Ep15_I will not be silenced_Dr. Clare Griffin.mp3

Ep15_I will not be silenced_Dr. Clare Griffin.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Ep15_I will not be silenced_Dr. Clare Griffin.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Emily:
Hey, there. A quick warning before we start. These are frank discussions about mental illness. Please be mindful if you continue to listen and reach out for support if you need it. Today's guest, Dr. Clare Griffin, opens up about medical treatments for OCD and bipolar disorder, about strongly advocating for her needs and using creative writing as a medium to express experiences of mental illness

Emily:
In one of my manic writing sprees. I felt an urge to do creative writing, and if you mean creative writing can be hugely helpful for mental illness because it allows you to find a way of expressing how you feel differently. And, you know, maybe you can then deal with topics that you wouldn't want to say explicitly in kind of an allegorical or a metaphorical fashion, or you can just kind of write things out or maybe six situations that you've been in before in some way.

Emily:
Clare is a science historian who opened up previously and episode 14 about the delay in her diagnoses and how this impacted her academic journey. I highly recommend going back to have a listen to the first part of her story before jumping in here. Welcome to Voices of Academia with Emily King. It's a podcast where researchers from around the world open up about their mental health. They might laugh, cry or say things you disagree with, but this has lived experience, not professional advice. We cover some sensitive material, but it's worth it to normalise difficult conversations, reduce stigma and help people feel less alone. Let's get into it.

Emily:
Ok, so, Clare, as we mentioned in the last episode, you came forward to tell your story. So again, I just really want to thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing what your experience has been. And we we learned a little bit about your life before you opened up about your story in the last episode. So similarly, today, I'd like to ask a few questions before we get into the next part of your story and some of the support resources that you've found. But just quickly, I know you've recently found the support source that you mentioned in the last episode. So did you want to quickly correct those details?

Emily:
Yes, thank you for that. So thank you for having me back on the podcast. First of all, but yes, I mentioned something that I was trying to remember the name of it off the top of my head. The person I was referring to is Lydia X Z Brown, and the name of their Twitter and of their blog is AutisticHoyer rather than AutisticTroyer, which is what I said last time. So my apologies to Lydia for mispronouncing that. And then hopefully you guys can find it because this is a very useful. She is a very useful person to follow, and her blog has many good things on it.

Emily:
So I recommend fantastic and I'll put a link to that in the episode description as well. So, clare, this is a couple of questions. Again, to sort of get to know you outside of your academic life in your downtime. Is there anything you're particularly watching or listening to or reading that you're really enjoying at the moment?

Emily:
Oh, Art! So there is an author. And her. What is her name? Art Ovadia. She is a Singaporean author, and she writes kind of period murder mysteries set in. I think we are currently in the interwar period in Singapore, and her main character is a disabled woman and disabled young woman. So it's like it's a nice mystery, but it's also it's not like gritty and noir ish. It's quite kind of gentle and it feels like inclusive. There are people of colour because, you know, Singapore and many different people and there are queer characters and there are disabled characters. And it's also it's not like, let us talk about how this person is disabled and that this is the only story of their life, like she is disabled. And also this is her life and like, it's a part of who she is, but it's not. It's not kind of hyper focused on as you get in some literature. So this is one of my favorite current book series

Emily:
That sounds like a really interesting book. I'd actually love for you to send me the link to that in the chat book. So maybe at the end of this episode? Yeah, yeah.

Emily:
Yeah, I will. I will send this to you.

Emily:
Thank you. What about who you're closest to and why?

Emily:
Oh, the honest answer is like the absolute person I am closest to is my cat. I know this is like a typical cat lady thing to say. So I live my life with my partner. But like he will freely admit, I am the cat's favourite and like he said, that he's completely fine with that because my cat is very she is very person centric and loves hugs and things. And literally, I will just carry her around the apartment like a little baby. So she and I kind of you can have a connection with animals that is very different to the one you, the connection you have with humans, right? Like because animals are never going to sort of tell a white lie or misrepresent their feelings on something like if the cat is pissed off, the cat is pissed off, you know, like if she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to hug right now. There will be no hugging of any description like you get kind of a much more unfiltered sense of self from them. So yeah, I'm probably I'm supposed to be saying like my partner or one of my friends. But like, I think everyone who knows me will appreciate that like this is the honest answer is that me and the cat, we are besties.

