Can I tell you a secret?

First some background...because I need to work up to it...

Its Global Mental Health Day. 

I have worked for an NHS Mental Health Trust, and it was a real eye opener.

I have seen family and friends struggle with their mental health, including losing their lives. 

I believe that stigma and taboo live in the shadows.  They create and add to misery, and fuel lives of quiet desperation. They allow prejudice to grow and people to feel alone.

Openness and honesty, just talking about mental health issues, can make things better.

But honesty. True, authentic, gut wrenching honesty is REALLY scary. 

What will people think? 

Am I broken? 

Am I weird?

Will people quietly avoid me on the street and stop answering my messages?

Will anyone ever employ me ever again?

Will people think I'm over sharing or exaggerating just to get attention?

So far so good, not too scary, general comments and background, but now I have to be really honest, and talk about me, and that is the scary bit....

After a ridiculous weekend where I was swinging wildly from suicidal thoughts to grandiose ideas a worried, supportive and loving husband (thank you darling) got me to go to the GP. A worried (and very kind) GP got me an urgent appointment with a Consultant Psychiatrist. The psychiatrist diagnosed me with Bipolar Disorder.

What?!

Surely that wasn't me?!

Was it?

I've always had mood swings, and felt things deeply (my own and other people's emotions) but bipolar, at 41, really?

Actually, looking back it shouldn't have been such a shock. Big tough impossible jobs and a series of toxic working environments and terrible bosses on top of being a mum, postnatal depression and well just life really, had slowly eroded away at my mental health. The same psychiatrist had two years earlier suggested I had cyclothymia (a more subtle form of bi-polar) and warned that I needed to manage my stress levels, that if I didn't, although it was rare, things could escalate.

I reached out at work, shared the report, but they didn't really understand and soon forgot about the issue, piling on the pressure as the toxic environment of local government in austerity continued to build. It wasn't their fault. I didn't have the strength to fight the system at the time and neither did they.

At this point, if you're worrying, it gets better, there is a happy ending...stick with it...

Lets go back a bit...

I remember being in my mothers womb...

Only kidding.... (I'd put a laughing/crying with laughter emoji here, if I knew how to)

A couple of years ago I sat in a counsellors office, it was the third or fourth session, and the third or fourth counsellor and she asked me what I did for fun.

I looked at her blankly.

Fun, what was that? I kind of saw the idea as an abstract notion, I understood it logically but didn't recognise it emotionally.

She got out a checklist, a checklist for fucks sake. A list of things people did for fun. I read the list, it included things like bowling, and meeting friends. Nothing jumped out as being fun to be honest. Seriously, not one thing on the list. She sent me home with homework, do something, anything, just for fun!

How the hell had my life become so joyless? I'm not a joyless person! Seriously, how the hell had this happened! I remembered reading Charles Dickens "Hard Times" at school and thinking how could anyone end up living a utilitarian life without joy? Yet the thing that had seemed so impossible to me as a teenager had become my reality.

But I'm tough and a problem solver at heart, and that moment sparked the beginning of a journey. A tough journey, a messy journey, a journey back to that person I vaguely remembered. A journey back to mental health.

I had to start with work, that was the biggest problem. I'd gone into HR in the public sector because I wanted to fight the good fight, do the right thing, help people, provide fairness, equality, social justice. And I did, sometimes. But more often than not managers just wanted me to find ways to make their life easier, and that led me into conflict between my values and what I was expected to do. It was tiring trying to find ways to please everyone and be true to my own values and I ended up doing things I was uncomfortable with.

But things had got out of hand. No job, no career, is worth a life without joy.

So I put in whistleblowing allegation at work.

Although theoretically this should have been seen as a neutral, or even positive act by my employers, in reality it was pretty effective way of destroying my local government career - not because I was wrong, but because I dared to speak up. And the behaviour from them that followed...

For now just lets say it got significantly worse before it got better...

So after one of the most horrendous six months of my life, battling with work just to be heard, my mental health was in tatters. At first, I was in such a mess I did what many people with a new bipolar diagnosis do, I took Lithium. I read up on it, and to be honest I was desperate, I just couldn't cope with my life as it was. It worked, to start with anyway. It created some calm in my mind, and let me create a new plan for my life. Whilst many people stay on Lithium for a long time and find it really beneficial, after a few months I started experiencing side effects. It made me nauseous all the time and just seemed to numb everything. It was like a mild chemical lobotomy. Not pleasant, not pleasant at all. Yes, I needed to find some stability in my mind, but I didn't want to live lobotomised either.

I needed a new way to pay the bills and support my mental health in a more general way (without lithium). I needed to sleep better, be outside in the open more, avoid toxic work environments and eat better. I needed to be self employed to give myself more flexibility and choice of what work I would do, when and with whom.

I'd always thought that the private sector would be full of cut throat behaviour, that it would be far more ruthless and harsh than the public sector, but it was actually quite the opposite. I found a band of friendly, creative, entrepreneurial free spirits who were generous with their time and knowledge to help a newbie like me (and oh my goodness I had a lot to learn, I still do). I found my tribe, if you're reading this, you know who you are!

Becoming self employed is still one of the scariest yet most rewarding decisions I've ever made (up there with getting married and having kids), deciding to focus on supporting employees (not employers) was also scary. But after a couple of unpleasant pieces of consultant work, I realised I needed focus on helping people who were struggling with their own issues and demons at work.

It has been a challenging, yet fabulously rewarding journey, and it is far from over (I have lots of ideas and plans for the future).

But asking for help, and admitting I had a problem helped me start doing the real work. I started really thinking about my priorities and values, and started spending time doing the things I felt drawn to do, and spending time with the people who I felt drawn to.

The picture at the top is me, a few weeks ago. It isn't me hyper (if you were wondering) but is actually me relaxed and being a bit silly. I was having a photo shoot with some friends because I needed some professional images for my business, and I didn't have anything I could use. But I hated the idea of having my photo taken.

My fabulous friends Matt Glover and Katy Wheatley were trying desperately to get me to relax enough to be able to take some photos. The picture of me above is actually an "outtake" taken by Matt. Me dancing as Katy was singing while we waited for a rather drunk bystander to move on and get back to the serious job of taking photos (he kept getting in shot and although he seemed rather delightful it wasn't quite the image I was getting at).

I don't have everything sorted, and I still have good and bad days, but I feel a new sense of ease. I am doing what I am meant to be doing, with the people I'm meant to be with, working in line with my values. I can now have fun without going into a hyper and do so regularly. It is hard to even imagine what it was like to be that person two years ago who couldn't recognise fun, because my life is now full of fun. Not always big, massive things, just laughing with my kids, celebrating my nieces birthday, date nights with my hubby and having lunch with my new entrepreneurial friends or playing cards with neighbours.

Yes I nearly torpedoed my marriage (but managed to save it) and I did torpedo my job and that toxic working environment, but I found other ways to earn a living where I could share my time with great, amazing, supportive people.

I've realised the Bi-polar doesn't define me, it may not even be a permanent thing, it is just a label. My poor brain was just desperately trying to find a way to deal with the awful situation I was in and find a way out, and it did. So thank you brain, for all your madness and craziness. I love that you feel emotions so strongly, that you cry at the sad bits in the films, and can't watch when people get really uncomfortable and that you can make my whole body join in with your laughter and care deeply about other people and their journeys.

I choose a full life, not an easy life, a life that is led authentically and honestly, even if it is sometimes scary. I will not be ashamed of my mistakes, but learn from them. The future is never certain, but you know what, it is going to be fun finding out what is round the next corner. I suspect that my adventures have only just begun....