Now I'd fallen down the rabbit hole and the chink of light above was looking very, very small and far away, I thought I might as well just take a deep breath, surrender to the fact that it wasn't just my bum that looked big in a space this small, caked in earth and leaf mould, and explore. Yes, I was going to explore the dark so thoroughly that maybe Bear Grylls would be there with his shirt off having just climbed a mountain with his teeth to meet me at the end...
Deciding to start counselling was one of the scariest decisions of my life. I had a real trepidation about opening Pandora's Box and not being able to get the lid back on- ever. I mean, I know I've got a few skeletons, mostly tucked away under a fug of alcohol and cloaked in the odd rubber dress and bruised by the odd broken stiletto, but they were generally more likely to have sent some poor, unsuspecting bloke running for therapy rather than me.
Joining an NHS waiting list for a counsellor seemed a little pointless given that I needed help right there and then. I also knew myself well enough to know that if I didn't run with the impulse then the moment would pass and I would find a reason to move on to something else instead and I would be back at this crossroads again in a few months-, maybe even years-, time.
After a few days of nervous phone tag, I finally met with a private 'counselling psychotherapist' here in Bedford. I went in feeling the same fraud I did when in the doctor's surgery and came out an hour later drained, cold, trembling and relieved. I knew deep down that I was doing the right thing although wasn't prepared to hear that this would be a three-stage process likely to take most of the next six months: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and stabilisation; Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and trauma processing; then finally building towards managing the future. But I was going to do this. I was going to take the sick leave, take the time to invest in myself, stop the world and just get off for a while. Or maybe I was stopping the world to get back on...once I'd got out of this crazy rabbit hole and snogged Bear Grylls that is.
Twelve sessions in, I can honestly say that this is a liberating, exciting process but one that shouldn't be underestimated. I can go in some weeks feeling fine and cry my way through the hour; I can go in feeling low and come out feeling energised and back in control; I can go in with my own hazy agenda and come out with clarity and acceptance.
The emotional rollercoaster has been frightening and I'm not sure I could have learnt to hang on for the ride without the counselling support. I have struggled to regulate my emotions whether happy or difficult and would become 'stuck' in emotional overdrive, flooded with nauseating emotion wrenching at my gut and that I just couldn't turn off. Initially it terrified me. I would panic and get close to putting my fist through a window just to try and pull the handbrake in a head-on emergency stop. I had been numb for so long that just feeling emotion again, of any sort, was overwhelming.
I have learnt now how to be 'safe' in the present moment, how to recognise 'triggers' through bodily sensations and how to bring myself down from 'fight or flight' responses. I am far more self-aware than I have ever been and feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to do this. Much of the inspiration has come from a book recommended by my therapist and I would recommend it to anyone to dip in and out of and see how life-changing something as simple as self-acceptance can be.
Mindfulness- a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world (Mark Williams and Danny Penman)
Yours well and truly shrunk.
Friday 29 May 2015
Thursday 28 May 2015
Breaking The Mould - Would You Like to Walk My Dog?
I walked into the doctor's in Bedford for a routine appointment to extend my fit note and walked out ten minutes later with a dog. A small, silky, amber-coloured cocker spaniel somewhat magnificently named Nike to be precise. Another thing I didn't see coming but I forgive myself for that one.
Nine minutes and forty seconds into the ten minute appointment, sick note signed but still in front of him, the doctor turned to look at me and decided to close the appointment with 'Did I have any pets?'.
Did I have any pets? Where on earth did that come from? But there I was now reaching for a balled-up Kleenex in my pocket, looking up and away at the top left-hand corner of the room, frantically blinking back rapidly-erupting tsunami-size tears when a simple 'er No? would have got me out of there.
Would you like to walk my dog? She's just in the car outside the surgery- she's quite old now and very good. Just take her round the park opposite and pop her back when you're done. She's called Nike.
So there I was walking the doctor's dog around a strange park with tears streaming down my face and snot on the back of my hand with a sick note in one hand and an opportunity leading me by the other. This random act of kindness (kind act of randomness?) did two things for me. It restored my faith in the 'chaos factor' that always helped me land on my feet with a twist; but also showed me that having a dog could be just the protective, nourishing reality I needed. (Not to mention the fact that NHS prescriptions just got real!)
When I'd been lying on the sofa in the dark blocking out the world only the week before, I hadn't wanted to see or speak to anyone. But I had craved a dog. A dog lying on the floor next to me, just to rest my hand on its warm, quiet, loyal head as I emptied mine.
