I was diagnosed seven years ago with having Attention Deficit Disorder.

Even working with my mental coach at the time, when I had to really concentrate on the golf course, I got too emotional. I just couldn’t switch it off.

Even though I was playing really good golf during 2012, as we got closer towards the end of the year I felt as though I was getting really angry on the course despite the fact that I was taking the medication.

We came into the part of the season where you’re trying to keep your card and I flat-out had a mental breakdown on the course at the WA Open at Mount Lawley.

My brain essentially said to me, I’ve had enough of this. I took myself off the course, walked in, went to my room and went into this really heavy fog. I was in this dozy state for what felt like three or four hours; I was just lying there thinking all these really weird – and in some ways disturbing – thoughts.

I came out of it and spoke to my friends who had become a bit worried about me and they just said, ‘Who cares about the golf, we just care about you.’

That was the moment when I decided not to take the medication any longer. Because if you’re not facing what’s making you unhappy in the first place, then all the medication in the world’s not going to help you. You still haven’t got to the root of the problem.

While I wanted to think better on the course my body just wouldn’t allow it; it wouldn’t allow me to think properly.

I didn’t have a great personal opinion of myself because I wasn’t playing good golf and I just felt that the medication wasn’t helping me at the time.

Near the end of last year I was having a difficult time trying to not get emotional on the course.

I got back on my medication and found that my emotional control on the course was so much better.

Now it’s come full circle where I’m in a better headspace to tackle what I want to achieve in the game having gone down that road of finding out why it was that I felt that way about myself.

Not only can I concentrate and do the things that I need to do – processing information and processing what’s happening on the course – it’s become so much easier for me to not ride those huge waves of emotion.

It’s the nature of the sport. Obviously you want to do well and you can look at leaderboards and moneylists and things like that but now I am able to have a bad hole and move on and remain in the process.

I’d never really had that discipline before because I wanted to get that shot back and try and force an emotional feeling on the course to keep on top of my emotions and nerves.

It became a self-fulfilling prophecy. You want to play well and do well but it comes at the price of being emotionally over-invested and all of a sudden that turns into greater expectations.

It’s a really crappy cycle to get into and I’d been battling it forever.

I feel like this year I’ve had a bit of help with that along with the fact that I’m a bit more mature.

I’m thinking through the shot more clearly, analysing the shot and hitting the shot. If it doesn’t come off, I don’t feel as though I was too emotional over it; I just hit a bad shot.

It comes down to more a miscalculation than an emotional failure.

If a shot doesn’t come off and you’re really emotionally invested in it, I always felt like I’d really failed. I’d really battle with that all the time but now I’m now starting to see the golf that has always been in me but which I haven’t been able to properly align with all of the emotional stuff to get it out of myself.

I could be disappointed and shoot 72 but be realistic enough to know that might have been the best I was going to get out of myself that day, rather than shoot 72, have ridden this emotional roller-coaster and see someone shoot 65 and think, How pathetic are you, you’re seven shots off the guy who’s leading.

Towards the end of last year I started working with a new sports psychologist based in Perth.

I typed ‘sport psychologist Perth’ into Google, his name came up and I gave him a call out of the blue.

Don’t laugh but his name is Shayne Hanks. I tell him if he intends to work with golfers maybe it’s not a good idea to have S. Hanks on his business card.

It’s great to have a sounding board and someone to talk to and we’ve become good friends. We spend almost as much time talking about his golf as we do mine and when that happens I give him a bit of his own medicine.

I feel very fortunate to be in the position that I’m in right now.

I’ve been working on my game with David Milne the past three years and he has been a massive part of my more consistent results. He started me on the run that got me to European Tour Q School finals and has guided me through all the ups and downs that come with this game.

I almost walked away from the game not long after that experience at the WA Open.

It was pretty heavy stuff at the time but there wasn’t a blueprint for how you should think about certain things on the golf course and about yourself.

If you’re fortunate enough to come through the other side you’re so much stronger for it and that’s why I feel like I’m getting the results now, even though – in my mind – it’s 15 or so years later than I would have expected.

I’m 43 years of age now and understand exactly where I am, where I can compete and I have the maturity to be able to do that and stick to it.

I tried the other way. I tried for years trying to force the issue and get better results and I came to the realisation eventually that I had to find another way to compete.

If I stick to what I’m good at then I’ll get the results I want to get.

They say youth is wasted on the young; it’s just taken me a little while to work a lot of that out.

At least I’m still in the game and able to compete and perform.

Better late than never.