Emily:
No, I don't want this supposed to. I want the real thing. So I love that it's all. And I've never thought about it like that, that you sort of get this transparency in the relationship with animals. I have a dog, and I mean, I love her because she always knows if I am upset or like anxious. And she's great for cuddles and for distracting me from other things that are going on in my life. But I guess dogs maybe don't get as pissed off as I think cats do. So maybe that's why I've never noticed that.

Emily:
But yeah, yeah, I mean, my cat is is very much like she's very 'princess-ey' and like, she will get outraged. Two of the things she gets most outraged about or citrus fruit and people sneezing. These two things are unacceptable to appoint. You would not believe unless you saw it. So, yeah, but pets are really great for people, and there's lots of evidence to show that particularly people with mental illness, like, it's really good for us to have this little soul around who needs us, and we need to kind of stay on track and take care of them. But then they also interact with us in a specific way. And like, sometimes it's really hard to talk to people about how you feel and actually verbalize it, whereas you don't need to work with animals like, I mean, you can talk human to them, but they don't really care. You just react to them and they react to you on just just in a totally different way and which is is incredibly helpful.

Emily:
I have to say when I was really struggling, so our dog is actually my partner's dog, and at the time we weren't living together, but I would go and stay with him for periods at a time and he would go to work. And I'd be at home with the dog and just having her crawl onto the bed with me or taking her for a walk and seeing the world through her eyes brought me a lot of joy, so I can totally relate to that. Yeah. So just a quick social media shout out for those unable to listen to the end of this episode, I'm going to get you to pronounce it clear because I don't think I can.

Clare:
Yes, yes, I like. It's very common for Slavic studies people to have. We will deliberately make things Slavic studies, names because we are huge nerds. My Twitter handle is @balalaichnitsa.

Emily:
Great. Thank you. So today I'd love for you to share with us some of the support resources you've discovered. So I think probably including some of the treatments that you've found for OCD and bipolar, perhaps some of the disability resources that you mentioned. And maybe if we have time potentially touching on on self-advocacy and if that has helped to support. You in some way, that's probably a lot to cover, but we'll see how we go. So you indicated to me before recording that, I guess some of your advice for others and I have a question around this, but some of your advice for others is how you feel about a treatment. A practitioner or a support group is valid. And if you feel pressured to accept something, accept something that doesn't feel right to you, you have the right to walk away. So I'd like to ask, I guess, if there's a particular scenario that comes to mind for you in that respect.

Clare:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, actually, there's a couple of things that have happened to me where I was like, I don't think this is fine. So at one point, I was working with the therapist who had a very specific way of working through something, and I got to a point in it and was I was like, I don't feel comfortable with this, like this doesn't feel right to me. And this person then had a whole spiel of like, Oh, it's supposed to be uncomfortable, like, this is how we get better. And I still ended it because, like I said, Well, no, but there's a difference between pushing through something that's difficult to get to a better place and doing something that does not feel right. And this person then said, Oh, well, perhaps you're just not ready to get better yet. And that, I think, is a really concerning attitude. And again, it goes back to this paternalistic attitude that we talked about last time that mentally ill people are supposed to put their sense of reality in someone else's hand. And it's, you know, it's very concerning for agency and it's also kind of philosophically questionable. Someone else gets to decide what is real for us, and we have to just totally go along with that. And I mean, sometimes sometimes we do need a different perspective on things, but it can get really toxic if you are expected to just totally give over your sense of the world to someone else, like that's that's very destabilizing and it's kind of really concerning. The other thing that came to mind was I was at one point in a support group that was kind of a general disability support group, and they decided to add trigger warnings and trigger warnings have a use.

