Welcome to the Rise and Conquer Podcasts. This podcast is for women who want to take ownership of their lives, live unapologetically, and are ready to turn their biggest dreams into their reality. If you're ready to be armed with the tools that will inspire to take bold action, feel confident within yourself, and conquer your goals, then you've come
to the right place. I'm your host, Georgie Stevenson. I'm a lawyer turned entrepreneur, co founder of Naked Harvest Supplements, and social media personality with a community of over three hundred thousand. I grew up believing I had to pursue the safe option and fit into a mold others had created for me. But then I entered my corporate law job and I realized that settling for a reality that didn't set my soul on fire was something I.
Was not prepared to do.
I wanted more, and I have a feeling you do too. Join me and special guest weekly as we get down to the nitty gritty on all things health, mastering your mindset, creating lasting habits, thriving in your career and relationships, plus so much more, and together we'll gain the knowledge and perspective to pursue our wildest dreams and kick fear to the curb. Well, what are you waiting for? Let's rise and conquer, Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of
the Rise and Conquer podcast. Today's guest is author and journalist Georgie Dent. At age twenty four, Georgie Dent the world at her feet also it seemed.
She graduated university with.
Flying colors, landed a job at a corporate law firm, and moved in with her boyfriend. Everything looked picture perfect and she had no reason to break, but she did. Within a year, Georgie was unemployed, back living with her parents, and suffering such crippling anxiety that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Fast forward to today and Georgie has three beautiful girls. That boyfriend is now her husband, and
now she is a journalist and author. Georgie wrote her breakdown in slow motion and how she rebuilt her life in her book Breaking Badly. Her story provides an inspiring and raw recount that proves that not oni is recovery from a mental health disorder possible, but so is rebuilding a beautiful life with a fulfilling career. And loving family. Georgie is warm and so clever beyond words. I was so grateful she invited us into her home to record this episode, and I am so grateful to listen to
her story and now share it with you. Welcome to the show, Georgie, Thank you so much for having us in your house.
Thank you for having me.
It is our.
Rainy here in Sydney, so sorry if you guys can hear the rain, but it's actually quite nice. But Georgie, the first question I ask everyone is what current season are you in? And so the reason why I ask this is we are all going through something and I'm very much about being grateful for what we're going through and realizing that it's just that a season.
So tell us about yours.
Okay, So I am in a season, I would say, or the season that I'm hoping to enjoy for the first half of this year is actually a little bit slower paced. Twenty nineteen was very very busy for me on a few fronts, personally and professionally with the family, with work, with my husband's work, and I got to the end of last year feeling really close to burnout, and so I have been really conscious of the fact that this year, I actually do want to do a little bit less work and I want to spend less
time chasing my tail. I've set things up this year so that hopefully it is going to be like that, and I mean it's only early days, but I definitely feel like I am going to be structuring my weeks and days so that I have got a bit more time to enjoy what I'm doing, whether whether it's when I'm at work or whether it's when I'm home with the kids. I just want to be doing one thing at a time, so almost.
Like being more intentional with your time.
Yes, and being really conscious about I mean, I've always one of the things about working and having kids is you know, and it's so cliched, but it is a juggle. And so I am constantly looking at my diary and seeing what needs to happen and how it's going to happen. And so because of that, I have had to be strategic about my time. But this year, my plan is to just skew slightly more towards doing less than doing more, so that I can enjoy the things that I have and the things that I do.
I love that and I can resonate a lot with that. Last year it kind of felt like I was like a headless chook and I was running on and I was doing so much and nothing was getting done.
Well, a lot was getting done.
But definitely this year is a lot about being more intentional and conscious that when I'm working, I'm working, and then when I'm doing other stuff, I'm present there too.
Yep, amazing.
Can you tell us a little snapshot about yourself? So also, I've done a little intro, but yeah, give us a little snapshot in your own words.
Okay, Well, so I am thirty seven, I've got I live in Sydney with my husband, and we've got three daughters who are nine, seven and about to turn four. I work as a journalist and I work across a number of different platforms. So there's a website that I edit a couple of days a week called Women's Agenda. I contribute articles, and I have worked as part of
the features team at My Claire. I have a column with Fairfax Papers, and then I do I wrote a book last year, and I do quite a bit of speaking around both gender equality and women at work and mental health and anxiety and perfectionism. So I wear a few different hats. Every week is a little bit different, and I yeah, but it's predominantly writing, speaking at events, and then I do a bit of media as well, so a lot on it is fairly busy.
Yes, And so do you actually do you like that I use someone who prefers more of a routine, or do you like that every week is quite different?
I do like having a pattern, That's what I do quite like. And my weeks do have a rhythm to them, so even though not every week is identical, there are a couple of things that are sort of anchored and the same. And I guess that's one of the things with having three children tour at school. The school term and their school activities does give you a sort of structure and routine, so I sort of know what everyone's got on each afternoon or each morning before school, and
then that helps to plan my week. So I definitely do like having some structure, but I also quite enjoy that not every single day is the same.
I love that.
And so you did just before, say, you wrote a book and it is breaking badly.
I have read it, guys. It's amazing.
I personally am someone who has struggled with anxiety myself. So I just found it. I know Grace has read it too. I just found it. Yeah, like you were able to read it, and especially because you were talking about Brisbane and Australia that sort of thing, and I just really resonated with it because you really went through each stage and yeah, it was great.
So let's get into that.
So it's your experience with anxiety, perfectionism, and your career burnout. So I love that you can share your experience with mental illness and be so vulnerable and honest about it because I know there's a lot of people who suffering sons like you did when you were talking about it at the start of the book two, and it's really it's hard to come out and talk about it. So what compelled you to write a book like this? And was it hard to share your message on mental illness?
Okay, very good question. I was compelled to write this book. I suppose it happened gradually. So when I had the book covers the fact that I had a nervous breakdown when I was twenty five and it was sort of four pretty hellish months where I was unable to do very much at all, and I was quite debilitated by illness and dizziness, and I ended up sort of living back with my parents for a period of time, and then I ended up in a psychiatric hospital. So all
of that was pretty terrible. The good part was that once I went to a psychiatric hospital, I was put on medication and I started doing a whole lot of therapy and that I'd never done before, and I very quickly became a lot healthier, and I was able to sort of function in a manner that was so much more constructive and healthy than I'd ever been. So pretty quickly after what I went through, I did tell people
what had happened. And it was about two years after it happened that I actually wrote about it for the first time, and I sent it off to Mia Friedman, who at the time her website was still just a blog mum of me, but it had quite a big readership, and I sent it off to her and just said, if you want to publish this anonymously, I'd be really happy to share my story. And it felt quite scary
even without my name being attached to it. I was really brutally honest about what had happened in that really yeah, and it really struck a chord. So it sort of had one hundred comments very quickly. And this is a long time ago. We're talking twelve years ago, when you know, there weren't comments galare on websites. And so that was
my first experience of writing about what had happened. And then I did write more about it, and I spoke about it more at different events and things like that, and whenever I spoke about it or wrote about it, I was always druck by the number of people who connected with it. So fast forward a few years ago, a publisher approached me and just said that she loved the way I write and that she thinks she would have really liked to work on a book with me. And she said, what would you like to write a
book on? And I think she was actually probably expecting me to say something around women, but I said to her, look, I think if I'm going to write a book, I've got to write about what happened to me. And so that was how it came about, and so I ended up writing the book. I started it just over ten years after I'd had the breakdown, and so I had the benefit of dis and hindsight, and I had written.
I had written quite a lot about what had happened at the time, but I also had you know, my mum had all these emails from between her and I, so I had material I could look back on. But I didn't find it difficult to write. I really enjoyed the process of writing it. But yeah, that was how it came about.
And so let's go back to the start a bit. Let us explore that a bit. So tell us about when you were nineteen and you were facing these health issues. Tell us about your first of all, like the health issues and your experience with the doctors you were facing.
So when I was in year twelve at school, So I went to school in Brisbane, so I was seventeen. In my final year of school, I started to have my tummy was quite upset a lot of the time. I started having cramps a lot. It was not particularly pleasant and I sort of ignored it for a period of time. I did go to the doctor at one point and he sort of said, oh, look, it's probably it's not uncommon. In year twelve. There's a lot of stress,
you know, it's your body's reaction to that. But then after I at the end of my first year of UNI, I sort of was having another set of physiological symptoms but also that were abdomen related, but it was more like intense, crazy period pain, but not necessarily when I had my period, and my tummy would often of a night completely blow up to look like I was almost five months pregnant, and then I would just have the
most horrific cramping in it. Anyway, I realized I needed to see someone, and I spoke to the GP and she sort of said, look, I think you probably need to go and see a gynocologist. And I was nineteen and I hadn't ever seen a gynocologist. And I went for the first appointment and the man was perfectly pleasant, age but perfectly pleasant, and when I explained to him my symptoms, he said, look, to me, it sounds like
you've probably got endometriosis. Will do an internal ultrasound and see, but if that's what you have, which I think you do, we'll then have to do some operations to cut the tissue away. Now again, this was we're now talking. That was almost twenty years ago, and endometriosis was not a word I'd ever heard. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't like the idea of having surgery to cut anything away. But I went through the motions and he did an internal ultrasound, which was, you know, vile as
these things are. And also I was young, so I wasn't sort of yet. I mean, I've had to three children now, so I know what it's like to lose your dignity completely in a medical setting, but back then it was all quite new, so I was quite afraid. But he did the ultrasound and he sort of was pointing out on the screen all these bitsiness pieces that I had no idea what it meant. But he basically said, look, you do have andrometriosis. It's everywhere, so we'll do some
surgery to cut it all away. Yeah, and those He ended up doing three operations over five weeks. It was really quite intense. My body horrific, you know, three general anesthetics. It really knocked me around, and I was still young. Mum came up to Brisbane to look after me, and I had heaps of family support. All my friends were amazing,
but it was pretty brutal. And you know the other thing was that I didn't particularly like having these symptoms it certainly wasn't something I really wanted to talk about with people, So I think that all made it quite a lonely experience, even though I had lots of people around me. But I really did feel like I was sort of on my own, fighting this battle with my
body that I didn't really want to be fighting. And then after I'd had all of those procedures, it was about a month later that I was still having really horrific stomach symptoms, and so then when we saw the GP, she said, look, you have to go and see a gastroentrologist now. And then fairly soon after that, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which again i'd never heard of until I was being told that I had it. And
it's a inflammatory bowel disease. It's an autoimmune condition. It's every bit as vile as it sounds, and it affects people differently. You can have it in sort of varying degrees of severity. There are people who end up having to have their huge sections of their bow surgically removed because of it. I was a pretty much case in the middle. I was not I didn't ever have to have surgery to have any of my bow removed, but
I did. It was pretty debilitating at different points, and I was put on iminosuppressant drugs that in itself created a whole raft of side effects. And I was sort of having to have blood tests every There were periods of time where I had to have a blood test every week for three months or so. I felt a little bit trapped in this medical black hole. But I was studying. I was at Union at the time. I was doing business and law, and I was really eager
to sort of keep up maintaining my normal existence. Yeah, and sort of hiding a little bit gnaoring it. Yeah, it's funny because I did, because you were I always went to my appointments, I always saw the doctors, I took the medication, I did whatever I needed to do.
But I really did try to divide my life into two parts, and that my medical health issues were in one part that was ring fenced and that was just my personal private battle that no one really needed to know about, and then there was the rest of my life.
Yeah, so you separated it in a way. Yeah, So tell us about you went to university, you graded, graduated university, and then you started working in a commercial law firm tell us about kind of because of these health issues, what a day in you know, the workplace looked like.
So I moved to Sydney for my first full time job when I graduated from UNI, and it was with a big corporate law firm. I was doing their graduate program. And I suppose that when I've been at UNI, I'd always been able to. At UNI, you have got enough autonomy that you can, I mean, aside from exams, and you know, if you had a presentation, if you needed to race out of a lecture theater, or you were
running late, no one really knew you could hide. When I moved down to Sydney and started full time work, I found it really difficult because my health issues I couldn't hide them in the day, and I was working
really very long hours. And I was also I'd started in an environment where you all know that these jobs are very competitive, that they're hard to get, you know that the standard expected of you is very high, and I think I absorbed a lot of pressure and stress that ended up sort of exacerbating the fact that I already had fairly average health.
And so.
Probably after about six months, my days at work looked I was just forever needing to go to the bathroom. If I was walking to work, it would take three or four stops along the way before I could get to work. And then I'd get to work and be mortified by the three bathroom stops and would then sit down at my desk and try to pretend that I was perfectly fine. And you know, it sort of ended up being a little bit of a very vicious cycle, and I ended up my tummy became much more difficult
to manage. There were instances where I was in and out of hospital, even if it was just for a day or two days, or you know, they had to do investigations. So I certainly wasn't thriving from a health perspective, and I was just sort of doing the best I could.
I couldn't even imagine, because, like I was saying before the interview, I've been in a law firm in.
The graduate position.
It's already such a press and stress in the day to day task. You're expected to be and earlier, you're expected to stay late, you're expected to say yes to anything they want, And so I couldn't imagine, and I definitely felt a lot of stress in that position, and I couldn't imagine as well having those health issues on top.
So I, yeah, I could.
Imagine that being such a stressful and like you said, like lonely part of your life. And so I want to talk about perfectionism because you do talk about this in the book and it's something I resonated with. And you were saying, for example, at work, you never cut yourself a break, like even if you took a sick day, which was very necessary, it's not like you were taking a you know, a fake sick day. You saw that
as a failure or an inability to cope. And I even remember reading the book, like even the language that you would use to kind of talk to yourself like it was, it was very negative and you were very hard on yourself. How do you think perfectionism contributed to your underwing?
Yeah, I think it contributed pretty significantly. And I didn't really until I had my breakdown and then had cause to sort of learn about all of these different things. I had no idea that I thought, like a lot of people, that perfectionism was just sort of the ultimate humble brag. But you really, you just have got amazing standards and you're like doing a great job, like.
You say in the interview, when you're like, oh, that's my weakness, yeah, perfectionist.
Sorry, I've Yeah. Well, we all say that and we all get the jobs because it's a known thing. But what I came to learn was that perfectionism is actually a very toxic condition, and where it becomes dangerous and or where it is toxic, is that you reduce the world into black and white and either everything is absolutely perfect or everything you were an absolute total failure. So
for me, illness was probably the most damaging. I think I did probably the most damage to myself at applying perfectionism to a chronic illness, because in my head, right up until the point that I fell apart, I really did think that any day that I didn't feel well, let alone a day where I needed to be in hospital and have a procedure, I internalized that as being total failure, because in my head, I was either basically a robot who could just go to work and have
absolutely no problems, or if I was a human being with some sort of vulnerability to a medical condition, I was a total failure. And I can see now in hindsight, I learned that that's actually perfectionism, and it's quite a toxic thinking pattern. But I didn't know there was any other option at that point. And because I was having a chronic illness, it wasn't like I sort of had, you know, three weeks where I had this terrible appendicitis and then they removed it and then I recovered and
I was fine. I was in a condition. I was in a situation where I had illness every.
Day, it was ongoing.
Yes, yeah, and so I think the compounding that over time was awful for me.
I definitely, again keep saying resonate, but I resonate with the feeling of the all or nothing and not really.
It's kind of like you're in this.
Like tunnel vision and you kind of lose sight of everything. And I love in the book, you have a quote from Brene Brown, and I'll read out the quote for you guys, because it's really good and it sums it up, and it says perfectionism is a belief that if we live perfect and act perfect, we can minimize the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It's a twenty ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us, when in fact it's a thing that is preventing us from flight.
So going off that, I love that you included that quote. I actually hadn't heard it before. What advice would you give someone who is maybe in that mindset of perfectionism?
I would say look for the nuance Because for me, perfectionism in whichever realm I was talking about or thinking about it was either I was absolutely perfect or total failure. And what I had to come to grips with and what I still do is recognizing when I'm being really hard on myself or when there's is looking for the nuance in that, like, so, am I a total failure? Or am I just a human being who has got an illness on this particular day? You know? Am I?
If you think about it in terms of you know, exercise or eating or your friendships, like if you have a fight with one person or you have you know, an issue at work on one particular day, if you're inclined to think that that is catastrophic, you know, or if you skip exercise for a day and you're sort of in that mindset of thinking, oh my just I'm a total failure because I didn't do that, look at it and say right, Am I a total failure or
did I just miss exercise for one day? Because I think there is so much more gray than there is black and white. But it's really easy to sort of unconsciously fall into the habit of thinking it's it's either everything or it's nothing.
For me, it was like almost a bit of an obsessive mindset, like it was very obsessive that I had to do things perfectly. And I think also something that helped me is like doing something you know sixty or eighty percent getting it done. This is more of a practical sense of what you're doing work, handing it in and then realizing sometimes it's better to just get it in, get it done, and get onto the next thing.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, I mean one of the things that I have said and a lot of people when they've wanted to sign a copy of my book, one of the things I've often written is, you know, to remember that good is better than perfect, because it is because even if you can achieve perfectionist standards for a short period of time, ultimately it's never going to be the endgame. You cannot,
in anything, always be perfect. You won't. Good is so much better and being really you know, there was part of me that felt like saying that was some sort of catastrophic condition, like if I don't do everything perfectly, the world will fall apart. But as soon as you actually start doing it, you say, do you know what, I don't need to be an Olympic athlete level of intensity for every single thing I do, I can you know, good is perfectly okay.
It's so true, and especially in the regards like, for example, this podcast. I personally have like a bit of a speech impediment, so I never thought i'd start a podcast. And I remember my first episode. I like re recorded it quite a few times because I wanted it to be perfect, and then it kind of just got to the point where I was like I just need to put it out there.
I just need to start.
And now we're on, you know, over fifty episodes, and it's kind of like practice makes perfect, like not perfect, but you've just got to keep going, keep moving forward. And it is like, it's funny because a lot of the things that I learned after my breakdown. I used to think that there was things in life that you couldn't change, you know, I didn't know there was any other way to think than the way I had and practice it those sorts of things. So practicing changing your
perfectionist mindset is actually achievable. So the more you do it, and you can start small, but just sort of scan your mind for the things that you might be inclined to punish yourself for and look for the nuance in it. So if you're saying that you've done something wrong or bad, or you've failed, take a minute to just be forensic
about that and say, is this the whole story? Is there evidence to suggest that I might be overreacting here or that i'm And those sorts of exercises, the more you do them, the more you can change your habits, and then you become more not beating yourself up for everything that's not right.
You start forming the new habits, the new thoughts. Love that. Let's now talk about a burnout, so.
Especially career burnout, So the listeners who may not have heard of it or know what it is, what is your experience with burnout and how did it feel?
Yeah, the way I would describe burnout is that you imagine what it's like if there's just bone on bone rubbing together. There's absolutely no cushioning of tendons or muscles or flesh left there's nothing there, and or you know, burnout actually thinking about a match that has burnt out, or a candlewick that has totally burnt out. There's just
nothing there. And I think that I mean, as I've sort of explained, my first foray into full time work was pretty difficult because of my physical condition and what I then in hindsight learned was also my mental condition on top of that, but it was also just the fact that I was working in a job where the hours and demands were really really huge and I could put one foot in front of the other for a period of time. And I did the same thing at UNI. You know, it wasn't I never took I didn't ever
miss an assessment. I didn't ever apply for special consideration, even though when I was at UNI I had my health was pretty bad, and I think that compounded over time. I couldn't go one hundred and fifty percent the whole time. So I did burn out, and I did get to a point where before I got really sick, I just had absolutely no engine, like I had no energy. It was as if no fuel nothing, and every morning when
I got up. It was sort of a miracle that I could even get out of bed and have a shower and get my clothes and I get to work. At the time, I didn't know that, but in hindsight, I just learned that I was operating on nothing.
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I don't know if you agree, but kind of when you're in that state, is it almost hard to realize you're in that state because you're just trying to Yeah, like you said, put one foot in front of each other.
Yeah, definitely. And I think it's the classic frog in boiling water scenario. So if you put a frog straight into a pot of boiling water, they're going to jump out feel a crazy amount of shock. But if the frog is in the water to start with and then you turn the water up, it just gradually gets hotter and hotter, and then when it's boiling, they don't even
notice the extra shock. And I think that's what it's like, because if I woke up one day and I was perfectly healthy and had a huge amount of energy, and then the next day I woke up and felt like I'd been over by a truck, I would be thinking, Oh,
what's happened? This doesn't feel right, But it happens gradually, so you don't have that jolt where you realize things about It's just you were climatized to a new standard, and the longer it goes on, harder it becomes to even recognize that this is not It felt like your normal sustainable it did. It felt completely like my normal.
One of the things that I would say to people who might be experiencing burnout is if you're waking up every day and life is feeling really difficult, probably something needs to change. I was stuck in a place where I thought, I did know that life felt really difficult, but I sort of also thought maybe that was because I wasn't I was being My expectations of what a career might be were too high. You know that maybe I was being indulgent to think that there could be more.
But the truth is, my instinct was right. Something wasn't working for me. It was really difficult, And I think that if anyone is in that place, it is always worth looking around and considering what you might be able to do to change that up. And it doesn't have to be as dramatic as falling up and ending up in the psychiatric like I did. I mean, that's a
pretty effective way of jolting the system. But I just would want people to know they have permission to say if things are difficult, you don't have to stay there, as in, you don't have to stay in that difficult spot forget.
I love what you said about giving yourself permission because I remember when I worked corporate, and it's funny because I was quite stressed, I was quite intense, and again, it kind of just felt like my new normal because I had done my law degree, gone straight into it.
It kind of same as you.
And then me and my husband moved to the Gold Coast and I started working from home.
And it's funny because people who knew.
Me when I worked corporate and lived near the city and stuff, they then met me again and so saw me again. We're like, you're actually really chill, and I'm like, yeah, this is actually me normal, and it just that person felt like my normal. But again, like you said, every single day it did feel like a struggle. But I thought it was almost like, oh, this is what you do, this is what life is like.
And I had almost I think to be honest too, I almost like leaned into it. I was like, yeah, you know, like I'm a law Brad, this is yeah. You almost go like, this is what you do?
Yeah, really, it's a right.
And then I remember one day one hundred percent what you said about the permission thing, and I just remember thinking.
Does it have to be this way? Does life have to feel like this? Because I feel like I'm drowning.
And then I kind of just gave myself permission that, yeah, I did this six year law degree, but I don't have to use it right now. If I don't want to, I can, you know, go off and follow this other thing that's shining over here. So I definitely love what you said about that, definitely about giving yourself permission. Okay, so let's talk about your visit to the psychiatric hospital.
Can you tell us about what that felt like, first goal in and then kind of your experience there and the most valuable thing you learned during your time you had that?
I think you're in there for two weeks? Is that great?
So basically I ended up being admitted to a psychiatric hospital after I had spent four months at my parents' house. I was on leave without pay from the law firm. Obviously I'd been sick, my crones had got worse. And worse. I'd done eighteen months and then one night I fell over in my office with this vertigo attack, lost my balance, and that was sort of the beginning of the end
for me. That I ended up spending four months at home because I was seeing every doctor, every health professional, alternative medicine, anything to try and figure out what an earth was going wrong with me. But I felt horrendous and the crones I'd always been able to push through, but this dizziness and nausea I couldn't push through. And so that's why I did end up at home with Mum and Dad, unable to do anything, and I got
into a pretty bad state. And it was after four months of that that a physician who was in his seventies basically said to me, look, what's happening to you is real. These physical symptoms are real, but it's been caused by stress. Because I'd had MRIs, I'd had every scan non to man, every blood test, I had done, all these neurological assessments, there was nothing physically that could
explain why I had this horrendous vertigo. And when the physician said that, he said, I think we need to talk about anxiety and I think you probably need to spend some time in a psychiatric hospital. And when he said that, I felt relief. And that was quite a strange thing in itself, because four months earlier, if someone had suggested I even need to see a psychiatrist, I
would have been pretty horrified. But I had got myself to a point where I knew something was so wrong, And when he said this, something finally made sense, and I thought, maybe this is stress and anxiety and my body can't cope. So I tell you that because I think it's relevant to how my experience felt at the
psychiatr hospital. I think that if I'd gone to a psychiatry hospital the day after that very first vertigo attack, I don't think I would have had the results I had after spending four months desperately looking for an answer, because I was in the mindset where I really knew something had to change fundamentally. Even with that, though, even with this sort of sense of relief and hope that maybe this was the right place to go, arriving at
the hospital was really confronting. I went to a clinic near Kurumban on the Gold Coast, and my parents live in northern New South Wales, so they drove me there. It's about an hour and a half. I kept having to get Dad to pull over on the car right up there because I just felt like I was going to be sick. The whole time. I was really scared. And when we arrived, I mean, it's just it's just not on anyone's buck at least. I don't think to be driven to a psychiat to hospital by your parents
to be admitted. It's just certainly wasn't on mind, not when I was you know, I was twenty five at the time. It wasn't where I'd expected to be. And then when I first went inside the waiting room, it's, you know, it's all pretty sad. Everyone there is pretty much having the worst day of their life, even if whether they were the person like me being admitted or whether they were admitting someone they loved. And the facility that I was at, it's a private hospital, but it's
not glamorous. It is like no frills, very sad looking building, nothing luxurious about it. And I only say that because sometimes I think you say private hospital, people might think it's like some sort of glamorous retreat. This was not so. But there were people there with there were two wings either mood disorders, which I was in, so that was people with depression or anxiety or bipolar, and then there was the other wing was for drug and alcohol addictions.
So there was some mixture in the ages and sort of physical states of the people that were all being admitted, and you know, it was all quite surreal, and I think to get through that in my head, I sort of just was watching it as if it wasn't really happening to me. I kind of disassociated a little bit. I was just thinking, this is all very interesting. But then I ended up sharing a room with this lovely woman, Sue, who was in her early fifties and her two adult
daughters were admitting her and she'd had breast cancer. She'd been diagnosed with breast cancer two years earlier, and after having surgery and then chemo and radiation, her physical health had just really deteriorated to a point where she couldn't really function very well. But then she also had this anxiety come in, and then it was very difficult to know where the physical stopped and the mental started. So even though Sue and I were in quite different stages,
we had quite a similar story. In that we both lost our physical health and then simultaneously lost a totally lost balance of mental health. And so having Sue with me in the room was really lovely because it felt safe and it felt like she was my you know, we had each other yep. And from my understanding, there's no huge scientific process that they go through about who's in a room with each other. But I always felt I've sort of from the minute I met Sue that
we were there at the same time. I just thought, yes, I can do this because I've got a person here who I felt safe with. And I also you know, the funny thing was when Sue and I first chatted about what had happened and why we were there, my first instinct was to I had so much sympathy for her. She felt so guilty to her children for putting them through this, and she felt so guilty for not being able to cope, which were the things I felt as well.
You know, I felt guilty that my parents had worked so hard to give me this amazing education and opportunity to go to UNI, and I was somehow blowing it. But listening to Sue made me really reassess that and think, do you know what, I'm not doing this to make anyone's life difficult, like I'm not choosing this. But it was really it was actually kind of seeing my own experience reflected in Sue that for the first time I
was able to offer myself sympathy and empathy to her. Yeah, exactly, I'd met her for three minutes and I felt so much sympathy for her and wanted to reassure her that she had nothing to feel guilty about. And it did make me think, for the first time in my life, maybe I need to extend that sort of sympathy and emotion to myself. And so a couple of the things that were incredibly valuable about being at rehabit that was probably the biggest one was that offering myself the sort
of same kindness instead of judgment and almost hate. You know, that was a huge thing for me because I realized that I had been so unkind to myself for so long and it had altered, really it had broken me. I also learned that medication, if you need medication, is very good. I was put on medication almost as soon as I got there, and I didn't sort of, you know, go to sleep on the Sunday night and wake up on the Monday feeling amazing. But within a week I
did feel different. And I've stayed on the medication the whole time, and I have not had another episode of mental illness where I've needed to sort of go to hospital or anything like that. But I realized that medication is very helpful if you have anxiety like I did. And I also learned that there is there are professionals, you know. I worked with a psychologist every single day and we did, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy. We did all these practical exercises, and it just made me realize
that there were things I could change. I had sort of in my head thought, how would talking about anything help how I feel? But the truth is it does because you don't just talk about nothing. You've got a professional who guides you through a process of interrogating why is this your immediate mentor response to yourself when you're sick.
It's like, because what else would I say? So, well, maybe you could say, Georgie, this is unfortunate that you're feeling really sick, but that's what's happening, and you've got to just look after yourself. But those sorts of things. That was a huge, total paradigm shift for me. So I would say the sort of the power of medication, the power of professional help, and the power of kindness to yourself are probably the biggest lessons I learned.
That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.
My Plato, And so let's talk about what it was like after rehab. So, something that I loved in the book was you said that you started working out David Jones and then you went into journalism. But something I love that you touched on is you said the whole experience for going to work at David Jones was actually
one of the best things you could do. And you kind of explained that, you know, going from this corporate law degree, you could understand how people might have almost a bit of an ego going to a different French sort of job where didn't have that pressure of stress or anything like that. But tell us a little bit about that and why you thought it was actually such a good step.
Yeah, So, I think one of the critical things I learned in rehab was that you know that I had been stuck in that sort of paradigm of perfectionism and I was very reliant on external benchmarks, validation to validate myself, and basically my self worth was attached to those things. So working in a big corporate firm ticked a box that clearly meant that I was successful, because that was a good job in Comma's good job. And I really did realize that, actually, my value as a human being
isn't dependent upon the job I have. It's dependent upon who I am and how I live and what I do in a day and the friend I am, or the girlfriend that I am, or the daughter. You know, it's so much more than just a job. And it was sort of coming to that realization that actually, and also that there was not a job in the world that was worth my health for So after rehab, I
resigned from the law firm. I hadn't been there for a few months, but I basically just said, look, and I was really honest with them, and I said, this is what's happened. I right now can only do a job where I can look after my physical health and my mental health, and at the moment, I can't do that in corporate law. So I resigned, but I had sort of got physically a little bit back on my feet,
and so I moved back to Sydney. One of my relatives owns a fashion business and it was because of that that I got a job at David Jones selling clothes. And really, ultimately what I needed was to sort of gradually re enter the world. But I wasn't yet ready to commit to full time work, and so David Jones was perfect because it was casual hours, the shifts were different every week, and I started seeing a psychologist as soon as I got back to Sydney that we'd organize
through the clinic. That set me up with a woman down here who I absolutely adored, So I was seeing her every week. I was really taking care of myself, you know, actually, and I loved it. I was walking a lot, and swimming a lot, and doing yoga, and having spent four months unable to do anything, the thrill of just going for a swim was amazing and I loved it. So I did have this highly charged appreciation I think of the whole world. And the thing I loved about going to work was it felt so simple,
you know. I would hop on the bus or go into the city. I would do my shift. In my break, I might go downstairs with a book or I ended up spending quite a lot of money at either the David Jones food hall or buying clothes. So it wasn't like an economically great arrangement, but it was just such a lovely experience. And I knew that all that mattered was that I was living again and that I was taking care of myself. And so I ended up doing that for about six months before I felt ready to
kind of re enter full time work. But it was just such a lovely break from you know, work didn't need to be this incredibly stressful, awful, all consuming thing. It could just be a place I went to for a certain number of hours every week.
I love that.
And then you also then went on to do journalism, and like you said at the start, you do all these things, and would you say that journalism is very much a passion.
Yes. The business degree that I did was a communications degree, so I didn't do journalism, but I did communications because I had actually always wanted to be a journalist. But at UNI, I did law and communications, and I was actually much better at law than I was at communications, and I found law a lot easier. And so it sort of happened that that sort of made me think in my head or maybe I should consider law because
it's probably easier to get a job. And then when I did get I got clerkships in the corporate firms, and then I got a graduate offer, so it sort of seemed like an easier path. So I finished up at the law firm. I was working at David Jones, and when it was time for me to I was in a headspace that I was ready to commit to
full time work again. I started looking around and journalism was definitely on my radar because it was something that I'd always wanted to do, and I actually had even thought about maybe going to UTS and doing a master's of journalism or something like that. But I ended up a friend sort of called me one afternoon and he was like, BTW magazine is advertising for researchers and they they're going to employ six people on a three month contract to help compile the Rich two hundred, so the
list of the richest two hundred people in Australia. And it said, you know, you'll be working alongside journalists, you'd be in the newsroom, and I just thought, this is a perfect stepping stone for me. I'm going to apply for one of these, and they wanted people who were either current business students or recent business graduates. And I thought, well, look, I've got a business degree, and so I applied for
that and I got one. And on the first day, the new editor in chief took us, the researchers out for coffee and he sort of asked us our stories, and I said to him, look, I'm a qualified lawyer. I didn't say I've just been at a psychat hospital and had a total melt down, but I did say, you know, I've been qualified as a lawyer, but I'm
having a career change. I've always loved journalism, and I thought this would be a great position, and he was lovely, and I didn't really know whether he would take that seriously or not. But I spent the next few weeks sitting between two journalists and I just absolutely could not believe my luck that I was sitting there. You know, they would ring people and ask all the questions that
I would want to ask people. They'd go out and have lunch with people and do all these interviews, and I just thought this was the most magical place I'd ever been in my life. And then the editor in chief came over one afternoon and he said, you know, were you serious when you said you'd consider a career in journalism? And I said, so serious. I love this place.
And he sent me a few small writing tasks and then eventually I had an interview with the editor of the Financial Review and they put me on the graduate on their trainee program for and I became a legal reporter for be Able to be out after the three months was up of the research. The thing that I loved was that BLW wasn't like a no stress environment.
It wasn't like I turned up and there was you know, we had weekly deadlines, so it wasn't as stressful as the newspaper, but we still there was lots of work to do. There was a lot happening, So it wasn't a stress free environment. But I absolutely loved it and I didn't find it stressful. I didn't feel sick when I was there, and I just absolutely loved it. And I realized then that you know, and this is where
relativity it's so hard to know. So what I realized was that work didn't need to be really really stressful, and it didn't need to feel like every single day you were pushing struggle struggle up a hill. You know it was. I loved it, and I knew then there was this there was an alignment between my sort of interest and skill and passion, and it made work so much easier.
I love that.
And obviously that was such a journey to even find that interest, and you kind of just went for something and got a step in the door and then did that. And so I think that's really amazing too, because you know it's really you think, Okay, I've finished high school, I'll pick this career, that I'll be in it for the rest of my life, and it's just not like that. I think sometimes we can be super hard on ourselves that it should be like that, whereas it's just not.
So I love that.
I want to ask you a couple of last questions to wrap it up. So at the start, you've explained that you have three young daughters. Let's talk about you working, doing all the things, like you said, having a family. Do you struggle now with anxiety and stress and balancing, and what are your sort of tips for people that are in the same position.
For me, managing anxiety and yes, is going to be a work in progress. For the rest of my life. So I am wired towards anxiety. I'm still an excellent warrior. That's one of my key strengths. I can and will
worry about all sorts of things. But when I had my breakdown, I guess the way I look at my recovery is that I set about building infrastructure for myself to cope, and that meant things like having really good thinking patterns where I could influence that, and staying on medication and seeking professional help when I needed it, being
really conscious of my physical state. So after I came out of rehab, within a couple of months, virtually all of my Cron's symptoms disappeared, which is not uncommon for some of the medication that I was put on. The science isn't clear, but there's something to be said for calming the nervous system down and then that having a positive impact on crime's disease, and that appears to have
happened for me. So I started to enjoy a better version of physical health than I sort of ever had, which then also meant maintaining my mental health was a lot easier than it had been. I will always remain vigilant about my mental health. So if I feel like things are getting I still Obviously my life now is actually a lot more stressful than it probably ever has been, just in terms of having three kids, having the commitments that I do, having a husband who's got a very
very busy and demanding career. But I'm very good at checking in with myself and knowing when things are feeling. You know, is this just a stressful three days or
is this something bigger than that? And I'm not coping, And whenever I feel like it's bigger than just something that's happening over two or three days, I start to look at seeking help I find that really helps me and making sure I do those the things that you know, if we do have a really stressful period of time, like last year when my book launched, we had a couple of things happen all in quick succession that we couldn't change. You know, my husband had a huge exam
five days after my book was being published. There were all these things in the diary, and you know, being really conscious of the fact this is going to be a really intense period of time. I'm going to have to sleep well, I'm going to have to eat well, all those little things and also recognizing, Okay, this isn't forever. This is not going to be my physical state of stress for the next five years. It's just this is
going to be a super super busy six weeks. So I guess being really mindful and conscious of how I'm feeling and why I'm feeling that way is something that I do every day that helps me maintain the intensity. I suppose.
Yeah, I love that. It's kind of like the whole you know this, it's this season. Yeah yeah, making sure you get help. I personally see a psychologist and it was like the best thing I ever done.
So yeah, they're amazing, you know. And I still, even as someone who has personally had the benefit from that, so many times, I still in my head think, oh should I book that appointment?
Yeah, you do it.
Then you look the appointment, you come out, and you think, oh, my goodness, I'm so glad I did that.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing. One last question before you go. So something I ask all the guests, and I guess for you, it would be when you're writing and feeling that creativity, is there something that you do, like a ritual or something that gets you creative and gets you inspired or what do you do to find motivation to write or feel inspired?
I consider myself very, very lucky because I do have a career in journalism where I get to write about the stuff that genuinely gives me like I have a fire in my belly. I want things to be different for families in Australia. I want things to be better for women in Australia, and so I find it a lot of the time it's really easy for me to tap into inspiration because the things I care about deeply without even like, you know, it's not an effort for me to try and care about these issues I get
to write about. And so that means I very rarely sit down and don't feel inspired by something to write about. And I guess that's where being aligned with your purpose helps. And for me, I feel like that happened not by accident, but it's been a little bit of accident and a little bit of design that I've ended up in a place where I don't have to struggle for inspiration.
No, I love that it's perfect.
And so where can the listeners find you and your whack?
They can find me. So my book breaking Badly is available at all good bookstores and online at book Topia if you want. I also did record the audiobook at the end of last year, so that's available too if you like.
Yeah.
Yeah, see, I don't do audio books.
I love audio books. I're my favorite.
I love listening, especially when the author reads them. It's really I find it very I don't know, yeah, very good.
Yeah. Well, I've heard that from a lot of people, so I'm glad I did that. I am also pretty active on Twitter. My handle is Georgie Dent. I've got a Facebook page. I write for Women's Gender, I write for Murray Claire and I write for the Sydney Morning Herald on a Sunday.
Amazing Grace will put all those details in the show notes, so make sure you check that out.
But thank you so much for your time.
This has been amazing, Georgie, thanks so much for having me.
Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of the Rise and Conquer Podcast. Today's guest is author and journalist Georgie Dent. At age twenty four, Georgie Dent at the world at her feet. Also, it seemed she graduated university with flying colors, landed a job at a corporate law firm and moved in with her boyfriend. Everything looked picture perfect and she
had no reason to break, but she did. Within a year, Georgie was unemployed, back living with her parents, and suffering such crippling anxiety that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Fast forward to today, and Georgie has three beautiful girls. That boyfriend is now her husband, and now she is a journalist and author. Georgie wrote her breakdown in slow motion and how she rebuilt her life in her book
Breaking Badly. Her story provides an inspiring and raw recount that proves that not only is recovery from a mental health disorder possible, but so is rebuilding a beautiful life with a fulfilling career and loving family. Georgie is warm and so clever beyond words. I was so grateful she invited us into her home to record this episode, and I am so grateful to listen to her story and now share it with you. And that's a wrap on another episode of the Rise and Conquered podcast.
I hope you got.
Something valuable from it, and I want to say.
A big thank you for tuning in.
I really really do appreciate it. If you're craving more than don't, I've got you sorted. We have our very own Rise and Conquer Community Facebook group where hundreds of like minded women joined to share in on stories, ask advice, and everything in between.
I'd love for you to join us.
Just search Rise and Conquer Podcast Community or find the link in the show notes. And if you loved listening as much as I loved recording this episode, then please subscribe and leave a review. It really helps us out. And if you think of anyone who would benefit or enjoy this episode, please share it with them. You can also find more on Instagram at risinconcor dot podcast and more from me your hosts at Georgie Stevenson. Once again, guys,
thank you so much for tuning in. This is a totally independent podcast, so we really do appreciate every bit of support. Hope you guys have an amazing day or night whenever you're listening, and I'll talk to you soon. By contain by Contay shanty.
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