Intervention Before Rock Bottom
Through my working life, I started to build up an increasing amount of industry connections. LinkedIn was a primary way in which my network was expanding, and I was adding more people into my phone as contacts with phone numbers. I was employing more people, working with more clients, and connecting with more people in various industries, often at managerial and more senior positions.
In my 30s, I wasn’t short of having people that I could reach out to have a conversation with, typically work-related rather than on a personal level, as personal-level conversations didn’t feel comfortable to me. I didn’t have anyone that I was connected to who had given me an indication that they were open to speak about things on a deeper level that were not work-related, but more about what was going on internally. Speaking about mental health certainly wasn’t something that I felt I had anyone I could speak openly to.
I turned to therapy, to a psychologist, as that one place to open up, to share burdens, heaviness, and hidden parts of my past. Yet even through all those years of one-to-one private therapy, my life still collapsed. My marriage, my business, my professional identity—and it was public too. It wouldn’t have been possible to hide it, because I was a public-facing family man, entrepreneur, and speaker. I had been very visible on LinkedIn.
You don’t typically hear or read stories on LinkedIn of people who have been living a picture-perfect life, who seem to have it all together, and then whose life totally and completely collapses. There will be, of course, many people, and I believe I am one of those.
My heart, as I share different elements of my personal journey through short life stories, is that there will be someone reading these words who will be able to relate to what I’m saying, and that what I’m speaking on will be resonating with them in their heart and in their mind. To come to a place where you realise that you are not on your own, that there are others who are going through—or who have been through—what you’re going through is so, so important. I would go as far as saying it can be life-changing, like a light at the end of what can be a very dark, private tunnel.
