Tag: Abductions From My Beautiful Life

Mental Illness And Humour

I don’t joke about mental illness.

And when anyone around me does, even if it’s about their own experience, I feel as though I am trapped in a cube of thick glass, a scream frozen in my mouth.

I’ve wanted to write about why I feel this way for a long time but have discarded the topic again and again. I know many people use humour to help them live with their mental illness. But I’ll come back to that.

Onto my reasons for not being able to take these jokes.

At its simplest, I don’t believe we have eradicated sufficient stigma to safely joke about what living with a mental illness means.

It might look like we are making progress, but it’s an illusion.

Sure, our baby steps skim the surface of the most palatable mental illnesses. Anxiety that resolves with mindfulness, or depression that is sorted with some exercise and early morning sun exposure.

The ‘brave’ disclosure of taking (a respectably small amount of) medication for anxiety or depression, has shed a lot of stigma in recent years.

But dive below the surface and things get uncomfortable for many. Think psychosis, psychiatric hospital admissions, Electroconvulsive Therapy etc.). The world still largely deals with this discomfort as though it is a teenager trapped in a car with a parent talking sex education. Sulky silence, avoiding eye contact, and wisecracks.

Then there is the constant energy sap of explaining.

Let’s take some experiences I’ve had recently.

First came the media requests for my opinion on whether Kanye West’s antisemitic hate speech, racism, and misogyny were caused by his bipolar disorder. You can find my responses here:

https://www.mamamia.com.au/mental-illness-can-happen-to-anyone/

https://www.mamamia.com.au/podcasts/the-quicky/kanye-bipolar

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/article/kanye-west-is-in-the-news-for-the-wrong-reasons-how-do-we-include-his-bipolar-disorder-in-the-conversation/fuocnelxj

Suffice to say I wasn’t laughing as I wrote and spoke.

Next it was a question at the end of the Q and A for one of my library author talks about my memoir, Abductions From My Beautiful Life.

‘Hi, I’ve read your book. I noticed there is no violence in it. Is that true?’

I asked, ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s just that whenever you read about people with mental illness, they are always violent. So, I was surprised not to find this in your book.’

An ache swamped my chest. Everyone in the room waited for my answer to this jagged question.

I explained that the media often stigmatises mental illness by reporting violent outcomes devoid of context or humanity. I explained that, yes violence occurs, but the mentally ill are more likely to be victims not perpetrators. I explained that when someone’s violence is rooted in their mental illness it is too often not a case of them slipping through the cracks. It’s a case of there being more cracks than solid ground.

And that no I have not edited any violence from my book. Aside from the violence psychosis visited on my brain, there wasn’t any.

I was thanked for my explanation.

But it shouldn’t take me or anyone else to explain that most people who live with severe mental illness are not violent, antisemitic, misogynistic, racists.

While I am well, I choose to explain it again and again and again, because silence leaves a space for the public to draw their own conclusions when Kanye behaves badly, or poor journalism demonises the vulnerable. But the constant explaining leaves me with no energy to laugh about any of it.

When I can, I push back against memes and social media posts that joke about my worst nightmares, or even just sprinkle stigmatising language around like poison disguised as fairy dust. ‘Psycho’ ‘nuthouse’ ‘mental’…

When I point out these ‘errors’ in the comments sections I am often told I can’t take a joke’. I’m told to ‘get a life’ ‘lighten up’, ‘fuck off’, or that ‘it’s just a meme’.

And when I am not well enough to push back and explain, the world continues to fill in the blanks, and papers over its discomfort with another meme.

So, does anyone get to joke about mental illness?

In my opinion:

If humour surrounding mental illness is part of a private conversation between people with lived experience who share enough history to gauge what is appropriate, I have no problem with it.

If you live with a mental illness and find being humorous about your experience is helpful to your recovery and maintaining stability, go ahead…

But have the grace to acknowledge you don’t represent everyone. Consider whether your jokes hide self-stigma. And if you choose to share your humour publicly, ask yourself if the benefits to you outweigh the risk of potentially generating more stigma.

Also – if you share jokes or memes online that perpetuate negative stereotypes around mental illness – don’t tell me to ‘lighten up’ when I call them out.

Lastly – If you have no lived experience of mental illness, don’t joke about it.

As long as the status quo assumes that the perpetration of violence and mental illness go hand in hand, we are still lightyears away from a point when everyone can laugh safely.

You may also like to check out:

Mind Your Language Katy Perry

Tokenism In Mental Health Awareness

The Parenting Trap – Is Information The Enemy?

A couple of weeks ago I found myself being shouted at by another parent.

