Tim’s mental health journey helps him go ‘full circle’…

Over the last eight years, Tim Shiels has undergone a challenging mental health journey that has seen him go from racing for global glory on the track to the brink of despair before going full circle and returning to the World Masters Athletics Championships.

It’s a story that reinforces the fact that none of us really know what others are going through and that the inner battles we all face aren’t easily won.

This particular tale begins eight years ago when the switch was flicked for a downward spiral in his mental health, although the prologue starts long before for Tim, who has overcome drug addiction and homelessness on the streets of Dublin before finding his saviour and ultimately becoming pastor of Omagh Community Church.

Today is almost eight years to the day that I picked Tim up at Perth Airport in Western Australia and while considerably jet-lagged he was obviously excited by the fact he had travelled halfway around the world to compete in the World Masters Athletics Championship for the first time.

Back then, the 800 metres was his game and he was genuinely and rightfully anticipating at least a medal come the event’s end on November 6, 2016.

Prior to the Championships getting underway, we visited some of the sights along Australia’s beautiful Sunset Coast, enjoyed a lunch at City Beach with the Indian Ocean stretching seemingly to infinity beyond us and there appeared to be no hint of anything other than hope and excitement emanating from Tim.

But that’s the hidden truth we all carry, isn’t it? The mask we wear to hide what is really going on within and so it was with the ‘Faster Pastor’ who had invested so much into this trip and his bid to win a world title that when he missed out on a bronze medal by just 11/100th of a second in the M40 800 metres, he was unable to cope with the disappointment.

It wasn’t just the self-perceived failure that weighed so heavily on the then 41 year-old who is celebrating his 49th birthday this very day [Monday, October 21st], but that fraction of a second proved to be the trigger that saw his mental health house of cards crumble and fall, leading him to the brink of suicide just three years later.

“It was the catalyst because I felt like a failure,” Tim acknowledged.

“ I think that the thing leading up to the World Championships in Perth was I could only think about running. And the mistake I made was thinking that running had to be the priority, but when running became the priority it impacted every other area of my life and coming full circle to where I am now – if everything else in my life is working and has a level of health, when there is a balance, I automatically become a better runner and that’s the flip.

“ I missed out on a medal by 11/100th of a second and looking back on it, I allowed the smallest of margins to have the biggest of impacts.

“ So what happened in 2016, feeling like a failure actually unearthed some unresolved conflict and trauma that I wasn’t aware was there and unfortunately I didn’t deal with it, I ran away from it and I was struggling.”

That inner conflict continued to build and to fester over the next three years until Derry native Tim, unbeknown to most of us, had reached breaking point, going so far as to stand on the Foyle Bridge about to jump until a chance encounter or divine intervention, call it what you will, halted him and it started a four year journey back to health and ultimately competing once more on the world stage.

But, in order for the healing process to start, he had to face his own feelings.

“In January 2020, like a large portion of the world population, I had some new year’s resolutions,” he said. “Coming off the bridge in 2019 completely broken, empty, completely hopeless and helpless, miraculously meeting someone, having an encounter and not jumping to waking up in January 2020 I asked myself some questions.

“I had to go on a soul searching journey. And in the soul searching journey I had to answer a lot of questions about who I thought I was, what I believed about myself and what I believed about the world.

“The first question I asked myself was ‘what do you want your life to look like this year?’. So I created a mantra, or a vision if you like, that I wanted to be a fitter, faster, healthier, happier, stronger version of myself.

“And you’ll automatically be swayed to thinking that will be physical but it’s so much more than physical because I needed all those things to be apparent in every area of my life.

“I was emotionally unstable. I was so unhealthy, my mental health was so unhealthy that it needed to be fitter. I needed to be faster and quicker to meeting the needs of my own soul, and meet my own needs rather than ignoring them.

“And I think we are good at ignoring our emotions rather than sitting with them and wrestling them and processing them to try to understand them, so I acknowledged that there was something there I needed to do.”

In order to address the underlying issues that led to becoming totally despondent, Tim wrote a book, ‘Imagine’, which allowed him to challenge the beliefs he had fostered about himself, to start the journey back to health, life and running.