Clare:
There's also some downsides because especially for people with mental illness. Some people then have to tiptoe through the world endlessly and like huge amounts of who they are and what they've been through in life. They can't just open up their mouth and speak them. They have to kind of go around first and go, Is it OK for me to say this thing? That's hugely significant for me? And there's been some things written on this that like how problematic that can be. So I have a huge ambivalence towards trigger warnings because they can be really important. But then there's also this other side of them. This particular group is kind of said, I'm not sure about this. We need to think about this. And then very suddenly they put up a thing saying, Oh, will mental health is a trigger and you have to tag your posts with trigger warnings. I was like, Well, not just mental illness, mental health. Technically, you can't mention like meditation without putting a trigger warning on it, which is obviously ridiculous. But also, even if it was mental illness, that's still bad. If you need to say OK, trigger warning, suicide trigger warning, self-harm trigger warning. Substance abuse. Ok, but if you can't mention that you are mentally ill. That's not a trigger warning that silencing people because other people are uncomfortable and there needs to be an understanding of the difference between responsibly using trigger warnings and that some people are irresponsibly using them in a way that actually harms people.

Emily:
Yeah, that's a conversation I have with my partner a lot. Actually, he's a mental health support worker. But even with this podcast kind of discussing how to approach trigger warnings, I kind of got to a point where I was like, But but everything could potentially be a trigger warning for someone because it's not, you know, there are some that are quite obvious, but there are a lot that are not obvious at all to me because I haven't had that particular experience. So you get in this point where it's kind of I can't I can't touch on everything.

Clare:
Yeah. Given the nature of the podcast, you can kind of just say to people, you know, this is a frank discussion about mental illness, like you may want to be prepared, like if there's certain specific, generally accepted triggers that you can mention. But I think generally people just need to think about, am I in the right headspace to listen to forty five minute discussion of mental illness right now because it's kind of a, like you say, all kinds of things that could come up, that could be a problem for people. And it's just the general awareness that this is this is not, you know, a light, fluffy podcast about, you know, baking or whatever. You know, like we we have a specific focus.

Emily:
Yeah, you do need to be in the right mindset. Hopefully, the fact that we have the support and the wellness episodes can provide a little bit of relief from that kind of content as well. So I guess what are some of the supports that you have found that are particularly helpful for you?

Clare:
So right now as well, for a long time, I wasn't on medication because like a lot of people, I was hesitant about what that meant and how to do it and like, what is this going to be like? I'm currently on a medication that works for me, so I take medication twice a day and check in with my psychiatrist who prescribes that. And that medication isn't right for everyone, but it can. Depending on what your specific condition is and how you want to manage it, it can lessen what your symptoms are like in order for you to do other work and things like that. So for me, currently that's working. I have done a lot of CBT and CBT is really hard work and kind of unpleasant, but particularly in the case of OCD. There was very little available treatment for OCD, even kind of late 20th century because there are anti-anxiety meds, but they only bring down the anxiety level. They don't kind of fix the underlying problem. And unfortunately, it does seem like right now the best way to deal with OCD is to say, OK, you are terrified of this specific thing happening. We have to do a tiny amount of that specific, terrifying thing to show you that it's actually not as bad as you think it is. And it is. It's it's not a nice experience, but. It does still seem to be the gold standard for OCD treatment, because the part of your brain that should tell you to stop worrying about something functions completely differently than for people who don't have OCD. And so just saying, Oh, don't worry about it too much, it doesn't. I'm not convinced that works for anyone, but it certainly doesn't work for people with OCD. It has to then be a thing about, OK, well, how likely is it that that would happen? How would we deal with that happening? Because that's the only way that your OCD brain can function in terms of worrying, because what non OCD people do is pretty much never going to work for an OCD brain.

Emily:
So I'm familiar with that approach, I guess labeled as exposure therapy.

Clare:
Yes, exactly.

