by Anna Gekoski
STEPHANIE COLE
Actor
‘I just became so anxious about everything. I was a walking jelly. Some anxiety is copeable with, it’s containable – you know, slightly raised heartbeat, breathing, slight nausea, slight over-reaction to loud noises – but in my thirties it wasn’t like that, it was that times a million.’
Stephanie Cole was born in Warwickshire in 1941 and started her training as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School at the age of sixteen. Since her stage debut at seventeen, she has had a hugely successful and varied career as a stage, television, radio, and film actor. On the stage she has appeared in West End productions of Noises Off, Steel Magnolias, Quartet, and A Passionate Woman. As a television actor she is perhaps best known for her roles in Tenko, Open All Hours, Soldiering On, Waiting for God, Doc Martin, and Housewife, 49. She now stars in Coronation Street, where she plays Sylvia Goodwin, for which she won Best Comedy Performance in the 2012 Soap Awards. Stephanie has suffered episodes of anxiety, panic attacks, agoraphobia, and depression at various stages throughout her life and is a patron of the mental health charity Rethink. In 2005 she received an OBE for her services to drama, the elderly and mental health charities. Stephanie has a daughter, Emma, and lives in a village outside Bath, where the interview for this chapter took place.
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You must have had such a long trip to come and see me. Have some coffee before we start and these biscuits are rather good. Are you happy talking at the kitchen table? I’ll put the answer machine on so we don’t get disturbed.
Now, anxiety’s an interesting word. It’s interesting that we’ve chosen to use that word – ‘anxiety’ – because it’s quite a small word actually. It implies, if someone’s anxious, that it’s a little bit of a worry. For me, that’s what it implies: one step on from worry. You’re worried about something and then you’re anxious about something. And to be anxious sometimes is normal, God forbid we should lose our flight or fight instinct because that’s what keeps us alive. It’s when you’re anxious over those things you don’t have to be anxious about – that’s when it’s not normal. Or to be anxious to a degree that the circumstances do not call for. It’s when our brain uses it when honestly there is nothing to be worried about, when it cranks up the dial on everything. To be anxious about something is copeable with, but this is much, much more, it’s a much bigger thing. It is anxiety writ large.
I didn’t, of course, know what its name was when it started, because I was just a child then. I just knew that it was very uncomfortable and frightening. I remember a couple of times, when I was going to school on the bus, actually being overwhelmed by what I now know is panic. I remember fainting at a bus stop; in fact, it was not a faint, it was a panic attack. It then came to a point when my parents were asked to go somewhere in the early evening, where children were welcome, so we set out in the car and I was overwhelmed by this terrible, terrible panic that I just couldn’t cope. I started to cry and said I couldn’t go and I had to go home, so they turned around and we went back home. But of course, at the time – we’re talking the late ’40s, early ’50s – if a child behaved in an odd way it was usually put down to a sort of naughtiness. Then I happened to overhear a neighbour who said to my mother: ‘Oh, she’s probably got it off the radio or television’, so it was put down to my . . . my acting tendencies. That what I was actually doing was trying something out, you know, that it was sort of play acting. Well it wasn’t, it wasn’t. And then it went away. Why, I don’t know. How, I don’t know.
It wasn’t until years later, when I started to have panic attacks after my daughter Emma was born in my early thirties, that I actually recognised what it was. I was very, very depressed after she was born, and that quickly developed into appalling anxiety and panic attacks, which started very suddenly, when she was three or four months old, I would guess. Looking back, it started as post-natal depression but nobody diagnosed that. You know, I completely adored my daughter, I just fell totally in love with her the minute she was born, but I was feeling just absolutely overwhelmed. I was completely convinced I couldn’t cope, that I should never have done this. It was also partly due to the fact that my first husband, though a sweet man, was completely incapable of taking any responsibility. So therefore everything devolved to me; this tiny thing’s welfare devolved completely to me. And although I had a lot of friends in London, where we were living, most of them had not yet become mothers so I didn’t have that sort of back-up. And my mum, who we normally turn to, was down in the West Country.
Anyway, what happened very, very quickly, I realise now, was that I just became so anxious about everything. I was a walking jelly. Some anxiety is copeable with, it’s containable – you know, slightly raised heartbeat, breathing, slight nausea, slight over-reaction to loud noises – but in my thirties it wasn’t like that, it was that times a million. I think that panic attacks vary from person to person a little bit, but basically mine always started with an increased heartbeat – the heart would race, I would have palpitations – and I would have an uneven heartbeat which, of course, is a very odd feeling. Then a breath-lessness, which leads to a lot of upper breath sort of panting as it were. Then eventually, because you haven’t got enough oxygen, because you’re breathing wrongly, your fingers start to tingle. I used to breathe into a paper bag, an old trick that works because it rebalances your oxygen levels, so it gets rid of the tingling and the breathlessness. Did I think I was going to die? When the panic attacks were bad yes, because there was this danger that you would pass out, which is frightening.
