NE: Seven years. I went in there 2014 and out in 2015. nine months.. I mean, when I was there a day felt like a month, but actually when I reflect back on it, seven years, I've just changed so much. So it does feel like a long time ago - it's like my life started in 2015.
NE: I'd first suffered with my mental health shortly after my sister died. The bereavement was just too much to bear and I was fortunate to get some psychotherapy on the NHS when I lived back in Essex.… And how old was you at the time?
CE: 10
NE:10. And I'd been in and out of their life. Their dad had been a constant and I tried my very best to do what I could for them, but I'd lost myself. So anyway, I'd come back from this hospital appointment where they'd offered me the chance to go to the Cassel and CE was like, how's your appointment? I said, ‘oh, it's okay, but they've offered me this treatment, it's in Richmond in Surrey which is a little way away and I can't do it to you girls,’ because I've got another daughter as well, Rosie. So, and she said, what do you mean? I said, well, it's residential for nine months. I said, I do get to come home at weekends. And there was a pause and I just was adamant that I wasn't going to go. And I just remember you looking at me and going, ‘mom, you can't go under it, can't go over it, can't go round it, you've got to go through it.’ And she was 10 and she just said I really want you to go. You deserve it. And for a 10 year old to be so self-aware, so knowledgeable of what's actually going on for me and seeing me suffer, and her suffer for us, for her to be so courageous and brave, I could only match it and do it. And it was the start of the, start of the journey.
[05:19]
CE: Yeah. I wasn't used to like the fact that, you know, mom would have to go away. So the thought of this would be really scary, but I knew that if it was going to help her for the rest of our life, and obviously that's just it, it's not about me. I shouldn't be selfish. It was about everyone and my mom to get better. So yeah, I thought was best.
CE: When she told me it was sort of just like instantly in my head - like I wasn't really thinking about it. It was just like, no, you're going. And I don’t know why, that's just how I felt.
NE: Yeah, my life growing up was quite difficult with regards to my sister's health. She had Crohn's disease and got quite gravely ill and needed multi-organ transplant and it was quite hard high drama. And she was 10 years older than me, so she kind of looked after me quite a bit as a child and then she'd become ill. I was the youngest of three, but I remember idolizing her, she was kind of everything; my mom, my best friend and my sister, and she was also my biggest critic, but that's sisters for you. But sadly in 2008 she was in Addenbrooks Hospital waiting for multi-organ transplant, but she died. And at the time I was a senior officer in HMRC for Customs and Excise for my sins and, but it was a very high pressure job. I was very ambitious, very confident. I ran quite a large team and worked quite closely with the police. So it was very, very high intensity, high risk kind of stuff, but there was no sign of any kind of mental health issues other than…I guess the job buried it.
And then obviously she died, my sister, and then, about 18 months later I was ill-health retired, depression had really, really grabbed hold of me. And I thought, how can I possibly be depressed when my sister has endured a lifetime of ill health, yet she was never sad? So there was an element of I'm alive, my sister's dead, my sister was never depressed, and yet, I don’t know where my life is anymore. And I had two small children at the time, obviously CE was four and Rosie was six months old, so it was incredibly difficult for me to manage. My only thought was that I wanted to be laying down next to her and I couldn't as much as with the children, as much as that bond is there, there was something lost in me. I didn't have the ability to love myself or anything. It was just…Yeah, very, very suicidal, just literally lost in an abyss of fear, self-loathing, trying so desperately to get out of it.
And then going into locked units and yeah, so obviously my marriage broke down as well, so the children had so much to deal with, but that was also an issue. But from that came, now looking back, came an opportunity for me to find out who I truly am, not defined by being the carer of my sister, not defined by my job or what I thought was success. You know, we had a big house and double garage and new cars and worked in the city and plain clothes, covert ops and the drama and ego of that. And yeah, I guess it was, it's cliché, but it's a breakdown to breakthrough and here I am.
