Will it happen again today I wondered as I slowly climbed the stairs to the office? For the last several weeks the events of each day had repeated themselves like Groundhog Day. I would climb the stairs to the office, go and sit at my desk with the door closed and just sit there terrified that the phone would ring. What was I afraid of? It was a totally baseless fear that every call coming in would be from a client to tell me that they were moving to another accountant. The reality of it all was that this hadn’t even happened once. Yet for some reason I was fixated on this unrealistic fear and it caused my stomach to bind itself in knots and keep churning over tighter and tighter each minute.
It’s April 1998 and the last few weeks had been a nightmare which had gradually escalated daily. It started out in an innocent enough manner, a simple fear on arriving at the office followed by a sickening feeling in the stomach. I had no idea what was wrong, but by lunchtime I was so sick I would have to go home. On arriving at home I would go to bed, sleep for an hour or so and get up as good as gold. I had no idea what was wrong with me.
Gradually things just got worse. There would be a fear even when leaving home about what the day’s events might bring. The fear simply increased on arriving at the office and then as I climbed the stairs to begin my day. Eventually I could do nothing but sit at my desk with the door shut until the sickening feeling became so bad I had to go home to bed.
What on earth was wrong with me? I had no idea and the lack of control and not knowing just made things worse. I eventually bit the bullet and made an appointment with the doctor.
Being a bloke of course, I didn’t have a doctor so it turned out I was allocated to the new doctor at the local practice. I had no idea who I was going to see but I was so desperate I just wanted some answers and most of all some help. I couldn’t continue to live my life in this manner.
It turned out that the new doctor at the practice was a young lady who was extremely thorough in her examination. At its conclusion, she pronounced that I was suffering from severe depression and extreme anxiety. What! The thoughts raced through my head. This wasn’t for me. I couldn’t be suffering from one of those “mental illnesses”. That was all just rubbish and it to be something else. Yet her explanation and the relationship to the examples that I had given her were undeniable. She must be right. At the same time a part of me was just so pleased that someone had been able to explain my feelings, my behavior and provide me with a reason for it all. Quite frankly, I was very relieved.
OK, we’ve got through that thirty seconds that felt like thirty minutes, but what was next? The doctor informs me that I will be put on medication to help with the depression and anxiety and that I would be off work for at least six months. Six months! How could I be off work for six months? I will be letting my clients down, my partners down and my staff down. But after a further discussion with the doctor it seems there was no way around taking this amount of time off work. I had unknowingly let things get to a stage where it was a hell of a mess and it was going to take a long time to get things right again.
It’s odd what goes through your head at times like this. I had to tell my partners, or at least one of them. Somehow, I knew that one of them would have a lot of difficulty dealing with mental health issues and so I chose the other instead of both. I must say that he turned out to handle it exceptionally well given the impact it would have on the practice. He simply told me to go home, as best as I can remember, and that he would look after it all. It was a huge weight of my mind now that someone had put a label on the problems I was having, I had medication to deal with the issues and I was able to leave work and recover.
And so it begins; the long road of dealing with mental health issues and all the fallout in my life that it served up to me and many others. Business partners, family, friends; they would all have their share. The battle still continues today.
Thank you for sharing your very personal story with us @bushie
You're very welcome. It is only through the sharing of stories that stigma can be beaten and mental health treated the same as physical health. Cheers.