Just as I was ready to sing, adrenaline and panic overwhelmed me. I dropped to the floor and couldn’t breathe...
childhood. I look at that video now and feel so sorry for the girl I see on screen. The reason I don’t say ‘me’ is because I don’t see that girl and me as the same person. It wasn’t me. Yes, it was my body, but that was about it; she was a shell of a person. What I see in her is true sadness; a slight deadness behind the eyes. It’s hard to look alive when you truly don’t care whether you are or not.
BACKthen, my life was spiralling out of control. The huge irony, of course, is that from the outside it looked like I was living the dream. I was a 23-year-old girl from essex and I’d carved out a super- successful pop career — first, at the age of just 12, with s Club Juniors and then with The saturdays. Both bands were big but The saturdays were huge, and had hit after hit.
I had a lovely, supportive boyfriend in england footballer Wayne Bridge — now my husband — and we lived in a beautiful house. I was rich and famous, at least compared to most. It was the life so many were desperate to lead; the life I was desperate to lead.
But by the point at which my psychiatrist, Dr Mike McPhillips, thought hospital the best course of action, I was so profoundly unhappy and so afraid of who I’d become — and what I was capable of doing to myself — that I just wanted someone, anyone, to make it all go away.
IT’s hard to explain what depression feels like, especially to those who have never been through it. My psychologist once told me that trying to understand depression by remembering your own sadness is like trying to understand the sensation of drowning by taking a shower.
For as long as I can remember I had suffered from anxiety, nervousness, the big black cloud, stress, low moods, sadness. As a little girl growing up in upminster — my dad kevin was a taxi driver and my mum Julie was an events organiser — I lived with it in silence and tried to conquer it alone.
In my late teens and early 20s I’d had medical help of various kinds (in the six months before I was hospitalised, I’d seen two therapists and tried three different antidepressants — Prozac, venlafaxine and sertraline — but nothing had worked for long).
eventually, every time, I would be back where I started, keeping up a smile with the band but coming home every night and sobbing myself to sleep.
Around the time we shot that video, I’d hit rock bottom. My list of symptoms made sober reading. I had uncontrollable panic attacks and paralysing negative thoughts about anything and everything. I had trouble sleeping, lacked energy and had lost my appetite and my libido. I couldn’t do anything without help and was unable to function in everyday life. Fundamentally, I couldn’t see the point of living any more.
WHeN our plane touched down from reykjavik, Wayne was waiting for me at the airport. We had already agreed I would go into hospital straight away but few people knew — and certainly the paparazzi who took pictures of us walking through Heathrow together had no idea of the pain and fear we were both feeling.
I have always been good at smiling for the camera. That’s the thing about depression — it’s good at hiding from the world. And yet it was also a relief to have a plan at last. obviously, I was nervous — I had no idea what to expect — but I was finally doing something about these awful feelings that had plagued me for so long. The only way from here had to be up.
I had decided not to tell my family about my stay in hospital, at least not at first. I just couldn’t. The shame of having to admit to my parents and sister Victoria that my beautiful life wasn’t enough for me, that I’d failed to function as a normal human being. I knew they would blame themselves and question their decision to let me go into the music industry when I was a child.
so it was Wayne who took me to the Nightingale Hospital in Central London. He was my constant, the person who knew me inside out and had seen me at my worst and most vulnerable. He made me feel safe and loved. I couldn’t have done it with anyone else.
As soon as I got there, doctors put me on new medication — venlafaxine, clonazepam and diphenhydramine sleeping tablets in such high doses my first few days in hospital are a blur.
I spent most of them asleep, but that was fine. I hadn’t had a good night’s rest for so long, it was a relief to silence my mind so it could just switch off. It was all I wanted, not to think, not to be inside my own brain, locked in my own painful internal battle.
Another effect of such high doses of medication, however, was very strong involuntary muscle movements in my arms and legs — as if I didn’t feel crazy enough already!
once I’d got my sleep under control and was no longer crying all the time, I started to integrate with the rest of the patients. It was a private hospital and we were a mixture of voluntary and involuntary admittals, suffering from a range of illnesses — from bipolar, depression and anxiety to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTsD), addiction and eating disorders.
It might sound intimidating but, actually, it was amazing. There were so many people who had experienced the same feelings as me, if not worse, that I felt understood and not so alone. I no longer had to hide, cover up and lie about how I was.
My days revolved entirely around getting better and understanding myself more. I did art therapy, which I was rubbish at but enjoyed. I did a little bit of group cognitive behavioural therapy, too, but I would get tired really quickly and I was nervous about sharing any of my issues with other people. Not because I was famous, but because I felt a profound feeling of shame.
I knew there would be people in there with worse problems than me, and I feared they would look at me and see the child-star cliché, the girl who couldn’t cope with success, which was the last thing I felt or wanted.
We had mindfulness sessions, too, but I never got into that. I couldn’t clear my mind; it would race even more. The anxiety would build until it was too much to bear.
ANDyet being in the hospital did give me some of that time for myself I’d missed as a teen. I began to rediscover things I’d been passionate about before — I started practising the guitar again and I spent afternoons with a big box of art and crafts, which I’d always loved growing up.
Wayne would visit whenever he could between training and playing football for Manchester City.