NE: Yeah, yeah. You have to have an interview first just to make sure that you are in that space to be able to do the work. If you are too fragile at that point, too vulnerable, or when you're going home at weekends, it isn't a healthy environment, then there's certain conditions that I guess they want you to be able to, to fit within so you can work and be safe on yourself. So yeah, they finally offered me a date and it was like nothing I'd ever experienced. It was you go there for half a day anyway, and actually everybody meets you. The staff meet you, and the patients that are there meet you and you spend half a day there. And what I didn't realize is that they actually then have a meeting when you've gone home to decide whether they want you to be part of the therapeutic community which is the residential.
[15:00]
And then you get a phone call to say the community has agreed. And then the date was set and off I went.. I remember being greeted actually with two or three nurses and never in uniform. It was very relaxed. But I remember being treated with such openness and it's totally different to how I'd been treated as an inpatient in the NHS; it was dignified, it was kind of welcomed as part of the family, but still with that underlying feeling that you had to prove yourself to be part of it. And I picked that up straight away. And I remember the mixture of ages, and the mixture of people, and the difference in cultures, and where we'd all come from, from around the country. Yeah, it's just like nothing I've ever experienced before.
NE: Yeah. And I found the group therapy, so at nine o'clock every morning you kind of, you have to have your group therapy in the morning, but it's not…I think it's called check-in, it's called morning meeting or something, I'm not sure. But yeah, everyone goes in there and you've got two people that are chosen as part of the community to run the group with a few staff members that are obviously trained therapeutically. And everybody goes around and checks-in and sees how they are. And I do remember one thing, which I just remember looking around and everyone was tapping their knee, everyone, and it was, you could kind of, and I used to say to you, didn't I, you know that Mexican, that tapping of the leg where the anxiety was so high. I remember hearing some very harrowing stories in that time. And I remember being very…
[20:06]
I broke down one day in there, in this meeting. There was a young…There was two men in there and he was just incredibly suicidal and he just seemed to speak everything that I wanted to say, but at that time I was still so closed and so where I couldn't speak about my emotions, whereas now I'm very open. But, he was so eloquent in the way he worded his fight for life, and I just remember really breaking down, crying for him. The fear I had, the empathy I had for him was so intense that, and I remember, even though I think I'd only known him for like two days, but I remember looking at him and saying, please, please don't die. He was really, really heavy, yeah.
NE: Absolutely. Absolutely to hear people and their journey and how, what seemed to be a thread throughout, throughout the whole community when I was there was that we didn't feel good enough ever in our life. And we never felt heard, and I think to a certain degree, that's why a lot of people can't share their feelings because they may have screamed them for so long yet no one was listening. Whereas in there they listened, and to have that conjure into a new way of explaining how you feel instead of internalizing it all, you know, like he had, you could slowly see people settle down and…Oh, there were some patients that we were all at different levels. Some were incredibly depressed one day and then incredibly maniac the next. I was in incredibly sad crying, but unable to ask for help, and I remember becoming very, very, I think the words envious or jealous of the women that could cry and ask for help because I never could, never did ask for help. And I remember sort of nurses spending time with patients that were vulnerable and thinking all I need is just that little bit of time. Can someone give it to me? But actually they were waiting for me to ask.
But I remember having quite a lot of tension with certain girl that was able to just cry and then go, oh, I need some help, need to talk it through. Whereas, and I remember I was just getting so angry thinking, why is she getting all the attention? And it just felt like I was this child, I don’t know, perhaps it was me thinking about my sister or you know the… I don't know. But I remember being angry with her and one morning in one of these meetings I just said, “You know, what's the matter with you? Why can't you…? And it was a real sort of conflict, me and her was in this real battle in the morning. I was like, “Why do you keep crying? Why do you keep crying?” And it was funny because one of the nurses said to me, “Why aren't you crying? And in that moment is when I broke, simple as that, simple as that. And she said, “If you want help, it's here. You just have to ask for it. Perhaps you've never asked for it.” And that was immense, yeah.
NE: I'm don't think, yeah. I don't know what to feel like. You okay.
