The breakdown.

 I have, on countless occasions, denied that what happened to me in early 2018 was a breakdown but that is exactly what is was. I’ve had several requests from friends and acquaintances asking me to share the specifics that both led to and were part of my 2018 crisis point. They tell me this will help them understand how depression can manifest itself when ignored and the warning signs that are associated. For the most part I believe them, though I can’t help but feel some simply see it as a ‘juicy read’ and I’m OK with that, because if a desire for something as such, results in them reading material which is likely to help them and others around them, who cares what their motivations, it is the means and the end result which matter.

I’ll start at the beginning (whilst perpetually reminding myself of the need to exercise brevity). For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt like I’m just not as good as everyone else and I cannot think of a entire week when I have not, at some point, been at the very least disappointed and at the most extreme repulsed, by what I see when I look in the mirror. This isn’t solely about physicality or body image (although that’s a part of it) it is about my whole being.

I’ll give three prominent examples of what I now recognise to be early warning signs that my mental health was heading towards the proverbial cliff edge.

Trousers

I bet you didn’t expect to see that word mentioned in a blog entry about my mental health … Growing up I was a skinny kid (like most boys in their childhood and early teens) but knowing I was skinny was hugely problematic for me and featured heavily in my thoughts every day between the ages of  roughly 14 and 22.

“I’ve seen more meat on a butcher’s pencil”, “there’s nothing to you”, “turn sideways and you’ll disappear” – all said to me relatively routinely, all in jest, all harmless, but all of which cut very deep indeed.

I don’t know where my infatuation with this started or why, and I know looking back that my weight was absolutely that of a healthy and active teenager. But for all of those years I was deeply ashamed of my size, exceptionally conscious of it, and, on reflection, dangerously obsessed.

So ashamed of the size of my legs was I, for years I wore two pairs of trousers. Each morning once I had showered, I would slip into a pair of thick cotton (often grey), wool-lined jogging bottoms and tuck the legs into each sock so the ankle bands didn’t slip out the bottom of my top-layer of trousers and become visible. I’d pull the waist band as low as my pelvis tightening the draw string so they stayed there and didn’t ride up to my hips where, with two pairs of trousers, it could become very tight and deeply uncomfortable. This would become particularly challenging during trips to the men’s room, so much so that there were many days I didn’t visit at all despite the pain. I still bare some small faint physical scars about my pelvis and hip area from pulling that drawstring so tight.

At the time I thought nothing of it, it was just a practical means of making myself look less skinny, but I now realise that this was one of the early warning signs of what was to come and a dangerous level of self-loathing that manifested itself in some very discerning and often unusual ways. I’m not sure if anybody ever knew, other than one time when a friend saw the offending article of two intertwined pairs of trousers on my bedroom floor but didn’t pass much comment beyond a brief look of confusion.

Jealousy

I have had a series of failed romantic relationships and there are many reasons for this, not all the fault of mine. However, if I think of some of my most extreme moments, they have in the main been driven by an undercurrent of jealousy and deep insecurity. This is the part which makes me most ashamed, I have never been violent but the nature of my insecurity and jealousy did manifest itself in ways which have caused a deep level of unhappiness and distress to partners past and present and for this, I carry an immense level of guilt, shame and remorse.

My first explosion of jealousy came at about the age of fourteen when I had my first proper girlfriend. We were sat at the back of the 105-school bus together on a seat designed for four people which was opposite another seat exactly the same. As was often the case with buses it would jolt and jerk and cause you sometimes to slip from the seat. This happened once and as my then-girlfriend was jolted forward, she put her hands out for safety, making contact with the knee of a lad called Mike sat opposite her. The ‘normal’ reaction to this would be no reaction at all, but not from me, and not then.

I froze immediately, lump in my throat and a red sea of rage enveloping my body, desperate to get off the bus and shout and scream over what I saw as her making a pass on another boy. The funny thing is, I know now and I knew then just how ridiculous it was and that’s the hardest thing to understand, how something I know to be utterly ridiculous and a figment of my imagination was able to take hold of my entire being. I couldn’t have left that bus quicker than I did. We went to my family’s home, I ranted, raved and accused her of all sorts of nonsense, punched my Mum’s grey rear-projection Sony TV with glass screen as hard as I could (thank goodness LCD wasn’t around then!) and cried continuously for about two hours after. I was not in control.

