A listener production.
Hello there, my beautiful listeners.
In between our guest episodes,
I do love to sneak into your Big Talk feed
and talk about stuff that I've been thinking about.
Now, it might be something that's happening in my life,
it might be something that's in the news,
but it's always something close to my heart,
something that matters to me.
And because it matters to me, I want to share it with you.
So my big question this week
is should you wait for someone to ask for help
before you step in?
Now, this is a big one,
and why I was thinking about it
is that it's recently been Are You OK Day?
Which I think is such a fantastic initiative.
It has helped so much about the conversation
around getting help,
being aware of what people are going through around you.
But it can be difficult, can't it,
to wonder if you should step in first
if you're worried about someone.
Do you need to wait for that person to come to you?
What I want to do is share with you my experience,
my experience with mental illness
and the times when I haven't been so well.
Some of you may know some of this story
because I do wear my heart on my sleeve,
and I'm a huge believer in sharing our stories,
in sharing our stories of vulnerability.
Because often when we are in the midst of such terrible,
deep, dark despair, you feel like you're the only one,
and you feel like you'll never get through it.
Because you can feel so alone, you isolate yourself.
You remove yourself from people around you.
And because you remove yourself,
it can be difficult to reach out.
And that's why I do think it is important
for someone not to wait.
If you're worried about someone, please trust your intuition.
Because we ignore that too often.
We sometimes try to be rational and logical
and sort of justify, oh, no, I won't do anything
because of this, this, this, and this.
No, listen to what your heart is telling you.
I use heart because that's where I think my intuition is.
But if you are worried about someone,
don't wait for them to reach out to you.
Reach out to them.
And why I say that is I know that when I was in the midst
of my postnatal depression, I felt so ashamed.
I really felt the stigma of having a mental illness.
And this was something that I found shocking at the time.
Why did I find it shocking?
Well, I grew up with a mum who has a mental illness.
My mum has bipolar disorder.
And some of you may be familiar with bipolar disorder.
But for those of you who don't know what it is,
bipolar is a chronic mental illness.
Someone with bipolar might have periods of frantic, manic energy.
And then coupled with that, they'll have times
of the most terrible, dark depression.
So you have those two extremes.
And not everyone has those particular extremes.
In my mum's case, she had a lot more of those terrible depressions.
So I was someone who grew up with a mum with a mental illness.
So I understood mental illness.
As well, over time, mum and I used to talk publicly
about our family's experience with mental illness.
I've been a long-term ambassador for Beyond Blue.
So mum and I would often share a public stage.
And we'd talk about our family's experience.
Mum would talk about what it was like to have bipolar.
And I would talk about what it was like to love someone with a mental illness.
And our message together had very much been,
there needs to be no stigma, no shame.
Let's talk about it.
And why, for me, I found it so shocking
when I myself had a mental illness was the level of shame that I felt.
And it gave me such insight because how I was feeling
was at such odds with what my public message had been.
I was feeling that shame.
Because what happens when you realise you are going through
a mental health crisis or a mental health issue is, for me,
it was a sense of, what right do I have to feel like this?
I am someone who seemingly has it all together all the time.
I have the perfect life.
But come on, let's face it, we know no one has a perfect life.
But up until that point, I thought I did.
And I thought that I had to present myself in this perfect way.
So if anyone was to look at me, they would think,
she has it all together all of the time.
So this facade that I built for myself over time
made it very, very hard for me to ask for help.
And of course, looking back now, I know that was not the case.
Here I was with everything that I had ever wished for,
but I had never felt so wretched and so alone.
And even as I share this with you, I can feel that pit in my stomach
because I'm back at that time of terrible sadness,
whereas to the outside world, I looked like I had it all together.
People would say to me, oh, isn't this the happiest time of your life?
Isn't this just wonderful?
Aren't you lucky?
And because rationally, I knew, yes, yes, yes,
but in my heart, I didn't feel it.
I couldn't say what I was feeling to anyone
because of the shame that I felt.
