Jonny: My Autobiography (40 page)

And I’m compounding the problem. Every time I try to fight the current, I say to myself come on, you can do this. But I know deep down that the message is an empty one and I do even worse, and that makes me feel even more pathetic.

Suddenly, I stop. I give up. I can’t do it. I have hit the wall – breaking point. I have barely completed one and a half days out of seven, and I’ve been late for pretty much every session. I can’t be here for another second.

I get out the pool. I apologise to the staff at the hospital. Sorry, it’s nothing to do with you guys, I just can’t do this. I get in the car and drive home.

On the way back up to Newcastle, I phone Graeme Wilkes and apologise to him, too. Besides all this inner turmoil, I still feel I have let people down.

I have a meeting with Graeme when I get back and he and the physios are positive with me. They say we’ll work on something else instead. We’ll give you some other rehab. But I’m not helping them. I don’t get out of bed in the morning. I sleep three or four hours and wake up with pounding-heartbeat panic attacks and a sense of urgency that something has gone badly wrong. But nothing has gone wrong. It’s just another day when I’m injured.

In one rehab session in the gym, I’m doing some lifting with the dumbbells on a Swiss ball. The dumbbells feel really, really heavy. Around me, the gym is full of jolly people, laughing and chatting, and I’m struggling with these dumbbells and questioning it all. What is it I am trying to achieve by lifting bits of iron in the air like this? How can all these other people be so happy?

I put down the dumbbells and walk out.

The next day, I go to see Graeme Wilkes again but this time I let it all go. I don’t talk to him about my groin. I tell him about my head.

Graeme is a fantastic guy, a very good doctor and the right person to be saying this to. He says what I realise I need to hear, that I have an illness. It’s like any other injury but this one is in my head rather than in my leg or my arm or anywhere else.

He is very, very good to me. He explains that my illness is controlling everything else and working on the groin injury is far secondary to sorting out my head. There is no point in my groin getting better if I don’t sort out my head anyway, because that issue is much more severe.

Merely to know that I have an illness that is not abnormal is like a first weight off my shoulders.

Graeme refers me to a specialist, but the connection isn’t quite right. I need to feel completely comfortable to deal with this.

Not long afterwards, I am at a dinner in London. I don’t normally do dinners, especially not the way I’m feeling right now, but I have been asked to attend almost as a secret, to present a surprise award to Richard Hill. I love doing that, and Hilly is special to me. I want to be at this dinner.

In the midst of the evening, I find myself deep in conversation with another
player, whom I have known for a long time, and because I am acutely aware of what is happening to me, I am on the brink of sharing my story with people, putting little feelers out in conversation. When I mention that I’m struggling a bit, a door swings open. This player opens up and tells me he had massive problems, too. Here is the proof that, thank God, I am not completely alone.

He tells me his story and I latch on to every detail. I feel great respect for him, to know that he has dealt with this for so much longer than I have. So I tell him my story, and he gives me the London telephone number of an American therapist, David Carter.
*
He tells me that David is the guy he spoke to, a great guy, funny but engaging. For me, he says, it really worked, so just try it. And that’s how I start.

Back home in Slaley, I ring David, although I feel hesitant. One of the first things he says to me is you just need to realise you’ve got an illness. He informs me that this illness is the cause of the depression and the panic attacks, and it has a cure. You’re not doomed, he says.

I enjoy hearing him say that. I need to know I’m going to stop feeling like this, I say to him. I need to know that I’ll get back to being my normal self again.

After that, I speak with David regularly, once a week for about an hour, always on the phone, David in his London office and me from the home phone in Slaley. I often ask for a second weekly appointment, and I take notes, furiously. The irony is not lost on me. It may have been my obsessive nature that drove me to my low point, but I intend to be extremely obsessive about finding my way out.

For instance, one time David gives me an exercise – write down every new thought topic that I’m obsessing about, how it’s affecting me and how I could look at it differently. So I do, spending a day and a half on it, and when we are next on the phone, I tell him I’ve done a hell of a lot. So we spend
the entire hour going through it, and as the session comes to an end, we’ve covered two pages. What, I ask him, am I supposed to do with the other six?

