How Exercise Helped Me Rebuild My Mental Health After a Decade of Struggle

I’m not ashamed to say that over the years, I’ve really struggled with my mental health. I’ve dealt with generalised anxiety since my college days — and while the binge drinking and chaotic student lifestyle definitely didn’t help, the truth is that as I’ve gotten older, it’s only intensified. It’s become a day-to-day battle for me, and I know many of you can probably relate. Life moves at such a fast pace and we’re all juggling so much that it’s hardly surprising when things start to pile up. But for me, it also feels like there’s something wired into my DNA that means I’m going to have bouts of feeling… well, a bit shit sometimes.

While everyone feels rubbish from time to time — that’s just life — what I experience goes way beyond that. For me, it shows up as cleithrophobia and claustrophobia; the two overlap, really. In simple terms, I can’t cope with the feeling of not being able to get out or being stuck in an enclosed space. Alongside that comes this horrible sinking feeling — almost like a sense of impending doom. I lose all motivation, and even the smallest problem makes me want to retreat straight to my bed. Working for myself, by myself, doesn’t help either. When I’m feeling particularly low, I isolate myself even more, which only makes everything feel heavier.

Even writing this is giving me a little anxiety because I know what’s coming — but I promise it does have a happy ending!

In 2012, my childhood best friend died from a rogue virus that entered her spine. We’d been inseparable since we were five years old, and it was my first real experience of losing someone. I’d lost grandparents before, and while that was heartbreaking, it was nothing compared to the overwhelming, all-consuming grief that took over my life at that time. It was a pain unlike anything I’d ever known, and I had no idea how to cope with it.

My anxiety became crippling. I couldn’t sit in a car, stay in a room, or be in any situation that made me feel trapped. I even struggled just being in my own body. Not long after Louise passed away, my brother was diagnosed with blood cancer. After watching him suffer for three years, he also died in 2015.

These two life-changing losses hit me in ways I could never have imagined. I was completely beside myself with grief for both of them, and everyday life became almost impossible.

But we deal with grief because we have to. I went to the doctors, and I got myself on medication that helped a lot. It didn’t take the pain away, but it did lift the fog enough to give me a little more mental clarity. I had people around me — wonderful friends, a supportive husband, and my parents. They were grieving too, of course. I’m not going to go too deeply into the people who supported me; they know who they are and how much they helped me through what I hoped would be the darkest time of my life. Sadly, it wasn’t.

By the time COVID-19 hit, I was a different person entirely. I’d gained a copious amount of weight from drinking too much, eating rubbish, and generally not caring. I could see the depression and the disdain for who I’d become staring back at me every time I looked in the mirror — which, honestly, wasn’t very often.

Then the worst thing in the world happened. I’ve never talked about this publicly before, although I’ve never shied away from the truth. I’ve always wanted to be respectful to my family — my mum especially — but keeping it private has come at a cost to me. My dad committed suicide.

It’s not what most people would assume. Yes, he was broken with grief for my brother, but he still had so much in his life to enjoy. Cruelly, he wasn’t able to. A disease of the brain was ravaging him, and it was inevitably going to leave him completely incapacitated. He decided he couldn’t face what was coming, and he took his own life to avoid it.

Not many people know this. As a family, we kept it private because facing the scrutiny of other people’s perceptions felt impossible. But if writing this — this frank, honest account of how I lost myself completely — reaches even one person who’s struggling right now, then maybe sharing it is worth it.

So here we are, five years on. I’m 45 years old, staring down the barrel of menopause, and I’m fat, unmotivated, unhealthy and, quite often, miserable. And I find that irrevocably sad. My natural personality — while dry and a bit sarcastic — is actually quite jovial and life-loving. But the past decade of utter shit has worn that down, piece by piece, until I barely recognised myself. Somewhere along the way, I got completely lost.

Here’s the happy ending – thank god! Around four years ago, we moved house — away from the town that held so many haunting memories (though there were plenty of joyful ones too). It felt like starting a completely new life. I began a new job, I had a side hustle on the go, and slowly I started to feel like it was time to take control of the things I’d let slip by the wayside. Namely, my health.

I’d historically been fairly into sport and fitness, but over the last decade that all went completely out of the window. Booze, late nights, lack of sleep, not caring — blah blah blah — all of it took priority instead.

