Rescued by Power Rangers - A Mental Health Story
I first shared my Mental Health Story on World Mental Health day 2022 on LinkedIn - (1) Rescued by Power Rangers - A Mental Health Story | LinkedIn
My story was based between 2018 and 2020. I’ve not spoken about the mental health side of my #PowerPlatform journey before and how I was “Rescued by Power Rangers” and thought it was an appropriate time to do that. Apologies it’s so long! I hope it helps others to know they aren’t alone if they are struggling.
We all have good and bad days, weeks, months, or longer… It could be one thing that triggers our challenges, or it could be multiple things coming along that overloads us.
If it’s manageable we get through them fairly quickly and easily. If it’s not manageable we might not recognise the issue, or might ignore the issue. We use our own approaches, talking to friends, family, professionals. I wasn’t great at asking for any of those and muddled through on my own.
My story probably starts back around 2017 but didn’t hit me fully until 2018. Between then and 2020 I really struggled. I distanced myself from almost everyone – friends, family, everyone. I didn’t talk, I didn’t respond, I didn’t answer the phone or door. I didn’t exercise. I comfort ate. I gained weight. I drank a lot to ‘self medicate’. I barely slept more than 2 or 3 hours per night. My brain felt strange. I felt close to tears a lot of the time. I felt short tempered and my emotions were erratic. I put huge amounts of pressure on myself and acted that I was ok at work. I sometimes had to just leave wherever I was, and spend time alone. It was a hard time… I think I made it harder by not speaking to anyone about it…
Fortunately I came out the other side happy, understanding myself and some of my signals better, and more confident in myself. Not everyone is so lucky to make it through though so I thought I’d share some of my story, and a way I now keep an eye on how I’m feeling and what’s going on in my life, and head, in case it can help others understand things too. (Today I mapped it to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs too and saw that it spread across all elements of the model. Interesting!)
This article tells the story and hopefully will help some others in some way.
I was on a large complex digital transformation programme and really enjoying it. I was part of a great team, working on interesting work, solving problems and exploring and leading the way. But it was also a challenge. We were leading a pilot to work in an agile experimental way that wasn’t familiar to the organisation, we were working with many experimental technologies which we didn’t have experience or capability with, we were working in a small but amazing team. It was hard but enjoyable! We wanted to succeed!
On top of that challenge I took on another big one… I’d lost a lot of weight and getting fitter and had moved from walking to running. My distances started to increase and I started competing in some longer events. The opportunity came up in work to apply for one of a small number of places for London Marathon so I decided to apply. I was successful and so was promoted all over internal and external social media and I collected sponsorship for my chosen charity. I was visible to the organisation… I could not fail.
Marathon training started ok but early on I got a hip injury and I started to struggle… and the cloldest winter for some years struck… I struggled more… I didn’t want to train, I couldn’t train, I found myself upset when I did train and I had a growing fear of the event and failing…
Along side we were struggling on our programme to work on unknown technologies, in way that was unfamiliar to the sponsors, competing for time and support with other projects, and to show success and value… It was a concern…
The day of the marathon came, 22nd April 2018. It was the hottest on record. I knew I hadn’t trained enough. I had over £3,000 of sponsorship, I had the eyes of the organisation on me and reporting on me… I couldn’t withdraw. I couldn’t fail…
The first half of the marathon was really enjoyable! I saw the sights, I heard the crowd, I soaked it in, I saw my friends and family who had come to support me, and the people from the charity I was running for. It was a hard but amazing experience!
The second half was dreadful and soul destroying... However onwards I moved and kept going. I couldn’t fail. The crowd kept me going. I locked eyes with a man in the crowd and he said with certainty “You’ve got this!” I carried on, and completed it the distance. Not how I’d imagined, and not how I’d visualised ‘success’… I felt like I’d failed and my knees were a mess (and would be for about 2 years)...
After the marathon I didn’t initially notice that my weight was starting to climb, I was drinking more, and that I wasn’t sleeping much. I also started to withdraw from life and not speak to, or see, the people I was close to. When I was with them I didn’t engage or talk. I felt numb. I knew I should, or should talk to people about how I was feeling, but I didn’t want to… I couldn’t… I thought I needed to resolve it on my own. To not manage it would be to fail…
A short while after I had an accident in my car whilst driving to work one morning. No one else was involved and there was significant damage that due to parts supply issues took months to resolve. I felt nothing…
Before I got my car back the challenge kept coming and I received notice at work that I was at risk of redundancy as part of an organisational change. A month or two later it was confirmed that I was due to be made redundant later that year…
I’d been through a number of redundancy cycles in my (then) 12 years at the company. It hit me hard as I’d invested so much of myself into the company during my time there, especially through the transformation, and I didn’t know where my future was, where I fitted, where my worth was.
