May 25, 2020
Depression and anxiety are a poor mixture for keeping the engine going. So how is it that so many of us keep on going, day after day, without outwardly batting an eyelid at the multitudes of challenges being thrown our way?
Looking back, I can’t imagine how I kept going so long; how I did what I did. But I do understand why the engine gave out when it did.
It was Christmas 2010. I had just concluded a 3-year spell as the youngest ever national secretary in a volunteer organization, alongside my work and home life. Three years prior, on New Year’s Eve, my Mum had shown her true colors in an epic manner, and it had taken more than 6 months for me to go back home again. Relations remained strained for at least a year after that. I had long since pushed all of that away for the sake of restoring peace and harmony, but in hindsight, the fury with which I had thrown myself into this volunteer work was me running a mile from the glaring truth about my relationship with my mother.
Late 2010 my term in office ended, and I had time on my hands. Rather than facing the truth, I found other things to do in the organization and started doing excessive amounts of overtime at work. That, and building unduly complex policies and procedures around my position to secure it.
A few years earlier, as a very inexperienced manager, I had been transferred to a different line manager and life had been uncomfortable ever since. I felt utterly unsupported and left to sink or swim. Then one day, my assistant was signed-off on long term sick leave and I was left holding the ball, in the midst of a major legislative change program. I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.
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