Finding HopeSeeing Yourself in the World Around You
Posted on March 28, 2020
When it comes to TV shows, movies, and books, I see myself fairly regularly in the physical sense: I’m a young white woman. But when it comes to the things that I most associate with myself – being Autistic and struggling with my mental health – there is very little. Depictions of neurodiversity and mental illness are usually very stereotypical and often downright wrong. And that only adds to the stigma around mental health.
Now, I’m a twenty five year old woman with ASD and several mental health problems (including anxiety, depression, and BPD). I recognise that my experience is very specific. I’m not asking for a fictional version of myself; I just want some characters that I can really relate to. That isn’t an unreasonable request, is it? Seeing yourself in the world around you is so important, at least it is in my experience. It validates my emotions, my experiences, and makes me feel less alone when those things often make me feel very isolated and, if I’m completely honest, broken.
I’ll give you an example:
In Season 2 of Supergirl, the character Alex Danvers comes out as gay and a major part of the season is dedicated to her coming to terms with that and her relationship with another character, Maggie. This storyline meant a lot to a lot of people but the thing that I really connected to was Alex’s emotional journey and her relationship with being happy. In episode 9, her sister is abducted (said sister is Supergirl so she gets into trouble a lot but that’s beside the point) and her reaction is: “I was happy for five minutes,” revealing a belief that she doesn’t deserve to be happy, that somehow she is being punished for trying to be happy. This is brought up again later when she says, “I feel like the universe is just magically smacking me down from being happy.” These two moments were huge to me. This is something that I really, really struggle with and I have never seen it anywhere but inside my head. So to hear it from a character I admired meant everything to me. It made me feel less alone and less ridiculous for feeling this way. Because if this woman (who is more or less a superhero) feels like that, then it’s not unreasonable for me to feel that way, is it? Of course, I’d love for it to be revisited because it’s not something that goes away overnight but the fact that it was mentioned at all kept me going for days – weeks – and even a couple of years later, I can watch that episode and feel better.
And recently, Chyler Leigh – who plays Alex Danvers – has revealed that she lives with Bipolar Disorder. She first started experiencing symptoms at twelve years old and struggled through her teens and most of her twenties: “The mania would come and go, but the depression felt like it was always there. There are a lot of different ways mania manifests: I had extreme irritability and felt like an engine running on overtime; I couldn’t sleep at all; and I felt disconnected from reality, almost like I was high. As a teen, I did a lot of drugs, and that made me feel better, but crashing was devastating.” She tried to be the one in control of everything when she felt so out of control. She was diagnosed in her late twenties* but before her diagnosis, she says she felt like she was drowning and saw multiple medical professionals and multiple medications that just made her feel nothing: “[They] made me feel nothing, and that to me was more important than feeling happy or feeling sad. I withdrew and I shut down… I just didn’t know how else to function. And so I lied about a lot, I hid a lot. I kept to myself. And that caused an incredible amount of chaos and just destruction in the family.” Eventually she hit an awful breaking point, a mania so high that she couldn’t sleep at all and ended up hospitalised. Once she was released, she talks about how she needed to start fresh and find what worked for her. It was “very, very difficult” but now she’s in a good place: “I did find a medication that works that I still take, which keeps me very level, much more even. There are not really big peaks and valleys. It makes me function as a human being where I feel like, ‘Okay, I can manage when things are really hard and I can also really celebrate victories.'”
Ten years later, she’s ready to talk about it and use her platform to support others and raise awareness: “It’s something that’s terrified me for a long time because it feels like I’m admitting some sort of secret, or some sort of way that people are going to look at me differently or judge me but I’ve been met with nothing but acceptance and love and support, which is just amazing.” Her story is complicated but unfortunately very common and she and her husband are raising three children who either have mental health problems or are neurodiverse. The link to the initial interview (I believe) is here in case you want to read more about it. She also talks about talking about mental health and mental illness with her children in a healthy way that isn’t scary and that’s really incredible. She’s now teamed up with the Be Vocal: Speak Up for Mental Health movement to advocate for mental health awareness and acceptance: “We have an incredible opportunity to change the narrative and change the conversation, and lead people to places that can encourage them and really take them where they need to go… It’s OK to not be OK. And it’s incredibly important to reach out. Be willing to let your guard down a little bit to be able to find that community. And also know that if you’re really struggling that there are so many resources.”