I was distancing myself more from people. I was spending lots of energy acting ‘normal’ when I could. I felt exhausted – mentally and physically. To try to relax and get some exercise I returned to what I was doing before and getting up early to go for walks in the countryside. I built it into my routine and whether bright and sunny, or cold and wet, I would go out. Every day.
In my worst days those walks were sometimes head down, not noticing anything, and I’d sometimes have some pretty dark thoughts and thought of ways I could stop feeling like I was… I never acted on them but they lurked in my head for quite a while. I was tried to just keep on walking and lift my head and look around to try to distract myself. Soak in nature, and the fresh air and it would help clear my head eventually.
I didn’t know what to do… I didn’t feel like my chapter was finished with the company so dug my head into the sand a bit and thought the best thing I could do was to continue to strive to make the transformation a success, to learn as much as possible, to make the biggest impact as I could… And I did!
I found the #Microsoft #powerplatform and started experimenting - I connected a small group of us together and we started to learn, and share, and solve problems, and grow, and make not just business impact, but people impact! I saw people excited, and engaged, and owning their own development, and growing before my eyes… I found my ‘thing’ and started doing more of that! Engaging more people in the platform by celebrating the successes of the people in the group to show others across the organisation, at all levels, what a huge opportunity we had and the impact we could make!
I was still due to be made redundant and leave the organisation but I set myself a mission whilst I was still there. I wanted to make as much ‘people impact’ as possible. I wanted to leave a legacy, and to hopefully be a person that people looked back on in their careers and thought had helped set them on a different path, or accelerated their current path.
I was somewhat distracted from what I was going through and focused on trying to impact as many people as broadly and deeply as possible. Whoever asked for help, I gave it. I shouted about them and the amazing things they were doing to anyone who would listen. Their leadership, their colleagues, their business unit, right up to the C-Suite. I shouted about what WE had done and how WE had done it TOGETHER.
We didn’t take ourselves too seriously and had a lot of fun with what we were doing… and it was noticed! MASSIVELY! Over 3 years our community grew from those initial 8 explorers to 4,500 across the organisation, across 70 countries. Having this impact gave me a ‘reason for being’ and a feeling of worth, and a distraction, so I grabbed hold of it and ran with it.
Through that period my world changed!
I was introduced into the world of the Power Platform community and met some amazing people who were encouraging, supportive, helpful, and very funny! I met others like me who were making impact in their organisations in different industries with the Power Platform.
I was introduced to Microsoft and made connections with the Power Platform product team, was invited to experience all sorts of things like presenting to hundreds of people at the Microsoft Business Applications Summit in the US, or to the Microsoft UK&I Power Platform sales organisation at Chelsea Football Stadium, became part of the Customer Advisory Board and attended meetings in the US and Europe.
I encouraged, and supported, and unblocked people through my organisation and continued to grow our internal community whilst also working with amazing people to establish our governance, define processes, configure our platform, negotiate licensing, and show people there was ‘another way’ and got to speak at global internal and external events to tell our story.
Although extended by 6 months, and then cancelled, I was still made redundant on the next cycle that happened… And it was the best thing that could have happened! I joined Avanade and moved into the world of Power Platform. I’ve brought my knowledge and experience of establishing scalable governance and growing communities and adoption of the Power Platform, to deliver value!
Finding something I loved and was energised by pulled me through and gave me something to focus on and motivate me. Finding a world of wonderful people who valued me for me helped raise my confidence and self esteem. Putting myself ‘out there’, owning my development, being brave, and building my resilience helped me grow enormously through those last 2-3 years and gave me greater faith in myself.
I suspect the majority of the people who were part of our Power Ranger movement, those from the Power Platform community, and those working with me day to day, don’t know how much of an impact they had on me during those difficult days. Their energy, their trust in me and what we were doing, and their support to be brave and try new things and experiment, pulled me through and spurred me on through it all and put me in the position where I could find my calm and my happiness again.
Find your passion, find your people, find your purpose and you can get through almost anything… But make it a bit easier on yourself and don’t be like me… Be kind to yourself, you don’t fail… you learn… Know when you should open up and speak to people and ask for help. Don’t try to do it all on your own!
I was “Rescued by Power Rangers”… Thank you to them all, and everyone who helped me through those dark days!
UPDATE MAY 2025
2024 into first part of 2025 has had it’s challenges - Damaged knee that stopped me for most of 2024 and has impacted my fitness, weight and health, divorce process that felt stressful although very amicable, burn out at work and lack of new challenges / career progression…. These are all coming under control now (new job, knee and fitness improving, recoving from burn out, taking more control of my personal finances and future planning) though so I’m pleased to report my tracker is heading back to green! Hoorah!
