Ep14_Living without Diagnoses_Dr. Clare Griffin (1).mp3

Ep14_Living without Diagnoses_Dr. Clare Griffin (1).mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Ep14_Living without Diagnoses_Dr. Clare Griffin (1).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. Today's episode touches on OCD and bipolar disorder. Please be mindful if you continue to listen and reach out for support if you need it. Today's guest, Assistant Professor Dr Claire Griffin, is a historian of science at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. Academic research covers science and medicine in the early modern Russian empire, including wounded soldiers and the history of pain. You discover that class interest in Russia extends also to inventing words for a very unique Twitter handle. Clare opens up about the delays in her diagnoses of OCD and bipolar disorder and how the conditions have impacted her academic journey, both before and after treatment.

Clare:
Ocd and bipolar have an average time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis of 10 years or more. And my condition, the specific way they manifest, they don't necessarily tend to bother people that much, because there is a general tendency for mental illness to be ranked according to how much it inconveniences other people. So if someone is desperately depressed and, you know, doesn't get their work done, can't take care of their children, doesn't hang out with friends, then that gets noticed, whereas someone might be in huge internal pain. But if they're hitting deadlines, if they look like they're keeping going, then people just don't pick up on it in the same way.

Emily:
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 normalize difficult conversations, reduce stigma and help people feel less alone. Let's get into it.

Emily:
So, Clare, you've come forward today to tell your story. So I really want to thank you for reaching out to the voices of academia Taim to do that. And I want to welcome you to the podcast.

Clare:
Thank you. It's great to be here and to talk to you.

Emily:
Thank you. So, I mean, at this point, we really don't know much about each other at all. So I wanted to spend a couple of minutes to sort of just get to know you a little bit outside of your research. And I thought I would start with a question about your favorite way to spend a day off.

Clare:
Oh, this is a really good question. Yeah. What do I do on my day off? So it kind of depends like what my energy levels are like and what the weather is like, because where I am where like often either very, very hot or very, very cold. I love video games. I'm a particular fan of Assassin's Creed. And this is like a nice way. It's like you feel like you're being active even though you're sitting down the whole time, like you're climbing walls and jumping down from things, except not really. I also enjoy running. There is an excitable small cat in here somewhere who may interrupt at some point. It's also fun to play with her. So, yeah, I think an ideal day off would be like a video game. Some running some time.

Emily:
Sounds awesome. I recently got into video games during the lockdown, but I haven't played Assassin's Creed.

Clare:
Yeah, it's a good long time activity. Assassin's Creed, some people don't like it because it is like murder all the time. But yeah, like if you like that kind of, like it's a little bit puzzle solvie and it's, yeah. So I enjoy it a lot.

Emily:
Awesome. And what about this one's a little bit of a throwback. So what were you like as a kid?

Clare:
Oh, yeah. No, I was a super weird kid like I have I had all these books on vampires. And I was also I grew up in a village and I was always looking after all the people horses. So I always I always liked animals more than people. So, yeah, I was kind of either reading or hanging out with horses, and this was kind of my thing.

Emily:
I think that's weird. I my dad's a vet, so I was hanging out with a lot of animals when I was a kid as well. And I think...

Clare:
I meant more the vampire thing!

Emily:
Well, yeah. So my next question was, what drew you to research? And I wonder because you've mentioned that you do you know, you're a science historian, which I think is really interesting, but that some of your research has to do with kind of past medical methods and soldiers wounds and pain. So I do wonder whether that's a little bit of a link here with some of your early interests and sort of what's drawn you into this kind of research.

Clare:
Definitely. So the thing I am particularly interested in is how it is that people in the past thought about certain things very differently to us. So what I always tell my students is we should always assume people in the past are generally well-informed by the standards of the time and intelligent and I mean basically well-intentioned, unless we have specific specific evidence that they aren't. And so we go in with that kind of attitude and say, well, why did they think these things that were completely different to us? So why, for example, did they think the vampires were real? One of the whole things I have for the book, I am desperately trying to finish right now is the use of chemicals in medicine and also powdered. A human remains in medicine, and I mean, we wouldn't I mean, some chemicals are still used in medicine, but we wouldn't prescribe someone mercury. So why did it seem like a good idea at the time? And so this is really this is kind of the connective thread through everything I do. All of my research is trying to understand what what was happening at that time, that all of these things made sense to them in a way that doesn't automatically make sense to us.

