Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner associate director and father of two young children James Parker suffered from a form of chronic fatigue syndrome two years ago. He shared his story with Legal Week as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, to shed some light on the difficulties he faced while combatting poor mental health in the workplace.

What were your symptoms?

I'd had a serious heart infection about nine months before, and the next time I got ill I seemed unable to recover – I was becoming more and more tired and hence resting more and more. This gradually evolved into a whole series of physical symptoms – seemingly anything that could go wrong with my body did so – anything from exhaustion, breathlessness, feeling dizzy, dissociation, an inability to stand up for very long, anxiety and palpitations. The list was long.

Eventually, I was referred to a specialist fatigue clinic at London Bridge and was diagnosed with post-viral (or chronic) fatigue syndrome. The diagnosis was a revelation, as by that point I wasn't sure anyone would be able to tell me what was wrong. It was explained to me that effectively my fight-or-flight reaction had got stuck and was always turned on. Imagine you're walking home from work tonight and a car nearly hits you – you'd go into fight-or-flight mode. Apparently I was in that state permanently. I've read into the area a lot since and it seems that there are many different forms of this condition, with differing causes and with widely varying impacts on peoples' lives.

How did that impact your working life?

For a period I was only able to work from home. That's where the firm and my clients were amazing. I was able to work quite happily, but it was where I was able to work from that was the main obstacle I had to contend with.

Modern technology and the nature of my work meant that I already frequently worked away from the office and, with a very supportive team, I was able to keep my working life as normal as possible, through what was an extremely traumatic experience, not only for me but for my young family too.

"Work was part of my medicine"

Did you take any time off work?

I had to have one week off work entirely, after I'd picked up a bad bug. But in a way, work was part of my medicine – of maintaining normality when it felt like my whole life was changing forever. Working each day was engaging my mind and keeping me mentally active.

With careful support and management from my HR colleagues, I was keen and able to work as much as I sensibly could. I know that I am quite motivated by my work, because I'm passionate about it and enjoy it, so I asked my HR colleague to be my 'angel on my shoulder' whenever it looked like I was trying to take on too much.

How did you juggle work life and family life while suffering from mental health issues?

Looking back, I think it was an incredibly hard time for my family and especially my wife, Laura, as we have two young children. She was frankly amazing and managed whatever my mind and body threw at us. Even when we countenanced that I may never recover and what we'd do about the mortgage and our family home, she was always supportive.

One day, one of the partners in my team rang and asked to speak with my wife, and the basic message was, 'we are here to help him recover – even if that means we need to turn his email off and ban him from working'! That support was, I know, a huge boost.

How did you get better?

The first step was always searching for an answer, until eventually I got a diagnosis. After that, I think things that helped were primarily cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with 'graded exercise therapy', and implementing the steps I learned from both those combined with meditation.

I started using things like the meditation app, Headspace, and I started doing yoga on a weekly basis, which I'm still doing now. Added to this, I did a huge amount of reading around the topic and saw what had worked for or helped others, including using positive affirmations.

For me, I had to teach my brain to default to a positive thought cycle. Getting outside and for short walks helped, as did laughter – even just watching a bit of comedy on TV.

 "In a way I found I was just hiding away"

How did it feel to get back into the professional environment?

What I felt was relief – I've known my team for a very long time, and it was wonderful to be back with everyone. I had a sense of achievement and comfort of being back around old friends. The second part – and this was the tricky bit – was that because of what my brain thought were my physical boundaries, commuting into the office was a big barrier to getting back into the office environment. My brain had gone into the cycle to tell itself that I couldn't do that, so that was something the CBT helped me break through.

What would your advice be to people who are experiencing something similar to what you experienced?

Clearly your GP is often a good first port of call, but sometimes the specialist nature of the issues faced (and certainly this was the case for me), mean that it's important to then turn to other resources. If needs be, get a second or third opinion.

At BCLP we are lucky enough to have mental health first-aiders, as well as dedicated private medical phone services. Talking to friends with medical knowledge or similar experiences also helped.

Then ultimately in recovery it was about a combination of CBT, mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and treating myself well – be that exercise, good food, or just laughter.

You will get through it and you will be stronger for it.