WATCH: Navigating PTSD through a return to music

Craig, who plays The Folklore Rooms in Brighton on Saturday, April 22, admits that he will always carry past trauma with him, but his rediscovery of music has helped put him in a strong place now. His debut album Songs from the Campfire is part of a ground-breaking project in partnership with CALM – the Campaign Against Living Miserably, a charity dedicated to saving lives through preventing suicide.

“I had quite a severe mental health illness back in 2016. I collapsed in the workplace and hit my head pretty badly. I was diagnosed with stress and exhaustion and burn-out. They said that my body had shut down just to put itself in protection mode because I was so stressed and so exhausted from the various management roles I had been working in for a decade. I think basically my body just said no. I was not really aware of the build-up, to be honest. It creeps up on you bit by bit without you really knowing and in a way that kind of stress is just part of the management roles that I was doing. Physically I had quite a severe concussion but afterwards I also had crippling anxiety. I had terrors at night. And eventually I was diagnosed with PTSD. At first it was thought it was depression and anxiety and I was sent off with tablets but when I got to the point where I was going to try to get back to work, I had panic attacks and a real sort of physical rejection of the job, even just seeing the logo of the place where I worked and that's when I went back to another doctor and I was fully diagnosed with PTSD.

“I used to play music but I stopped to focus on my career in management because it was going so well but actually as I was recovering I pulled my guitar out and just started strumming a few chords. And I just felt a fantastic connection with it. I was recovering and I was practising meditation because I wanted to get my mind back to strength and I just found that playing the guitar was like a form of meditation. I started writing various melodies and chord patterns that just came to me and I found that I started lyrically connecting with the patterns that I had written. It was like an outpouring of self-therapy with my guitar. It was helping me make sense of what I had been through. It was like it actually gave me a map to help myself through the illness. When you have a proper breakdown, you are changed. You don't feel the same person and you feel like you're a failure, but when I started writing I could see where I wanted to be and I came out with about 20 songs that were all connected to my journey.” And now this is his debut album, but the point is he is using his new musical career to help others: “I thought I wanted to combine the music and sharing my story with generating help for other people. In the management roles that I had I had access to private healthcare and if I hadn't had access to private healthcare, I wouldn't have had access to the therapies that I was able to have. But there are people that have not had access to those therapies who are not here now. I wanted to raise funds and I looked around and I found CALM which is such a fantastic charity.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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