Emily:
Hmm, interesting. I the only thing that I can say that sort of relates to that is I recently watched this history of makeup. Ok, come back in like the the Victorian era. They were using things like clothes and burning clothes to use as an eyebrow pencil, for example. And that actually still works today. But some of the other things that they were using are very, very toxic today and had to be made up in a lab and basically just made up to see what it would be like, but couldn't be used on people now. So, yeah, I never studied that at university, but I think now I find it really interesting to see sort of where things came from and the stories behind them, so. Sure. Super interesting area of research. So I guess I've started to ask some of our guests this question, because I'm interested to know what motivates people to sort of come forward and tell their story, because I think it can probably be for a lot of different reasons. So what is that reason for you?

Clare:
Hmm. I think ultimately the reason is that a difference between keeping something private and keeping something secret, because privacy is a good thing. It's good to have that little bubble around us where we say these are the things I know or these are the things just me and the people close to me know. And then secrets all the negative. If you feel you have to hide a part of yourself that doesn't feel good and that's actually really destructive to feel like you cannot walk through the world as yourself. And a lot of minority communities feel like that that they feel this kind of they are pushed into not saying certain things because they know there will be consequences or that there could be consequences if they talk about themselves the way they would like to be able to talk about themselves. So for me, I got to a certain level of comfort. And I think I don't think anyone is ever 100 percent comfortable with saying these things. Like, you just it's kind of a boundary issue and a management issue. But I got to the point where the balance shifted for me, and I would rather. Deal with the consequences of saying certain things rather than internalize these ideas and kind of poison myself from the inside out because I'm trying to keep myself out of certain consequences.

Emily:
Hmm. I'd be really interested maybe later on in this episode to touch a little bit on how you reached that point, because I think that's a really interesting area. So before we get into that part, I just wanted to do a quick sort of social media shout out. So if our listeners would like to reach you online when they listen to this episode, where can they find you?

Clare:
I'm mostly on Twitter in particular, I think I see might I have the most common name amongst like English speakers ever? I think like so if they search for Claire Griffin, they'll find like a million people with that specific name. My Twitter handle is like Nizza, which I think we'll have to put in the show.

Emily:
Definitely will.

Clare:
Basically, it's an invented Russian word because the Russian instrument, the balalaika is traditionally played by men. And so the word for balalaika play is blacklight, nick. It's it's masculine. So I made a feminine version for myself "balalaichnitsa". So I stumble over it myself sometimes.

Emily:
I love that.

Emily:
That's so good. Yes. We'll definitely put that into the episode description because it's a little bit difficult to get to know how to spell that. Yeah. So we're going to shift gears now for our listeners. This is where you may experience some triggers, I guess are often wonderfully, but disarmingly open. So if listening today brings anything up for you, I would encourage you to reach out to one of your supports. Contact your GP or access the relevant support numbers and resources for your country at www.checkpointorg.com/global. So, Claire, I don't really feel like I can talk about mental health in during a global pandemic without acknowledging that we're in a global pandemic. So I kind of like to ask, you know, how you're doing, given the pandemic and I guess, you know, any other sort of life stresses in general. You're obviously in Kazakhstan. I've never been there before. I'm in Australia. So that's probably a lot that I. I don't know. It's a very loaded question, I guess. But how how are you doing?

Clare:
And right now, I'm doing OK. Kazakhstan's present kind of government rule situation is that it's not completely open, but shops are generally open. Restaurants are mostly open. There are mosque mandates everywhere. There is a vaccination campaign. So I everyone who is a teacher of all descriptions was prioritised for vaccination. So I have been completely vaccinated with Sputnik five. So right now, it is kind of certainly not like an easy situation, but it's kind of not too bad right now. It does look like we might be going into another lockdown. The major thing for me is international travel is very hard right now. It is. I mean, flights still get canceled all the time.

Clare:
It's difficult. It would be potentially tricky for me to go out into the UK, depending on how they rank Kazakhstan on any particular week. Getting back into Kazakhstan, I would have to have a certain number of documents to do that because I'm not a citizen. So that from my kind of expat lifestyle, I mean, I. So the last time I left the country was January 2020, and I was in Istanbul on holiday. I haven't been back to the U.K. since summer 2019. And I'm not going this summer because it's going to be too complicated. So it's probably going to be three years, like two and a half, three years in total that I won't be in the UK.

