Hi guys. I'm Matthew Mitcham and I’m going Back to School with Student Edge.
Hi I'm Simon Miraudo, and today we are going Back to School with Olympic gold medalist
Matthew Mitcham.
Hi.
Hey Matt how are you going?
Good.
What was it like being a teenager? What was it like for you?
I actually... like I don’t want to be morbid or anything but I guess like a lot of teenagers.
I was going through that hormonal s*** storm of the changes and along with that I had
a bit of a genetic predisposition to depression and
so yeah like from 14 to 18 I kind of went through that pretty heavily.
How did you cope with that? Were there mechanisms in place? Were you able to talk to people
about it? Were you, not silently suffering but did you feel as if you had to do it alone?
No I was totally silently suffering because part of it was like you know I was a sports
person as well I kind of had a lot of shame about my depression because I saw it as a
sign of weakness, and especially in the macho sporting
environment I didn’t want to be seen as weak so I kept my mouth shut and I just tried to kind of
tried to deal with it in my own ways but that had
knock-on complications you know, because I just couldn't figure out how to deal with my feelings
appropriately. I ended up spending most weekends like just getting absolutely getting blind until I
passed out as a, I don’t know, a form of relief.
Was there someone that eventually was able to kind of break through to you and give you
an opportunity to talk about it or did you find the relief in sports? How did you kind
of get through that period?
I think sports was actually contributing to it. I was diving you know but I wasn’t really
enjoying it. I kind of felt like I had put all of it... I had this child hood thought that
I really wanted to be the best in the world at something.
It was a really powerful driving-like motivator because it had a lot of emotion attached to
it you know like I felt like I would be validated as a
person if I was the best in the world at something that’s what pushed me and drove me to keep
going through sports for so many years, even though I was really not enjoying it. When I started getting really
good at sport I latched on to that because I thought
diving was going to be my one ticket to being special and I had a really tumultuous relationship
with the coach. It took me years to figure out or to actually get the courage to ask
him why he never gave me positive feedback and that’s when he said "oh if I don’t
say anything then it means that there was nothing to correct" so
but being in a like already in an already negative frame of mind because of my depression
I just made everything about myself and so I was constantly always getting negative feedback,
negative feedback, negative feedback and taking
it really personally and so that was contributing to my depression, but I felt like I had to
stick it out because you know "it was my one ticket to being special".
I mean all of this is on top of your schooling because you did start gymnastics and diving
at a fairly young age.
School was probably less of a concern.
I mean, I knew that it was very unlikely I was going to make a living out of sports.
I kind of... I didn't put that much effort into school.
Like I still did relatively well. I scraped by with the bare minimum.
Well tell me about the positive side, or at least what you learned about yourself in the buildup to the Olympics.
Heading into it, you're finally approaching, hopefully, your childhood dream coming true.
Were there things that did kind of crystalise for you?
Actually that period of depression that I had as a teenager, I only got
out of it because I ended up retiring at 18 from the sport. Like, I quit the sport altogether.
I didn’t really do much about actually addressing the
depression I just lived life and had fun and went out too much. It wasn’t a very healthy
lifestyle. But I ended up changing cities and also
kind of doing a bit of soul searching as well; especially around my sexuality. I always knew that I was gay
but I kind of made this really conscious decision to be absolutely 100% upfront, open and honest with people because
I felt that not being open and honest had alienated
me from within my training squad and within outer circles at my
school as well. Because when people don’t know
what the obstacle is that they're dealing with; like they can sense that you’re not being
forthright with them but when they don’t know what the terrain is like they don’t
know what is they don’t know how to navigate it you know but when
you've just lay it all out there and say "this is what I am" then people end
up being able to interact with you in a much better way because they
know exactly where the land mines are. They know how not to or how to deal with you in particular
ways so that was a really beneficial experience for me. And moving to a new city and having a fresh
start and starting diving again in a training squad where
I was actively made to feel very comfortable and actually accepted for who I was and that had such
a profound effect on my self-esteem, and this was only
15 months before the Beijing games. Like I was just- and I hadn’t made an Olympics
yet so I was just trying to make Beijing; just the team; no medals or anything in my mind.
I guess I was just so happy and motivated and passionate
I just gave absolutely everything to diving. I was so focused that every single dive that
I did I was like "this is for Olympic gold." Even
though that I didn’t think I was special enough to actually get an Olympic
gold that’s how focused I was, I guess.
The thought as I was on the dais, like, "It's all
been worth it." I did PG that a little bit but yeah i couldn’t believe it had all been
worth it. Yeah I was just shell-shocked because
I honestly even though that I had this childhood thought you know that maybe if I was the best in
the world at something you know my mum would love
me or everybody would have to love me, and it really worked for a
while. Like it was very validating to kind of be the best in the world but then because I had
never actually addressed the underlying causes; the
underlying roots; the core issues of my depression... I naively just thought that because I had depression
as a teenager for a substantial period time that I was never
going to suffer from depression again. I don’t know why I had this thought that you only
suffer from depression once in your life but what I realised eventually was that unless you do
actually address those underlying causes it just kind
of lays dormant for like until stuff starts getting difficult again and all that self-esteem
stuff came back for me with a vengeance, and I
felt like I as a person was inconsequential and that people only cared about the medal
and that essentially I was just a coat rack or a medal bearer. Yeah my self-esteem sort
of needed more bolstering and I ended up just going back
to the last crutch that I'd used to medicate my feelings as a teenager and that was alcohol
and drugs. That was the catalyst for me to actually
you know address the problems. I went to rehab which was just amazing - the most amazing
experience for me - and I got clean and sober then spent a lot of time, yeah working on those
core issues and learning how to esteem myself without
relying on all of these external sources of esteem like you know Facebook and Twitter
followers or money in the bank or you know just
learning to stop comparing myself to others because I was just always making myself less then
everybody else.
What is your word of advice for the kids who are silently suffering?
You know the ones who kind of felt like you; like "it will pass" or "I just need to get
by this and not tell anyone." What do you wish you could have told yourself back then?
Just to reach out you know? A problem shared is a problem halved, which is another awful
awful cliché; I don’t know why I said that. but yeah to reach out because I felt like
I had all the answers but I didn’t, so I suffered unnecessarily
for years but it wasn’t until I reached out to people who knew better than me which
was the psychologist in a rehab center, that’s when things
started to turn around for me and when I actually started to acquire tools to fix myself. Like I say this
a lot. Mental health is not like a gold medal where you can go and say: "yes I’ve got
mental health." You know it’s not like a tangible
thing you can hold. There’s no destination. You can always be happier and healthier so
you know if you just kind of work away over time it’s something
you can do for the rest of your life and you can yeah make a process out of it rather than a journey
for a destination.
Matt, thanks so much for your time.
Yeah thanks.
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