“There’s something my therapist suggested I share with you.”
A fellow teacher, let’s call him Liam, is stood at the front of the class. It’s 1999 and the war in Kosova has just ended.
We’re all gathered, about 10 of us teachers and managers on a Refugee Council teacher training day, suddenly hanging on Liam’s every word.
We’re a motley mix; British, Iranian, Persian, Ethiopian, Polish, Eritrean. We take our work but not ourselves seriously. Until Liam started talking, that is.
“I suffer from panic attacks,” Liam continues, “and my therapist thought it’d be a good idea to be open about it. Especially when these are the sorts of environments that tend to trigger them.”
Even before this confession, I have great respect for Liam who’ll go on to be a big wig at a local London council. For the last year, he’d been seconded to the Kosovo project, settling new arrived refugees fleeing the war in the Balkans. He even spent a week there after the war ended.
But, to my mind, what he’s doing now takes real courage. It’s the sort of disclosure that I hope I’ll never have to make, my own panic attacks having receded for a couple of years.
They won’t return for another 15 but when they do, I’ll begin again the exhausting job of keeping them hidden.
And keeping myself hidden, too.
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