Time to talk again

Today, Thursday 6th February is Time to Talk day.  This is a day particularly set aside to think about mental health.

This is what the Time to Talk website says: Time to Talk Day is the nation’s biggest mental health conversation. It’s a day for friends, families, communities and workplaces to come together to talk, listen and change lives. Time to Talk Day is taking place 6 February 2025 and is run by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, in partnership with Co-op and delivered by See Me with SAMH (Scottish Action for Mental Health), Inspire and Time to Change Wales. We want everyone to feel comfortable talking about mental health.

I have written about mental health at different times: in 2018, in 2019, in 2020 and in 2024.  There are probably other posts but that will do for now.

 
Recently I have been researching Kintsugi. In particular, I'm interested in the philosophy that by repairing something broken with the gold, it can make the piece more beautiful than it was originally.  I think this feeds into my textile work on Identity.

Whatever you may think of AI, I have found it particularly useful for doing research.  I've been using Claude.ai and in about 18 minutes I can get around 18 months of research.  Amazing.  So I asked Claude about the human need to be seen, recognised and valued.  This is part and parcel of our identity and the lack of 'being seen' can often be a root of depression.

I got all sorts of information about psychological and social aspects and then I asked Claude about being seen through creative expression.  So much was found, but I'll just share this bit:

The Paradox of Creative Expression:

- Many artists create from a private, even lonely space, yet their work serves to connect them with others

- The act of creating can be healing in itself, even before sharing with an audience

- Some find it easier to be "seen" through their art than in direct personal interactions

- Creative work can serve as both a shield and a window - protecting while revealing

Impact on the creator:

- Developing a unique creative voice helps strengthen sense of identity

- The process of creation often leads to deeper self-understanding

- Receiving recognition for creative work validates both the art and the artist's experience

- Creating alongside others (in workshops, classes, collaborations) provides community and mutual recognition

The Risk and Reward:

Sharing creative work requires courage - it's an act of trust to put one's inner world on display. But this vulnerability often resonates deeply with others who recognize pieces of themselves in the work, creating meaningful connections and the profound experience of being truly seen.

Then I asked about Textile Art and Textile Artists in particular.  I was given so much to read through - too much to share here.  Try asking Claude yourself.

However it convinced me that creative expression can be a source of healing particularly for mental health issues.

I will continue to investigate identity and find ways of expressing this through my textiles and mixed media pieces.

Watch this space!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Let’s start a conversation

Did you know that February 1st is Time to Talk Day? I first came across it in 2018 where I wrote a blog post about my story and the value of talking for mental health. 

Thankfully in the years since then I have been healed. I do have down days – the winter doesn’t help – but I do not sink into depression. I can’t remember the exact day it lifted but I do know that it was an answer to other people’s prayers and mine.

This year (I know it’s only been a month!) I have had spaghetti for a mind. Everything has been muddled up and needs untangling. Maybe it’s more like one of my threads boxes than spaghetti!

I have been overwhelmed and over thinking. Actually some of it started the Thursday before Christmas when I did some free machine embroidery on the latest textile piece I’m supposedly working on. It just didn’t fit the piece of work or the picture in my head. And really why would something so innocuous send me spiralling into anxiety. The work and the machine sat on the table for what felt like forever but was actually just over 2 weeks. I couldn’t go into the room. I felt I couldn’t do any thing creative. I couldn’t even think about being creative without shaking inside. I have never suffered from anxiety – just a few butterflies before interviews or exams. But day after day there it was. I self-medicated with binge watching Chinese drama videos on YouTube.

Some of them are supposed to be comedies. I think some of them are supposed to be serious. But seriously, there’s slow motion kissing, slow motion gazing (how do you gaze in slow motion?), slow motion walking and slow motion running. And of course, slow motion blinking.  There’s also either a scheming man or woman or both, a firm-jawed cold CEO and a waif described as Cinderella in the click bait title. 

I haven’t written blog posts here. I did do one for church on Perspective.  Actually I wrote about perspective on this blog post From under the sideboard.  I haven’t written in my planner/creative journal. I have managed to turn up to a studio day and a workshop but it was a struggle. I also turned up for two poetry zoom classes but ended up somewhat further down the spiral after one of the poems I wrote stirred up a problem I thought I’d dealt with.

Chinese drama aside, I have also talked to people. I’ve ‘chatted’ by text on Messenger, I’ve been on zoom calls and I’ve met with people in person.

Looking back, the issue of whether I should give up textiles and mixed media has come up about every 4 years. Should I throw out everything and find something else to do? Rest assured, it wouldn’t be cooking!

