The Day I Snapped (Mental Health Documentary) | Real Stories

you know how do you explain to your husband you having these crazy thoughts that you can't go back to work I simply knew when I started dressing what was happening that I wasn't going to do it and I wasn't going to be able to do it anymore I was going to have to stop and I was going to have to change something fairly dramatically I was like a wave came over me and I just lost control of myself and I just came in it came in sat down and burst into tears you feel that you have no choice so you put on the acting face and you go in there as if everything's wonderful and underneath there's just nothing but a very very runny wobbly jelly there was no reason for me to get up in the morning there was no value in what I was doing there for dad seemed like a very good option [Music] stress is on the increase affecting over a fifth of the working population this is the story of five professionals who were pushed to the limit by the pressure of work you can imagine the demands of modern life nowadays people are expected to work at a much faster pace there are many many jobs that people are trained for but not allowed to do so people aren't fulfilling their full skilled potentials if you like social support at work and social support generally society is changing those kind of things are breaking down all of these lead to people actually suffering more stress and eventually starts moving on to more illness in Britain work is the third most common cause of stress after bereavement and financial worries employers lose nearly seven million working days each year to stress-related illnesses yet many people are unaware that their complaints are symptomatic of stress I wanted to be a social worker from the time I was 15 I chose my a-levels on the basis of wanting to be a social worker being a basic grade social worker was enough I [Music] was expected to become an accountant a housekeeper a homecare manager an Assessor for people having to play so many different roles within a very short period of time having those roles changed without proper guidance without proper training is exhausting it's exhausting emotionally it's exhausting physically and at the end of the day you burn out I burned out after a particularly traumatic visit to the clients house I found my hands and my feet covered in XML which I have not suffered from since I was 10 years old or something and when I say covered I mean absolutely covered so I went to the doctors and explained what had happened and he said you're not going back and that was it and it was as simple as that Linda was told to take time off but after six months bored and restless she was determined to go back to work I think she was hoping that she put the past few months behind her that she'd be able to return to work and obviously return to work be stable not be ill and she was that beat she was bubbly effervescent and I felt fingers crossed things should go well for her I don't quite a sheltered life I'd gone to a nice school and to suddenly go from that having expected going to farming or something like that to go into London where it was also a high-fly and posh cars and wining and dining at night I mean it was it was a bit glamorous I suppose [Music] because you're used to earning quite a lot of money is very hard to suddenly not have that money all to expect you won't have that that's sort of money so it was it was it was some this is one of the sort of jobs where you could never leave it until it decided to leave you I think from above you getting performed perform perform targets targets targets and I think you've got to be a very special kind of person to cope with that and I don't think most of us can I remember when I first joined the company you know we used to go out for an hour and a half lunches and meet clients and have a great time and towards the end we actually had sort of no lunch at all we've got sandwiches in and just worked all the way through if you read any articles from anywhere everybody thinks you're optimum efficiency for sort of six hours maybe eight so when you're working twelve or fourteen there's a huge tail off your efficiency from being okay she doesn't just sort of gently go down it goes up so you're making more mistakes you're making more mistakes cuz you're more tired you're then worried about making more mistakes in there you are and it just sort of catches up on itself and gets faster and faster and you know long arse do not work decisions up in London are instantaneous and on the one push of a calculator if you've got a decimal point in the wrong place you've probably done a deal and lost it could be two hundred thousand pounds I mean huge money just on one press of one button and and that again cannot be good for you I mean this is everything it's just it just everything is tension everything is stressed and speed it was all I could do to make myself get out of bed to face what I knew was inevitably gonna happen that day and yet it is the instinct it's something again you come back to it it's something you've done for 23 years you feel that you have no choice so you put on the acting face and you go in there as if everything's wonderful and underneath there's just nothing but a very very runny wobbly jelly but you don't realize the cumulative effect is having in the body and in the mind probably is more important you used to get home at night you go to sleep you'd be waiting for wake up absolute dripping wet with sweat the fear and when you're in the job it was just constant sort of a great lump in the sort of top of the chest there which you were just