At the beginning of this year, my husband had a health scare and decided to take matters into his own hands. He saw one of those adverts on social media — a gym looking for men in their 50s and 60s to join up and transform their lives through fitness — and he actually signed up. I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly, the washing line had more training gear on it than work shirts, and my weekly meal-planning instructions now started with grilled chicken and ended with broccoli. WTAF.

For six months, I watched him leave in the early hours — cold wind, rain, the lot — to head down to this mysterious gym and work out. And slowly, the improvements started to show: more energy, a healthier attitude towards food and booze, more get-up-and-go, more positivity, less fatigue… I was honestly starting to get FOMO in a big way.

So I took the plunge. I joined True Personal Training in Wetherby — a six-minute drive from my house and possibly the scariest thing I’ve done since standing on the start line of the London Marathon back in 2009. Joining a gym is terrifying for so many people, and honestly, unless you pick the right place, it’s terrifying for good reason.

I am not going to a gym with mirrored walls, rows of intimidating machinery, and big strong men grunting loudly in the corner. Nope. Absolutely not. Immediately no.

True Personal Training in Wetherby is a supportive gym where you’re assigned your own trainer who will also be working with a couple of other people during one session.

It means the coaches are fully present with you throughout your workout, guiding, correcting, encouraging — not just leaving you to fend for yourself. You book into every session, so there’s no drifting in and out; your programme is completely bespoke, and the support is constant. And they hold you properly accountable too — if you don’t show up, they will ring you and ask why. Honestly, I need that level of “where the hell are you?” energy.

I’ve been going since June, and after about a month of honestly hating it, something clicked. Not only has my fitness been completely overhauled, but the changes nobody can see are mind-blowing. I don’t think the guys at True — including my fellow gym-goers as much as the trainers — realise how much has shifted in my head since that very first session.

Alright, yes, I walk in and moan because it’s 7am and I can’t be arsed. I’m definitely one of their biggest whingers — but it’s all in good fun, and once I’m there, I graft. The miracle is that I’ve actually made friends. I have familiar faces to say hello to every day, people who are genuinely good to be around: supportive, encouraging, and fun.

And the trainers? Fantastic. I have bants with them every session, and they all know I’ll whinge my way through the workout — but what they probably don’t realise is just how much they’ve helped change my life.

The facts around the link between exercise and mental wellbeing are everywhere, but let’s be honest — when you’re drowning in depression, grief, anxiety or whatever flavour of mental chaos life has handed you, those facts might as well be written in a different language. If getting out of bed feels like the fight of your life, then lacing up trainers and walking into a gym feels not just unrealistic, but impossible. I know that feeling far too well.

But here’s what I didn’t understand until I’d lived it: when you move your body, even in the smallest way, things start to shift inside your head long before they show on the outside. Movement increases blood flow to the parts of the brain that help stabilise your mood; it boosts endorphins and serotonin — those little chemical lifelines that help you feel calmer, clearer, more level. It also quietens down the stress hormones that keep your brain stuck in panic mode. And slowly, without you even noticing at first, it starts to lift that heavy, suffocating fog.

And that’s why I wrote this article. Because if I can persuade even one person that the journey to the gym — or the football pitch, or the swimming baths, or just a walk around the block — could help ease the mental torture you’re stuck in, then the anxiety of sharing all this publicly will have been worth it. That one single journey could genuinely change your life. Seriously. The one time you manage it might be the turning point that nudges you back towards hope, towards yourself, towards happiness. And wouldn’t that be worth it?

I’m not in any way affiliated with True Personal Training — other than being a paying member who moans her way through the warm-up — and they’ll probably be just as surprised to read this article as I was to find myself writing it. But I do want to say thank you to the team down there, even if they don’t fully realise how much they’ve helped me. Not all heroes wear capes; sometimes they wear black tracksuits and stand behind you making sure you finish your last set.

I’m lucky that I have True just around the corner — and there’s also one in Guiseley — but if you’re nowhere near either of those, I’m certain this style of fitness club is popping up all over the country. And honestly, I would highly recommend giving it a go. It might seem expensive at first — I pay £220 a month — but let’s put that into perspective. I go around 20 times a month which means, 1: I’m an actual machine (jokes), and 2: it works out at about a tenner a session for a personal trainer. Compare that to the price of a standard gym membership you never use, the cost of weight-loss drugs, or — most importantly — the value of your health and happiness. Enough said.

Words – Joanne Brook-Smith