What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness (11 page)

Were my family supportive? Not really . . . I think they were bewildered and irritated, actually. They were supportive up to a point, but in the case of my first husband he really didn't know what to do, he had no idea. And of course, you know, even post-natal depression, yes it was known about, but in my case it wasn't recognised, nobody recognised it. At that time, forty years ago, I remember it being seen as a sign of weakness, like: ‘You can't cope with your life, what's the problem with you?' There was that sort of feeling abroad, there was still very much a sort of ‘pull yourself together' attitude. But you can't just pull yourself together, you actually can't, and it's not your fault. It's just ill luck really. But now, forty years later, we know so much more, we talk about things so much more. Now, for instance, if my daughter started to exhibit any of those symptoms I would, of course, immediately – because the knowledge is out there – say: ‘Come on sweetheart, we're going to see the doctor, because I think that's what you've got.' But people didn't know so, yes, bewildered and impatient is what my family were, I think.

And for the person going through it, if you don't know what it is – which I didn't for a long time – it's very frightening. It took quite a long time for somebody to say: ‘Actually, what you're having is panic attacks.' Eventually I went to our family doctor and interestingly – remember this was forty years ago but she was a wise old bird – she said: ‘What I think this is, is panic attacks, as you've got a lot of pressures on you.' But at first I was very unwilling to believe it, very unwilling. I refused to believe that it was not something physical, because that's how it manifested itself. Because the fear didn't come first, the physical symptoms came first. And I had various tests – testing the heart and so forth – which, of course, were absolutely fine, but I still didn't believe her and, therefore, the reason I didn't get help in the first place was my own fault.

I actually went so far as to change doctors and, after a time, I did actually get the help I needed. At first I was given Valium, which was useless, it just made everything . . . it made it worse actually. It didn't do much for the panic attacks and I just felt that I was swimming six feet under the surface of the sea. It was just a horrid feeling. It did nothing. This went on for some months and then I remember waking up one morning – and this was my saviour – and I was angry, I was so angry. So I got my beloved daughter up, I made breakfast for everybody, and I said to my husband: ‘I'm going running.' And I literally didn't think, I just put on some trainers and I went out the front door and I ran twice round the block, very fast. Don't ask me why I did it; even leaving the house at that point was pretty scary, the panic had set in big time. And I just ran round the block twice to absolutely tire myself out.

I suppose I must have just woken that morning and I literally blew my top. I was really, really angry that my life was so curtailed, so deeply curtailed; I was so angry that my life had been made so small. I was only about thirty-three. What sort of life was this? I had turned down jobs, I couldn't even shop! I mean it really was terrible and I thought: ‘Jesus Christ, this can't be right.' I can remember thinking: ‘This is ridiculous, I can't go on like this, I've got my whole life in front of me, what the bloody hell is going on, nobody can help me.' My life had been taken away from me and it's terrible when someone's life is taken away and it actually is a truly physical thing. It's not to be made light of because, when it happens to you, it is as . . . what is the word? What I'm trying to do is liken it to, you know, something physical. I remember after my second husband died I broke my ankle and getting around was very hard. For people who are stuck indoors who cannot, or who dare not, go out, it feels the mental equivalent of getting your legs blown off.

And my anger at this made me turn the corner: when I was so angry that my mind, or whatever this was, had done this to me, that I just ran round the block. And if you harness the energy from that anger it is the most wonderful thing. The danger is that you get angry inwardly which makes it worse, but I didn't, I got angry outwardly at last and to be honest that was what made the difference. When I got back from my run I rang the doctor and I got an appointment that day and I went in and I took the Valium and I . . . actually, no, I'd thrown the Valium down the loo because I was so angry. So I went to the doctor and I said: ‘It's useless, I want . . . there must be some help out there.' And he was a great doctor actually, he was a wonderful doctor, because he really listened, he was a brilliant diagnostician, he was one of the best diagnosticians I've ever met. And he said: ‘Right, I'm going to send you to the Royal Free because I believe they've got this thing they've not long set up', which I think was to do with fear of flying, but I'm not absolutely certain. Anyway, they gave me this set of exercises that I then took away and did every night, without fail, and it retrained the brain remarkably quickly. It probably took six months of diligently doing that every night. And it worked, it worked.