through I suppose you've got used to it you actually have got it was there but if you did sit and think it was certainly there like a huge great lump in the middle it's very difficult to cope with it was the relationship I think with with the pupils that made the job that you had these young people and you could influence them you could inspire them in your subject it was the juggling of you know so many different balls so many different responsibilities so many new initiatives in schools and a school that is successful wants to keep improving and that I felt increase the pressure on all staff and senior staff so on top of all your daily responsibilities there would be new things to look at new things to implement I have wonderful parents but they're quite academic they're very successful dad's been a successful head teacher you know for I don't know 30 years my mother ism is a mental health commissioner she's been a JP she's you know didn't work at Cambridge University so it's a very high-powered very clever and I couldn't believe that these people could love somebody who wasn't successful therefore I had to be successful I had to be put you know I had to be really good at what I did the first blip I think my doctor would call it depression initially happened that the May after I'd started the new job in January and I think that was almost sheer exhaustion of all that change and of trying to get up to full speed when I didn't know the people I was working with I was I didn't know the systems in this new school and yet I expected myself to perform brilliantly from the word go Alana had pushed herself too hard she was prescribed antidepressants and sought long-term counseling not recognizing the severity of her situation she was back at work within a week I didn't think anything was different except there was this scary idea that this could happen but it you know it was only like a little blip and continued then in my job working hard taking on more responsibilities and so on in many ways when I think back about at night the lifestyle was great it was very boozy which suited me down to the ground I knew you know hundreds of people from the various departments that have worked in and so the local bars around that area if I walked into any of them I'd know enough people to go and have a beer with the culture of the office in the company that I work for was people were there pretty well from dawn till dusk if not before and after and you're sat there you know in front of a bank of five computer screens relaying new news and information and share prices from all over the world you are sat in a chair with a feet up on the desk and the telephone hanging off your shoulder for 12 hours a day the principal stress is involved in that type of work is the feeling of being permanently evaluated and the sort of competitive edge and if you suddenly found that you were sort of falling behind in one way or another you know that's quite an unpleasant feeling if everyone else around you is doing better in terms of the amount of business that they're generating or the amount of money that they're making or whatever it be it was stressful and many people are well suited to it and and they perhaps enjoy the stress or they just don't get stressed but I found being permanently analyzed and permanently feeling that I had to succeed at what I was doing and I had to try and be better than the next person or as good as the next person very difficult I felt a physical pain in my chest a lot of the time that awful sinking feeling you have when you realize you know and you get in your car and you driving off on holiday and you realize you've left the stove on that's a god you know or what have I done and you have to whatever you know those types of things that's how I felt a lot of the time you know butterflies in your stomach and and I definitely felt often quite uncomfortable in my chest in fact I went to have a couple of medicals and they sort of warned me about that my liver wasn't working as well as it should probably because I was just boozing too much I don't think I was boozing because I wanted to get away from stress but it was a part of the lifestyle that you go ahead and have a few beers and so I definitely felt that my health was suffering it was suffering it's on paper I mean it was it was a real thing my family notice it and I think my friends noticed it too I certainly wasn't happy with what I was doing and it showed or it began to show more and more I certainly wasn't a healthy and I think if I had continued you know it would have probably got worse my biggest love is being out in the fresh air I've always been the dairy farmer I don't know that I want to be an arable farmer on a with all the tractor work and such our dairy farmers there's quite a lot of variety [Music] you never think it's going to be you and I never thought it was going to be me I didn't think I've got any big problems we were financially stable I've got a good marriage my family were fine I got the best staff I could ever hope for on the place I got friends everything I thought everything was fine I didn't I did anyway stress cortland completely unawares here on ease award-winning Dairy Herd supported by his wife and two children Linz long hours and dedication were to bring about his downfall farming is a 24-hour day thing his day began at four o'clock and it finished about nine in the evening usually obviously he came in for coffee and came in for lunch but it was relentless he was very stressed and didn't have time to go walking and all the things we'd started to do he was making excuses not to do because farm work