By writing this blog I am either going to be a massive hypocrite or it will be a monumental action in the movement of the game of life. 

We all play the game, we’re all pieces on a chessboard; we all move the marker on Ludo and we all fight for that one special piece when it comes to Monopoly – for me it was the dog, I don’t know about anyone else.

Whatever your chosen piece for a boardgame the rules are the same…

Win win win!

Don’t try and lie, it’s true, no one enters a game to come last, no one wants to lose, we all want to come first and stare at the people behind us from the finish line and feel even just a miniscule of satisfaction so that we can tell ourselves…

“…this time, we did not fail.“

No one ever says…

“Well done for coming last.”

They always say…

“You tried your best.”

But if we’re honest with ourselves, what we really hear is…

“You tried your best…BUT IT WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH WAS IT???”

I’m not being mean, it’s just my version of reality and if you disagree with me that’s absolutely fine.  I am not naïve enough to think that what I’m saying is the truth because it might not be; it might just be my own opinion but to some extent, it is just as valid as yours.

Today I didn’t intend on writing anything.  I was going to have a weekend off from blog writing because all I’ve said this week is…

“I’m running out of material.”

But am I?  Who knows?  I’ll let the reader be the judge of that one.

In just over a year I’m going to be forty – god it kills me every time I say that, simply because anyone who has known me for over ten years, will know that when I hit twenty-nine I freaked the hell out! I spent an entire twelve months panicking about turning thirty.  I kid you not it was awful, I was awful!

For me, becoming thirty was worse than any episode Bernard had to throw at me.  It was worse than hospital, it was worse than losing all of my friends to an illness that I had no control over.  It was worse than being left on the single’s table at a friend’s wedding and being told you didn’t make the cut for bridesmaid because your self harm scars would look ugly on the photos (yeah I’m not joking, that did actually happen).

When I looked at my life I was ashamed, I was embarrassed.  All of my friends were in a much better position that I was.  Better jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends, they owned their own houses, they drove a nice car – they could actually drive! They had kids or were having kids or were in a position to have kids.  I had none of that that.  I was stuck in a job I wasn’t much good at, even though a monkey could do it for the same amount of peanuts – my old colleagues will agree with me, it wasn’t rocket science, again, I’m not being mean.

Everyone else had everything you’re supposed to have by the time you reach that milestone of turning thirty.  I stuck out like a poor unfortunate thumb…

Mentally ill, single, rubbish job, can’t drive, lives with her mum.

The epitome of failure in the eyes of the successful.

When I was about twenty-seven I went to the theatre with a friend.  I was working part time in a kid’s clothes shop.  We went to see Billy Elliot.  Going to the theatre always sparks of my creative side.  Once I wanted to be on the stage, then to the side of the stage and then, to have anything to do with the stage would have been lovely.  But for me, at that time I was a simple shop assistant; my friend on the other hand had a super high-profile occupation, she wasn’t a surgeon, but she changed lives. 

We were driving back from the theatre and we were talking about how good the show was and I made the mistake of saying how I wished I could be part of something that incredible.  I remember her response as clear as day…

“You’ve got no excuse to just be working part time.  You haven’t been ‘ill’ for a while now and you’ve got the time on your hands to be doing something more worthwhile, you say you’re a writer so you should be doing something with your writing.”

I remember instantly thinking – after “ouch”…

“Well that’s your birthday present gone from twenty to a tenner!”

I know some people reading this will agree with her, she was my friend telling me how it is and there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s friendship!  Well, a word in your ear…

Do you think the unfortunate haven’t heard that before?  Do you think we haven’t said that kind of thing to ourselves?  Trust me, when you feel like a failure compared to everyone else, that kind of thing is part of everyday living, it’s like brushing your teeth, it’s like flossing, pouring the milk on your cereal, tying your shoelaces on your way to your mediocre job…it’s a way of life!

Now let’s get real, the world has been throwing milestones at us long before we turn thirty.  From birth your baby is supposed to crawl by a certain time, walk by a particular age and be speaking full sentences before you’ve even thought about introducing them to the potty and if your kid doesn’t do these things, your kid isn’t half as good as the kid four doors down with the parents who have a jacuzzi in their back garden.  Don’t lie mums, I know you’ve all read those “how to” books.

The truth is, there is always someone telling us that by a certain point in your life you should be doing a certain something.

