That Was When People Started to Worry: Young women and mental illness

by Nancy Tucker

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Author: Nancy Tucker

Publisher: Icon Books

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 178578448X
ISBN 13: 978-1785784484

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 1785782932
ISBN 13: 978-1785782930

'In the waiting room, I see a lot of people who I could tell had real, serious problems. They deserve to be here. I don’t. I'm a fraud. A lazy wreck seeking an excuse for her incompetence. I'm useless.' Abby, 24

Having conducted over 100 hours of interviews with 60 women aged 16-25, Nancy Tucker- the author of The Time In Between, an 'astonishingly good' (Sunday Times) memoir of a life consumed by eating disorders- explores what it's like to suffer from serious mental illness as a young woman.

With raw honesty, sensitivity and humour, That Was When People Started to Worry examines real experiences of anxiety, self-harm, borderline personality disorder, OCD, binge eating disorder, PTSD and dissociative identity disorder. Giving a voice to those like Abby who can’t speak out themselves, Tucker presents a unique window into the day-to-day trials of living with an unwell mind.

About the Author

Nancy Tucker is currently reading Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, after working as a nanny, classroom assistant and finally an assistant psychologist in an NHS mental health service. Eventually, she hopes to train as a clinical psychologist. Her first book with Icon, The Time in Between: A Memoir of Hunger and Hope, was called 'stylish and incisive' by the Guardian, and was praised by Jacqueline Wilson, Psychologist and MIND.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Freya

No one else makes mistakes. Why am I so useless? I can’t admit what I’ve done. Everyone will hate me. I have to escape.

It was 4.45pm and I wasn’t supposed to leave until 5.30, but suddenly I was hot, too hot to think, too hot to breathe, and I thought I might be sick and – If I’m sick in the office I’ll never be able to go back. Everyone will know how disgusting I am.

Everyone will hate me. The neon red sign was illuminated in the front of my skull – ‘ESCAPE! ESCAPE! ESCAPE!’ So I turned off my computer without saving my work and grabbed my bagfrom underneath the desk, and when I passed Ruth’s desk she muttered, ‘Off early again, Freya?’

See? She already hates me. She already thinks I’m a slacker.

When I pushed open the glass doors of the building and sucked in grimy city air I felt light-headed with relief. In that moment, it didn’t matter that I had left early for the second time that week, or that my shoes had clip-clopped across the floor to a backdrop of tuts and sighs. All that mattered was that I had escaped, because if I hadn’t escaped then – ‘Nothing untoward would have happened. It’s only a feeling. It’s only anxiety. Anxiety builds and then diminishes. It doesn’t last forever.’

– I would have died. The walls would have closed in and my heart would have exploded from my chest and I would have expired, and it would have been noisy and messy and inelegant, and worse than the dying – far, far worse than the dying – would have been that everyone would have hated me. They would have hated me for the noise and the mess and the inelegance, and the inability – even in death – to do anything – ANYTHING – right.