‘I didn’t know how I was going to pay the mortgage’: Mum who nearly drove car off a cliff because of woman bullying her at work
Emotionless, Kathy Heath climbed into her car and turned on the engine. Her eyes stung. She hadn’t slept properly in weeks.
The mum stared blankly ahead as she made the short journey to work. Suddenly, a dark thought told her to steer off the cliff she was driving on.
The terrifying urge was the wake-up call she needed to reach out for help. “I couldn’t function or do anything,” the 44-year-old told the Manchester Evening News.
“I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I lost so much weight I was like a stick insect. I was so anxious that sometimes I couldn’t speak.
“I was mixing all my words up and shaking a lot. I just wasn’t myself.”
Bullying at work had pushed Kathy to the brink. The mum-of-one, from Appley Bridge near Wigan, was in her late 20s when she snapped and suffered a breakdown.
She was working in the payments sector when the belittling began. Receiving bad feedback and having role responsibilities taken away from her by a female colleague led her to believe she was bad at her job.
The negative thoughts took over and started affecting her personal life – convincing her she was a failure in every single thing she did.
“There was a reason I was ill,” she added. “I thought no one liked me. I was performing very well at work but I wasn’t being given good ratings. To prove the bully wrong, I worked from 7am to 11pm. I burnt myself out.”
Single with a mortgage to pay, Kathy felt unable to quit the role in fear of not finding another job. Her mental health struggles became so severe she spent three months lying in bed unable to function.
Kathy’s plight was eventually recognised by a senior member of staff who noticed she looked unwell. After taking some time off work, she was eventually made redundant due to her low rating score.
“The head of department spotted that I didn’t look well,” she added. “She said I had a case but made me take time off.”
While off work, Kathy enlisted the help of a life coach and a counsellor, started working out with a personal trainer, began meditating and learnt yoga.
“I built my own resilience kit,” she added. “I thought, ‘I can do this.'”
Kathy found another job following her redundancy as she began to rebuild her life. Several years into her new role, she decided to use her experience to help others.
The mum went on to launch Healthy Minds Club in May 2021, which she describes as a personalised, proactive and positive mental platform.
It aims to connect users with highly qualified, screened and vetted experts, products and services to “prevent issues from happening in the first place” and “nipping issues in the bud” while “helping users to achieve important wellbeing & lifestyle goals”.
“For years I haven’t spoken about what I went through,” Kathy added. “When I tell people, they say, ‘Wow, you should really share that’.
“If [the workplace bullying] happened to me now, I would have gone to HR. I would have taken it to court and gone through the proper process.
“I’d been in the company for ages and I thought, ‘There must be a way we can solve this’. But by the time I burnt myself out, I was too ill to think about anything.
“I lived on my own and I didn’t know how I was going to pay the mortgage. The negative beliefs held me back.
“There’s a positive story at the end of this. There is hope.”
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