What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness (18 page)

Then there were psychiatrists asking questions – ‘How do you feel today on a scale of one to four?' – and a trainee psychiatrist who was a bloody idiot. He came along and he said:

‘Oh, so you have sexual problems.'

‘Why?'

‘Because you're wearing two bras.'

‘No I'm not, it's a nursing bra.'

Then, when they gave me a medical:

‘I see you've tried to stab your stomach.'

‘No, that's a linear nigra, cos I've just had a baby.'

So I just thought: ‘Right, I'm never talking to you ever again.' Which I didn't.

So then I was, like: ‘I won't do anything, I'll just sit there like this.'

And that's what I really remember first and foremost about Northside – that I decided that if I sat very still in one place no one would notice me. I just thought: ‘If I sit really still, really quietly, and I don't have eye contact, then I won't be here, they can't get to me.' You know when two year olds cover their eyes and they think they disappear? It was like that.

The only person who got through to me at the time was this one nurse Elaine, cos she treated me like a human being. She fought for Madi to come to the hospital so I could breastfeed her, and with Billie playing, and breastfeeding Madi, that was my solace and Elaine worked that out. I remember that the skin contact of just holding Madi was so precious, and her face and her eyes . . . she didn't look at me like I was mad, she looked at me like mummy. At first they had the door open with some nurse sitting there watching me, you know, in case I was a danger to my children. And I was so ashamed . . . I couldn't understand why they thought I might harm them. But Elaine really read it and I remember her coming past and saying: ‘I don't think we need this door open', and kicking the doorstop.

I remember I had a TV in my room and Elaine would just come and lean up in the doorway and watch TV. Not sit, not trying to be my friend, just stand. And I'll never forget I was watching Billy Connolly do his bike ride through Scotland and I used to love going to Scotland as a child. When we were on holiday the parents would . . . I don't know what they'd do, they'd just leave us to it. So we'd go to the ice-skating centre or just camp by the loch and sing and make our voices echo, so I had really fond memories of Scotland. So I remember watching that and she just used to make odd comments about Billy Connolly – not looking at me, just using the TV – and it was really clever of her. And gradually I'd sort of say something like: ‘Been there.' And really she was the one who did more than all the psychiatrists. I learnt a lot from the way she treated me in that hospital.

At first, nobody in the business knew where I was, I just lied to everybody. I hadn't even told my publicist what was going on, I'd just said I was taking some time off. This was despite the fact that I'd been on the public record talking about mental health – and working in mental health – since the late '80s, after my sister Linda, who had schizophrenia, killed herself. At the time I was advised to just say that she had ‘died of an illness' but I'd had enough of hiding it like a dirty secret, so I told it like it was: the stigma, the effect on the family, her suffering, everything. And you know what? I got a really positive response and a lot of people – both the public and well-known people – came out and said: ‘I'm glad you talked about it.' And then the Minister of Health in Australia asked me to chair the National Community Advisory Group on Mental Health, which I jumped at and did for ten years, alongside my media career. So up until the point of my breakdown I'd been saying: ‘If only people with mental health problems would stand up and be counted!' And then, you know, when it came to me it was like: ‘Screw that! All you other people, you stand up and be counted!'

But then, after a few weeks at Northside, there was a phone call – the nurses said: ‘There's a phone call for you' – and I went to the phone and it was this journalist saying: ‘Oh, so you
are
at Northside Clinic, yes we heard.' And I freaked. I was freaking out anyway at that time – you know, I couldn't even look at the leaves on the trees out the window, I didn't like the way they moved, let alone dealing with something like this. So I got really upset, really agitated, and I was ashamed. Because I was a journalist myself, I just knew it wouldn't be honest, it would be sensationalised. I could have written the bloody headlines: ‘Nutter' and/or ‘Suicide bid'. And then you get everyone going: ‘How selfish! These people! Don't they think of their families? How selfish!' And I remember ringing my publicist up and talking to her, crying, saying: ‘I'm in Northside. What are we going to do?'