came first again Joel used to say she said I was getting too fussy if I had an idea it had to be done there and then even if it was half way through a meal things like this but I don't as I said I don't know whether anyone else noticed anything about me often people pinpoint a nervous breakdown to one particular event as a clinician when I look at people you find that they've brought loads and loads of problems with them that have been building up to that point and what they're saying is the particular event is one particular precipitating event that everyone latches on to often that is the thing that pushes them just a little bit over the edge but it's like the straw that breaks the camel's back it's rare that that one event was caused everything nanana struggled on at her new school for two years but the burden of her workload finally became too much I don't know why it happened that day I don't think there was anything significant about what happened the day then I my engine broke down you know it I think it was just a fact the fact that I had this time completely ran out of steam it was a Friday and I can't remember anything particular about the morning I probably did some teaching but I remember I was quite worried about even it's a meeting in the afternoon he had a Working Committee on learning styles and I remember saying to my colleague I feel this is the straw that's going to break the camel's back that it was for me I felt involvement in this additional committee was just one thing too much was with the head and myself and a number of other staff and I just remember think to myself I'm not coping with this I'm just I'm not coping with this situation toll and at one stage I asked to be to be excuse me went to the loo and cried and just knowing what was happening can't remember the journey home I used to remember the feeling of relief at leaving work and it wasn't just that's another day over I can go home to whatever but it was like it was like this Armour had been then you were having to hold this armor up all day and then you could be you you could you could get in the car and you could be you don't ask me why I couldn't be me in my work and just that relief but yes and and coming home and you know how do you explain to your husband you are having these crazy thoughts that you can't go back to work you know you're just such a wreck you're so collapsed inside it is it's a feeling of collapse it's that you've no more strength you can't do it anymore like Eleanor Simon tried to conceal the stress he was feeling for years but he too was delaying the inevitable I was very snappy very short-tempered my children who I love dearly I'm sure must have hated me at times because I've sort of didn't want to do anything with them didn't want to go out I just wanted to sit and chill out so that all starts to add to the stress all the way through and he just becomes a cumulative effect until some he's got a given there's a dirty great bang it all goes wrong I think the day that it all finally went wrong and others thought pigeons came home to roost as it were was when I went up in the train I got on a train I wasn't feeling good when I got up in the morning I was feeling very stressed about a couple of situations that I knew I had ongoing from the day before and I said it was sort of clammy and a bit grey and sweating and unpleasant so I was got halfway to work I blacked out on the train I got off the train to come home so I thought this just isn't right and British Rail bless their cotton socks are absolutely stunning which was amazing they don't often get praised but I got back on the train at Clapham Junction to come home I said to the chat next three look I don't feel particularly good you know I'm not gonna be doing horrible like throw up all over you but I'm not feeling right I did blackout and when I came to there's a guard sitting next to me and they'd actually called an ambulance it was waiting at Saturn station to sort of whip Whitney off the train and I got tested and they thought I'd had a heart attack it was just stress it was just a girl I think they called it or they call it executive burnout or something the hospital in Sutton because I was very twitchy anyway the hospital in Sutton was just like a it was just a scary place to be so I signed myself out of that and they got very upset when I saw myself out of there got a taxi home rang my wife and said I'm coming home because it's all gone horribly wrong blah blah she'd obviously completely flipped her lid because she thought I was signing out of hospital and I was having a heart attack and all this sort of things I got back here at which point the family doctor was standing in the kitchen as I walked through the door behind me I just was sort of confronted by my family doctor who then gave me the lecture of a lifetime how dare I sign myself out of hospital how dare I come back and it's like all these things I think when things going wrong there's only one place you want to be and that's home Berlin the farmer home and work were inseparable and the pressures became inescapable we had an in October which is quite a busy time of the year I'd gone to another farm to pick up some bags of feed and I intended to pick up ten bags of feed [Music] when I got back here I found out and got ate and that seemed to tip me over the edge he said I can't even count to ten or something silly and I said what everybody makes mistakes like you would say but he's always thought everything's his fault if it goes wrong which of course it isn't and he just sat down over there and he said I just can't cope any longer and burst into tears