It's not actually quite the same as cognitive behaviour therapy but it is a branch of it. It was very simple. Last thing at night, in your bed, lying on your back. First thing you did was tense the bottom half of your body: your legs, your bum, your everything. Tense and let go, tense and let go, tense and let go. Three times. Then your arms, shoulders and head. Tense and let go, tense and let go, tense and let go. Then the middle of you, you know, the whole breathing, stomach area. Tense and let go, tense and let go, tense and let go. Then breathe: in and out to a count of five. This means that both physically and actually mentally – because breathing has an effect on your brain – you're quite relaxed.

Then what you do is you choose something that's very simple. In my case I decided to choose going shopping because I couldn't even do that on my own. I couldn't even go and shop with
someone else
. I couldn't shop, period. So I decided I would go shopping on my own to start with, in my head, which was a short journey, an easy journey. I decided to do it without my daughter first, because it was an added worry: if I had an attack when she was with me, what would happen to her? And actors are used to imagining things very quickly, very easily – but most people are anyway whether they know it or not – so I would start with making a shopping list in my head, and then I would get my handbag and put my shopping list in it, and then I would get my wheely trolley. Then I would put my coat on and I would check in my bag that I'd got my keys – everything that you would actually do – and then I would open the front door to the flat, I would go out, close the door, cross the hall to the main front door, open, close, down the steps and cross the tiles to the pavement. Then, all in my head, I would turn right at the pavement, walk along to the end of the road, cross the crossing at the end, walk down the road to Finchley Road, cross the road at the crossing. Then I would go in to either Sainsbury's or Waitrose, I can't remember which it was I used to choose – I think it was Waitrose actually – but it doesn't really matter. Once I was in there, I would check my shopping list and I would go round and shop, and then I would get to the checkout and I would do everything at the checkout, and then I would do the return journey.

Now this took a long time: it wasn't doing it all in a night. I mean, the first night I got as far as finishing the shopping list and the panic started, so I stopped, I did the whole relaxation thing again and I started the journey in my head again. I got a little bit further, but not much further, and I started again. And of course, what often happens, because it's at night, is that you go to sleep because you're reasonably relaxed, and that's okay, it doesn't matter. So the next night you do the same thing: you start it all again. And gradually, gradually, over the weeks, you get to the point where you do the whole thing all the way through. Then, if you feel like it, you actually do it in real life.

Once I'd done the whole thing and been totally relaxed from start to finish then I realised that actually I could do it. But, of course, there was always the possibility that my brain would decide otherwise for me. So therefore, what I did was, I always took a paper bag with me, which I did for some months, and I think the first time I did actually use it. And then I would go back at night and I wouldn't give up. I carried on doing that, and once I could do
that
properly I would think of other things, like going on a journey on a bus or, of course, the tube, or being in a lift. Now that took much longer, obviously, but I was diligent, I did it every night without fail, because I knew that was the only way to do it. And after about six months I was free, I was free of the shackles. I was just so determined,
so
determined, that this was not going to curtail just my life, but my daughter's life, and my life with my husband.

When I'd recovered sufficiently, I was offered a job teaching with a great teacher who had taught me at the Vic School in Bristol and I took it. So, what we set up was: I would drive down with my daughter, she would stay with my mum and dad, I would teach for a couple of days staying with them, and then I would drive back to London. And that worked very well. I'd gone into the theatre very young – I'd spent about fifteen years in the business and I loved my career – but I'd lost some confidence in myself and my abilities as an actor before I became pregnant. I had been looking at my career and feeling that I wasn't getting anywhere. I was working nearly all the time but I could see my peers and my friends, you know, sort of doing television, and so on and so forth, and I'd done a little but not very much. But in fact, actually once I'd worked for six months at the Vic School I went back into it because I regained my confidence with the help of some wonderful people in the theatre who encouraged me.