Learning about my illness and realising he couldn’t make me happy was a lot for him to take on. He lost a lot of weight around then and ended up the lightest he has ever been.
Now we think it was due to the
stress, but at the time I didn’t notice how badly everything was affecting him.
As we’ve spoken about my breakdown over the years since, the stress it caused him has come out in both anger and sadness.
At first, the doctors recommended three months in hospital but it became obvious that length of time just wasn’t going to be possible. Demands from the outside world were mounting — the band was booked on an arena tour which started in weeks. Tickets were already sold out and I couldn’t let the girls down.
After four weeks, I was discharged, and just two days later I went to do a gig in a nightclub. Did I know deep down it was too early? Just as I was miked up and ready to go, a rush of fear, adrenaline and panic suddenly overwhelmed me. I couldn’t do it. Going back to being ‘Frankie from The Saturdays’, in front of hundreds of people, just didn’t feel possible.
I burst into uncontrollable tears and dropped to the floor. My whole body went weak and I couldn’t breathe. I was so frustrated that this was happening to me. After all the therapy, the medication, the month in hospital, I was still unable to return to my normal life. The girls were scared, too. They had never seen me in this state before and didn’t know what to do. Our tour manager got me into a car and back home.
By The time the tour came around that winter of 2011, I was feeling much more positive about performing. even I don’t understand how I can love and hate something so passionately at the same time. Being on stage brings me so much joy but it also brings me so much anxiety.
At that point, my panic attacks had evened out but sleeping was still a massive problem. I still couldn’t quiet my mind enough to fall asleep and then stay asleep, often waking with nightmares about people being in my room.
I was very thin, too. Deep down, I knew I was too thin — but I also thought I looked great. On tour, one of my costumes had cut-outs either side of my stomach, from my ribs down to my waist. When my manager insisted I add some material to this dress — because he thought revealing my juttingout ribs would set a bad example to other girls — I just felt angry that he was asking me to hide my tiny size.
he was right, of course. I wasn’t setting the right example. I don’t want other girls to feel they have to be unhealthy in order to be happy — I clearly wasn’t — but at the time I just couldn’t see it.
I was having weekly catch-ups over Skype with my psychiatrist Mike — and getting frustrated. I had been into hospital and I had been taking medication for my depression ever since but I still wasn’t ‘fixed’.
At one appointment I admitted how disappointing it felt, and asked him if most people on medication ever feel ‘normal’, or if those with depression just have to accept there is a level of happiness they will never reach.
his answer shocked me. Once on the right medication, most people do find their mood returns to normal, he said, and in that sense could be said to be ‘fixed’. And yet that hadn’t happened to me.
he said that out of 600 patients, he’d only had two who’d had to be hospitalised. I was one of them.
The fact that Mike can’t just ‘fix’ me, no matter how hard he continues to try, makes us both pretty sad. I have been one of his most complicated patients and he often has to remind me just how far I have come.
Mike has reached the conclusion that I have treatment-resistant depression, which means I seem to respond well at first to medication but that slowly it becomes less and less effective, even though I always end up taking the maximum dosage possible.
In all, I’ve tried more than ten different forms of antidepressant, anti-anxiety meds and tranquillisers. I continue to spend hours of my life in therapy because I believe the two should always go hand in hand.
I have to adopt a belt and braces method as I know it will keep me afloat, and that means continuing to take hefty doses of whatever Mike prescribes for me.
The side-effects of these medicines are often a big problem, too. Typically, they result in headaches, nausea, tiredness, low — or no — libido, a horrendously dry mouth, weight gain, constipation and, most embarrassing of all, involuntary muscle spasms.
Day-to-day life with anxiety and depression is hard enough already, so these horrible extras don’t make things any easier. The dry mouth makes singing and TV work more difficult, the weight gain contributes to my depression and anxiety, and my low libido has been a recurring issue in my relationship. I totally understand why — joined with my self-loathing and low confidence, it’s not the sexiest combination.
It must be very difficult for Wayne to accept that my lack of interest in sex is because of my medication and has nothing to do with my feelings for him, or how much I am attracted to him.
And yet the medication also makes my life liveable and manageable. I still have my ups and downs, my good and bad days, but it stops me from slipping back into that deep dark hole.
Basically, it stops me having another mental breakdown and ending up back in hospital. This is what it is like living with a mental illness. It can hit anyone at any time, regardless of who they are, what they have, or whether they are strong or weak characters.
It took me reaching what could have been my breaking point to begin to get to grips with my illness. That has been a hugely empowering journey, and my biggest breakthrough has been realising I will get through it.
No matter how low I feel, I know I won’t ever be as low as I was when I went into hospital because I managed to speak out and ask for help. It is not a path I would have chosen, nor would I wish it on anyone else, but I keep on going and I try to live it in the best way I can.
Often, there is no specific reason for unhappiness or depression: it’s just who you are. For me, however, there are clues — perhaps most obviously in the kind of girl I was growing up . . .
AdApted by Alison Roberts from Open: Why Asking For Help Can Save Your Life by Frankie Bridge, published by Cassell on February 6 at £18.99. © Frankie Bridge 2020. to order a copy for £15.20 (offer valid to Feb 21; p&p free), visit www.mailshop.co.uk or call 01603 648155.