Meeting The Edges Of Sanity – My Breakdown and Spiritual Awakening

Friends were quietly getting worried but none of us knew how to deal with mental health problems or how to support someone with mental health problems.  My best friend became the sole custodian of my mental health struggles while I continued to try being Miss Perfect Potential Girlfriend.  Ever the pleaser, ever patient, ever disconnected from my needs. 

On Friday 13th June, I stopped fighting to be normal and let go.  Letting the deep power of repressed emotion and disconnected creativity surge up in the blur between the waking world and dream world.  Increasingly sleep-deprived, the two worlds merged into one.  My mind continued to race to understand more than it possibly could.  Why was there so much synchronicity with him?  Why was he not making time to see me?   

The satisfaction and dopamine hit of working out cryptic, indirect messages had me hooked to chasing inner connections and ahas.  Part of me felt I was becoming like John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” and part of me was too intrigued and gripped in the false adventure of some mystery discovery to be made.  I believed I was on an exciting journey to discover deep secrets of life.  For 3 days, I swung between soaring manic highs and terrifying depressed lows as the stories and seeming insights flowed through my consciousness. 

I was living in Japan and felt drawn to explore Japanese characters.  Those characters took on deeper meanings as I began to see a deeper order and meaning for what had been created.  My spiritual desert of atheist disconnection and skepticism was getting a tsunami of spiritual insight.  Grains of truth were scattered in the manic mess of deluded psychosis.  

As the sleepless nights wore on, my thinking became increasingly paranoid.  My nervous system wired while being in a dream state meant my academically trained brained tried to follow with logic, 

Dad has cancer >>> His birthday is in cancer >>> Cancer also means evil >>> I’ve recently seen statues of evil Gods >>> Therefore there’s a battle between good and evil on earth >>> Dad’s cancer is in his bones >>> My good friend’s lyrics are about turning to bone >>> And then turning to ash >>> Therefore bones are significant

Eventually this line of manic thinking lead to the conclusion that I’d sold my soul to the devil.  By opening my heart and pouring it out to a romantic interest, I’d given the devil the keys to manipulate me into doing his work.  I told him what truly mattered to me. The devil was going to use me to subtly harm my loved ones.  

The deluded thinking continued, creating good vs evil symbols

• • • Adam and Eve
    • The apple
    • Apples are red
    • Apples are green
    • Bones form skeletons

All of these symbols took on an electrifying significance.  So much so that walking around and seeing them anywhere would set off a wave of chilling fear throughout my mind and body.  As if life itself was confirming my worst terror.  A red door, a cartoon skeleton, a green table, an apple – all of them taking on far more meaning than they actually had.  Feeling alone, isolated and trapped in my own mental prison, another sleepness night was waiting for me before the shock that would bring it to a halt. 

The crescendo builds

A third night of restless non sleep left me ever more paranoid. Sinking into deeper conspiracies. I was a puppet in The Matrix. Something was controlling me and calling the shots. I wanted it to stop but I was convinced that he was the only one who could help. He had something to do with orchestrating all of this.

The crescendo of paranoia was growing in sleep deprivation and isolation. But it was time to see my friends. I’d agreed to go to my friends’ indie rock gig with my best friend. It was time to hide all that was raging through my consciousness. Time to put the “I’m OK” mask on. 

But my over-sensitivity and seeking too much meaning left me feeling invisibly taunted by the decor of the live house. A puppet in some bigger sick game played on me by a puppet master I could never see. Symbols I’d associated with evil – bones, the colour red – sent chilling fear through my mind. Their message reminding of the battle between good and evil I was involved in and that I’d chosen evil. Feeling isolated in a public place. No-one could possible known the anguish and torment I was feeling. My heart racing. My mind grasping to make sense of it all. Still looking for some elusive deeper meaning. 

The live indie rock music brought relief. The flow of loud music drowning out my runaway thoughts and fantastical conclusions. Replacing them with song lyrics I knew so well. I could smile again. I could enjoy again as I danced and sang with my best friend. For a while, I tasted my old life. Things were back to normal. And then it happened. 