Emily:
Yeah, it's I'm sorry to hear that. And it's so hard to know sort of how long this is going to go on for, I guess. Right. But yeah, I guess fingers crossed for your situation and and that you're able to get back to some of your your friends back in the UK at some point soon, hopefully next year.

Clare:
Yeah. Yeah.

Emily:
So you indicated prior to recording that I guess you were given an initial diagnosis of OCD in your early thirties, which has recently been updated with an additional diagnosis of bipolar spectrum disorder. You said that your story is one of living a lot of your life, sort of being unaware that that these concerns you had had names and they had treatments, and you're now sort of adjusting to living with the diagnosis and the treatments that help. So like my initial response to that when I read it was that that must have been quite a revelation for you.

Clare:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is very weird. So both OCD and bipolar have an estimated time, average time from onset of symptoms to diagnosis or 10 years or more. So this is, in a way, the typical experience. So for some people, it can be faster, but it's often only faster if it is a particularly traumatic situation. So if someone unravels to the point where they are not coping at all on a day to day basis, they could get a diagnosis faster. But if you appear to be coping in your life, then that doesn't really come up. And my condition, the specific way they manifest, they don't necessarily tend to bother people that much, because there is a general tendency. For mental illness to be ranked according to how much it inconveniences other people. So if someone is desperately depressed and, you know, doesn't get their work done, can't take care of their children, doesn't hang out with friends, then that gets noticed because it's impacting all the people. Whereas someone might be in huge internal pain. But if they're hitting deadlines, if they're kind of they look like they're keeping going. Then people just don't pick up on it in the same way. And so I am obsessive about deadlines, obsessive about kind of producing good work. And I write a lot when I'm manic. And so I look like I'm good at my job. But sometimes me being good at my job means I'm really not. Well, sorry. I need to come sit with me. And now she wants to like wander off over here. Outside cats are a very good model for like living your own life because cats have no interest in other people's opinions. Right. Like...

Emily:
They doing whatever the hell they want.

Clare:
Yeah, exactly. This is what's happening.

Emily:
So I wasn't aware of that sort of lag time between initial kind of display of symptoms and diagnosis. So that that's really I mean, it just something new for me to learn. But so, yeah, and I'm also really intrigued that mental illnesses are ranked based on how they impact other people. That just seems so bizarre. I mean, I understand, but it you know, as someone that experienced treatment resistant depression and anxiety disorder, I just I don't see why how that impacts other people should have anything to do with it.

Clare:
Yeah. But if you think about the times when someone has said to you, "You don't seem OK to me, I think you need help"... did That really correspond to your worst day or to the level at which your internal feelings impacted them.

Emily:
That's true. So I guess it can be helpful in terms of other people kind of recognizing and reaching out and offering support.

Clare:
Yeah, because you kind of you do need someone else there. And it's often very helpful for someone else to be there and understand. And if when we kind of have been trained to look for distress, signals of mental illness in terms of, you know, I mean, like I, I do think it's appropriate to say inconvenience, like if if it's impacting them in some way. And then they see and it isn't necessarily them being bad people, it's just how everyone has been trained to see mental illness that there should be. That the way we think about it is in terms of external presentation rather than how someone feels internally.

Emily:
Mm hmm. So what was your sort of first so if there was this sort of lag time before you had your diagnosis, do you have sort of a first memory of when things perhaps seemed to be maybe more difficult for you than other people or then you would have expected?

Clare:
I always remember, even from being a kid, being particularly anxious about things and, you know, it's difficult because how do you know what someone else is is feeling? So I I've read certain memoirs, interestingly, by people with schizophrenia who said who just assumed everyone felt like this sometimes and everyone had these kind of psychotic symptoms sometimes, because how would you know that that's happening? But I did just yeah, I do remember having a level of anxiety about the world and about how people would respond to me not doing things perfectly. That I mean, it's difficult to say. It's I wouldn't really want to say that it was excessive, but it was a response that was upsetting and damaging to me. So like that is kind of the earliest memories of reacting to what other people might see as kind of fairly

Clare:
Minor events. In a way that was was, was upsetting to me personally.

