What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness (19 page)

Because CBT's good at how to manage things but there's a risk of it coming back if you don't . . . well, it depends what sort of person you are. I like to understand things. I can deal with things if I can deconstruct them and understand them because I have that sort of analytical mind. If somebody says: ‘Just do this, this, this and this', never mind about the why, I'm like: ‘Well, I'll give it a go, but . . .'. But when you can understand how those things came about, for one thing you stop beating yourself up. So the talking therapies made me realise where this fear of lack of control, and disordered eating, and ritualised depression, came from. It was my way of trying to survive and it had outlived its purpose.

So for me, and it's different for everyone, the most important part of my recovery process was understanding and forgiving, forgiving myself. Because the thing about mental illness, partly because of the way society looks at it, is that you spend so much time and energy – you don't even realise you're doing it – being angry with yourself for being like that. You know, a lot of people take on a victimised persona and that's a form of anger. That: ‘I can't help it', that absolute helplessness. I wasn't one of those people, I never felt a victim, I was like: ‘Argh, why am I like this?' But that victimisation – that inverted form of anger, of frustration – saps the hell out of you. I think once you can forgive yourself and understand why you became that way, and it doesn't matter why – could be brain chemistry, childhood, coping – for me, that was important. And saying: ‘You know what? You're not that mad or bad or stupid. You survived.'

You're only as much of a victim as you make yourself. Any illness – I don't care if it's physical, mental, whatever – any illness requires putting some part of yourself into getting well. And that's not a bad thing, it's a good thing, because you take back some control, no matter how small. You just need to get your nail underneath and worry that bit of control because that's the first step. And it's the little things, not the big grand things. It can be: ‘Right, today I'm going to go up and down the stairs twenty times – even if I have to miss the fourth step!' That can be a start; having a small goal is good. Like, even if you have to write down what you're going to eat and when you're going to eat it, which I remember doing and sticking on the wall. Or, you know, a mood chart – brilliant – get a big old calendar, or make one, and use gummy stars or just a felt pen and chart shit days. At the end of the day: ‘How was today?' And for every bad thing, you put a blue star. And then you ask: ‘What was a good thing?' Because then you start seeing if your moods follow a pattern. And it helps you to recognise that there's dark and shade, there's light and shade.

It's about, as I say, getting that fingernail under reality and stripping reality right back down to all those tiny things which help connect you. So get a pet, look after the pet. Get a plant, a pot plant. Mad things, but they work. Sensory things are good. I did quilting for a long time, with lots of different scraps of material, which I had to go and choose. I didn't want to go out, I hated going out, but I had to choose the scraps, so I had a reason. And I could feel the scraps and I had to hand sew them, so I felt the rough bits and the silky bits. It's a bit like food. I make sure that I have lots of different textures of food and I make myself stop and think about it. And I always have flowers around the house for the smell, so I can go and just close my eyes and smell. Again, it's a sensory thing, because my issue is disconnecting from things, so feel and smell are important. Or if you've got a camera on your phone, start taking photographs. Even if they're stupid ones, like I did yesterday . . . I took one of a poppy, a red poppy in this field of white peas, just one on its own. And it's not a great picture, it was a bit blurred, but for me it's more about what it represents. I thought: ‘Ah, this is different, that proves you can be different.' The beauty in difference. So things like that – it's a bit like food for the mind.

For me, running is also really important, although I don't think of it as exercise. I need it because I naturally have a lot of energy, I'm really bad sitting in one place and doing nothing. It probably is obsessive, but that's another thing I recognise: that I
am
obsessive, so I look for good obsessions, or helpful obsessions, or diverting obsessions. I think it's my way of coping. I don't think: ‘Right, you've got an obsession so get rid of those', or ‘You've got panic or anxiety, get rid of those.' These things were developed in me. I created them in me – added with brain chemistry and childhood and all the rest of it – as a way of protecting myself, so they're not all bad. So I'm going to look for what I can get, you know, what I can do, that's utilising that.

I think as an adult if you come to be treated, or helped, with a mental health problem, it's very hard for someone to say: ‘Right, I know this is how you've been operating for the past thirty-five years or forty years but bugger that, we're going to start again.' I think it would help to say: ‘Right, you're really good at being obsessive about something so what can we do? Let's see, what if you were to walk every day? And where's a really good place? Okay, if cracks in the pavement are a problem, we'll do cross country.' And that's what I do, cross country, so I don't get obsessive about traffic, and green's really calming. So I haven't had to ditch all those protective elements of my mental health problem so I feel a lot more secure, I don't feel stripped of who I am. It's important that we don't just see it as: ‘That's mental illness.' Because where do I end and where does the mental illness start? It's better to see it as: ‘You've got some good qualities in this mental illness and let's use them to help you live a more productive and happier life.'

I think the other thing that's really helped me is being allowed to incorporate my spirituality, because that was never allowed and it's not readily accepted within a mental health system. But it was actually one of the things I went to when I was fourteen, because I was dealing with death and darkness and destruction, and at fourteen the only thing that could save me – that anybody had as a way of being saved – was stuff that was in the Bible. Because you were told: ‘And the Lord said I will save you', and: ‘You walk through the valley of death.' I remember reading
Pilgrim's Progress
. The only thing on the horizon, where anyone was talking about getting you out of hell, and describing the kind of hell that I was in, was faith. You know? And I guess, as a child myself, through schoolwork and this idea of a faith, and a God – something bigger – that was my lifeline. If I was going to be anything now I'd be a Bahá'í – because I believe all faiths are the same – but now my church is really outside: the green. I need the green, the trees, I love being out, and I love being with my dog, Alf.

