5 valuable lessons I learnt from my journey from patient to healer
Last week it was Mental Health Awareness week and I meant to share this post but life kept getting in the way. To be honest, the thought of sharing it was rather daunting. I have shared some of my story in the past and written about it at some length in my most recent book Finding Inner Safety (Capthorne, 2022), but writing this still felt confronting.
Here goes…this is the room where, back in 1995, in room B14 in London’s Nightingale Hospital, I sat as a patient and received group therapy. I don’t remember being able to sit through many sessions. It was hard work, such as I’d never done before, and I often fled the room in tears. Other times, I stewed in denial and tried to take over from the facilitator/therapist thinking ‘I don’t need this. I know it all.’ It was easier to feel pride than pain.
Fast forward over a decade – during which time a lot of healing had been done – I was back in the same room but this time as the ‘healer’. For the next ten years, every Tuesday morning, I ran a patient group. I never approached them for work, they found about my work and offered me a job not knowing about my history. So, I took the job and there I began crafting my life’s work, helping people to sleep. There was a lot of suffering in room B14. People suffering from addictions, eating disorders, severe depression and other forms of severe mental illness. I helped them to regain their energy and sense of self by helping them to let go, trust and sleep. It was here that I gained enough confidence to write my first book Tired but Wired (Profile Books, 2010) which gained me some degree of success and, just like that, my work took off.
This journey of returning to the place where my healing began has been a magical one and one that I’ve never taken for granted. The work is ongoing and since that pivotal time in 1995 there has been a great deal of heartache, but the difference this time is that I am resourced to the hilt. I have tools and it’s up to me to choose whether or not I use them or whether I allow myself to sink into the quagmire of darkness that I have come to accept as a part of who I am.
I share my lived experience because, in the immortal words of Stephen Hawking, ‘it matters if you don’t just give up’. I fervently believe this. Right now, in our world, we are dealing with a mental health crisis that our health system can neither understand nor resource adequately. Our younger generation are struggling, especially since the pandemic, and all sorts of diagnoses and labels are being thrown around. I don’t say this to offend – you may have a label, your child may have a label, I had labels (some would say I still have them) but we also have choice…and we have hope.
I believe we need to reframe the way we view mental illness and the labels we can become so attached to and identified with. Because it is in the over-identification and medicalisation that we lose choice and hope and no one wins…except perhaps Big Pharma (but that’s a whole other story). As Gabor Mate says ‘diagnoses describe things but they don’t explain anything’.
Decades ago, I was in survival mode. Today I no longer identify with the mental health labels I was given and I am no longer medicated. I am who I am and with that comes the responsibility to understand who I am and to keep resourcing myself so that I stand a fighting chance of thriving. I describe this in Tired but Wired as an ARC of transformation;
- Awareness
- Responsibility
- Choices
What catalysed my breakthrough was a profound shift in awareness that made me realise that I, only I, could break the cycle I was in. I had to take responsibility. I had to make different choices. Thus began my journey of healing. There’s been a lot of trial and error but I wanted to share some of the things I learnt that have become non-negotiable in enabling me to thrive:
- Start the day right – this means cultivating a good morning practice and not distracting myself with my phone, jumping into the days have to do’s, must do’s, should do’s…but just taking a few moments to listen to what’s going on in my body and mind. I take just 3 deep breaths, eyes closed, hands on belly and I listen. Ahhh this is where I am this morning. Then, from this place of self-awareness, I choose the resources I need in this now moment. Sometimes I’m guided to do a 10min journal dump as the ‘noise’ in my head is often overwhelming at this time of the day.
- Movement is key – I learnt that the right type of movement is non-negotiable for me. I learnt that, because of past traumas, I have a tendency to escape my body (psychologists call this dissociation) and live in my head. After my breakdown, movement became my saviour, but at first, in extreme ways. I swung the pendulum way out and started doing marathons and triathlons – I was numbing out with exercise! I’ve had to learn how to ‘titrate’ my feelings with the right type and amount of exercise. This morning, I planned to go hard in the gym, but on listening to myself first thing I realised that I needed something more gentle and compassionate – walking my dog and doing some grounding chi kung under a tree in nature.
- A really good cry – I’ve become really good at crying! It took me over 30 years to learn how to cry and face really tough emotions such as grief and sorrow. Growing up, I’d learnt that it wasn’t safe to cry or show any emotions, so I held it all in and numbed out with destructive and addictive patterns of behaviour (e.g. doing my first half Ironman Triathlon 2 months after the traumatic death of my sister in 2002!). Therapies that include any kind of somatic work, including dance and breathwork, have been particularly helpful.
- Eat breakfast! In the pre-breakthrough days, breakfast was coffee and a cigarette! No wonder my nervous system was in a perpetual state of disarray. No wonder I couldn’t sleep (yep, having breakfast helps you sleep). No wonder I was perpetually riding the emotional rollercoaster.
- Genuine support – this one is still a work in progress. Learning to trust myself in relationships, learning to trust others, learning who I can genuinely laugh and cry with. Recognising when I’m tipping into a spiral and need therapeutic support to steady me. Healers need healers need healers…
There is so much more I could share but this is enough for now. I hope you find this helpful and resonant.
Do drop me a line if you would like to connect with me or share your experience too – what tools do you have that enable you to thrive? Please forward to anyone you feel could benefit.
Love
Nerina x