Someone semi well known, a parent to several children. This person has their fingers in a few pies, some might be called parenting advice adjacent, but to my knowledge they lack formal qualifications.

They delivered their passionate message via Facebook couched as a public service to ALL parents. I am wary of all unsolicited parenting advice. My aversion to it stems from my first pregnancy and early first-time motherhood.

Back then I eagerly soaked up all the information, like a stray kitten lapping up a saucer of milk. The need to have a vaginal birth. How essential breastfeeding would be for my baby.

I made myself sick on information.

In fact, had I stubbornly clung to it, that information could have killed both my baby and I. (A baby in the posterior position, postnatal psychosis brought on (in part) by sleep deprivation, a lot of medication to treat the postnatal psychosis that passed into breastmilk).

But back to the Facebook tirade I found difficult to look away from.

The message was completely overshadowed by the breathless anxiety in its delivery. I’ve never been a proponent of parenting out of the fear of what could happen based on general information. The topic of this particular rant is almost irrelevant because it could have been about anything. It happened to be about Tick Toc. More specifically a call to ban it from our children’s devices.

Personally, I would not give my primary school student access to any social media. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

Personally, I believe banning Tick Toc from high school students’ phones rather than letting them have it and teaching them about the dangers, is a bit like banning sex instead of providing good quality sex education. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

Reflexively banning anything because you’ve come across some frightening information about it will just make it more appealing to many teenagers. Like the kid who has never been allowed sugar… But stop I am straying from the point I am trying to make, which come to think of it can still be made with the kid who has never been allowed sugar.

Take two kids with the same parent and apply the No Sugar rule.

It might work perfectly for one kid who is pretty compliant, naturally eats a wide variety of foods, and happens to love taking vegetable muffins for lunches. They grow into an adult who carries their childhood eating habits into adulthood and live happily ever after.

The other kid might be more rebellious. They might gorge on sugar at every birthday party they go to and resent their parents’ strict (though well intentioned) food rules. They trade their vegetable muffins for chocolate bars at school lunches. They feel guilt and shame associated with eating sugar and grow into adulthood with disordered eating that takes years of intensive therapy to manage.

Whether it is sugar or social media – I no longer make blind decisions based only on external information (be it expert or the anecdotal variety hurled at me by social media). I aim to interpret parenting information in the context of my child(ren) and my family before I lay down any laws.

Favouring my intuition over information isn’t easy. In other areas of my life – such as my veterinary work and the management of my Bipolar 1 Disorder, I have always relied heavily on information to help me make decisions.

But I can’t count the number of times information (even expert information) has failed me as a parent.

In this age we are assaulted by information wherever we look. It can overwhelm and make us doubt our knowledge of our children. And if we let it, the information and opinion overload becomes a stick to beat ourselves to an indecisive mess with.

It has taken me years and plenty of mistakes to marry my intuition and knowledge of my children with a scant amount of trustworthy information to find the formula that works (not all but) a lot of the time, for this family.

I am not against parents sharing information and opinions. I share my own frequently. This post is a case in point. But I find it helpful to remember that ultimately we need little information to parent well, and it is information most parents agree on anyway:

Love your children unconditionally; provide them with food, water, shelter, the opportunity to exercise, and the best medical care you can access; don’t expose them to any forms of abuse; teach them how to navigate the world they inhabit; and if you are fortunate enough to be able to – provide them with an education.

Beyond that, you can ignore what everyone else is doing. It’s down to what works for you and your child.

You may also like to check out:

Rewards For Reports: Entitled or Deserved?

Mental Health Parenting Truths 101

If you enjoy my writing, my recently published memoir Abductions From My Beautiful Life is available on most online bookselling platforms including Amazon, Fishpond, and Booktopia. You can find an excerpt here: Book

Work Leave For Mental Illness If You Are Not Naomi Osaka

Naomi Osaka’s decision to step back from her job for reasons of mental ill health has stirred up a lot of debate in the last week. And yes, it’s great that she is being open about her mental ill health being the reason for this decision.

But Naomi Osaka is not representative of most people who experience mental ill health during their working life. The main reason is that (financially) Naomi can afford to take enough time off to recover.

I don’t point this out to minimise her suffering. Mental illness doesn’t discriminate. It will make you feel equally shit whether you are wealthy or not. But the luxury of time off for an employee to recover fully from an episode of mental illness is not one many workplaces will or even can accommodate.

This week several experts have stated that it is illegal for employers to discriminate against employees living with a mental illness, that these employees have a right to time off and to have their work modified to accommodate that mental illness.

