EMILY OLSEN -- What if we started having different conversations? What if people could be viewed as normal AND have struggles with mental health stuff?

The other day I had the opportunity to speak with Emily Olsen, who some of you will know as the wife of Green Party MLA Adam Olsen.  I asked for the opportunity to speak with her because like me, and millions of other Canadians, she had gone through her own journey with mental health ... and it was a subject she said could talk about all day long.  It took her up on that offers and first asked, “How do people take those first journeys to get there ...” 


So, I did go off my medication ... I went off cold turkey, and I’m okay, I’m still talking to you today.  I went off the 2^nd week of September 2014.  Essentially I’d kind of had enough, and had tried for years to go off medication. Every time I tried to go off I seemed to have this strange effect where I’d go into a state of a bit of anxiety and I would then be overwhelmed with just this awful life- consuming depression.  I would kinda be on another planet for a month at a time ... and I would have these long bouts of incredible sadness – at the same time functioning. 

ME:  You would sort of have this grey cloud of dread hanging over you? 

Yup ... that and a very deep desire to be out of the suffering of it – I was constantly fighting with the suffering of it.  And so, I could do the things that I had to do, but given any amount of time to do anything I wanted to do, or enhance my life, was when I felt very crippled by the illness.  I had so many things to make me feel better, I had two beautiful children ... and you know I just really, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what life was.

I had one of my annual weeks off ... in September that happened to coincide with a program being offered through The Haven on Gabriola Island called Come Alive.  I knew several people that had gone and done that program, but not really knowing what it was, other than whenever people came back from it, their lives seemed to improve.

I‘d say “How was it, how have things changed, what have you learned?” and they would just say things like, “I learned how to breathe”, and I’d think, that’s a funny thing to say.

Finally, I said, “Oh my goodness my holidays are on a week where there’s this program – I want to go”.  A bunch of family members had always said if you want to go and do the program, we’ll pay for it – so I was very very lucky.

I was packing to go - said goodbye to my family – and I went to go you know pack my toiletry bag and there was this massive bottle of Prozac ... and I just couldn’t.  I just couldn’t do it any more.  I had this moment of ‘I don’t care what happens I’ve got to try it for real.  I made up that decision I was never going back ... and I went cold turkey and I’ve never had any medication since, so ... it was easy.  I had to go retrain myself, but what I noticed was that it would be the springboard to a new path of how to find discipline -- how to address all the things from my past.  It’s been a long journey but I worked really really hard to do that.

Meditation was transformative, and like I said, talking a long, really hard look at my life and going, ‘Okay, what can I control ... what do I need to let go of ... what needs some therapy ... what needs talking about ...  and who am I going to be on the other side of it?  What do I actually envision for myself as a human being – as a mother – or as a wife, a friend? 

Man, oh man was that a journey -- and now that I’m on the other side of it! 

 

A part of it was actually

doing the Connection

Project; it was a huge

part of my healing.  

Actually, designing an 

event where I 

essentially got on stage

and I just went ... “This 

is what I have been 

dealing with for the 

past 25 years” in the 

most raw way that I 

could.  And I had a whole 

bunch of other people join me onstage to share parts of their stories.  It 

actually had a healing of its own, and that’s what I was talking about in 

the blog.

ME:  One of the things I did notice was that you had that (Connection) project, and had two other people come along side you as well to talk about their mental health experience with you.  How did you find these people, how did you connect with them?  You talk about a connection project, so how did you connect with them? 

So, the first event that I participated in, not The Connection Project, was actually a  very smaller event – there was about maybe 30 people there ... that was during Mental Health Week about a year ago, in May.  A friend of mine had been part organizer in that. He had been working with different organizations, and they just wanted to get the conversation going.  He had invited me, and two other people, to just talk about our journey. The reason why I was invited was because I had talked to him, mainly because he was an event planner, and I’d spoken with him about my idea for the Connection Project.  So that was a kinda mini opportunity, that I was given.

What that experience did was “A”, show me that I could speak about my mental health journey... and “B”, that the project that I was already producing was something very important.

I noticed just how many people, in that room, that were given a window in to these three people’s lives.  I think they found a window into themselves as well ... and I noticed how many people came and spoke to me after; people were desperate to have these conversations.

The Connection Project was born in a moment when I was working with a life coach the previous fall.  He said, “What do you want to do?”

I said, “I want to finish writing a book about my mental health journey, but I also really feel like I need to get on stage”.

I had this vision of doing a one-woman play, talking about my journey and it would be sort of this artistic/musical thing. But the further I went into it, the more I realized this was a very particular thing I needed to talk about, and during that time while I was working with this life coach, I heard a radio show.  It’s called Now or Never by the CBC, and it was an episode where Trevor Dineen, one of the two hosts of the show talked about his journey in dealing with obsessive / compulsive disorder.

