Me, my mum, and our mental illness

Me, my mum, and our mental illness

My mum has always been a worrier.

She’s the mum that used to wait up and refuse to sleep until she heard me come home. When I was at university, she’d fret every time I mentioned that I was going out drinking. She still asks me to text her when I get home, and if I forget, she’ll message in the morning to make sure I’m alive.

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That’s a big part of the reason I felt like I couldn’t talk to her about my mental health issues – the depression, the suicidal thoughts, the anxiety, the obsessive worries.



Because if my mum worried so much about all the dangers in the outside world – the attackers, the darkness, the injuries I could get when drunk – how would she be able to sleep at night knowing that the really scary stuff is going on in my head?


How can you keep your daughter safe when it’s her mind that’s the danger?

But our silence goes deeper than that.

I grew up with my mum’s depression, witnessing the Prozac cycle, the arguments, the tearful stormouts, firsthand.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

I didn’t want to admit that I was going through similar things. I didn’t want to worry my mum when she was dealing with so much of her own stuff.

Meanwhile, she couldn’t talk to me because she felt like she had to be strong. She had to be in control. She’s my mum, she has to be okay.

So we both walked around the house, together in our misery but unable to make the connection.

I pushed my mum away so she wouldn’t see how unhappy I was, then resented her for failing to notice that I was struggling.

Our relationship grew strained. We were both faking it.

But now, we’ve started to open up. I’ve come out about my mental illness, and the wall of silence between us has started to break down. We can see each other. And more importantly, we can talk to each other.

It’s sad that we wasted so many years that we could have been helping each other feeling scared and alone instead.

So in honour of Mother’s Day, I decided we needed to have a proper chat. To make up for lost time and get a real understanding of what we’d been going through on either side of that wall.

Here’s that conversation, with the occasional anecdote about colleagues, naked massages, and drunken nights snipped out.

(My mum’s referred to as ‘M’ so that anyone Googling her name won’t be presented with an intimate chat about depression).

Mum: So, how are you doing?

Ellen: I’m much better. I think the medication is starting to kick in.

I don’t feel dramatically different, which is what I was worried about, but things are a lot easier.. it’s not, as heavy, if that makes sense. Was that similar to your experience?



Mum: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I remember your grandmother, she got to a stage of exhaustion because she was give, give, giving all the time.

I remember the doctor giving her valium. She was completely spaced out on it, totally out of it.

When I started to feel symptoms of depression, I thought that’s what they would give me. I resisted for a very long time.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

E: When did the symptoms start for you?

M: Well.. I think a lot of my issues stemmed from when my brother died.

There was very much this stiff upper lip. There was this real veto on expressing grief.

So the first time I ever noticed symptoms of, well, just not understanding why I felt so miserable all the time was not long after that. But it wasn’t triggered, necessarily, by that.

It was triggered by other stuff – other emotional catalysts – an argument with someone, or something going wrong that I had no control over.

And it would not be a reasonable response. It would be a complete crash and burn.

There was lots of sublimating it by doing stupid things. Like getting hammered…

E: Oh, yeah. I did that.

M: I just craved something, so I noticed it then.

I kind of recognised symptoms when I had the most recent bout of depression, but again, the catalyst wasn’t trauma. I can almost put my finger on what that minor catalyst was.

E: Do you remember what it was?

M: It was a conversation about a badly cooked steak that I had with your Dad.


E: Wait, how long ago was this?

M: A number of years ago.. it must have been ten years ago? Yeah, must have been about ten years ago.

E: And was it Dad criticising it?

M: Yeah. It was a critical comment, and one that wasn’t meant to be hurtful, but it did hurt. It stung me.

I remember having this conversation. I left the room and sat in the kitchen, and it was as if someone had just pulled a stopper out of the balloon, without the comedy [farting noise].

E: Yep, much sadder than an actual balloon.

M: Utter deflation.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Now, clearly, you and your brother were around. There was a real sense of: ‘I’m not going to show this emotion. I have to be exactly what my children need me to be. I’m going to pretend that I’m fine.’

But inside, I was utterly broken. And it’s very easy to put that act on.

You have that veneer. But inside, you’re utterly shattered.

E: But I think for you specifically, that pressure must be even stronger, because it’s not even that you’re having to live up to your own image… it’s that you’re a mum, and you know you have children relying on you.

M: The last thing you want is to worry anyone. I spoke to friends, though.