I still had to be a little bit careful and I still had to do the exercises, but by this time not every night, just if there was something specific that was coming up. For instance, I used them again some years later when I had to fly to Singapore to do a series called
Tenko
and it was wonderful because it freed me of my fear of flying. So although it took quite a bit of time to reprogramme my mind, that's what ultimately helped me – it more than helped me, it actually cured me – because my brain and body were at odds and I needed to put them back into harness again, which I did. There were still sort of lingering gremlins sitting on my shoulder; I could do it but there would still be a slight feeling of uncertainty. It's only in the last fifteen or twenty years, for instance, that I've quite happily gone in lifts and the underground, and so on and so forth. But now it's gone, which is not to say that it won't come back, if circumstances were such, but at least I have the tools at my disposal to actually cope with it.

***

I remember when I went back to the wonderful doctor, when the exercises I'd been given were beginning to work, and him saying: ‘Look, if at any time you want to go into why this has happened then I can actually send you to someone.' Really for analysis actually, psychoanalysis was what he was suggesting. And at the time I felt that what I had been given was quite sufficient but, because I'm very curious about how human beings work and why they work in the way they do – and everyone is completely different, which is astonishing given how many there are of us – I did, in fact, actually go into analysis very much later in my life, which was hugely helpful to me. This would have been, I think probably . . . terrible isn't it? Lost in the mists of time . . . I think probably in my early fifties, late forties.

I became fascinated by how I had . . . God this is such a long story, I'll make it very, very quick. I had, in my early twenties, met my real father for the first time, we then lost touch, and then in my late forties I decided to try and find him again. I did this for the same reason that I went into analysis: because I wanted to actually have a handle on some of the patterns in my life that I had started to recognise, which were to do with what had happened to me as a child and a young adult. I wanted to have a handle on these things because I didn't want to be at their beck and call any longer, I didn't want to be at their command anymore. Because of course, until the recognition of the fact that they existed, when I didn't realise they existed, they had full command of me. The moment I realised this wasn't quite right was the moment I thought: ‘Right', so I went into analysis for – I can't remember – five or six years I think.

I'm hesitant to talk about exactly what the patterns in my life were to do with, because in a way I hate all that stuff that came over from America about everybody letting it all hang out. I mean, in many respects it was terrific, but there is a danger of, you know, disappearing too much up your own arse, with trying to work out what this was. But I will say it was to do with issues of abandonment, of being abandoned twice by my father, of being abandoned at a very young age at school. I had been brought up in a tiny village in north Devon – we were bombed out from Solihull in the war – and I had gone to boarding school from the age of five. And although it was a tiny, lovely school – and we were very, very well looked after and cared for there – it was a very early age to be wrested from your mother, which was horrible. Then my mother remarried and we moved, when I was about eight or nine, to between Bristol and Bath and I went to a boarding school in Bristol – which was ghastly – before becoming a day girl.

So it was all to do with that: abandonment, feeling not able to cope. So what I actually wanted to do was work out what it was and, therefore, how I could actually reprogramme myself so it didn't do me harm any longer. And that was what happened. It was helpful because although I'd dealt with the physical stuff with the exercises, it was only in a superficial way. It's rather like having a very nasty cut on your arm and what they do is they sew it up and they put a bandage on it and that's fine, that's taken care of it. But then actually the process is much slower because then the body has to heal the scar, heal the wound, and then you have some scar tissue left. And sometimes what happens is you have some very obvious scar tissue left and that can be ugly if it's on your face, so you think perhaps you'll have more surgery to take that away, and you have to deal with that. So the wound had been sewn up but there was still some scar tissue and I wanted to just get rid of that. It's not a terribly good analogy but it'll have to do.