They would come on suddenly. I can remember, my husband and I were planning a holiday and we were on Regent Street, going to the travel agent to book it. And suddenly I had this – the palpitations, the breathlessness – and it was so bad that he got a taxi and we went straight up to our hospital, which was the Royal Free, and they did all the tests and, of course, they could find nothing wrong. But because the attacks were very frightening the natural reaction was: ‘I’m not going to put myself in this situation where it happens again.’ And that’s why your horizons get narrower and narrower. If you say: ‘Okay, I can’t walk down Regent Street again planning a holiday, because that might happen again’, you don’t do that. But then, let’s say, you go to the cinema and it happens again in the cinema, so then you think: ‘Well if I’m going to go to the cinema and that’s going to happen, then I can’t do that.’
And that’s what happened to me, gradually, gradually. So consequently your boundaries and possibilities – what you feel you can cope with – become fewer and fewer. It took about six months for me to get as bad as not being able to go shopping. Shopping was the most terrible ordeal. I would manage to get to the end of the road with my daughter in her buggy and then I would have to turn around and come home. Eventually, anything that’s away from the home is a no-no. You know, you can’t go out to see friends or anything, the flat was the only safe place for me. What triggered the attacks was absolutely classic: anything that was away from home, because at home I was safe.
Were my family supportive? Not really . . . I think they were bewildered and irritated, actually. They were supportive up to a point, but in the case of my first husband he really didn’t know what to do, he had no idea. And of course, you know, even post-natal depression, yes it was known about, but in my case it wasn’t recognised, nobody recognised it. At that time, forty years ago, I remember it being seen as a sign of weakness, like: ‘You can’t cope with your life, what’s the problem with you?’ There was that sort of feeling abroad, there was still very much a sort of ‘pull yourself together’ attitude. But you can’t just pull yourself together, you actually can’t, and it’s not your fault. It’s just ill luck really. But now, forty years later, we know so much more, we talk about things so much more. Now, for instance, if my daughter started to exhibit any of those symptoms I would, of course, immediately – because the knowledge is out there – say: ‘Come on sweetheart, we’re going to see the do
ctor, because I think that’s what you’ve got.’ But people didn’t know so, yes, bewildered and impatient is what my family were, I think.
And for the person going through it, if you don’t know what it is – which I didn’t for a long time – it’s very frightening. It took quite a long time for somebody to say: ‘Actually, what you’re having is panic attacks.’ Eventually I went to our family doctor and interestingly – remember this was forty years ago but she was a wise old bird – she said: ‘What I think this is, is panic attacks, as you’ve got a lot of pressures on you.’ But at first I was very unwilling to believe it, very unwilling. I refused to believe that it was not something physical, because that’s how it manifested itself. Because the fear didn’t come first, the physical symptoms came first. And I had various tests – testing the heart and so forth – which, of course, were absolutely fine, but I still didn’t believe her and, therefore, the reason I didn’t get help in the first place was my own fault.
I actually went so far as to change doctors and, after a time, I did actually get the help I needed. At first I was given Valium, which was useless, it just made everything . . . it made it worse actually. It didn’t do much for the panic attacks and I just felt that I was swimming six feet under the surface of the sea. It was just a horrid feeling. It did nothing. This went on for some months and then I remember waking up one morning – and this was my saviour – and I was angry, I was so angry. So I got my beloved daughter up, I made breakfast for everybody, and I said to my husband: ‘I’m going running.’ And I literally didn’t think, I just put on some trainers and I went out the front door and I ran twice round the block, very fast. Don’t ask me why I did it; even leaving the house at that point was pretty scary, the panic had set in big time. And I just ran round the block twice to absolutely tire myself out.
I suppose I must have just woken that morning and I literally blew my top. I was really, really angry that my life was so curtailed, so deeply curtailed; I was so angry that my life had been made so small. I was only about thirty-three. What sort of life was this? I had turned down jobs, I couldn’t even shop! I mean it really was terrible and I thought: ‘Jesus Christ, this can’t be right.’ I can remember thinking: ‘This is ridiculous, I can’t go on like this, I’ve got my whole life in front of me, what the bloody hell is going on, nobody can help me.’ My life had been taken away from me and it’s terrible when someone’s life is taken away and it actually is a truly physical thing. It’s not to be made light of because, when it happens to you, it is as . . . what is the word? What I’m trying to do is liken it to, you know, something physical. I remember after my second husband died I broke my ankle and getting around was very hard. For people who are stuck indoors who cannot, or who dare not, go out, it feels the mental equivalent of getting your legs blown off.
And my anger at this made me turn the corner: when I was so angry that my mind, or whatever this was, had done this to me, that I just ran round the block. And if you harness the energy from that anger it is the most wonderful thing. The danger is that you get angry inwardly which makes it worse, but I didn’t, I got angry outwardly at last and to be honest that was what made the difference. When I got back from my run I rang the doctor and I got an appointment that day and I went in and I took the Valium and I . . . actually, no, I’d thrown the Valium down the loo because I was so angry. So I went to the doctor and I said: ‘It’s useless, I want . . . there must be some help out there.’ And he was a great doctor actually, he was a wonderful doctor, because he really listened, he was a brilliant diagnostician, he was one of the best diagnosticians I’ve ever met. And he said: ‘Right, I’m going to send you to the Royal Free because I believe they’ve got this thing they’ve not long set up’, which I think was to do with fear of flying, but I’m not absolutely certain. Anyway, they gave me this set of exercises that I then took away and did every night, without fail, and it retrained the brain remarkably quickly. It probably took six months of diligently doing that every night. And it worked, it worked.
