My battle with depression, anxiety, & suffering. A message of hope.
It is now 3 years ago, 25th December 2017, when in the early hours of the morning I was walking to the M53 motorway in pyjamas ready to end my problems.
I can not recall changing my mind, or even the walk home, but over the course of the following week I suffered a complete breakdown. I was found in the middle of the night in minus conditions outside just standing there. On another occasion with my head out of the window unable to recall how long I had been there or why. I was losing my temper and breaking down crying many times a day during that period between Xmas and New Year.
Why am I telling you this?
For a while, I have considered whether I should share my story. Whether to keep it private. What my kids might think reading it one day. What people in my working life may think. The situation I was in was and is no reflection on the amazing friends and family I am blessed with or my love for them.
What changed last night was reading the Samaritan's statement urging people suffering to reach out and ask for help amid fears Christmas alone in Tier 4 could cause a mental health crisis. I am not unique. If I can get the help I needed and get better then absolutely anyone can. The resources are out there. I hope people can have faith in the process knowing that I saw no way out and no way to get better. I was wrong. It is never too late to get help.
Sometimes the problems are so big you do not know how you are going to solve them and that is ok you do not need to have all the answers. Talk, get help, be patient, keep the faith, and believe in the process.
Before I share my story if you are dealing with suicidal thoughts, or are suffering in any way, please reach out. The help is there. I have listed below a number of services that can help and offer support networks. I have also listed some free to access videos and resources at the very bottom which have helped me and may be of use to you or someone you know.
Many are listed here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/suicide/
Samaritans (116 123) operates a 24-hour service available every day of the year. If you prefer to write down how you are feeling, or if you are worried about being overheard on the phone, you can email Samaritans at jo@samaritans.org.
Rethink may help you if you are dealing with suicidal thoughts. It has ideas you can try to help you through a crisis. It explains how you can stay safe and where you can go for support.
Childline (0800 1111) runs a helpline for children and young people in the UK. Calls are free and the number will not show up on your phone bill.
PAPYRUS (0800 068 41 41) is an organisation supporting teenagers and young adults who are feeling suicidal.
Mind (0300 123 3393) is a charity providing advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem. They campaign to improve services, raise awareness, and promote understanding.
Students Against Depression is a website for students who are depressed, have a low mood or are having suicidal thoughts.
Bullying UK is a website for both children and adults affected by bullying.
Hub of Hope is the UK’s most comprehensive national mental health support database. Download the free app, visit hubofhope.co.uk or text HOPE to 85258 to find relevant services near you.
Background
At 20 years of age, I would have said I was one of the most mentally strong people around. Whether true, or whether arrogance, that is what I genuinely believed. Without going into the detail there had been various challenges from birth to 20 years old which I had got through with incredible support from Mum and I felt I could handle any blow, any problem, any knockback that came my way. There was rarely a month, let alone a year when I did not have to exercise my mind and put to the test my mental state.
Everything in my 20’s could not have gone better. By 29 I had gone 9 years without facing any real challenges, problems, and riding wave after wave of success. In 2011, at 29, I am engaged to the girl of my dreams, having bought our own family home, our son born that April and days later I am offered a Directorship at a solicitor’s firm. Mum, my brothers, my friends, were all healthy and well.
Two problems.
1) I had not needed to condition my brain, stand guard if you like at the doors to my brain, for the challenges that lay ahead. If my 20’s were summer then my 30’s was winter. A heavy winter was coming.
2) Because my 20’s had been so amazing my mindset had changed without me realising it. Growing up I was brought up by my Mum to appreciate life being about fulfillment first and foremost. Looking back things were now the wrong way round. At 29 I was focussed on achievement and naively thinking everything would continue to go my way.
Pain becomes suffering
On 30th April 2012, our son’s first birthday, my fiancé is rushed to the hospital, diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, and was extremely poorly. Having been mistreated we were fearing the worst at one stage. Thankfully, things got better but the doctors warned it could be a long road back especially mentally.
The next 3 years are a blur. During this period, my son had a lot of challenges and we had to fight the system to try and get him the support he needed. Michelle was pregnant with our daughter but suffered a terrible pregnancy during this time, with a young son, and me doing 60 hours a week running between two offices fire fighting. At a few weeks old our little girl is rushed into hospital. Bacterial meningitis. One night when we spoke with the Doctors they prepared us for the worst. Thankfully, she was discharged only to be readmitted 3 weeks later with severe breathing difficulties. Jessica was very poorly again. Thankfully, she was discharged — alive and well.
Then, 10 days later, I am holding Mum in my arms trying to resuscitate her. I was too late. The person who saved my life. The person who fought for me as a child defying huge pressure from “experts” and family. My shield, sword, best friend, and my guardian angel was gone.