“I had to recognise that I was really weak,” he explained. “I had put on this persona that I was the strong leader, I’m a church leader, that I was this strong man of God, but really I was falling apart.

“I had to get honest with myself because I was miserable and I have really no reason to be miserable because I have a wife who loves me, and yet my marriage was not as healthy as it is today; I have children who love me and yet because I was busy and trying to be busy so I didn’t have to deal with my feelings, I felt like I was a stranger to my children – they have since acknowledged that they didn’t feel that, that I was present, but I didn’t feel like I was present.

“So when I began to look at every aspect of my life I realised I was so unhealthy and I had some counselling and I wrote a book. While I was writing the book I dared myself to imagine what my life would look like if I believed some things to be true. I asked myself what my life would look like if I believed that I’m loved, if I believed I’m enough, if I believed I had a gift, and as I began to unpack all of these things I became healthier.

“I felt encouraged to start running again and that’s how I evolved into who I am today.”

During the last eight years, athletics and running have taken a bit of a back seat in Tim’s life, which isn’t particularly new to him but more recently he has rediscovered his love for the sport and he acknowledges that it is an important part of his life and he’s relishing the future, entirely, including on the track. “I stop-started for years and what would happen was every time I got some forward momentum something would come along and derail it, but this year I decided to keep going because I genuinely want to see what I can get out of my body,” he said.

“I have a very different mindset. I used to run to win races, but now I race myself.

“I’m excited to see where I can go with this, and that is something I missed [during the last eight years]. I’ve tried to get away from running so many times but I’ve been around running all my life, I’ve been around athletics all of my life and every time I try to get away from it I find I can’t, so I’ve resigned myself to the fact that running will always be a part of my life and that it’s important.

“I have to remind myself on a regular basis that there is many a person lying in a hospital bed who would like to be healthier, so rather than being over sensitive about times, I’m just going to enjoy the times I get to run.”

And that is an attitude he embraced two months ago when, eight years after he last stepped onto a track at a World Championship, he did so again, coming full circle in Sweden, with a totally different mindset which allowed him to enjoy the event rather than feel somewhat smothered by expectation.

“It was brilliant because there was no pressure,” explained Tim, who helped the Irish men’s M40 4x400m relay team to seventh overall in a season-best time of 3:41.89 minutes. “I had been under immense pressure and I had been running really well but then I tore my hamstring.

“It was then my team-mates [encouraged him to travel and compete] said ‘we’re delighted you’re back, there are lots more races to come’. They know my journey, what I’ve battled through. I’ve not shied away from the fact I was suicidal and the thought of running ever again in my life was the furthest thing from my mind when I wanted to end my life, so to even be considered for an Irish vest was a miracle in itself.

“So, even though I was injured and I knew I wasn’t going to run to my potential, I felt so free. I went to Gothenburg and I got to enjoy an event.

“It was the opposite to Perth when I was the favourite to win and you do feel that pressure. I put that pressure on myself.”

Another highlight of his World Championship return was he got to share it with youngest daughter, Cadhla. Tim enjoyed the fact that she was able to see him compete for his country and while eight years earlier that would have added more pressure onto his shoulders, now it was something they could both savour.

Shiels has embraced the fact that he is, always has been and always will be more than ‘just a runner’ and no amount of on track success, or even failure for that matter, will change that – although he’s still keen on discovering what he can achieve on the track.

“Cadhla got to see her daddy run in an Irish vest and here’s what I’ve learned over the years, my family, as much as they will enjoy it if I ever become a world champion, and I may never become a world champion, I’m still coming home to be Daddy and Father,” Tim beamed.

“And we have three labradors too and regardless if I am a world record holder, an Irish record holder, a world champion, their poo still needs picked up in the back garden!

“Being a world champion doesn’t change anything so I’ve learned to embrace that. So, the exciting thing is I have this opportunity to see how far I can take my body. I turn 50 next year and it’s a wonderful opportunity to say ‘half a century on the earth, what can I get out of my body?’.

“ Not can I win a World Championship, not can I break and world record, but what can I get out of my body. How far can I push myself in a healthy way along with the other things that are going on in my life because I’m not just a runner.”