See Me, Without Labels

Tags

Labels, Mental Health, PTSD, Writing

Note: This was written in February 2020 for a site that had requested my story. Due to COVID-19, it was spiked. Before Pride Month ends, and to coincide with a lecture delivered by Professor Michelle Furlow, I am sharing this original essay here.

Standing in a classroom at Ryerson, I have reached the point in my lecture where I’m going to tell my story to the 150 students looking at me.

“It all began on a chilly Friday evening in October, 1963, when I made my entrance into this world. Many would claim that I had a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and was looking over the top of my glasses at someone … ” It gets a laugh, and now I can settle in to telling them who I am, so that they can see me, without labels.

I’m still a bit of a 60s hippie chick, and I am not a fan of labels for people; labels work on jars and cars, tins and bins, socks and rocks, but not people. You see, when you label me, you negate me, you remove my humanity completely. Labels are distancing phenomena and are used mostly for control.

Upon my birth I was assigned a label. The wrong one, but, stuff happens. More on that later.

I grew up in an alcoholic family. My late mom and I were the only non-drinkers. Let’s say it made life interesting. In Kindergarten, I had a medical issue occur that would require a doctor visit and a hospital visit. This was the 60s, and at that time, mental illness was something that was “just not spoken of in polite company,” and was weighted down with stigma. Lots of code words at that time, too. What is now called anxiety was then referred to in whispers as “overly sensitive” or “high strung”, etc. I was 5 and there was no pill to take, no therapist to see, it’s basically, “Suck it up, you’ll be fine. It’s not a big deal, have a lollipop.” It was also around this time that I also had this unshakable feeling that something was off, that things didn’t make sense.

My school years were an experience I would gladly forget, given the opportunity. Bullying was daily life, from Grades 1 through to 13. We moved frequently, which meant constantly changing schools and neighbourhoods. Just after I turned 15, I was diagnosed with depression. Again, we didn’t talk about it, and heaven forbid you show any emotions: that just was not done.

A few months after my 16th birthday, Mom and I sat down for a chat. I had rehearsed the words thousands of times and stumbled badly on the first sentence, in my attempt to come out; come out as a girl, not what was on the label I was assigned at birth. I was lucky to have a mother who was light years ahead of her time, and she put her hand on top of mine that were shaking, and said, “Before you choke, I already know what you are going to say, it’s okay, I get it.”

I’m staring at her, “But … how?”

“I’ve known since you were very young, Kit, trust me, mothers always know.”

“But, why didn’t you say something??”

“Honey, I thought I knew, and if I had said something to you, what if I had been wrong? Trust me, it has been killing me inside having to watch you struggle with this up until now, but you had to find your own way to the answer.

Before you ‘but’ me again, I have an envelope in the drawer behind you, I’ve been gathering information, pull it out, we have some reading to do. And Kit, whatever you do, do not breathe a word of this to family, they will never let you have a minute’s peace if they find out. This is between us until the time is right, okay?”

And there was another label – Transgender.

We had heard the whispers of “The Purge” that ran from 1950 to 2000, kicking LGBTQ2S people out of the civil service, the military, and the RCMP. It was typical to have some of the community folks from mom’s work drop by for dinner and some laughs, and this topic was spoken of often. After graduating with a thorough education on these things, it was only natural that along with my working life, I would also dedicate the past 39 years to activism and advocacy work on behalf of the community. A few years after I came out to my mom, I got involved in mental health advocacy work (30 years now), and yet still could not bring myself to mention my own battles, all the while fighting for others.

I found that in the Bay Street world, working in a constant state of overwhelm was “normal.” Yet, I found that when I was that buried in work, I didn’t have the time to think about anxiety and depression. In the 90s, that would come back to haunt me. Working for a company where a 100 hour work week was standard, things started to break down. I became physically ill, seriously enough to require hospitalization.

Another new label – Burnout.

As soon as I went back to work, I went right back into the company’s routines, and was back in hospital quickly with another case of burnout. The third time, I remember my doctor shaking his finger at me, “If you do this again, my friend, there will be no recovery, you will be sick for a very long time. Take my advice, quit and get a job elsewhere that will not put you into an early grave.”

I took his advice, and decided to teach for a year. I loved it! I found my old excitement for work in being able to share knowledge with my students. It was the break I needed, and my anxiety and depression became manageable once more.

