1066 All Stars

Get Your Stuff and Get Out

There is a certain wonderful irony to the fact that the single biggest event that happened to me that could drive me into therapy happened whilst I was in therapy. Or, more to the point, just about to leave therapy.

Let’s rewind a little bit. I had taken the step of being open and honest with my employer about my mental health condition. In return, I was assured of support as I worked my way back to full capacity.

After two months of therapy, my psychiatrist agreed that I was ready to go back. I would be phased in on a reduced schedule until I was ready for the full on grind of the working day. My job, as I had been assured before starting my treatment, would be there waiting for me.

Days before my proposed return to work, I was told that in my absence, my position was being made redundant. My department was to be reorganised, my role the only apparent casualty. What a coincidence.

Typically, I regret my response. I had every right to feel considerable anger but instead, I sought validation; I wanted to understand if this was professional or personal. Was this a rearrangement of a department on the grounds of efficiency or a reflection on my perceived worth to the organisation? Did it really matter? It did to me.

I was offered the chance to go back but in a utility role and apply for any of the other full time vacancies available. But I saw the writing on the wall. I had no interest in being a spare part. I never returned to the office.

I suspect it is difficult to know how to feel about being made redundant at the best of times but my circumstances were certainly unique. On the one hand, I had lost my job, my working home for the past 12 years. I was saddened to feel that I wasn’t wanted, angered at how it had been managed. And of course I was fearful of what came next.

On the other hand, I was leaving a job that had made me miserable and they would pay me a reasonable sum to get rid of me. I had a chance to strike out and try something new. Undoubtedly there were reasons for happiness.

With the various legal wranglings, I benefited from a further month of therapy before my redundancy became official. Wrapped in the bubble of the Priory, I had the comfort of knowing I was around understanding, supportive therapists and fellow patients. In a sense, I didn’t really have to deal with it, only in theory. I was able to process my anger and sadness and begin to accept.

With my employment terminated, my therapy came to an abrupt end. I was resentful of being robbed of the chance to go back to my old life and put right so many things that had been wrong, apply the lessons I had learned. Instead, I was out into the big wide world, my therapy incomplete. I felt like Luke Skywalker at the end of Empire Strikes Back, partially trained, confronting Vader before he is ready. Would I too be beaten by a superior foe before being cast adrift in the wilderness?

Post-therapy, I struggled with conflicting thoughts. On one hand, I told myself I was allowed some time to process and recover. I would take 2 weeks without the pressure of searching for a job, just to relax and unwind. By the second week, I became anxious, creating a phantom external pressure that I ‘should’ be looking for a job, any time not spent in front of a recruiter a wasted minute. And so instead of a break, I found myself descending back into depression, wondering where to turn next.

That turn would take me in an unexpected direction.

Temporary Insanity

Having charted the escalation of thinking errors and learned behaviours, my time at the Priory was very much a watershed where I discovered myself and began the process of recovery. For the first time then, we enter a period of my life post-therapy where I attempt to reintegrate into the world I had left behind.

The trouble was that as much as I had changed, the world was still very much the same. In addition, I had been robbed of the safety net of going back into an environment where management knew of my circumstances. I had always assumed that if I went back to my old job, there would be an inherent level of understanding and openness.

Instead, I found myself on the open market and, wary of the stigma of mental health,I felt obliged to hide my recent past. And so enquiries about my job history were fudged; I had not worked since early June but was not officially made redundant until September and so that is the date I stuck to, acting as if the period from June to September never happened.

After applying and failing for numerous roles, I reluctantly took the step of applying for temporary work. I figured it would be a good way of reentering the workplace with less pressure and help me to feel good about myself that I was earning money again. I could not have been more mistaken.

A role came up just before Christmas. I did my best to wriggle out of it, thinking I would take Christmas off and reapply myself in the New Year. A combination of persistence and guilt eventually persuaded me to take the role and so I found myself trudging off to patrol the immigration courts in some place I had never heard of.

Walking in, I didn’t know what the rate of pay was so I e-mailed the agency. The reply made my heart sink; minimum wage. I wandered round in a daze most of that day, the only bright spot a brief moment when I thought I wasn’t required and would be sent home. Alas I worked the whole day and would return the next.

That night, I got home, collapsed on the bed and cried.

The next day was more of the same. Again, I returned that night and cried.

I could not process how far I had fallen. From a manager, regularly liasing with senior managers and the executive committee to earning minimum wage setting out paper cups and filling water jugs. I felt utterly humiliated, demeaned and embarrassed. Was this to be my future? Was this all I was good for now?

After a couple of weeks, I was transferred to another court that had recently opened. Perhaps inevitably, I took the lead amongst my colleagues, the senior staff and Judges impressed by my confidence and competence, wrongly assuming that I had been doing the job for many years. Yet inside, despite the lack of responsibility and the ease of the role, I remained convinced that I was barely capable. And of course, I wanted out.

And my chance would soon come.