and I said something like you know don't worry and he said I've been feeling like this for ages I was like a wave came over me and I just lost control of myself and I just came in it came in sat down and burst into tears I really didn't know what to do and we talked about him going to the doctor and he said no I'll be right in a minute he went straight upstairs to bed and was and did sleep actually straight away for ages but I had I had got him to say he'd go to the doctor because I thought I couldn't phone without his permission then anyway and so I did phone and so I was quite tearful on the phone to the receptionist she was brilliant and said oh I don't worry you know we'll fit him in and everything oh there no actually wouldn't cried all over him as well which one very nice but at least who's that showed I wasn't myself after eight weeks back in her job with long days of meetings and home visits Linda was feeling pressurised again because I attack time off sick there was subject to very close personal supervision so although I had you know tens of years of experience under my belt whatever I was doing was being very closely scrutinized I had tried to sort out a situation within the hospital say that a gentleman would be able to leave and in fact go to a nursing home that gentleman should have left the hospital before I went on holiday when I returned from my holiday he was still in the hospital because of bureaucratic difficulties within the two systems between the social services and Health Authority at that point I knew I couldn't do this anymore that really was it enough was enough if I couldn't get somebody out of the hospital who'd been in there for months at a cost of seven eight hundred pounds a week for the sake of less than 100 pounds week worth of plastic tubing then I couldn't do anything I couldn't I really did feel as I couldn't achieve anything that that was absolutely it depression is a spectrum ranging from the mild depression which is almost like severe stress all the way up to such a severe illness that people stopped eating they stopped talking they virtually stopped thinking and suicide is often one of the ultimate ends of depression about five to ten percent of people with severe recurrent depression will kill themselves when memory serves me right I had a row with my kids had a row with my partner and generally felt that there was no reason for me to get up in the morning there was no value in what I was doing there for dad seemed like a very good option so dead was what I aimed for I had a large quantity of heresies MO and Baca branding and after everybody had gone to bed when I made myself a bed up in the lounge and then drank the brandy and 8-step our seasonal and woke up a day later in the local hospital full of tubes and bits and pieces and was very very cross what I really wanted to be was in my nice little black hole when I wasn't in my nice little black hole I was in a hospital room so I was furious absolutely furious when you when you arrived at that sort of point in your life I mean it's not talking you want it's action you want it to stop and daddys the only real way that you can stop because what you're stopping is the experiences its life you'd want to talk about it I'd you know I'd done the counseling bit and all the rest of it you don't keep repeating it no point so it's dead deadly seat you know that the the Sunday night feeling that people get where you know tomorrow's Monday I noticed that something alarm bells started ringing for me when I noticed that actually earlier in the weekend perhaps after a year of doing the last job that I had Saturday I would be starting our god Sunday and then it's Monday again and really by the end by the last year that I was there I I had a sort of feeling of joy on a Friday night that the week was over and almost instantly still the same evening almost in the same breath thinking oh God two days and I'm back here again and you I mean that's quite serious I mean when you really think about that you can't carry on doing doing that job you just can't doesn't make sense ironically it was as I was starting to earn more money bonuses became quite exciting and have you that that was when I really triggered in my mind that though I had to get out and a lot of people laugh at me about that because it seems kind of weird as you start doing good money but I knew that as soon as I got used to that good salary and good bonus then you're on your career track and you can't escape or it becomes harder and harder and harder to escape with his health deteriorating and under a lot of stress it was time to get out or face a possible snap an opportunity arose when our company was support by another company so I spoke to my boss and asked him what he thought was going to happen and he said to be honest I don't think many of us will survive this and I you know went like this and I felt great you know this is what I've always wanted I get voluntary redundancy I get redundancy I can you know leave and get paid to leave and then start with whatever else I feel like starting with [Music] the next day I came in and there was a big sign saying everybody from this department should go to the personnel department and I thought you know this is great this is it this is it and I went to my desk take my coat off and there were some new business cards with my name on at my desk and my heart again to sank and I thought oh my god I'm I'm still here I'm still here and I just couldn't almost couldn't face it so I went upstairs and to the personal department and there was greeted by somebody who said I'm afraid you know you're going to