A Cumbrian man has written his first novel and hopes it will help people understand mental illness.
Andrew Lawes, 37, of Penrith, wrote Dancing With Disorder, based on his own experiences and Cumbria Crack caught up with the support worker to find out more.
What prompted you to write this novel?
Dancing With Disorder is heavily based on the story of my own mental breakdown, which saw me sectioned after a prolonged battle with mental illness.
While the story may be fiction, Paul Dalton’s emotions and experiences of mental illness are very real.
I wrote this story because it needed to be told.
This is one experience of mental illness, and of the damage it can cause to so many lives.
There are thousands, if not millions of people who experience depression, anxiety and other conditions in the world, and not all of them are able to verbalise their experience.
I have been blessed with the ability to do so, and one of my hopes is that those people will be able to use this book to explain their experiences to the people that matter most to them.
Perhaps most importantly, though, is that I needed to tell this story so I can leave these experiences in the past, and look to the future free of the baggage that comes with having been through such a situation and never being able to explain to my loved ones what it was like.
Now, I can show them this book, and say to them that this is as close as you can get to an explanation.
I want what I went through to mean something, and hopefully, this book can help towards my experience mattering.
What I will also point out is that while Dancing With Disorder tackles some difficult themes, it does so with humour and heart.
It is as much a story of friendship as an account of the darkest aspects of life, and it is infused with hope throughout.
You have written other books before – what is the difference between those and Dancing With Disorder?
I wouldn’t recommend the general public buy my Fantasy Premier League Nightmare books!
They were written and self-published with a very specific audience in mind – namely, the people I play the game with, and those who know us!
Without the series, however, Dancing With Disorder would not exist.
I used to post essays about mental health onto the internet before my breakdown, and achieved a relative level of success doing so, with several celebrities sharing my writing with complimentary quotes.
After my breakdown, I found I was too scared to write anything real, in case it somehow set me off on a course back to the mental hospital.
I wouldn’t call it writer’s block as such, more that my anxiety and the lingering fears of sectioning made publishing anything too daunting.
Then, after a particularly poor performance in Fantasy Premier League one weekend, I wrote a story about how all I wanted to do was beat my mates, and how I wasn’t good enough to do so.
It made my friend, Martin, laugh, so I did another one after the weekend after.
Somehow, it spiralled to writing about our mini-league every weekend, with the underlying narrative that I could only retire from the game if I did so as champion of our league.
I’m currently second in the table this season, so hopefully this season will see my FPL Nightmare finally end.
How long did it take you to write the novel?
I’d written the first 15,000 words a couple of years ago, because I wanted to see if I could make Martin laugh while writing seriously.
The reaction was positive, but then I put the project on the back-burner while focusing on my studies – I’m doing a psychology with counselling degree with the Open University – and work and enjoying the new relationship I had started with my now- fiancée, Hazel.
Once I had found a balance between family life, my work and my studies, I felt able to pick up my laptop and give Dancing With Disorder the attention it deserved.
Once I did, it took about four months to finish.
We love the fact that the protagonist isn’t a straightforward main character – what were your thoughts behind giving him an unidentified mental disorder?
One of the underlying themes throughout Dancing With Disorder is the need people have to be heard, and how often this need is not met.
There are positives and negatives for individuals when they receive a diagnosis – without one, it becomes much harder to receive the support needed, especially for younger people.
However, what often happens – and I have experienced this both from the perspective of a support worker and a service-user – is that people stop seeing the individual and only see the diagnosis.
When someone is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, their emotions become too easy to dismiss as symptomatic of the condition, and so they are never taken as seriously as they should be.
When someone is diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, their experiences and beliefs are treated very differently to someone not diagnosed as on that spectrum.
It’s the same with depression, anxiety, the full range of personality disorders and mental illnesses, it’s all the same: people no longer see the person, they only see the condition.
By leaving Paul Dalton’s mental disorder undiagnosed, the reader must see him as the person he is, not the label on the doctor’s form.
Plus, everyone loves a good puzzle to solve, and I’m sure people will enjoy trying to diagnose Paul Dalton for themselves as they read.
Hopefully, by the time they finish the book, they’ll understand that his diagnosis doesn’t actually matter.
What I do hope Dancing With Disorder does is show people that they can find a place in the world.
It is a hard world to live in, a lot of the time, and when you feel disconnected from it and isolated in it, life can become so very difficult to cope with.
Sometimes, just making it to bedtime and saying you’ll try again tomorrow can take everything you have, and making it to morning is the greatest achievement.
I hope this book shows people that they are not alone in the world, that someone – even a writer they may never meet – understands how hard it is for them, and how brave they are to keep on trying, keep on hoping and keep on breathing.
I won’t promise anyone things will get better and they can achieve whatever dreams they want. What I will tell them is that it’s okay not to be perfect, it’s okay to get things wrong, and that you deserve so much more than what you are experiencing right now.
Your illness does not define you, your diagnosis does not define you, and the world is a better place for you being in it.
To anyone who is struggling, that the Samaritans are always there to listen.
You can phone them on 116 123, and you can email them at jo@samaritans.org, or you can pop down to the offices for an in-person talk.
They will listen without judgement, and if you feel like no-one ever listens, they will make you feel heard.
Dancing With Disorder is available to buy from Amazon via bit.ly/DancingWithDisorder
