This interview was originally published through Audible Sessions.
Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.
Holly Newson: I'm Holly Newson. Welcome to Audible Sessions, a place where we delve into the books, careers and lives of authors and creators. Bryony Gordon has written a follow-up to her book Mad Girl. It's called Mad Woman, and it charts three years of her life that show that mental health is never linear. We spoke about binge-eating disorder, the impact of hormones and how the state of the world and society doesn't really set us up for great mental health. To start with, I asked, with all her years of talking and writing and campaigning about mental health, if she thinks we'll ever move beyond people saying things like, "Oh, I'm so OCD about organising my bookshelf."
Bryony Gordon: I hope so, but it hasn't happened in the 10 years since I've been writing about OCD. People say to me, "Oh, I'm a bit OCD, you should see my sock drawer or my bookshelf." And I think, "Oh, my goodness. I don't have a sock drawer or a bookshelf." Like, my husband has always joked, "I wish you had the good type of OCD." There obviously is no good type of OCD, but, yeah, it hasn't changed. So, I keep writing and people are like, "Oh, another book about mental health, Bryony. Change the record." And I'm like, "Well, we still need to be talking about it." Because if anything, things have kind of gone backwards, certainly in terms of provision and funding of mental health services, so you keep going.
HN: What did you want to reflect on or share in Mad Woman?
BG: So, Mad Girl was kind of like the first three decades of my life, whereas Mad Woman is the last three years. I guess what I wanted to show was A) that recovery isn't linear. I guess we have this notion that someone writes about their mental health, and it's like – because we love neat narratives, don't we? A neat beginning, middle and end, you know? Of course, real life isn't like that. So, we love the notion that someone will write about facing their demons and they will triumph over adversity, and then they'll go off into the sunset and live happily ever after. But that's kind of not how it works. And it's certainly not how it's worked for me. So, Mad Girl was all about OCD and eating disorders. And then immersing myself in the mental health community, I learned that I probably needed to get sober.
Since then, I've got sober and I've written about alcoholism. But for me, when the pandemic hit, I was two and a half years sober, and I very much thought I was sorted. I was like “Tick, mental health done.” And then life comes at you. I realised during the pandemic that I was coping with food. I developed binge-eating disorder, which I didn't even know existed. I thought, like so many other people, binge-eating, I thought because I'd experienced bulimia in my 20s, because I wasn't doing the purging, I didn't have an eating disorder. It was just the binging. And also there's this notion that if you can't stop eating food, it's a kind of a moral failing as opposed to an eating disorder. And that's just not the case. The truth is, my mental health took a real dip between the end of 2020 and I would say right up to the very beginning of 2023. But I learned a hell of a lot from that. And I kind of wanted to show the messiness of mental health. I wanted to talk about things. I kind of see my job as exposing shame to the light, and then it kind of dies.
And so I wanted to explore binge-eating. I wanted to explore what I'd learned about the effect of hormones on my own mental health. There was lots of other things, but also when I wrote Mad Girl 10 years ago, I very much had this quite binary view of mental illness, which is it's a chemical imbalance. Take some pills, you know? And, of course, there is an element of that to it. But I really do think now that a lot of mental illness is really appropriate. So, when I say that, what I mean is, it's a very sophisticated response by your brain to show you that something is not right in your life.
I sort of came to this conclusion during, I think it was this third lockdown, and I realised I was depressed. I was in a depression again, but it was the first time that I'd looked around, because obviously mental illness and depression's very isolating and it makes you feel very alone. But it was the first time I'd looked around and I thought, "Oh, my God, everyone else is depressed too." And I realised that it was utterly appropriate that people were depressed because we were locked down. That was the first time I went, "Whoa. Maybe mental illness is actually trying to sort of teach us.”
I heard someone once describe it, it's like depression is almost the cure in itself, you know? It's your brain trying to say something's not right, and what are you going to do about it? And the more I thought about this, and the more I looked into it, and the more through my own experiences of going through quite an early menopause in my early 40s and the effect that had on my mental health, I kind of realised that actually, I was like, "Maybe people with mental health issues are actually the most sane people in society." Because maybe it's weirder as a woman, I think, to be able to live in this society that isn't set up for you in any way, shape or form still, and not feel the pressure of that and not feel the stress of that.