CE: Yeah, we've sort of spoken about this kind of thing before. Yeah. Obviously not in full detail, but obviously I was always the kid that wanted to know everything that was going on. So I'd always like, it was like beg her to tell me what was going on. I just wanted to be in the loop, so, yeah.
Yeah they had this trampoline in the garden and like, I think they had like a barbecue or something in the garden. So that was really NEe and I think it did distract me as well from it. It sort of like painted a better picture of what I thought in my head.
CE:. Like you said, I was only 10 so I didn't really know what was going on, but when she was obviously here on the weekend, it's hard to like fit the stuff you want to say and ask into that one day.
NE: I remember coming home and having to have that mummy face on and knowing what an intense week I'd had. I'm just so wanting to grab you and hold you, but then there was this where you wanted it to be fun as well.
CE: Mm-Hmm.
NE: And yeah, I know it took a lot of effort from both sides, and I remember you expressing the sadness when I used to go back on a Sunday that I hadn't even thought about because your dad would say, oh no, they're fine, but it's because he didn't want to worry me.
CE: Yeah, and I do remember one weekend where it was on my birthday and obviously we've never had like a birthday apart or anything, like we've always celebrated birthday's, Christmases, holidays all together. It's always been the same. So this time when she had to leave like on the day it was sort of just like, oh come on, like I wish that there was just one more day
Rob: So how did it work then through the year? What was the kind of actual, if it's possible to go back, going back to your kind of process because obviously a lot happened in that nine months.. How did it work between…? Say, you had a nurse who was assigned to you? Would you have one nurse or how did it work?
NE: Yeah, there was one nurse assigned to you, and when you say nurse, there's no nurse's outfit. You can't tell the difference between the nurse, the cleaner and the patient. Probably the psychoanalysts do kind of wear perhaps a smarter possibly tailored suit. But other than that, the power dynamic is very relaxed. And then I'd have a psychoanalyst and a group analyst and a movement drama therapist. So that's the treatment, that intensive treatment that we received. And then obviously every morning at nine o'clock you had an hour of kind of community group therapy. So you'd have your twice weekly individual, and yeah, I won't say his name, but my psychoanalyst was just amazing and he knows who he is. And then we had a small group therapy, so actually I think the community of say 13 was split into two and that would be group therapy twice a week as well, and then dance therapy or movement therapy which was very expressive. But there was art room there, badminton, all in that same sort of area. You had a set budget and you all had to work as a team, and I now know that every single part of it was to get you to learn to live again.
Whoever has made that mix and picked those nurses, must have picked them well - each nurse is trained slightly differently. Everyone in thecommunity was very much like a child; you know, acting out, playing out, projection and it was just maNE at times, crazy at times. And the full sense of the word there was people angry and then bereft, and despairing, but actually certain nurses were able to always diffuse the situation. But you always had one male nurse, and he was Scottish …Everyone was kind of like, don't upset him, don't upset him. he's an amazing guy, amazing guy, but he never took any of our childish antics. there was a lot of anger, a lot of despair, a lot of, you know, people leave, people storm out of therapy sessions and it's very high drama, but it's also very unique. It's a bit like the big brother house. The slightest thing; someone puts a cup in the cupboard the wrong way, that's enough to sort of cause the whole house to split down the middle.
[35:23]
Rob: Did you ever find that other patients helped you at all?
NE: Yeah, another patient, that is what's so key about the community, and there was me and another lady that was my age and they used to call us the husband and wife team of the…We were like the mom and dad because we were the oldest at the time, so and then we both had the surrogate mom and dad if you like, in the nurses. So it's so hard for me to put into words. It's a feeling and a process rather than a set of words. For anyone that has only felt a certain way, and then to be engulfed with such depth of emotion. It's very hard but very enlightening.
Rob: You were talking before when we were having our coffee before you talked about these things where you'd go and there'd be a review of your whole kind of progress and stuff or whatever.
