Philippa Motte: her healing journey

“I sometimes came close to mental death. » During her life, Philippa, a former communications manager, experienced periods of deep depression. She also experienced manic attacks, taking her to heights of exaltation and creativity. This mother of two boys suffers from bipolarity, a psychological illness that disrupts mood.

For almost ten years, Philippa hid this disorder which at times plunged her into delirium. “I became a mystic,” she relates. I was overwhelmed by the suffering in the world and I had such self-confidence that I wanted to save humanity. »

At the time, society still struggled to face mental disorders and preferred to place patients between four walls. Without her consent, Philippa was committed to a psychiatric hospital three times: “I have bitter memories of the drug treatments which knocked me out. I was sometimes attached. It was violent. »

Finding no constructive way out of confinement, she immersed herself in philosophical and spiritual literature, discovering meditation “which allows you to reconnect with yourself”.

A meeting will change everything: a new doctor invites him to take a different look at his illness. “He wasn’t the one who saved me, because I think we can’t save someone else psychologically. But he played an important role in helping me on my way to recovery. » Today, Philippa has become a “peer-helper”: drawing on her experiences, she supports people suffering from the same disorder as her and leads discussion groups.

From this experience, she learned that we cannot persist in wanting to save others. “On the path to reconstruction, the hero of the story is us,” she emphasizes. But this other saves us by the way he allows us to understand our own anxieties. Over the years, Philippa has chosen to put words on her bipolarity through two novels*, and has made mental health her profession by training companies on these issues.

* The day my mother told me everything (Ed. HarperCollins) and It’s me who is locked up (Stock ed.).