It’s not actually quite the same as cognitive behaviour therapy but it is a branch of it. It was very simple. Last thing at night, in your bed, lying on your back. First thing you did was tense the bottom half of your body: your legs, your bum, your everything. Tense and let go, tense and let go, tense and let go. Three times. Then your arms, shoulders and head. Tense and let go, tense and let go, tense and let go. Then the middle of you, you know, the whole breathing, stomach area. Tense and let go, tense and let go, tense and let go. Then breathe: in and out to a count of five. This means that both physically and actually mentally – because breathing has an effect on your brain – you’re quite relaxed.
Then what you do is you choose something that’s very simple. In my case I decided to choose going shopping because I couldn’t even do that on my own. I couldn’t even go and shop with someone else. I couldn’t shop, period. So I decided I would go shopping on my own to start with, in my head, which was a short journey, an easy journey. I decided to do it without my daughter first, because it was an added worry: if I had an attack when she was with me, what would happen to her? And actors are used to imagining things very quickly, very easily – but most people are anyway whether they know it or not – so I would start with making a shopping list in my head, and then I would get my handbag and put my shopping list in it, and then I would get my wheely trolley. Then I would put my coat on and I would check in my bag that I’d got my keys – everything that you would actually do – and then I would open the front door to the flat, I would go out, close the door, cross the hall to the main front door, open, close, down the steps and cross the tiles to the pavement. Then, all in my head, I would turn right at the pavement, walk along to the end of the road, cross the crossing at the end, walk down the road to Finchley Road, cross the road at the crossing. Then I would go in to either Sainsbury’s or Waitrose, I can’t remember which it was I used to choose – I think it was Waitrose actually – but it doesn’t really matter. Once I was in there, I would check my shopping list and I would go round and shop, and then I would get to the checkout and I would do everything at the checkout, and then I would do the return journey.
Now this took a long time: it wasn’t doing it all in a night. I mean, the first night I got as far as finishing the shopping list and the panic started, so I stopped, I did the whole relaxation thing again and I started the journey in my head again. I got a little bit further, but not much further, and I started again. And of course, what often happens, because it’s at night, is that you go to sleep because you’re reasonably relaxed, and that’s okay, it doesn’t matter. So the next night you do the same thing: you start it all again. And gradually, gradually, over the weeks, you get to the point where you do the whole thing all the way through. Then, if you feel like it, you actually do it in real life.
Once I’d done the whole thing and been totally relaxed from start to finish then I realised that actually I could do it. But, of course, there was always the possibility that my brain would decide otherwise for me. So therefore, what I did was, I always took a paper bag with me, which I did for some months, and I think the first time I did actually use it. And then I would go back at night and I wouldn’t give up. I carried on doing that, and once I could do that properly I would think of other things, like going on a journey on a bus or, of course, the tube, or being in a lift. Now that took much longer, obviously, but I was diligent, I did it every night without fail, because I knew that was the only way to do it. And after about six months I was free, I was free of the shackles. I was just so determined, so determined, that this was not going to curtail just my life, but my daughter’s life, and my life with my husband.
When I’d recovered sufficiently, I was offered a job teaching with a great teacher who had taught me at the Vic School in Bristol and I took it. So, what we set up was: I would drive down with my daughter, she would stay with my mum and dad, I would teach for a couple of days staying with them, and then I would drive back to London.
And that worked very well. I’d gone into the theatre very young – I’d spent about fifteen years in the business and I loved my career – but I’d lost some confidence in myself and my abilities as an actor before I became pregnant. I had been looking at my career and feeling that I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was working nearly all the time but I could see my peers and my friends, you know, sort of doing television, and so on and so forth, and I’d done a little but not very much. But in fact, actually once I’d worked for six months at the Vic School I went back into it because I regained my confidence with the help of some wonderful people in the theatre who encouraged me.
I still had to be a little bit careful and I still had to do the exercises, but by this time not every night, just if there was something specific that was coming up. For instance, I used them again some years later when I had to fly to Singapore to do a series called Tenko and it was wonderful because it freed me of my fear of flying. So although it took quite a bit of time to reprogramme my mind, that’s what ultimately helped me – it more than helped me, it actually cured me – because my brain and body were at odds and I needed to put them back into harness again, which I did. There were still sort of lingering gremlins sitting on my shoulder; I could do it but there would still be a slight feeling of uncertainty. It’s only in the last fifteen or twenty years, for instance, that I’ve quite happily gone in lifts and the underground, and so on and so forth. But now it’s gone, which is not to say that it won’t come back, if circumstances were such, but at least I have the tools at my disposal to actually cope with it.