Millie Farrow was still a young girl when the voice in her head started telling her what to do.
Her earliest memories of extreme anxiety are from the age of 10, when she would become so overwhelmed that her throat closed up and she would have difficulty breathing. At the time she called it “the breathing thing”. It happened on the football pitch sometimes.
She was taken to see a doctor, but back then, some 16 years ago, not even medical professionals could identify the anxiety she would carry, like a heavy weight around the neck, her whole life, and she was prescribed an inhaler in case she had asthma.
But it wasn’t until secondary school and after joining Chelsea, as exams and the prospect of a professional career in football came at her fast, that her obsessive compulsive disorder started to rule her life and became so unbearable it would lead to breakdowns.
OCD is a disorder many associate with the odd quirk – mainly people who are slightly obsessive about cleanliness – but at its extreme end it can be debilitating, forcing the sufferer to relentlessly perform tasks that are irrational.
“It’s like having a little voice in your head and the more you listen to it the stronger it gets,” Farrow tells i.
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At secondary school, she recalls the strange tics that emerged, such as having to cross a word out on a page five times if she made a mistake, or sometimes having to rip the page out altogether and start all over again.
She would become so fixated on things – even people – that she found she wasn’t able to properly concentrate on what the teacher was saying. Or, when it came to football, the coach and the training session.
In her teens, the situation got so bad that Farrow would dread attending camps with England youth teams. Even though the invite meant she was one of the most talented players in the country in her age group, it also meant she had to spend weeks alone with her OCD.
At times, it would be so bad she would cry on the car journey to the camp, wishing the drive would never end so that she would have less time alone with her condition constantly nagging her.
“Because of all the external things I had to try to be focusing on in my life at that point, whether that was being at a football camp, or in training or a game, I felt it was easier for me to listen to it and do what it wanted me to do so I could get read of that thought and try to focus on the present, the here and the now,” she says.
But although she did what the voice said, it didn’t get any easier. At one stage, she became fixated on a team-mate and was convinced, completely irrationally, that the girl was “contaminated” or “dirty”. The same thing had happened with a girl at school and now it was invading her football world.
“I could never switch off,” Farrow writes. “I could never relax from my thoughts. It was constant. During a training session I could feel myself struggling more and more in my head, pushing myself down further and further.”
One of the stranger manifestations of the OCD was that Farrow had a thing about periods. She hated people discussing them – it would send her into a downward spiral. One day, the “contaminated” team-mate asked Farrow and a couple of girls in the changing room if she had “leaked” (a not uncommon request, Farrow says) and it sent Farrow’s OCD into overdrive for the remainder of the camp.
Farrow avoided everything the girl touched – particularly difficult at mealtimes when they shared buffet food and serving spoons – and if she couldn’t do so, would use hand sanitiser she kept on her at all times, or a sleeve. But the obsession took over: she would find herself focusing only on the girl in training to see what she contaminated, and would miss what the coaches were saying.
During England camps, girls roomed in pairs and Farrow prayed en route to every one that she would not room with the “contaminated” girl. Yet it couldn’t be avoided for ever and one morning, after filling out the forms on arrival, she realised she was rooming with her.
Farrow felt so uncomfortable and upset she spoke to a strength and conditioning coach, and though he had no idea what she was going through he could tell she was distressed and switched her roommate. However, when he new roommate later discussed her heavy period, Farrow felt herself losing control.
“I was draining myself mental and physically,” she says. “It’s absolutely exhausting. I got home from an England camp. There’s no break when you’re on camp, you’re there for a week or whatever. You’re 24/7 in that environment. I was 24/7 OCD. Paying attention to things that were completely irrelevant or irrational when I should’ve been focusing on listening to a drill or the coach.”
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Next, she went to Mo Marley, the head coach, to explain. “I hated how it made me feel, I hated how it affected my football and most of all I hated how I felt it affected the people around me.”
