Content warning: this post includes a brief description of psychotic distress
February 29th. My first significant relationship ended. The next day I went into work looking like Robert De Niro. Not the young Robert De Niro of The Godfather, lean and good looking, nor the Robert De Niro of Taxi Driver, angry and descending into madness (not yet at least) but the Jake LaMotta De Niro, the boxer of Raging Bull – face puffed up unrecognisably without the physical bruises, eyes, almost invisible, swollen through crying.
In true stiff upper lip and British style, nobody at work said anything, nobody asked me if I’d had a good day off.
Grief as a trigger for mental illness
For the next few months, I cried daily, in the shower, so as not to be heard by my flatmates. I lost weight and in six weeks dropped two dress sizes. I left the office at lunchtime but without eating lunch. I stayed at work till seven o’clock and idled my way home, postponing the long evenings of a single person. After a few months this grief was unbearable. I had to do something about it.
Self-help only gets you so far
I bought a self-help book Living through personal crisis by Anne Kaiser Stearn which details the stages of grief offering some practical advice. At this point although seeking a solution, I was paradoxically still in denial. Years later, at work, I came across a related theory of loss from Elizabeth Kubler Ross about how people can respond to the organisational change process. Reading the Kaiser Stearn book took me so far, but not far enough. I became a union rep and transferred dissatisfaction with my own situation to the distraction of helping other people with theirs. That didn’t work either. It’s at this point, I think, that my grief evolved into or triggered mental illness.
Tell tale signs of my depression
At home I bathed in two inches of water because I believed I didn’t deserve a full bath when people across the world had water shortages. This feature of my unworthiness and self-neglect hidden for years until I was admitted to hospital with psychosis and I explained to the nurse accompanying me as I took a bath (by this time on suicide watch) what my thinking was. Also during this admission, my sister visited with her then toddler – this was too much. A child did not deserve to see a wretch like me and I repeatedly bashed my head on the floor, wailing in protest – a toddler in their thirties. During this same period, before slipping into psychotic illness, I believed that an ear infection, despite my doctor’s reasoned explanation, was something far more serious, a brain tumour. Recently, my current GP has explained that anxiety can make you fret about and overemphasise things you might not previously have taken notice of. This is certainly true for me and his explanation has helped soothe my current anxieties about the minor physical changes of getting older.
So now it is that I recognise that if I start slipping into this kind of distorted introspection, tinged with negative connotations, it may be time to get help.
And if you notice physical or mood changes in family members, friends or colleagues, forget the stiff upper lip, they may be relieved, if you just ask after them.
Mental Health Awareness Week