NE: Yeah, I mean I remember when I was first in the Cassel, there was one lady, and everyone was like, oh no, she's having a review. She's got a review tomorrow and everyone was like trying to keep it quiet, didn't want to upset her. She was pacing and really in this high anxious state. And I was like, what's a review? And they was like, “Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible.” So, of course, I was in there for three months and I get a note passed to me, your review is next week, da, da da. And then I remember I wanted to write how I felt. I'd try and give myself feedback but also to state what I liked and what I didn't like, and I think they wanted to hear all of it. So I remember walking in there as this like horse-show of very high powered people. And I read out what I thought I was doing right, what I thought I could improve on and what I wanted to do in the future and what I wanted to work on in the future. And then basically, they sit and talk about you and tell how you've got on in each of your therapeutic processes and what they're finding difficult to tap into, and you're sitting there just like a fly on the wall with your own therapy, and it's just so surreal, bizarre. At the time I hated it, I absolutely hated every single minute of it. But I look back now and I think how amazing that they get this whole stretch of time to focus in on one person. But yeah, you then you get a written report very much like school.
[40:55]
Rob: And then the second time around, did that feel different?
NE: Yeah.
NE: Well, I was able to talk about my emotions, whereas before, they'd just been so turned in on myslef. It'd be sort of self-harm and suicidality, and suppressing a lot of my feelings, and to be able to give them voice and validity in that last review was amazing. And I remember at the end I just, I thanked everybody because you're never going to see them all again; you know, the lead psychoanalyst and his wife. And they're all there in front of you. And I just said at the end, you know, it would be my dream to be a therapist. And I remember the nurse manager turning around and saying, one day you'll be sitting in my chair and there was a tear come out of her eye and a tear come out of mine and I thanked them. And that review was it.
It's called the Last Review. So, last review, but I was different. Setup was the same and it always is the same, but I was different. I was able to…I was no longer feeling less than, so I was able to talk and be okay and talk with them instead of mumble to them. I was able to just express how I felt and where I'd gone wrong in the past, which I had. I didn't realize how much anger I had inside me and I lost it one day, absolutely lost it. And I don’t know if I can say this, but I will. They've got listed trees in the in the rear of the of the property on the grounds, and they are gorgeous, they're Canadian, something [inaudible 45:08]
[45:09]
And one day I just snapped and I went out there and there was a walking stick and I was just smashing this walking stick against this tree. And I was only been there a little while, so, one, I didn't realize that the tree was listed. Two, I couldn't express anger. And I was like, what do I do then? If you'd self-harm, you was asked to leave. So, I was like, I need to get this anger out, I don’t know what to do with myself, and just picked up this random walking stick, and I went and…
Well now I know the tree's listed, but it's now listed with a little bit of small amount of scarring should we say, and I'm also left with the small amount of scarring. But yeah, I remember they spoke a lot about that, and I think that was my turning point, there'd been a process of anger being turned inwards for so long that that outpouring was what was needed. But I was hauled in, and they said, you know, you're going to be thrown out if you carry on. Then that was it, my anger was done, not done, but I knew my boundary on both ends of the spectrum. So you've only got the middle. So I just tried and I gave it my all. I had to. And I knew that if I didn't, then the kids won’t have a mum, and the generational trauma would've been intense and would've damaged them. Which of course the journey so far has had an impact, but as you can tell, we're able to explore now because I didn't have the vocabulary before. I didn't have the ability to even tap into it. So, in a way, as much as it might be hard to hear, there's a conduit that's allowed us to really be open. And for CE to challenge me and for her to be able to be real about her struggles.
So how is it possible to talk about how the whole system works there? How did it do that? And could that have, could you imagine that could have happened in another means, in another means? There's two different questions there, you know what I mean?
[50:00]
NE: Yeah. I believe it's the community within the place. It's the structure, it's the boundaries. It's the fact that people are leaving and new people are coming, but when they leave, it's healthy. So a lot of my childhood was not able to express anything. My emotions were kind of stifled a little bit, so I wasn't able to express how I felt and the sadness around my sister's death or how when CE was born or Rosie was born, I wasn't able to feel like I could share how beautiful it was. Everything, my whole life seemed to be closed and it was just about driving for work and this drive that meant happiness in the end. But here it's definitely about community, honesty, routine and pushing outside of the comfort zone. And you basically, if you want to, you learn to live again from a child because there's so much play goes on. It's like St Trinians one day and fight club the next. [Laughs]
But, and I think it's down to a structure that's always worked and it can be replicated and I believe it should be replicated. And it would save so many people's lives and lives of their extended family because I don't believe we would be as close, possibly they may have been put into care or something if I hadn't had got the help.