And so the mad woman of this book is kind of me going, "I am mad, I'm actually angry. I'm angry because the way the sort of things I've gone through in my life have been perfectly appropriate to this society, patriarchal society, I live in that isn't set up for me or any of the other 51 percent of the population.”
HN: So, what do you do if society is the problem that contributes to or causes mental health issues?
BG: Well, I mean, I think it's interesting. I've come to this conclusion that a lot of mental health campaigning is trying to get the government to increase funding. And it's sort of like, "Well, actually, it doesn't matter how much funding they throw at it, because it's the government and it's the systems we live in that are the problem in themselves." We know that all sorts of things affect mental health outcomes, from race to income. And it's a much bigger problem than just throw some money at the mental health system and let this stuff be more available. It's kind of the sickness is the society in a way.
So, I guess what we do is we write about it and we talk about it and we make people realise it, and take people on that journey with us. The subtitle of the book is “How to Survive a World That Thinks You Are the Problem.” And for me, it's like, I want to say to lots of women who come to me and they say, "I'm drinking too much, or I've got this binge-eating problem, or I'm really depressed, I'm stressed, I can't handle life. I can't handle life having to juggle everything I'm expected to juggle. And I feel like a freak because of it." And I want to say, “No, you are not. This is absolutely normal. You are not the problem, babes, you are the solution.” That's really what I'm trying to say, is that the power is within you, but we need to sort of collectively mass to kind of get that through.
HN: I don't know why it puts this in my mind, but I have a theory that I know more men who are better at pub quizzes, and I think this is because they have brain space to remember all those facts.
BG: Yeah, yeah.
HN: Whereas women are having to remember a million other things just to make day-to-day life function for everyone.
BG: I saw an interview recently with someone asking this female CEO, right? And this person had asked her about imposter syndrome, and she's like, "Don't ask me that question. You are not asking that question to men." So even the language that we use, it's set up to make us feel like we're imposters in our own lives, and we're not. And of course I have imposter syndrome because I live in a world that isn't set up for me, but that doesn't mean it has to define me. I don't want to dwell on it too much other than to point out that yes, people are going to feel this if you don't allow them to feel part of society. I think we're getting much better at these things, but it's kind of exhausting. That amazing monologue in Barbie that America Ferrera did about this is what it's like being a woman. And it's true. I still think that there are a lot of men that don't get it and find it annoying when we talk about this. But it's why I talk about it. If I'm annoying you, then that's good.
HN: That monologue really surprised me because when I watched it, I was like, "Oh, yeah, we're saying this again." And then lots of men were like, "Oh, that monologue really opened my eyes." And I was like, "Oh, you didn't know that before? Oh, that's where we are. Okay."
BG: Yeah, people are like that. I have to still, in my day-to-day life, I experience so much trolling, which seems like it's such a benign word for what gets sent to me in my inboxes. The other day I had to show some of the stuff to this male colleague that I work with and to kind of say, "Look, this is what I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis." It's like people emailing me to tell me I'm fat and ugly and vile, as if it's at all relevant. I'm not a model. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter if I was. And I could see his eyes go, "Oh, my God, that's awful." I mean, he wasn't like, "Oh, deal with it Bryony." He was like, "That's awful." And I was like, "Yes. This is what it's like to be a woman with your head above the parapet in the media."
HN: So, take me back to that time in the pandemic with lockdown. It's 2020, and before you really realised what's happened, you've developed binge-eating disorder. What did that look like for you?
BG: It was very secretive. It was very similar to, I guess, to sort of the end days of my drinking. It was very secretive. It was like at night, it was sneaking downstairs and it was eating really ridiculous things. Eating, like, chorizo, raw cooking chorizo. I sort of had this shame where I was like, “I'm not eating Ben and Jerry's, like normal people do when they comfort eat. Like, this is weird.” I could feel this raw sausage stuck in my teeth, and I was hiding the packets down the back of the sofa until the next day where I could put them in the rubbish bin outside. Sometimes I wouldn't even remember that I'd done it. It was like I was going into blackout.