6 months on pain became suffering. Every morning I would sob lying on the floor of the bath in the shower. Uncontrollably. I could not get up. At 8am I would be sat on the end of the bed half-dressed not able to move. Putting on a sock felt like climbing Everest.
After more family bereavements, my wife suffered depression and somehow managed to look after the children incredibly well but was struggling deeply.
I did not feel like I was contributing to anyone I cared about in my life. I felt like I was making their lives worse not better. My brain was going at 100 miles an hour though. Fear, anxiety, spinning round and round with a million different things going on.
Then I would go to work and put on the act. Go to football and manage the team putting on an act.
During these years I suffered regular nightmares, flashbacks, could not sleep — not helped by both kids being terrible sleepers either.
In 2017 I was referred to the stroke clinic, suffered multiple panic attacks, had nerve damage, two slipped discs, and was told by a back specialist he had 80-year-old women in better condition than me.
I then had to face up to the most extreme situation anyone in my profession could face.
My mind and body were broken. I felt like a punch bag that had taken too many hits and had finally come off the wall. Hinges smashed.
My wife and children were struggling, and I was unable to help them. I could not even help myself.
It is a reminder. Do not confuse achievement with happiness. To the outside world, I had it all. Yet I was broken.
Getting help
The power of making a decision should not be underestimated. That is where it all starts. I do not know what triggered it but one day in early 2018 I decided. I must get help.
In 2016 I had gone to bereavement counselling which did not work at all for me and it was them who said they could not help me and sent me away. It does help for many so please do not let that put you off. There is no right or wrong and I think I gave up on getting help having not had a great experience from just one service. Try different resources and support services.
I know it is easy to have faith when things are going well. It is easy to be happy and not need to manage your state when good things are happening.
Managing your mental state and living in a beautiful state no matter what the circumstances are is a challenge and one that I believe anyone can achieve.
That is not to say you never suffer pain or ignore it. The aim for me was to rewire my brain. Clean the hard drive if you like. Prevent pain from becoming suffering or something worse in the now and the future. Translate the emotion, process it, and move on changing my perception or my actions.
I was genuinely getting better and making great progress by September 2018 despite us having filed for divorce, I had moved out, and was living in a one-bedroom flat, with huge personal and business problems to face. The support and the help I was receiving was working despite those circumstances.
Talk to people. Reach out. Seek expert advice and follow their guidance. If you need to, be willing to check out as many support services as you need, and research people online who have suffered similar challenges and turned their life around. Use them as a mentor even if you never get the chance to speak to them personally.
Do not bottle it up inside. Share with whomever you feel comfortable with sharing. I totally understand feeling like not wanting to be a burden on friends and family but if a friend or family member reached out to you and said, “can you help me?” I have no doubt you would help and therefore the same is true in reverse.
Anyone who knows me will acknowledge that talking and sharing was never my problem! Personally, I needed solutions. A plan where I could put my faith in things improving for me via strategies or processes. Finding them made the difference in me.
I visited my GP, was referred for counselling, went on anti-depressants (I came off these later in the year due to side effects and other things, but they did take an edge off), and I was fortunate enough to be able to go and see George Cunningham at NLP Liverpool after a recommendation from a friend. He was one of the biggest factors in me getting better.
Try and hit the pause button, take your time, stay patient, talk, and reach out to the support services and go from there would be my advice.
Often we will do more for others than we will for ourselves. I told myself that I was going to get better for me too but my inspiration was my kids and my Mum.
We did not come this far to only get this far.
That helped me get help when I did.
What I wish I could tell my 2017/18 self when I sought help
· Be more patient. I thought I could get better quicker than I actually did. I beat myself up a bit about that and this was unrealistic.
· I never lost my Mum. She just transformed into something else. Whatever you believe in, or do not believe in, I know I can still feel her love. I know she is still there. I know she will not forsake me. I know I can use her teachings, actions, and love to inspire me and in a way build a new relationship with her spiritually rather than focus on the loss.
· Progress is not linear. There will be setbacks, days when you feel back to square one, and it does NOT mean things are not working or you should give up. It is a natural part of the process.
· Tweaking things and experimenting with techniques is crucial.
· Complacency is the no1 enemy once you start to get better. For me, I thought I had cracked it. My strategy for mental and physical wellbeing went from me doing it 5 days a week, to 4, then 3, then 2,…. then I wondered why I was going backwards! When you start to get better keep doing what you are doing even when you feel you do not need to. Exercise the mental and physical muscle in the good times ready for the next time challenges await.
