My lived experience of bipolar disorder, breakdown and breakthrough, and why your story deserves to be heard 🫶
Today is World Mental Health Day, and this year's theme, chosen by the World Federation for Mental Health, is "Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change."
When I first read those words, I had to put my coffee down for a minute. 
Because I am a lived experience! I’m a woman living with bipolar disorder who has been sectioned in a secure psychiatric hospital. Twice.
I’m also an award-winning Mental Health Coach, a partner, a daughter, a friend, a dog mum, and a Blidworth lass who’s never happier than with a caravan and a field.
All of those things are true at the same time. That’s the bit I really want people to hear.
So today I’m not going to give you the polished version of my story. I’m going to give you the real one. Grab a brew, folks.
The chapter of my lived experience that I used to wish I could tear out
Some of you know the headline of my story. Fewer people know what it felt like from the inside. It didn’t happen overnight. It crept in over years: grief, workplace stress, long hours and barely sleeping. I lost my dad and my stepparents to cancer, and I just kept going, because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Big girl pants on. Smile. Carry on.
Except my mind and my body had other ideas. Anxiety came first. Then chronic fatigue. Then depression. And eventually, severe bipolar manic psychosis, which led to me being sectioned in a secure psychiatric hospital. Not once, but twice.
There’s no pretty way to describe that, and I’m not going to try. I was frightened, confused, and so far from myself that I couldn’t see a way back.
Mania doesn't arrive with a warning label...
It can feel like energy, an electrical charge racing through your body, euphoria. It can feel like certainty, and even brilliance, right up until it doesn’t.
Thoughts race faster than you can catch them. Ideas galore. Sleep stops feeling necessary. And when psychosis takes hold, the line between what’s real and what isn’t blurs in ways that are almost impossible to explain to anybody who hasn’t been there. Whilst it can feel more euphoric than anything else you have ever experienced, at the same time your life is spiralling and your loved ones are deeply concerned. But you dismiss them, as you have never felt better; you are invincible, nothing can stop you… But it can, and it does.
Being sectioned means the decisions about your life are no longer yours to make. Behind the doors of a secure psychiatric hospital, I was frightened, confused, and so far from myself that I couldn’t see a way back. The woman who had led teams and held everything together for everybody else couldn’t recognise herself any more.
And then it happened again. Going through it a second time brought its own kind of fear: the fear that maybe this was simply who I was now, and who I would always be.
I want to be honest about that, because so many people carry those same fears quietly, convinced they’re the only one.
If you’ve never experienced a mental health crisis, it can be hard to imagine how lonely it is to lose your footing while the world carries on around you. And if you have, you’ll know there’s often a second kind of pain that follows: the shame, the worry about what people will think, and the fear that this is now all you’ll ever be.
I’m sharing this because silence is where stigma grows. And because if you’re living through a dark chapter right now, I want you to hear this from somebody who has been there:
It is a chapter. It is not the whole book.
What changed? Somebody really listened
There are still moments when I think back to that frightened, confused woman and wish I could sit beside her and say: you have absolutely no idea where your life is going to take you yet.
Because my second breakdown became the beginning of one of the biggest transformations of my life.
Coaching gave me something I hadn’t had in a very long time: a space where I was listened to as a whole person, not as a diagnosis. It helped me reconnect with my values, recognise my strengths and challenge beliefs I’d carried around for years. And, crucially, it helped me learn to spot the warning signs I had always ignored.
I learnt that being strong doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine and carrying the whole world on your shoulders. Sometimes strength looks like:
- Admitting you’re not okay
- Asking for help
- Resting
- Completely changing direction
Slowly, my pain became my purpose. I’d been coaching people for years through my leadership career, around 20 years now in one form or another. But after everything I’d been through, it became something deeper. It became my calling. Today I’m an award-winning Mental Health Coach and Master NLP Practitioner, and my lived experience sits right alongside my training in everything I do.
I’m not defined by my diagnosis. But I’m not ashamed of it either. It’s part of the reason I understand.
Even the Mental Health Coach has challenging days, hard years, and grief.
I’d be painting a very unrealistic picture if I told you life is all sunshine and roses now. I still live with bipolar disorder. I still have difficult days. And this last year has asked an awful lot of me. I’ve moved home and moved the MoJoe Lounge. I’ve worried about my mum after a fall. And, most heartbreakingly, I’ve said goodbye to two very special friends.
My best mate Darren, my Dazza, was my trusted confidant, my constant cheerleader and the person who always had my back. I miss our deep conversations, his brilliant mind, his risky humour and our twice-weekly check-ins where we’d put the world to rights.
At his funeral, a Greek word stayed with me: agápē (ἀγάπη). It describes selfless, unconditional, compassionate love — loving someone for who they are, without expecting anything in return.
Unconditional love – loving without conditions.
Compassionate love: kindness, care, and empathy.
Enduring love – a love that continues even after someone is gone.
A love that leaves a mark, the kind of love that lives on through memories, stories, and the people it touched.
I also lost the fabulous Dizzy Dubfire, a fierce diva with a passion for eclectic music, empowerment and speaking her truth. I’ll always remember her kindness, those knowing hand squeezes and the wonderful individuality that made her her.
Grief doesn’t follow rules. It catches you in a song, a memory, an ordinary Tuesday.
So here’s what this year has taught me, all over again: looking after your mental health doesn’t mean being positive all the time. Sometimes it means letting yourself be sad. Saying “today is hard.” Leaning on the people who love you. I practise what I preach, folks, and some days that means sitting with my feelings rather than trying to fix them.
If you’re grieving right now, please be gentle with yourself. You don’t have to turn your pain into a lesson. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Filling my cup up: My Mental Wellness
I talk a lot about filling your own cup, and these days I’m much better at noticing what fills mine. Usually it’s the simple things: that first slow morning coffee, a Sunday lie-in without a shred of guilt, or a little “to me, from me” treat when life has been tough.
And of course, there’s Road Trip Joe! 
Give me my lovely partner Tim, our gorgeous puppy Cookie, a caravan and a field, and I’m as happy as a pig in poo. 
Our retreat in Crete was a wonderful chance to slow down together, and I’ve got my eye on a six-week winter spa experience at Thoresby Hall to look forward to in the colder months.
But wellbeing isn’t about spending money. It’s about knowing what you need. Sometimes that’s rest rather than more activity, company rather than solitude, or simply permission to have a rubbish day without beating yourself up about it.
Some days, I simply crave a nice cup of tea, a hot bath, then snuggling on the sofa with Tim and Cookie, my dog, and watching a good Netflix series.
If you're the one who's struggling, please don't wait until things feel unbearable.
You don’t need the perfect words. You don’t need to have it all figured out. Sometimes the bravest sentence in the world is just three words long: “I’m not okay.” Say it to somebody you trust. Say it to your GP. Say it to me. Every single person I’ve worked with started with one conversation, and so did I.
If you’re the one who’s listening, you don’t need to fix anything. You don’t need the perfect response. Put the phone down, give somebody your full attention and let them finish. If a friend or colleague hasn’t seemed quite themselves, ask how they are. Then ask again, and mean it. It might feel small to you. It could be enormous to them. And let’s not save this for one day a year.
Lived experience can challenge stigma, improve services and shape how our communities look after each other every single day.
If something in my story has stirred something in you, I’d love to hear from you. I work with people at the MoJoe Lounge in Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, and online, wherever you are.
You’re very welcome to book a free discovery session. It’s a relaxed, no-pressure chat about what you’re going through and what you’d like to change. No judgement, no formula, and definitely no pretending you’re fine. Just a cuppa and a conversation.
And if you’d like a gentle place to start on your own, I’ve made two free resources for you:
- My MoJoe Toolbox: practical, creative coaching tools to help you explore worries, emotions, beliefs, values, goals and confidence.
- Hug in a Mug: my much-loved free self-care workbook, for when you need to pause, breathe and be a little kinder to yourself. ☕💜
Awareness days come and go, but mental health doesn’t keep to a calendar. Whenever you happen to be reading this, somebody is quietly living with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, grief or stress. Perhaps that somebody is you.
So wherever you are on your own journey, I hope you’ll remember this:
Your feelings are valid. Your story matters. And you deserve to be heard.
The frightened woman in that hospital couldn’t have imagined the life I’m living now: the MoJoe Lounge, the clients who trust me with their stories, the love, the laughter, the caravan trips with Tim and Cookie. If she could find her way here, there is hope for you too.
As I often say, what you go through, you can grow through. But on the hardest days, simply getting through and being gentle with yourself is more than enough.
And most importantly, you don’t have to do this alone.
Sending a big hug to anybody who needs one today. 🤗💜
Joe Roe 💜☕ The Mental Health Coach
Please note: Mental health coaching is not a substitute for medical or psychiatric treatment, counselling or psychotherapy. If you’re concerned about your mental health, please contact your GP or an appropriate healthcare professional. If you need to talk to someone right now, you can call Samaritans free, day or night, on 116 123, or call NHS 111 and choose the mental health option. If you or somebody else is in immediate danger, call 999.
