Around the year 2000 I started suffering Depression, Anxiety and what I remember most about it was I had no get up and go about me. (I just couldn’t be bothered). As far as the anxiety was concerned I would get up tight about things to a point where I realised I was holding my breath. ( Not a clever idea is it?)

There are two things that stick in my mind even all these years later about my depression and anxiety,

Around this time our daughter was 8/9yrs old and we decided to hire a static caravan in Northumberland here in the UK along with my parents. As my wife wasn’t sure of the way there my father said he knew how to get where we were going.

It was on the road home an anxiety issue arose because despite being told to follow my father, my wife overtook my father and I and up ahead their was a fork in the road. She should have taken the fork to the right when she took the fork to left. This meant my father and I waiting at that junction anxiously till they reappeared.

Having Depression and anxiety quite often meant I couldn’t go further than my front door. I am a uniformed Salvationist of the Salvation Army and I can even remember every Sunday for weeks on end putting my uniform on (except jacket) until it came time to go and I would come to put jacket on and I couldn’t. Nerves and anxiety got the better of me and I used to ask my wife to call the Church to say I wouldn’t be there.

The main factor that played a part in my recovery was every week my father came to see me and we didn’t just talk about my depression we had general conversations as well. I also used to get regular visits from my then pastor who used to suffer from Clinical Depression, again the discussion I had with him again were general.

There’s a saying on one of the UK’s tv channel’s says “It’s good to talk”.