I made a mistake in the lyrics I knew so well and at the exact same time, my friend on stage singing his own lyrics made a mistake too. A powerful energy surged through me and through the room. My friend was clearly angry and I thought it was all my fault. Something made me screw up the lyrics and somehow influence him to mess up the lyrics. The parts of my mind entrenched in this battle between good and evil saw it as the devil sending energy through me to my friend. Terrified, my body momentarily went into survival panic and freeze mode. A part of me split off and froze in time and space, drastically altering the course of my life. 

My friend was so angry with himself for his mistake, his perfectionism eating him up. He was saying he was better off dead. Trapped in my own mind prison, I had no way of seeing reason or seeing if he was OK. Terrified, he’d go through with it and it would be my fault, I tried desperately to convince him to stay alive. 

Eventually having to go home, I spent the journey staring at my mobile screen waiting for a reply from him – the one I believed to be the mastermind behind all of this. Surely he knew what was happening. He could call off this devilish energy and let my friend live. My best friend sat beside me on the train as I stayed trapped in my own world. She did all she could to pull me out of my self-made hell. But I was too far gone. 

Finally, hope flooded my being when the mobile light flashed to say a text was here. “At last, he’s responded!”! I thought, only to become furious when I saw it was “just” my best friend sitting beside me asking if I was OK. How could she trick me like that? I raged inside, never vocalising the words. Unable to feel the concern she had and her loving intent to pull me out of the darkness. 

Anxiety and panic became my bedfellows for the night. But the next morning it was time to return to work. Dejected, hopeless and numb, I got ready for my day. Shower water flowed as I stared down at the tiny blue bathroom tiles. The alarming thoughts fired up in my head again “he’s going to die and it’s all my thought! I have to end my life to stop this.” 

No sooner had the suicidal thought entered my mind when another part of my mind exclaimed “That’s not me! I don’t have suicidal thoughts.” As if all of the extreme emotion and fantastical thinking was OK but a suicidal thought was too much, too shameful. The final proof that I wasn’t as OK as I was trying to convince myself I was. 

In that moment, as a flicker of sanity beckoned me back from the edge, I vowed to find out what had happened to stop anyone else going through the internal hell I’d gone through. I wanted to understand it to be able to prevent it. 

At work, I began opening up to a colleague I trusted. I could never reveal the extent of my delusions, but her kindness, compassion and helpful suggestions to talk it through with the guy I thought was the master puppeteer helped to begin bringing peace back to my psyche. A few hours later, I heard from my friend I was terrified for. He was absolutely f*cking fine as if nothing had happened and then later I could talk to my best friend – someone I could be more honest with about what happened. 

2 weeks later, I was back in the UK. Calmer, recovering but now facing the death of my father. 2003 was a year that left deep wounds in my heart and my mind. 

nearly 20 Years On 

Nearly 2 decades later, my intent has changed completely. I don’t want to prevent people going through something like I did. I want to help people understand it and move through it with more grace, compassion and understanding.  It was a spiritual awakening reminiscent of a shamanic initiation ritual but without any experienced elder to guide me through.  

Fixing or healing it is no longer of interest to me. What is of interest is the wound at the centre of it – its context, teachings and gifts. The deep archetypal connections held within it and the deeper, sharper pain being avoided – in my case the imminent death of my father. 

Far more interesting is the religious context, the cultural context, the ancestral context and what else was going on in my life at the time. And far more interesting is the trauma – the story my mind created at the point of trauma that locked it in. The protection mechanisms and distortions it created that lay hidden inside, impacting relationships for years and years to come. The unique cracks trauma created in my heart and mind and what truly repaired them. 

Far more healing than any healing techniques or therapies has been writing.

Writing gives context.

Writing gives you the power of self-awareness.

Writing to help others deepens and accelerates your own healing.