E: I’m always conscious of, something I still worry about, is that depression and anxiety make me a bad friend.


I’ll cancel on things, or I’ll be talking to them and my mind will be somewhere else.

I found myself just shutting people out, because I felt rubbish and I didn’t want to keep bothering people with stuff they couldn’t fix. Which is not healthy, but…

M: No, it’s not. What it does is it presumes on what your friends are thinking. Because actually, they probably really do want to help.

E: Yeah, and it’s because your anxiety and depression tell you to presume.

(Picture: Daniella Birtley/metro.co.uk)

M: Exactly. You think they can’t empathise with you and that’s the weird fracture in the relationship. The very people that you know could help you, you shut out.

And I know exactly what you mean. I still cancel on people. I’ll cancel. I’ll think ‘I can’t’. I’ll make up an excuse.

You get to the brink of going to the door…

E: It’s always right at the last minute, when you suddenly think ‘I can’t do it’.

M: I’ve even done it when I’ve driven to a person’s house and then thought: ‘I can’t. I can’t even get out of the car’. And I’ve come home again. Made up an excuse. And they haven’t got a clue.

E: I think a lot of times when you have mental illness, you become very, very good at lying and faking.

M: But that’s protection. Winston Churchill – I’m digressing, but stick with me – used to have depression. Did you know that?

E: I think I read that, yeah.

M: He suffered very, very badly from it. He’s the one who coined the phrase ‘the black dog’.

E: Wait, was that him? I thought that was from that book!

(Picture: Dave Anderson for Metro.co.uk)

M: No, it was him. He use to say that depression, the black dog, was his ‘constant companion’.

Well, if something’s your ‘constant companion’, there’s a point at which you start to feel a little protectve affection for it… it’s YOUR thing. You think: ‘this is my identity to myself at the minute’. You protect it.

For me, the breaking point was when it got to such an enormous depth, I remember walking into the bathroom and I didn’t recognise myself in the mirror. I honestly didn’t know who I was looking at.

I’d totally lost track of who I was. I’d lost myself. It was that point when I thought ‘I’m gone’.

E: How long did it take from the catalyst steak incident to get to that point?

M: Not long. Not long at all.

E: Was it constant low? Or dips and peaks?

M: Up and down. At that time also, I couldn’t access my religious faith. I had this sudden realisation, that because I’d lost myself, I thought: ‘I’m in hell. I’m in hell.’

The idea of being in hell and alive terrified me. Even now, it terrifies me.

It was that point and that feeling of ‘well, I might as well just not be here, what’s the point?’. I would be in the car and think: ‘I could just put my foot down’.

(Picture: Liberty Antonia Sadler)

Nothing could be worse than this feeling that I’m in hell, and that I don’t know myself, and that I’m letting down all these people. And I’m not the mother, the wife, the daughter, they need me to be.

But it was recognising that all these people would be affected by me not being here, that stopped me from doing it.

I thought ‘I need help, because I’ve only just talked myself out of doing this. I need help.’

Prozac was a godsend.

E: Yeah, it’s amazing.

M: It might have been psychosomatic but I felt the effects almost immediately. The sense that ‘ah, I’ve done something. I’m climbing my way out of this pit now.’

E: Definitely.

M: It wasn’t the drugs. It was the release of having gone to a doctor and saying ‘I can’t do this’

The incident that led me to go to the doctor was almost an accident in itself. It was that morning when I was going to smash myself into the roundabout.

I was on my way to work, and I was really shaken by the whole thought process. As I walked into work, my legs stopped working. I couldn’t walk.

A colleague came out, and luckily, she’d had experience dealing with mental health issues. She gave me a cup of tea, and she was the one who said: ‘you’ve got to go to a doctor. You are suffering from depression. You’ve had a major incident here. You’ve got to go.’

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I went to the doctor’s, walked in, and couldn’t even articulate what it was. I walked up to reception, she took one look at me – tears, snot – and bundled me into a quiet room so I wasn’t in front of everyone having this major meltdown.

I had Prozac in my hand within half an hour. I’d been signed off work for a week. I had therapy sessions organised. Seven sessions, and that was the real difference.

The Prozac took me to that point I was buoyant enough, but the talking therapy – which is your next step – is the bit where I started to unravel the why I felt that way and understanding myself.

Which I’d done a bit before. But before, when I unravelled it, I didn’t know what to do. Just ravel it back up.