When he told his story, something stirred in me so deeply that it kinda gave me the courage to move forward in confidence.  I don’t know where it came from – and I thought, ‘I have to get on stage.  I have to get on stage and talk about this mental health thing’.

So, after that initial guest speaking opportunity, my Connection Project event planning moved so much faster. I had already booked the venue earlier that year.

I booked the Charlie White Theatre for two days – one evening and one matinee – not knowing what my content was, but just knowing I needed to book it.  And then I just worked it backwards – just started piecing it together. I began meeting people who had stories to tell and it just came together piece by piece.  It was like this bizarre synchronicity of coincidences and connections. It was just the most bizarre experience ... but it was very very cool.

ME:  I know having gone through my own journey with depression anxiety and stress – I myself would feel like just about all I could do was to get through my day at work.  I would come home absolutely exhausted and need the next 12 to 14 hours just to recoup enough energy just to go through another day.  You talk about going into the dark corners where you finally saw that light.  What did that feel like for you?  Did you have issues kind of similar where it was all you could do to get through a day ... and it would take all of the energy you had out of you? 

Yah, so that was one of my kinda wake up calls.  My son was about 6 years old, and I came home from work one day from Canada post, and often I would work overtime. I came home from work one day and I said oh, ‘What do you want to do, do you want to play or read a book?’.

He said, ‘Aren’t you going to go to sleep now Mom?’ – and it just broke my heart. 

I knew exactly what had been happening, it was a jarring moment of clarity, because more and more, I would just come home and sleep after work.  I just wanted to sleep because I just couldn’t face what reality was – it was so depressing.  I didn’t know how much of it was the medication, and how much was the illness of it.  There were many factors.

I would have obsessive / compulsive thoughts of committing suicide ... uh ... all the time, and that was exhausting.  It’s exhausting because you know you won’t follow through on it, but maybe you attempt it, maybe you feel dead inside – maybe you ... it’s the safe spot to go to because you can’t face what’s in front of you.  

For me that was really what it was – so it was just this feeling that ‘oh I just want to die’, and I would say this thing all the time and my husband would point out to me, ‘ You always say that” -and I would say, ‘I just want to be a good person’.

I knew there was a possibility of a good life somewhere in the future, and I think that by saying those words, I was saying, ‘I’m not a good person – I don’t deserve joy at all – I don’t deserve happiness, or something’. I knew deep down there was something more, but I just couldn’t access it while I was dealing with all of the depression. Sometimes the anxiety would be all-consuming ... I wouldn’t sleep and I would do things like clean obsessively, or I would worry about money ... or whatever the flavour of the day was. 

And I’m not saying I still don’t get those thoughts; I just know how to deal with them.  And I had to incorporate actual practices into my life to strengthen my resiliency to stop falling into any of that old behaviour.  It’s still in there, right?  It’s still in there a little bit.

And so now that I’m out of it, I feel a huge responsibility, and passion to try and talk about it because 10 years ago we couldn’t talk about mental health stuff like we can now; it was so secretive and I couldn’t even mention it.  I was terrified if I ever came clean to my own kids, about the fact that sometimes I suffered from depressive thoughts, that they would see me as not strong, and they wouldn’t feel safe.  So, at every cost I fought it -- I faked it -- I smiled -- and did whatever I had to do to make it look like I had it all together.

But what that was doing was really jeopardizing my children’s ability to experience life as children, and it was damaging I believe.  And I’m not going to spend a lot of time in guilt for the years I was depressed, I’m just going to make sure with everything I am, that I don’t show that happy all the time is the healthy way. I think showing them that sometimes you’re going to feel sad, sometimes you’re going to be in grief.  Life happens, but the less you fight it, and the more you accept what is, will be the way to have joy.

You get to understand that ... joy is the feeling to feel what is truly happening in front of you, or inside of you. 

ME:  And it doesn’t necessarily have to be something happy.  It can be something that is sad, but you can have the joy of being able to see it and realize it.  I can’t say I know what you have felt or anything like that, but going through my own struggles, and still looking back over a dozen years, I know for example that society doesn’t, and didn’t, want to look at a person who was having those issues – ‘those people’ are not safe.

