My Mental Health Back-Story
A honest account of living with mental health struggles & what's actually helped.
Before I dive in, a trigger warning: this post covers depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and suicidal thoughts. If that sounds like too much for you today, it's a-OK to give it a miss.
I also want to make clear that I'm not a mental health professional sharing advice, nor am I looking for solutions or advice in return. I'm purely sharing my experience, in the hope it might help someone else.
I've struggled with my mental health for most of my adult life, so this isn't a single story. It's several. A London breakdown, years of panic attacks, a handful of therapists, and a lot of hard-won lessons about what actually helps.
My first job out of university was in London. Floor-to-ceiling windows, a smart pencil skirt, the feeling that I had arrived somewhere. I had ticked every box I was supposed to tick for that stage in my life.
But quietly, behind all of it, I was falling apart.
I was depressed, although I didn't have a name for it then. I just felt miserable, quietly, persistently miserable, and I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone.
Whether that was shame or not wanting to bother people with my needy-needs, I'm still not entirely sure. Just getting out of bed each morning felt like a heroic effort. And talking about it was a no-go.
Eventually I registered with a doctor and went to see him about how low I was feeling.
They told me to try… meditating.
This was 2012, so perhaps therapy and medication, or a deeper look into your mental health wasn't as as much of a norm as it is now. But when you're deeply depressed, meditation alone isn't going to cut it. And motivating yourself to want to feel better is harder than it sounds when you're in the thick of it.
Meditating wasn’t going to touch the sides of what I needed to heal myself, but I gave up with the Doctor. I felt too ashamed to keep going back, and it felt like such an effort to get myself there.
Eight months after starting that shiny London job, I quit and moved back to the countryside. I felt immeasurably better. I thought I’d found the cure…
But while the slower, less hectic pace of country living certainly helped my mental health, it wasn’t the cure-all fix.
Fast forward to 2018, and life was good. I was building a business on the side of my job that I was obsessed with. I was living somewhere I loved, and in a relationship that felt supportive.
Then one afternoon, lying on the grass on a beautiful day in France, I suddenly felt sick. Then I was hyperventilating. Then crying, uncontrollably, unable to catch my breath. I thought I was going to stop breathing. It was terrifying.
When it passed, I sat on a cliff-top looking out at a wide expanse of sea for a long time, piecing myself back together. My brother had talked to me about panic attacks before, he'd struggled with them throughout university, and slowly I realised that's what had just happened to me.
I went back to work after the holiday. Walking in on my first day back, I had another panic attack. And then another panic attack, a few days later.
Before long, almost every situation was a trigger; catching a train, sitting in a meeting, standing in a crowd at Wimbledon, presenting at a conference in front of two hundred people.
I went to my doctor, who told me to try… deep breathing. 🤦♀️ It felt like a deja vous.
Don’t get me wrong, deep breathing helps. But when you're having daily panic attacks, it is not, on its own, going to fix it.
Five visits to the doctor’s in floods of tears later, I was finally signed off work and prescribed and antidepressant medication. I was also put on the wait list for therapy. My employer funded some therapy sessions, and I took a month off to rest, start the medication, and begin to heal.
Wierdly, that month was, honestly… dreamy.
I lived slowly and seasonally in a way I hadn't allowed myself to before. Long walks to start each morning, followed by a slow breakfast, some creatively fulfilling work on the business I was growing, some reading. Simple, unhurried days.
I realised that was what I wanted my life to look like allll the time. So, I made it happen.
Over the course of 6-months I worked on my business until it could bring in my ‘just enough’ income goal. I took the leap from side-hustle to full-time, and created a slower way of living.
And it was, for some time, transformational for my mental health.
So it came as a surprise, a few year’s later, when a panic attack arrived out of nowhere, in the middle of a supermarket - hyperventilating, feeling faint, crying. The full works.
I went to the doctor and went back onto some antidepressant medication that I’d slowly come off a couple of years before. I doubled down on my mindfulness tools - journaling, long rambling walks, resting more, and reevaluated how I was working in my business.
It helped, but my mood continued to fluctuate. Some days I was full of energy, almost hyperactive. Others I felt heavy and lethargic.
What I learned from this, and frustratingly have to keep learning over the years, is that managing my mental health will always need to be a priority.
When things are good and I forget, or when I think I’ve found the golden cure… I now know it’s likely I’ll have mental health struggles again at some point… as I did years later in 2024 when I had a psychotic episode.
Regardless of whether you identify as someone who struggles with your mental health or not, it should be a priority for all of us. It’s tough in a world where notifications, alerts and to-do lists are put first, before ourselves.
I believe that living in tune with the seasons is one of the most quietly radical things we can do in the modern world to nurture ourselves. When we slow down enough to notice the first frost, cook with foraged ingredients, decorate our homes with seasonal finds and cold plunge into running rivers, we find our way back to what it truly means to be human.
Before I wrap up here, if you're struggling with your mental health, please do reach out to your GP or, in a crisis, contact the Samaritans on 116 123.
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