· If you can avoid this do not make decisions about your life, relationships, career, etc until you start to get better and are in a good place. That is really tough and something I struggled with as I was in a rush to get better and change my life. When you know a relationship or a job has been painful in the past, it is painful in the now, and you think it will be painful in the future it is easy to want to get out of it asap. In my experience, if you do not heal and fix yourself first you just take the same “you” into the next thing. You risk groundhog day and the same issues repeating themselves. It is possible you may get better and go “wow actually it was my state making that relationship, or job, or whatever feel wrong, but it isn’t. Now I am in a better place I can see things differently.”
If you can (often it may not be possible or advisable) heal first and change the life circumstances later.
· Enjoy the journey and not just the destination.
· Commit to using the support services, techniques, or changes, or strategies that help you for the rest of your life. I thought I would be able to leave them and just get the tools out when I needed them but that did not work for me. The techniques and strategies I use now I am committed to doing regularly and why not! They work for me and even if I feel good why not try and feel better! Accept it and stay disciplined.
· It is always a work in progress and that is fine.
What works for me
1) Making sure, at least 5 days a week, before everyone wakes up I am at 15/10 mentally and physically. That way when the world wants to beat the shit out of me I may go from 15/10 to 6/10 and that is ok. In the past, I got up at 3/10 and the world beat me down to a minus. Meditation, stretching, priming, and exercise before everyone is awake has changed my life.
The priming starts with a breathing exercise, gets you out of your head and in your heart. I picture coping with challenges effortlessly and easily. Staying calm and patient. Then you go through the mental exercises.
It is only a ten -fifteen-minute routine and is well worth trying.
2) Practising the techniques to change my state during the day when I start to feel pain or struggle. This is harder and a work in progress for me but again has changed my life greatly.
3) Stimulate your brain with no extra time. When I am in the car or doing chores, or working out I play audio or video through my headphones which is not related to my career or hobbies. This is the “no extra time” bit. I absorb the information whilst doing something else killing two birds with one stone. Many of the links below are what I use during these periods even if only for 10 minutes.
4) Writing my personal blueprint. I have this in my bedroom. The brain is just a brain. In my view, it is not the real me. The brain is a device used to protect us which once had to fear lions, tigers, and bears getting us and now makes us worry about whether we are successful enough, or have enough friends, or worry about what people think about us on social media. That is not me it is just “THE brain”. I have a blueprint that is the real me. Who I am. What really matters to me and what you need in your life to achieve it.
5) Writing out a crisis plan. In case I ever suffer I have a list of things I need to do which I know works for me. My loved ones know where it is and if I reach out to them, or they sense I am verging on a breakdown, they know to direct me to that. It really helps when I am in the eye of the storm.
6) Faith and certainty. I realised I struggle with faith and certainty as my life is filled with tons of uncertainty, much of which I can do nothing about. Most of your adult life is conditional. Your partner, kids, friends, it is all conditional. They can wake up one day and just decide they do not want to see you anymore. Your job. Your business. Conditional again. The government could just change the rules (look at 2020 as an example).
I spend time each morning focussing on certainty spiritually and from my Mum. I meditate and channel that energy to keep the faith that no matter what life’s challenges are I will meet them with that triangle of support. I remember times in my past when things looked bleak, tough, and uncertain and against the odds, we got through.
7) Nutrition, exercise, and quality of sleep are MUSTS, not shoulds.
Stuff we all know but most of us do not master. I made changes to things like my pillow, mattress, pre-bedtime routine, etc which made a huge difference to the quality of my sleep. I am not very productive in the 10 pm -midnight slot despite always previously being awake in that period. Now I try to go to bed at 10 ish and get up at 5:30 am. That is a must now and something I enjoy. Really!
8) Ration mobile phone.
I turn my phone off for long periods especially when with the kids. I struggle with the distraction and can end up scrolling through social media. I ration it and set specific times when I will check my phone and other times when it is on airplane mode.
So that is why I am sharing this because if anybody reads what I have written and it strikes a chord, I hope it encourages them to talk to someone.
Below I have included some free resources and links which I hope may help also.
Links
1) George Cunningham NLP Liverpool (covers nationally via zoom and calls: https://www.nlpliverpool.com/index.html
2) Nutrition: Jimmy Slomka is fully qualified and puts a lot of free content out on Instagram about enjoying your food, eating healthy, and being healthy — would recommend checking him out for ideas on your meal plans, etc:
https://instagram.com/jimmyslomka?igshid=erd244to1uuy
3) Megan Robbins. 5–4–3–2–1 fame. Suffered from anxiety and depression and is a great teacher and lecturer. This is a seminar link on YouTube I would recommend: https://youtu.be/l_zx3G43I2I
4) Priming — Tony Robbins exercise:
Explanation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXYhfy4b5Bg
Priming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faTGTgid8Uc
5) Seminar on depression, anxiety, and negative emotions (FREE)
