He disappeared for 27 hours, but now Chris is creating the community he needed – Karen Heley and Ashley Pheonix went to meet him
When Chris Clarke went missing for 27 hours, his family feared the worst.
Chris himself thought he had only been away for an hour. The experience of dissociation changed his life – and has now led him to create a new kind of mental health community in Enfield.
We went to meet Chris with plenty of questions. Neither of us knew much about dissociation. We knew it was connected to mental health, but not what it could actually feel like to experience it. Chris was about to change that.
Dissociation is a mental process where someone can become disconnected from their thoughts, memories, surroundings or sense of time and reality. It can be the mind’s way of coping when life feels overwhelming, leaving someone feeling as though they are not fully present in the world around them.
In 2023, while out on a bike ride, Chris became overwhelmed. He describes his brain as having “switched off”. He continued travelling, eventually cycling from Surrey to Westminster, but his sense of time and reality had fundamentally altered.
He was gone for 27 hours.
Chris remembers only around 15 minutes of that time. For the people who loved him, those 27 hours were terrifying. They thought he might have died. For Chris, however, the journey had felt like a much shorter period. His brain had effectively kept him moving while disconnecting him from the normal experience of time and reality.
“I realised something was wrong,” Chris told us. When a police officer said “it’s all right, Chris, we’ve been looking for you,” he broke down and cried.
What happened next was as difficult. Chris was diagnosed with dissociation, but found that very little was explained to him about what it actually meant. He had to research it himself. He also discovered that he did not fit easily into the categories used by many mental health services.
He wasn’t suicidal, he wasn’t clinically depressed, but he was frightened, confused and struggling to understand what had happened to him. “I was lost. I was lonely,” he told us. “I just couldn’t make sense of it.”
The experience fundamentally changed his life. The confident person who had known where he was going suddenly had to learn who he was again. He worried constantly about another episode. He withdrew from people. He kept himself busy because stopping meant having to confront his thoughts.
Chris then decided to create the thing he couldn’t find – and that’s how 27 Community was born.
The aim is to create safe spaces where people can come together, talk, walk or simply be around people who understand what it is like when life becomes overwhelming. The ‘Walk and Talk’ events take place monthly in Enfield at Forty Hall Estate – chosen deliberately because its grounds offer a break from the intensity of everyday life. Monthly group sessions also take place on the last Tuesday of each month at Enfield Town Library.
You don’t need a diagnosis to come along – you don’t even have to talk. Chris remembers a time when he couldn’t talk about what had happened to him, so 27 Community has been designed around the understanding that people need to join in at their own pace. “No pressure,” Chris told us. “You don’t have to explain yourself.”
What struck us was that Chris isn’t presenting himself as someone who has everything worked out. He is still learning about himself. He describes himself as a member of 27, not simply its facilitator.
The group helps him too. And perhaps that is the most important thing we took away from our conversation. Lived experience isn’t just something that happens to people. It can become knowledge, connection and action.
Chris could have kept his experience private. Instead, he has turned it into a space where someone else might not have to feel as alone as he did. For us, as two people with our own lived experience of mental health challenges, this feels powerful.
“What happens when people with lived experience stop waiting for someone else to create the space they need – and create it themselves?”
For Chris, the answer is 27 Community. And his invitation is simple: you don’t have to explain everything. You don’t have to have the right words. You just have to know that you’re not alone.
For more information about 27 Community and upcoming activities:
Instagram @27communitygroup
This article is published with support from LocalMotion Enfield, part of a UK-wide movement for community-led change
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