E: ‘Yeah, it’s fine, don’t look at this mess. Everything’s fine’

M: ‘It’s cool, it’s cool. It’s all put back together. I’m a wreck inside, but it’s FINE.’

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Talking therapy’s good, but you have to know what to do with it.

E: Did they give you coping techniques?

M: Yes. But yeah, the space between that initial catalyst and the talking therapy was three years.

E: Oh my god. What? I thought you were describing a few months.

M: Nope. Three years.

E: Jesus. Wow.

M: It would go in a cycle. Catalyst, low, then okay.

So now, the coping techniques are: I recognise it for what it is. I’m not going mad. If I’m feeling miserable, that’s manageable. The black dog is tiny enough. I can give it a pat and do something about it, take a walk.

All that stuff they say about taking a walk… it does help.

E: Yeah, it definitely helps to a point.

(Picture: Mmuffin for metro.co.uk)

M: It helps when the black dog is small. When the black dog is sitting on your lap and you can’t even get off the sofa it doesn’t help at all, it’s trite nonsense.

But anyway. All of that makes me think: had I been more open with you, would you have recognised those symptoms? Or were you too young?

E: I don’t know. I remember growing up knowing that you had depression, and I definitely remember knowing that you were on Prozac. But I don’t remember being told.

I think there was one incident where you cried in front of me so I was always aware of it.

I started reading a lot about it. When I started experiencing depressive symptoms as a teenager, I was very much like, ‘well, it can’t be depression’.

As a teenager, you – no offence – you don’t want to be like your mum. And also, because I had seen how bad it was for you, I said, well, I don’t want that. So I would dismiss it as hormones, I wouldn’t deal with it. It’s fine, it’s fine.

I don’t know. Did you tell us? How did I know that you were on Prozac?

M: I must have done.

E: There’s a very distinctive memory that I have, which is that you were on Prozac, and then you felt better, so you came off it. And I remember being VERY upset that you were coming off it, because I thought it wasn’t safe. And then you had to go back on it again.

That’s one of the main memories that I have, because that made me very reluctant to get on medication.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

It’s taken me a while to accept that meds are fine and they can help. They helped you so much.

I remember that you went to therapy. I remember you telling me some stuff. Oh, and I remember I found your diary once.

Mum: Oh. What?

E: That was really difficult. There was a bit in there about suicidal thoughts, and I closed it and thought ‘I don’t want to know that’. It really scared me. I freaked out.

I don’t know how open you can be with your children.

M: Exactly. You don’t want to scare them. The daily grind has to continue.

And that was a saving grace, spending time with you. The affection and love that I showed to you, and what you showed to me, that’s what got me through it.

I remember some of the holidays were coloured by my depression.

E: Is that why they were so awful? I made a rule about having no more family holidays. They were terrible.

M: Of course they were awful. But being in the sunlight, and going out for those walks, and eating copious ice cream – that was just the most blissful therapy for me.

Those are crystalline moments of gorgeousness. They showed me that I can be depressed and still have moments of unadulterated joy.

That’s what made me realise there’s stuff to live for.

Once you tackle depression you get to treasure those moments. You learn how to stretch them, and not to fear depression. To recognise it and know that you won’t let it get the better of you. I’m not going to let it overwhelm me.

That’s what the Prozac does. It lets you remember good feelings.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

E: I think antidepressants give you a bit of distance and perspective from depression.

You’re not deep inside it. You come a little bit out. It’s still there, but you can approach it a bit more easily.

M: It probably won’t ever go. It’ll be a little tiny puppy of a dog, but there’ll always be a little bit – the worry, the concern, the stuff.

*We then moaned about work and other stressful things for a bit, which I’ve left out because specifics were mentioned.*

M: When I read stuff about you being suicidal, of course I worry about it. But I understand that it’s a journey you have to work through yourself.

There’s a genetic trait as well.

E: Yeah, on both sides. I remember when dad mentioned his mum’s mental health issues, I was like, ‘f***ng hell.’

M: Yeah, you’re screwed. It’s a journey. it’s an ongoing one.

(Picture: Liberty Antonia Sadler)

E: Are you still on that journey?

M: Yeah. Little by little. The black dog’s still here. There are going to be issues in the rest of my life. There’ll be catalysts for misery. It’ll be sad, but it won’t be depressing. I’ll grieve, but I’ll do it properly.

I’ll recognise what depression feels like.