Emily:
Ok, Yeah.

Emily:
And then in terms of the impacts on your work, so you said that sometimes for you it can kind of benefit your work to a degree because you are concerned about deadlines and you do write a lot in a manic period. But can you describe sort of some examples, I guess, of how your academic journey has been impacted before you receive the diagnosis?

Clare:
Yeah, so I would go through periods where I would write so fast and for so many hours in a day, I would give myself migraines from the volume I was producing. So, I mean, on the upside, I'd written a lot, but it wasn't necessarily very good. So I would go through kind of very productive periods, but then like crash into migraines and depressions and kind of do this. So there was kind of a. I would either be overly twitchy and kind of doing all the things or just kind of gone. So you would kind of get two totally different experiences of working with me, depending on where I was. Hmm.

Emily:
And so difficult to be sort of sustainable in that way. And I guess I can relate to that to a degree as well. And so how did that sort of make you feel about your your ability to progress as an academic?

Clare:
Yeah, it was difficult sometimes because I academia has has an over work culture and an overweight problem. And so if you are producing a large amount, people will automatically see that as going well. And burnout is almost sometimes treated as I mean, it's certainly treated as acceptable, but it's almost sometimes treated as like a badge of honor, like I wrote for so long. Then I slept all weekend, you know, like I finished my conference paper on the plane and then got through the conference on coffee and alcohol. And then, you know, I slept the following week. And so you are trained to think certain things are normal when they actually aren't, like those things are not good for you if you're taking a red eye flight and writing your conference paper on the red eye flight. That's not really going to be good for you. I mean, I shouldn't be too judgmental here because people have different working rhythms. But if people are constantly putting themselves into this cycle of like overproduction and then crashing and over and over again, that then can be really damaging.

Emily:
Yeah, so so for you, obviously you've received this diagnosis now, so I'm interested to know sort of at what point you decided to sort of get some help and potentially see diagnosis and also maybe what point of your career that was, because obviously now you've reached assistant professor and we have a lot of people on these podcasts that are at the state level. So I'd really like to talk about sort of what happened in in more senior academia as well. But few sort of went when was that period?

Clare:
So like as we've discussed the OCD diagnosis earlier, and I was a postdoc and basically I told some people how bad I'd been feeling. And happily they said, OK, we think you need some help. And part of that was doing that awful barrage of tests of like, tell us every terrible thing that's ever happened to you and your worst imaginable day. And let's make a neat chart of trauma and awfulness. And one of the things I scored hugely highly on was anxiety and was OCD symptoms. And so on the basis of that, I received the OCD diagnosis. But the problem with some of those tests is that there's a focus on anxiety and there's a focus on depression.

Clare:
But one of the ways in which depression is framed is that it tends to exclude either overly misdiagnosis of people who are bipolar with depression, or to exclude people from a diagnosis because they don't fit the clinical model of depression. So clinical depression is two weeks minimum of being depressed. So I don't ever fit the clinical model. I've never got assessed for mood disorders initially, but I can be incredibly depressed. But it's usually for like

Clare:
Four or five days. So it sounds less bad because it's for a shorter period, but it's still really serious. And so I didn't fit into that box. And so I was never further assessed for mood disorders. On top of that hypomania and mania, again, they can appear to be OK or even good. Oh, this person is in such a great mood. They have so much energy. They're so productive. They're so much fun. But that might actually be being fueled by something else. And so I actually had to later push for getting assessed for bipolar because I went through a period where I was had huge amounts of energy and was kind of fantastically productive and then fell out of control and it wasn't fun anymore. And like it's too much too much energy and then slumped into a crash and couldn't get out of bed for three days. And it was that particular, you know, format that made me think, OK, that that shouldn't be normal. And that does seem like bipolar. So, I mean, the the diagnosis experience was kind of very different from each of them. But my experience is diagnosis. I mean, people always talk about it's very expensive to get diagnosed overseas, but it's also it takes a fairly high level of. Willingness to to speak to people kind of really like courage, to say things that worry you out loud. Self-control of putting yourself into these situations and being calm enough to have these conversations and really serious self advocacy and sometimes having to say to people, not, you are wrong, I need to be assessed for this other thing because something isn't right here. Yeah. So it is it is a it's important, but it's also really, really tricky to navigate.

