Richard Martin - This Too Will Pass: Anxiety in a Professional World

www.triggerpublishing.com

Thank you for purchasing this book.
You are making an incredible difference.

Proceeds from all Trigger books go directly to
The Shaw Mind Foundation, a global charity that focuses
entirely on mental health. To find out more about
The Shaw Mind Foundation visit,
www.shawmindfoundation.org

MISSION STATEMENT

Our goal is to make help and support available for every
single person in society, from all walks of life.
We will never stop offering hope. These are our promises.

Trigger and The Shaw Mind Foundation

Disclaimer: Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Trigger encourages diversity and different viewpoints, and is dedicated to telling genuine stories of people's experiences of mental health issues. However, all views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this book are the author's own, and are not necessarily representative of Trigger as an organisation.

A breakdown isnt the beginning of mental illness, its the
publication of it. Its the volcano that has been rumbling away
for years, exploding with boiling lava and destroying everything
in its path. It has no choice; it was made like that, and people
built houses on its slopes knowing what it was but hoping that
it might not actually erupt.

Lucy Martin 2016

Chapter 1

It is said that as much as 75% of adult mental illness (excluding dementia) would be diagnosable by the age of 18, if only we looked and knew what to look for. I wonder what someone looking at me all those years ago would have seen. I did not know I was a volcano, and the eruption, when it came, was a big surprise. Looking back now, though, at all the steps and choices I have taken, there seems an inevitability to it, that I was heading inexorably to that moment in May 2011 when everything started to fall apart.

Here is a quick overview of the first 23 years of my adult life. I studied law at university. I had intended on being a barrister, the sort of lawyer that stands up in court, but I was persuaded to spend a couple of weeks on a summer placement in a solicitors firm in the City of London. There I found interesting work and, in sharp contrast to the loneliness of my experience shadowing barristers, a sense of community and support.

And so, after law school, I joined that firm. It was, in London terms, medium-sized probably around 200 people all told at that time. But it proudly proclaimed its difference from other firms. It punched above its weight in terms of the work it did and the clients it acted for. It had a unique training system that gave trainee solicitors (articled clerks as we were known then) far more responsibility than at other firms. Also, to attract potential recruits who might otherwise be drawn to larger firms, it had a policy of paying more than anyone else in the market. The extra money was nice, the responsibility was something I thrived on, but I think it was the sense of being different, special in some way, that really drew me in.

I worked hard and progressed well. On qualification, I joined the litigation department, which at that stage handled a huge range of different forms of dispute. I gradually started to specialise in employment work.

The firm expected you to work hard. In return, as well as the high salary, the firm made sure we could relax and have some fun. There was regularly a tab in the local pub, we had lavish summer parties, and at Christmas the younger lawyers put on a panto, an opportunity to parody the partners that ran the firm. It was a long-respected tradition, and the mark of progress in the firm, as much as being made a partner, was the moment you were first portrayed in the panto.

It was in the panto that I first met Lucy, shortly after qualification in 1995. Lucy had trained at another firm and had joined mine in the summer of that year. She worked in the corporate department. Having studied Russian and French at university, and with the Russian market just opening up to Western investment, her specialism was advising on those investment deals. She spent weeks at a time in Russia and other (ex) Soviet states. As a result, our paths had not crossed until the panto rehearsals started. I was sitting with my script, waiting for the rest of the cast to arrive for a first read through, when this confident, smiling, beautiful vision strode in. She was reading through the list of actors, working out who she knew, until she came to my initials (law firms tend to identify you by your initials).

Whos RTM?

Me, I squeaked, in awe of her already.

We got to know each other over the weeks running up to that Christmas. It took a while for us to get together, but by the new year we were an item. She was funny, intelligent, beautiful, sophisticated. There was something exotic about her Russian work. Much of her working time was spent living out of hotels in far-off places, and in London she even owned her own flat. She was a couple of years more qualified than me, which made her seem terribly grown-up, but she knew how to enjoy herself. Her fridge contained only cottage cheese and Champagne. On one occasion we had agreed to meet for lunch on one of those dead days between Christmas and New Year. She was supposed to be working that day. I had the week off. I was amazed at her audacity in staying in the pub with me all afternoon rather than going back to her desk. How brave, how cool was that? She also thought it was funny that I had a tape of Monty Python songs in my car although perhaps she was just humouring me. And we smoked the same cigarettes that was the clincher, clearly.

What actually was the clincher was that she was vulnerable and I seemed strong. She told me she needed a lot of looking after and I thought, I can do that, thats what I do. And I saw in her someone who would hold me, protect me, and love me for who I was make me safe. We each had our unmet needs from childhood, and unconsciously thought the other could fill the hole.

She encouraged me to be brave and to explore things. I had never been outside of Europe, but she took me on holiday to Grenada unbelievable luxury and expense. She made that seem okay, something that I was entitled to do, rather than something I did not deserve, that was for other, better people.

Things moved fast. We married in 1997 and Steph, our eldest, was born in January 1998. Lucy gave up full-time work to look after Steph problems at work meant that she left the firm at which we met and we never really had the conversation about how we would share primary responsibility for kids. Later, she did go back to work in law firms, part-time, for a few years, but from then on, in my own head at least, I became the primary wage earner. We had been living in North London, but soon after Steph was born, moved south of the river in search of more space. It was a lonely and difficult time for Lucy with a newborn baby, a new house and neighbourhood. She didnt have any nearby friends and was left at home while I went off to work each day.