be made redundant you have to leave now and you know go through the exit interview and what have you and I was just grinning from ear to ear it was one of the best days of my life it was really wonderful the worst days he sat just there in the chair staring at the carpet with his hands on his knees I think that was the worst time you know he wasn't doing anything or saying anything and I couldn't say anything that could possibly help I just felt useless um my self-esteem was had gone yeah useless affair failure that's how I felt dreadful word it's not we don't mention it now I was really frightened as days went on because I didn't know how bad it was going to be and especially as he began to go a bit downhill to start with I did have a psychiatric nurse come around and that that did work very very well because somehow you can talk sometimes talk to someone you don't know better than people you know I did keep a diary after January or so so as I could see how I was progressing but I think the couple of months before that I haven't got much recollection not at all I said to Jill what a pity I didn't keep an account of the journey back but who wants to read about carpet staring and worry beads caryn the community nurse came in the afternoon says I'm doing nicely going to give one more visit and says we'll see how I go I told her that I felt that I now hadn't got quite so much to talk about and that I felt that in itself was a good sign and she agreed Lynne's recovery has been slow with many setbacks but with the help of counseling and medication he is overcoming his depression after Linda's suicide attempt out of immediate danger she was admitted to a local psychiatric hospital that was a useful space it was a useful time because it gave me time to not be with people they actually allowed me to be on my own until I was ready to start meeting with other people after 10 weeks Linda was discharged and sent home on medication nothing the the whole experience I think has been really very damaging for the children they've both been quite traumatized by it knowing that what your mother is saying in terms of behavior is I'm leaving you is incredibly difficult to deal with emotionally and although it was two years ago now and they they both oh I think suspicious is probably a good word you know when I come home will she actually be there if she's not there why isn't she there if she is there is she gonna be sprawled out somewhere having taken another massive overdose because she wants to die they don't know it's destabilized a great part of their life I think falinda the effects of stress was so severe that the family was unable to cope she and her partner eventually separated Simon's way of dealing with such emotional turmoil was to blanket from his mind to be honest was immediate time after all this had happened I can't remember that clearly I think the brain just shuts down it doesn't want you to think about it afterwards where I know is everything was horrendous I mean the doctor tried to get me into all sorts of psychologists and psychiatrists and whatever and I mean I haven't got a lot of time for them to be honest certainly for me they didn't do the right things you know that antidepressants went on for a long long time and I never really know where they helped I just was too scared to come off them in case they were helping so I stayed on those high things for up to two or three years which is a long time scaling the dose down after scaling it up and moving from one to another I think they said I should have six months off and you know I went to my boss and said I gotta have six months off which there was just you know forget it you know you can have a couple of weeks if you need it but that's it so that's more stress don't try and move it at all Simon was only allowed three weeks off before he was forced back to work without time to recover he failed to cope and was eventually dismissed this is a job you've done for 23 years you can't just stop doing it it doesn't become is not possible you can't think it's possible and it's not until somebody makes you do it by saying bye-bye Simon that you have to do it and I must admit the day it actually happened although I knew it was coming of the day before you sort of building up to it he's all still horrible at the day that actually said okay that's it you you're out of here you actually feel sort of the wait you know I'm sure I gained about three inches in height I said when but I had to for me pretend that everything was great and it wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination and I mean it caused stress on every part of my personal life to such a degree that in the end my wife and I separated I feel great guilt towards both my wife and particular my children who at that time in my life there were about sort of 14 and 12 and that's a very important time for them and they obviously saw a daddy was totally unstable up and down like a yo-yo and bad temper some minutes not here a lot of the time and that's a guilt that you just got to live with sadly you can't do anything about it you can try to make it up to them and I try to sense but it's how big the scar is in them I don't know how they cope with it I don't know they seem to be coping with it very well and it's something I will always regret I suppose guilt regret the same sort of thing that you can't turn the clock back and do it again five days after Ellen has breakdown she was already looking for a new challenge to occupy her time I almost felt that if ho if I stayed on the sick that I wouldn't get up again there was that real fear and it was probably fear of