Emily:
Hmm. And I'm starting to sort of say how you were starting to get to that point that we sort of talked about earlier on about, you know, you got to this point where you weren't willing to accept certain things and you wanted to sort of, in this case, self advocate for yourself to sort of get a better idea of what was going on for you. But I'm guessing that maybe natural progression of that was to start to later on speak out about some of these experiences, because that was impacting you and you weren't willing to put up with, you know, how how that was impacting you. Is that sort of correct?

Clare:
Yeah, absolutely, and then you start to see how you can positively impact other people, because watching other people say their experiences helped me better understand my own experience. But also, disability advocates often talk about how much energy and time it takes to do advocacy and self advocacy. And so if I am doing

Clare:
Okay, so I'm going to laugh now, because the fact is, once again, like making go away like exactly through the middle of everything. Yeah. Like I love this pet thing to be like I'm just going to come through the middle of it. I could go around, but I don't want to.

Emily:
What's her name? She's a guest on our podcast now.

Clare:
This is Zaria. She is named after an ancient Slavic goddess, which, you know, so I have brought this on myself. She knows how important she is.

Clare:
Oh, yeah. So so the times at which I have the energy and the feeling that I'm able to talk about certain things, it's good for me to say them because someone else might need that thing, but not be in a place where they're able to talk about it and have the kind of the energy and ability to have those conversations. So, yeah, it does. It is it is better for me to say certain things. But it's also I know that it does benefit other people to be the person out there saying these things when they don't feel that they are able to.

Emily:
Mhm. Yeah, I think that's a really important point and actually came up in one of our previous episodes to around race. But you know, one else is kind of going to advocate for your situation if they haven't experienced that situation. I mean, obviously there are allies, but you know, I as an ally for a number of different people in a number of different communities, I'm never going to really understand what it's like to be a part of that community. So I just can't advocate in the same way that someone in a certain community would. But then, you know, for myself, doing the mental health advocacy that I do now, you know, it does take a lot of work and it's a lot of effort. And sometimes it can negatively impact you as well. So I guess it's just having an understanding of for yourself, you know, where your boundaries are and how far you're willing to go. And if you need to step back at times, you know, that's obviously OK. You need to look after yourself. So I think that's a really important point to rise to. You know, you you you can help other people from your own experience, but you're also not obligated to if that's going to negatively impact you. Yeah, I think that's that's important.

Clare:
Yeah, absolutely. Like, I think I think it can be really positive to be open about these things. But I would never want someone else to feel like they have to be open about these things. Like if they have a diagnosis and they never tell anyone their whole life if that's the right thing for them to do, like great, like continue. People don't have to put themselves in situations of vulnerability if they don't feel that's the right choice for them.

Emily:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So we're coming close to the end of this particular episode. So I would like to talk more, I guess, in the next episode about some of the things that have helped you adjust since you've received your diagnosis. But just on that topic of when you're a bit more of a Sanea academic sort of postdoc and beyond. How do you feel your diagnosis and I guess even your openness about your diagnosis has has affected your academic journey, whether it's positive. Or negative?

Clare:
Yeah, it's a tricky one because you don't always know how all the people are reacting. So I think in the current situation, I think it would be relatively unusual for anyone, you know, an administrator, a student, a colleague, whoever to say, I am going to exclude you from this particular event because you're mentally ill. But that doesn't mean they're not doing that. It just means they're not saying that publicly. So you always kind of get this feeling like to what extent is my presence in academic world? To what extent is it being impacted by other people's perceptions of what's happening, perhaps especially with mental illness and disability? Because we are seen as people who need to be protected by others. And protecting disabled people is presented as a good thing, like society kind of gives people permission to act in a way towards us that is very paternalistic and often very controlling. So, yeah, you just don't know how other people are kind of treating you necessarily. I have personally not had anyone be deliberately difficult with me kind of openly, which is great. But I do know a lot of other people who have had that issue. I mean, I just was talking about how people shouldn't have to put themselves out there if they don't feel that's right.

