“Come
back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.”
Euripides
So, I won’t lie; I definitely
changed my mind a few times on the title and the theme/contents of this blog post,
and I even ended up asking Chat GPT for ideas on angles for the piece! From its
answers, I though
t perhaps a Q&A would go down well but with it being
fairly last minute (I’m writing this a few days before), I figured I’d best
just ask AI to think up the questions – plus! It did a really good job thinking
of them for this article actually on the Gracie’s Way website: An Interview with Gracie’s Way
Project Lead: Aimee Wilson | Gracie's Way! Anyhow, here’s my answers to some of the
questions it thought of…
What has writing I’m NOT Disordered
taught you about whose pain is taken seriously—and how did that understanding
shape your decision to create Gracie’s Way?
Through my mental health journey – not solely through
writing I’m NOT Disordered – I’ve definitely learnt or witnessed that there can
be a huge variation in treatment of people. That one Psychiatric Nurse can have
two different patients crying and can comfort and reassure one with a pat on
the back and the offer of a tissue and tell the other one; “sort yourself out.”
Or a Psychiatrist could be faced with two people saying they’re suicidal and
they’re concerned about one and have them sectioned but will just tell the
other one “ring the Crisis Team if you feel worse.” And, in all honesty, I
believe that nine times out of ten the largest reason behind this is the person’s
diagnosis. Reality is, I have been treat better by both medical and psychiatric
professionals since officially losing the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
diagnosis (it was overturned in April last year – I blogged about it here: “LET’S
REMOVE IT FROM YOUR RECORDS, YOU’VE CLEARLY RECOVERED FROM IT!” | HOW I HAVE
OVERCOME 8 SYMPTOMS OF BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER & HOW YOU CAN TOO |
I'm NOT Disordered)!
I think that I’m someone who always try to see both
sides in an argument or disagreement and with the stigma and discrimination
against those with BPD, I try to imagine; if I didn’t have the experiences that
I have, and was faced with interacting with someone who had such a diagnosis;
how would I treat them? I can’t imagine ever treating someone as poorly as I –
and others with BPD – have been, but I can appreciate the fear you often find yourself
feeling or struggling with when you’re faced with something you don’t
understand, have no knowledge or experience of, or already have misconstrued impressions
of it. And I certainly appreciate and understand that fear can lead you to
behave in ways that can be the complete opposite of what you would normally do…
But there has to come a point where it’s not about misunderstanding and being
afraid and is purely spiteful and judgemental.
Through these experiences of both myself receiving
this kind of treatment and witnessing others treat with it too, I have become
acutely aware, I think, of any sort of poor treatment or disregard for mine and
anyone else’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This means that from my very
first experience of it, I’ve been more than aware that pet bereavement is not
treat as seriously nor is it as validated by others as human death and loss. I mean
to the point where when a neighbour – who I’d considered a friend – heard of
the death of my first rabbit she said, “shall I heat the stove up and get the
pot out?” And I think that through I’m NOT Disordered and all of the collaborations
I’ve taken on, projects I’ve completed, and content I’ve created; I’ve learnt
the rewards to feeling as though you’ve taken action against something that’s
wrong. I’ve experienced the beneficial thoughts and feelings you can have when
you stand up and do something about the wrongdoing of either another person or
another organisation. So, in discovering this inequity in pet bereavement, of
course an almost immediate thought was ‘what can I do to change this?’
Through my experiences of stigma and discrimination
in mental health, I’m equally aware of the impact this mistreatment can have on
a person. I recognise that it can make someone who is feeling unsafe, become
completely suicidal. I know it can turn someone who is depressed into being
properly unsafe. I know it can lead someone experiencing hallucinations to fall
completely for their delusions and lose touch with reality. I know it can cause
an anxious person to experience a full-blown panic attack that leads them to
thoughts that they’re dying. Now, to me, if my response to a person can have
such a phenomenal and potentially life-threatening impact on them, I need to
make sure I get it right! I need to make sure I treat someone well and that I’m
not in any way responsible – even partially – for them taking their own life…
Which is basically the sad reality of poor treatment in mental illness.
So, my end answer or decision on what I could do to
change the poor response to those experiencing pet bereavement, was to create
Gracie’s Way. And my previous experiences of receiving horrible comments etc served
as motivation to power me through all the challenges hurled at me through the
project creation process.
In what ways did your work challenging
the pathologizing of mental distress prepare you to recognise pet bereavement
as grief, rather than something to be ‘got over’?
