In the latest instalment of the Keep Talking series on B&T, our own editor, Tom Fogden, recounts his experiences with mental health and the importance of talking to anyone, but particularly a professional, about problems. It follows pieces by the likes of Aimee Buchanan, Cam Luby, Al Crawford and Ian Perrin, the man behind the series.
And a content warning: this article contains discussion of suicide.
Everyone believes that they are normal to an extent, I believe. But of course, we’re not.
The moment that one realises they are not, in fact, normal is incredibly confronting. Or at least it was for me. I don’t know if that’s the normal reaction.
I remember it well. It was during lockdown.
My girlfriend at the time had noticed that I was not myself (to put it lightly) and she recommended that I seek advice on therapy.
After completing a survey as honestly as I felt comfortable doing, I received an email back the same day referring me instantly for therapy. It was recommending that, given the six-month or so waiting list for treatment on the NHS, I should seek private care given the seriousness of my mental health issues and that there were a number of options for reducing the financial burden.
As it turns out, it wasn’t normal to think about killing oneself multiple times per day. As crazy as it might sound to you, I had no idea that it wasn’t normal or that it was problematic, to say the least.
I should, I suppose, like all good journalists, give you some context.
This wasn’t a new feeling. It had come and gone since at least my teenage years. Sometimes it was incredibly visceral. Other times it was in a more conceited vein — wondering who would show face at my funeral, that kind of thing.
It peaked at moments of loneliness. It was in moments — often during my time at university, a four-hour drive from my home in London — that these feelings of killing myself became acute.
I was trapped, stuck in a world to which I felt I didn’t belong with people to whom I didn’t relate, or vice-versa.
As would become a pattern, I would spiral as my feelings became deeper, darker and more visceral and with the sense that I would be letting everyone down if I didn’t make the best of my time or myself, given everything that they had helped me with.
There were times that killing myself seemed the only way out. I even half-attempted it a couple of times.
As a British man, talking about one’s feelings is at best tricky. It certainly doesn’t come naturally.
Sometimes I would call my parents in floods of tears while always holding the darkest of my feelings. They were always willing to listen and help.
I mentioned it, always whilst incredibly drunk, to some very close mates. They were always understanding and helpful. But we rarely spoke about it the next day. I dare say some of them had similar feelings. But the feelings never truly left.
After university, I returned to London and began my career as a journalist. I was proud to say what I did and who I was working for.
But it was here that other feelings began to creep in. What was I doing? Why was I doing it? What’s the end goal here? Will I achieve anything? Will I have let everyone down?
For a while, my feelings, which I later was later informed were depression and anxiety, were manageable. They would ebb and flow.
Moments would be exacerbated at times of tension and often brought on by drinking. In response, I would tend towards violence and, again, drinking. I ended up in some situations that, looking back, I really shouldn’t have got myself into.
But it was during lockdown when everything came to a head in a dramatic fashion.
I was living in quite an oddly designed and unusual share house in Southwark — perhaps a 10-minute walk from the Tate Modern, a great location at any other time.
With little to do save work from home, drink, smoke and every so often go for a run, my feelings of loneliness returned and were even more acute than before. There were days I simply couldn’t leave my bedroom. I wouldn’t eat. I would wake up, cry, sleep and cry again before re-commencing my drinking.
When the opportunity arose to go outside with friends, things would get out of hand and fast. It was a joyous, cathartic release.
But the next day, the loneliness would return with a chemically induced serotonin void that was impossible to fill. I remember calling my then girlfriend and wailing down the phone to her while she was at work about how I would amount to nothing, had a litany of problems and that the only feasible solution to my dilemma was to end it all.
I did get therapy and it helped. I spoke with a woman called Karin who, quite honestly, changed my life. She helped me realise that the problems I was facing were, in fact, real and I did need fixing.
But she also showed me that my feelings were not only manageable but explainable.
I explained how I felt at university, how I felt about my work and career, how I felt about being a man, how I felt about being alone — whether I was in reality or not.
I was the product of everything that had happened to me and that these things were not bad or good. They simply were. And the more that I understood that these forces were at play in my head, the more I could learn to live and thrive with them, not in spite of them.
When lockdown was lifted, I stopped going to therapy. I needed the cash to go outside again. It was an impulsive decision that, if I could do my time again, I probably would have made differently.
A year or so after, I moved to Australia. An impulsive move (another iffy trait of mine) and it was hard at times.
But my talking, to Karin previously, and others at the time, had made it manageable.
I wasn’t alone, despite being on the other side of the world. I wasn’t a failure.
I have a lovely life now with my partner, Mira. I’m happier than perhaps I have ever been in my life. I still have moments. But I know how to cope with them and I have people who want to help me.
I’m not normal. And I’m OK with that. I just needed to start talking about it.
If this has made you think about anyone in your life please don’t tell me. Instead, please give them a call and see if everything is OK.
