From Breakdown to Breakthrough

On the 28th of June, I lay in my bed looking at my ceiling, and thought:

“I’m pretty sure my house is trying to kill me.”

Now this wasn’t actually so far from the truth: my bedroom ceiling had huge gaping cracks stretching out from the corners, the bulging mass held up by a very carefully and well-balanced broomstick with the whole lot threatening to collapse on my head at the exact moment I sneezed a bit too forcefully.

It had been this way for 6 weeks… after nearly 18 months of similarly negligent fails on behalf of my landlord and real estate agent.

But the cracks in my ceiling weren’t the only thing wrong in my life.

I was drowning at work.

You may know the feeling – I’m sure we’ve all been there at one point or another.

That sinking, sick, churning, fearful knowing in the pit of my stomach that no matter how much I poured every ounce of my being into my work, no matter how many lunch breaks I skipped or how many dozen hours of unpaid overtime I secretly did at home, it wouldn’t be enough and the work would keep piling up,
and I would lose my job.

And I was the only one supporting our family with a job.

There were other issues too.

My beautiful 14-year-old son had had his heart shattered for the very first time in a breakup with his first true love. I’d just been through a breakup myself and could relate. However, this happened at the same time that his best friend – just 13 years old - died quietly by suicide. I watched with a mother’s sinking heart, sick with fear and anxiety as my own child started posting images referring to the darkness inside him and indicating his own suicidal thoughts and wish to self-harm.

My heart was breaking into a million pieces right beside him.

It was Carl Jung who famously used the house as a metaphor for our psyche; at this point, it’s safe to say my house was a pretty dark place. And it had giant cracks in it.

A breakdown…

The cracks spread slowly at first, and then gathered speed, like the proverbial ball accelerating down a hill.

The first signs of my imminent breakdown appeared when I found myself staring blankly at my computer screen at work, paralysed by fear, unable to type even a single sentence for over four hours straight, the panic and fear rising so much within my chest I felt I couldn’t breathe and my chest was about to explode.

My team leader – a psychologist in his previous life – recognised the signs and ordered me to take a week off. But I didn’t get better. I didn’t eat or sleep for the entire week, and by the end of it my mind was doing some pretty wild things.

I had started to imagine that the songs, podcasts and books that I was listening to or reading – devouring really seeing as I couldn’t sleep even for a second – had special hidden meanings just for me, extreme paranoia had kicked in and I thought that my phone was tapped and people were pursuing me, trying to steal my very important secrets.

By the time that I started believing that the colour red was a warning sign and that my mum was going to sacrifice my cat it was DEFINITELY time for an intervention.

My mum called emergency services, and I was taken to hospital.

…or breakthrough? Growth begins.

At first, I didn’t really understand why I was there. The ambulance and police officers who brought me in had only told me that they’d heard I wasn’t sleeping and – as far as I last knew – not sleeping wasn’t exactly something that you could be arrested and taken to hospital for.

I eyed the psychologist who was assessing me (ironically, wearing a bright red patterned shirt) with suspicion as she asked me about the things I’d been experiencing.

She told me that she’d heard I thought red was a warning. At this point, I knew I was in pretty big trouble. I had to start turning my thoughts from negative to positive or my life would quickly go from bad to worse. Even though I was groggy, I told her no, I’d figured out by this point how I could change my thoughts by remembering that there were lots of red things that I loved like my cute little red teapot and red flowers. I was admitted to hospital anyway, but it was an important turning point.

I knew what I needed to do to turn this ship around.

Even though I was clearly in a rut, I decided to focus only on the positive things around me, nothing else.

A dear friend who I hadn’t seen in ages was working as a nurse in emergency and she recognised me; even though it was the lowest point in life you would ever want to reconnect with someone, she was kind and sweet and helped to reassure me that everything was going to be okay. As I was being taken to the Adult Mental Health Unit, the three burly male nurses who wheeled me down the hall were joking with me and cheerfully telling me all about the history of the buildings, and significance of various dates as we passed. I loved it.

I looked at all the beautiful artworks on the wall and positive and inspiring messages from others and imagined that each was a personal message of hope, just for me. The nurses everywhere were kind, explained things and showed me to my room where I finally slept, thanks to the meds, and my overwrought and sleep-deprived brain slowly started to right itself.

At my first breakfast, I was amazed to find that the food was delicious and thoughtfully prepared… with my background in health and nutrition and also mindfulness, I realised how important this seemingly small detail was. It made me realise that I was truly in a place of healing and my only job was to get better.

I decided to love and make the most of every second of my time in hospital.

Real transformation: the power of visualisation, mindfulness, conscious action. And love.

I remembered that my strength had always been the power of my mind. And I began using it to my advantage.

I started by using my imagination to tell myself that I was on holiday, in a lovely hotel, with a beautiful view and incredible food… how lucky was I! It wasn’t so far from the truth, I certainly was on holiday, even if it wasn’t exactly the type of holiday I’d have chosen.

It was a simple but powerful shift, an act of pure letting go, gratitude and acceptance, as well as shift in perception that allowed me to visualise a far more positive alternative to my existing situation and feel into that reality, with every ounce of my being. It worked. I began exploring what else I could apply this to.

The hospital itself was loud, chaotic and smelt funny at times. However I had my little bottles of essential oils with me and I found that whenever I started to find my environment overwhelming, I could just put a few drops on my wrists, close my eyes and breathe in deeply to find an instant place of inner calm and peace.

I also realised that I had been gifted this free time off work and wanted to use it productively.

I started visioning and reimagining my life… if I could have everything I possibly wanted, what would my ideal life look like?