The only way I could describe it is like, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. I look back and think, "Well, yeah, it was a very strange time for a lot of us." I think all mental health issues are just faulty coping mechanisms, you know, they develop a lack of a better way of dealing with life. I realise now I was two and a half years sober, which is like being a two-and-a-half-year-old, you know? It really is. And the shame I felt, and not so much because I was like, "Oh, I'm pigging out." It was more just like, you feel disgusting and you go into this kind of trance almost, where you are eating thousands of calories in like 20 minutes or something.
It's literally to numb yourself. It's the same thing as alcohol, drugs, whatever your poison happens to be. I'd then go into the denial, and it was much like drinking where I'd wake up and go, "Oh, my God, I'm not doing that again." And then you spend the day sort of restricting your food to try and make up for it. Then 4 o'clock would roll around and I'd be in bed and I'd be unable to sleep, and the whole process started again.
There's a sort of denial that's very much inherent in most mental health issues, to be honest. And so you sort of put it – not put it to one side, but it's like it's not there, and you can't face it. I always think life is like, I wake up every morning and it's “How many masks have I got to put on to get through today.” And that's obviously not a conscious thought that we put on, but that is the truth. Like, "Okay, come on Bryony, let's get out there." That was what it was like, and it was what it was like for many people during those lockdowns. I had a 6, 7-year-old daughter, and it was like, "Come on, let's go and sit and try and do column method, long division. And then I'll also try and do my job and then we'll go out and get our hour of exercise, and then we'll pretend, and then we'll tune in to the daily death forecast, basically. And then it's sunny outside and we'll pretend that everything is lovely.” This is all some sort of weird fever dream, and it was bizarre. I'm sure we'll be untangling the effects of COVID and lockdowns on people's mental health for decades to come.
HN: Do you think as a society generally we're doing enough to deal with the aftereffects, now everyone's just trying to sort of carry on?
BG: Again, it's become so polarised, like the kind of response to it is either lockdowns were evil, or vaccines are. Where most people sit somewhere in the middle of going, "Oh, well, it was what kind of had to be done." I think that the thing that's at the foremost of my heart is children, and how weird that was for them. Being out of school essentially for like a year, was the first time that happened since the Second World War. I mean, that is bizarre. I think we will be seeing the effects of that for years to come, but I don't know what the solution is. I wish I did.
HN: And the binge-eating disorder for you became, in your head, getting through that or out of that, tied up with maintaining your sobriety.
BG: Yeah.
HN: So, is it common for people to move from one addiction to another?
BG: Yeah. I mean, it's a phrase, it's cross-addiction. I am not the first alcoholic to get sober and lose themselves in loads of food, and I will not be the last. But also, again, it's a bit more complicated than that. You hear a lot of people who get sober and they realise that actually their behaviour has been addictive since they were children. They were sneaking sweets, and that was the same for me. It's kind of like almost you start to realise that the thing you are addicted to, it's kind of by the by. It's the process. If I'm not working a good 12-step programme, I could get addicted to anything. It may not be alcohol or drugs. I may be sober, but how emotionally sober am I? I could use Candy Crush.
There's another saying in recovery, which is, you deal with whatever's going to kill you first. And for me, that was very much alcohol and cocaine. When I came in in 2017, it was desperate. Immediately you are trying to stay sober, and you see this a lot, people are like, “Reach for the Ben and Jerry's.” And it's kind of like, “It's okay, as long as you don't pick up a drink. It's okay.” And so I think there was an element of that, and people have said to me, "What did your husband think?" And I was like, "Well, my husband was two years out of watching his wife go to some very dark places indeed because of drinking and drugs." So, you know, some chorizo it was. It takes a while to kind of realise what's happening.
But, yeah, so it's very common. That's why I wanted to write this book is to go, "It's okay. Recovery is not linear." Often you deal with one issue, and you feel it's like whack-a-mole, it's like another one comes up. But actually, that issue's probably been there in some shape or form, you’ve just not been able to get to it because there's been a bigger issue to deal with. So, in a way, sounds very odd, but it was a privilege to be able to actually deal with it, because if I'd still been drinking when the pandemic happened, that would've been dreadful. Like, absolutely dreadful. If I'd still been alive, you know?