When I was sixteen I was getting ready to leave school, I was putting my record of achievement together and probably going through some form of depression at the same but the biggest thing of all was every day I would look in the mirror and I would feel panic.  I panicked because in my eyes I was sixteen and I hadn’t done anything worth shouting about.  When I looked at the contents of my record of achievement I didn’t see anything.  No Nobel Peace Prize.  No Man Booker Prize.  No Medal of Honour or Outstanding Contribution to Music Award.  Vice form rep was as close as I was ever going to get to any kind of societal recognition.  And just so you know, I was robbed of head form rep, the guy my form voted in never even went to the meetings, he was too busy smoking by the bins!

I’m not going to list my every failed attempt at a milestone, god that really would be depressing and I’m trying to turn the frown on this blog upside down, remember, this is not a space for self-pity because public self-pity is a request for admiration and ego-boosting and that’s just not what this is about. 

Today, this is me saying I’m having a bad day.  I’m grumpy.  I’m moody, I’m short tempered and I’m just fed up, I’m not going to lie. 

Today I am fed up because I have a massive spot on my face that I can’t get rid of!  I’ve tried every acne trick in the flippin book and nothing is working…

(NB – not asking for tips, trust me I’ve been fighting off mini mountains since I was ten years old)

I’m fed up because I miss my cat.  When everything else in the world was rubbish she was the one constant thing who never passed judgement.  And today, when I really need her fluffy tail in my face and her little head pressed against my chest like she was trying to listen to my heart, she’s not here.

I’m fed up of lockdown.  I just want to go to M&S and have a bacon butty and a cup of tea with my mum. 

I’m fed up because I want to go to the bakery round the corner and get a Bakewell tart and not feel like I’m committing a crime because its not really an essential item. 

I’m fed up because apparently I look like I’m in my twenties, and don’t get me wrong I am grateful for that, believe me, I am.  Every night when I wash my face I look in the mirror and I am happy that I don’t have crows feet yet but when I looked in the mirror this morning I swear to god I could see a wrinkle right near my mouth!

I’m fed up because when everyone was turning thirty I felt like I was being left behind but now that I’m facing forty, I feel like I’m being forced to leave my youth behind and I’m just not ready to do that.

They say age is just a number.  They’re right, it is just a number. 

It’s…

1. How many boys did you kiss before you were 12?
2. How many GCSE’s did you get?
3. How many A-levels did you pass?
4. How many driving lessons did it take for you to get your green ‘L’s?
5. How many times has your heart been broken?
6. How many bedrooms has your house got?
7. How many kids have you got?

How many times are you going to torture yourself with the answers that come up to the expectations of our everyday society? 

Because that’s all it is, it’s everyone else’s view on how we should live our lives.  We put pressure on ourselves to match up to that expectation, whether it’s what we want or not.  We still strive for it in someway and we burn ourselves with self-pity because we forget the things we’ve done and the things we’ve achieved in terms of our own lives.

I look at my thirties and I wish I’d done all of the things I have when I was in my twenties.  I wish I’d met Matt earlier so I could get married young.  I wish I had been quicker to learn how to manage Bernard so that I wouldn’t have spent my twenties trying to lead a life of apparent normality.  I wish I had been a speaker sooner and had the ability to believe in myself so that sometimes life wasn’t so hard.  Sometimes I just wish things were different. 

Having said that, I also know that what we have is never enough.  If I could drive I would love a baby blue Fiat 500.  But who’s to say that once I got my Fiat 500 I wouldn’t then want a BMW?  Then a Mercedes? Then a Porsche?

I’ve got a four bedroomed house but I’d love a bigger back yard. 

I’m in a job I couldn’t be happier in but I want more money in my pay packet.

I’ve got hair on my head but I wish it was thicker.

I’ve got a decent laptop but now I want a better one.

I’ve got a stoma but there’s something wrong with it so I want a new one.

Truth is, we always want more.  We always want something better than what we already have.  We’re never happy with just our lot and that’s just human nature. 

We compare ourselves to others because…

“Keeping up with the Jones’s”

…is drilled into us from birth. 

Today I was writing the fiction story that I started last year.  I will never do anything with it because it’s just for me.  It’s my release and something that has kept my head above the water for months.  As I was writing it I could feel those burning, hot water, things they call tears trying to push their way through my eye sockets and I realised that I was thinking of the things that I can’t control.  I found my brain inflicting self-hatred, reminding me that I will never be normal and I will never have the things others have so easily.  I may get what I want, but it will always be a battle because life has always been a battle.