That was 3 March 2015. Almost three months later, I now have a puppy lying sprawled in the sunlight on the floor in front of me. (He has just scratched up his first stretch of carpet and worked out that pot plants spit real earth onto the floor when harassed but he's still perfect in his wilful, stubborn, snoozy, adorable way.)
But that, ladies, gentlemen, and all my friends- is a whole 'nother magic story!
Nine minutes and forty seconds into the ten minute appointment, sick note signed but still in front of him, the doctor turned to look at me and decided to close the appointment with 'Did I have any pets?'.
Did I have any pets? Where on earth did that come from? But there I was now reaching for a balled-up Kleenex in my pocket, looking up and away at the top left-hand corner of the room, frantically blinking back rapidly-erupting tsunami-size tears when a simple 'er No? would have got me out of there.
Would you like to walk my dog? She's just in the car outside the surgery- she's quite old now and very good. Just take her round the park opposite and pop her back when you're done. She's called Nike.
So there I was walking the doctor's dog around a strange park with tears streaming down my face and snot on the back of my hand with a sick note in one hand and an opportunity leading me by the other. This random act of kindness (kind act of randomness?) did two things for me. It restored my faith in the 'chaos factor' that always helped me land on my feet with a twist; but also showed me that having a dog could be just the protective, nourishing reality I needed. (Not to mention the fact that NHS prescriptions just got real!)
When I'd been lying on the sofa in the dark blocking out the world only the week before, I hadn't wanted to see or speak to anyone. But I had craved a dog. A dog lying on the floor next to me, just to rest my hand on its warm, quiet, loyal head as I emptied mine.
That was 3 March 2015. Almost three months later, I now have a puppy lying sprawled in the sunlight on the floor in front of me. (He has just scratched up his first stretch of carpet and worked out that pot plants spit real earth onto the floor when harassed but he's still perfect in his wilful, stubborn, snoozy, adorable way.)
But that, ladies, gentlemen, and all my friends- is a whole 'nother magic story!
Breaking Off - What Colour Are My Balls?
Right, so time to get off the sofa and get better. But first, who the hell was I? In the Army I knew exactly who I was. I had been fully deconstructed and reassembled on the drill square and during log runs at Sandhurst and had been put back together as a fully automated, commissioned officer. I had a uniform (badly ironed and the late night v-shaped scars on my right arm to prove it), I had a rank, I had a fixed, unswervable daily routine, including a silver service feeding plan, I lived and worked with people who just got things done and put the world to rights in the bar afterwards. I had responsibility, things expected of me, frequent urgent despatches to go cross country skiing for weeks at a time, the opportunity for fully-inclusive package holidays to hot, hot places with tea and medals on return. On the firing ranges I knew that I would miss most things at 100m and hit everything from 300m with a respirator on; at my office I knew there would always be someone awaiting a bollocking stood outside and a fresh brew on the desk inside; in the bar I knew that I could get five bottles of Verve for €50 and pour 4 of them over those stood around me who would either be naked or at least in fancy dress. The madness was the sanity. The crazy world made sense. And then, a little tired after a year-long one of those hot, hot package deals, I left.
And I drifted. Drifted while moving in a highly-organised fashion between project management jobs as that seemed to be what the world thought it needed although didn't quite know what to do with. The thing was, I had absolutely no idea what I was aiming for- didn't have a clue whether it was the pink, the red, the brown, the black and where the hell was the cue ball when I needed it? Sod the f*****g parachute, what colour were my balls? Did I even have any anymore?! Where were those impulsive, stubborn cahunas that had steered me into the Army careers office on my way home from a bad day in the City (recruitment consultant - every day was a bad day) and enrolled me at Sandhurst three weeks later; the ones that bought an Audi TT convertible over a dodgy internet connection in Basra (justification for upgrading from trusty Renault Clio: surviving); the ones that got my underwear caught alight in the Paris Hilton (hotel, not the Chihuahua-clutching blonde) one snowy New Year; the ones that got me a spontaneous nose job in Harley Street following a particularly traumatic break-up; the ones that drove me to France on the wrong side of the road the day after passing my driving test. Yes, where the f*** were they now.
