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Hi There, A brief and rather personal look at myself, I was born in Wales originally, but my parents immigrated to New Zealand when I was a baby. As such I consider myself a Kiwi through and through. I grew up in West Auckland in the 80s with a brief stint in Christchurch. Bipolar Disorder was a common word leisurely slung about the house during my upbringing, both my maternal and paternal grandfathers suicided (I prefer this word to the term ‘committed’ suicide which implies judgement), so we (my older brother and I) were made aware of such a condition in our family genetics very early. As I reached my formative years, my Uncle suicided. This was enough to send my mother into a relapse (she had been institutionalised herself for a number of months as a teenager). I remember clearly as a 13 year old the chilling night at North Shore Hospital when she was in such agony she was screaming at me to kill her to end the pain. The next day she was sliced open only to find nothing physically wrong – my first true insight into the power of the mind in absolute agony. My father appeared to be coping with the situation at the time, however it later became apparent that he was largely deluding himself, in fact to this day he denies his own wife and son are Bipolar, has left my mother and has a son who refuses to speak with him. Interestingly enough I did incredibly well at school and started university. As I reached my 20s I hastily married and found myself in well paid positions for my age. I spent a lot of time partying with friends, frivolously spending money on technology, bad food, and alcohol. It all seemed like fun, and I did enjoy large chunks of my life back then, however I was ignoring my souls cry for both truth and recognition and it showed with bouts of depression. In reality I could only hold down jobs for ~18 months at a time, this was interspaced with periods of unemployment where I would shrink away from the sociable, happy, smiling self everyone loved and become a creature of insecurity. I found it increasingly difficult to be the person everyone liked, and in returning to New Zealand after a 2 year stint living in London my wife left me. Obviously I was initially devastated and the grief was overwhelming, but I felt the pain and moved on, eventually considering the idea that I had married for less than desirable reasons. Five years ago I met my current wife. She is an amazing, incredibly strong woman, who has catalysed changes in my life that I will be forever grateful. A year into our relationship I suffered a near complete breakdown, all my life I had been trying to be the person my friends and family liked and it was killing me. Initially diagnosed with PTSD and eventually Bipolar Disorder I was forced to face the reality that I was allowing others to be my locus of identity, I had lost (or had never been) who I really was. I started on medication and counselling, and began down the path of discovering myself and healing ‘the pain’. I went up and down, had a psychotic break, suicide attempt, and manic episode. During this time I lost all of my friends as well as my relationship with my brother and father – I would constantly be frustrated when people would say, “don’t worry the old you will be back” to which I would reply “And what is wrong with the current me?” People did not like me talking back or saying what I thought or felt, they were far used to the crowd-pleasing, non-threatening, empathetic fat man that they knew and loved and didn’t appreciate that I was tired of being in that role. 2.5 years ago my wife and I moved out of Auckland to a small community 45 minutes north of Auckland. We survived on benefits for the first year, lived without hot water and ate cheap processed food to survive. I was still medicated and seeing my nurse regularly (though he was useless in my opinion). Both being diagnosed mentally ill (her much earlier) we were determined to gain control of our lives and become healthy individuals. We began walking, every day, 1 hour twice a day religiously! We considered walking as our medication and made it a non-negotiable part of our lives. We both now live completely without psychoactive medications, I am working full time and I am now a normal weight having been clinically diagnosed morbidly obese 24 months previous. I cannot advocate more for walking in amongst nature (get off the streets and go to the park / beach / bush), do it every day and you will feel the difference, in fact It has been through exercise and time with nature that I have moved from being agnostic (originally bought up catholic) to having a well-rounded spirituality. The other major change has been food. It has become apparent that the chemicals in foods were a major part of our mental unwellness, we tend not to talk about this in our society, but it is a major problem in our culture that we are all happy to accept for some reason. My general feeling is that if your grandparents wouldn’t recognise something, don’t eat it!