"Coming through hell"

At the age of 11 my world fell apart, in the mid 1970's my mother gave birth to a baby brother who had then became my pride and joy as I had already had three siblings all sisters, just 6 weeks after his arrival he was taken away from us (died). He died in my arms after crying in the night.

As a child myself I didnt know how to deal with it so bottled fear and hatred up constantly getting into trouble, fighting stealing ect.

I returned to school after we laid my brother to rest only to be taunted by class mates, stating that I had personally killed my brother, which was not the truth from that point on I became withdrawn and so distressed. it was a battle that I was never going to win.

I bottled everything up and tried to block it out eventually becoming a football hooligan and my behaviour had become out of hand, I became a bouncer in my late teens and that went along way to setting me straight until another tragedy happened whilst working one night myself and my colleague were called to an incident at the venue we were on duty at, it was a teenage age girl had collapsed and needed urgent help whilst we were tending her and awaiting paramedic assistance she was convulsing and died in our arms, this brought everything about my brother flooding back.

I could not handle going back to work cause of the fear of people saying it was my fault, I became so sad and emotional and finally ended up so depressed over these incidents among other things that I became so suicidal that an a number of occasions I attempted to end my life, one occasion I was successful but the paramedic brought me back to life (thankyou so much).

Ive been in and out of trouble since then receiving probation fortunately for me my p. o is fantastic, she asked me what id like from my probationary and I said major counselling which she got me again (thankyou).

She put me in touch with a phycologist, we met, we spoke she just let me babble on about my history and she offered me one to one counselling which I accepted through St Andrews Healthcare, I didnt think I would complete the 12 weeks but I, I attended every session, was given tasks weekly to complete, but the most important thing was to be given the tools to make me realise when something was wrong or about to upset me, I have completed 2 further courses since then, thanks to this great team at st Andrews im im 100% better place theses days, thankyou ladies you know who you are and to end this story on a great big smiling note after being asked I now peer mentor people who are anxious, depressed, sad ect.

Thankyou to every member of the team for making see these states of mind are temporary, work hard with the help we are offered and things can be turned around.

THANK YOU ST ANDREWS