The simple epiphany came while I was stood in the shower wondering which flavour shower gel to use that morning. Squashed into the tiny rack in front of me were no less than five different shower gels, three shampoo and conditioners and two face washes. That was it. My life was overloaded- exploding with too much choice. No wonder I no longer knew who I was- I didn't even know which of anything was my favourite, my signature, anymore. And this was the same in every corner of my flat as I looked around. Scented candles: orange grove, vanilla and honey, red berry, seagrass (wtf?) FMBs: brown, dark brown, tan, black, black with spurs, grey. Tea: English breakfast, earl grey, organic green, green with manuka, camomile and honey, lemon and ginger (I hate ginger). Cook books: Jamie, Nigella, Ella, Hugh F-W, Gordon (decorative). Books: three at a time bought every time from Waterstones and never read, just stacked. Jewellery: mountains of it lying oxidising in various tins and boxes. I'd lost myself. Not in a romantic chapter of desperation and depression but under a pile of...'stuff'.
So I decided to streamline then and there. Indulge in my favourite things all of the time because they were 'me'. Use the things I liked, no matter what their value- what occasion exactly was I saving them for? Live- get on with it. And I promised myself the following...just because that's where I'm at:
Balls.
And I drifted. Drifted while moving in a highly-organised fashion between project management jobs as that seemed to be what the world thought it needed although didn't quite know what to do with. The thing was, I had absolutely no idea what I was aiming for- didn't have a clue whether it was the pink, the red, the brown, the black and where the hell was the cue ball when I needed it? Sod the f*****g parachute, what colour were my balls? Did I even have any anymore?! Where were those impulsive, stubborn cahunas that had steered me into the Army careers office on my way home from a bad day in the City (recruitment consultant - every day was a bad day) and enrolled me at Sandhurst three weeks later; the ones that bought an Audi TT convertible over a dodgy internet connection in Basra (justification for upgrading from trusty Renault Clio: surviving); the ones that got my underwear caught alight in the Paris Hilton (hotel, not the Chihuahua-clutching blonde) one snowy New Year; the ones that got me a spontaneous nose job in Harley Street following a particularly traumatic break-up; the ones that drove me to France on the wrong side of the road the day after passing my driving test. Yes, where the f*** were they now.
The simple epiphany came while I was stood in the shower wondering which flavour shower gel to use that morning. Squashed into the tiny rack in front of me were no less than five different shower gels, three shampoo and conditioners and two face washes. That was it. My life was overloaded- exploding with too much choice. No wonder I no longer knew who I was- I didn't even know which of anything was my favourite, my signature, anymore. And this was the same in every corner of my flat as I looked around. Scented candles: orange grove, vanilla and honey, red berry, seagrass (wtf?) FMBs: brown, dark brown, tan, black, black with spurs, grey. Tea: English breakfast, earl grey, organic green, green with manuka, camomile and honey, lemon and ginger (I hate ginger). Cook books: Jamie, Nigella, Ella, Hugh F-W, Gordon (decorative). Books: three at a time bought every time from Waterstones and never read, just stacked. Jewellery: mountains of it lying oxidising in various tins and boxes. I'd lost myself. Not in a romantic chapter of desperation and depression but under a pile of...'stuff'.
So I decided to streamline then and there. Indulge in my favourite things all of the time because they were 'me'. Use the things I liked, no matter what their value- what occasion exactly was I saving them for? Live- get on with it. And I promised myself the following...just because that's where I'm at:
- Shower gel: Molton Brown Templetree (and Dove if feeling poor)
- Tea: English Breakfast and Earl Grey (together, in a pot)
- FMBs: Sort yourself out, its summer- barefeet and flip flops
- Books: William Boyd (Cecilia Ahern in moments of absolute weakness)
- Box Sets: Breaking Bad (do not attempt to watch GOT simultaneously)
- Soaps: Eastenders every day and Made in Chelsea on Mondays (of course)
- Sports Kit: Sod everything and leave trainers on doormat
- Perfume: Bulgari by night and JLo in the sunshine
- Men: streamlined to devastating perfection. May need to compromise (will require therapy)
Balls.
Wednesday 27 May 2015
Brakes On!
I'd never really been to the doctor for anything other than the routine stuff, once a year at most. I couldn't remember the last time I even had a cold. Sitting in the waiting room that morning I felt awful but I still felt like a fraud. I wasn't struggling to give up smoking, I wasn't a domestic abuse victim, I didn't have cancer- none of the posters on the wall applied to me. What was I going to say when I got in there? I tried to rehearse in my head but it just sounded like someone else far away...'I need some time off', 'I broke down at work this morning', 'I'm not coping very well', 'I think its triggered by long-haul flying'...it was massive in my head but sounded so thin and self-pitying saying it out loud. I felt ashamed even though deep down I knew there was no need. Asking for the time off work, the 'fit note' was the hardest part even though that was what I really needed- why did I find it so difficult to ask for what I needed? In the end I was signed off work for a week and prescribed anti-depressants. One week was never going to cut it but at that point I had no idea of the rollercoaster that sodding filing cabinet had got me on....that overloaded filing cabinet was now teetering at the top of the stairs looking at me with a raised eyebrow wondering what I was going to do next...
I lay on the sofa for a week. A huge brown leather three-seater that my grandparents had bought me as a moving-in present the year before. I don't think I opened the curtains; the TV was just doing its own muted thing in the background; Sainsbury's bravely delivered to the door; getting dressed definitely didn't happen; I was waiting for the anti-depressants to work; I couldn't hold a thought in my head; I wanted to just be still and quiet. Invisible and temporarily absent from the world.
Mentally I felt in a fog, sliding into that clichéd black hole- the overriding image in my head was trying to get over a high wall and watching my hands almost reaching the top and sliding back down. Couldn't I be any more original? Not to mention the that fact that getting flashbacks to struggling over six foot walls under the weight of an oversize bergan on the assault course at Sandhurst really wasn't helpful! I didn't want to go out and when I did the anxiety got me. Supermarkets were overwhelmingly chlaustrophobic and I would have to leave, unable to cope with the other people around me, unable to make simple decisions about what I needed to buy, unable to cope with the pressure of the checkout and the expectation of me to engage with the world in ways which everyone else seemed so able to take for granted.
Physically, I was weak, tired and run down. I had mouth ulcers; I wasn't sleeping and when I did I'd wake up with a jump as though a creepy Minion had just appeared in my room; my skin rejected all contact with jewellery; talking about things I didn't even realise were mildly stressful gave me a rash all over my neck; and I was pissing clear- completely, 100% clear and the whites of my eyes were white, white, white. I was a full-on adrenalin repository!
Psychologically- no idea. Loop the loop. I wasn't recognising myself in the mirror. I blamed the Citalopram. It could stick its nausea, its weird warping of my taste buds and its mirror tricks.
I went cold turkey.
I lay on the sofa for a week. A huge brown leather three-seater that my grandparents had bought me as a moving-in present the year before. I don't think I opened the curtains; the TV was just doing its own muted thing in the background; Sainsbury's bravely delivered to the door; getting dressed definitely didn't happen; I was waiting for the anti-depressants to work; I couldn't hold a thought in my head; I wanted to just be still and quiet. Invisible and temporarily absent from the world.
Mentally I felt in a fog, sliding into that clichéd black hole- the overriding image in my head was trying to get over a high wall and watching my hands almost reaching the top and sliding back down. Couldn't I be any more original? Not to mention the that fact that getting flashbacks to struggling over six foot walls under the weight of an oversize bergan on the assault course at Sandhurst really wasn't helpful! I didn't want to go out and when I did the anxiety got me. Supermarkets were overwhelmingly chlaustrophobic and I would have to leave, unable to cope with the other people around me, unable to make simple decisions about what I needed to buy, unable to cope with the pressure of the checkout and the expectation of me to engage with the world in ways which everyone else seemed so able to take for granted.
Physically, I was weak, tired and run down. I had mouth ulcers; I wasn't sleeping and when I did I'd wake up with a jump as though a creepy Minion had just appeared in my room; my skin rejected all contact with jewellery; talking about things I didn't even realise were mildly stressful gave me a rash all over my neck; and I was pissing clear- completely, 100% clear and the whites of my eyes were white, white, white. I was a full-on adrenalin repository!
Psychologically- no idea. Loop the loop. I wasn't recognising myself in the mirror. I blamed the Citalopram. It could stick its nausea, its weird warping of my taste buds and its mirror tricks.
I went cold turkey.
Tuesday 26 May 2015
Breaking Down
It was February 10th 2015 when I finally cracked and despite seeing things more clearly now, back then I just didn't see it coming. I can remember driving to work and feeling this strange sense of calm, serenity even, and found myself tuning in to Classic FM. I'd never been able to listen to classical music, finding it too overwhelming and conflicting (let alone middle-aged), until the Christmas time just gone when the chat and hype of Heart just became too much to take in. I can see now that my head was filling up and starting to reject external stimuli in a bid to process what it already had. I was like a neglected filing cabinet stuffed full of unsorted, unstapled, unread papers spilling out of folders and drawers as out of control as the magic porridge pot spewing unchecked all over the floor.
I had been working in India for a couple of weeks and was returning to the UK office on a Monday morning. I opened my inbox and there was a string of whinging emails. Could no one get life in perspective? Something I have struggled with since leaving the Army in 2008. Why sweat the small stuff- its exhausting. But there was also an email from Stalker 69 and I froze.
Stalker 69 was a pervert masquerading as an old boy travelling the Golden Triangle on his own having a well-deserved break from his terminally ill wife back home. He came and joined me for coffee where I was working in the hotel café in Delhi- I thought I was having a nice chat with a fellow Brit abroad until he came back moments after taking his leave and offered me the 'opportunity' to see the inside of an executive suite. Staggered, I was lost for words. When he came back a third time an hour later, taking a more aggressive umbrage with my refusal of his offer, I was still unable to just tell him to f**k off. I felt uncomfortable, ashamed and unclean. I went back to my room and stood in the shower for half an hour. It wasn't like me to react like this, to take something so personally. Was I ok?
So when two weeks later, he had tracked down the general enquiries mailbox at work and sent me an email thanking me for coffee and offering me his contact details I couldn't believe it. How dare he. He knew that he had made me feel uncomfortable. Why would a 69 year old man think that a woman thirty years younger than him should be interested?
My team were talking to me but I wasn't hearing them. They were getting further and further away and I couldn't process their voices as well as the panic in my head. The team meeting was in five minutes. I had to get myself out of the office. I got up and headed to the Ladies across the landing and as soon as I had closed the door, I just remember turning to face the full-length mirror and starting to cry, uncontrollably. I couldn't stop. I knew something was wrong and that frightened me as I could usually control or suppress uncomfortable emotions. But I couldn't do this anymore and I needed help. I stepped out.
I couldn't think. My head was empty. But I couldn't stop crying either. One of the ladies in the office came and put her hand on my shoulder. She told me firmly that I wasn't well and that I needed to go and get better. It was like having a broken leg, I just couldn't see it. She did me a huge favour just by saying that; I needed to hear someone else tell me that I wasn't well in order to give me the courage to address this myself. Otherwise I would have simply returned to my desk, buried everything again and continued to limp on doing myself perhaps irreversible emotional, physical and psychological damage. Little did I realise that this was just the beginning - just the top drawer of that filing cabinet opening itself just far enough for me to walk into rather than skirt round.
I had been working in India for a couple of weeks and was returning to the UK office on a Monday morning. I opened my inbox and there was a string of whinging emails. Could no one get life in perspective? Something I have struggled with since leaving the Army in 2008. Why sweat the small stuff- its exhausting. But there was also an email from Stalker 69 and I froze.
Stalker 69 was a pervert masquerading as an old boy travelling the Golden Triangle on his own having a well-deserved break from his terminally ill wife back home. He came and joined me for coffee where I was working in the hotel café in Delhi- I thought I was having a nice chat with a fellow Brit abroad until he came back moments after taking his leave and offered me the 'opportunity' to see the inside of an executive suite. Staggered, I was lost for words. When he came back a third time an hour later, taking a more aggressive umbrage with my refusal of his offer, I was still unable to just tell him to f**k off. I felt uncomfortable, ashamed and unclean. I went back to my room and stood in the shower for half an hour. It wasn't like me to react like this, to take something so personally. Was I ok?
So when two weeks later, he had tracked down the general enquiries mailbox at work and sent me an email thanking me for coffee and offering me his contact details I couldn't believe it. How dare he. He knew that he had made me feel uncomfortable. Why would a 69 year old man think that a woman thirty years younger than him should be interested?
My team were talking to me but I wasn't hearing them. They were getting further and further away and I couldn't process their voices as well as the panic in my head. The team meeting was in five minutes. I had to get myself out of the office. I got up and headed to the Ladies across the landing and as soon as I had closed the door, I just remember turning to face the full-length mirror and starting to cry, uncontrollably. I couldn't stop. I knew something was wrong and that frightened me as I could usually control or suppress uncomfortable emotions. But I couldn't do this anymore and I needed help. I stepped out.
I couldn't think. My head was empty. But I couldn't stop crying either. One of the ladies in the office came and put her hand on my shoulder. She told me firmly that I wasn't well and that I needed to go and get better. It was like having a broken leg, I just couldn't see it. She did me a huge favour just by saying that; I needed to hear someone else tell me that I wasn't well in order to give me the courage to address this myself. Otherwise I would have simply returned to my desk, buried everything again and continued to limp on doing myself perhaps irreversible emotional, physical and psychological damage. Little did I realise that this was just the beginning - just the top drawer of that filing cabinet opening itself just far enough for me to walk into rather than skirt round.
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