The Crash- Reality Check
A warning before reading this post, the following has some descriptions of a mental health event and psychosis that I experienced in one of my episodes/ Read with caution.
The irony of the crash I experienced is that on the surface I appeared to have my life in order. I was at the top of my game in my corporate career, I had many meaningful friendships and was in a great romantic relationship.
What could be wrong right?
In what was supposed to be one of my final years as a Director before my name was put forward for admission into the partnership at my accounting firm, I was selected to attend a prestigious global partnership development program for senior managers.To put it into perspective on a global oasis there were 150 people chosen to attend with 9 representatives from Canada. The company at the time had over 200,000 employees.
I was super excited to attend and knew that this was an indication that it was only a matter of time before I would gain admission into the partnership. So I thought.
One of the first questions that was asked of us at the conference was “What is your biggest fear coming into this program?” I wasn’t sure why but the only logical answer for me at the time was that I was not living life according to my core values. Truthfully at the time I could not even really articulate what those values were but my gut was telling me I was not being true to myself. Now if this did not give me pause to reflect on why I felt this way, we then placed our responses into a hat and everyone picked one out of the hat at random and read out the response. What was crazy about this exercise was that I was seated in the last seat, and it actually got all the way around and I read out my own response. The universe and god work in mysterious ways is all I could think of when this happened.
Over the course of the development program which spanned 7 months, there were many components of the program that were psychological in nature and were reflections of self and what I truly valued. What I did not fully appreciate at the time was that I was in fact undergoing a psychological process as I was using the program to work through why I felt I was not living by my core values and how I could rectify that.
In hindsight I really should have been seeing an actual psychologist in conjunction with going through this program as it really sent me down a path that I was not fully prepared for. There were many emotions being stirred up in me that I could not fully explain and I was suppressing the overwhelming feeling as best as I could.
The program wrapped up in France in November of 2016. During this final phase of the program there were a lot of reflections on what we had learned about ourselves and our leadership style during the program. For me leadership was one thing, but most of my growth was on a personal level and the leadership aspect was secondary. Many people showed signs of sadness to be leaving an environment and a group where many great relationships had been forged and going back into environment’s back home where toxic elements existed including their workplaces. I was excited about what the future had in store but knew I had to have many difficult conversations with people in my life where my actions were not fitting their love for me. I had to own up to my mistakes.
Then it happened, the psychological break and following crash.
During one of the last exercises of the program, we sat in a room for 8 hours and everyone was responsible for preparing a reflection on their experience in the program. I was so proud to hear my peers' stories and reflections. However, I found myself getting quite overwhelmed with emotion during this process and was progressively getting more fidgety and the room started to feel suffocating to me. I wasn’t last, but my presentation was near the end of the day. I had prepared a beautiful reflection video which was narrated by me. It showed all the growth that I had made during the program and I could not wait to present it to my peers. However, it did not go this way. Rather than present this amazing video, I went up and delivered an adlib speech. This did not go well, as it was filled with topics that were mashed together and at many times made little sense.
I have never had any direct conversations with my peers on this speech specifically but I can only imagine how they must have felt. I cpi;d see the concern in many of their faces over what was happening to me. The truth is I did not think anything was wrong with me at the time.
Over the remainder of our time in France, I was battling my emotions and started to feel extremely paranoid that my peers were having conversations behind my back and I was enraged at the thought of this. The program ended and I had buffered an extra night for myself to unwind after the conference before flying back to Toronto.
Then it happened, a full break from reality.
I can only describe the next few days as me being in a first person video game. It was like I was in the Legend of Zelda and I was trying to solve a mystery.
A few of my peers who had also stayed back, were extremely worried and stayed behind to ensure I was okay. From what I was told, the global team at my company was contacted and an emergency situation was declared. So much so that a few of my peers and the hotel staff convinced me that I should go to the hospital to get checked out. I think they thought I was on drugs, and I cannot really blame them for that. But the truth is what was happening was much bigger than alcohol and drugs.
