“I have my good and bad days,” says Frankie Bridge. ”Nine times out of 10 I’m fine, but sometimes I have those days when I feel like I just need to spend the day in bed and like I can’t really cope with life.”
Bridge has long been open about her experience of depression and anxiety. The former The Saturdays singer has been affected by mental health problems since childhood, which led to her being admitted to a psychiatric unit in her early twenties.
Now 31, she says those “dark days” are “a lot more few and far between than they used to be” – and that’s largely due to getting professional help.
“I still take medication, I still go to therapy as and when I need it,” she tells HuffPost UK. “They make me able to cope with life on a daily basis and to enjoy my life as much as possible. As long as I keep doing that, I’ll keep doing both things.”
Bridge has detached herself from the stigma attached to antidepressants that makes some people feel like they have to come off them. She says her doctor helped her to realise they’re just like any other medication.
“He put it to me bluntly and said: ‘If anyone had any other illness like diabetes or asthma, you would never expect them to come off their medication, so why is this any different?’ And he’s totally right.”
Over the years Bridge has also learned her mental health is strongest when she takes a holistic approach. She values good food, keeping fit and spending as much time as possible with friends and family to maintain balance.
“My favourite form of self-care is to have a sports massage,” she adds. “I find that if I’ve been tense for a really long time, I get headaches. I know I hold all my tension in my shoulders and my neck. When I have a proper massage that just sorts me out.
“I hate soft massages, I don’t want someone to stroke me, I just want someone to get in there! It’s technically not relaxing but it is in the long-term.”
Although Bridge first spoke about her experience of depression in 2012, she’s recently launched a mental heath podcast, Open Mind, and released a book on mental health, Open: Why asking for help can save your life. She says the timing for both just felt right.
“I hate soft massages, I don’t want someone to stroke me, I just want someone to get in there!”
“I felt ready to do it. I’ve started to be more open and honest on Instagram and people have always been so understanding,” she says. “I felt that other people still felt really lonely though, and that other people in their lives just didn’t get it, so there was still a need for someone to be honest about their experiences.”
The book is written with contributions from clinical psychologist Maleha Khan and psychiatrist Dr Mike McPhillips, because Bridge thought it was important to have professional voices alongside her personal experience.
“I’ve never once said ‘my book’s a self-help book’, I can’t give you all the answers, all I can tell you is what works for me, which is why it’s so important for me to have them in it.”
She says learning more about mental health through people like Khan and McPhillips has influenced the way she parents her two sons, Parker and Carter.
“I like to think it makes me more understanding of their fears and worries. I try to not just brush them aside because they’re a child and make them feel that they’re silly,” she explains. “I try to talk to them about how they feel. I know as a kid someone saying to me ‘oh don’t worry, don’t be silly’ didn’t make me feel any better.”
Her husband, retired footballer Wayne Bridge, takes the reins with the boys without hesitation when she’s having a hard day, she adds. But learning that it’s okay to ask for that help is a work in progress.
“About two weeks ago I was having one of my dark days when I didn’t really feel like I couldn’t cope with the day,” she says.
“Normally I would try to push it to one side and ignore it and act like everything was okay, then it would spill over into the next day. Whereas I said to Wayne:‘I’m feeling really rubbish today, I don’t think I can really cope.’”
Wayne took Parker and Carter to the park and out for lunch, allowing Bridge to listen to her instincts and have some downtime. After a day in bed, she felt able to come downstairs and play with the boys by 5pm.
“I just kind of gave into it that day and accepted I was having a bad day and opened up and told Wayne that was how I was feeling and took the help I was offered,” she says. “I feel like it made me get through it a lot quicker.”
It’s for this reason that her advice for her younger self would be: “speak to someone sooner.”
“I didn’t understand what was happening, so I didn’t really know how to talk to someone about it,” she says. “But maybe if I’d talked to someone sooner things would have been a bit easier.”
Open: Why asking for help can save your life by Frankie Bridge is out now.
In What Works For Me – a series of articles considering how we can find balance in our lives – we talk to people about their self-care strategies.
Useful websites and helplines:
- Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393
- Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI - this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill.)
- The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email: help@themix.org.uk
- Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0300 5000 927 (open Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on www.rethink.org.