I had recently discovered the mind-blowing resources and tools associated with global personal development platform MindValley and attended an online webinar by Jim Kwik, author of Kwik Brain, who quickly became a personal hero of mine. It laid out this plan on how to “Nail the Next 6 Months”. The steps were:

Assess: Know where you are and where you’ve come from. What have the last 6 months been like? Well that was easy… in my case it had been pretty rotten to be honest.

Acknowledge: Accept that you can't change the past and for something to change, you must take action to change something (umm spoiler – the change needed was me!) Ultimately, our own mindset and actions are the only thing that we have ultimate control over, and the first place we can take steps to reclaim our power.

Aspire: Allow yourself to dream big, and visualize what do you really want your life to look like? Well this was easy too – I wanted my life to be limitless. And for my kids to be safe.

Act: Make it real, make an action plan, start taking simple small steps. Here’s where the work starts.

Axe: Stop doing things that take you in the wrong direction. Changing patterns and unconscious behaviours, setting boundaries, cutting things out… eek MORE hard actions!

Add: What could take you one step closer? Ask yourself what if...? Try new things, be curious and adventurous, step out of comfort zone and absolutely, definitely DREAM BIG!

I asked my Mum to bring me a notebook and wrote down my dreams and goals and planned out the steps I would need to take to get there.

I also binge-watched powerful YouTube content such as Marisa Peer’s “You are Enough” and Vishen Lakhiani’s videos on how to harness the power of the subconscious. Putting into practice the tools and strategies championed by these thought-leaders started to reprogram my mind and tap into deeper parts of my being that had remained to date unacknowledged.

Without knowing it at the time, I was engaging in a powerful process of recovery planning and action, transforming both my inner and outer world to achieve real and lasting change. I realised that I had been prioritising others’ needs – my employers, my landlords – above my own and my family’s. To change this, I needed to love and value myself much more.

My very first step was to write my resignation letter and quit my job.

Big step. Scary, but so incredibly important.

In my downtime, I found the most positive and inspiring quotes, images, music and videos and surrounded myself with these. I also blocked out any negative media, reconnected with my friends and family and started getting involved in life in hospital.

I chatted and laughed with other inpatients as we pretended to drink fancy “champagne”- which was really sparkling water from the vending machine – and played ball games, danced and practiced yoga and meditation in the courtyard. We all pitched in and helped to build a garden with the ward staff, and I came to remember my passion for working with people who had seen tough times and supporting them to remember their strengths, while sharing a little bit of light and energy with each other.
I resolved then and there to use my experience to make a difference in this space in the future.

Stepping Back into the World

Returning home was of course the real test because it’s different when you are on the outside and real life hits you in the face again.

I also didn’t have a job now, and the lingering possibility of ongoing symptoms and a lifelong battle with mental illness hung over me, and was, quite frankly, scary. But I remembered the plan that I’d created in hospital and continued to build on it, ticking things off one by one, celebrating as I passed each milestone and drawing on my family, friends and clinical support as I needed to.

So where am I now?

My ceiling has been fixed hooray! More importantly, my son and I stayed very close and connected and he’s through the toughest part of his teens, flourishing and engaging in school, work and family life with a smile.

In terms of my own approach to life, much has changed. I no longer look at all the things wrong in my life, just the steps I can take to fix it. After a short break, I started to apply for jobs.

I knew I wanted to use my experience in hospital and my passion for wellbeing to benefit others. Combined with my previous experience working with disability, it turned out my skills were in high demand.

After a flurry of job offers, I initially accepted a dream position as a Psychosocial Recovery Coach working alongside people with severe and enduring mental health challenges to reach their goals. In this role, I was able to see almost every day how powerful a strengths-based approach could be in leading to personal breakthrough and transformation. The steps were not dissimilar to what I’d intuitively employed myself in hospital: helping people to identify their strengths, envision their goals and ideal life and then develop and implement a plan of small steps and supportive actions to get there, walking alongside them all the way. Occasionally I also shared with people the personal success I had with reframing my experiences, using imagination and visualisation to alter my perception so that I could see what I had experienced - rather than happening to me - was instead for me.

In just one of a series of fortunate coincidences following my experience, I met the director of the Adult Mental Health Unit at the hospital where I had been admitted and was invited back to share my story about the power of recognising people’s individual strengths with hospital staff. I also applied for and won funding to develop a series of events highlighting the value of lived experience contributions to the community through art and music to reduce community stigma around diverse mental health experiences. The events were a great success.

However my passions remained strongly tied to youth mental health and suicide prevention throughout. I found myself selected for a charity TV show and working to raise funds for a series of charities that work in schools to deliver mindfulness and suicide prevention programs for children, teens and at-risk communities. On my fundraising journey, I reconnected with my dear friend Alf Orpen, the creative energy behind One.Organic and long-time supporter and ideas lover.

Over a series of meetings, LoveDirt was born.

Through LoveDirt, we want to empower people with tools and positive inspiration that can help grow the love within, sharing the message that sometimes our biggest struggles – the dirty, messy, painful parts of our lives - can lead to our greatest, most powerful transformations. Ultimately, how we embrace the ups and downs and grow through what we go through is what matters. Our goal is to raise $7000 for youth mental health charity Mind Blank so that their important work can continue to reach our young people who need this message more than ever.

So has my journey been one of transformation, possibly even awakening?

I like to think so. In fact, I know so.

And like Joel Osteen, I also think:

“There are some things you can only do in a storm.”

I’ve learned that small shifts in perspective can be really powerful. This includes turning around our focus from all the problems in our lives to instead focusing on what is good. Sometimes hitting rock bottom can also give us the strength to wipe away all the things that no longer serve us, making life’s greatest challenges actually our greatest opportunities to create lasting change, and rebuild the life that we actually want. That power begins within.

This is my story anyway, and this is what I hope to share.

By Farina Bibi Murray