Also, I think it's so important to recognise the child within you and to play. Like yesterday, it was really muddy and I was skipping and Peter's saying: ‘Those people are laughing at you', and I don't care, I think it's okay to be that child. And both my girls play, we play a lot, we play every day. They'll say something to me and I'll sing:
‘Today, I'm in an opera, we're going to sing!'
But you're not allowed to be like that when you're with grown-ups . . . well, with some grown-ups you can, but a lot of them you can't. I think a lot of people struggle to do that, especially in my industry. In order to lose control they have to get pissed and act stupid, and I think that's really mentally unhealthy. Whereas I've seen it's really important for me to include it as part of my day: to be absolutely stone-cold sober and enjoy it and have that sense of relief, of laughing, and being silly and frivolous. Again, it sounds corny, but there is a child inside and I need to embrace it, allow it, enjoy it. It is very, very therapeutic.

***

Have I ever faced stigma? No, I don't think so, not personally. You're allowed to have a mental health problem and be a celebrity: it's almost
de rigueur
, isn't it? You know, it's like: ‘Oh good, another one!' It's like artist and mad, sort of thing. I think the ‘risk', in inverted commas, is facing stigma because of the people who you advocate for or support. So while celebrities might be allowed to have those eccentricities, I don't kid myself, because I see how it is with the advocates and people I work with, with refugees and how they're treated. So I'm under no illusions. There's no glamour in being a mental health patron – with mental health they think it's catching and they still connect mad and bad. Where are the big balls to do with mental health? Who are the glitzy stars who hold star-spangled do's for mental health? You know, there's no glitz, there's no glamour, no pink or red ribbons, no Liz Hurleys and Elton Johns.

When I had breast cancer everyone was my best friend, wanting to come and hug me and saying: ‘Can you do this, and can you do that, and can you be guest of honour at this, that, and the other?' Oh, I could live high on being a spokesperson for a breast cancer charity, which I will not be. There's far more glamour in that than in mental health. See, breast cancer is a disease of mothers and we all know mothers are saints: you know, the martyr. And to be honest, when you're going through it, because the mum is usually the core of the family, mum going down is awful. But mum being mad, it's: ‘Bad mother', or mum being suicidal it's: ‘What about the children? She should have the children taken away from her.' You know, I remember saying to someone: ‘Imagine being diagnosed with breast cancer and someone comes along and says, ‘I think we might have to get social services involved, we might have to take your child away.' But that's regularly the suggestion with mental health, in headlines and in reality.

So, yeah, how's it impacted on my life? Bad and good. At the end of the day, it
is
my life, it's shaped my life. It's who I am. So I live with it, I manage it, in the same way as someone who's prone to high cholesterol, or someone with asthma, or someone with diabetes. The decisions you make day to day, and in the long run, decide whether you suffer from those conditions or you live with those conditions, and I live with them and they have upsides and they have downsides. If you've had something since you're fourteen, it is part of who you are and that's . . . it's not a bad thing.

‘At OCD's most spiteful, you're blackmailed; a hundred blackmails a day. It has ranges of blackmails, but at its most spiteful, if you don't do a particular thing then someone you really do love is going to die. And you know that that is total nonsense – that's the weird thing, you have total insight – you know it's completely, completely crazy, but you're not going to risk it.'

B
orn in 1967, Charles Walker was educated at the American School in London, followed by the University of Oregon, where he studied Political Science. On his return to the UK, he worked in numerous marketing and communications roles and became involved in local politics. Charles was the parliamentary candidate for Ealing North in the 2001 general election and was elected to the House of Commons in 2005 as the Conservative member for Broxbourne. Stepson of former Conservative MP and middle-distance runner Christopher Chataway, Charles lives with his wife Fiona and their three children, Charlotte, Alistair, and James, in Goffs Oak. Charles has suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a type of anxiety disorder, since childhood, and has used this personal experience to campaign widely on mental health issues as a politician. The interview for this chapter took place at his office, just days after he ‘came out' as suffering from OCD in the House of Commons debate on mental health in June 2012, in which he memorably referred to himself as a ‘practising fruitcake'.

***

Come in, come in. Right. Good. Over the last two weeks, ten days, I can tell you I've talked about this a fair bit. It's quite interesting: you get the news coverage first – it becomes a news story – then it becomes a features story, and then you get the academics. Does that . . . ? That seems to be the way it works, or is working. So, anyway, fire away.

When was I diagnosed with OCD? I wasn't. I still haven't had an official diagnosis, I self-diagnosed. I know I've got it. Although I only worked out that it was OCD probably in recent years, to be honest. Looking back now though, I say that I was thirteen when I was first ‘visited by OCD', when it came onto my shoulder for the first time. I was at St John's Wood tube station buying a ticket and I was convinced that the person selling me the ticket could hear what I was thinking. And of course, at age thirteen you don't know that's OCD, but then it started to manifest itself in the usual sort of ways: not treading on lines, having to touch things multiple times, counting, coming in and out of rooms, light switches. And then there were the voices of self-doubt, although they're not audible voices – you're worried that you've said something inappropriate, you're worried about how people are going to react – and all this is part of OCD.