Overcoming Depression, Burnout, Anxiety and Insomnia with Dan Murray-Serter

**Steven Bartlett** (0:07)
It's very rare that you get to meet entrepreneurs that are following and have followed in the steps that you followed in your life. And like, whenever I meet people like you and Ben Francis, who is similar age to me, who has like similar life ambitions, I see it as like this really amazing rare opportunity to learn for myself and to ask honestly, like selfish questions. And I saw on your Twitter, I think it was over the mental health week period, you did a tweet where you talked about your experiences with depression, burnout and anxiety. And from what I know about your story, you experienced those things in that order. So I think that's a good place to start, which is let's talk about depression and the role that depression played in your life and where it came from and how you've overcome or are overcoming or handling depression.

**Dan Murray-Serter** (1:00)
Yeah. So interesting actually, because I realized when I started to talk about mental health stuff even more interestingly than what you've just said, I kind of realized that I'd been burying another mental health problem. So actually the tweet was more depression, burnout, anxiety and insomnia. But actually it's really interesting. I did a podcast interview with a nutritionist called Rhiannon Lambert. When I was preparing for that, I was going over the fact that I'd grown up fat. And the fact that I probably did have an unusual relationship mentally with food. And suddenly, I was unpacking what had happened in my 20s, and I actually had bulimia. I used to throw up for like four to five years, not intentionally though, this was quite unusual, but that's how deeply rooted this mental health problem was. I would eat something, and I would throw a lot of it up. My friends would know about this, but it wasn't labeled. And I went to specialists in Harley Street to see what was up, and they were like, medically, you're fine. So psychologically, there's something there. Anyway, I haven't done it since I was about 26 or whatever, but it suddenly occurred to me a few weeks ago, really interestingly, that being able to label the time I got depression, the time I got anxiety, the time I got insomnia, the time I was burnt out, I remembered those moments. This one, I'd actually buried as a story in my head. I'd never expressed it in my whole life to anyone publicly at all, full stop. And it was a couple of months ago, and I wrote a newsletter on mental health and nutrition, and I admitted for the first time then that I'd had bulimia and what the symptoms were and how long it had gone on. And the fact that I was basically losing lots of weight, getting really skinny, and all I saw was someone fat. And it was so interesting to me, like two revelations that came from that. One is that if it's so uncomfortable, right? For me, it's really embarrassing to admit to myself that I was weak enough to have a mental health condition that bad, that I would psychologically throw up when there was nothing biologically wrong with me. That's really awkward to admit to yourself. It's also far more terrifying to admit it publicly once you've uncovered it. It made me reflect on the fact that sometimes these things are actually just so painfully embarrassing about your personal life that you can even bury it to yourself.

**Steven Bartlett** (3:27)
Did you ever understand why you were Blemic? Because it's a psychological comorbidity. What was the cause, per se?

**Dan Murray-Serter** (3:35)
It's really hard to say what the cause was because I got it after I'd lost weight. By the time I was 21 or whatever, I was in perfectly reasonable shape. But I got it at 23
And actually there was a result of it. The only time I was ever hospitalized. It's a really random but hilarious story in its own way. Because I'd been throwing up, I'd been basically like hurting the inside of my throat, right? And I was at a festival one time and I had a coughing fit in Hackney. And I had a coughing fit at the hospital and I coughed a hole in my throat, literally. It's called Pneumomedia steinum. It's a very unique thing to happen apparently. And fortunately it was close enough to the Royal London Hospital to go in there and show them, right? And basically what happened to me was my head started to grow. So I was with my friends feeling fine other than this cough. And one of my friends just looked at me and was like, whoa. And I was like, what? They're like, mate, your head is massive. I'm like, I'm not even talking, mate. In your dick. No, no, no, your head is growing. What is going on? I was like, what? And then everyone else was like, oh my God. Anyway, walked to the hospital. It's sort of like five in the afternoon or whatever, because there's a day festival. And there's like, you know, it's East London. There's quite a lot of genuinely like gang related things. People are bleeding everywhere, all this stuff. And they just see me and they're like, that guy's next. And put me, and I went into intensive care for like the whole week. Whilst they were basically trying to sew up this hole in my throat.