I have mixed feelings about this. I feel exasperated, bemused, and tired. Because these earnest, well intentioned experts have no idea how mental illness and work mix in the real world.

The first time I experienced mental illness (postnatal psychosis followed by rebound depression) I was hospitalised for close to four months. ‘Luckily’ for my employer I was on maternity leave, so absolutely no thought had to be put into managing my absence, because it had already been planned for.

After I recovered, I continued to work as a small animal vet for another 12 years before taking a break to have my book published. In those 12 years I experienced a severe Bipolar 1 episode on average every 2-3 years. When I say severe, I mean requiring hospitalisation for weeks or months on end followed by a gradual re-integration to life outside the hospital.

Here are the two deal breakers my illness presents to most work places:

Firstly, for me, the onset of episodes of illness is sudden – ie between 24-48 hours. There is no time to plan or find someone to fill in.

Secondly, when I’ve had to phone work to say I would not be in for my next shift, I’d have to follow that with ‘I have no idea how long I will need off’.

Again – luckily for my employers – in those 12 years I was a casual employee. This meant I was effectively fired each time I got sick.

The practice I worked for was not doing anything illegal, and from a practical and financial point of view they could not have indefinitely held a position open for me. Each time I eventually recovered, and because there is almost never a shortage of work for vets – new hours were found for me. But me being able to slot back into the same workplace each time was due to the nature of the industry, not due to any laws to protect my position and income.

I am privileged, and thankfully my husband could support our family without my wage when I got sick. But my survival and roof over my head have had absolutely nothing to do with my workplaces being able to accommodate my mental illness.

Just because it isn’t legal to fire people or make their life hell because they live with mental illness doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I know plenty of people who live with this reality.

This injustice occurs because of a gargantuan power imbalance between an employee who lives with a mental illness and their employer. Whether employers are aware of it or not: They hold all the power. Here’s why:

Stigma still prevents many people from disclosing they live with a mental illness to their employer – especially when they are asymptomatic. Once that person becomes symptomatic, they are likely to struggle just to get through each day or hour. Symptoms such as poor concentration and memory, distorted thinking, irritability, a sense of hopelessness, panic attacks, and non-existent self-esteem, (to list just a few) make it incredibly difficult if not impossible to not only schedule a meeting with their boss or with HR, but then present at that meeting as a fully functioning human being.

And if they do, and their boss discriminates against them they often don’t have the mental resilience and the finances for a legal battle to bring their discriminating employer to justice.  

These employees will often just go quietly –because that is all they have the energy for. Then their employer gets to shrug their shoulders and say: ‘Well it was the employee’s choice to leave!’

I am grateful to Naomi Osaka for cracking open the conversation about mental ill health at work a little wider. If it causes even one employer to stop and consider that the playing field between them and an employee who lives with mental illness isn’t even, it will be a good thing.

But there is still a long way to go before people who disclose their mental illness at work can expect to be treated the same as anyone who discloses a physical illness.

To read a bit more about my work life, you might like to check out my recently published memoir: Book and how it came to life: Welcome To The World ‘Abductions’

Welcome To The World ‘Abductions’

Elation

For the last 14 years this emotion and I have had a complicated relationship. Before that, I experienced its giddy joy like anyone else.

It greeted me on the first days of longed-for holidays.

I experienced it on planes during take-off. In that moment of palpable lift, when the wheels left the ground and I shed gravity for a while.

It swooped through my body when I’d meet my childhood best friend, Sandra, at airports and train stations in different countries after years of separation.

Many moments of elation were tied to achievement. School grades, University degrees, getting jobs, have all elicited it. A psychologist would grimace at that, but there you have it.

But when I was nearly 33 something happened that warped elation for me.

I gave birth to my first baby.

The birth of a baby is usually viewed as the ultimate source of elation. Much is made of the overjoy of brand-new mothers.

But I was brewing something sinister when I went into my 33 hour labour on 2 hours sleep. That sleep deprivation, and the massive shift in hormones after the birth became the key that fitted the genetic lock for my dormant Bipolar 1 Disorder. It introduced itself violently, as an episode of postnatal psychosis when my baby was seven days old.

Three and a half years later I did get a day of pure elation after the carefully managed birth of my second baby. But I took none of it for granted, as though I had an inkling the psychosis would be back at the six week mark.

Psychosis in Bipolar Disorder is often preceded by mania. For some people mania is preceded by hypomania, which is like an artificial sweetener to the sugar of real elation. Same same, but different.

I do experience hypomania, but it is transient. Blink and you’ll miss it before it progresses to the high speed car chase of mania. I don’t spend weeks feeling fantastic about everything.  But I’ve lived through enough hypomania to make me wary of true elation.