This was the start of a significant problem for me and would be a feature of every single relationship I had from that point on. I could lose a week writing about my episodes of jealousy and insecurity which normally included: wild accusations; checking phones; spying; turning up at the workplace of my exes; studying receipts … I could go on.

The closest I ever came to suicide was in a hotel in Doncaster whilst I was away on business, in fact it was the first week of a brand-new role with a brand-new employer. I won’t disclose the specifics, it isn’t necessary, but my near-attempted suicide was all as a result of a depressive episode triggered by jealousy and insecurity in my relationship at the time.

We’re quick to criticise people who are jealous and sometimes rightly, because it can have such a seismic and detrimental impact on our partners, but jealousy in relationships often doesn’t come from a place of spite. My jealousy was driven by a sense of worthlessness that led me to believe that I was insignificant, that anything good happening to me was temporary, that I couldn’t possibly compete with others for my partner’s attention, and that the end of  my relationship was inevitable because I just didn’t deserve it.

Bulimia

Between 2016 and 2017 I developed a really bad habit. By 2016 I felt that my issues with my weight (some call it body dysmorphia) had largely passed and I no longer felt ‘skinny’. In fact in 2015 I had ballooned a little, so by the time 2016 had reached I recognised the need to shift a bit of timber, nothing significant probably just a few pounds but I knew I was carrying more than I should when people had started to comment, and by the way, I’m grateful that they did.

Those who read my first blog entry titled ‘I am a depressive.’ will recall that I cited over and under eating as being some of the behaviors I exhibit during a depression. I have a reasonably big appetite but during depressive episodes this can be exaggerated. I didn’t accept that I was a depressive in 2016 but whenever I was entering what I now know to be a depression, stuffing my face became a natural side-effect. Often stodgy food: mash potato; pie; chips; bread and butter – eating this way during one of my slumps was a massive and at the time welcomed distraction. I love food and my love for food and the distraction caused by the buzz I would get as the high carb, high fat grub crossed my lips, would, even if just for a second, take the pain away.

Once I’d finished scoffing, I’d be left half-comatose, feeling sick, guilty and of course, still depressed. Food was no longer crossing my lips and any joy I might have experienced from the two courses of artery clogging crap I’d just eaten was overshadowed by the state in which I now found myself; sat on the sofa barely able to move and feeling so full, it hurt.

So, each time I’d put into practice the same dangerous routine. Head over the toilet bowl, two fingers down the throat, a towel on the floor to catch the splatter and I would force the exit of the stodge I had just rammed down the hole in my head. Painful and unpleasant? yes. But once it was done I could move, my tummy didn’t hurt, and there was room for more shit food.

I’ve never referred to it as bulimia before now, I just saw it at the time as me making myself feel more comfortable when I had eaten to excess, because 'Nobody likes to feel stuffed do they?'.

There were many other signals, but these examples I think, give a clear picture as to how a pattern of behaviors and habits can indicate some severe problems with one’s mental health. These are irrational behaviors that very few but me knew about, in fact this is the first time I have ever spoken about some of these experiences to anyone but my fiancée.

2017

Skip forward to 2017 and I had met Holly. Holly is the person I credit the most with my developing the courage in facing the fact that I am a depressive head on, and taking control in an attempt to do something about it. She is harsh at times and toe-curlingly blunt, but she knows better than anyone how to deal with me during a depressive episode and the weird thing is, we’ve never spoken about it, we just have this understanding. I love her, I love spending time with her, I love talking to her and I will be ever grateful to her that she stuck by me when most others would not have. I’ll do a post about the partners of depressives soon, but I cannot emphasise just how hard it is for husbands, wives, girlfriends and boyfriends whose other half is a depressive.

Holly has been on the receiving end of my explosions of jealousy and deep insecurity on a small number of occasions, this was in the past exacerbated by the fact that we spent nearly two years having to live hundreds of miles apart. However, I had managed to keep a relative lid on it in comparison to previous relationships, so determined was I not to allow my feelings of worthlessness to ruin whatever prospect I had with her.

What I could not have possibly anticipated was just how detrimental keeping a lid on it actually would be. In the past I would explode, accuse, spy and suggest, which was of course hugely detrimental to me and my partners, but I was at least talking about the contents of my head. Of course, this was a terrible way of doing that and it didn’t solve the issue, but it did allow me to share the problem I had, albeit by means which were totally irrational.

