I was 10 minutes from the end of a job interview when my future employer asked: "So that's all behind you now, is it?"
So far, the interview had gone pretty well. Until the person I hoped would soon be my boss asked me a question I'd never come across before.
Turns out, they'd found a video I made several years prior, of me singing a song I wrote.
No big deal, except that I was singing said song whilst an inpatient in a psych hospital.
"So, I found that video. And I just wanted to check, that's all behind you now, is it?"
My face burned. I wanted to explain everything: that mental health struggles don't vanish, it's something I manage (or at least try to as best I can).
Instead, I lied.
"Oh yeah that was a while ago, I'm doing much better now."
Technically, I was doing much better. I'd learnt a lot more about how to manage the episodes of months-long deep depression that plagued me since I was a teenager.
But the full truth? I was in one of those episodes right then and there, while doing that job interview.
And that interview wasn't the only time I'd softened the truth.
I've spent my working life in what I like to call the "honesty gap".
Even if I disclose my mental health experiences, I might minimise or explain it away as "in the past".
This kind of creative disclosure became a necessary art form to maintain my work life.
What pretending cost me
I ended up getting that job — the one where my manager had found that video.
I was good at it, too, even though I was also having a really hard time the entire time I worked there.
I've managed to maintain my working life throughout these depressive episodes, despite how disruptive they are to my personal life.
I'd polish emails while panic pulsed through me, hoping my colleagues wouldn't see that I had a live chat with a crisis service open in my other browser tab.
Most people don't see the daily pretending required, or the constant hum of stress it causes.
Being seen as "high functioning" helped me survive professionally, but it also pushed me into a pattern of overwork and exceptionalism.
I worked myself into the ground trying to atone for my mental health and the fear that it made me unreliable. It was a silent, relentless pressure.
I began working in the mental health space, and while that made it easier to talk about, it was still surprisingly difficult to talk about my mental health in present tense.
One unexpected thing helped: I experimented with being more honest somewhere outside of work.
Sharing more openly in my creative life became an outlet — and eventually opened the door to changing how I move through workplaces now.
Finding a way to be more honest
I made a memoir podcast with the ABC about my mental health experiences — No Feeling Is Final. It ended up being a lot more popular than I anticipated.
That means that now, in most workplaces, people already know something about my mental health history. And while this has made for some awkward moments, it's also opened a door to greater honesty in my working life.
Still, knowing someone has struggled is very different from being able to say, "I'm struggling right now."
Slowly, I've gotten better at that.
Recently, I was leading a very stressful project — tight deadlines, tricky stakeholders and big expectations.
I was working overtime and my anxiety was starting to peak. Most worryingly, I was starting to have anxiety nightmares, one of the first warning signs that I might be slipping into another episode.
Full transparency mode
Over a Zoom meeting early one morning, my voice shook slightly, but I said it anyway: "I need to let you know this is having an impact on my mental health. I'm OK right now, but if it gets worse, I won't be able to keep leading this project. We'll need a back-up plan."
I felt ridiculous (how is my mental health my boss's problem?) but I managed to be surprisingly direct.
I needed to tell her what was on the line for me.
In the past, these episodes led to chronic suicidal periods, where I'd get sucked into a very deep hole that was difficult to get out of. I wasn't willing to risk that happening again for the sake of this project.
To my pleasant surprise, she agreed. No project would be worth destroying my mental health for.
In fact, she already had a "break-in-case-of-emergency" option.
We ended up finishing the project successfully — and more sustainably — because I knew she knew my limits, and I knew there was a Plan B if we really needed it.
This experience showed me what's possible when the circumstances are right, that I can be honest about my mental health and still be seen as competent — as someone who knows herself well and takes proactive steps to stay on track.
I may have a way to go yet, but this is a small glimpse of just what can happen when I start to close that honesty gap.
Honor Eastly is co-founder of The Big Feels Club, which supports people living with long-term mental-health challenges and their workplaces. She is a winner of the Australian Mental Health Prize for her advocacy work.