However during this last 6 weeks it’s been obvious that I need to be creative. It’s what I’m meant to do. Creativity is the gift God has given me in order to help, support and encourage others in their creativity whatever that looks like.

I’m so thankful for all the people who have listened to me during the past few weeks. It is so good to have people you can trust who will listen without condemnation. Each of them said in one way or another some or all of the following:

• I’m supposed to be creating
• I encourage and support others
• I need to be kinder to myself
• I need to find the joy 

What do you need to find?

What do you need to talk about?

Do you have a trusted friend who will listen?

If you don’t, email me and I’ll start a conversation with you.

Maybe you could become a listening friend.

Thanks for ‘listening’ today.
Bernice

Mental Health Awareness

This week has been Mental Health Awareness week with World Mental Health Day on Thursday.  The week started with a video: Every Mind Matters.

I have written about mental health and in particular my struggles with depression before - in a post Time to Talk Day and a follow up post More Talk.

This week I have felt better than I have felt for months.  The previous week in particular was a really down time. I am reluctant to share with people if I am in need because the ladies I trust to ‘have my back’ either have really busy lives or have problems they are dealing with. But by the Friday I was in the deepest hole ever and felt I was not only going to hit rock bottom but disappear into the sludge beneath the rock. Not that I told anyone that. I did however message four friends to ask for prayer. They sent me lovely messages of support.

On the way to church I was thinking about life in general and the verse ‘without vision the people perish’. I was wondering why I do art and textiles, why I bother to run the Jubilee Studio, what was the point of getting up in the morning etc.   During the preach, our guest speaker talked about living with a greater sense of our value, dignity and purpose.

During the meeting I was able to talk to people about the depression and lack of refreshing sleep - often getting up more tired than the night before.  People prayed with me. During the coffee time afterwards a friend gave me a card and a present.

What timing!  She hadn't known anything about my struggles.

If you are a Believer, don't doubt how important your prayers, chats and encouragement is.

If you are not a Believer, don't doubt how important your chats and encouragement are.

Either way, send cards, give gifts, smile, listen.

World Mental Health Day saw the release of this video.

Keep talking.  Keep listening.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

More Talk and a free class

Thank you for all the comments from last week's post Time to Talk.  This is another long, wordy post.

I wrote the original of this blog post as an email to some friends in September 2013 while I was suffering from depression.   I am sharing it now to further our discussion about mental health.  And also to help those of you who don't have problems to recognise when your friend or colleague is having a problem.

September 2013
It is very difficult for me to even write this. I'm not terribly keen on making myself vulnerable and admit that I need help.

I am currently very depressed and feeling like I want to cry – but daren’t in case I can’t stop. I've just done a questionnaire on a website and probably answered 95% of the questions as being depressed.

I'm very good at giving the appearance of being altogether, having my life altogether and being strong. I am very independent and rarely ask for help.

I just need to explain to you what's been going on. I have in the past been diagnosed with clinical depression and so over the years I’ve always known when it was creeping up on me and I've been able to take avoiding action. But this time it has crept up on me without me noticing because I was keeping myself busy. A lot of it stems from the whole of the last 12 months with my dad being ill and living partly in Solihull, partly in Pembrokeshire and then sitting with him while he died. Then keeping myself really busy by clearing out the house and still living partly here and partly there. This has meant with the sale of the house every little thing that pops up to stop the signing of the contract seems to be a major issue for me and I'm not dealing with it very well.

I can probably trace it all back to January 2006 when Andy left home and left the country and I didn't allow myself to cry. Somebody had said to me that him leaving home would be like a bereavement and I thought that this comment was really silly & spent the year saying well everybody's children leave home, lots of children go off to college and lots of people's children emigrate so I didn't allow myself to grieve in that sense.

In 2007 when my mother died I think I cried for about three minutes but really more from the shock of seeing someone die and so I continued on my merry little way.

Then there was the issue of the ending of King’s Church, which I have dealt with in terms of forgiveness and other things like that, but didn't allow myself to grieve about the loss of something that I'd invested 13 or more years in my life into. (I had been the church administrator.)

I very much like to be in control of things, to know exactly what's happening and how things going to pan out. In the last 12 months obviously that's not been the case. I never know whether I will be at church, or at group, not knowing whether I would be in Solihull or whether I’d be in Pembrokeshire. I've really felt that my life was totally out of my control and this obviously added to the stress.

As you know I haven't been sleeping well and the noise in my ears is quite appalling & have really struggled with the fact that despite lots of prayer that God hasn't done anything about that.

I’m currently feeling stuck as though if I make any movement I will fall into the abyss – in order to write this I had to start by dictating it on my iPad. The inability to start something is really trying!

