Keeping it all inside was what nearly dragged Sam under. Then he began to open up and share his story with others. Soon his life started to get better and better. Now, he’s written this book to help you do the same. Sam knew he needed help – the problem was that he thought self-help was for hippies, sobriety was for weirdos and therapy was for neurotics. It was only when he began to open up that things got better and better. Now he’s written this book to help others do the same." I craved stimulation at all times. I was terrified of even fleeting moments of boredom. I thought of myself as being constantly on the run from lapsing into that fat bored kid I had once been. The truth is, I was probably just scared of ever being alone with my own unfiltered thoughts. I have spent years as a broadcaster both in radio and TV. I have hosted numerous shows on BBC 5Live, BBC London and talkSPORT and presented documentaries for BBC Three and Channel 4. From 2016-2018 I hosted the drive time show on Talk Radio, covering the Brexit referendum, two general elections and the 2016 US Presidential Election, live from Washington DC.

Then I did something that was pretty alien to me. I started to own up to the fact that I was struggling. I went to a group called Andy’s Man Club where blokes meet every Monday night for a chinwag about life, all the shit it can throw at you and all the beauty that’s to be found in it too. It helped. I started chatting to mates about what I was going through and the things I was worried about. I was stunned by their empathy. Next, I started writing about this sort of stuff. A couple of articles in the newspaper about my own little struggles: the drinking, the anxiety, the childhood stuff I’d never quite shaken off. I’d been writing for years but never with much honesty about myself. I like making people laugh and found it was easy to use humour as a means of distracting from self-reflection.Keeping it all inside was what nearly dragged Sam under. Then he began to open up and share his story with others. Soon his life started to get better and better. Now, he's written this book to help you do the same.

I feel it works because it’s so intense, so focused and stretches over a week. Knowing you don’t have to ‘gather yourself together’ to face the world at the end of an hour’s session gives the psyche the freedom to let go and allow the tough stuff to surface. I must say here that screaming, sobbing and climbing the walls aren’t obligatory. Also, not all the course was painful – there were momentsof wild energy, blissful peace and immense playfulness. The sheer inventiveness of it surprised and delighted me time and again. But when he reached his thirties, work, relationships and fatherhood started to take their toll. Like so many blokes who seemed to be totally fine, he often felt like a complete failure whose life was out of control; anxiety and depression had secretly plagued him for years. Turning to drink and drugs only made things worse. Sam knew he needed help - the problem was that he thought self-help was for hippies, sobriety was for weirdos and therapy was for neurotics.Delaney says about the book: “Like most blokes my age, I have been through some ups and down, including periods where I worked way too hard, drank way too much and let the stress get out of hand. I wrote this book because I didn’t feel there was anyone out there who I could relate to who was sharing similar experiences.

In this extract from his new book, broadcaster and journalist Sam Delaney tells how he embraced a simpler, more idle lifestyle to save his mental health Surprise yourself and try something different. Achieving a goal or learning something new can increase your confidence as well as being fun. We all have something we'd like to try. Do it today! Regular exercise and eating a whole food diet is encouraged to maintain our body's optimum health but what about our minds? Then, on the sixth day, the miracle happened. I looked like seven shades of shit and my screamed-out voice had descended into a husky growl, but I felt incredible – clear, light, hopeful.

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Eventually, there was a collapse. There always is. Since then, I have rebuilt my life in a simpler way that is easier to manage. Its starts, as many of its ilk, with the author hitting the low point. However, being pissed at the darts and holding up a sign that asks his wife to marry him does not particularly sound like a real nadir. It was - like a lot of the book - quite amusing though. We are then introduced to traumas large and small in his life. Its interesting. Raised by a single parent in relative poverty, whilst the other parent swanned around in a Bentley. There's quite a lot of this duality at play in the book. It is possible to be a blokey bloke, but be educated. Rich and down to earth etc. My writing has appeared in The Guardian, Observer, The Sunday Times, Independent, Daily Telegraph, NME, Q, Grazia, Cosmopolitan, the New Statesman and numerous others. For more information, see penninghame.org. Penninghame offers a sliding scale of fees and bursaries may also be available.