Rob: Couldn’t have happened in a different way? Couldn’t have happened if you'd been, I don't know, going to somewhere like the Priory cliNE on a daily basis, maybe.
NE: No, I truly believe you need to be an inpatient and the door needs to be open. I've been in a locked unit three times. And as a country, we should be ashamed of ourselves - it's barbaric and degrading, you need to be in a community. But you need to know the door’s open because everybody's experienced so much trauma. You know, it wasn't just my sister's death that got me to this point, it was a catalog of events. But everybody has experienced such horrifically hard upbringings that they need to be nurtured day and night. And there's so many of us. I know I still have sleep problems now iroNEally, but I was an absolute insomniac.
[55:09]
So, but you are forced to go to bed at 11, and you've got some really strict nurses, but funny nurses, they know where the boundary is. They're like, no, “You don't need a drink, you're going back out to bed. So and it sounds like it's a prison, but it's not. But to have that routine and you've got to get up, you've got to get downstairs, you've got to have your breakfast, you've got to clean up after yourself. Yeah, Monday to Friday's perfect, with that that door open. We're humans, we're not zoo animals.
Rob: We can't really go without talking about your leaving and how that whole went. So, tell me the story of that.
NE: Yeah, I was just I had become quite a character in the place I think, and I'd changed so much, the nurses could see that. And they'd done me a little festival and a barbecue and I came down and the community had put up all this bunting and stuff. And they were cooking a barbecue and just made cakes, and You're amazing NE. You've got this. And it was such an absolute, healthy goodbye, and then every morning in these groups in the morning, nine o'clock, I would sit in this one chair; it was kind of from the 1970s, it was very low and no one liked to sit on it because it had literally one spring underneath and that was my chair because I just for some reason there's that inner child part of me, but I still connect to now, and I think a lot of adults don't connect to it enough. But actually they're sitting on the…One day I was just hoping that I'd fall through it in the middle of this really intense group therapy and just have my legs sort of, my bum slip through with my legs hanging out, but no, I didn't, so and I didn't want to fall on purpose because that just wouldn't…Timing comedically wouldn't have been right, would it?
So anyway, and then when we had new people, they'd often go in and someone would go “No, that's NEk’s chair, and I'd be like, yeah, that's my chair. So for nine months I sat in this chair and then when I left, it had been put in the back of my car as my goodbye gift. So, sorry NHS, I do owe you a new chair, but it was amazing. It's amazing, and I'm going to get it upholstered, new springs put in and it's going in my therapy room.
Rob: But is it here?
NE: Oh, it's actually in the garage, sadly.
Rob: Oh, so not here?
NE: You could have signed….and the guitar, they all signed the guitar. Yeah, they all signed the guitar for me.
Rob: Oh really? Is that in the garage as well.
NE: Yeah, it's probably in the garage.
Rob: Where's the garage?
Rob: That's really, really cool. So that was your leaving go, but had you changed then? Obviously, you've been talked to about your emotion and stuff, but had you changed, did you feel that you changed at the time?
NE: Yeah.
NE:, I would say the first three months were me resisting, sort of arguing with the girls saying, you know, why are you crying, buck up? Because, but actually what it was about is me wanting… what she was getting.
[01:00:06]
She had the ability to cry and to ask for help, like I said before. But what also had happened is that I was taking so much medication before I went in so that I actually went…They'd got me off of the benzodiazepines and so I was going through quite a rollercoaster of withdrawals because they want to see you for you not medicated, not on anything that you don't need to be on. And I think that's another beautiful thing about the place, is that you are on the bare minimum of medication. So, obviously I was going through some withdrawals which caused some horrific mood dips and peaks and issues. And I remember I couldn't cope at one point, and I so desperately wanted to reach for what I would normally have reached for, which would've been diazepam or something. And I was just stuck thinking, I can't do this because three months at that point when you are in withdrawals as well, and the community was changing constantly and I was in this massive friction.
