Tony's story

My name is Tony. Until about the age of 50 I think my mental health was pretty good on the whole.

I was a Principal in the Civil Service. Then about 10 years ago I took early retirement. Austerity was a new thing and they were looking to reduce their head count. The deal seemed OK so I took a package.

But sometimes you need to watch out what you wish for. I found out quite quickly that who I was, my purpose in life, and pretty much my entire social life was all wrapped up in what I did for a living. On the Friday I was myself; on Monday, I was no-one at all. I was completely filled with regret over what I’d done. I couldn’t accept it.

I got quite ill quite quickly. I can remember walking endlessly from one room to another in my house. I called it “doing fly” – because that’s what flies do. I’d make cups of tea and leave them to go cold. I’d leave taps running. I’d walk in the park but not notice anything around me. I had retreated into my head, and the same half a dozen scripts ran over and over again.

I’d try to talk to people about it but I couldn’t make my problems make any sense to them. Some would try to fix my problems for me with 5 minute solutions. Sleep became a real problem. I’d wake at 3:30am every morning. In the daytime I was exhausted, but my mind would be full of thoughts, with no room for useful focus. It was like being in a car with the accelerator pressed to the floor, but with the handbrake on.

That’s when things got worse. I found myself in Tolworth Hospital, in a room full of about 60 or 70 people, in a lecture about stress reduction. After a while the consultant told us all to get into groups and to talk about our feelings and what we’d heard for 20 minutes. I remember being really uncomfortable with this, thinking “Is this what you get?”. I thought I’d get one-to-one help. I didn’t realise it was supposed to come from a schizophrenic single mum. She was lovely, but she had her own problems.

Then I got involved with a peer-led recovery organisation called RISE.

Everyone made time to witness each other’s experiences. We did worthwhile things – that we decided to do - and we supported each other.

That was the start of my recovery. I also started to realise that these days, everyone’s in recovery from something.

So I started looking into why RISE worked as it did; and that took me into learning about counselling. I qualified last year as a counsellor. Time to put something back in.