When Lightening Strikes
We all remember our first time…
It was 1997, I was living in North London and working in the
West End as a recruitment consultant. It was my first proper job out of
university where I had studied a Masters in Human Resource Management.
The work involved head hunting senior finance candidates and
placing them in new roles... for significant fees.
We worked 12 hour days and spent evenings often either
wining and dining clients or otherwise tripping the light fantastic on London’s
glittery Soho streets. My mornings would usually begin with trying to re-hydrate
my booze addled body with an energy drink as I trundled from the Northern line
towards Goodge Street.
Many of my work colleagues found their own ways of coping
with the stresses of fast paced London life, with some turning to chemical
solutions of one kind or another.
It wasn’t just the hours and the partying that took its toll
on me during that time, it was the work and the environment of work. The
culture was male dominated and aggressive. Bullying, thinly disguised as
‘banter’ was rife. People would be publicly humiliated if they missed their
targets. Despite the fact that I was generally quite successful and at times
even won monthly awards, it felt like swimming in a fish tank with piranhas all
around.
It wasn’t just the attitude towards fellow colleagues that
bothered me. It was the attitude towards our candidates, the very people we
were supposedly helping. As I look back, if there was a tipping point, then it
was the way my then manager treated one
of my candidates. I remember the candidate was called Sanjay. He was a refugee
from Eritrea. Upon escaping violence and making it to the UK, Sanjay had worked
multiple jobs for years in order to pay his way through accountancy exams. He
successfully achieved his ACCA qualification and started work as a management
accountant. When I interviewed Sanjay, my manager Paul sat in to assist.
Sanjay was smart in appearance, had been successful in his
current role and was ready to move his career forward. I felt convinced we
should represent him and start looking for roles. My manager Paul said no.
Absolutely not. Sanjay had a pronounced stutter which he later informed me was
heightened when nervous. As Sanjay was an accountant, the fact that he had a
speech impediment barely registered with me. Not so with Paul.
“Bin him.” He declared after the interview.
I asked why?
“We’re not putting a stuttering clown in front of our
clients.” Came the reply from Paul.
I tried desperately to argue the case but Paul was adamant
and made it clear I was damaging my own employment prospects by objecting.
It dawned on me that we were simply selling people. I had
been raised to believe that people should be kind to one another. I was clearly
in the wrong place.
So why the elaborate back story? What has this got do with
anxiety?
Well…everything as I later understood.
I was burning the candle at both ends. I was destroying
myself physically and mentally. When my lightening of panic stuck it seemed
that it came out of the blue…a curse. However as I hope you can see, this is
actually far from the truth.
I had never heard of anxiety as a real condition. I thought
it just meant someone who spent their whole time worrying about things or was
in some other ways just a big ‘scaredy cat’ like the cartoon character
Snagglepuss. What I now realised was both my outer and inner landscapes were
approaching breaking point. I was getting little sleep, no exercise, living an
entirely urban existence despite growing up in the countryside, drinking too
much and working in a way that directly conflicted with my core values. If
there was a Tao, a way of living that suited me…this was the opposite…I needed
a warning, and by God I got one!
I remember it was an end of quarter celebration of some
kind. There had been a re-structure in the company and I had a new manager, a
very successful, high earning recruiter called Dawn.
Dawn did not attend the celebration but told me to be at
Euston station at 8am the next day as we were heading off to meet a potential
new client.
The party was pretty fierce and involved each team taking
part in some kind of floor show. As I recall we did a kind of 1970’s disco
routine.
It was a fairly late night and I shuffled along to Euston
station not feeling particularly well. I didn’t think much of it as being hung
over had become a fairly standard way to spend a morning.
“You reek of booze.” Dawn announced upon meeting and
climbing on board the train.
She then proceeded to fill me in on the client and explained
my role was simply to be the note taker.
The office was in an industrial estate which we arrived at
via taxi. As I recall it was a modern, purpose built building. Feeling rather
jaded from the night before I drank two cups of coffee while waiting for the
meeting to start.
