I want to get real with you. The fact is mental health is nothing to be ashamed of, and neither are our stories. So, here’s mine…
This is Highroyds Mental Hospital, where I was sectioned under the mental health act at the age of 14 years old.
Within its walls, I was able to get an in-depth insight into the inner workings of the mainstream model of mental health treatment. Though an extremely frightening experience for the 9 months I lived there as a young girl, I now class this as one of the most golden learning experiences of my life, contributing dramatically towards the work I now do 27 years later.
Following leaving Highroyds, I was placed into foster care and then lived alone from the age of 16. I was a ‘revolving door service user’ in the NHS mental health system for the following 14 years, having 3 long periods of homelessness through this time. I repeatedly presented in crisis at my GP surgery, going back onto the waiting list for the same therapy ‘treatment’ again and again, which I often found retraumatising. Nothing changed with my mental health presentation, and I felt stuck in a cycle of the same old patterns. Up until the age of 30 when a nervous breakdown brought me to my knees.
Proclaiming subconsciously ‘there must be another way?’ led me into a whirlwind of personal development books, teachings on holistic modalities, and spiritual texts. I ploughed through videos and courses teaching me how to regulate my nervous system, identify and integrate the wounded parts of myself frozen in the past, and expose the beliefs I’d created about myself as a response to the trauma I’d experienced growing up. I trained using countless metaphysical texts, and embodied the teachings to set and transform my goals for change in a trauma-informed manner. I ate through lessons affirming to have faith in the process exactly as it was and I gained above all else an unshakeable trust. It all felt very new, as I wondered ‘Why on earth have I not been taught any of this within the 16+ years I was a ‘service user’?
Fast forward 11 years, now at the age of 41, and the ‘HEROES Programme’ mental health service I designed and piloted within the NHS is now expanding rapidly through the city I was born in. I have developed a unique methodology for teaching people how to work with their suffering, knowing the wisdom that the human experience of suffering can bring. Our HEROES Programme is radically unlike any other mental health service as we do not look to ‘treat’ or ‘get rid of’ or ‘fix’ anyone’s experience of suffering. We look to support people to learn how to be with their emotional experiences, work with the parts of themselves in pain, and build capacity in their bodies and minds to hold difficult emotions. As we firmly believe that this is also how we build capacity to hold joy, consistent happiness and peace.
We train people in how to be able to witness the opportunity for healing guised in each of their emotional triggers using the methods, processes, tools and resources I’ve created to support other people suffering, like I used to.
With HEROES, we have so far supported the recovery journeys of thousands of patients across Leeds, in West Yorkshire and hope to expand further throughout the country. Our outcomes have been phenomenal and we have hundreds of stories similar to mine, of patients with complex emotional needs who have been within the mental health system for decades and sadly not been able to access the support which felt right for them. But within HEROES, ‘lightbulb moments’ are a common occurrence!
We look to support people to learn how to be with their emotional experiences, work with the parts of themselves in pain, and build capacity in their bodies and minds to hold difficult emotions.
I have so far trained over 800 NHS and private healthcare staff in trauma-informed care, using our unique HEROES approach, with aim to actively support systemic transformation of the way that mental health services are designed and delivered, and the way patients are worked with. I have also worked with countless corporate clients, teaching them how to bring wellbeing and authentic conversations to the forefront of the workplace, in all settings.
I placed within HEROES all the modalities which changed my life and supported my own healing following prolonged trauma in childhood.
HEROES stands for Healing, Education and Recovery Of Emotional Strength. And, it also stands for the kind of person who enters the programme, ready for dramatic change in their lives.
In the past, I never believed I could be here. I came from a shattered sense of self-identity, crippling beliefs about who I was, what I was worthy of and an emotional pain cycle on repeat which dictated the vast majority of my life and relationships. Although I will never teach that recovery is an end point to get to, and will always be a journey, I now have a strength of presence within my relationship to myself which I know has my back through everything, and brings an overall consistent happiness, joy and peace to my life.
Which means I would like to say, no matter where you are at right now, no matter how deep your pain, no matter your life situation, or challenges you face, I wholeheartedly mean it when I say IF I CAN DO IT, SO CAN YOU.
HEROES stands for Healing, Education and Recovery Of Emotional Strength. And, it also stands for the kind of person who enters the programme, ready for dramatic change in their lives.