Everybody has a breaking point when the pressure of worry or grief overwhelms you.

This has happened to me twice, the last time in my late 40’s when my alcoholic wife divorced me to get her share of our matrimonial assets. Over a period of a few months I lost my wife, our home and finally my job in an advertising agency. With little prospect of getting another executive position, I opened my own office as a public relations consultant. But the odds were all against me.

The feeling of anxiety and helplessness crushed me to the stage that my brain refused to function. Anxiety pressed in on me so heavily that I could hardly breathe. I could not make the simplest decisions. I lived from one moment to the next. I tossed and turned through sleepless nights. Life had lost its savour; I had no appetite for food and lost 20 kilos in a couple of months. I completely lost my sense of confidence. I was no longer in control of my life and myself. I felt as though my brain had turned a somersault and I was walking backwards.

I reached a crisis point one evening when I demanded of myself what I really wanted out of life. I remember scrawling on a piece of paper:

‘Run a successful business.
Become a more loving person.
Make some provision for later years.’

The first thing was to get some breathing space. I telephoned a friend and asked him if I could spend a few days on his sheep station in the Wairarapa. That was fine, he said. He and his wife were going away and I could have the house to myself. I could help his farm manager rounding up the lambs for docking and drenching. The unaccustomed physical work was so demanding that I found myself eating and sleeping again.

The next thing to do was to seek help. A dear old friend of mine gave the name of psychiatrist who had helped her at one stage. He told me that I wasn’t going nuts, but had simply succumbed to overwhelming pressure. He put me on a drug to adjust my brain patterns, and said it would take a week or two to have any effect.

After about 10 days when I plumbed even deeper depths, I felt something turning over in my brain, and my confidence began to return. I started eating liked a horse and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I realised that I had to find some way to make decisions. Somehow I had to get outside myself – so I invented a counsellor I called George.

George and I developed some rules.

‘George, what do I do about such-and-such?’

‘Well Bill, how important is this decision? Do you really have to do anything about it?’

‘Do you have all the information you need to make this decision now? Does it depend on events which haven’t happened yet?’

‘Then when will you be in a position to decide?’

‘All right, that’s when you have to decide.’

For the first time in my life there was no weekly pay packet. I hustled after business, did my best for clients, sent out my bills and put it all in God’s hands. I looked for opportunities to help others.

It was the start of the best decade of my working life. My energy and iniative returned to me. I built up a clientele of leading companies and organizations. I walked into Wellington?s concrete jungle each morning, and said to my self with satisfaction: ‘I can survive here on my own!’

After five years I married the woman who has been my perfect partner for the last 25 years.

My rules to sort yourself out:

• Sit down and face up to the situation.
• Give yourself a break.
• Get help.
• Put yourself in God’s hands.
• Be positive! Whenever you feel negative feelings taking over, do something positive immediately!
• Look for opportunities to help other people.