After just a few sessions, it’s clear to me that this is big, way bigger than winning the World Cup or trying to be the best player in the world. But this is what I’m made for, isn’t it? Back against the wall, facing a huge challenge that look insurmountable. That’s how I see it. I’ll just have to give it everything, the way I used to love to do.

At the end of the season, my groin allows me back. I play three games, two halves as a substitute followed by 70 minutes in a good final-match victory over Leeds at Kingston Park.

Out there on the field is the only time I seem able to live in the moment. It allows me to escape from everything and I grab these playing experiences keenly. They are so important to me that I don’t want to let them go, and I try to hang on to them for as long as I can. So after the games, in the changing rooms, I sit there, still in my rugby boots, while everyone else changes.

Playing rugby makes me feel a bit better about myself; it gives me back a bit of self-worth. And sitting there in my kit extends the feeling. I know that changing means having to face up to what I know is waiting for me. It’s like taking off the cloak of invincibility and going back to reality.

It’s probably not hugely healthy to do this. I know that. I know it’s going back to my old values, my old self. But until I have found the new identity, I can still derive great comfort from the old one.

When I talk to David, he often says oh yeah, I know what that feels like, I used to do that, too. Often, when someone tells me their story, I feel like it could never be as bad as what I’m going through. But some of David’s stories make mine pale into insignificance. I really try to listen to him and learn. I have to retrain my brain to see things in a more helpful way.

For many years, life has been relatively simple, one season blending into another, an upward curve of playing rugby and gradually accruing more success. My identity was written in facts – this many wins, this many caps, this many points, these awards, this World Cup, these Lions tours – and these facts produced evidence to show that my values were right and were never to be messed with.

And my values were so dogmatic, so set in black and white. I decided what was right and what was wrong, what was professional behaviour and what was not, who deserved to win and who didn’t. I could go out on the field and say I’m better than these other guys because I’ve worked harder, given more, care about it more.

But in this state I can’t work harder and I can’t be the best, and two years of that pushed me to breaking point. Under the scrutiny of my own values system, I was faring terribly.

I explain to David my anxieties about losing everything I had worked so hard to achieve. I tell him my fear of not playing any more, and he mentions a great quote, from the founder of Buddhism. ‘The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.’

This shocks me. What an incredible thought. And it makes so much sense to me, especially when I think about playing rugby. Before games, I am dying
from thoughts of what might happen and what might go wrong and my need for it to go perfectly. Afterwards, I’m no better. I can destroy myself with ceaseless reflections on what I could have done better and how that might have changed the course of the game.

I tell David I want to know more about this and he gives me some reading. I speak to Blackie and find, not surprisingly, that he knows all about it.

David starts throwing in other references. He talks about Gandhi, Jesus and other iconic figures – not preaching, just telling me about their philosophies and how these incredible people, these powerful leaders, have been dealing with the same stuff as I’m now facing for thousands of years.

And I consume it all hungrily. It’s clear to me that I have to be honest with myself, and acknowledge that I have to look beyond rugby and achievements and facts that you can find in a stats book. I am being forced to find something deeper. This is a massive turning point for my life, the start of my spiritual journey.

Increasingly, I am inspired by Buddhist philosophy. I want to understand more about who I am and why I seem to be fighting against the world I live in instead of working with it. In order to do that, I realise I need to learn more empathy, and be more flexible with my views and my values. My whole life has revolved around piling on layers of achievements, trying to be the best, wanting people to respect me the most and seeking perfection. I figured all these things would protect me and make me strong, but ultimately they have made me so much weaker. I find a connection with Buddhist philosophy. Just shed the layers, go back to the beginning, stop viewing everything I do in comparison to others.

I won’t kid myself. I know that I will always be as nervous as hell before a game and as frustrated as hell after it. But at least I can see a way to a
healthy perception of the world and my place within it. I can now see that there is something far deeper, more important and more lasting than the game or myself.