CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDAL IDEATION
“After a decade of running the same close-knit team and genuinely loving my job, our company was bought by another and everything changed overnight. My role changed: no longer was I out on the road supporting technicians. I couldn’t accept direct calls from customers I had personally looked after for 20 years – there was a generic telephone number for that now. Technicians left and we became short staffed and I couldn’t support the ones that stayed, because suddenly I had 3-hour long teams meetings to discuss why technician B had spent 17 minutes longer on a site than deemed necessary by someone who’d never visited the customer themselves. I was presented with a system for this and a system for that, but very little training for these things. I wasn’t just thrown in at the deep end, I was launched into the North Sea in the middle of a storm and I was drowning.
One day I was on the motorway. I could see the lorry in front of me, but my brain wasn’t communicating with my right foot, if the car didn’t have automatic braking I wouldn’t be here now. That was the point I knew I needed help. That’s when I realised I was broken.
That morning as I shakily pulled to the side of the motorway, I phoned my GP, they saw me immediately, no three week wait for an appointment. She was incredibly patient, and I was with her for nearly an hour. I was diagnosed with work related stress and anxiety and signed off work.
My wife, ironically given the circumstances, describes the whole situation as being a passenger in a car accident, you can see it happening, but you can’t stop it. The warning signs were there; I was becoming withdrawn. When I look at photos of myself in the run up to the motorway incident I look empty, I was burnt out and had a permanent tightness in my chest. I ignored the warning signs because I was supposed to be the strong one for my family. I was supposed to be supporting my wife after her dad passed away suddenly less than 6 months before, so I carried on, trying to be stoic, instead of talking about it.
There are still people who don’t believe mental health is real. But my experience with panic attacks, a combination of insomnia and exhaustion, wondering if you’re having a heart attack all day every day, the fear of admitting to people that you’re not ok, intrusive thoughts, the overwhelming feeling of failure. These are all constant mental torture.
After I was signed off, I’d go days without talking to anyone, I’d sit in silence and play on the Xbox with my children. They have an unbelievable understanding of mental health, it’s surprising that they are taught about these things at such a young age.
I remember this time when we had a few days away. We climbed up from the beach and my daughter, who was 10 at the time, spotted some flowers on a bench. She realised why they’d been placed so she grabbed my hand and dragged me as far away from the cliff edge as possible. I had absolutely no intention of checking out that day, I was just following the path to the tea rooms! But that is something that will always stay with me.
I was prescribed medication which eventually started to kick in and combined with counselling, I started to return a bit at a time. She’s a chatty one my other half, and would often come from school, work or one of the kid’s sports things and tell me of another dad that had gone through something similar. At first I’d ask her to stop telling people, I felt ashamed and embarrassed, but it made me realise I wasn’t on my own and that so many others had gone through it. I knew these people and I’d never have guessed that our mental health experiences were something we have in common.
I came to realise I could never return to that job without jeopardising my health, so I now work for myself. There are of course stresses associated with that, but it’s a different kind of stress now, it’s a motivational kind of stress. I’m back doing what I love; being on the road and dealing with customers.
I suspect my mental health experience has been used by my competition to paint a poor picture of my reliability to potential customers. Truth be told, I’m happier now than I ever was and I am determined to prove it.
If you are starting to see the warning signs, don’t ignore them. Seek help.
Don’t be afraid to share your story either, it might save someone else – I know mine has.”