*”When I first got the bipolar diagnosis it was sort of like, ‘Oh my gosh, if that was me, how on earth am I going to deal with this? Am I in the same place? Am I equipped? Do I have what it takes to actually really genuinely take care of myself?'” I find this quote really helpful because that’s how I feel everyday. I wonder EVERYDAY if I’m ever going to be equipped to look after myself.
And here’s another example:
One of my favourite fictional characters is Daisy Johnson from Agents of Shield (which will be ending soon, something I am genuinely devastated over – it’s going to take actual therapy time to adjust to such a meaningful change in my life). Again, she’s practically a superhero (there’s a theme, I know) and ever since I started watching the show, I’ve been very inspired by her and her storyline. She’s a force of nature. She’s experienced great tragedy and each time, she uses it to reinvent herself, searching for ways to do good and make positive change in the world. She might be a fictional character but she means so much to me. And that led me to following the actress that plays her, Chloe Bennet, on social media. A few months after I started watching the show, she did an interview where she talked very honestly about her mental health: “I suffer from anxiety, I’ve had depression… it’s hard.” She talked about having panic attacks. She talked about the importance of mental health. And she talked about having therapy: “I see a therapist on a regular basis and that has helped me so much.” Reading all of that meant a lot to me. Knowing that someone I admire has had a similar experience makes me feel less alone in that experience.
Bello Magazine (November 2016)
It goes without saying that I wish none of us had to deal with these challenges but hearing people talk about these experiences really helps me. It makes all of this less lonely, less isolating. And seeing strong, smart, insightful, compassionate people (real or fictional) deal with the same things I do, reminds me that I can be those things too, that my mental health problems don’t make me less of a person with less of a future. Seeing people succeeding in what they do, while living with these challenges makes me believe that that’s possible for me as well. Representation is a powerful thing.
‘Clarity’ Music Video – Out Now!
Posted on February 7, 2020
As of today, the music video for ‘Clarity’ is out and available for you all to watch! I’m so excited for you guys to see it. Richard Sanderson and Lois de Silva did such an amazing job and I’m so proud of the result. I hope you love it as much as we do.
Again, this video is different from anything I’ve ever done. They’ll be a Behind The Scenes of the video video coming soon where I’ll talk about it in detail but the idea of the double version of myself was really fun and having animation was really cool. And working with Lois was such an amazing experience; we went to college together and I’ve always wanted to work with her so getting to do that so early in my career was so special. She’s so good at what she does and she was so enthusiastic and professional about the project. I’m so, so happy with the final result and I hope you guys love it too.
Tips For Talking About Mental Health and Mental Illness
Posted on February 7, 2019
Today is Time To Talk Day 2019, a day dedicated to talking about mental health and breaking down some of the stigma associated with mental illness. It’s always ‘time to talk day’ on this blog so to do something special, I thought a post about talking about mental health might be appropriate. It’s true that the more you talk about this stuff, the easier it gets but starting is hard and we all need help sometimes. So with that in mind, here are some tips for talking about mental health stuff:
You are telling someone about your mental health:
- Start with writing – Talking is hard. If it’s going to make the process easier, it’s absolutely okay to start with writing, whether that’s writing it all down in a letter or email or simply ask to have a conversation about a particular topic by text. I used a Facebook message to let all of my friends know that I’d been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder; it was the most efficient way of getting all the necessary information to all of my important people.
- Bring helpful information – You don’t have to remember all of the information and sometimes it can help both of you to have something concrete to refer to.
- Know that you can stop if you need to – You don’t have to reveal everything. The basic facts can be enough. This is your story and you can share as much or as little as you want. Talking about mental health and sharing your experiences can be helpful but that doesn’t mean you have do it if you don’t feel comfortable doing so.
- Remember that some people won’t understand – Unfortunately, not everyone will understand or react helpfully. Chances are you’ll come across someone who will say something hurtful and it will be devastating. It will. There’s no way around that. Allow yourself to feel it and then let it go. There are more good people than bad.
Someone is telling you about their mental health:
- Hear them out – Try not to interrupt, even if it’s to reassure them. It may have taken a lot to get to this point.
- Appreciate the courage/effort it took – They’ve probably been thinking about this conversation for a long time and worrying about how it will go but they did it because they care about you and want you to know what’s going on with them. They worked through all that anxiety for you and that’s a really big deal.
