From Year 10 dropout to founder of one of Australia's biggest employers in renewable energy
This is an edited extract from Here Comes the Sun by Andy McCarthy, published by Affirm Press, RRP $34.99
As anyone who has experienced a panic attack will know all too well, the first one is the most terrifying. You have no idea what’s happening, but you know it’s bad, and there’s a fleeting moment where you think you might die. It’s awful beyond words.
Unfortunately, that feeling was about to become all too familiar. Despite coming home and finding that the business was running well and my worries were unfounded, I had another panic attack in the week after we returned. Then another the following week. Then again two days later. The panic attacks were increasing in both frequency and intensity. It usually happened when my head hit the pillow. Once you think to yourself, ‘I hope I have a good sleep tonight’, that’s it.
You’ve lost the battle.
The only way I could shake these crippling attacks, day or night, was to throw my sneakers on and run, until I couldn’t run any further.
It was the peak of winter in Gippsland, but I would still jump out of bed and belt around the streets of Mirboo North at all hours. Literally trying to run from my troubles. One night I ended up at the golf course at 1am, running lap after lap, uphill and downhill. It was absolutely freezing, my fingers were numb, and I was getting belted by the wind and rain. Eventually I couldn’t lift my legs any longer and just collapsed. I tripped and fell, lying face down on the 15th fairway and shaking like a leaf from sheer exhaustion, soaked from head to toe in a combination of raindrops and sweat. I lay there for a long time and eventually trudged back home, ashamed and deflated, wondering if this horrible feeling was going to be with me forever.
For the next few weeks, I suffered wave after wave of these episodes. I was so tired that my whole body felt numb. The stomach cramps were crippling to the point where I had to curl up in the foetal position on the floor. Unsurprisingly, it brought on a serious bout of anxiety and left me feeling depressed and helpless. I’d always considered myself to be a positive and upbeat person who was able to take things in my stride, but suddenly I found myself absolutely broken, regularly bursting into tears and unable to pull myself back together.
I sought solace in making regular (and increasingly desperate) calls to Beyond Blue, the national mental health hotline. I was incredibly grateful that they were available twenty-four hours a day. You can’t pick and choose when another episode will happen. When these panic attacks washed over me in the middle of the night, I couldn’t wait until the morning to speak to someone. When you’re in that headspace at 1am, even 2am feels too far away.
The thing I didn’t understand was that, on paper, life had never been better. I could think of many other times in our journey when things had been harder. To the outside world, it looked like I had everything. But inside, I was falling apart.
Just as I was starting to get things back under control, news came through that a mate of ours had gone missing overseas. Eventually hiscar was found near a clifftop and we were devastated to hear that he had taken his own life. He was in his mid-twenties, a star footballer and one of the happiest blokes I had ever met. His infectious smile went from ear to ear. Everyone loved him and we felt like our hearts had been ripped from our collective chests. It was deeply uncomfortable to know that someone at his stage in life, with the world seemingly at his feet, could have made this decision, and the news came at a time when I was already extremely fragile.
It could have gone either way for me at that stage, but the terrible news shocked me into turning things around. I saw the impact that his loss had on his friends and family, with many of them completely unaware that he was battling his inner demons. It’s hard to admit, but in my darkest times, when I felt that there was no way out of the prison inside my head, my mind went to some awful places. For those who haven’t experienced depression and anxiety, it’s the feeling of hopelessness that does the most damage. When you’re in the middle of an episode, or suffering from them repeatedly, it feels like things will never be okay again.
During this period, I withdrew and wandered through life like a ghost, completely devoid of any feeling and unable to communicate with people. I used to love the early morning trip to our local cafe, spending the first thirty minutes of every day immersing myself in conversation with whoever was there. Now I made my coffee at home, or ordered it online so I could quickly pop in and out without having to engage with anyone. As a card-carrying extrovert who loves being around people, it was a strange feeling to find myself crossing the street to avoid having conversations.
At this stage, my ambition had completely diminished. In my early teens, when I was bullied relentlessly, all I ever wanted was to have a solid group of mates who I could feel comfortable with. Over time, I started to become that person I had wanted to be, and my ambition became greater. By 2018, it had grown to such an extent that nothing short of changing the world would have been sufficient. And now here I was, a frail and broken soul, whose only ambition was to sleep five hours a night without waking up in a pool of sweat.
As you can well imagine, this downward spiral had a profound impact on my ability to perform my duties as a husband and father. The kids were visibly worried about me. I tried to keep a brave face, but they were acutely aware that something serious was going on with Dad. One day my youngest boy, Charlie, walked up to me cautiously, paused and placed a hand on my shoulder.
‘Are you okay, Dad?’
Kel was an absolute powerhouse through this time, shouldering the extra load and trying to ease the pressure on me. If it impacted on her own wellbeing at the time, she did a remarkable job of not letting it show.
And, of course, it also had a significant impact on my team at work. I went missing without notice, I failed to turn up to meetings and I started rejecting speaking and presentation gigs that I would have given anything for a little while ago. I was too depleted to explain to my team what was happening to me, so I just withdrew from life and business. It must have been worrying for them too.
It’s these flashpoints that teach you the most important lessons. This period of absence made me realise that our business didn’t have solid foundations. We had few systems and processes in place, and when I wasn’t around to get involved in decisions, they got stuck in a bottleneck. I had terrific leaders around me, but I hadn’t empowered them. Whether it was my passion, micromanaging nature, or just plain ego, I had built the business around me, and everything of value still largely resided inside my mind. I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about how to fix it, but I knew we had a problem.
After weeks of staring at my ringing phone and being physically unable to answer it, I couldn’t take it any longer. I messaged my management team, told them I wouldn’t make it in the next day and didn’t know when I would be back.
I also told them what was happening to me.
They would have been concerned about how to manage the business without me, but they didn’t show it. The message was:
‘Andy, you just get yourself right. We’ll take care of the business.’
I turned my phone off and went back to sleep. With that conversation out of the way, it was time to focus on my recovery.
About Andy McCarthy
Andy McCarthy is a storyteller and passionate lover of life. He thrives on creating connections with others, and wants to make an impact wherever he goes. Andy met his soulmate, Kelly, as a nineteen-year-old and they spent several years living abroad, backpacking through more than seventy countries, gathering life experiences and saying yes to anything that promised an adventure. Upon returning to Australia in their late twenties, Andy and Kelly moved to a tiny village in the hills above the Latrobe Valley to start a business and raise a family, immersing themselves in the local community while raising three energetic boys. Despite the pressures of being a global changemaker in the energy space, Andy always makes time to travel across Gippsland to coach, umpire and cheer on his boys' sporting endeavours.
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