He’s just him.
And that’s one of the two biggest lessons he’s learnt.
The other one is that by sharing his story, he knows he is not alone. Far, far from it.
“My mental health is the best it’s ever been because I have been able to do this,” he says.
Soderstrom has told this story a few times and the reaction is generally the same; more stories emerge. Conversations spark up. People start opening up more about their experiences. The guards are down. There’s a licence to be a little vulnerable. People lean forward to listen.
Today is no different.
It’s a three-hour lunch that feels like 45 minutes.
Such has been the impact that Soderstrom and Breakthrough Mental Health Research Foundation chief and Mental Health Commissioner John Mannion are using it as the centrepiece of a new program being trialled at a number of SA businesses, including West End, which is also being tested and reviewed at Flinders University.
Called Golden Thread, it will convey a message that mental health support for workers has to be developed from the ground up and encompass all parts of a business.
“It looks at the foundations you put into place, ensures you are ready to then start to develop your mental health strategy,” Mannion says.
“We spend three sessions within workplaces building a foundation, from which an individual mental health strategy can be developed.”
A key is getting workers to open up about their feelings and concerns.
“So Mark shares that story just to dispel the fears you’ll actually have to worry if you actually reach out,” he says.
“Within the sessions we’ve been doing, people are really starting to share things within the first half-hour. It’s amazing.”
Soderstrom has also launched a podcast, The Soda Room, which aims to get people speaking openly about their experiences and, mainly, vulnerabilities.
Guests have so far included Travis Boak, Travis Head, Chelsea Randall and John Platten. All have spoken openly and honestly about their lives and challenges.
“The more people are open, the more the show how vulnerable they can be, the more others realise that pretty much everyone, at some point, goes through this kind of stuff,” he says.
“It’s normal and we need to recognise it as normal.
“That way people know they are never alone.”
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467 or suicidecallbackservice.org.au
MensLine Australia: 1300 789 978 or mensline.org.au
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