- Don’t dismiss or minimise – It’s natural to want to brush off scary things and make them smaller and therefore less scary but that invalidation can be devastating, especially if this is something that they are currently really struggling with. If you’re at a loss of what to say, try “Thank you for telling me all of this” or “That must be really difficult” or “Is there anything I can do to support you?”
- Let them know that you will be there for them going forward – Make sure they know; don’t let it just be implied. Tell them and then check up with them. It doesn’t all have to be about mental health: it can be staying in semi regular text contact, a silly card because it reminded you of them, or just trying to catch up a bit more often.
I hope this has been helpful or at least not boring. I wishing you all a lovely Time To Talk Day and I’ll see you in the next blog post.
Another Anna Akana Video I’m Grateful For
Posted on November 17, 2018
In the middle of my recent bout of depression – the worst one I’ve had – at my lowest point, an Anna Akana video appeared in my YouTube subscriptions. It was called ‘the voice’ and it was about her new short film that was being released the next day.
She talks about how, while 2017 was the best year of her life, her depression was also at its worst. There was a voice – that felt like it was in the room with her – telling her to kill herself. And it got to the point where she had a plan for how she was going to go through with it, which is a major red flag.
“I was just so in pain and I just felt like I had nothing and like I was nobody and I wasn’t worth anything at all and I literally… I have this big whiteboard on my wall and I wrote out DO NOT KILL YOURSELF, like all across it. I put it on post it notes and I put it on my bathroom mirror and like… everyday when the voice came and I would be like ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’”
While she still struggles with depression, she says she’s out the other side of that particular battle and she credits getting through to all the mental health education that’s out there and all the things you have to do everyday, hoping that they add up. She also made this new short film, pouring everything into it because she needed something to remind herself of why she’s here. It’s about the moments she wanted to die and all the things she had to live for. I would include it in the post but I just really want to focus on this introduction video (but you can find the short film here). Maybe I’ll write a full post about it when I’ve sorted out all my feelings about it.
I am so grateful for this video. Talking about this stuff is so hard and so to have this raw and uncut video where she talks about this experience but also how she got through it was and is so important to me. It’s helped me in this incredibly hard period and so I wanted to share it here.
“Please don’t kill yourself if you’re also suicidal… just don’t do it. There’s a lot… there’s a lot of great things to live for.”
Describing Depression
Posted on October 27, 2018
I love words. I LOVE words. And that’s so viciously ironic for someone living with Autism and mental health problems because they are so difficult to describe, to talk about, to truly put into words. I’ve talked about how much I write and how much I document (this post here) and every now and then I think, “Oh my god, I’ve got it. That’s how it feels.” And then I go to therapy or I talk to a friend or teacher and I go to describe how I’m feeling and I’m just left scrambling. Because these things are so hard to put into words.
Let’s talk about depression specifically. This one seems to have a lot of metaphors attached to it:
- Living in darkness – With the associations between light and good and happiness and therefore the associations between darkness and bad and sadness, the connection here is obvious. It’s also a metaphor that fits with the feeling lost and directionless and not knowing how to move forward. And living in it implies a terrifying finality.
- Winston Churchill’s black dog – We can’t know for sure what Winston Churchill’s mental health was like, whether he suffered from mental illness, from depression, but he did describe periods of great despair that he referred to as his ‘black dog,’ that came and went as it pleased. (While I can understand this metaphor, I personally really don’t like it, being the owner of the the gentlest, sweetest black dog and therefore nothing like Churchill’s description.)
- Having a dark cloud follow you around – Weather metaphors are common in mental health, maybe it’s the all encompassing nature, maybe it’s the lack of control we have over it that makes it a fitting metaphor.
- Being surrounded by fog – Similar to the weather metaphor, it’s uncontrollable and overwhelming. It blots out the sun, makes good indistinguishable from bad, makes it difficult to make your way forward.
- JK Rowling’s dementors – Everyone who’s read Harry Potter knows of dementors and the effect they have on people, essentially sucking the happiness, the joy, the life out of people. JK Rowling has talked about how dementors are the embodiment of her depression, not unlike Churchill’s metaphor.
There are more, of course: everyone has their own descriptions (and they can change depending on the particular state of the depression). On which note, I thought I’d throw in a few of my own:
- Feeling like I’m filling up with water – When I’m deep in depression, I feel like my body is filling up with water and the water level gets higher and higher until it’s reaching my mouth and nose and I start to feel like I’m going to drown in it. And sometimes it feels like something more sinister than water, like ink or oil.