It’s easier to borrow the words from the website I was on to describe how I am.
• I am low-spirited for much of the time, every day
• I feel restless and agitated
• I get tearful easily
• I feel numb, empty and full of despair
• I am unusually irritable or impatient
• I find no pleasure in life or things I usually enjoy
• I feel helpless
• I’m not doing activities I usually enjoy
• I am having difficulty remembering things
• I find it hard to concentrate or make decisions
• I blame myself a lot and feel guilty about things
• I am having a lot of negative thoughts
• The future seems bleak
• I have difficulty sleeping
• I feel tired and have no energy
• I have physical aches and pains with no obvious physical cause
• I am moving very slowly


I have been told I should allow myself to grieve and that my emotional ‘tank’ is on empty and I need to give myself time and activities to refill it. So I would appreciate your support as I deal with all of this.

Thank you.

****************************

You may find this video useful to watch if you want to help people: The Power of Empathy

February 2018
My friends did support me and I'm pleased to say that I overcame.  In 2014 I was asked to construct a class for an online class called MADE.   I accepted and called it Redefining Normal. Using a Brené Brown quote: 'grief is the absence of normal' as a starting point the class explores the things that naturally occur in life - children leaving home, parents dying, job events, retirement - the things that happen to almost all of us. The class investigates what is our normal and how we deal with a new normal.

I am offering this class for free.  Click on this link: Redefining Normal to get to the class.

Thanks for reading all of this and thank you for joining me today.
Bernice

Time to Talk Day

This wasn't what I was planning on writing about today.  Actually I wasn't planning on writing a blog post at all today.   But here it is anyway!  On reading this post by Julie Kirk I found out that today is Time to Talk day.

Time to talk about what?

Mental Health

In January there are always television programmes, newspaper and magazine articles and new DVDs on sale to encourage us to diet or to get fit.  But mental health is every bit as important as physical health.

I've had mental health issues over the years.  Only of course they weren't called mental health issues back then.

My first dealings with depression came in my 20s.  Real depression - not just feeling down.   I was married (unhappily) and had a 24 mile commute each way to work.   There were so many times when as I drove home I wondered about driving straight on at a particularly nasty right hand bend.  I never did.  I went to the doctor instead.  And he was amazing.  I saw him every week and we talked.  This was my GP not a trained mental health worker and he saw me through it.  Firstly with valium and talking, and then with vitamins and talking.  And I survived.  And I got divorced.

Everything went well for a couple of years and then I got a job where I was bullied.  Only of course it wasn't called bullying back then.  Because it wasn't recognised that adults in authority bullied those in positions below them.  Apparently only children were bullies back then!   One evening I got together all my medications and a bottle of Bacardi and contemplated them.  Then I stood up, poured the Bacardi down the sink, threw the pills in the bin and went to see a friend.  I didn't tell them about what I had planned but we did talk. Talking is so good for you.

The next episode of depression came when I was pregnant.  Everything was going so well.  I was (and am) married to a wonderful, faithful and supportive man, had a good job and was pregnant against the odds the Doctor quoted to me.  I was 36, which in 1986 made me a geriatric primigravida.  So lovely to be called geriatric!  The relaxation classes made me anxious and I would walk out worse than I went in.  The dog died unexpectedly.   The vet thought it was from eating rat poison.

And I thought it was my fault.

How could I look after a baby if I couldn't even look after a dog?   After Andy was born I was referred to a clinical psychologist as it was obvious I didn't have postnatal depression.  I was clinically depressed and was given 2 years of psychotherapy.  These days prenatal depression is a recognised condition.

Since then I have been able to mostly keep the depression in check.  I know when it's creeping up on me and I know what to do so that it doesn't stick around.  I wrote about that in this post about choosing Participate as my 'one word' in 2014.

What I have learned is that bottling up what you feel does you no good.  Find a trusted friend who you can talk to and who will listen without judgement.  Who will talk to you about everything and nothing.

If you have dealt with depression find some good in it.  Your experience can help someone else.  Become a listening friend.  Recognise what someone is going through.  Find a way to see behind the mask.

You see for years everyone thought I had my life together.  I like to be in control!  I have a wonderful husband, fantastic son and daughter-in-law and two handsome grandsons.  I have lovely friends.  A nice house.  Enough money to be able to travel.  You can look at me and see the good life I have.  And it is good.

But sometimes.  Just sometimes.  The facade cracks and the darkness tries to creep in.


For more stories and information:
visit the Time to Change website
follow the #timetotalk hashtag on @timetochange on Twitter
or their @timetochangecampaign on Instagram

Well done if you've stuck with this post today.
Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice