There’s a monster on my back. It resides there, whispering to me. Even as I type these words, it’s speaking to me, judging every letter I type. “They’re going to hate this blog, you know!”

By Stuart Adam Gardner

My name is Stuart Adam Gardner, and I’m the author of There’s A Monster On My Back. I’m 38 years old and still battle daily with the voice that many of us have. It’s so engrained in me that I don’t even hear it a lot of the time, and I have to use a metaphorical butterfly net to catch the thoughts as they float from my brain. Things like “That photo of me is horrible.“, or “Does that person think I’m stupid?“, or “You idiot! Why did you drop that!?”. It’s relentless.

A lot of people I speak to can relate to that voice, or have one of their own. These monsters get everywhere. They’re good at reproducing. Negative thoughts seem to birth more negative thoughts. There’s a saying I found online once, accredited to ‘Peace Pilgrim’. “If you knew how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.”

But why did I write the book?

Well, I’ve worked in education as a Teaching Assistant for 20 years. I have no idea why; as a child I hated every second of school. I found it a breeze but hated being told where to go, when to go and who to be with. It may be that I have the choice to revisit it as an adult, and enjoy it? Or perhaps, as has been suggested a few times, I work in a school as I don’t want any child to feel like I did.

Let’s revisit what I just typed – I hated every second of school. That’s not possible. And yet, as a child, I managed to train myself to think negatively on a pretty regular basis. Instead of thinking of aspects of the day which I enjoyed, I’d focus on those that I hated, and only remember the bad days. The monster I had as a child, essentially, took over my thought process. Even now, my immediate response to my own primary school experience is negative. I have to force myself to ignore the monster and think of the happy times. If you have your own monster, you now how exhausting that can be!

But yes, I started as a Teaching Assistant in 2002. Education was a lot less stressful for children and adults alike. I won’t launch into a tirade of how education in this country could be improved – that is a blog for another day! – but as a TA, I quickly bonded with the children who were like me. The quiet ones, the ones who struggled to come in every day.

My role grew into that of the distinguished HLTA, or Higher Level Teaching Assistant. Basically, slightly higher pay with much, much more responsibility. I was one of the first cohort of HLTAs, brought in by the Government in the early 00s. I’ve been an HLTA ever since, developing my teaching skills in the ever-changing world of education.

In 2014, a colleague suggested I train as an ELSA, or Emotional Literacy Support Assistant. I was trained by two fantastic Educational Psychologists in how to help children manage their emotions. In this training, I realised that all the things I’d been working on with children, wasn’t this ‘snowflake pandering’ work I’d been led to believe by so many, but actual scientific fact. It’s a fact that talking makes us happy.

During my work as an ELSA, I would often be working with children who struggled with anxiety. Now, don’t get me wrong, anxiety is useful – it helps us to keep safe around cliff edges for example! – but what can happen is it can become hyper-sensitive, and alert us to dangers that aren’t real.

I came across a book called What To Do When You Worry Too Much by Dawn Huebner which had some great ideas to combat anxiety. It talks about worries being like tomatoes – the more attention you give them, the more they grow. Part of this book mentions a worry monster. It briefly talks about naming the monster and telling it to go away. Every time I got to this part of the book, the children reacted really well to it. The idea of anxiety being a monster, helps the child to externalise the worries and not blame themselves. I wanted to do more work around this idea, but there was no book that took the theme further.

So, I wrote one.

I sat down to write the book back in 2018. I wrote it in about half an hour, as a poem. And then I printed it, blogged it, and forgot about it. I mean, who would even want to read it. And how could I ever get it published. Basically, the monster didn’t want me to tell the world it’s secret, so it whispered a barrage of negative thoughts to me. I listened and limited myself. I stopped anything happening. A few people read it and liked it, but that didn’t prompt me to do anything else. I wanted to be a writer, but it all seemed like something that happened to other people, not me.

I remember talking to a friend one day, saying “I can’t even draw. I’d need to find an illustrator.” But for some reason, this time something changed in my mind. Perhaps the monster was briefly distracted for a second, but a thought managed to get through to me – surely anyone can draw a monster? It happened around the same time that I discovered I could self publish on Amazon. So, if I could draw a monster, and I could publish it, then why didn’t I try?

Now, my initial monster designs weren’t great. I knew I wanted a ‘blob’, as not only was it easy to draw, but children could ‘mould’ it into the monster they envisaged. They could also draw it easily. But blobs needed arms and legs to show their emotions, so I drew some weird lines and hoped for the best. This didn’t work, as you’ll see in the images below.

But it could work! Armed with a tablet and my finger, I worked on the blob until I had something that I could easily copy and add emotions to, without arms or legs!

Now, I started the job but managed to procrastinate long enough that the idea started to go cold. It was hard work making images that matched the text. Work was busy, my mind was full and, again, the idea was shelved. If only there was something that would stop me in my tracks. Something to make me stay at home and finally finish the thing. Luckily for me, Covid came along.

I’d been triple jabbed and avoided the virus throughout the first two lockdowns, even though I was still working in school. But apparently, if you go to a nightclub at New Year, it can be classed as a super-spreader event. Luckily for me, I had it very mild. I didn’t have any of the main symptoms, just sore sinuses. I count my blessings and thank the NHS for that, but it did of course mean I needed to self-isolate. What could I do to fill those long days? Make a book perhaps?

And so, There’s A Monster On My Back was finally born.

I still struggle with my monster, as I mentioned. Every day, negative thoughts sneak through and lodge themselves in my brain. But also, every day, I manage to tell myself something positive. The more I do this, the less powerful my monster becomes, and this is the message from the book.

There’s a monster on my back, but I am in control of it… and I am FANTASTIC! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it monster!!!

Next steps…

You can buy a copy of Stuart’s book on Amazon – visit the link here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09PMBSVCG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1

If you’d like to come along to Stuart’s book signing on Saturday 1st October, here are the event details>>