I even had issues around being able to get life insurance.  You suffer from depression so they say no; you can’t get life insurance.  I fought them on it and I said here’s the options.  One, you’re giving me the option not tell you, get the insurance, and then if something happens you pay out.  Or two, you can know I have the issue and the problem, and I tell you here’s the things I’m doing to work on it, to make sure you won’t pay out on it.  So, what kind of sense does it make for you to say, ‘No, I can’t have it’

I guess that’s a reason people feel that they’re alone and stuff.  But I think more and more people understand and realize that they’re not alone – but there’s that first initial feeling that, ‘Oh everyone else looks perfectly fine out there, so I must be the only one that’s the odd duck’

Well that too, and there’s the whole thing of judgement or the worry that somebody’s not stable ... and that suddenly it becomes your responsibility and it’s a discomfort for people ... so there’s discrimination in the workplaces. 

What I’ve seen is that the more mental health is it’s talked about --- the more it’s made normal ... the more we’re actually able to actually remove it, the idea that it’s separate from our humanity.  All parts of our being have an affect on our mental health – just like the physical – just like the spiritual.

If we neglect the spiritual self, whether your faith be in, God or Buddha, or whatever it is that you believe in ... if that stuff gets taken away, you’re depleted of your ability to fully access who you are as a complete human being.  It’s going to affect other areas of your life.  So too does it impact every part of society.

Mental health needs to be addressed, just the same as the physical health is ... the actual functioning of day to day life ... affordability ... all that ... if you don’t have a home.  When I was at my worst. When I ended up in Eric Martin, it was hugely to do with the medication I was on.  I think that probably played 80% of the role – and the other 20% was how hard my life was, trying to make it as a single young woman, in Vancouver away from my family. It wasn’t healthy for me.

So, I was struggling – I became a burden on the system because then I was on medical EI.

But what if we started having different conversations?  What if people could be viewed as normal AND have struggles with mental health stuff? 

ME:  I think that if we’re not admitting that we’re having those kinds of struggles, whether they’re continuous on-going day-to-day ... or occasional things ... then that’s what isn’t normal.  We need to admit those things are happening to us. 

That’s right. If you think of your favourite movie, what often draws you to a particular character, is the moment that they are imperfect or vulnerable, and it is often that vulnerability which gives that character the courage to overcome or persevere or whatever.

So, at the end of the movie you go through the same experience - you’ve been on a journey with the character – you’ve been on the arc -- you’ve been through some kind of climax and you actually feel attached to that human and whatever they’ve been through.  Whether they fall into addiction, whether they cheat, whether they’ve been cheated on, whether somebody dies ... that’s the part of us that actually feels the connection where things aren’t perfect.

The more we can see one and others imperfections, the more compassion we’ll have ... the less separation they’ll be.  Whether you’re ‘right wing, left wing, or chicken wing’ as you said, we’re in this together and it’s not going anywhere.  The problems aren’t going anywhere – the issues that need to be addressed aren’t going anywhere – especially the ones of human condition.

You know I went to bed the other night, feeling a bit overwhelmed about a few things, and I’m just very much in the process of practising, trusting, that everything is happening as it should -- as long as I contribute and be honest and giving and thoughtful of other people, and do what I feel I must be doing, which is talking about this stuff and connecting where I can.

You know, I was a little nervous before you called me. A lot of people have been reaching out since I wrote that blog post, and any time I do anything publicly you know there’s a bit of fear of what other people think of you.  I’ve made that something that actually drives me as opposed to deterring me, so I get excited when new a opportunity arises.  And I move towards it as opposed to away from it.

Yah so of course I was nervous before you called, but you showed up as another human being, so I appreciate that. 

ME:   I noticed when I read the post, or maybe it was when I opened up the Connection Project there was a comment made, and I forget if it was one that a participant made, or whether you said it yourself, but it was something about whenever things feel to difficult to handle, to terrifying to face, I just let it be there – I remember I’m not alone.  But the thing that I really liked was the comment, “I strike a match to my fears and I walk bravely forward” 

I don’t know where that line came from but I have to say it felt like it just fell on to the page.  That for me was like a moment of yes! These are the words I want to use to describe shedding light on this subject. It was ... nice to have those words show up. 

ME:  Can you talk about the second Connections Project coming up in the Fall?  I know you said something about there being a pre-meeting before it, but what kind of things can people expect at the Project? 

SO ... I let things kinda develop organically.  Many people have reached out to me since the last Connection Project, asking to be involved in the next one’, and I really feel that the thing that was most important in last years event, and what was the most impactful for people, was the simple no-frills story telling.

So, I’m going to stick with that. I will continue to stay away from the clinical aspects of mental health and speak to the personal experience. Our storytellers this time, will be a range of people in and around loved ones with mental health challenges and not just people going through it. 

I want to stay true to the simplicity of storytelling. As well, I look forward to seeing the magic and healing that occurs when people come together and connect. A planning session for the upcoming October 4th Connection Project is being held at the McTavish Academy of Art June 26th 7-9pm. For more details email emily@theconnectionproject.ca  

ME:  I’m not going to put words in your mouth, but I think it would allow people a better chance to connect with what’s being presented, because like you say, it’s not the clinical aspect of things. 