Emily:
Is that something that you do in consultation with a therapist or

Clare:
It is typically done in consultation with a CBT therapist? You can do it by yourself. There are a lot of self-help guides, and then the issue here is expense and safety, because as we talked about last time, we talked about how expensive diagnosis is. Treatment is also really expensive. Like if you're talking about an experienced CBT therapist in the UK, you could easily spend a hundred pounds an hour on this and that's just not accessible. So even on the NHS, the British National Health Service has a certain amount of treatment that people can get for free. But, you know, it's very limited. You'll have only a certain amount you can have and you're probably going to wait six months to get it. So access to that level of treatment is pretty limited. There are increasing numbers of self-help guides like I said, and they can kind of walk you through it. But the problem is then you don't have an expert there with you. And so you don't have someone helping you to decide what your specific comfort level is. And so the danger is. Do you go too fast and you give yourself too big an exposure and then that kind of makes it harder. So. Really, price wise is one of the major things that kind of determines people's treatment on that. You can do it by yourself and there are resources for doing it by yourself. And there's often also community groups, so you could kind of do it by yourself, but check in with a community group. So a lot of mental health charities have some kind of online discussion group where people can kind of talk through these kinds of things.

Emily:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I guess I would like to put a little bit of a disclaimer here that we don't sort of recommend that you do this on your own, that you try to find some form of support, whatever that may be that works for you.

Clare:
Yes, I agree. I mean, I would particularly be happy of framing this as support because again, like I say, kind of employing someone to help you is just not feasible for some people. But having having friends, having family, having an online or in-person support group or a licensed therapist, one or more of those things is really helpful.

Emily:
Yeah. And those are some really good suggestions because we do talk a lot about therapy on this podcast, and we've also talked about some of the barriers, including financial barriers to that. So it's kind of good to mention some alternatives as well. So I guess this is kind of a question because I'm I'm personally invested in the answer. But how have some of these supports that you've found, I guess, helped you manage your career as an academic? I'm particularly interested to know if you've been able to find more sustainable ways to work compared to what you mentioned in the last episode about how you have these quite sort of up and down periods and how it seems like that wasn't sustainable for you before you received the diagnosis. So I'm yeah, I'm really sort of interested, I guess, whether that's possible.

Clare:
Yeah, I mean, it is. It is. It is, to a certain extent possible. But one of the issues is you do need the cooperation from other people and you don't know ahead of time if they're going to cooperate. And even if they say, Oh yeah, I totally support you. Some people either haven't understood what that means or they didn't really mean it in the first place. So there can be huge issues there. Happily, I'm at a place in my career where I can say no to things, and it doesn't impact me in the same way that it might impact a PhD student or a postdoc. I've become increasingly kind of demanding in a way when I deal with people and I say I'm not going to do events online in the middle of the night back when we were flying places. I'm not going to fly six hours and then immediately get on a two hour train ride to go somewhere like I'm taking a hotel for the night and I'll get the early train in the morning or, you know, you need to schedule me. So I have breast warning people ahead of time if I'm coming in for a conference, if I don't feel well during this workshop, I'm just walking out of the session and you have to be OK with me just going, I need a break now and going in order for me to take part. And I've managed that partly by saying this ahead of time, saying These are the conditions. If you want me here, this is the me you get. And if you're not prepared to have this version of me, you don't get me there at all. And yeah, and just hoping that people are basically willing to follow through with the kind of promises they make about allowing for that kind of way of working?

Emily:
Yeah. So I guess I have two questions from that. The first is, do you have an example of sort of when you've tried to advocate for that and it hasn't worked out because you sort of mentioned that. And then the other one is what do you think it was that helped you get to the point where you felt comfortable to advocate for yourself in that way? So you've said it may be a little bit easier for you now that you're at this more senior position of your career? I guess some people would argue that might make it harder. So I guess I'd be interested in the answer to those two questions.

Clare:
Yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, there's always going to be kind of pluses and minuses because about wherever you are in your career stage, because yes, there is a certain level of protection with being more senior. But like you say, you know, there are potential other consequences for four senior people. So my thing is I feel I feel comfortable turning things down because people in the fields I work in know who I am and I've had enough publications out and I've been at enough conferences that mean not going to X workshop isn't a huge deal. Whereas if someone is a, you know, a PhD student and this is going to be the very first conference they go to, then it is a bigger deal for them saying no to something. So an example of someone not doing this. So at one point I was flying a pretty long way to go to a conference and I'd said ahead of time. I'm flying a long way. I'm very happy to come. I need this to be arranged so that I can kind of get there, OK, and I need you to schedule things at a time where I'm going to be OK getting through it. And of course, they say, Yeah, yeah, of course that's fine.