Imagine a Tupperware box overflowing with cold baked beans and in order to get the lid to shut you grab a tablespoon and flick the beans out all over the kitchen until you have created enough room to get the lid on tight. Sure, the lid is shutting and the problem is solved (ish), but the bean splatter all over the kitchen has created one big mess and some permanent stains on the the paintwork. This was what I was doing, emptying my head of jealous thoughts but in doing so causing irreparable damage to my relationships and one big mess to clean up.

The trouble is when I first met Holly, I was trying to keep the lid shut without creating room in the box. I’d have an occasional flair up, but I’d push the lid shut as hard as I could, nearly bursting an artery in the process. The basic laws of science however, meant that at some point that lid will come unstuck again and you can keep pushing it back on, but it will stretch, eventually misshape, and not only will the beans inevitably overspill, you will never be able to get that lid on again.

Severe weight-loss in December 2017, excessive drinking and an inability to spend time by myself without perpetually crying, were the result of my attempts to keep the lid on the box as its contents expanded rapidly. From November 2017 right through until March 2018, I would spend almost every single day as an 8 on the depressedometer. I look back and wonder how I actually managed to do anything in this period and can honestly say, it is all a bit of a blur – if some significant world event had happened in this time, I couldn’t tell you about it because I just don’t remember much beyond how I was feeling in that moment.

2018

Tuesday 9^th January 2018 – I remember it like a scar, the day I cracked up and had a nervous breakdown.

It was inevitable really, the years of suffering from depression and the associated symptoms. I left 2017 in a state of deep depression with my box overflowing and feeling, ultimately, powerless to do anything about it. Up until this point, I always felt like I had managed my nuances and depressive behavior, probably because I never acknowledged it as a real problem. But for the first time in my life I felt as though I was losing control of my mind.

I had been working in Birmingham that day and had stayed in a hotel nearby the office on the Monday. I knew I was cracking up, I kept checking my phone every 30 seconds waiting for the message telling me  that something terrible had happened, there was a perpetual ringing in my ears – I guess what tinnitus feels like, I was in the car with a colleague in HR called Maddie (also now a very close friend of mine) who was driving me to Birmingham from Holly’s student house in Southampton where I had stayed on the Sunday having travelled up with her, I actually think I barely spoke a word to her on the journey. “Are you OK?” she asked once or twice “just tired” I replied.

As I checked in to my hotel room that evening, I realised I had forgotten to pack toothpaste and hair wax, and whilst rational Jake would’ve just popped to the nearest shop or supermarket to stock up, I instead just curled up in a foetal ball, and cried. I had agreed to meet Maddie for dinner in the hotel restaurant which I couldn’t back out of, so I showered, put on my game face and headed down, all of the time itching to get back to my room and bury my head under the duvet. It was one of the quickest meal’s I have ever eaten, probably because I barely touched it. Once I had gotten back to the hotel room and forced myself to be sick, I crawled into bed with an empty stomach, but for a knot in the middle, fully clothed and began to sob which carried through on and off until morning.

I awoke on the Tuesday feeling like I was hungover (I hadn’t drunk the night before), struggling to lift my limbs and with the ringing in my ears intensifying. I didn’t bother with breakfast, I’ve never really been a breakfast person but even a cup of instant coffee was unpalatable, I hadn’t the energy to make it.

Once the day was over, I made my way to Birmingham New Street station to jump on the train back to Torquay (Holly’s family home at the time and where I had left my car on the Sunday). I had a paper ticket and the gate machine kept rejecting it, I tried and tried again to get the gate to open but it just kept spitting my ticket back out. I couldn’t fight the tears running down my face as the attendant pointed out that I was actually putting my ticket receipt into the barrier, not the ticket itself. I could sense she saw I was a little distressed, but she quietly helped me along and I made my way to the train.

I don’t remember much about the train journey other than the noises in my head. The ringing had intensified but I was hearing so much more than this: a woman’s voice that just kept echoing and echoing saying “Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake”; a belly laugh that just repeated over and over again; polystyrene rubbing together (makes me cringe even now); football stadium tannoys. I knew I was losing my sanity and this random selection of noises which I feel certain bore little to no resemblance to the actual noise in the environment which surrounded me at the time only served to validate that. I remember the woman opposite me on the table seat asking in a distinctly Cornish accent “you alright mate?”, I don’t know what I was doing to provoke her question but I can only imagine I was phased out, there but not there, lights on but nobody home, drowning amongst the noises in my head.

