Elaine Crowley said she blocked her family and didn’t want “anything” to do with them as she battled depression.
The Ireland AM opened up about her mental health struggles and dysphoria diagnosis for the Talking Depression campaign.
She credited the support of her sister Maggie for being there for her during difficult times.
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Elaine explained that even though she loves her family dearly, there were moments when she didn’t want to speak to them.
She told the Irish Independent: “I felt they were annoying me. All the calls. No. ‘Can you just leave me alone. I’ll get through it, stop ringing me’. I don’t know where the anger came from.
“I didn’t want to have anything to do with my family and I absolutely adore my family. I just hated everybody, and I hated myself. I didn’t want to be around myself. I didn’t really see the point in being in existence, to be honest.”
Maggie said she never thought of giving up on Elaine, and added: “It’s not the person you love saying this.
“It’s their illness. So you have to keep chipping away at having little conversations. Because some people are not ready to hear it at once.
“You have to learn not to take the behaviour of the depressed person personally. And that can be hard, because you can get biting remarks.”
Elaine’s depression became very severe during her 30s, as she devoted her energy to her career but let everything else drop off.
Maggie said: “We, I especially, got very worried about her. She’d answer the phone, you’d say how are you, and she’d never go ‘I’m grand’. She was very sad, you’d know by her.”
Maggie would asked a mutual friend in Dublin to check in on Elaine, if she wasn’t able to contact her. She added: “We were extremely concerned. I could see how bad she was.
“There were a couple of years that were horrendous.
“Outwardly, if you didn’t know me, you wouldn’t have a clue there was anything happening to me, because I was on television almost every day.”
Elaine was diagnosed with dysphoria aged 36 but was worried people would think she was a “nutjob” but is grateful for finally seeking out help.
She added: “I was the person stigmatising myself.
“It’s terrifying to come to that point but the relief I got afterwards. I wish I’d done it years before.
“It felt like someone saying, ‘You’re not a lunatic, you just have this and loads of people have it, you can actually deal with it.’”
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