Farrow was eventually sent home, and told anyone who asked that it was due to pain from a previous hip problem. “It got so frustrating and it hurt me so much because I cared about reaching my potential and doing my best and proving myself and I still do.
“At every club I’ve been at it’s been the same story. It would get to a point where it would be: this is too much. I’d have these breakdowns and wouldn’t know what to do with myself and that’s when I needed to seek a lot of help.”
She could not escape it anywhere. In another instance, she was out with family and friends when she thought her friend’s hand had been contaminated after touching something. It bugged her, constantly, so much so she closely observed everything they touched in the car on the way home.
She was so embarrassed and was so concerned about causing her parents distress that she would sneak out when they were watching TV to clean everywhere in the car that had been touched.
“That was the reason why I tried to hide the cleaning a lot, because I knew it would make them feel stress and sadness for me,” she says. “It’s not a great place to be. They saw the breakdowns and the anger outbursts I’ve had.”
She adds: “Say my hand was ‘contaminated’ for whatever reason. Then I pick this up… ” she lifts a coffee cup. “Now this is dirty. Or I pick my phone up, now that’s dirty. It would get to the point where it was too much. Now I need to clean that, that, that, that, because I touched this.
“It’s not just a voice. It’s a feeling that comes with that message. We have thousands of thoughts a day and a lot of them float by like clouds. For me it was never a cloud, it was stuck. The only way I could get rid of that thought or feeling was to do the compulsion and the act it was telling me to do.
“Whether it was I need to wash my hands, I need to clean this, I need to know if you touched that. The thing is with it, if I didn’t, if I tried to fight it. If I was like no, I’m not going to wash my hands. F*** you, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to listen. And I didn’t wash my hands. The feeling and thought would get stronger.”
Farrow has bravely detailed her experiences and is speaking to i now to show young boys and girls that the route to professional football is not always easy. She believes, in fact, that in a lot of cases the opposite is true.
It struck her when Alex Scott, the former Arsenal and England star, spoke passionately about footballers being not just “role models” but “real models”, while working as a pundit during the Lionesses’ stunning Euro 2022 victory.
Farrow hopes that by sharing the brutally tough pathway she has taken, others will understand that there’s always hope. She also wants coaches and managers to hear what goes on inside somebody’s head so that they may one day understand what a player is going through.
“No one can be 100 per cent educated in everything,” she says. “But there definitely needs to be more of a level of understanding there. Just recognising that athletes aren’t robots, they are human. For certain players to be able to reach their potential there might need to be a little bit more work done there for that certain individual, whether that be the psychological side, or the understanding side of ‘you can talk to me and we can make a plan’.
Thank you so much to everyone who has shown support so far. I am overwhelmed with your kindness. I really appreciate it
— Millie Farrow (@MillieFarrow) January 2, 2023
To pre order – https://t.co/VTZjBizt1q
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“It’s an awareness thing. That’s why I’ve done what I’ve done with the book. I’ve had all sorts of discussions with coaches about my potential and I’ve always believed I’ve got the potential to play at the highest level. And when I was younger everyone dreams of playing for their country. But the journey isn’t always what you plan it to be.”
She adds: “That’s why I felt it was so important to be completely honest. It’s almost a bit embarrassing for me. When I was younger and trying to deal with it, I just used to hate myself and be ashamed of myself because I couldn’t control my mind. I let it completely take over me. That’s where it gets worse and worse.
“There were points in my career where I genuinely felt the universe was telling me I shouldn’t be a footballer. Injury after injury, the OCD, the anxiety, self-doubt, putting myself under tremendous amount of pressure. But I never did. I kept going and kept going.
“Now it’s got to the point I’ve signed the best contract I’ve ever had and I get to play football in the States on one of the biggest stages in the world. For me, there is always hope, no matter how bad it seems and no matter how deep of a hole you feel like you’re in. There’s always a way to get yourself out.”
Brave Enough Not to Quit, by Millie Farrow, with Kate Field, is out on 13 February from Pitch Publishing
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