Clare:
That's fine. And then when it comes to actually scheduling the sessions, they come back to me and say, Oh, but I mean, is it really could you not like do this time that I've already said, this is a problem for me? And I said, no, you agreed to certain conditions of mean coming. And in order to put me in a certain place that I feel comfortable with. And this is one of the dangers where people will say in order to get you on board, they will say, of course we'll take care of you. Of course we'll sort this out to get you to say yes, and then they're not willing to actually follow through with that. And because sometimes that kind of accommodation does cause some kind of issues for the conference and people, in order to be supportive, people have to be willing to genuinely rearrange things in order to house people there. So that is the kind of issue I have where people have have said they will arrange things. So it works for me. And then when it comes down to it, still expect me to say yes to things I've already said no to.

Emily:
And I guess that's where that self-advocacy kind of comes into it, because I know I've definitely sort of balked at certain things that have been asked of me and then I've tried to negotiate it. And I guess if it's a text message or an email, you kind of write what's best for you? And then I always freak out that I've written that thing that I need before they've responded. And you worry that you've maybe screwed up this opportunity or something until they write back. So there's that anxiety, right? But then if they write back and they challenge you on it, I imagine that's a really difficult thing when you're already feeling a little bit, you know, uncertain and unstable and insecure to to really hold those boundaries strong. Do you have any kind of advice on maybe how how you do that for yourself?

Clare:
It is really difficult because like we talked about earlier, those of us who live with mental illness, we do feel like all version of reality isn't kind of accepted. And I mean, we do have problems and we do kind of react in different ways in ways that aren't always helpful for us. And so there is there can often be a voice in your mind if someone implies you're being difficult by saying no to something they want part of your mind. I think almost always is going to go, well, maybe they're right. Maybe I'm just being difficult. Maybe they're in the right, and that's so hard to deal with. That kind of gaslighting is so hard to deal with. I mean, how do you deal with it? I think part of it is just to remember that this is hard, that it is hard to have to go back to someone and say, No, I told you what I needed. You agreed to give me what I needed, and you can either do that or I'm not participating. And I think it's important to try and give yourself some time and don't feel the need to just jump in and answer straight away. And sometimes, if you're not sure, sometimes the right answer is just to say no. Because if you're not sure if it's right to say yes, sometimes it's better to just give yourself the extra protection of walking away. Because if you walk away, there's going to be another opportunity at some point down the road. Whereas if you stay in something that's potentially damaging to you, it could be a bigger problem. But I really feel the most important thing is just acknowledge that it is difficult. We don't have to always be OK getting all through yourselves through these things.

Emily:
I mean, I have to try and remember that one. So we're coming close to the end of this episode. I guess there was one other thing that I had to ask you, and then I'll say if there's anything else you wanted to add. But you mentioned this resource called word gathering. So you said it's a disability literary website where people can creatively express their conditions. And I know your work's been published there, but how did you come across that?

Clare:
So in one of my manic writing sprees, I felt an urge to do creative writing. And you know, if you mean creative writing can be hugely helpful for some mental illness because it allows you to find a way of expressing how you feel differently. And, you know, maybe you can then deal with topics that you wouldn't want to say explicitly in kind of an allegorical or a metaphorical fashion, or you can just kind of write things out or maybe six situations that you've been in before in some way. And so I started writing like this and then I I thought, I specifically want to send this to a disability literary journal, and there are several out there. What gathering is great. I've always had a really. I've now been published by them twice I've already had. I've always had a really positive experience with the editors, which unfortunately, as we know, we don't always have positive experience with editors in all kinds of fields. So that's really great. Like, especially if you're starting out writing these kinds of things, having someone, I mean, they they happen to have said yes to both things I sent them. But have someone be nice about the submission process is huge. If you're doing this for the first few times and like arguably in general, and they're great also. They do a really wide range of things, so it's fiction and poetry and creative nonfiction and reviews and kind of various things. And so you can go there and read lots of different things, but also whatever format works for you, for expressing yourselves. It could find a home there because they have this kind of very inclusive approach to what? To how you can express your feelings as as a disabled or mentally ill person.

