Breakdown and running - Episode 8

Series One - Why Run? podcast - 14th May 2022

Trigger warning - please note that there are references to suicide in this interview.

Karen is a secondary school English and performing arts teacher. She is one of the brightest, funniest people you could hope to meet and her next plan in life is to have a go at stand-up comedy. In-between Karen’s extended periods of highs in her life, she has also experienced some very low lows. For Karen has struggled with depression and anxiety throughout her adult life and has had several breakdowns.

 Karen started running as a teenager and has run consistently for the last 40 years. For her, it is a way of helping process the anxiety, the anger and frustration that are part of her mental struggles. It quite literally helps her to burn away the excess adrenalin that contributes to her anxiety.

 Karen’s life is one of extreme emotions and she says she wouldn’t want it any different – for if she lost the low moments of despair, she would also lose the high moments of joy too.

“ I was a worrier as a child,” says Karen. “Being an only child, I had a lot of older, doting relatives. I grew up in very protective environment. As a five year old, my friend remembers me always crying.”

Karen knew she was a worrier. And events reached a head, when went to uni and met Sohrab (her husband).

“We were going out and he went home to Iran in 1979 which was, of course, the time of the revolution. Pre-mobile phones, I realise now that I had what was a sort of breakdown. I was worried sick. Obsessed that he was killed. It was typical of depression and a breakdown, getting everything out of proportion…making ridiculous assumptions. Things settled down though when I went to university.

“My second breakdown was when I had my son. It was such a happy pregnancy, he was such a wanted child. And when he was born, it was classic post -natal depression. It was like the whole world fell in.  That ticked away until he was about 18 months and then I just crashed and I was sectioned. So spent about four weeks in psychiatric units.”

Karen was sectioned and spent time in hospital and has been on anti-depressants ever since. “Quite a high dosage actually. So I feel that they’re probably always shielding what’s actually going on. I don’t really know, but I don’t really care as I know I can’t function when I’m ill.”

Karen started running in her teens. She was a county athlete. She started running again in her early 20s and has kept running ever since. Going for a run “resets everything” for Karen.

“Even if when I set off, I feel I’ve got worries or am in a low mood, which still happens, even on all these anti-depressants…once I’ve set off running, I very rarely think of that again.”

A psychiatrist once described it to Karen as “fight or flight”. “He said that what was happening to me when I’d wake up so anxious was that I was waking up with a gripping fear – without knowing what I was frightened of.”

By going for a run, Karen quite literally runs away from her fear and it helps burn off the adrenaline that is causing her anxiety.

Karen can be quite an angry runner and she’s been known to swear at people. “ I think I enjoy that,” she says.

 When asked to describe her mental difficulties, she says that when she’s very, very, very ill, she can’t run, because she gets too anxious and quite agoraphobic. “But that’s not happened very much.”

 Karen says she finds it incredibly difficult to describe her depression, anxiety and breakdowns. She said that she’s read Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and she gets what she’s trying to say, but she still doesn’t think she’s quite got it. “Although I also say to people that everybody’s breakdown is different and everybody’s depression is different.

 “I obsess about death and I find myself thinking about death several times a day – the fear of my own death or my children. I count off how many years I’ve got left and it’s a constant obsession and definitely something that pulls me down. It is a constant worry in the back of my mind.

“You can’t switch off. It’s like a physical feeling.”

As she’s got older, Karen says that she’s got better at getting herself out of bad episodes. “I’ve made my bedroom in to a second sitting room and it’s got a television and if things are getting to me, I just take myself away and sit by myself.”

Karen also indulges herself more. “I grew up in an environment where it was almost a bad thing to enjoy yourself or do something for yourself. My mum was like ‘you’re always going out’ like it was something bad. My mother didn’t understand mental illness at all – poor woman – with me and my dad – and she was obsessed with doing housework. So the idea that you’d sit and read or book or something – was an indulgence.

 “Well now I’m trying to turn that around and think actually, why can’t I just indulge myself whenever I want?”

Karen says that she wouldn’t want to be anyone different as her tendencies to depression and anxiety are partly what define her. She says it’s part of what makes a very competitive, loud person. When she retires, Karen wants to do a stand-up act. “It’s something that’s really important to me. I like being on stage. I’m a performing arts teacher. I like acting. I’m really loud. And I don’t think I’d have all of that, if I didn’t have this other side to me. It would be a bit bland.”

Karen says that running has been a stabilising influence in her life and would encourage others to give it a go. “Interestingly my psychiatrist runs. And he would almost prescribe it. It’s just so important to keep moving…even if you’re not running…to keep walking…getting out. And I did feel in lockdown on those days when I was just sitting on screen for hours on end and I’d feel like a lethargic slug by the end of the day. Because you’d be stuck in this position .

“I think people are designed to move. Our lifestyle isn’t really normal for any animal – unless you’re a sloth – it’s not what we’re designed for. So I suspect running is a way of replacing that movement that we used to have in our lives.”