Soon we were ushered into a small meeting room with no
windows and a strip light above. After the shaking of hands we sat down and
Dawn began the meeting.
I was writing notes while mentally willing the meeting to
end so I could get some fresh air.
Suddenly I started to feel unwell. My temperature seemed to soar
and I felt sweaty and sickly. The room began to spin and the voices of Dawn and
our prospective client sounded strange and hollow, almost tin like.
My vision blurred and I could see all sorts of strange
colours swirling around the room. As I tried to write my hand was shaking and I
couldn’t make any legible marks, just a strange spider-like scrawl. I felt that
I needed to escape, to get out but I was worried not just about showing up my
new manager but also that I might fall or pass out. The worst part was that I
felt trouble breathing. It had somehow become conscious and it almost seemed
like I had forgotten how to do it. It was the most horrible and frightening
sensation I had ever experienced.
Somehow I managed to get through the meeting and was so relieved
to get outside and breathe deeply. As I made my way to the train I was
terrified. In that one instant my world had changed. In my mind the words panic
attack were making loops. Clearly I had at some point heard the term and had
enough awareness to suspect at least that it had happened.
On the train, I rationalised that the state was due to being
in a hot room, hung over with too much caffeine and too little sleep. Now I
realise that while all that was true, there was more to the story.
As horrific and frightening as the moment was, the real
agony was still to come.
If you are reading this because you have or are in some way
suffering from anxiety, what happened next will no doubt be very familiar too
you.
I went home and told my house mate what had happened. I
think he replied that it sounded like a nightmare, sparked a cigarette and told
me to forget about it. I did…until the next morning.
I made my way to work from the tube, sipping an energy
drink. Shortly later sitting down at my desk and starting up my computer my
mind drifted back to the day before.
A thought entered my mind…it was a thought that would affect
me many, many times from that day to this… “I hope it doesn’t happen again” and
of course like clockwork…it did.
I stumbled away from my desk telling my manager I was
feeling really sick and needed to go. Dawn said something about calling her
later but I wasn’t listening. I dashed back up the Northern line, packed a bag,
jumped in my car and drove immediately from the city back home to my parent’s
house in Gloucestershire. In every sense, I ran away, seeking the solace or the
countryside and my family.
The next day having talked the incident through with my
parents and despite their advice I called Dawn, left a message saying I was
resigning and would not be returning to the office.
So to be clear, following my 1st panic attacks I
left my employment and now had no means to financially support myself. I
explain this to illustrate that the impact of anxiety on my life was instantly
devastating.
It took me three months to find a new job during which time
I had to support myself through any savings and a graduate loan that I somehow
managed to persuade a computer at the bank I was eligible for. During this time
I spent my days in North London reading and making many circuits of the local
park on my roller blades.
It was a strange period in my life. I was 25 years old,
unemployed and with the giant monkey of anxiety firmly on my back. Truthfully
however, in that time formed the seed of my deliverance from the condition.
Despite the worry of unemployment and uncertainty about the future I had
another feeling. Somehow I sensed that I had done the right thing. I had been
in the wrong place doing the wrong thing and the Universe had other plans for
me. It is a very bizarre feeling when you sense the flow of your life and
realise that you have been trying to paddle upstream. It was not the last time
in my life that I would find my canoe navigating in the wrong direction.
I managed to get to second interview with a tour operator as
an overseas trainer after some creative work with my CV (I was after all a fully
trained recruitment consultant and was at least still capable of recruiting
myself).
At that second interview I had to conduct a training
session. I had barely began when ‘that’ thought entered my mind…and bang. I
felt I couldn’t breathe, the room was spinning and there was a panel of
interviewers looking at me.
In that moment I made a decision. It was a decision I have
subsequently made hundreds of times. I decided to hell with it, I’m just going
to keep going. If I pass out, I pass out but I’m not running away.
Two weeks later a letter arrived…I was to be sent to
Benidorm for an induction…I got the job….the Universe had spoken!