- Feeling like I’m deep underwater – Sometimes I feel like I’m in it so deep that I can’t even see the surface so I don’t even know, which way to swim. And down there, I feel so alone.
- Having a black hole in my chest – On a day to day basis, it drags everything in, making it difficult to even know what I’m feeling before it’s gone and on bad days, it’s so strong that it can feel hard to even stand up straight.
- Feeling like there’s a darkness inside my chest, but deeper than is physically possible for a human body – That’s the only way I can describe this sensation. I understand the dimensions of my ribcage but it feels so much deeper than that, miles deeper. And there’s a darkness there, an ache, like this incredibly deep well of misery.
I posted this on Instagram a while ago:
“Ever since I saw @littlepineneedle’s post and the hashtag #seemyinvisible, I’ve been thinking about it and how I could visually represent the things I struggle with. But in the end, I decided just to look at how I’ve been feeling lately. My mental health is a constant balancing act but lately, my depression has been overwhelming. It feels like there’s a black hole in my chest that’s trying to suck everything in and it’s all I can do to stand up straight. Nobody can see it and that only feeds it. It’s been really inspiring to see so many people sharing their stories over the last few days. This is one of the reasons why #mentalhealthawareness is so important: it helps us to feel less alone.” (x)
I’m not entirely sure what I’m trying to do with this blog post. I guess, I’m just trying to put this thing into words.
Blog Note: This is the 100th post on this blog, which is amazing. I love this blog dearly and am so proud of it as a project. I don’t know what the future holds but I do know that it probably holds more posts…
I would also like to just put it out there that my mental health – my depression especially – has been… less than great recently. It’s been brutal, more so than I’ve ever experienced and I’m really struggling. The most common advice I get is ‘just take it one day at a time,’ but that’s what I’ve been doing for weeks and nothing’s changing. I feel completely stuck and I don’t know what to do.
So I Wrote A Thing For World Mental Health Day
Posted on October 10, 2018
(Trigger warning for self harm.)
Today is World Mental Health Day.
If I’m honest, I’m not really sure what to say. I’m in the middle of the worst depression I’ve ever experienced and I’m very aware that my perspective, my opinions, my hopes are distorted by that. If this was a video, I might just sit and cry. But this day is important so I’m trying to pull myself together and put something out into the world that is (hopefully) positive (and maybe helpful).
This year’s theme is the mental health of young people. When it comes to things like this, I’ve never felt comfortable talking about anyone’s experience but my own. So that’s what I’m going to do. I hope that’s okay with you guys.
My experience at secondary school was a very mixed one. I spent the first three years dealing with some complicated health problems but by the time I reached Years 10 and 11 (ages fifteen and sixteen for those of you who don’t know the education system in England), I felt really settled. I loved learning, particularly English, Maths, History, Psychology, and Philosophy (real shout out to my teachers in all of those subjects). I got real satisfaction from working hard and that was reflected in my grades. I came out of secondary school with not unimpressive grades, especially when you consider I missed most of the first three years. So I felt pretty good about going into Sixth Form (A Levels/ages seventeen and eighteen).
But that was when it all started to unravel. I really, really struggled. I’d gone from completing the work with ease to barely scraping by. I couldn’t understand it: I was trying so hard and it didn’t seem to make any difference. And I couldn’t see it at the time, but my anxiety was getting worse and worse and what I now know to be depression was creeping in. But I didn’t know it was happening so I just kept pushing forwards. I spoke to a couple of people about the high anxiety I was experiencing but each one told me that anxiety is normal and that was the end of the conversation.
It all came to a head when I failed an exam, something that had never happened before. I’d been told I was all set for an A* and I came out with a U. I was absolutely devastated. I know now that our worth as human beings has nothing to do with grades but I was eighteen years old: I had only ever been valued based on my grades. It’s no one person’s fault but that’s how the education system in this country works. It needs changing.
But back to this little story. I don’t remember much after I opened the envelope and saw that U but I ended up in one of the less used college toilets, self harming repeatedly with a broken paperclip. I don’t know how long I was there (long enough that the automatic lights went off and I was plunged into a very appropriate darkness) but at some point, my friends tracked me down and coaxed me out of the stall. I still remember seeing my reflection: my make up all down my face, my hands shaking, and the scratches barely hidden by my long sleeves. One friend took me to a nearby café, bought me a hot chocolate, and just talked to me. And eventually I told her what I’d done. Her kindness and gentleness was so healing, not for the whole problem but for that very difficult day. I will never forget it and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay it.