And then I thought…

“Stop it.  Stop comparing yourself to others.”

…because I am not “others”, and would I even want to be?  Would I really, honestly want to be someone that I am not?

On Wednesday at work, I was having a natter with a colleague and we were discussing how people spend their lives comparing themselves to others.  Suddenly I realised that as humans, we spend so long comparing the things we have and haven’t achieved that we forget to actually bask in the glory of the things we have.  She then quoted, probably one of the most wise and profound things that I have ever heard…

I can’t help wishing I’d heard that when I was thirty, then things might have been different.  My friend printed that quote and it now takes pride of place on the wall facing my desk.

Today I had to remind myself of this quote and of the conversation we had because she made me realise that, although I may not have achieved all of the items on the world’s invisible achievement checklist, I have done some things others will never do.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget about what we have because we’re too busy trying to better them.  How can we appreciate what we have if we don’t even acknowledge how great it is to ourselves?  

Now before I end this, I am under no illusion that this little epiphany might not last.  I might post this and read it a week later and think…

“…poppycock…”

…delusion and illusion are part of life and I know when we think we see things clearly it’s often a moment in passing but, in preparation for that moment of self-doubt I want to tell myself and anyone else who has made it to the end of this blog…

You are an individual, you are not the same as anyone else and nor should you strive to be…because my friend…

…there is no comparison.

Dedicated to my friend at work, you turn my frown upside down, even if this piece doesn’t reflect that; thank you for making things clearer…

Thirteen years ago I thought I could make it as a writer.  I thought all I needed was someone to show me the way and I thought that way was through an Arvon Foundation course. 

Just to paint a picture of what Arvon is all about, it’s basically a house somewhere remote, surrounded by fields and farm animals and the foundation owners stick about 10 of you in there with two to three professional writers and over the course of 6 days they teach you the tricks of the trade.  It’s kind of like Big Brother for arty farty people without the cameras.  There are all sorts of writing genres to choose from so you look through a brochure, pick which course you want in which teeny tiny village, look up the writers who are leading the course and you convince yourself this is what you want; this is what you need because if you’re going to be anyone in this world, this is the path to take in order to achieve it…

…or is that just me?

It’s a funny old world Arvon.  I learnt very quickly that in a room full of people who are all different from each other you can still feel that agonising pain of being unaccepted.  I say this because, at Arvon you willingly open yourself up to criticism.  You literally hand over your heart and soul for someone to look at, analyse and then dish out their constructive opinion. 

I admit I went Arvon thinking I was pretty good at stringing a sentence together but it didn’t take long for that thought to be squashed.  It was implied that my writing wasn’t good enough.  And I was told it was too dark, too bleak and people don’t want to read something that has no hope in it. 

I disagreed, and trust me, that took balls!  When you’re staring a writer in the face who is paid to put words on to paper and all you have is a few sheets of A4 with words that reflect your own pain, it doesn’t matter that life is sometimes like that.  Life can be bleak and sometimes there is no hope – but without the money in your bank account to back up that claim, it doesn’t matter what you think, it doesn’t, because the man with the money doesn’t care.  He’s getting paid to tell you your work is unreadable and as a writer you should especially steer clear of writing about mental illness because no one wants to read about it, it’s…

“…too depressing.”

Arvon left an impression.  It was a crazy week with no phone signal, and if you can’t drive there was no escape.  Everyday I felt like I was being ripped apart by a pack of hungry lions washing my limbs down with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and it hurt!  Man it’s painful.  I am not naive and please don’t think I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for, I did.  But I also had a dream that someone might have a little bit belief in me so that I could gain a little for myself.  

Believe it or not, somehow, by the end of the week I felt like I’d turned a corner.  I’d finally connected with the people I was sharing my soul with, I was the youngest and I wanted to be liked – who doesn’t?  I took everything that was said to me on board.  I tested out all the advice about my writing and on the final night I wrote a light-hearted, comical short story that blew the socks off all them! It did, I know it did because the applause still rings in my ears and I remember being poured a glass of wine by the writer who told me my work was too bleak to put on to the page and he said…

“I think you’ve found your niche.”

You know what?  I look at that story thirteen years later and I wonder what was so good about it to change the opinion of an entire room?  What was it in those words on those pages that changed people’s opinions about me when for the last five days they thought everything I wrote was too depressing?   