this feeling of fear of failure again I had failed but I wasn't going to stay there we have quite a large house so I started talking to Alan about you know could we do something like been breakfast and he was quite opposed to start with Ellen his pattern was when she felt uncomfortable feelings like being vulnerable being scared being scared that she was actually going to fail her way of being was just to launch herself into work and work so hard that she didn't have to feel anything so all she was doing really from my point of view it was repeating very old pattern to start with I found it very very stressful I mean the first two guests I had were very very difficult it's been part of the learning process for me just to you know to learn to accept that this is not the Hilton and it's not five-star it's our home and it's it's an interesting experience when bookings were uphill and it was really high when bookings were down then it was the end of the world for her and she'd come and should talk about her business and what she was doing and so I was able to say to her well I wonder do you realize how strongly your ally on yourself with your business you is there another way of stepping back and developing a life of your own so that you're not only defined by your work Justin to has found a new line of work swapping the desk and computer for a workbench a grinder and a new life as a builder I've always had a thing about property and I've always had a thing about doing things with my hands which is the one thing other than punching numbers into a calculator or into a keyboard on a computer the one thing you don't do in banking and also have a small element of creativity I like to think anyway and it's nice to be able to employ that a bit in my work as time went on and I was arming and ironing and thinking about what I would be best suited to opportunities came up for me to odds and sods of work for friends and it really just started from there and as soon as I'd got into it then when I met David my business partner who has been in this business for much longer than I have he was able to point me in the right direction a bit and it's it's a very different lifestyle but it suits me very well the one thing which you know inevitably you suffer from when you make a decision like like the one I made his money I mean that's that that's everybody's principal concern I think probably is money you know where's the next mortgage payment going to come from well luckily for me I got paid to leave so I got a certain amount of money which has provided a a cushion for me to move into a much lower scale of pay the first job that I did when I started working for myself the tiny amount of money that I did work for a friend of mine but that felt more real than any money that I'd ever earned before this is real money it was cash or it wasn't it was a check but you know I'd actually physically own till I hadn't sat at a desk had a good month or a bad month or whatever and just received a you know a salary paid so it into my account you know I'd had to physically work for it and that was great as you get older and you start to have children and there are implications about whether you can afford to raise them and whether you can afford to educate them in the way that you would hope to do and those are obviously big financial issues and those are concerns that I do have now but I'm confident that I'll conquer them one way or another and I want six children so I've got to do something pretty well about ten years four actually left the job I started the charity that I now run which is wildlife aids and I was sort of that was my relaxation I come home in the evenings and work with the charity till to the one o'clock in the morning or do rescues and work or weekend's but I needed it Drennan to keep going so that's why I did that but as soon as I left work then I just took on this full-time I come home to my roots now this is what I always wanted to do I dreamt about it and I'm doing it and every morning I get up and I actually quite look forward to it and even when the phone rings it two o'clock in the morning and somebody says I've run over at Badgers and although it's a horrible thing to do I know I can do something about it I know I can make something better and I doing it wildlife aide is a double whammy for me because I love animals and I think they're probably animals pets whatever their best anti-stress machine you'll ever get in the world are the only people's lives they've saved but I should think millions upon millions have been taken so long and earn big money and sort of done everything I wanted to do had better lifestyle the most I can now put something back in sorry if I get fed up with it here I can wander around the garden like gum I'm stroking badger I can go and do anything I want and that's the difference when you're being controlled by other people and you have no choice in what you do that's where the stress becomes unmanageable here if I don't like it in a way might be an ego but it's mine so I can get up walk away and come back in court last time feel a hell of a lot better in there six months on then is still on medication but he is making a marked recovery with Jill's help he couldn't have gone on like he was getting faster and faster more and more fussy more and more worried I couldn't see how he kept saying he was going to step back from the farm etc in three years and I couldn't see how that was going to happen the way he was going we do say now actually that it has done in my favor because it stopped him and he's starting again slowly jobs been fantastic I mean I'm bound to