After that, I dropped out of that course and clawed my way out with two A Levels and an Extended Project, far less than I and everyone had expected of me. I went straight into a music course but had to drop out two days in because my anxiety was so bad that I just couldn’t cope. I spent a year grappling with the anxiety and depression, trying the first of many antidepressants (so many) and trying to retake some of the exams in the hope that I could improve my A Levels (I didn’t end up opening the results of those until after I finished my degree, three years later, but that’s another story). During that year, I tried desperately to get help from the NHS to no avail: my anxiety was so bad that talking to people I didn’t know was practically impossible and they refused to help me if I wouldn’t talk. Eventually we were forced to go private, something that I’m endlessly, endlessly grateful has been possible. And I only managed to get my diagnoses when my university said they weren’t able to help me if I didn’t have an official diagnosis.
It still upsets me to talk about. I asked and asked and asked for help but no one either seemed able or willing to help me. I would not be as twisted up now had that not been the case. The information and support was not available to me, it wasn’t available to my family, and it wasn’t available or deemed important enough (I’m not sure which is worse) to the medical professionals I saw. That has to change. It is not acceptable.
Now that I’ve told my story, I want to include some other important, relevant stuff.
The first thing is that I want to link you to Hannah Jane Parkinson’s recent article in The Guardian. She makes the very important distinction between mental health and mental illness. And this is where, I think, physical health and mental health are most comparable: your mental health is something you take care of (or don’t) everyday, by eating and sleeping well, exercising, talking through your emotions, and so on. Mental illnesses, similarly to physical illnesses, can be caused by not taking care of your mental health but there can also be genetic factors, environmental factors, and just hard stuff going on in your life.
WAYS TO HELP YOUR MENTAL HEALTH:
- Talk – Talk through your feelings with someone you trust.
- Keep a journal – This way you can air your thoughts and feelings in private.
- Keep in contact with friends – It’s really easy to get busy and fall out of touch but spending time with people you love and feeling connected to other people is so important.
- Exercise – This doesn’t mean every or any kind of exercise will help. On a personal level some types of exercise can potentially hurt your mental health. You just need to find the one that does help and then it will really help. I always recommend swimming because it’s non-weightbearing and therefore causes less strain on your body when you’re potentially already struggling with physical symptoms, like fatigue.
- Eat well/drink sensibly – Everything we put into our bodies affects our minds.
- Be mindful of your commitments – Yes, social interaction can be really helpful but if you’re taking on too much, it will take more from you than it gives you. And then you won’t be able to cope as well with whatever else is thrown at you.
- Ask for help if you start to feel mentally and emotionally overwhelmed – Fortunately it’s starting to become easier to access support and counselling but even if it’s a struggle, it is a struggle worth going through.
- Spend time with animals – It’s scientifically proven that being with animals is good for your health!
WAYS TO HELP YOUR MENTAL ILLNESS:
- Work with a medical professional/therapist that respects and understands what you’re struggling with – Finding one can be the mission of a lifetime but having that presence in your life whose sole purpose is to help you through your struggles is incredible.
- Medication – If you’re prescribed medication, take it diligently.
- Try to keep track of your triggers – Knowing what they are doesn’t always prevent them from sending you into a complete spiral but even one spiral avoided is progress.
- Create a support system – This isn’t something you can necessarily do without help but, over time and with the help of people who care about you, building a circle of trusted people who will support you through whatever it is you’re going through is so special and helpful.
- Take time off if you need it – This is one I think we all struggle with. It’s a learning curve for a lot of us but it is important and can prevent small problems from becoming big problems.
- Find a stress reliever – Whether it’s reading, or watching every episode of your favourite TV show, or doing something artsy like watercolouring, taking a break from all the stuff in your head is well worth doing.
- Create a safe space for yourself – Living with a mental illness is exhausting and so having somewhere where you can just exist without thinking or masking is so important.
And of course, there is overlap between these two lists.
Where we go from here, I’m not sure. The information about mental health and mental illness is spreading and spreading and more and more people are speaking up. Now we need the right systems to support it: doctors, treatment, government officials who advocate for positive change. For now, that’s all I know. For now, I’m just trying to manage one day at a time.
(And a gentle reminder, my debut single, ‘Invisible,’ which I wrote about my experiences with my mental health is available on iTunes and Spotify and all those places and all proceeds go to Young Minds, a charity that supports young people in their mental health.)