The answer is simple…

…I changed.

I changed because they wanted me to.  I changed the vision I had inside my head, I changed my writing style.  I flipped the coin from heads to tails and I dipped my toes into an area that I knew nothing about.  I felt like a ham sandwich in need of cheese that’s nowhere in sight. Don’t get me wrong that applause was worth it, but when the week ended what was I left with?

The course leaders said it’s good to tweak.  If I tweaked my writing style things would be different.  But in order to tweak my writing style I had to tweak myself.  I had to tweak every part of my personality and train it to think the way other writers deemed to be acceptable. 

The only problem I have with that is, nobody tells Bret Easton Ellis to stop writing weird stories that you can never figure out because by the time you’ve read all about the yuppies on Wall Street snorting coke, you can’t remember which story Patrick Bateman hasn’t been mentioned in. 

No-one tells Jilly Cooper to down her writing tools in exchange for knitting needles because old ladies should not be thinking about throbbing members! 

And it never crosses anyone’s mind that perhaps Shakespeare isn’t the greatest writer of all time because half of his plays are bleak!  They’re depressing and there’s no hope in them because 90% of the time he kills off the majority of his characters!  You just have to look at King Lear to see that.

So I rebelled, I rebelled against the professional writers, the paid writers, the people considered to be knowledgeable and qualified to tell me I’d never get a shelf in Waterstones.  I’d like to say I respected their opinion but I didn’t, not really.  So I decided, if I wanted to write a story with characters who were consumed by mental illness, then I would. 

If writing stories about mental illness is such a bad thing then doesn’t that say something about the world?  Doesn’t that say that we should be opening our eyes and our mouths and putting pen to paper to say to the world that this exists!  And it kills people!  And in the grand scheme of things this was just one person’s, opinion so tell me where the crime is!

I’ve always believed that diagnosis is simply an answer to a question, but it also fuels the fire for stigma.  It doesn’t matter how many people have a mental illness, if you’re not talking about it, then any negativity increases, it doesn’t fade.  In my early twenties I was ashamed of my mental illness.  It was a huge part of my life that I didn’t feel I could be open about.  I could only deal with it through writing and Arvon was a sharp reminder that even then the written word still wasn’t okay. 

My mum was happy to tell people about my diagnosis. I’m not sure if it was because she’d seen me completely destroyed by it and she’d had to drive hundreds of miles across the country to pick me up on countless occasions when it got too much to cope with.  Or was it because she wanted people to know there was a reason her daughter had flopped at every angle of life and Bipolar was that reason.  Or maybe she just wanted to start off the change; maybe she was ahead of the game, I don’t know.  Whatever it was my mum should have been my inspiration and it should never have taken me twelve years to realise that…

…if we do nothing, then nothing changes.

In 2014 a friend loaned me a book…

I hadn’t known her for very long so I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I don’t read books about Bipolar people by people with Bipolar.  But I decided to humour her and I read the first page.  That first page turned into the first chapter and then the entire book.  I’m not about to talk about the book in detail, it’s not my story to tell, but please check Andy out, his book is on Amazon, he’s an amazing Bipolar survivor, a wonderful friend and my inspiration.  He won’t take the credit for it but…

…Andy is the reason I found my voice.

At the tail end of 2014 something in me changed.  I was becoming less ashamed of having a mental illness.  I was slowly opening up to more people in and out of work.  I’d mention it in passing, I’d “like” something on Facebook that was mental heath related.  I would post something mental health related and this strange feeling started grow within me.  It was like a burning desire to do something, I wanted to change something, I wanted something to get better!

One morning when I was getting ready for work Mum said she’d noticed I didn’t seem quite myself and she asked what it was I wanted to do.  I remember putting the milk back in the fridge and I said…

“I want to be like Andy, I want to talk about my mental health…I want to be a speaker!”

There…I’d said it.  That’s what I wanted.  Right there and then in the kitchen with half a carton of semi-skimmed in my hand, was the moment that I had to say goodbye to shame.  If I was going to speak up about living a life with a mental illness, then I had a shedload of balls I had to grow and it was not going to be easy.

My family and friends would ask me what I would talk about and I know some of their lips curled when I said I was going to be honest about my mental health.  But when they asked me what I wanted to get out of it I would have to stop and think for a moment.  Because in all honesty…

…what the hell did I know?