Emily:
That sounds really great. I hadn't really thought about how you could write a creative story about your experience, but kind of make it end differently like it's yeah, it's an interesting concept, and maybe I have to give it a go. But how do you feel it helps you personally?

Clare:
I mean, we talked in the previous episode about privacy vs. secrets and like, where are our boundaries in terms of disclosure? If you can take a part of your experience that you that you want to keep private and make it into some kind of metaphor or allegory and give it to your fictional character, that can be a way of processing these things and expressing it so you can kind of turn things into into other things. And if you can kind of transform them in some way, partly or controlling them like it gives you a whole other level of control to say, Well, I can take this kind of demon and make it smaller and different. And then it's it's mine. But it means that you do get to say things out loud that you might not be comfortable literally saying out loud.

Emily:
Yeah, because I know there's kind of a technique for sort of naming some of your demons and yeah, like changing the size of them if you kind of visualize them and that kind of thing. So I guess it's similar to that. But in a, you know, writing form, yeah. I might have to. Yeah, I'll check it out. So is there anything else you'd like to add, clare, before we wrap up?

Clare:
I think one really important thing to remember is that wherever you are in your journey, it's never going to go perfectly and you're never going to behave perfectly. And you know, if you have a bad day where you feel you've behaved badly and you wish it could be different, that's always going to happen. And it's trying to find a way to accept that is the really important thing. Then stepping back and really considering, should I be apologizing to someone or actually is the situation different? And like, maybe it's better for me just to move away from this and just allowing yourself to be imperfect depending on how you're going each day is just a really a really important skill to try and work on.

Emily:
Yeah, as a perfectionist, I'm going to advocate for that one as well. Yeah. Learning to be imperfect. So we are at the end of today's episode. Thanks again, Clare, for sharing. I'd love to keep in contact. I'm going to follow you on that Twitter handle that I can't pronounce, but I'm going to put in our episode description. And if any of you listeners would like to get in contact with Clare, she's also available on her website, so there'll be links for both of those available in episode description. So that brings us close to the end of today's episode of Voices of Academia. Sorry, clare, I was this something you wanted to add?

Clare:
I just wanted to say thank you for having me, and it's been great to talk.

Emily:
Awesome. So to you guys listening or reading, thanks for choosing to share some of your time with us. I'd love to know your takeaway from Clare's story. Let me know on Twitter @EKing_Sci for science. Otherwise I look forward to having you with me again in a couple of weeks. Bye for now.

Emily:
Before you go,we have some support resources and information for how you can share your own story. If this episode brought anything up for you, there are mental health resources and emergency numbers available for various countries at www.checkpointorg.com/global. For information found in this episode, refer to the episode description or visit the podcast section of our website www.VoicesofAcademia.com.

Emily:
There you can also access the full transcript of this episode made available by our lovely Voices of Academia team member Daniel Ranson. This podcast was written, hosted and produced by me, Emily, with support from some very special people in my life. You can find me on Twitter @EKing_Sci for science, but I'm part of the larger voices of Academia team. We have a website, a Twitter account @AcademicVoices and also share stories in blog form, with the option of them being anonymous. If you like this podcast and want to hear more stories, please leave a review, subscribe, tell me what you think on Twitter and tell your friends. The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and most other major listening platforms. You can also follow the Voices of Academia blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Just head to our website www.VoicesofAcademia.com to sign up. If you have a mental health or a wellness story to share, we absolutely want to hear from you, whether you're a team leader, research assistant, post-doc, student, ex academic or any other type of researcher, Follow @AcademicVoices on Twitter. Visit the link in the episode description or visit our website www.VoicesofAcademia.com for details on how to share your story. It's time someone gave you a voice.

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