Paul McKenna reveals he was ‘waking up at midday and drinking’ as he ‘didn’t care if he lived’ in secret battle

HYPNOTIST Paul McKenna has admitted that he suffered from depression so badly that he didn’t care if he lived or died. The best-selling author revealed that it was triggered by working with suicidal people whose way of thinking began to rub off on him. But he insisted that instead of viewing the experience as a negative he saw it as a gift, as he’d been able to turn it into a product and help other people going through depression.

Paul, who has since penned the books Freedom from Anxiety and I Can make You Happy said: “I have been depressed. "Years ago, when my father died and I was doing a study for the military into PTSD, I was working a lot with depressed and suicidal people and got infected with that mindsight and it was pretty awful. "I got to a point where I didn’t care whether I lived or died,” he told Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast. “I’d get up at midday, I was drinking heavily and friends said: ‘you’ve got to turn this around’.

"And I made a conscious choice. I went: ‘actually I don’t want this.’ And that’s hard for people who are depressed. "What I found after I’d been there myself was, I was able to help people who were depressed with much greater success, so it was a gift. "Very often when I’ve been through something terrible, I’ve been able to use it to help other people, or even turn it into a product, so that’s one of the positive ways to look at it.”.

Paul also told how he had used his subconscious in order to find the love of his life. The therapist married for the first time at 53 after tying the knot with his former PA Kate Davey in 2016. He told Kaye Adams that the reason he had taken so long to settle down was because he was dating women that he found attractive, rather than women he really liked. It took a friend, who was a life coach, to point out where he was going wrong.

Paul, who previously dated TV presenter Penny Smith and models Clare Staples and Liz Fuller, explained: "He said: ‘I’ve noticed you date some nice women, but you don’t like them really.’. "I said: ‘what’s that got to do with it?’ He said: ‘stupid thinking. What you’ve got to do is think who do you love to be with and who are you attracted to.’. If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.

"Being a hypnotist, I thought – I’ll put these two suggestions in to my subconscious and see what happens and it drew this Excel spreadsheet and at the top of it was Kate. "I went– ooh, that’s awkward, because Kate had started as my assistant and ended up running all the companies, so we worked together. "A few days later we were in my kitchen and we’d polished off the best part of a bottle of wine and I said: ‘tell me something about you that I don’t know,’ and she said: ‘I love you.’ I said: ‘oh my God, I feel the same, this is extraordinary.'".

Paul made his name as a DJ on Capital FM and Radio 1 during the 1980s and early ‘90s, before becoming a successful hypnotherapist. I was working a lot with depressed and suicidal people and got infected with that mindsight. His self-help books have grossed more than 17m in the UK alone. But he told How to be 60 that despite selling millions of book teaching people how to be smarter, richer and more successful, he no longer puts a lot of emphasis on these things now that he is 61.

He explained that he had imagined himself at the end of his life and then asked himself what he wished he had done more and less of. “The first time I did it, I thought – I wished I’d loved more, laughed more, been less competitive and realised that there was so much stuff to enjoy and I wasn’t because I was overly ambitious and just obsessed with obtaining more stuff and status,” he said.

"I went - right, I’ve got to calm down endless goal-setting and achieving. When I’m really old I’m not going to wish I had another car or more money. Maybe I should enjoy more of what I have. "So, I shifted from being all about goals – got to achieve this, got to achieve that and if I didn’t, I could really get quite upset – to more of a value-driven life. "I would like to think that I’ve evolved in a positive way. That I’m maybe kinder than I used to be. I’m certainly more relaxed than I used to be.".