Now, you guys know I’m always honest in my content
online, so I’ll be absolutely frank and open about the fact that I had to check
what was meant by ‘pathologizing of mental distress’ and I thought I’d be
honest about it because others might be questioning it too and I don’t want anyone
to feel stupid or embarrassed for that! So, according to Chat GPT(!) it means
that someone is seeing mental distress as a person defect or medical diagnosis
and not as an understandable response to a life event etc.
In answer to the question… I’d say that it wasn’t
me challenging that notion around mental distress that prepare for me
recognising pet bereavement to be what it is – grief! It was me experiencing
pet bereavement. That’s what taught me a thing or two about it! Sadly, I do
believe that pet bereavement is something that you can’t truly understand or
appreciate unless you experience it, battle it, overcome it, or struggle
through it. I mean, a common thought or response amongst those with the
experience on being mistreat or hearing of another being mistreat, is actually:
“maybe that person (the one responsible for the mistreatment) never owned a
pet.” But I also recognise that it’s something which – even if you don’t have
that personal experience of – you should still never pass judgements, make
assumptions, or invalidate another person’s journey with it. Never losing a pet
is no excuse for being rude or spiteful to someone – things which are experienced
by those who disclose their pet death to those who can’t – or won’t/don’t want
to – empathise.
One similarity between challenging the pathologizing
of mental distress and preparing for pet bereavement being grief though, is the
concept of ‘normal.’ I think that a desperate longing a lot of people
experience during the hardest moments in their lives is around wanting whatever
their thoughts, feelings, and experiences are to be normal. Wanting to know they
aren’t alone. And it’s tricky because no matter what the hardship is, you very
obviously don’t want others to have gone through it too; but at the same time,
you appreciate the notion that you aren’t different. I think that this is because
if you’re going through something no one else has, you’re often led to question
what you’ve done wrong. Where you’ve gone wrong. Basically, wondering what’s wrong
with you; and this can lead to a lot of self-blame that is typically both
unnecessary and completely mis-directed!
This is a common difficulty through mental distress,
and I’d judge it to be equally as common for those experiencing pet bereavement
– it’s a huge reason for two particular decisions with the creation of Gracie’s
Way:
1. It’s
why I created the resource for bereaved owners: Understanding Your Grief (you
can read more about it here and
request your free copy by emailing gracieswayuk@outlook.com)
– to explain that their thoughts and feelings through their grief are likely,
typically normal or at least, completely understandable! Interestingly, one owner
who reviewed this resource left in her review (which you can read here) that it
had actually stopped her from feeling isolated and misunderstood! I was like; “mission
accomplished!”
2. It
was also the reason why I created resources (particularly the Pet Grief
Information Pack and Grief Communication Guide – you can read more about both
of these, here)
for professionals – because I recognise that how they treat a bereaved owner
can be truly influential on that person’s experience of their grief and the
ways in which they cope with it.
How has listening to other peoples
lived experiences through the blog influenced the way you wanted Gracie’s Way
to feel—emotionally and ethically?
I really wanted for Gracie’s Way to be respectful
and validating no matter what a person’s lived experience of pet bereavement –
even if you have five people with complete oppositional experiences! I wanted
all five to feel validated, trusted, respected, appreciated, normalised, and supported.
I don’t want anyone looking for help during pet bereavement to turn to Gracie’s
Way and come away from the website having gained absolutely nothing from it!
Even if the only gain is the contact details of other organisations on the Help
Directory page (which you can visit here) and the
person turns to somewhere else – someone else – for help and support! It’d
still feel like a win for me, to be honest!
Actually, having that mindset alone is something
which has come from listening to lived experiences through I’m NOT Disordered –
I’ve learned that one person recommending a helpline or a resource can be lifesaving.
And that the person who takes the recommendation and benefits from it, can be so
very grateful to whoever gave them it originally and hold a lot of importance towards
them for the part they played in that person managing to come through whatever
they were struggling with. Managing to stay alive. To stay safe. And I can
appreciate that feeling as someone who has been on that side of things too –
the person who has been recommended something and it’s been helpful and I’ve
been full of gratitude to someone who feels all they did was “point you in the
right direction.” Often, those people don’t realise how genuinely lifesaving
they’ve been – but I get it. So, I would feel incredibly rewarded and fortunate
if I heard that someone contacted an organisation on the Help Directory and
benefited from doing so in some way.