So, there's another saying, which is that you get sober and the layers of the onion start to come off and you start to deal with more and more things. At first, I was like, "Oh, my God, not another thing." Like, "Bryony, why can't you just be happy?" But now I can see that it was kind of necessary, because I did have this notion still when the pandemic rolled around, like 2019, and that New Year, and I remember we were in Thailand and we had this blissful Christmas and New Year on the beach in Phuket, and thinking, "Oh, my God, this next decade, hopefully it can be calm." Because the previous decade I'd got sober, there'd been a lot of chaos. I had a baby. There'd been a lot of stuff happening. And I did think, "Oh, if we are going to follow that linear path, oh, I've done it. People like me. People buy my books. ”
And so it was a great big lesson of: Life isn't quite that straightforward. And you might think, "Well, what's the point? What's the point in getting well if I'm just going to get unwell again?" But it's not that kind of binary. There are days where I'm really upbeat and there can be days where I can cycle through a whole heap of emotions in one day. I think it's like most people. So, for me, it's like trying to get out there that if you have a chronic health condition such as OCD or addiction, and that's what they are, really. For lots of us of a certain age, they get embedded in over decades, and it's very difficult to pick them out. And it takes time to get to it and get through it, and that's okay. But if I do the work for an hour a day, it gives me 23 hours back.
HN: Another thing that you came up against was perimenopause. How did that affect your mental health?
BG: Yeah, that was weird because OCD, which I've had since when I was a child, came back January 2022. I think it had probably been there for a while, but I hadn't noticed it because it sort of shape-shifted a bit. And it was awful. Like, it was dreadful. I was like, "This is strange. Why am I feeling this when I'm sober?" I've done all this work on myself. I remember the therapist I had being like, "You are actually delusional. What your brain is telling you, there's absolutely no resemblance to what's happening." So, my brain started to tell me that I'd relapsed. It was really insane. And I went through this whole period where it was like, I knew it kind of logically, but I couldn't stop obsessing about it. And a friend said to me, "Have you had your hormones tested?" And I was like, "Ugh." Like, "Oh, wouldn't it be great if we could just explain this all away with my hormones?" And I was like, "I'm too young." And they were like, "No, you're not."
And cut a long story short, I spoke to my mom, who was like, "I didn't go through the menopause, darling." I was like, "What, you're still getting periods at like 70?" And she was like, "Don't talk about my age." But she then called me back and she was like, "Actually, I went through this in my early 40s, and your grandmother did, and most women in your family have done so." And I was like, "Thanks for that information." So, I went and got my hormones tested, and they didn't say this exactly, but what I kind of took from it was that The Rock and Jason Statham had higher levels of estrogen than I did. I was like, "Wow." They were like, "These are levels that we would see in people that had actually gone through menopause."
Anyway, so I started taking HRT, and within two days, no word of a lie, it was the difference between day and night. But then there was a sort of complication in that it turned out I was very allergic to progesterone, which is something you have to have later on in the cycle of HRT. I was suicidal and it was very dark. The doctor was like, "I think you have progesterone intolerance," which is something that happens to 1 in 20 women, where you're just sort of allergic to this hormone in your body. We're learning much more about PMDD [premenstrual dysphoric disorder] and the relation to progesterone of that. We sort of talked through it all. They were like, "What was it like when you were pregnant? How was your mental health?" And it was terrible. I was under the care of a local psychiatric team, but I remember when I gave birth to my daughter, it was like this fog had lifted. And, of course, now I look back and realise that was the progesterone leaves your body. I got OCD for the first time when I was 11, 12, and it all started to sort of link up and they were like, "You've probably had PMDD your whole life."
It's always tempting to be able to kind of want to blame an issue on a single thing and go, "Oh, my hormones are what have made me mad." But, actually, probably I always had a propensity towards mental illness, but what I can see is that the hormones have made it a hell of a lot harder at times. And I think to myself, "Whoa, it is only now we're talking about all of these conditions that have affected women since the dawn of time." Not just menopause, not just PMDD, endometriosis, like all sorts of things. And I just think it's outrageous. Then you still get this kind of backlash against it, "Oh, it's all people talk about now." And you hear it a lot from women as well, women who have gone through menopause or they're like, "I got through it, I'm fine. You're making a big deal out of this." And it's like this sort of internalised misogyny, you know? To that I go, "Whoa, okay, well, lucky you if you got through it, but you need to accept that some people struggle with it." I just thought if men went through this, it would be the only thing we were allowed to talk about.