So she came and signed me out for the afternoon, collected me – because I virtually couldn't walk – and took me to her house. And we sat down and she said: ‘We'll do this in our own words, we'll kill it.' And that's been my thing ever since: ‘I'll kill it first.' So anyway, we did the story with this journalist we knew, in a woman's magazine, and they had the exclusive, and I was allowed to sit down and go through it all, which was unheard of in those days. But they had a scoop and the story was, you know, it was as good as it could be, it was really good. And the public reaction was okay actually. It helped that I handled it my way: the way I talked about it and explained it just normalised it, and a lot of other people could say: ‘Yeah, I've felt like that.' It wasn't just done in sound bites and sensational headlines so the general public, en masse, was less scary.

Having said that, after I came out of hospital none of the good old journos I knew could meet my eye. Nobody talked about it, it was never mentioned, it was like it never happened. It was only when I went back to the first mental health group meeting that I felt really okay with everybody. I remember one of them said: ‘We'd just like to welcome you back and tell you how great it is that you'll now be able to hear exactly the same voices we can!' We had all these in-jokes that only we could understand, and they were really great.

***

When I got the call from England out of the blue to come and do the chat show,
Trisha
, in 1998, I hadn't worked in television for . . . oh, several years. After coming out of Northside, me and Mark divorced and I gave up nearly all my media work to concentrate on really just getting better, bonding with my daughters, and doing voluntary mental health work. During that time I also met my husband Peter, while interviewing him for a government job in mental health, and we'd only been married a matter of months when the job offer came in, so I left the final decision to him. And even though he had a great career in Australia, he told me it was an amazing opportunity and to go for it. So I accepted the job, having told them everything – the breakdown, the panic attacks, the depression, everything – and insisted on having lots of rest time written into my contract so I could concentrate on my family and not be so career-driven. I'd come to recognise some of my patterns by then – through therapy, which I'll come back to – and there was no way I was going back to how I was.

The only problem was that I was taking quite a lot of antidepressants by this time, which I wouldn't have at Northside – I refused, I refused – as I was breastfeeding. I was on . . . oh God, what was I on? I can't remember now, my memory's crap. But I didn't want to be on antidepressants when I came to do the job so I came off them in a matter of weeks, really quickly, and it was . . . urgh. I was saying to someone the other day, it was the
worst
experience, the
worst
, I didn't know anything could be so
bad
. And I'm not a wimp – I had two children, no pain killers, no nothing, I can do pain like no one else, I zone out. But man, that was bad. They didn't tell me, they said, you know: ‘There may be side effects', but whoa.

The things that stand out in my mind? I was chairing a mental health group for service users and carers and we all met at this hotel at Sydney Airport because people had to fly in from whatever country. And it had this big sweeping open slat staircase in the middle and I was talking to a dear friend, Judy, and we're walking down the stairs, and I couldn't judge where the next step was. And I was halfway down, or a third of the way down, the first flight – cos there was a flight, and then a flat bit, and then more – and I just remember thinking: ‘How the bloody hell am I going to get down?' I was in the middle, I couldn't even hold on, and I was, like: ‘Woah.' And the terror . . . I was like: ‘Judy, I can't.' I said: ‘Judy, Judy, get me . . .' and she got me to the rail and it was literally like holding on and going step by step. Then I sat there and had some water and I said: ‘I'll be alright, I'll be alright', like an idiot.

