Let’s stop stigma – support better mental health

Guest Blog – Trigger Happy by James

Many people with Depression struggle to identify the trigger for their illness. I have many underlying issues from various experiences in my life. However these have lay in dormant until my trigger this year, when they all came flooding back. However I will talk about these experiences in later posts, this post is purely to talk about my trigger that caused this most distressing experience of my whole life.

It was back in March 2012, everything was going well. I was doing well at work, my partner and I had just come back from a week in London where we watched The Lion King musical for her birthday. Life was good, I was happy…
Then one day I went into work and my entire life was flipped upside down. I was called into a meeting with two managers. One of the managers explained that it was alleged I had been falsifying my work statistics for financial gain. I absolutely was floored by this revelation because for one, I don’t like money and I earned enough to be comfortable in life and I felt the trust placed in me had been taken away.
I was suspended for around a month. In this month my mind went absolutely everywhere. I felt useless and felt the future I wanted with my partner was slipping away faster than I could keep up with. Even though I was on full pay, I just felt worthless. These allegations were wholly untrue but I felt so worthless that I really couldn’t feel strong enough for battle. 
I pushed everyone away, my partner who tried to help so much. My family who kept asking could they come over to see me and help, I kept refusing and spent most of my days in bed. I didn’t eat or drink and lost quite a bit of weight as a result.
Throughout my suspension, my employer kept sending evidence to me at my home address. However this evidence was inconclusive and I began to find the strength to fight it. I had a lot of issues around the work and in my home life so my defence so to speak was that I may or may not have done the work, I can’t  say for certain, but here is why I believe it not to be showing as done. And I opened up about all the issues I have been facing since being a young boy. I also made the point that some of the evidence was dated on days that I didn’t work.
Eventually after a month, I was allowed back under a ‘final warning’ which will remain on my staff file until April next year. This experience was extremely traumatic and one I never wish to go through again. I won against my employer even though I have this warning hanging over me. I didn’t challenge it, simply because I just wanted to get back and get on with earning my wage. However from going back, I found my past experiences came to the front of my mind and I couldn’t cope. And that’s when I decided to get help. So this experience, whilst it was traumatic, proved to be bittersweet. It gave me the push I needed to pluck up the courage to get the help I needed to resolve past issues. Which I am well on the way to doing.