say that aren't I that she really has the first thing I noticed and this sounds as though he's a house husband but I promise you he's not I'd been out and I came in and he was just doing the washing up and it was wonderful and I didn't realize how long he hadn't done anything like that for and I remember a really warm feeling thinking wow you know he's actually doing that because he just sat here while I got the milk got the papers got the logs lit the fire which isn't Lin you know it's just not eight months after his collapse Lin and Jill are in the process of moving to the local village retirement has come three years early they have a new house and a new start he's talked about when we move he'll stop taking his tablets which the doctor wants him to do but he hasn't felt ready to do but you know just the last few days he said I think I will so it's all really positive stuff yeah [Music] the moment we've got so many places to go to him it's so much time to make up and be a little bit irresponsible press you know come home late at night okay or not come home at all dude's got plans which I better not divulge now it'll be great it's gonna be great fun we've got we've never to lived in the village or anything there's several societies and such we think that we can probably get into I just get different life turn off the old one mmm there's gonna be the next chapter yeah Linda has reluctantly come to accept that she will never go back to work but it has left a large hole in her life there was a huge multiplicity of roles in my life three years ago mom there isn't now it's very very very different and a housewife it I've never been just a housewife ever ever before days are very much about getting up going to the shop getting me newspaper doing the crossword fiddling around in the garden playing with the animals sorting their back making sure they're fed and watered there's food in the cupboard for the kids was it really deciding to die I suppose it's the last to boot to be broken once you've done it and have lived you know that you can always do it again they're not doing it it's probably more out of respect for the people around you and because one has a burning desire to be alive [Music] like a just a mixer please five years since he left the city Justin has completely transformed his life he is his own boss and his career as a builder is going well every angle of it is different it used to be ice a very sedentary lifestyle this was that more out here and I you know I sat at a desk for 10 or 12 hours a day looked at computer screens and and you know got up to have lunch and sat back down again and now I sit down and have lunch and I stand off for the rest of the day and at the end of the day I feel you know physically exhausted but it's a great feeling I mean that's a lovely feeling we'd be lying about to say to you that I now have a stress-free lifestyle I don't but I have a good lifestyle and I really really enjoy what I do now in complete contrast to before I look forward on Friday night to Monday I want to get back to work again in a way I have two days now whereas before my day was work and then sleep now I have work and then I have you know the rest of the day which might mean you know down the pub whatever and then sleep but there's a whole different segment in my life which almost didn't exist before I've definitely made the right decision you know I think there are opportunities in the world which enable you to be more in control of your self and and how you run things and how you do things and that's what I've achieved so I'm very pleased I saw an ad from the parish magazine which said professional opera singer dekes dedicated students and I thought well dare I I hadn't sang since I was at school I thought well you know Africa absolutely lousy boys but I'll work at it and I want I really wanted to do it I was it seemed a way of being able to express these emotions and a lot of emotions [Music] ellen:oh in her old phase would have ended wanted to sing at Covent Garden I mean oh she wouldn't have stopped her anything settle for anything less but she must have a wonderful singing teacher who again enabled her to find her voice didn't judge it and I've never heard her on this thing I didn't know how she's at what her voice is like and I doesn't really matter it's her voice [Music] good lad come on this way my husband still says you know I wish we could have a foreign holiday more often but that's become far less important for me it's as if you can live every day rather than waiting for the holidays or waiting for the weekend with the support of friends family counselor doctor not necessarily drugs you know I think everybody can find a way through [Music]

Channel: Real Stories

Views: 1,006,471

Rating: 4.7637835 out of 5

Keywords: Real Stories, nervous breakdown, teenage mental health documentary, mental health documentary uk, mental health documentary, Full length Documentaries, what is stress, #mentalhealthawarenessweek, dealing with anxiety, TV Shows - Topic, mental health, Full Documentary, Documentary, dealing with stress, 2017 documentary, mental health awareness week, Documentaries, anxiety, mental illness documentary, stress, mental breakdown, self harm, depression

Id: FoI1pC3Dtg8

Length: 49min 21sec (2961 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I snapped about a year ago. I struggled through it and finally went on short term disability a little over a week ago. Not sure what I am going to do but I can't go back to that job. This is not the first time I have snapped either so I am bit worried I will never be able to hold down a long term job.