I remember I had a little Kia Sportage and I drove from the airport and it was horrific. All the traffic from the different terminals converge and there's this one place, this roundabout, and it's like: ‘Go to this turn, go to that turn', and I got this tingling in my mouth and then I thought: ‘I can't read, I can't read.' And then I thought: ‘I can't even see', I couldn't understand the lanes. And in Australia we always had automatic cars and I just thought: ‘I can't drive.' It was a complete cold, confused panic. Now I'd had panic attacks before – with the breathing and all that – but you know they're coming because there's that build-up, you know? And I remember just thinking: ‘Jesus', and putting my hazard lights on and sitting there and people beeping at first and then thinking I'd broken down. And then I was thinking: ‘Well, what do I do?' Because if it was panicking I'd breathe but I remember trying to do all my breathing exercises and nothing. Then, after about ten, fifteen minutes, it sort of went and I remember crawling, just thinking: ‘Is it going to come back again?' And it didn't, but that's what it would do.

So coming off the pills was just . . . just horrific. If I hadn't had Peter and I didn't want to be off the antidepressants because of the job, I'd totally understand people saying: ‘Well, you know what, I'll just stay on them.' You know, I can absolutely understand that, because
boy
. Being on them was fine, I just felt whatever normal is, but coming off them was just God awful, really awful. It was so bad that I didn't think I'd be able to cope with going to England and doing the show but, with support from my therapist and Peter, I did it.

***

I've said it before but that's cos it's true: since 1998, when I married Peter and moved to England to start the
Trisha
show, I feel like my life's been blessed. Before, I was totally career driven, went from bad relationship to bad relationship, and had no support. Bugger all! Nothing! But now, well, my family understand. I am married to someone who's at the top of their field: Peter's not only a psychotherapist, he lectures and trains other psychotherapists, so blimey. Then there's my daughters. My younger daughter's done mental health first aid – she's one of the youngest people in the country to have done it – and she's worked in her summer holidays in a halfway type house, and both my daughters have worked at Mind on a voluntary basis. So I've got a family around me who are very aware of mental health issues and aren't frightened to flag those up.

It's so different to when I think about growing up with my half-sister, Linda, who had schizophrenia. If the rellies came over, and she was off her face on Largactil at the hospital, they'd race up there and get her out and then mum would make a joke about teenagers out on the town, you know: ‘Ooh, she's got a hangover.' It was all secret, secret, secret. Even though they worked as psych nurses, it was always: ‘No one must know.' So the beauty of my family now is that all of us are allowed to bring it up and talk about habits and situations and behaviours that might be worrying us. So there's this complete contrast from growing up in the '60s and '70s in terms of understanding and support.

Another huge part of my recovery process has been talking therapies. I first started them in 1994 because, in order to get out of Northside, I'd had to agree to have six months of therapy. I
had
to sign up for that. So I started seeing a psychotherapist up to three times a week at first and then, after the six months, when I could have given up, I carried on until I left for England because I found it really helpful. I also had relaxation therapy, which I thought was bullshit and wouldn't work, but I remember once this woman did this session with me, with all these sea noises and imagining this, and that, and the other. And she said: ‘There, how do you feel?' and I said: ‘Yeah, great nap, thank you for that', and she said: ‘You weren't sleeping at all, you were awake the whole way through.' And that's the first time I thought: ‘Ohh, maybe it's not bullshit.'

I then went back into therapy in about 2005/6, after mum died and my stepdad went to my husband and said: ‘Has Trisha ever had any issues about her, er, identity or parentage or childhood?' And Peter said: ‘Er, just a bit!' And he said: ‘Ah, alright, why?' And he said: ‘Well, she doesn't feel she fits in and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.' And he said: ‘Well, I'm not her dad.' I'd known from the word go really, you know, but it just brought up so much stuff that I said to Peter: ‘I need to go into therapy', because I now do things to safeguard myself against becoming ill. So I saw this chap, John, who's a psychotherapist who works a lot with children, which was really, really good for me. Everybody talks about the here and now but with John he almost, not treated me as a child, but because he'd worked with children so much – it sounds corny – but he could talk to the child within me. Because there
was
this child, there was arrested development. Oh, I wonder why?! So there was a part of me that was very vulnerable and very scared and he took me really, really back. Things like phobias and fears I had, he was: ‘Right, let's look at that.'