Which is another thing learnt from experiences
heard via my blog; it’s not about wanting everyone to email Gracie’s Way and
request a free resource from the website because – through experiences with my
blog – I know that different people are helped by different things and in
different ways. Not everyone will do well ringing a helpline and talking to a
trained stranger who may have to stick to guidelines or pre-determined questions
and flow-chart-style pattern of questions e.g. a certain answer leads to a particular
next question, and another answer leads to a different next question. Some
people will more likely benefit from receiving a document and reading it and
working through the activities or exercises in it at their own pace and in
their own space. Others, yes; will feel better supported by a helpline. Or you
might get someone who simply needs to know there’s resources and helplines out there.
Who just needed to do the research and see that help and support exists if they
feel worse or, if they decide they want it or need it. And I wanted for Gracie’s
Way to illustrate this respect for everyone needing different things to get them
through and that there’s a mutual respect that isn’t deterred or detracted depending
upon which thing gets you through! There’s no judgement on Gracie’s Way.
How did your experience of holding
space for complex, non-linear stories on I’m NOT Disordered inform the way
Gracie’s Way approaches support, without timelines or fixes?
The act of featuring guest posts on I’m NOT Disordered,
actually wasn’t exactly my idea to be honest! That first one in February 2014
(which you can read here)
– the girl who wrote it actually asked me if I had considered publishing guest
pieces on the blog and, to be honest, my confidence and self-esteem levels were
terrible back then so I lied a bit and pretended like I’d already had the idea!
And she ended up sending me that piece and I published it and began publishing
others too – the next one (which you can read here)
being from the girl who I was closest to as an inpatient and who helped with
the layout and design of I’m NOT Disordered for the first year of its existence
(because then she was discharged (she’d been admitted before me) and I was left
forced to learn how to do it for myself!)!
I quickly discovered a popularity around guest
posts though – I think that my audience liked to hear other stories and to see in
which way these other people – sometimes with absolutely massively, wildly
different experiences to my own – managed to still fit into my life somehow. Of
course, seeing the increase in my audience and being able to recognise that the
blog managed to maintain those people – they weren’t always just coming there
for that one guest post – meant that I realised publishing the stories of other’s
experiences was contributing to me being able to help more people by drawing
them into reading I’m NOT Disordered. So, I continued and to tell you how many…
Put it this way; if you search ‘guest posts’ in the archives of my blog posts, it
takes a few scrolls to work your way through the results!
I think one reason why they’re popular is actually
linked to my answer to the previous question when I spoke about people
benefiting from different things in different ways… So it might be that a guest
post is similar to someone else’s journey, and they feel less isolated or it
might be that it’s the absolute opposite of their own journey and they find it
enlightening and draw positive comparisons. But for me, another reason for
their popularity is that they’re real. They’re actual, real stories of real
people, going through real experiences. It’s not a professional telling you or
leading you to believe that once they deem you to be in ‘recovery’ then you’ll be
absolutely fine for the rest of your life! That you’ll never struggle again.
Never need help again. Will never have the same thoughts and feelings you’ve
struggled with so much. And doing all that you can to tarnish or defy that
impression of recovery being linear, feels like a hugely important mission
because if you don’t? Well, I remember my first relapse in recovery. I felt
like a failure and thought it meant I was back at square one and needed to be
hospitalised and sectioned again and I ended up attempting suicide because I
felt so hopeless and worthless. If, however, I’d been prepared for that – if professionals
had warned me that you might sometimes still struggle and that you could even
end up feeling like you’re back at the beginning, I would have had coping skills
ready to use and I wouldn’t have beaten myself up over it. I honestly believe,
if I’d known that relapses are actually a norm in recovery and are something that
you just need to work really hard at being able to add them to the list of
things you’ve overcome, I might not have made the attempt! An attempt which
seriously could have led to me losing my life.
I appreciate that professionals might be wary that being
so honest and open about recovery and the fact that you can still struggle will
leave people wondering why bother fighting so hard for things to never be
perfect... But to me, it’s about the phrasing of it. It’s about providing the
relapse or ‘blip’ warning without seeming hopeless and with the assurance that
you’re telling them this because you don’t want them to feel hopeless for going
through a hardship that they knew full well was possible and just didn’t give
you the heads up about it! To say you want someone to be informed and
insightful in a way that leaves them feeling like their fight to survive is
worthwhile because even if they go through one million and one relapses, the
important thing is they get through every single one of them!
