I snatched my power back and healed myself by confronting him, the anger making me courageous. That day I pulled something out of myself, a fearlessness that never left, that I could channel into my voice, my music and my songs. I found my strength.

After my crisis, everyone became more supportive and realised I was vulnerable. I learnt how to cope better by expressing myself when I felt too much pressure instead of pretending I was invincible. For me, it was the beginning of the realisation that I don’t have to sound like Aretha or anyone else. I just have to sound like me.

Relationships are hard, all of them, but you have to make your own mistakes and deal with your own dramas. The only way to learn is through experience. We don’t put enough emphasis on the value of failure and how overcoming it is character-building, and how pain can be a useful tool because, without it, you’ll never know happiness. Anger is also a powerful tool that gives you the energy to move on, but you have to let it fade otherwise it will consume and poison your thinking. That’s what ‘Til Morning’, one of my favourite songs on the album, is about.

This sort of gap between what a person says and what he makes you feel is not uncommon – think of the friend who rings you when you’re down, talks to you in an encouraging, supportive way, but leaves you feeling worse. The space between Matt’s words and the feelings he provoked in me was enormous. He was describing a life that was frightening, but I didn’t feel frightened for him. I felt uncharacteristically disengaged.

Each time I heard it, it seemed so profound! There is so much in life that we cannot control no matter how we try. Circumstances, events, feelings, even our own thoughts! But we can take responsibility for how we relate to what happens. We can grimace with our hands over our ears or we can lift one hand. By now, this has become a refrain in my mind, one that often returns to guide me in my life and in my work with patients.