And because if you get into labeling and clinically diagnosing and blah blah blah blah blah.  I believe we all have some mental health challenges, whether we’ve been diagnosed or not, or whether it’s been short term, acute because of trauma because of some life event, or whether we’ve had depression all of our life ... whatever it is.

I’m going to make it so that everyone gets a set amount of time and you know six or 8 stories will be told through-out the night – I’m going to have it be that precise.  So, they’ve got their story, they’ve got the freedom to tell their story, but we will coach them on how to do it in the most effective way.  We’ll help the speakers get their talk distilled down to the core of their story. 

The first Connection Project was very artsy and there were musicians, I did a bit of poetry, and people went on stage with nothing more than a time slot. This time around the stories will be rehearsed and succinct.

This way the talk can be repeated so that if we decide to travel with it, or we decide to visit schools or host another event, those stories are at the ready. 

The first time around, I did whatever I could to get the Connection Project made – I only filled a third of the theatre both nights – but that didn’t matter.  I delivered, we all delivered, whether it was for 2 people or 200 people. The project had to go forward, regardless of the fear, regardless of who or how many showed up. 

ME:  I always like to think that the person, or persons, that need to be there are the ones that show up.

I know I’ve taken a lot of your time today, but I just wanted to ask ... you did a 10k mental health find-raiser with Adam and your son.  How did that go ... how old is your son?

So, he is 11, and he is an incredible person – he has a lot of compassion.  When I finally came clean about my mental health experience, it opened up something in him.  He’s been an angel by my side ever since – he’s so beautiful.  He said, ‘I’ll run it with you Mom’.  I couldn’t believe it – he raised money – he raised more than I did. And he ran the whole 10K!
The run went really well and it was interesting cos there were a few hills, not many, but as I was running, I was thinking, ‘This is life, peaks and valleys, and when I got to 5k it was like, there’s no turning back – there’s all these metaphors showing up right.  Well I’m half way there, I’ve got to go one way or the other, so I’ll keep going.

And then at 8k I thought, ‘Oh my gosh I’m gonna die; my legs were giving out, it was awful. And then I thought, but I don’t give up, I never have.

So as horrible as it got, I thought I know there’s something good on the other side of this – and also that I’m resilient and I can do this. And so can anyone else that sets their mind to it, as long as we love and are supportive of ourselves, and we connect with other people around us.

And then at 9k a raven flew over my head and I just thought, ‘You know what, I’m very attached to the animal kingdom, and I gave thanks’. I just said right out loud, “Thank You!”  It gave me that last little boost to the finish line. 

And the other thing makes a difference in any mental health journey is having a partner that is supportive.  It was really good to have my husband there, to be at the finish line(s). That’s the thing -- when you have a partner that is passionate, patient, and understands ... that makes a world of difference.
Sometimes it can be inconvenient to be with someone that’s be down- and- out for that many years, but he stuck with me, never gave up on me, and I never gave up on him while he was sorting out who he was too.

He’s doing what he loves. And I’m doing what I love -- which is not what I expected. 



 

Mental Health Week was last month (May) ... however our own mental health is something that we need to be self-checking ... we need to be aware of our own mental health and well-bring at all times, not just one week of the year.  It’s also something which all of us should be aware of when we see adverse and/or harmful changes in friends, family, and co-workers.

My apologies to Emily for taking so long to complete this piece – and I hope that you the reader found it helpful and informative.

I’ll close with these words from Judy Darcy, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions:

“Having the courage to speak up and start discussion is essential to lifting people up and bringing mental health and addictions out of the shadows. The people we care about – whether they are friends or family members, co-workers or teammates – need to know that they can ask for the help they need, without judgement and without shame. It is our responsibility as a society to make sure that those who need help have access to quality supports and services”.

“Improving mental health and wellness must become part of everyday life in our schools and workplaces and communities throughout the province. Our government is working to transform mental health and addictions care to ensure it works for everyone – adults, families, children and youth, as well as First Nations, Métis and other Indigenous communities. This means starting early with prevention and early intervention for children and youth, expanding primary care networks and team-based services that include mental health and addictions care, and making sure supports are culturally safe”.

Please enjoy and share the following documentary LOVING THE DARKNESS. 

To learn more about the Canadian Mental Health Association, CLICK HERE: 

CLICK HERE for more information on Erase services and resources for students, parents and teachers:

For information on Everyday Anxiety Strategies for Educators (EASE) CLICK HERE:

And, to find a Child and Youth Mental Health intake clinic in your area please CLICK HERE: