Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
28 Liz McConaghy: "You're not going to get more purpose than saving lives in Helmand".
WARNING: Listener discretion is advised. This episode discusses a suicide attempt.
Liz McConaghy was a former RAF loadmaster. Our latest episode unpacks raw and riveting transformation from ramps of a Chinook, to a beacon of hope as a mental health advocate.
Her journey, detailed in "Chinook Crew Chick" and echoed in her keynote speeches, reveals the grueling reality of physical injuries, the specter of PTSD, and the pursuit of new purpose post-service. Liz's story isn't just about survival; it's a testimony to the power of vulnerability in overcoming life's darkest moments and finding solidarity in shared struggles.
Grief and trauma can weave complex webs in our lives, but understanding how to navigate these challenges can illuminate pathways to healing. This episode doesn't shy away from exploring the intricate dance between professional duty and personal pain that Liz experienced within the RAF's stoic culture.
Liz emphasizes that resilience is not about being unbreakable; it's about growing stronger through setbacks and discovering that our worth extends far beyond our achievements.
Her message is clear: sharing our narratives can foster profound connections and serve as a catalyst for personal and collective growth. Prepare to be moved and motivated as we explore the profound impact that openness, self-care, and teamwork can have on our mental health and overall well-being.
https://www.chinookcrewchick.co.uk/
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Thank you. Welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership. Join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. Today, on Forging Resilience, we're joined by Liz McConnachie, the author of Chinook Crew Chick, an incredible book about her time as a loadmaster in the RAF, seeing numerous operational tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now she's putting her energy into keynote speaking and as a mental health ambassador. So, liz, welcome to our show.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me, Aaron.
Speaker 1:No worries, it's our pleasure, liz. So give us a bit of a I've done a really snapshot, bastardized introduction there, but give us a little bit of the of an overview of who you are and on what you're up to today, including a touching on your service there, and we'll dive into it from there.
Speaker 2:Cool. So, yeah, I grew up in Northern Ireland if you haven't already noticed from the accent and joined the Air Force on my 19th birthday and I had no background in the military whatsoever. It was all off the back of seeing a magazine with a picture of a helicopter on it and I went. That's what I want to do and, as you mentioned briefly there, I was very lucky. I went to Iraq. I joined a week after 9-11, so I was very lucky that I went to Iraq for two deployments quite early on in my career at 21. And then I did 10 au pairics in Afghan and again, I feel very lucky to have had that slice of time in my career, to have been able to go to those theaters and a huge amount of purpose you know that went with that.
Speaker 2:And then in 2019, sadly, a career on Chinooks is not kind on the body and after 3000 hours flying around on a essentially being shaken to death, my neck packed up. So I left in 2019 on a medical discharge, thought life was really good for a while. The bungee had been cut and I was out in the big city world and I think a lot of us can say you know great new adventures and actually that wasn't the case at all. And in 2020, when lockdown hit and the world got very quiet, and that's when the thoughts in my head got very, very loud and took a huge overdose. In 2020 I tried to end my life all in and around PTSD etc. And then thankfully survived and came out the other side of that, wrote the book and now, as, like you mentioned, I do keynote speaking after dinner, speaking all that kind of stuff in and around mental health, resilience, ptsd and, yeah, I'm very lucky I've got my purpose and passion back yeah, no good for you.
Speaker 1:There's so, so many things to. I love the way you just casually laid that out, but there's a million and one things there would that we could dive into. But I think the first thing that jumped straight out of me is you said you got medically discharged because of all the the neck but I, which stems from the neck injury.
Speaker 2:But how much do you think of that was just a some sort of trauma manifesting itself through through the neck but that that is what you picked up on do you know, I've only only maybe in the last year or so, whilst I've been going through a lot my PTSD kind of counseling and talking to more people, because the the places I go and visit now and people like yourself I speak to on a regular basis. I understand that concept of chronic pain, ptsd and trauma mentally manifesting as a physical pain. I'd never even heard of that concept before and I do think there is probably some element in that. You know, I certainly even now.
Speaker 2:I know that my neck still flares up when I'm feeling particularly tense and it's not an injury you would. Normally it's not like shoulder shrugging or anything like that. It's a pure neck injury at the back of my neck. But I feel it more intensely when I am in, I guess, low mood and I guess it comes with everything you know. Whenever you're fit, healthy, life is good, it's sunny in the summer we don't feel the same aches and pains as we do whenever you're mentally not on form. So I do think there's a very, very strong link there.
Speaker 1:You're right yeah, in terms of you trying to take your life back in 2019. I was listening to you speak about the other day the people that you loved and that were close to you, although you felt really on your own, seeing your brother's face and avoiding the conversation with your mum, in terms of of you're not being ready to speak to her yet it's such an isolating thing to have to try and manage that on your own.
Speaker 2:All those pressures and traumas yeah, so the the overdose itself. I mean that day I woke up and felt, um, almost like I've been body snatched by the grim reaper. That day it was all due to the drug I've been taking called amitriptyline, which is a nerve blocker for the neck pain that I'd been having. So this drug definitely had a case, you know, had a moment towards the overdose and I remember thinking at the time you know it was all of the overdose was attributable to this amitriptyline. But the truth is amitriplet and had just tiptoed into my brain and unlocked the Pandora's box of everything that was going on and amplified those very dark thoughts I was already having in around a lot of the stuff we'd done on MERT in Afghanistan and a lot of stuff coming out the back of.
Speaker 1:What were those? What? Could you give us a little insight of some of those dark thoughts? If that's, if that's OK, yeah no, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:I think there is. You know, you hear of lots of PTSD, of people feeling like they they didn't do enough or they, um, they could have saved someone's life, and you also have a thing called survivor's guilt as well, which I'd heard loads about. You've got a couple of mates who, you know, gave up their seat to a soldier and a soldier got shot in their seat. Mine was none of that. You know, I never felt like we could have done more to save people. I always felt like we'd done the most. But I had this overwhelming sensation of loss, and I think at the time it's possibly because my ex-husband was also serving in the military. So I had seen the effect of that loss on a lot of girlfriends in that kind of forum, but I also so it wasn't just someone who was serving in a uniform, I was also girlfriend off someone serving in a uniform. So I think a lot of the um, a lot of the guys that we picked up on merch, certainly I always used to think, well, what this is me someday getting that phone call. And whenever 2020 hit and that's when I say these thoughts started to get really loud I found myself one night looking up a lot of the soldiers that we picked up on merch, who had never survived in the back of the aircraft, who had died literally at my feet. And it's something that we'd never done before on that duty. We'd never really personalised the body bags. It was just a body bag, a very precious piece of freight that we had to get back to Camp Bastion.
Speaker 2:And here I am a couple of years later, you know, looking at them up. You know, had my logbooks out, was Googling the names and some of them were, you know, fathers, sons. One had proposed his fiancee before he'd gone out to Herrick and hadn't made it home, so all of those red flags were absolutely flying at that point, um, in terms of where my thought processes were going, and I really developed insomnia, and I think the insomnia was kind of it. It manifested because of the lack of routine that we all had in Herrick, or sorry, in Covid, I think, but mine specifically, every time I put my head in the pillow it felt like a marble had dislodged itself and was just bouncing around in my brain without any pattern of thought. There was no common theme to the things that were keeping me awake at night, but I'd find myself lying there thinking about weapon drills, stoppage drills and the minigun that we used to carry in the aircraft and going through emergency evacuation drills and replaying some of the merch out in my head, not with a view to doing them any better, but they were just there like on a tape, constantly going through my brain.
Speaker 2:So, again, I kind of knew I was in a really bad way. But, um, as you mentioned there, I didn't reach out to help for anyone and I think you know, looking back, how, why did I not do that? And I think it's because I just didn't want to be that burden and I think, being a female in a very male-dominated world, although I was never made to feel like the weaker sex in any way, shape or form, the tunic force is incredible for that, I have to say, and I think the forces as a whole is an extremely equal opportunities employer. It's always been, you know, one team, one goal, there's no gender pay gap and the forces were all in it together, which I think is a really important message for people.
Speaker 2:But you know, I was never singled out to be a burden or a weaker sex. But I didn't. I think I put that pressure on myself. I didn't want to be the girl crying around the back of the tent or anything like that. And you know, I think, just as in general us forces people, you know we do still see weakness as a sign of failure and you don't want to ask for help. None of us do, and and usually until it's too late. So I never reached out for help. And then it was the um. Yeah, the middle of august I took a massive overdose um 95 amitriptyline.
Speaker 1:So I was very lucky to survive yeah, yeah, have you heard of the book? Uh, the body keeps the score I have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a few people have mentioned to me I haven't read it.
Speaker 1:I've read it. It's quite a. I think I mentioned this in the last podcast as well, but it's quite a struggle for me to read. But what, what, what I can correlate between what I've read there and what you're saying is it sounds to me like you were grieving at some sort of level for the the people that you had, um, witnessed lose their life whilst you were working, plus supporting your partner, who's obviously grieving at some level and the accumulation of that, that, that and stress, without the capability to process yeah is one of one of the many factors that led you to you're so right
Speaker 2:at that moment you're so right because, essentially, the time it came to lockdown, I was grieving a marriage, because my marriage had broken down. I was grieving a job that I'd loved and it was all taken away from me almost in a matter of months.
Speaker 2:So I was grieving those two huge things in life. I'd lost an extremely good friend, who's another female colleague, and then she was forced to cancer and had not dealt with that. I know, looking back now, that I'd done the classic keep busy, don't really process it moment. So I was grieving all of those things, but underneath all that was grieving every single soldier that we picked up who died. So you're right, it was a huge pot of grief that I'd never really emptied in any way, shape or form. And grief does come in very different ways, doesn't it? You know it's not just necessarily losing a person, it's losing a house, losing some friends through a divorce, all those things that go with it.
Speaker 1:So, um, grief was definitely one of the underlying factors I think I hadn't dealt with very well well, what do you think your intention was in terms of looking back through those log books and googling those names? Which is trying to get to there, liz, do you think?
Speaker 2:I think, some sort of closure. I think, um, almost, you know I had seen all of those bodies and never, really I'd never felt again come back to that grief thing. I'd never grieved for them at the time because we had a job to do. You know some of my busiest day on work. We had 16, nine liners, which is the merch out back to back, and we were going and getting, getting bringing them back in, and the darkest day I picked up five of the rifles all in one sitting who'd all been killed.
Speaker 2:So you can't process that at the time because the next day you're doing the same thing and the next six months later you're back in Herrick doing the same thing again, as I went 10 times in the end. So stopping to sit and think about those, that grief was not an option because that would have prevented us to be able to go back in and do more. So I think that's maybe when I started to process it. Really it was like I finally had time to go through it all and start to process it and allow myself to start to feel emotions about it. And I think we're all very wary about letting ourselves feel emotional about something, because it's a tap that when you open, it's extremely difficult to turn off and I think you can get quite overwhelmed quite quickly, which is absolutely what happened to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, such an interesting one because, as you know, yeah, when we do turn that tap or when we do open that, as long as it's constructive and within the right environment and space, it's very beneficial. Because for me personally, my things that I've processed, it's only been like, as I describe it, a dull disappointment in myself that I've carried, disappointment in myself that I've carried. But releasing that, whilst it is not something I'd like to do in public, because it's a lot of release of energy, emotion, emotion, once it was done it's like a weight off, and mine's not the extreme and I'm not trying to compare here, but what I'm saying is that we're not taught and nor is it encouraged. And so my question to you is did you see an evolution of those sorts of debriefs or during those tools to give people the opportunity or the tools to process what they'd seen or been through? Did that, did that develop?
Speaker 2:there. What so there in terms of development of um PTSD awareness, I think, as we went on through the Herrick era, it we, we then got decompression. So decompression didn't exist in the early Herrick's and it was almost like the horse had bolted by the time. The old two days at Cyprus drinking warm beer and having a chat in a cinema with a pod racer at the front going. If you find yourself drinking too much when you get back you know it was not enough in terms of it came too late and I don't think it was fit for purpose.
Speaker 2:I've been being honest. I felt like very much it was a box ticking exercise. We had trim, of course. That came in again. That came in about halfway through Herrick and it was a peer-to-peer thing. But it was almost like you were encouraged to ask your mates if they were okay but you weren't given the tools to cope with what if the answer is no. So it was like a half-arsed effort of trying to kind of look after people and I think the forces as a whole were extremely poor at managing the truck. I don't think anyone knew what was going to happen when we went to Herrick. I think Herrick as itself evolved very rapidly and went downhill very, very quickly, and I think none of us expected to see the loss and the trauma and the carnage that Herrick then became.
Speaker 2:So it caught everyone out, if I'm being honest yeah but in terms of a personal journey, you know I was never able to talk about thoughts and feelings. You know, even being a female which I think is widely thought that women are better at talking about emotions, and you know having a glass of wine and crying with their friends. I was in a very male dominated world, so I just didn't have that emotional intelligence or capability, didn't have the tools in the box to kind of verbalize any of the things I was feeling. And the truth is, at the time time I wasn't feeling them because I'd squashed them so deep inside. Yeah, and then, after the overdose, I went to my first um counseling sessions with PTSD resolutions and again I just could not get anything out. I would just, I remember sitting in this woman's front living room and driving home and just crying the whole way home in the car and just not being able to process or verbalize any of the things I was thinking. And about six weeks into that I actually changed to a different counselor with Help for Heroes and every time I logged onto my Zoom calls with her I'd be in tears within two or three minutes. She maybe only even had to ask one thing, which is how are you doing this week, liz and I would just start to cry, and that, to me, felt the right way around. I was in a safe environment, I was able to let the emotion out, and I always use the analogy you know, you don't run and fall and cut your knee and not expect it to bleed. It's the body's response to that trauma. But yet why are we so good at stifling tears when that is the body's natural response to trauma? But we've, all you know, got very, very good at keep the tears back in. So I do think, on a personal journey, I've become much better, and even in terms of verbalizing, talking about the overdose, talking about my trauma, I started on the speaking circuit about a year and a bit ago and found myself, you know, very quickly in a mental hole again because I was re-traumatizing myself every time I recalled the story.
Speaker 2:I also found I was breaking down a lot on stage, depending on the audience, if it was something completely close to home and it would be different things that would pull on the heartstrings. But the odd time it was an audience that just struck a different chord, I'd find myself very, very emotional on stage or on camera. But as the time's gone on I've found more tools, more words to express my thoughts and feelings, so that's kind of improved. But I think just in terms of you know my I guess emotional awareness has got so much better. So I know when I need to pull back a bit from exposing myself to certain things and when I'm in a good way and I find it quite cathartic. So but that has been in itself quite a personal journey yeah, but it has, and it's completely understandable, isn't it?
Speaker 1:if you understand, if you remember that the brain doesn't know the difference between something vividly imagined and something real. So, yeah, when we, I guess, when you get into certain details or go back into that in your mind, your brain doesn't know the difference and it can really normally and rightly so trigger. That, it's just an incredible muscle, the brain.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, whenever I started writing the book, for example, and lots of people said to me afterwards like how did you remember all those stories there's from basic training? And at the time I couldn't. So I started writing the book, for example, and lots of people said to me afterwards, like how did you remember all those stories, liz, from basic training? And at the time I couldn't. So I started writing the book as a very cathartic thing, mostly about my time in Herrick. That I did remember and it was very, I'd say, two-dimensional. You know, it was just, you know, a couple of stories I'd remember and the general overview of my career. But then as I started to write more and more about it's like you exercise your memory part of your brain and things were coming back really quickly and you know I kept revisiting it. It's certainly during the editing process many like about a year later and more and more stuff was just coming back to the forefront of my brain. So your brain is very clever at erasing and blocking out the things it doesn't want to remember.
Speaker 1:But equally, you know, it's good at exercising those things when you do want to bring them back, yeah. Or forcing us to, to take it to, to deal with them, because we, we're trying to limit ourselves.
Speaker 2:It's forcing us to take action and there's this, this, this straw, that well, I wonder you know with covid, if, if covid hadn't happened, whether or not I would have got to my point of meltdown. Or if, if the world had stayed busy and I'd kept all my coping mechanisms, which were staying busy, lots of running, I did, a lot of running to empty the bucket. I think it's fair to say most of us do some form of exercises as veterans or military, to kind of exercise the demons, I guess. And that was gone. And I wonder, if that hadn't happened, if COVID had never hit, whether or not I'd still be a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, or whether or not I would maybe just go around life forever with that big Pandora's box in the back of the brain. I hate that term, it's not that it's not the right term, but with those memories somewhere at the back, um, you know, and I would just quite happily cope with with it for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:But you know, my personal opinion is with, in terms of my story and feeling like a failure, especially in in a contact when I was in the military, it was, um, yeah, I could have probably lived with that, but it wasn't repeated trauma, trauma, trauma. You know, it was just like a dull disappointment. But what I do see, both in myself and lots of my clients, is that one day something will happen that that will force us to to look at things. So, if we imagine that you carried on running and running, then injury, if, if, if, if your sport got taken away from you, it probably just prolonged it and we get again. But it comes back to, to, to.
Speaker 1:We're not just taught these things at school, but we're not taught these things at home either how to process a feeling. It's okay to feel a, b and c and this is how this is what it is, this is what it's there for and this is how you manage it. You don't have to eliminate it. And I like I explained a lot to my clients is, if something happens because trauma it can be with a capital t or the normal small t in terms of just getting called a name in the playground but carrying that and then living into that for the rest of your life, albeit subconsciously, like the water or like a balloon or a beach ball getting held underneath the swimming pool. We don't want to feel it, we don't want anyone to see it, so we just hold it down, but that takes effort and it's tiring.
Speaker 1:And then the next thing, the next shit bomb arrives in your lap and now you've got two, so something's going to explode back up. Rather than feel that discomfort of it, having it near, processing it when the time's right with the right people, and moving on, we stay inevitably. At least I found my mind stuck next to it because I was on repeat, on repeat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on repeat you're right about processing at the time, when the time's right. You know, there's no way I could have processed that stuff while I was still doing the job and that brought me into the coping mechanisms. But I think coping mechanisms is a really interesting thing because mine was running. But when does the coping mechanism become really toxic and destructive? You know, there's a point where I was running my entire body into the ground because I was having to run further. You know, when I joined the ref I could barely run a mile and a half and by the end of it I was running like 10 miles every day. And coming back to what you said, the days I didn't run it made me very agitated, and that's a known thing.
Speaker 2:You know, people who are addicted to training will say if they miss a day in the gym, they're like an angry bear. And it's very prevalent in the military world and I think we put that down too because we're such routine people. But I actually don't think it is. I think it's because a lot of us use training as a coping mechanism. So as soon as we miss a day of the coping mechanism, that's when the other stuff starts to build up a bit more and we get very agitated, very short-tempered, it's not necessarily because we've missed a day of our routine, it's because the coping mechanism's kind of gone a bit and the other stuff starts to surface and it is, you know, even the keeping busy thing.
Speaker 2:I know people veterans who literally cannot sit. Still, they can't just sit in their thoughts for a day. I'm probably quite guilty of this myself. The busier I can be, the better, and every unit of time the day needs to be filled doing something productive, otherwise you've let yourself down, you haven't been, you know, a good member of the team for the day or you haven't had a bit of purpose.
Speaker 1:And sitting with your own thoughts is the most uncomfortable thing I've ever had learned to do, and I think that's where a lot of us military are still not very good at that yeah, and I've had some great conversations with people about this and it's because you, you need to operate in a certain level of, uh, fight or flight when you're doing the job that you did because, literally, you, you need that response that the the problem arises when we don't know how to turn it off or turn it down or release it. So, instead of it after being after six months, we'll we'll kick it down the road and it'll end up being after 22 years and it'll be on the body's terms, not on our terms, and that's when, yeah, I guess that the problems arise. Um, in terms of your, your own therapy. You'd have to go into depth here, but what's some of the things that you've learned about yourself, liz, through therapy?
Speaker 2:so I I'm definitely in terms of lessons I learned. You know I look back at the liz of old versus liz today. I'm definitely more emotionally aware, I am softer on the edges, I think before I was quite hardened person, probably again because of the job that I did. But you know, I looked at some of the female crewmen that were coming behind me in my wake and I was kind of their instructor and I wasn't necessarily the person they would come to for, like to ask a question. You know, I like to think that I was setting a really great example of how to do my job and people still say oh Liz, you were so inspirational doing your job all those years.
Speaker 2:But I think actually I was almost too perfect because everything had to be perfect, I had to be quite hard-nosed and I wasn't. You know, I was infallible. I never admitted failure and almost because I wouldn't let myself fail, I was so stead set on making everything perfect. Hence, again, coming back to the running thing. I would always want to, always, and I'm not very competitive, but there was a personal pride thing where I want to be able to run as fast as the guy. So I wasn't that burden and so I was almost on. I felt quite unbreakable looking back and I now know, since the whole overdose and the things I've learned since then, like the true meaning of resilience and it's the favorite word we love, but I obviously the name never heard of it we love finding that word about, don't we?
Speaker 2:and I think I had misunderstood the meaning of resilience my entire RF career I thought, you know, when I was putting my report every year from the boss for the promotions it was, like you know, sergeant McConnachie, so resilient, black Sergeant McConnachie, so resilient I thought it meant unbreakable and therefore I'd keep going, I'd keep doing more, I'd take on extra stuff because I wore, like a badge of honor, this unbreakable status. And that's not what resilience is at all. It's about bending, breaking, falling over and using those failures to learn the lessons that you do learn so much more from failure than you do from success. But to use those failures and come back stronger, using them to bolt on your armor for the next battle. And I think I've learned more in the last four years than I ever did in my 17 in the RAF. Definitely, um, because I am more emotionally aware now.
Speaker 2:I have a better way of verbalizing my, my trauma, and I think my, my greatest asset now is spotting in other people. You know I can absolutely see when someone else is treading that same similar path that I went down, um, because you can pick up the signs very quickly. You know when someone else is treading that same, similar path that I went down um, because you can pick up the signs very quickly. You know, when someone's um behavior shift 180, that's a very obvious sign that they're struggling and we used to pick it up.
Speaker 2:You know, coming back from Herrick, someone who was always the first down the pub suddenly wouldn't want to come out to the pub or the gym bunny stopped going to the gym. Even on my own story, you know I'd stop running completely. Much of that was to do with COVID. But even when COVID lifted after the first lockdown, I just had stopped loving all the things I used to love and I would withdraw from social situations. I used to go to the opening of an envelope as long as it was free Prosecco and then I would not go to anything and I'd constantly make excuses to pull out of stuff. And I think you know I spot, I can see those behaviors very obviously now but nobody could pick them up on me because it was locked down. And I think you know I'm much more aware of them now with a lot of my mates and just even people I meet at talks and things like that. I'm just um, it's a good, it's a good skill to have, I guess yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:And something that's come to me there which I've connected and I'd just like to ask you about and especially with the running again, because I recognize it myself, because I see it in others as well is we put the or we make the mistake that we're valued by what we do, not who we are. So if I can get this promotion, do this job, pass this course, run this far, this fast, then I'm valued and then I can value myself. So if we don't have that, what's there to value us?
Speaker 2:No, I totally believe in that. You know, I've don't have that. What's there to value us now? Oh, I totally believe in that. You know I um, I've done a lot of stuff in the last year called compassionate therapy, and compassionate therapy is that, you know, being able to sit and go. I'm a good person inside. I don't need to have done this or done that to be, you know, valued by friends or for any kind of gratification or professional status, and it's something I'm still working on. I wouldn't say I've got it cracked at all, you know, case in point, I used to go to the swimming pool every day.
Speaker 2:I swim every day and I'd go to the pool and I'd do a 90 minute swim again. It comes back to that classic coping mechanism and my therapist is like, well, is there a jacuzzi or a sauna and stuff at this pool? And I was like, yeah, they were like have you ever been in them? Well, no, because that's a waste of time. And the idea of sitting in a jacuzzi or the sauna steam room is, you know, 15 minutes wasted time where I could be thrashing myself in the pool. And I think, again, the veteran community are really bad at that.
Speaker 2:The military people. You know we don't go and sit in a sauna or we don't book a spa weekend or we don't just do stuff that's nice for us because it doesn't give that value. And that value that we hold so dear is that, you know, gratification from achieving something running further, all that kind of stuff. So I think you know I thought the uniform defined me my entire career. I thought I was Liz McConaughey because I was in the RAF and actually it, or because I was a crewman specifically. But it's not the uniform that defines you, you define the uniform and it took me a long time to understand that. Whenever I came out that you know it was, it was who I was, a person, the fiber of me that made me so successful in that role yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:I guess that's what was highlighted to you and and and led you to that day in in august in 2019 the lack of purpose and awareness and yeah, you know, I think purpose I talk a lot on my talks about purpose, passionate identity and those are the three things that the RAF gave me in Bucket Loads and I mean you're not going to get more purpose than saving lives in Helmand. And in terms of identity, being a student at Cromwell was great, certainly, being one of the only females, I was a bit of a rock star at the time. Everyone knew who I was and that was all gone. No-transcript thing. You need to identify. I think you need to know why, when you look in the mirror in the morning, you need to know why you're getting going to work, why you're doing what you're doing. And it might be different for some people it might be money, some people might be their family and some people might be helping people.
Speaker 2:And I absolutely know from, I guess, looking back at my career path and looking back at when it was taken away from me, that my purpose in life is helping others and making a difference to people. And I don't mean in some kind of Mother Teresa way, but I think you know, breaking it down to the very simple thing of to serve. And us that are forces, people, nhs fire service, any of the blue lights. You know we don't do it for the money, do we? It's fair to say, nor indeed really the lifestyle. I think we all do it because there's something inside us that is wants to serve and to make a difference, and that doesn't go away when you take the uniform off. That was still inside you. So I know that my purpose is definitely to serve people and to help other people and I've got it back now since the book came out and I think you know the book was written in 2021.
Speaker 2:And then it didn't actually hit the streets until 2022. And I still find that year before it actually hit the streets very difficult. I was going through my counselling. It had been over a year since the overdose, but I think I still didn't have that purpose back. You know of years since the overdose, but I think I still didn't have that purpose back. You know I still just, you know I've got a bit coming out, liz. I was working for a drone company, I don't. You know life in general. The wheels were back on, but I just didn't have that purpose back again. I didn't really know who I was and what I was doing here on this little blue planet, and I think I've got it back now in helping others.
Speaker 1:I think what's interesting for me listening you say that is that that purpose has always been there, that you just might not have seen it again or not.
Speaker 2:It wasn't in your focus or your yeah straight in front of you and that's why covid, I think, was so hard for many. You know, as soon as covid hit, I volunteered to op react at the time, uh, which is run by, I think, an ex shaky potential I can't remember our next navy guy, but there was op react going on. There was lots of stuff in and around helping getting the vaccines up and ready, and I ended up helping out with a 3D printing company doing visors for NHS staff and healthcare workers because I just needed something. I was like scrabbling around, just going somebody give me something to do because I felt so, so redundant. And then, when that was switched off at one point because the the print 3d visor thing, um, overnight Boris Johnson decided that actually you're not allowed to do that and it has to all come through the chains. Um, that that's when, again, I started to really fall down again. So, yeah, I think it's key for all of us. You need to know why you're getting up in the morning, don't you?
Speaker 1:and it can be money.
Speaker 2:you know being motivated by money is not wrong. As long as you're aware of it, that's absolutely fine. You know, work the overtime, do the weekend shifts, do whatever you want, because if money motivates you, that is absolutely fine, but you have to be aware of it and also not judge people that aren't motivated by money or vice versa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so is there anything you could sort of like do or that you do yourself on those days when you do struggle to remember, uh, why you're here, or in terms of no struggle to get out of better things, better said. You know, you mentioned it's one of the things you talk about in your speech but what's something we could do to lean into that? Then, for those that are us that don't necessarily think we've found our purpose or can see it we don't really feel that drive I think, um, what I do not.
Speaker 2:Well, coming back to the just getting out of bed thing, I still have days that really I really really struggle and I often look back to see has it been some kind of trigger on tv or has it been something I've someone has spoken to about a story or talk I've done? That's kind of triggered me again. But truth is, some days we just hit that bigger wave, knocks us off the surfboard and you know I'm definitely better getting on the surfboard now, so to speak. But, um, you know there was days for weeks on end I used to be drowning and now I'm better at swimming, getting back on pretty quick.
Speaker 2:But I think I can't underestimate the value of movement for mental health. I don't run like I used to anymore, but I get out and I talk to friends and I I think I genuinely think a problem shared is a problem halved. It's the oldest thing in the book, but it's so true. If you can talk your through your problems, then it does definitely help you soundboard them off other people. But I think I found now, but the more vulnerability I show to people, the more opens that door for them to walk through and share their vulnerability.
Speaker 2:You know there's a very different thing between saying, um, I understand where you're coming from, I'm struggling too, would you like to talk? Than saying, yeah, mate, come and chat to me anytime you want. I've always got an ear for you because that doesn't necessarily mean you're vulnerable to someone. It doesn't necessarily. You know, you still might have all your shit together, which doesn't necessarily encourage someone to come and talk to you. But if you share a little bit of vulnerability, then you humanise yourself and then someone will more than likely come and speak to you. In terms of leaning in to try and find your purpose, I guess you just need to, you know, look at your day to day things and look at the things that genuinely make you feel not fuzzy inside but light a fire inside you.
Speaker 2:And you know, it's fair to say, we've all had moments in life where something sparked something inside us and sometimes again coming back to it.
Speaker 2:We're all too quick to kind of push those aside and maybe follow a different dream or follow something our parents have pushed us into, or follow what we should be doing, or again following money if that's not your motivator. And you know, one of my biggest regrets in my career is after I came out of the forces. I actually took a job with a really great company, very well paid, and it was in the simulator at Odium, the Chinook simulator. The money was incredible but it wasn't my thing and within weeks I realized how unhappy I was there and actually walked away from that job very quickly because I realized it wasn't my purpose. So if you can find your purpose or you have an inkling what it is, you know, absolutely nurture it. You know, don't push it aside because if you do, you'll never ever find true happiness I don't think or true fulfillment in what you're doing what relates to that for me is that that thing, it's not the it's not the thing, it's the it's one level underneath, so it's not necessarily the money, it's the freedom.
Speaker 1:It's not necessarily the serve or helping. People are serving on the back of shunix. It's helping people wherever, but we sometimes assume there's only one way to do it. But really there's lots of avenues where we can absolutely lean into that. Well, what? What are some of the other key messages you that give to people in your keynote speeches?
Speaker 2:and so, um, and the two things I always give them as a takeaway when I leave is um, you know that year 2020, I was absolutely on that river of depression, it's fair to say. I mean, you can call it what you want. You can call it PTSD, depression, whatever complex trauma. There was a lot going on. It's like a bowl of spaghetti. I call it whenever I've been doing counselling. But, um, I was on that river for the whole year, ups and downs and in really quite you know low places, and a few people knew that I wasn't quite so great not everyone, because Facebook is wonderful thing, you can plaster life's great all over it and very few people knew how bad I was in the background.
Speaker 2:But the odd person who has asked me twice you know some people go how are you doing, liz? And I'd say absolutely great, what about you? How's lockdown going? How are the kids? And you get the spotlight off you straight away and I think we're all very guilty crumbling inside. You don't want to talk about it. You will do anything to get that spotlight off you rather than someone start digging in under the skin. But the odd person asked me a second time how are you doing really it was enough to crack the eggshell a bit. You know, I think the forces are very good at hard boiling us as eggs, but they never reverse that process. So we're all hard boiled inside. But someone cracking the eggshell at the odd time was just enough to make me leak out a bit of emotion.
Speaker 2:And I think I didn't realize, on that river of depression, how quick the overdose was coming and I went over it in 12 hours. I basically woke up one morning and by midnight that night I'd taken 95 amitriptyline. So it happened that quickly. I had gone into the departure lines of life, I had my donut at the top of the water slide and I was just going downhill that day and it was too late at that point for anyone to stop me. I joke that even if Daniel Craig had come on for dinner I was still doing what I was doing. I was absolutely mission focused. So I was a very dangerous place to be.
Speaker 2:You have to get to someone before they get to that point. So I always tell people to ask twice If you have any of your friends. I think it's fair to say we all have that one friend. I don't think I was that friend for many people. They all thought life was great. But ask them twice.
Speaker 2:And the second thing I now do is give my mental health a number out of 10, because I think it's so much easier for all of us to say I'm a three out of 10 today than use the words I'm struggling or I'm really not good today. And it's twofold really, because it means I can monitor my own mental health so much better. So if I'm nine out of ten, they don't have to worry about Liz this week, but if I'm loitering around the three, four mark, they keep a little bit of a closer eye on me and just bell up the odd time or pop in. But you have to be authentic with it. There's just no point in lying about it.
Speaker 2:And I think you know it's a really good system to use with kids, colleagues, you know, family sit at the dinner table at night time and just go. What's everyone's number tonight or at the end of the week, you know, put it on the bottom of your emails and if you're in a company, but I think you know or down the pub on a friday night at five o'clock, just what's your number, because it's such a simple little way just to kind of gauge who's good or who's not good. You don't have to explain why you just stay on my team.
Speaker 2:I don't want to talk about it, but just, and then people know to keep an eye on you, yeah, and from the outside looking in, then if we're, if we're trying to support people, make some friends, and we potentially are worried about what some of the things we can do or maybe that would have been beneficial for you to to have when you're in the lead up to that- yeah, I think I needed someone to tell me they were struggling because I coming back to that purpose thing I felt like if I had had someone who opened up to me and said I'm really struggling, then it would have a made me feel less like I was the only one who was going through this, but it also would have given me that one little thing that I needed to get out of bed every morning for because I've got to go and help them or I've got to get them through. It comes back to like training training, you know, in the gym if you've got a buddy buddy, you don't let them down because you're both going. And I think if I'd have had that one person who had said I'm really struggling, then it would have given me that like, okay, let's, I'll get out of bed so I can come and get you out of bed, type thing. And I didn't. You know, I think we were all struggling, but it was almost like unanimously unspoken about, so nobody actually put their hands up and went.
Speaker 2:I'm finding this really, really tough and lockdown was such a funny time for some people, because some people absolutely had the best lockdown of their lives. You know, I had a friend who did a little bit of training, lockdown hit and she just went into super drive when it came to boxing training and lost, you know, three stone and just had the lockdown of her life. I had the opposite, you know, I'd gone from basically doing Ironman, triathlons and running and cycling every day to just doing nothing. So it was such a strange, strange experience for so many of us.
Speaker 2:But I think I never had that one person who said I'm really struggling. And I have to say, even looking back in the last two years, potentially, I have found, even when I'm heading towards a bit of a dip, if I've had the odd friend who's reached out to me and said, liz, I'm really struggling. And I've had one friend since then who's tried to take an overdose and another person who just contacted me randomly on LinkedIn who was in a pretty poor way, but it somehow pulls me out of my hole and makes me want to help them again. So I think, you know, because we're gregarious, we're humans there's, you know, we, we thrive by helping each other's. We're pack animals, aren't we?
Speaker 1:so I think that's quite, quite important. It's really interesting, isn't it? It comes back to what you're saying earlier about being a bit open and vulnerable to maybe not necessarily where our heart on our sleeves, but actually explain again to the right people at the right time how we're really feeling, how we're really doing.
Speaker 1:Um yeah, and if yeah, providing that, and like you said, that you never know, because vulnerability has been described to me as like, like it's like a 20-ton shield, as the last episode it's brennan brown. It's like a 20-ton shield, you, that we carry around but obviously we get really tired and it's just a blocker between us and we assume nobody else is suffering from like we are. Then there's the added judgment, the shame and all that other good stuff which makes it so hard to relate to each other.
Speaker 2:Then yeah, but you learn so much from I mean, go back to a very simple example microsoft spreadsheets, which honestly bring me out in a cold sweat. I'd much rather get shot at in helmand than do a Microsoft spreadsheet. But if you're sat at your desk and you're doing something at work and you just can't get your head around it, how many people sit there in silence and just tap away going? I have really no idea what I'm doing. But if the person next to you goes, I have absolutely no idea. Do you know what you're doing? Because I've got no idea what.
Speaker 2:Suddenly you're in it together, you're solving the problem together. You go, well, I tried this and this did work, but that didn't work. And suddenly you're. You know it can be an exam or it can be anything, but you know as soon as you break down the fact that you are struggling, you're suddenly in it as a team, together trying to problem solve. And then you learn and you move forward and you progress and you probably achieve an end goal. And that's from a very simple thing like a Microsoftrosoft spreadsheet, which is my nemesis. But it could be anything. But how you know the second someone beside you sits and goes oh my god, I've got no idea what I'm doing, or I'm really struggling. Suddenly the flood gets open and I think you know you amplify that throughout life and and we all realize that we will always achieve more if we do it together than trying to fight it on our own with our big shields, like you mentioned yeah, and again, just zooming out a little bit.
Speaker 1:Remember we're not the only ones in this planet and there's no one went to zoom it out and getting overwhelmed by everything's going on and zoom right back down and look after ourself first, but also, like you said, to realize we're not alone, there's other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and someone said to me you know, your mess has become your message and it's so true. You know, I think we can. Your lessons that you learn in life can be passed on to others to stop them going down the same route or to help them at the time. So I think it's really, but you have to have that, I guess, the moral courage to talk about it, which is guess where I'm kind of moving into now yeah, and I guess that's a learned process because I hence the the reason.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I guess it triggers certain things within you because it's to stand up in front of people and talk about your lowest, low and and and give them an insight of to your thoughts and your feelings and your most vulnerable moments is it's not always an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2:Yet the strength that people can draw from that yeah, there is, and I think I also, and I know I know that there is an element of things I have to keep back and I know that there is. So I'm quite lucky now the book is out. Everything that's in the book is black and white. It's open source. People can read it, people know the story. So when I talk about my story I'm not giving out any new information. So it's not opening any other threads of emotion for me and it's a very, I guess, scripted talk that I give in and around those lessons that people can learn from my story.
Speaker 2:But don't get me wrong, there are still elements that I don't speak about in public and that are still unweaving and being unraveled in the background with counselling.
Speaker 2:And you know there's a point in the book where I talk about the hardest phone call I ever had to get we touched on it very briefly earlier was speaking to my mum after the overdose, because you know that is an extremely difficult, difficult conversation to have with your mother when you've tried to kill yourself and equally, when my brothers arrived at my bedside.
Speaker 2:And it's something that I don't talk about in the in the spiel that I give on a stage, because it's still just too raw and, uh, I'm kind of waiting for. Nobody, thankfully, so far, has asked a question about it at the end, um, but I tend to find it's those, so some of those daggers that come out of nowhere. I got asked a question, uh, a couple, uh about a year ago in a podcast about a colleague that I mentioned in the book, who died in a helicopter crash, and out of nowhere came this question about him and it just opened up another thread of emotion for me. So I think you do have to understand that there are certain things that maybe you're not right to talk, you're not ready to talk about all the time, but that's okay as well, because we all have a very, you know, personal journey and and having stuff in the background is okay. You don't have to let everyone know everything either no, exactly 100.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the way that I choose to, when, when with my clients, people I work with, there's a message in that for you and you might not be ready and maybe on stage it's not the time to process that or go into it, but that if we, if we think of emotions as energy and motion, it's just trying to drive an action and that is its only outlet is that it's there's another. So, yeah, you're right to to unpack that in the right place and to understand that and to, yeah, gently process that when you're ready is so cool Liz.
Speaker 1:it's been brilliant to chat to you. Great to finally meet you. Is there anything you'd like to leave us with before we start to wrap up?
Speaker 2:Not really. I'm on social media. If anyone wants to contact me, ask any questions, again, I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram. In fact, I'm even on TikTok now, against my better judgment, my marketing but, um, yeah, I'm on there as Chinny Chick or Chinook Crew Chick, so you can look me up and I'm sure no doubt you'll find me somewhere. Um, but really keen to connect with people, because I think every time I stand on the stage and tell my story, what I get most out of it is at the end, when people tell me their stories, because I know my inside out. Now I talk about it many times a week, but it's hearing other people's stories is what really interests me now, because then again, coming back to that, you realize that you are human for falling over, because everyone falls over at some point. So, um, I would love to hear people's stories and get connected with people brilliant.
Speaker 1:Well, liz, thanks again for your time, thanks for your vulnerability and courage to share your story. It is inspiring to listen to um, so keep up the great work. Appreciate you being here thanks so much.