When you decide to be a speaker you don’t wake up on the day of the decision and think..

“…woo hoo! Yeah! I’m a speaker and I know exactly what I’m doing!”

I wish it was that simple.  I joined a speaking club where I was encouraged to do all sorts of things that I had never imagined I could do.  In everyday life I would never read aloud.  I would stammer, I would flounder and then I wouldn’t be able to breathe.  The ladies at the speaking club taught me how to pause.  If you pause you can find your breath, if you pitch your voice at the right level it takes less nervous energy and if you concentrate on the pace of your speech, the flow is easier and your audience are able follow and understand everything you say. 

Those ladies pushed me to limits I never knew I had.  They had me enter the North Pennine Area Speech Contest where I talked for eight minutes about drag queens and I came first place. 

While I was trying to find my feet in the speaking world and I was also coming to the realisation that still so many people had no idea what Bipolar is or that in actual fact, it’s not a crime to have it or talk about it.  The day I spoke about being mentally ill at the speaking club was the day I knew my time there was coming to an end.  They were horrified.  They were beyond words – which for a speaking club isn’t exactly a great advert – they suddenly lost respect for me, maybe they wondered what they had let into the club?  Whatever it was they felt, I allowed myself to be affected by it for a few weeks before I decided to leave for good.

I was out on my own, I had no idea what it took to become a speaker let alone a good one!  And let me tell you, it is hard, it is stressful, it is nerve wracking and when you open up at a bootcamp for the first time in front of 10 strangers it’s like hanging yourself out to dry and waiting for a ten-tonne truck to come and run right into you.

I did three of Richard McCann’s bootcamps and he taught me everything I know!  How to stand, how to draw your audience in, what your presentation should look like and all of the things that you should be doing to get out there and speak to the world.  He taught me that if you don’t go looking for a speaking gig, you won’t find it, because it sure as hell won’t find you.

Today’s blog is not about listing my speaking achievements.  I don’t speak out about the horrors of having a mental illness so that I can gain praise.  In the early days I would post things on Facebook to show people what I’d done, it was a way of saying…

“Hey!  I’m bipolar and I’ve done this when no-one thought I could!”

When you have a mental illness people expect very little of you.  And when you’re constantly being told that a decent, wholesome life is out of reach and you have to accept that unhappiness is 90% of your make-up; it is so hard to turn that around.  When you feel like the only person who believes in you is you; it’s hard to make that enough.

Initially I had no idea what I wanted to achieve.  I was tired, I was bored and I was so sick of the system getting it wrong for so many people.  I was exhausted from hearing stupid and ignorant comments and using words wrong way…

“Oh my god, she’s so Bipolar”

“I’m having a Bipolar moment”

“They’re so moody, they must be Bipolar”

…because that’s not really how it works, that’s not even how mental illness as a whole works. 

I was frustrated with the media world for painting all Bipolar people with one of very few brushes…

Stacey from Eastenders

Claire Danes in Homeland

Stephen Fry – because he always looks fine!

People would ask what did I have to offer?  What could I possibly speak about that people would not only give their time to listen to but also walk away having gained something from hearing the words that come out of my mouth.

You know what?  I wasn’t sure anyone could gain anything from hearing me speak.  I didn’t even know if I had a story to tell.  I’ve never really put a foot wrong in my life.  I’ve never smoked, I stopped drinking at twenty-six, I was never a wild child; even my Bipolar episodes were low key compared to others.  I’ve never been close to death, I’ve never taken a life, I’ve never been to prison, I have never done anything worth reporting. 

What I have done, is try to live my life.  I’ve tried to never give up and I’ve tried to fight a system that needs reminding that the mentally ill are still people.

Six years in, I don’t know if I’m any good; I will never be perfect and I will always pick holes at my delivery.  I probably do the exact opposite of how I have been trained and for that I apologise to Richard.  But what I do must be working because now I have business cards, a website and a blog and not only that, but I get requested to speak and that was once a pipedream.

Andy taught me that the best way to speak to an audience is to think of it as a conversation and he’s right.  It’s a conversation that we should be having with our families and our friends, that having a mental illness is as normal as having a cold.  It’s just like any other illness, it’s a fight and it’s a battle to take control of in order to get well again. 