And then that first three months, I think you were just getting on into the routine of it and so was Rosie. And it was that they'd come to realize that this is going to be long. So, I was getting the guilt from them too, and rightly so, yeah, that I felt incredibly suicidal at one point. Yeah, I do remember thinking, I can't do this, but then remembering I've got to do this.
…My emotions and that first three months were so shut down and laced then with anger, and I'd be like “I need my medication.” They were like, no you don't. I was like, no, “I need my medication. Can you get the doctor then?” And it was kind of this air of entitlement. But what they were actually saying is, you are not a customs and excose officer. You're not a customs officer in here, but you are here to be vulnerable and ask for help. Get off your high horse, roll your sleeves up and work, or don't think you can take the lead or rally the troops. I'm not the Pied
But I had to really, because there's parts of us that, we feel are…I've always naturally been like that; this organizer and doer. So of course, I was great for the barbecue organizing that they do every year, you know, and great at organizing, leaving dos, but actually they wanted to see me and my process of why I feel I need to do that.
So of course, when they said you're not a customs excise officer in here, I took that as a knock on my personality. Like, “Why are you attacking me? What do you mean?” But actually it was about, you can be NEk in here. You don't have to wear a uniform. You don't have to wear a fake face. We're actually accepting you, part of this community for who you are, as you are with all the baggage that comes with it.
And CE, when your mom came out, I mean I know you were young and it's a long time ago, so maybe it's hard to remember, but can you remember how you felt when she was coming out? Did you come to pick her up?
NE: No, I drove home.
CE: Yeah, I thought that.
CE: Yeah, no, absolutely. I was like probably counting down the days. And then obviously when she did come home, I think it was just probably surreal that every day she was still there. Obviously, granted probably was tough because obviously she's not used to that either. But I can imagine it was just really, really, really NEe to just have her back. And not just that, but to have like a different version of herself back as well, but like in the best way possible. Obviously, I never saw any bad version. That's the thing. It's like everyone normally sees that bad part of. But, I never saw it, not in my eyes at least, it was just like having my mum back and it was really good. Rob: And now you've been become a therapist for real.
NE: I remember speaking with my psychotherapist and as the months were on, I was really able to find these words and dig deep and really explore what was going on for me. And we would have such intense sessions and heavy dialogue and I just found it was thrilling and deep and it interested in me. And I was so scared to say to him because I thought I can't be one because I've been mentally unwell, I can't be one. And …I suppose it was a bit like a child going to their dad and saying, can I do this? Can I do this?
So, I remember going to him and saying, “Ah, I've got something to ask you, and I know you're going to have to sit on the fence about it and you're not going to give me a yes or no, but I just really want to start this training. I really want to do the training.” And he wouldn't answer because obviously he was very, very ethical and he was amazing. But I remember on one of my last sessions I joked and I said to him, “I'll never be able to push your boundary, will I?” And he went, “You never know when you're qualified.” And it was then that I was, oh, you never know when you're qualified, so that was my little kind of, yes, I can do it. And yeah, the nurse manager just…And quite a few of the others just said, give me a ring if you need a placement. It was one of them, so yeah, the journey began.
So it's been a lot, it's been a long seven years; lot of self-awareness, a lot of tapping into stuff and working. And I worked for the…Volunteered for the Samaritans as well, for a good portion of my life. So, and then to finally do this training and set up my own private practice. I'm just so proud, so proud. And yeah, I think my clients feel where I've been. I think they do. So the Cassel is changing many people's lives.
NE: And if it wasn't for you, you know, I've thanked you over and over again, but I nearly didn't go, and if it wasn't for…
CE: Yeah.
NE: If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have gone. We are good. Yeah, thanks.
CE: Thank you.