I wanted for this message to ring true through Gracie’s
Way’s bereavement content too (particularly in the Pet Bereavement Coping Guide
– which you can read more about here and
there’s a review on it, which you can read here) – to spread
the word that you might feel you’ve overcome your grief or are simply newly coping
super well with things, and then a whole new reminder or challenge comes up,
and you can’t see straight because you’re so overwhelmed, upset, and struggling!
I want for people to know that’s completely acceptable and that it doesn’t mean
you’ve done something wrong. It doesn’t mean you’ve deserved more pain. It
doesn’t mean you hadn’t overcome everything you thought you had. It doesn’t
mean you’re going backwards and will have to face all those same things again.
It might feel like you’re losing your loved one all over again, but that
honestly doesn’t mean you’re back at square one too!
In addition to the bit about linear recovery and
journeys, that question mentioned ‘fixes’… I think this is something else I try
to make clear generally in Gracie’s Way – there’s not always a ‘fix’ for
something. Sometimes it’s about learning to cope or manage a thought or feeling
or simply being able to recognise where it comes from and why you’re
experiencing it, and not necessarily fully overcoming it or totally stopping it
from occurring! And again, not every possible helpful thing is helpful for
everyone e.g. the Creative Writing Workbook (which you can read more about here) and
the Wellbeing Activity Guide (again, more about that here but
there’s actually also a review about this one on the Testimonials page, here!) won’t
be for everyone! They won’t be everyone’s cup of tea or have methods in them
that everyone is interested in or which everyone will benefit from.
What did the blog teach you about
language—especially the harm of ‘helpful’ clichés—and how has that shaped the
words you use around pet loss?
Oh my goodness I’ve learnt so much about language
from my thirteen (yes, I’m NOT Disordered celebrated its thirteenth Birthday
just a few days ago – you can read the blog post for it here!)
years as a Blogger! And yes, a huge amount of those lessons was around how damaging
or how unhelpful cliches – even those which might be commonly defined as ‘helpful’
– can be! So, I’ve definitely used those lessons in my language when creating Gracie’s
Way and all the themes and contents etc of the content for it.
One area I’ve tried – because you can’t be perfect
when it comes to language online – to be especially careful around has been the
use of ‘loss’ because I want to make it clear that the website and all of the resources
it can provide, is about death and bereavement and the grief associated with those
‘losses’ as opposed to – but is just as important and valid as – that which
might stem from when a pet goes missing etc. So, as hard and upsetting as it can
be, I try to fully avoid using ‘loss’ in the content for Gracie’s Way because I
want to be clear about who the resources are for – I’d rather people realise in
reading the website that these resources aren’t for them and what they’re
struggling with than request a copy of one and discover whilst hopefully
reading. In all honesty that would make me feel as though I’d been dishonest
and misleading in my language and those thoughts and opinions of myself could
be really oppositional against my motivation, passion, and determination for
this project.
Another part of Gracie’s Way that I’ve been wary of
in my language, is the mental health side of it and this is where I feel especially
very fortunate to have been a blogger in this industry for so long because it’s
meant I feel pretty confident with this side of things. I’m not exactly a newbie
who is figuring things out as I go anymore. I feel like I’m very well-educated
in language around mental health, suicide, and self-harm and that I’ve learnt a
heck of a lot of lessons over the years about it.
One key lesson being around the harm that can come
from avoiding the ‘right’ words for something. By saying you’re ‘really sad’ instead
of depressed or hopping around ‘suicide’ with other descriptions and terms and
long-winded sentences! It can actually be offensive to a person who is
experiencing these things because it’s their reality and they’re sat there
reading your avoidance in paragraphs and are thinking ‘I wish like hell, I
could avoid it too!’ It makes them think there’s something wrong with it and it
can leave a person feeling hopeless and as though the right help isn’t out
there for them if everyone avoids even using the right words! Like, if you can’t
say one word, why would you provide resources or support that address the
entire topic for someone to gain help?!
Tips for people struggling with language around these
topics? Do what you believe in and what you think is right because at least
then, if you’re wrong; you can feel somewhat confident in defending yourself
against anyone and everyone who is likely to point out your wrongdoing –
another tip? Be prepared to be called out for it and don’t try to battle anyone
– report nasty comments to the responsible platform or company, but don’t argue
with strangers online. State your point, recognise theirs, apologise where necessary,
and make any relevant changes. Don’t get into a row that will likely escalate
any horrible comments or start raising attention that influences others to jump
in on it too!