I kind of also realised that menopause, the way that it's spoken about, younger women get very scared of it. They go, "Oh, my God." But for me, the more I went into it, and the more I experienced it, the more I realised that there was this sort of witchy magic to it. I kind of came to this conclusion that everything it brings up, like, emotionally is your brain and your body's way of saying, "Are you going to deal with this now? You need to deal with this because if you don't, the next chapter of your life is going to be as difficult and miserable as the last one.”
And that's not to say that my life has just been wholly difficult or miserable, but it was certainly a moment where I realised I'd spent my whole life trying to bend myself into these kind of very uncomfortable positions to fit into a box that had not been carved for me. And it had not been carved with me in mind at all. So, these issues that came up for me about self-esteem and being able to use my voice were very much a way of going, "Oh, I need to deal with this to move forward." I think that's what we see with a lot of women when they hit their 40s and 50s, they sort of go, "Hmm, no more. No more. Enough."
HN: And you went to see a private doctor, a menopause doctor for this because of the limited provision on the NHS and limited research. Vulgar question, is that very expensive? Should I save the NHS or should I start saving?
BG: So, people often think, "Oh, private? I'll use health insurance that I get” – again, this is a place of even just having health insurances comes from a place of immense privilege, by the way. But health insurance companies won't cover anything menopause-related. So, yes, it's quite expensive. It should be made available. I mean, it is to a certain extent, but part of me was like, "Oh, my God, am I contributing to the problem?" But I went to the doctor and all the doctor would say to me was like, "Have you tried losing weight or exercising?" And I was like, "I do nothing other than exercise." My problems aren't because I'm a larger lady or whatever, you know, it is tiring. And it's sad, but that's why we talk about these things, right? Because if we don't talk about them, we can't change them. Someone said to me yesterday, someone sent me a message going, "I want to relate to your problems because I have them too. But then I hear that you paid to go private and this is just not relatable to me." And I'm like, "But am I supposed to just not talk about it because of that?” I talk about it so that that is not the outcome. I use my privilege in the hope that I can pass it on to others and to change the systems that lead to it.
HN: I can't stop thinking about my mom, who, her advice was always, when she went through the menopause quite late, she was in her 50s when she started going through the menopause. But I just remember her for years, she really struggled. And then she went on HRT. She was depressed for years, and something just switched. After that, she would, unsolicited, to just any woman at any age who would listen, she'd go, "Menopause? Get yourself some HRT, get yourself some HRT." She’d tell everyone.
BG: But you do get that now. And I saw something the other day, someone said, "Could we stop telling all women in their late 30s that they're probably going through perimenopause and that's the reason for their stress?" And obviously it is not the only reason for your stress, but I do think that the link between hormones and mental health needs a hell of a lot more research pumped into it, especially female health.
HN: Yeah, completely. And you mentioned that you do exercise a lot. You got into CrossFit? How do you feel about being a person who both likes CrossFit and woo-woo things now? How is that sitting with you?
BG: Well, I don't, like, do them together. I don't take my crystals to CrossFit. I think I could.
HN: You should.
BG: I think they'd be open to it. I find CrossFits really inclusive. Oh, my God, I speak like a CrossFitter now. But, yeah, I like a bit of crystals in my life. A bit of CrossFit, a bit of everything, really. I'm open to it all. I suppose the CrossFit enables me to sweat out my rage. And then the crystals maybe help me to be more kind of Zen about it. So, I think it's a good balance.
HN: Talk to me about cold water swimming. Because you took that up, but there's one thing that you did that I would've made the exact same mistake, which is to buy the bright pink and camo dry robe, which was also my instinct, and I think you might have saved me from myself. So, talk to me about the decision.
BG: Yeah. I just saw it and went, “It's bright pink and camo. Put this dry robe in my arms. I want it." I bought it because in that very addict-y way, I was like, "Well, I need to have all the kit." It was like all the gear and no idea. Now I don't use it at all because I've just got a really warm coat and that works just as well.
