The road to recovery is paved with good intentions

So it’s been 11 months and 9 days since I was first signed off sick from work. And what a roller coaster of (mainly negative) emotions it has been. I have never before realised the importance of my mental health, the lack of connection and awareness of my own body, and by being bed-ridden for most of 2021, I have had to face all of the demons that have been buried deep for 31 years.

This is not a ‘woe is me’ story, but rather, what I hope, to be a somewhat helpful story to someone out there, who may be struggling with the very things I have had to encounter this year.

To give you some context, I have always lived a fast-paced life, and am part of the generation that was constantly told to ‘power through’, combined with the ‘stiff upper lip’ mentality of us British, this meant throughout this non-stop life I was leading, not once did I stop to check in with myself. This inevitably led to the ultimate burn-out at the beginning of 2021, shortly followed by diagnosis after diagnosis of serious illnesses that will take months, if not years, to recover from. And I was advised that if I didn’t stop these toxic habits of constantly striving for more, I could end up with a life-long illness.

So I started seeing a therapist (in the UK this is seen as almost taboo, as we like to keep all things mental health hush-hush), I started writing in a journal, I began meditating, and all of those things you are supposed to do to improve your mental well-being.

Whilst all these things are now a staple part of my daily routine, this alone was not helping shake the demons from clawing back into my mind through the long isolated days. I discovered the only thing that (temporarily) helped me feel slightly normal again, was to drink. And the slightest hangover even seemed to mask the daily symptoms my illness has given me. Bonus, right?

Well, as you can imagine, it was a slippery slope. When there is nothing else to look forward to, and your days are drawn out with no purpose but to ‘get better’ and ‘rest’, what else is a girl to do? One glass could easily turn into a bottle, and one day a week easily multiplied into seven. But it was getting me through, and it was helping me survive the ultimately loneliest and toughest year of my life.

When the medication finally started to kick in, I was determined to get back to my ‘normal life’ as quickly as possible. For a couple of weeks, I was running every day again, forcing myself into work and dragging myself into the gym in the evenings. I was adamant not to go back to the long days of lying in a dark room wishing for a miracle. Whilst the endorphins were now the new mask where my symptoms could hide behind, it didn’t last long. As you can imagine, my body pretty quickly just took one look at what I was trying to do, and went ‘oh hell no!’ and there I was, no lessons learnt, back to being bed-ridden and cursing myself for pushing it all too quickly.

This has happened a couple more times since then — ‘why would you keep up this toxic pattern?’ I hear you cry. My answer is this: because I was just so desperate to get back to my ‘normal’ life, that at the first glimpse of normality I grabbed it with both hands, determined to ‘power through’ and to no longer be trapped in Groundhog Day.

I can’t tell you how many times it all felt hopeless, and more often than not, I didn’t think I’d ever feel like myself again. I was lost in a spiral of depression and anxiety, I became a recluse and shut myself away so I no longer had to be disappointed by the inadequate feelings my illness left me with.

This story isn’t over, in fact my recovery is only really just beginning. I am still on medication, I am still seeing specialists, and I am still working hard on my mental and physical health. I am nowhere near back to my ‘normal’ life, and instead I am realising what I want my ‘normal’ to look like. If anything, this horrendous experience has made me reassess my life and my priorities. I have had to truly look inside myself and ask myself ‘what do I want from this life?’.

Whilst I appreciate that everyone is different, I do find writing everything down really helps: how I’m feeling, all the good stuff, all the bad stuff, what I’m grateful for, what my goals are etc. And the one thing that managed to pull me out of the personal hell I was living in: what do I want my life to look like in 5 years — and from this, what can I do every day to make sure I am one step closer to this vision. This was a point where I was finally able to see the forest through the trees, I could see that there is life after this illness, and that there are things to look forward to.

I had disappeared into a shell of a person I didn’t recognise, but since then I have come to make friends with myself, to make peace with myself, to stare those terrifying demons in the face and say ‘No. You are not part of me anymore’.

A book I would highly recommend, is The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle, digest it slowly and really give yourself space to commit to it and I promise you, it will change your life.

For those of you suffering with your mental health, and let’s be really honest, we all have at some point haven’t we? Let me tell you: hang the f*** in there, do whatever you need to do to survive, because you will survive. And you will be all the more stronger for it when you get to the other side.