When I think about why I started this whole thing in the first place, it was never about achievement.  It was about telling the professionals who aren’t listening that they need to open their ears.  It is not okay to write the mentally ill off.  It is not alright to tell people what an acceptable way of life is according to them.  Everyone is different so how can people be pigeonholed? 

I didn’t set out to change the world (contrary to my Bernard’s belief), I set out to show people how to say…

“…no! That is not okay.”

In 2008, back at Arvon, I was proud of my bleak and depressing stories and I should never have allowed myself to change because others didn’t feel the same way.  Nobody ever asked why my stories were so dark.  No-one ever took the time to wonder if there was a deeper meaning to my miserable paragraphs.  Maybe they weren’t interested, maybe darkness is something we should avoid at all costs.  I don’t know.  But I do know that change is inevitable.  I know it happens without us even noticing and over the years, especially the last six, I have changed both inside and out. 

My writing has changed.  Everything I write now has some form of hope resting within the depressing words.  I’ve made this change because I have hope in my life, where once upon a time I had none.

At Arvon people said tweaking yourself was the right path to take to gain success…well?

Consider me tweaked…

…but it’s not because of you … it’s because of me.

Dedicated to my good friend Andy. You gave me the strength to get started and taught me never to be ashamed of being Bipolar. One day when the world is a safer place I hope we can share a stage and tell our stories together…

When I go to Marks and Spencers I usually have a list and I have to stick to the list or I’ll just go wild and buy stuff that I don’t need.  As you can imagine, in M&S it’s virtually impossible to obey the written command of a shopping list and whilst I may have entered the shop aiming for a pizza, four frozen baked potatoes and a bag of fancy apples, I usually come out with those items plus a box of biscuits, a bag of Percy Pigs and a chocolate lolly for my niece.

In Waterstones I will go in with around five books on my list and I give myself permission to buy them because they last longer than a bag of Percy Pigs.  But more often than not I come out empty handed because I’ll look at the books and for some reason I might not like the cover, or I might not like the first five words on the front page; so I put the books back on the shelf because none of them have met my expectations and there’s no point buying a book if it doesn’t tick all the boxes that it needs to.

Now this is where psychiatric life gets interesting.  When your mental illness starts to act beyond the realms of a GP’s capability a good GP will down tools and say…

“This ain’t my bag; I’m sending you to a psychiatrist!”

…and after you’ve waited between four to six months for your appointment this is where the fun starts!

Nineteen years ago the only psychiatrist I’d ever heard of was Freud – and let’s be honest he doesn’t have the greatest reputation, I mean I was at university reading Dracula and they were throwing the Oedipus Complex about like it was a football covered in cream.  In case you don’t know what the Oedipus Complex is, it’s something Freud came up with where a guy has a complex relationship with his mother and this is because he fancies her and it results in all sorts of chaos in his life and relationships (something to that effect).  It got dragged into every book I read while I was doing my degree and I now have to make a conscious effort not to give off any impression that the characters in my own stories fancy their parents because it’s a crazy idea and I will not be tainted with the same literary ridiculous brush that the likes of Bram Stoker and the Bronte sisters have been tainted with, no thank you!

Aside from Freud I didn’t know a great deal about what a psychiatrist was about.  I knew they were doctors and I knew they looked after brains but that was it.  When I got my appointment to meet my very first psychiatrist all I could think was that he was going to fix my brain and make me normal.

When you have a physical ailment and you go to the doctor or a specialist, they can look at the problem and they can see it because whatever it is is usually staring them in the face.  My bowel problem was a physical problem and whoever looked at my situation knew that there was a real problem and they tried to fix it.  When it comes to your brain all a psychiatrist has to go on are the words that come out of your mouth.

You can’t lie about constipation.  You can’t hide a lump that shouldn’t be there and if you’re in pain, or discomfort and you can barely move there’s no disguising that because it’s real; a doctor can see it.  But if it’s your brain that’s in pain, if it’s unhappy or it’s got a million things going on in there that it shouldn’t have, voices, despair, moving inanimate objects and a crazed idea about saving the world with the help of the singers on a playlist on your iPod; then those are the things you have to tell the person the system has placed in front of you and hope to God that they believe you and they want to fix you!

In 2002 I was a first timer in a psychiatrist’s office.  In the waiting room I sat and looked all the people who were there with their social workers and nurses.  Some had no teeth, some had yellow fingernails from too much smoking and some just stared into space.  I remember looking at all of them and thinking…

“Is this my life?  Is this who I am now?”