So I kept pretending. I kept hiding.
During that time, no one asked me, are you OK?
Are you all right?
No one asked me that question, and I do wish they did
because if someone had asked me sooner,
it would have saved me so much pain.
And that is why I still talk 15 years later
about my experience of postnatal depression
because I never, ever want anyone to feel as alone as I did during that time.
I felt like there was a pane of glass between me and the rest of the world.
And you know me, listeners.
You know that I'm someone who loves to connect.
I love to talk to people.
I love to be present and in the moment, but I couldn't be.
And what happened during this time was that that pane of glass
just got thicker and thicker between myself and the rest of the world.
But I kept pretending, and I'll never forget going along
to my first ever mother's group.
And this was something that I had been looking forward to
because I thought, finally, hopefully I can connect with some people
who are feeling the same way that I'm feeling.
Perhaps I'll feel less alone.
And I was late because I couldn't clip the wretched baby capsule into the car.
And I was a lather of sweat.
And I remembered this was adding to my sense of inadequacy.
I thought, I can't even put my baby into the baby capsule.
What sort of mum must I be?
And I remember ringing Petey at the time.
He was on the other side of the world.
He was working for 60 minutes at the time.
So he was away a lot.
So that actually helped me be able to pretend that I was okay
because he wasn't around all the time.
And I remember he was slightly shocked thinking,
it's okay, you'll be right, you know what to do.
But, you know, even this simple task was making me so unraveled.
And I had thought up until then that I was capable.
You know, I was someone, you know, in inverted commas.
I was a professional.
I was, you know, a successful journalist.
And I had my life together, but I didn't.
I was falling apart.
And I eventually got Allegra in the baby capsule into the car.
We were late to the mother's group.
And I remember looking around at the time and I felt even more adrift
because as I looked around this room, everyone seemed,
and let me put the emphasis on seem,
everyone seemed to know what they were doing.
The conversation went along the lines of,
isn't this the best time of your life?
And I remember thinking, no, but I couldn't say it.
Doesn't it just get better and better, said another mother.
And I'm thinking, no, I felt more and more alone.
If someone in that room had said to me, are you okay?
How are you going?
I would have felt that that was a place that I could have said,
I don't know what I'm doing.
This is not the happiest time of my life.
This is the worst time of my life and I need help.
But no one asked me that question.
And again, I wish someone did because do you know,
I think if someone asked that question,
I wouldn't have been the only woman in that room
who would have answered, no, I'm not okay.
I think many other women in that room would have felt
that they have permission to also share, no, this is hard.
I don't like what's happened to my life.
And I look back on that time and I do wish that someone had
asked me that question.
So I left that mother's group.
I went back home and that pane of glass just grew thicker
and thicker and I got sicker and sicker.
My brain went to all sorts of frightening, awful places.
The obsessive thoughts that I thought would disappear
became bigger and scarier.
And I was too frightened to share that with anyone
because I thought if I tell someone what is going through
my mind, they're going to take my baby
and they're going to lock me up.
And that is a really scary place to be.
And you know what began my reaching out?
It was when Beyond Blue ironically got in touch with me
because I'd, as I'd said, done some work with them
over the years with my mum.
And they asked me if I would like to be an ambassador
for their perinatal program.
They had no idea what I was going through.
And I remember saying, oh, yes, yes.
Can you send me some information?
And I remember I would read this brochure
obsessively about the symptoms.
I had all of the symptoms.
I could tick them all off.
But then I would hide the brochure in my top drawer
and I'd think if I hide it away,
maybe those feelings will go away.
I also remember going to a nurse afterwards
where they do what's called the Edinburgh Test,
which is like a checklist of symptoms
just to see how you're going.
Hello, I knew how to sort of rig the test.
I sort of lied in that test saying, you know,
how well I was feeling.
Because again, I didn't want to fess up
to what I was really feeling.
And even though I went through that test,
no one actually took the time to say, but how are you?
How really are you?