I had created a story in my head that of the remaining three peers who stayed behind with me that 2 were there to help me and one was there to try to harm me. In hindsight this was far from the truth as all of them were concerned and wanting to help me, but the feelings I had and paranoia were preventing me from thinking rationally. I now know that feeling I was experiencing to be a severe case of pyschosis.
It all culminated in a final decision made by my company and my mom that I should be flown back to Toronto and straight into the emergency room for evaluation. As you can imagine when someone is experiencing psychosis, is of muslim descent and is trying to board an international plane that this could be quite the international event.
The way in which they were able to get me back to Toronto was to use what I am going to describe as an emergency nurse but this guy was like a navy seal. The way he was able to navigate getting me from the hotel, into the airport, boarded in the flight and sedated enough that I would not have any outbursts was incredible. I truly believe this person was sent from God to get me back to my mother in Toronto. You can imagine how worried she would have been.
When we arrived in Toronto, I was transported straight to the emergency room at my local hospital. My mother was awaiting my arrival and I was still in a state of psychosis. The story line that I was still working with was that there were bad people at my company that were out to sabotage my career and that I had to protect the people I loved. The feelings were so strong in me that to this day I find myself having to remind myself that it was the psychosis. I’ll never forget the look my mother had. I truly thought that she had been driven crazy as she had such a confused and scared look on her face. Little did I know this was because she was worried about me and how I was behaving.
The doctor then entered the room. I’ll be honest, as amped up as I was in a state of psychosis and paranoia, I can undoubtedly say this doctor did not appear to seem compassionate. His opening line was “You appear to have bipolar disorder and don’t think that you know more than me on this topic” It took me aback, “What do you mean I am bipolar?”. I truly had no experience with mental health issues prior to this and I knew little of what this meant.
Given the experience I had at the first hospital, my mother and I made the decision to go to a second hospital which was a bit further away. I was still in a state of psychosis and the decision was mutually made by myself and the emergency room doctor that I should be admitted into the inpatient care unit to further assess my symptoms and to get my condition under control. Over the next two weeks a series of blood work and medications were applied that was able to stabilise my psychosis and my mood.
I feel very fortunate that I was able to see a psychiatrist so fast. In Canada it can take up to 18 months before someone experiencing mental health issues is able to see a psychiatrist. Given I was in a state of emergency it really did accelerate my timeline.
Crystal Ball Reflection Learning
The obvious point here is that perhaps I should not have made some of the life decisions that led to me deviating so far away from my core values. Now this is true, however, I believe that I had to make many of the mistakes to be able to strive to be a better version of myself. My only regret is the hurt I caused some of my loved ones.
In terms of the leadership program/ Now I don't blame the company for what happened to me. However, I would caution employers to reflect on the curriculum and agenda of a developmental program and assess if there are psychological elements that need to have warnings attached to them. It would have been helpful to know that some emotions could be stirred up with the deep work we were doing so that I could assess if I should have supplemented it with a pyschologist. We were provided a career coach as a supplement to the program, but for me the work I was doing was very personal in nature and not necessarily tied to my leadership profile at the company.
In life, I now know that talking through our issues is important. Bottling things up does not help yourself and whether you speak to a trained professional or close family and friends, please do speak up. Your demons do not have to be battled alone and I would encourage you to find someone you can trust and speak to.
Finally, it can be quite difficult for family, friends and coworkers to identify when an emergency situation is forming. I had no previous diagnosis of a mental illness and the perfect storm ensued leading to it being uncovered in me. I believe that the peers who stayed back with me did everything they could and then some to deal with a situation that was far above their pay grade. These are truly lifelong friends for me. I believe the more we continue to speak about mental health, the more people are willing to get basic mental health first aid training. I would recommend it for everyone as a tool to be able to better understand mental health and how to handle different situations.
In subsequent posts I will go into more detail on living with bipolar disorder and other events that helped with my recovery journey. I know many will experience the condition and the symptoms in vastly different ways. This post was merely a reflection of my experience with it and how it was first identified in me.