No one tells you what to expect when you go to a psychiatry appointment.  A few months ago I had a CT scan and I got a leaflet in the post to tell me how it would work.  In the summer my mum had an Endoscopy and she got a booklet to tell her the exact steps her feet would take.  When I walked into the Rivington Unit at the Royal Bolton Hospital in 2002 and sat with all the psychiatric patients, no one told me how it would work, no one told me the steps my feet would take.  No one told me that it doesn’t matter if you have good days and bad days or if the only reason you managed to get dressed today is because you’ve just had three bad days and this one is a little lighter.  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter because it’s not about yesterday or last week or ten years ago.  It’s about…

…how you present on the day…

You have to be willing to work in that room.  You can’t be shy or secretive.  You can’t hold back and you have to be the strongest version of yourself even when you have no fight left in you, you have to find some because if you put forward a wavering claim of insanity and a psychiatrist doesn’t see it to be a convincing representation of how you truly feel, then you will walk out of that door with absolutely nothing.  No diagnosis, no meds, no referral to therapy…absolutely no help whatsoever.  And believe me, when you’ve jumped through the hoops to get to the top dog, you don’t want to leave with nothing, because you have to remember, these guys are pros.  They could probably pay off my entire mortgage in a couple of pay checks. They take no prisoners, they haven’t got time to be messing about so the least you can do is get your facts straight.

I got lucky.  My first psychiatrist was a human being.  I was in that room an hour.  I was nervous, my hands were sweaty and when I followed him into the room the first thing I said was…

“Where’s the couch?”

When he gave me my diagnosis I cried.  Not because I was sad – I mean I was, obviously, Bipolar Disorder is not something to celebrate – but because I finally had answers for the behaviour I couldn’t explain.  I left with meds and a weight off my shoulders because just when I thought no one could help me, I’d found someone who could.

What’s the worst thing that a good psychiatrist can do?  The answer is simple…

…get a new job and leave.

You never know who’s going to take their place, it could be any old fool.  You know that saying people use when you’ve just split with someone and they’re trying to make you feel better…

“You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.”

Well for me, it was a bit like that.  My first psychiatrist, let’s call him Dr Jackson, he was amazing, but he wanted to move on and who was I to hold him back? But he left a train wreck in his wake.  Anyone who took his post didn’t stay for long and in most cases that was a good thing.

I met so many frogs.  Really ugly, dirty, smelly frogs.  Frogs who made me cry, they made my mum cry…

“You’re putting words in her mouth”

“You’re too intelligent to be a psychiatric patient”

“You’re not Bipolar”

“I don’t think you need psychiatric medication, let’s take you off it”

Maybe this is why I had so many hospital admissions, because these buffoons were confusing the situation.  Being an outpatient and having so many different psychiatrists – and I’m talking double figures, not just a couple – I was passed from the consultant to their junior.  When you see a junior doctor doing their psychiatry training you really get to see how the cogs turn.  All the questions the consultant has casually asked you over the years that you interpreted as general conversation, turns out, it’s a trick. 

Everything they ask you is a tick box exercise and the juniors haven’t quite mastered the art of the general conversation tone.  They have a shopping list.  A list I like to call the Shrink’s Shopping List…

• What medication do you take?
• How much of it?
• What benefits do you claim?
• Who do you live with?
• What is your current mood?
• Do you want to hurt yourself?
• When was the last time you wanted to hurt yourself?
• Do you want to kill yourself?
• When was the last time you wanted to kill yourself?

They literally tick the boxes on the paper in front of them.  I don’t know if they realised that the doorstep of a folder with my name on the front of it lying on their desk already had the answers to 90% of those questions.  But they don’t look at you; they just tick, and after that they tally up your responses and send you on your merry way. 

I hit my head against the goal post so many times.  I was in that room less than ten minutes and ten minutes when you have to wait months for your next appointment to get another nit wit who doesn’t know how to think outside of the tick box is excruciatingly painful, physically and emotionally.

In nineteen years of being in the system I have four psychiatrists who I owe my life to.  Just like the doctors have a tick box list, I have a tick box list of my own. 

Dr Jackson put me on the right track numerous times.  Dr Ogden did the same.  I once saw him shopping in Sainsburys and he had a twenty-minute conversation with me and my mum standing next to the fish counter.  When he wasn’t my doctor and he discovered I was on one of the wards he paid me a visit and sat down with me and asked what went wrong? He was a saint and if I ever get to see him again, I owe him a fish.