And again, my mind, it started to fracture.
And that is so frightening.
And I got to a really scary place.
I remember hiding the carving knives
that we had in our kitchen drawer.
And I wrapped them up in newspaper
and I put them in our wheelie bin
at about 3 a.m. in the morning.
And I thought, if anyone could see what I was doing,
what would they think of me?
And that was my rock bottom.
And I think at different times in our lives,
we have a rock bottom.
And I knew then I had to reach out.
I knew I would never do anything.
And I think it's really important to make that clear
because often people hear me say that,
or some people might have heard me say that,
and think, oh my God, what were you going to do?
I knew I would never do anything,
either to myself or to my baby or to my family.
But my mind was really frightening me.
And I think it's important for people to realize
when their mind does go to those places,
please ask for help.
So what I did was that I spoke to my mum
and I knew mum was the first place that I could go.
And I knew I could talk to mum,
obviously because of her mental illness
and because I knew she wouldn't judge me.
And I told my mum what I was experiencing.
And she said to me, she made me promise her
that I would talk to Petey and that I would talk to my doctor.
And I made my mum those promises.
She also reassured me that I wasn't going to do anything.
And I needed to hear that from my mum.
And then I thought, okay, now is when you really have to be brave.
And I knew I had to talk to Petey.
And that is the hardest conversation I've ever had in my life
because I was still very much in that head space that I was a failure.
I had pretended to Petey that I was all right.
And I thought, what is he going to make of me if I say to him,
I'm suffering in this way.
This is the real me.
Will you still love me?
What are you going to think?
And that is why it was so scary.
And Petey, being the darling man that he is,
he took me in his arms and he said to me, it's going to be okay.
And they were the words that I needed to hear that night.
I needed that reassurance.
I didn't need to hear, as often well-meaning people might say
to someone who comes to them for help, oh, you'll be right.
What have you got to be depressed about?
Oh, you must be imagining it.
Do you know so-and-so is far worse off?
Look at what's happening on the other side of the world.
They've got something to really be depressed about.
You've got nothing to worry about.
No, do not say that to someone, please,
who comes to you to ask for help
because it has taken extraordinary courage
for that person to come to you to say, I need help.
He didn't judge me.
I knew then and there that he was going to love me, come what may.
He was going to be there by my side.
And that is what, dear listeners, people need
when they come to you asking for help.
They need to know that they are loved, that they are not judged.
They don't need you to fix it in that instant,
but they need to be heard and listened to.
They need that space.
And because of those very beautiful words
that my husband told me that night,
it then gave me the space, the love, and the reassurance to get better.
But having that conversation was the very start.
And yes, I do wish that someone had stepped in earlier
and really asked me if I was OK.
Sure, I might have brushed them off to begin with
because I might have thought, oh, no, I have to keep this pretense
of being the perfect mother, the perfect wife.
I needed to keep that facade going.
But if someone had kept tapping away at me early on,
that would have helped me from a lot of that pain
and that guilt and that shame that I carried.
And even though it was awful to go to that rock bottom,
that lesson that I learnt about being gentle,
about being imperfect, about being vulnerable,
about embracing and loving myself, flaws and all,
means I am a far better, happier, and just more empathetic person.
And I like to think that for you, dear listeners,
as you listen to me, just share a part of my story,
that there might be some of you in that story
or it might be someone that you know or that you love.
If you are going through a hard time, please reach out to someone.
If you are worried about someone, please ask them how they're going.
And if they brush you off, go back and ask them again.
I'll be back next week with another beautiful, big conversation.
But of course, listening to this, I don't want anyone to feel more alone.
I want you to feel comforted and heard.
Please, as I said, reach out to someone you know,
someone close to you, to your GP.
But if you don't feel comfortable doing that,
remember Lifeline is there, 13 11 14.
Also Beyond Blue are an extraordinary resource.
They're at beyondblue.org.au.
So please reach out.
As I said, I'll be back next week with one of my guests.
Until then, just know you are fabulous.