It’s a journey. It’s understanding why you feel that way. It’ll be a lifelong journey.

E: Are you still on meds?

M: Nope. I was on them for the best part of eight or nine months.

E: That’s actually not that long at all.

M: The first time was a matter of six months, then I stopped. Then the next time I thought ‘yeah, not going to stop like that again. that was a stupid thing to do’.

And then I weaned off them slowly. Nine months taken religiously, three or four months weaning off slowly.

Knowing it’s there if I need it, that’s helpful. I mean, I could have tried weed.

E: You still can try weed*

*DO NOT TRY WEED, MUM.

(Picture: Deirdre Spain for Metro.co.uk)

M: Certainly wine, was a helpful thing. But it’s not a crutch. But the Prozac was damned helpful.

E: Were you worried about going on Prozac?

M: No. Not at all.

E: You were ready. You’d do anything.

M: At that point, if they told me I had to stick licorice sticks up my anal cavity, I would have done it. I’d have done anything to not get to that point, where the next step is to kill yourself. It was desperation. They could have given me anything.

So I was quite pleased that it was Prozac.

E: Not electric shock, or anything. That’s not great. Scary stuff.

M: Didn’t fancy that. Or a lobotomy.

Like you, I was worried antidepressants were going to stop me being who I was.

But at that point, I didn’t know who I was anyway. What did I have to lose?

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

E: My desperation point wasn’t as bad. It was just exhaustion, a fed up point. I was just so tired of feeling like that. It’s been years, I’m done with it.

I always had a feeling that I didn’t want to be on antidepressants. I didn’t like the idea of it.

But when you get to the point of ‘I can’t do this anymore’, you’ll just do anything.

M: Your traits were slightly different to mine. That obsessive checking thing is different. I can see it in myself.

The other night I was in bed, your dad woke me up and my first thought was: ‘did I leave the door keys in the door?’ I knew I hadn’t, but I had to go down and check.

E: DON’T CHECK. I check. It’s not a good pattern.

M: As I came back upstairs, your dad said: ‘and you wonder where she gets it from?’

E: Dick.

M: That all stems from anxiety. There will have been some trigger. I think you can identify the trigger, if you think back.

(Picture: Erin Aniker for Metro.co.uk)

E: Oh, yeah. I don’t want to blame either of you.

For there to be trigger, there has to be something waiting to be triggered. If someone said the exact same thing – if someone made the steak comment to someone else who didn’t have underlying mental issues, it would have just been forgotten.

But because your mental state is kind of waiting for that, one comment just clicks it on.

M: Absolutely. It’s raw and it’s naked and it’s sore.

E: For me, it was Dad mentioning switches and telling us we had to turn them all off before bed. Then it was [my brother’s] lava lamp.

[Once upon a time, my brother fell asleep with his lava lamp on and headphones in his ears. During the night, his headphones tangled in with his lava lamp, the lava lamp fell on the bed, and there was a mini fire. He was knocked out by the smoke. It was scary.]

I was always worried about things burning, but when that happened, it was like, well, my fear is true. Things can just set on fire. It really cemented that worry for me.

I remember when I started having panic attacks, it was because of a nightmare I had about people breaking into the house and killing us all. Something about home invasion is a huge trigger for me now.

M: Because it is scary. That’s horrifying.

(Picture: Mmuffin for Metro.co.uk)

E: And that’s the thing. It’s difficult with depression and anxiety because the things themselves are real, they’re logical.

It makes sense to be upset over work stuff, or to be scared of fires, but your brain just takes it to another level where it becomes too scary.

M: My trigger was ‘I’m meant to be perfect’. Yours is ‘I’m meant to be safe, and I’m not.’

I think your symptoms are possibly more damaging to the way you want to live your life, because you’ve had to go home to check things, you’ve had to go downstairs and check the door.

E: It was exhausting.

One of the other things was that I didn’t want to tell you specifically, because I knew you would worry, and I didn’t want you to feel at all responsible.

M: I can’t deny that I did think: ‘is there something that we have done?’

But I understand that I’m not responsible for how you respond to things.

E: Exactly, you can’t control it.

M: You’re an adult. It’s allowing you to be independent. You have to handle this. It’s your right to share however much you wish to. You share what you need to share.

I feel, with you, that I think I knew elements of it.

I recognised that you had panic attacks. I came to pick you up from school with one, and I recognised exactly what was going on.

