What are your taps? Some personal thoughts on fundraising and mental health

Last week I gave a presentation with Mandy Johnson at the Institute of Fundraising Yorkshire conference entitled "Fundraiser, heal thyself." We spoke about our own 'journeys' and personal lessons from when we've battled back from mental health issues. This blog is based on my parts, with special thanks to Mandy for inspiring much of it. I am not a mental health expert - this blog is written from personal experience, and I hope some of it may be relevant for you. Why are fundraisers particularly prone? We all know about the tight deadlines, the overlapping high targets, competing priorities and demanding colleagues we face. These can lead to long hours, anxiety, stress and feeling inadequate. But there's more. To be good fundraisers we arguably need to feel strong affinity with the causes we represent. This can lead to secondary trauma of exposure to often life-changing issues, illnesses and more besides. We are communicating passion, which can be exhausting in itself, and it's tough to get knocked back when we're personally invested. There's also often the inescapable feeling that we're not doing the real work of the charity. This can lead to internal divisions between fundraising and other operational and comms teams, and fundraising can quite literally become a thankless task. Things are going well. So why am I crying in my garden? Let me take you back six or seven years. I loved the charity I was working for, liked and respected my colleagues, was pre