HN: Why was that not the colourway to go for?
BG: I think it kind of marks you out as a real newbie, fashion-y, like, “I'm here because I've heard it's good for me on Instagram” kind of thing.
HN: Got it.
BG: I don't know. I think the cold water swimming community is much like the CrossFit community, very warm and welcoming. So, they're happy for you whatever the colour of your dry robe. The bigger mistake I made, Holly, was that I didn't buy a cap, swim cap, because I thought that the reason people had them on was to not get their hair wet. And I was like, "I don't really care about getting my hair wet." But I realised that actually why people wear them is to keep warmth in their head. So that was the bigger mistake, the bigger error on my part. I do now have a swim cap.
HN: So, are you cold water swimming in conjunction with CrossFit?
BG: At the moment, I'm not doing much cold water swimming, and I'm not doing much CrossFit because I'm training for two marathons in April. I'm doing the Brighton Marathon, then I'm going to run from Brighton to London over two weeks. And then I'm going to do the London Marathon to raise money for Mental Health Mates, which is the not-for-profit organisation I set up eight years ago, which encourages people to get out, move for their mental health. I'm doing it to raise money for that, but also to show that exercise is for everyone, no matter your size. And you can do it for how it makes you feel rather than how it makes you look. So, there's just a lot of running and I have to get behind the barbell a couple of times a week. And then I guess the cold water swimming is just to like the ice bathy kind of legs. Give them a bit of a break.
HN: That's a lot of marathon to be training for.
BG: It's a lot of marathon. It's a lot of movement. But it's good. I'm enjoying it.
HN: We've spoken about how mental health and things aren't linear. When you are writing a book like this, like Mad Woman, do you feel any pressure to make sure there is an epiphany or make sure there is some sort of happy ending?
BG: I think the thing is that you don't write a book unless you've had an epiphany of sorts. I pitched the book because I'd had this epiphany, and it was like there's not one singular moment where you go, "Oh, it all makes sense." But I think I'm always careful with all of my books to not be like, "And then I lived happily ever after…” It's like, you learn something, but we're always learning, you know?
HN: Is there something that you hope that people will take away from Mad Woman?
BG: I suppose it's the same as with all my books, is a sense that they're not alone. Every book I've ever written, it's the thought of someone else feeling the way I felt. And it's wanting to say, "It's okay, I've been through this too, you are not a freak." I like to see them as like little beacons and say, “I've had this, if you've had this, let's come and hang around this book and we can all realise that we're not freaks. We're this whole community together, instead of feeling alone and all dotted all over the place.” So that's kind of the purpose. For whatever reason, I don't feel shame writing this stuff down. In fact, I find it really crucial to my recovery. I kind of see my duty, or sounds very pompous, but like my job is to expose shame to the light. Because it dies then, you know?
HN: I can't end without asking you, how was narrating the audiobook for this one?
BG: Oh, my God. Okay. I just have to apologise to everyone listening to it on Audible because I love reading them out, because it's like how you imagine it as you're writing it. But there's this one bit where [laughs] there's a lot of characters in my head. So, there's Jareth the Goblin King, but there's also like a Nigel Farage character and a Jacob Rees-Mogg character. And so when it came to that bit where they're having a conversation on BG News, which is like this alternative version of GB News. It's like I describe having this alt-right panel in my head that's just horrible. It's just constantly slamming me. The lovely guy David where I recorded it was like, “So, you're going to have to do a different voice for Nigel, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Jareth the Goblin King.” I'm like, "I'm not an actor." And Nigel Farage suddenly had this kind of real wide boy cockney accent. And then Jareth the Goblin King was like what I imagine David Bowie sort of was. It's just dreadful. I'm really glad that I've been given the opportunity to apologise for that preemptively [laughs].
HN: Sounds like a reason to listen [laughs]. Bryony, thank you so much.
BG: Thank you, Holly, for having me.
HN: Thanks for listening to Audible Sessions. If you enjoyed this and want to hear more, search Audible Sessions on the Audible website or on the app. Mad Woman, written and narrated by Bryony Gordon, published by Headline, is available to listen to on Audible now.