I remember that. I recognised the symptoms. I thought: ‘I know this. Bugger. I know this.’

And I also know that you went through a period of self-harm. Now, I couldn’t come up to you and say ‘are you self-harming?’

E: Wait, how did you know?

M: Blood.

E: Jesus.

(Picture: Mmuffin for Metro.co.uk)

M: It was unfortunate that I tidied your bedroom up and invaded your privacy. You freaked out enough about that. I certainly wasn’t going to say ‘and what’s all this stuff you’re doing to yourself?’

E: I’m sorry.

M: I knew you were, but I couldn’t say anything. The helplessness was hard. I blamed myself. I couldn’t do anything.

E: I think even if you had said anything, it wouldn’t have changed things. I would have just done a better job of keeping it secret. I had to recover on my own.

M: I like to think that if you had got to the point of no return, you would have said something. Or I would have noticed enough.

E: Yeah. That’s true.

It was difficult, because I knew you were there for me and I knew I could talk to you. But depression felt too big. I knew I could, but I just couldn’t.

I also, as a teenager, felt a lot of resentment. I was angry that I was going through so much and it felt like you weren’t noticing. I’m being so obvious, how can you not say anything?

M: Yeah. My Chemical Romance? Jeez.

(Picture: Mmuffin for Metro.co.uk)

E: It was difficult because I couldn’t understand how something that felt so big to me – no one else could see it.

It made me hide it more, because I thought no one understood, no one was doing anything.

M: But actually, it was because they didn’t know what to do. It’s not that obvious, because you’re a bloody good actor. And it’s only so big and obvious to you because you’re in it.

E: How do you think that mental illness has changed our relationship? First when we were both struggling with it, and after, now that we’re open about it?

M: You’re always closer when you share. It’s interesting being the mum of someone who’s struggling, and being in the same house, because you can see it. You’re standing on the edge, and I’m there to catch you if you fall.

I’m not seeing it now. You’re out of the house. You’re doing this alone. I’m now the mum at a distance. You’re not in the habit of calling regularly.

I know now that you have been in trouble, and that I didn’t really know anything about it. You’re a long way away. My immediate first thought was: ‘right, that’s it. She’s coming home to live with us.’

E: Nope, nope, nope.

M: Then I thought: ‘don’t be stupid’. You wouldn’t do it, and that’s not the answer.

E: True.

M: But it’s like I say, ‘text me to let me know you get home okay’. That would help. Just texting to let me know you’re alive would be nice.

E: I can do that.

M: You can do that. When you’re grownup, you have your own life. I think we’ve got a close enough relationship to talk candidly like this.

E: The fact that we have this shared experience – I know that I can talk to you about this more so than dad, because I know you won’t say the ‘wrong’ thing, because you actually understand it. When I was younger, that’s what stopped me from talking to you, because I knew that you knew how bad it could be, so you’d worry more.

M: I can understand that. But we go through it. We’re going through it. You know exactly what that feels like. But talking won’t set us off.

And there are so many people out there going through the exact same stuff, we just don’t talk about it.

The more we talk about it, the more people will feel able to step up and say: ‘you know what? I don’t feel good. I don’t feel okay.’

How to talk to your parents about your mental health: It’s sometimes easier to come clean when you’re ‘on the up’ – when you’ve started to ask for help, when you’re on meds, or when you’ve taken the step to get therapy. That way you’re telling your parents about a positive step you’ve taken.

– when you’ve started to ask for help, when you’re on meds, or when you’ve taken the step to get therapy. That way you’re telling your parents about a positive step you’ve taken. Don’t play the blame game. We all feel resentment towards our parents sometimes, but remember that they’re human. Now’s not the time to take out all your issues on them.

We all feel resentment towards our parents sometimes, but remember that they’re human. Now’s not the time to take out all your issues on them. Try not to get angry or shut down if they say the ‘wrong thing’. You can’t know how your parents will react. Let them deal with it, and don’t take any initial comments personally.

You can’t know how your parents will react. Let them deal with it, and don’t take any initial comments personally. Set up an action plan that will help your parents to not worry. Say you’ll call them once a week, tell them about your weekly therapy, or promise to let them know if things get really bad.

Say you’ll call them once a week, tell them about your weekly therapy, or promise to let them know if things get really bad. Ask your parents about their experiences. You may not be the only member of your family going through tough stuff. Be there for each other.

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