Clare:
But sometimes I do feel pressure from myself to say certain things, even if I'm less comfortable with saying them than I would like to be. So if something comes up where I feel people are being bad about disability, about accessibility, about acceptance of disability and mental illness, sometimes I will kind of use myself as an example, because I do have a reputation amongst people I work with as being good at my work. I mean, this is there's a reason people work with me. And so I can say to them, if you don't think mentally ill people can do this, you think I can't do this except you've you know, I can do this. So how is it that you can, you know, be terrible to these other people when you think that I can get this done? And so using myself as an example to kind of show them how ignorant that being that if you can accept that I am competent at what I do. You can't go around saying, oh, well, crazy people this. Disabled people that.

Emily:
Yeah. Yeah, I like I don't really it's not good that it has to come to that, but I don't really see any other way for people to learn. It means that any of us that do experience these difficulties like sometimes might have to cross our own boundaries, because it's important to us to have that understanding there and to have those changes be made. So I guess, yeah, it is kind of a tricky line to walk.

Clare:
It is. I mean, we've seen two recent examples of this. Naomi Osaka originally said, look, I'm not going to do press conferences and then was pushed into saying because of this specific thing, Britney Spears has been under a conservatorship not only of her estate, but of her own body for more than a decade. And in order to try and escape that situation, she had to stand up and completely publicly in front of the whole world, say this is the state of my body, this is the state of my mind. This is what's happened to me over the past decade. And so they have had to reveal these things about themselves that it seems that they were themselves stepping over the point where they felt comfortable in order to express to other people the seriousness of this. And unfortunately, it does seem that we still have to do this because. Not everyone is willing to educate themselves. So there was a whole thing back in summer last year with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement that people were buying huge quantities of, like why I no longer talk to white people about race and similar books. And so people were at least making some effort whether or not a good faith effort or not is a different question to educate themselves on that. And not everyone does that on every topic, and not everyone does that about disability and mental illness. And so the reason that we keep having to publicly reopen our wounds is that not enough people are willing to educate themselves and put themselves out there and be a vocal ally to disabled people.

Emily:
Hmm. So I guess that's potentially a good place to end this episode. Do you have, in your experience, sort of one resource that you would recommend people go to to educate themselves on this area?

Clare:
Oh, I mean, it's difficult. Because I mean, I'm here sort of talking about mental illness within the broader spectrum of disability, because I think it's good to frame it like that. There's a website called I think Autistic Troia, which is run by a disability advocate, and she writes a lot of really important things on there. So I think that particular website, I will have to, I will remember what it's actually called and we can put it in the show notes. But yeah, I think that has a lot of blog posts that would help people understand how to be better about these issues.

Emily:
Hmm. Perfect. Ok, we will put that in the episode description. So, Claire, is there anything else that you'd like to add before we wrap up this episode?

Clare:
I think we should finish here, because as you can tell, I am a talker. And if I keep going like this for just keep going forever. So I think we should stop here.

Emily:
I'm a talker, too. Maybe that's why I started the podcast. So I just want to thank you for sharing some of that. I am aware that it can be difficult to talk about, even though you are sort of an open advocate. Sometimes, you know, it can bring up things that can be difficult to to be vulnerable around. And I guess we've touched on that, too. So thank you so much for taking part. And I do look forward to the next part of your story.

Clare:
Ok, thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been great to talk to you.

Emily:
No problem. So I guess as just a quick reminder, if our listeners would like to get in touch with you or learn more, where can they find you online?

Clare:
Best place is Twitter @balalaichnitsa.

Emily:
And again, that will be in the episode description. So tell listeners, thanks for listening close to the end. Stick around for details on how to share your own story. And I look forward to having you back in a couple of weeks to hear the next part of Claire's story. Claire will talk us through some of the support resources she's discovered, including treatments and disability, literary journals and websites. Bye for now. 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.check point.org.com/global. For information found in this episode, refer to the episode description or visit the podcast section of our website www.voicesofacademia.com. 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.

Emily:
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 Web site, www.voicesofacademia.com to sign up if you have a mental health or wellness story to share. We absolutely want to hear from me. Whether you're a team leader, research assistant postdoc, student X academic or any other type of researcher, falher academic voices on Twitter. Visit the link in the episode description or visit our Web site, www.voicesofacademia.com for details on how to share your story. It's time someone gave you a voice.

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