‘THERE IS HOPE!’
How James beat depression
The ring is sparkling on his fiancée’s finger. Any day now the wedding date will be set. And James Middleton can’t stop pinching himself.
At the start of last year, the brother of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, was in such a dark place emotionally that suicide was never far from his thoughts. In his pit of despair, he couldn’t face his family, let alone forge new relationships.
The fact that he’s found a way through the labyrinth of depression and is now headover-heels in love is a miracle – and not one that he will ever take for granted.
“I am on the other side,” says James (32). “It’s like a rebirth… and now there’s a feeling that I can take on anything.”
As the Weekly recently reported, James popped the question to his French girlfriend Alizee Thevenet, slipping onto her finger a sapphire ring not dissimilar to the one Kate received from Prince William
(37) when they became engaged in 2010.
As the nature-loving pair look forward to the new chapter in their lives, James revealed last week he believes he will never truly be rid of the depression that so crippled him, and has declared he will continue to do all he can to help erase the stigma that causes even more anguish to those in the throes of the debilitating mental illness.
The businessman admits that if he hadn’t found a way to seek help and open up to his family and friends, he most likely would never have met and fallen in love with Alizee.
Recalling the depression, which first began to rear its head in 2016, James says, “There are certain snapshots that I have, little memories of just how... I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I was just like, ‘What am I meant to do?’
“I was better off in my own company, so I didn’t have the additional worry of someone thinking, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I removed myself from everything.”
With James not returning calls or texts, the concerned Middletons – mother Carole
(64), father Michael (70), and sisters Kate (37) and Pippa (36) – enlisted the help of James’ friends in a desperate effort to get through to him.
“I remember my friends turned up one morning and rang the doorbell,” he tells.
“I saw it was them and I just didn’t answer the door. And they rang it again. They rang my phone. I was like, ‘I’m not answering.’ I thought, ‘What am I going to do? What are they going to say?’ I understood that they cared about me, but I couldn’t see what they were going to do for me.”
The root cause of his problem, says James, was his life-long struggle with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder (ADD). His ADD, in particular, meant he often came up with “fantastic, original ideas” but had difficulties completing tasks and dealing with the minutiae of running a business.
“It’s hard work setting up in business,” he shared earlier this year. “Even without ADD and dyslexia it’s like pushing water uphill. I found it hard to cope. Self-doubt eroded my confidence and nothing made me happy, passionate or excited any more.“
By the end of 2017, the depression had taken over his life. He was contemplating suicide – although he never felt in danger of going through with it – and could barely function.
Hitting rock bottom, he reached out to his GP for help and spent almost a year in therapy, describing this time as like, “sitting in a chair with a ball of wool made up of eight different colours and then a therapist is sitting opposite you with a needle untangling it”.
At different times, each member of his immediate family joined him for some sessions, “and that was actually a very, very big thing”, he confirms.
“It helped them understand me and how my mind was working.”
At the beginning of 2018, James took time off work and says, “Bit-by-bit shafts of sunlight started to penetrate the gloom.” So much so that when he first encountered Alizee, he had enough of his old chutzpah to ask her out.
One of the first places they visited as a couple was Coniston Water in England’s Lake District and it was in this picturesque setting that James chose to propose 15 months later.
Now he feels compelled to continue talking openly about his depression because it’s precisely what Kate and William are advocating in their royal charity work for mental health.
“It was a dark and miserable place to be,” he says. “But, the fact is, there is hope at the end. It required effort and energy but… the grass can be greener than it was before.”