I force my elation through an airport security like checkpoint before I allow myself to feel it, because I know it could be the hypomanic second that precedes a manic episode.

So when elation wings its way into my heart, I put it through my metal detector of questions: How are you sleeping? Any racing thoughts? How’s your memory and concentration? Any sense of urgency, a pressure in the part of your brain right behind your eyes?

But right now I am truly elated.

Even my psychiatrist agreed I am entitled to it, after I handed him my third baby a couple of days ago.

My third baby is of the paper variety. Its newborn smell is that of fresh new books.  Its gestation period has been longer than a human’s, longer than an elephant’s. 14 years from first words to published.

This baby’s name is ‘Abductions From My Beautiful Life’, nicknamed ‘Abductions’, and it is my memoir.

You will find my DNA all through it. My many selves. The child, teenager, university student, veterinarian, mother, psychiatric inpatient and outpatient, writer, mental health advocate, partner, and friend.

I wrote this book because there are not enough first-person accounts of severe mental illness, especially those featuring psychosis. I wanted to dissolve some of the misconceptions about people who live with severe mental illness, and the stigma that accompanies them.

The road to get this book published has been long, rough, expensive, paved with barely-existent patience, blood, sweat, many tears, diplomacy, and a lot of rejection.

It seems– books that deal frankly with mental illness (other than depression and anxiety) are too prickly for many publishers to touch – or to quote the feedback my agent and I got time and time again:

‘It is beautifully written, and an important story, but it is not commercial enough’ ie it will not make us any money, so we won’t go near it.

After several years of rejections, I did finally find a way to have it published, via a contributory contract with a publishing house in London that I supplemented with my own freelance cover designer and freelance copyeditor, to ensure it was published to a professional standard.

To the countless Australian publishers who passed on this book because ‘although beautifully written, it was not commercial enough’ – I say:

This book was never intended to be the next Harry Potter, or 50 Shades of Grey. But having finally published it I am elated because I have given the people who might be interested, the opportunity to read this allegedly ‘well written important story’.

An opportunity they may never have had if I had given up on it. So if you are one of those interested readers, you now get to decide whether or not you like it, rather than having an anonymous wall of publishers tell you what you should or shouldn’t be reading.

All reviews, feedback, and comments are welcome. For now you can leave them in the Comments section of this post, or email me at anitalink73@gmail.com

And if you do enjoy Abductions or find it meaningful and you can think of someone else it might resonate with, recommend it to them or maybe even gift them a copy.

Publication, purchasing, and launching information:

Abductions From My Beautiful Life will be published on Friday 30.4.2021

You can preorder it now and continue to order it once it is published from:

Amazon Australia – click the link BELOW the image

https://www.amazon.com.au/Abductions-Beautiful-Life-Anita-Link/dp/152898319X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=anita+link&qid=1619352950&sr=8-1

Fishpond Australia

https://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Abductions-From-My-Beautiful-Life-Anita-Link/9781528983198

Booktopia Australia

Booktopia https://www.booktopia.com.au/abductions-from-my-beautiful-life-anita-link/book/9781528983198.html

If ordering from the UK:

Fishpond UK

https://www.fishpond.co.uk/Books/Abductions-From-My-Beautiful-Life-Anita-Link/9781528983198

Austin Macauley

https://www.austinmacauley.com/book/abductions-my-beautiful-life

Waterstones

https://www.waterstones.com/book/abductions-from-my-beautiful-life/anita-link/9781528983198

If ordering from the US

Amazon US – click the link BELOW the image

https://www.amazon.com/Abductions-Beautiful-Life-Anita-Link-ebook/dp/B091N7BSZP/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=abductions+from+my+beautiful+life&qid=1619353373&sr=8-1

Barnes and Noble

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/abductions-from-my-beautiful-life-anita-link/1139205441?ean=9781528983198

Launches:

To begin with I am planning several smaller private launches over the next few weeks and months rather than one big one. They will probably take place at my house to work as flexibly as possible with ever changing Covid restrictions. But the format will be similar to a traditional launch with drinks, discussion of the book, maybe a reading, and books for sale and for signing, or if you’ve pre-bought your book you can bring it along to be signed.

 If you live in or are passing through Brisbane and would be interested in coming along to one of these smaller launches, please email (anitalink73@gmailcom) or Instagram DM me @anitalinkthoughtfood so that I am aware of your interest when I send out invitations.

I will post further information about launches as they evolve.

For more on how ‘Abductions’ came into being you might like to check out:

Accepted: Crumbs To Canary Wharf

And you can find a brief excerpt here: Book

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