I remember departing Torre station in Torquay and walking up to my car which was parked on my in-laws (to be) drive. I got in the car, started the engine and began the circa 30-minute drive home to my house which was in Plymouth at the time. About three minutes into the journey I reach a roundabout (one which I now live within walk distance of) and with the noises still hammering in my head, I didn’t know what to do. I had lost the ability to recognise which way I needed to go and instead hit the accelerator to the floor and kept driving around and around and around until eventually the alloys of my white Lexus clipped the roundabout which I subsequently mounted and then stalled the engine.

I hit my head hard against the steering wheel and started to cry. After a minute or two of sitting there, I was approached by a bald chap who looked to be in his early fifties. He knocked on the window and asked me if I was OK (the third person to ask me this inside of 24 hours), I replied by raising my thumb lifting my head and driving off. I feel guilty about that, I didn’t even give him any eye contact really, not for more than a second.

I preceded to drive home, crying the whole way and still unable to shake these damn noises I was hearing, they weren’t intensifying at this point, just consistent in volume and frequency. As I headed down the A38 I decided to take the Plympton turn-off (a small village just outside of Plymouth) and instead of going home went to the only person I knew at that time could help and who would be able to convince me everything was going to be OK, my Mum.

My Mum is of the old school, but she has a unique quality I am yet to have found in anyone else. Regardless of the problem or its complexity, regardless of whether she has any specific experience of it or not, she is amazing at helping people deconstruct issues, rationalise them and build a plan to fix whatever it is that needs fixing. In what was the darkest moment I have ever experienced, she didn’t get emotional or cry, she didn’t lecture me or tell me that I was working too hard, or that I need to look after myself properly, she just calmly listened and pragmatically pointed to the things which would help me get better.

This really was the start of my recognising I am a depressive and identifying practical ways in which I can live with it. I didn’t tell Holly I was suffering from depression until the March I think, but once I had she was as wonderfully supportive, empathetic and encouraging as she always was and continues to be.

With some encouragement from my Mum, a trip to the doctors for a diagnosis and prescription of anti-depressants was what immediately followed the breakdown, just a day after. And a conversation with a colleague which was possibly one of the greatest acts of kindness I have ever received.

Once I’d had the diagnosis from my doctor, I knew I had to tell my employer I was a depressive and I decided to speak with Maddie (the lady who drove me to Birmingham). As I called her, I sensed a level of intrigue in her voice, I can almost hear it now “Hello?” – it was as if she knew something wasn’t quite right. “Hi, um, I’m um” I was choked up, I couldn’t say it, I knew what I wanted to say ‘I’m depressed’, she cut in “Jake, just take a breath, everything is going to be OK, I’m here for you”.

We’ve never actually spoken about that incident since, but her awareness, her non-judgmental tone and those four words “I’m here for you” meant the entire world to me. I guess she must have recognised it was coming which probably shouldn’t have been such a surprise given she had seen me the day before and I’m sure would have recognised what a mess I was.

She went on to help me get therapy, funded through work, and checked in on me every single day. I’m not sure whether it was intentional or just coincidence but from that point forward we spoke every single day until she left for a new role and her first words were always the same during every single call “You OK?”.

Back in those days I was a bit of a maverick in the workplace, hugely successful but my regard for rules and process wasn’t as high as it is now, and I think she probably protected me from a lot of shit. I don’t know for sure, but I believe she knew I wasn’t simply a loose cannon, just that I was ill and that illness would manifest itself through irrational behaviour sometimes but also streaks of brilliance in terms of creativity, energy and leadership.

I credit five people with saving me during this period and beyond: my Mum; Holly; my Daughter; Alastair Campbell; and Maddie. Her support was effortless, she wasn’t trying because she genuinely cared and that part of her character (along with others of course) is why we remain close friends even today, despite the fact that we have never actually discussed my breakdown.

I hope this hit the spot in relation to what people wanted to see, and that it can help people who aren’t suffering to understand just how certain behaviours an indicator of depression and ill mental health can be. I also hope, that people who are suffering will feel comforted that the way in which that suffering might manifest itself (e.g. jealousy, body dysmorphia etc) is more common than you might think, these are symptoms and they do not make you an intrinsically bad person, they are side-effects of a terrible illness, but an illness which can be managed with support, advice and in some cases medication.

As always, comments, feedback and counter-arguments welcome.

J