In 2011 I met Dr Murphy.  Now this guy is my favourite.  I owe this one my life five times over.  He is the one I quote in my presentations because he put me on the path to what the pros call…

“RECOVERY”

He put me in my place.  He gave me a nurse I didn’t want but it was the best thing he could have done.  He told me there is always something else to try when it comes to medication.  He did what he said he was going to do and he gave me…

“The life I wanted and the life I deserved”

If there is one person on this earth who I want to see me strut my stuff on a stage, it would be Dr Murphy.  Because of him, I put Bernard in his place and now I’m in the driver’s seat.

In December I had my four monthly check up appointment with my current psychiatrist, we’ll call him Dr Smith (inventive, I know).  Last time I spoke to him I was in the middle of an episode and I wasn’t sleeping or eating.  While he was on leave I had no one so when I had my appointment with him months later I told him all about losing my job, redundancy, finding a new job, starting a new job and he said…

“…and you did all of that while you were ill?”

I said…

“Yes.”

He said…

“I am proud you’ve been able to do that.”

No psychiatrist has ever said they were proud of me and his words warmed my heart.  When you’re a psychiatric patient quite often you’re labelled as being at the bottom of the barrel, some professionals see you as a no hoper, there’s not much they can do with you and you have two options…

Crumble and die

Or

Prove them wrong.

I went for the second option.  Option one was never really an option.  I don’t admit defeat easily. 

On the first day of my new job I was shown around the offices.  Bearing in mind I haven’t been an inpatient for ten years it took me a second to realise the finance office used to be the reception of the locked ward I once spent two months of my life on and from the window while I wait for the girls in the office to count out my petty cash I can see the room I used to sleep in.  I can’t describe the feeling. 

Every time I look across at my old room I see a version of myself that was lost and had no idea what the future would look like.  I never imagined I would get a grip on Bernard.   When Dr Murphy would challenge my grandiose ideas I would challenge his questions and my family and friends would look at me and wonder if I was ever coming back.

In March last year, eighteen years after first meeting him, I saw Dr Jackson.  I sat in his office and told him there was alien being in my brain with superpowers and I was waiting for it to give me the instructions on how we were going to save the world (this is just before Corona wreaked havoc in the UK).  He found the problem and he set the wheels in motion to fix it and once I felt better I thought…

“…one day I will show him who I have become.”

On Wednesday I walked across the hospital to take a document to my senior administrator.  I knew he worked just down the corridor and every time I make this journey I walk past his office and I think to myself…

“…one day he’ll open the door and he will see me.”

The senior admin knows my past, she knows Dr Jackson has been my psychiatrist and in passing she mentioned my name and he passed on his best.  There is nothing nicer than being remembered but when you’re a psychiatric patient you never know if you’re remembered for the right reasons.  When I took the document over I phoned my mum for a chat on the short walk I said the words…

“I’d love to see Dr Jackson when I’m doing something like this.”

In the office I was looking at a spread sheet when the senior admin tapped my hand and nodded towards the door.  Fate works in mysterious ways and sometimes you really do get what you wish for. 

Every time I come out of an episode I am embarrassed. I am ashamed of my behaviour, my words, just Bernard in general and it can take months, years, forever, for that embarrassment to fade but when you’re stood in an office with the secretaries for all the Psychiatric Consultants in the hospital and you look up from that tapped hand and one of your most treasured psychiatrists is standing in the middle of the room and he waves and asks you if you’re okay?  There’s no other feeling like it. 

I was having a tough day on Wednesday and seeing Dr Jackson gave me a lift I didn’t think was possible.  It must be nice for a consultant to see a patient go from the bottom of the barrel to having a job in the very area where they’re still a patient, but let me tell you now, it is the best feeling when you realise all your hard work has paid off and you really have proven all the terrible consultants wrong and no matter how small your achievement is, it’s still an achievement. 

In that moment I felt like a success story, for me and for him.  It’s a sign that he did a good job with me and I did my best with the tools that all of my favourite psychiatrists have given me. 

The shrink’s shopping list may be an abundance of difficult questions and there is no right or wrong answer, but sometimes it’s not what’s on the shopping list that matters…

…it’s how you do your shopping.

Dedicated to the four psychiatrists who saved me and still do to this day.