I started my own consulting business and worked from home. This worked well until Mom retired, and took sick while working part time. A trip to the hospital where they handed us her death sentence. Terminal brain cancer. She had beaten cancer twice before, but this time they gave her 6 weeks. She hung on for 7 months. I was holding her hand at the moment she took her last breath.

Having put life on hold while I took care of her, I had not seen things were being cleaned out. I couldn’t get back to work fast enough to save our place, and was about to lose the home we had shared for 48 years. Depression hit harder and I went downhill fast. It led to my first suicide attempt in 2011. It was the first time I was diagnosed with PTSD and the conditions that co-exist with it.

A bunch of new labels, and I was referred to by my illnesses, not by my name.

I ended up homeless and on the street with the clothes on my back and my cat, Heidi, in her carrier. After a few days and nights, we found ourselves guests of our city’s shelter system. I ended up in Emergency multiple times with severe panic attacks. Each time, I would be discharged with more pills and another new label. I also picked up more labels during that time: sexual assault survivor, assault survivor, suicide attempt survivor. The last panic attack I experienced after all of this was severe enough to trigger cardiac issues.

Getting into my own apartment was such a relief, I could get back to my advocacy work, while working to educate and cause positive changes in policing. I met with a psychologist who revised my PTSD diagnosis to Complex-PTSD, covering multiple traumas over an extended span. She said that if the old guidelines had not been so stiff, I would have been diagnosed in my 20s and avoided the difficulties I had in the intervening years. Once the C-PTSD was treated and managed, everything else fell into line as well. The therapist I worked with after could not fathom how I had any mind remaining after my experiences. Simple, really – I inherited Mom’s stubborn streak, and I’ve got too much to do to surrender to it now.

Following a busy media spring and summer in 2016, my friend Laurie McCann contacted me, “Christine, do you know Natalie Harris?”

“Yes, we follow each other on Twitter.”

“Do you talk to each other?”

“We have liked a tweet now and then.”

“Okay. You two gals have got to meet and chat, OMG, you have the same sense of humour, you work in the same mental health fields, you both get results, just imagine if you talked and compared notes, you really must meet!”

“Okay, Laurie, I’ll get in touch.”

Little did any of us realize what Laurie had just set in motion. It was an instant connection, and we would talk for hours, sharing stories, laughing until we were sore, sitting up all night texting. We had instantly become BFFs. When we met in person, it was even better, and we became chosen sisters! Nat didn’t walk through my door, she burst through it with love, laughter, and so much lightness. I had reviewed her first book, Save-My-Life School for a magazine I was writing for. After stating the first section of her book was my story, too, I “came out” to my readers about my mental health battles for the very first time. Nat was part of our 2017 Ryerson lecture series, and we have since spoken together on stage in multiple cities. We wrote and performed our essay “Love Is Love” on International Women’s Day 2019. Nat was the one who inspired me to be fully open in public about my battles with my mental health.

TPS HQ, Nov 2017, our friend took this photo of Nat & I sharing a soul-reboot.

People have tried to come up with labels and their own interpretations of us; human beings are meaning-making machines, after all. Their interpretations never fit. We have our own labels: BFF, Sister, Soulmate, Partner. We are BFFs and chosen sisters. Soulmate, because our souls merged so perfectly that Nat swears we share one soul between two bodies. Partner, because in everything each of us does, the other partner is always there, supporting them. When we say our favourite vow, “I’ll love you forever and a million days more,” it comes from our shared soul.

Back to that Ryerson classroom – wrapping up my story, and finishing my lecture:

“You saw all those labels from over the years. If I only exist to you as those labels, then you will never see me, or truly know me. If you surrender those labels, you will then know me as the musician, singer, writer, artist, educator, speaker, advocate, the City Mom, and the amazing love I share with Nat. Drop all of the labels, and see me, Christine, with the only label that matters, the label that we all share – HUMAN.”

Christine Newman is a published author, educator, speaker, advocate, and an LGBTQ2S Peer Support Advisor & Lived Experience Facilitator for the Peer and Trauma Support Systems team at the Mood Disorders Society of Canada.

A Promise, An Oath, A Vow; Adapted

Tags

Education, Mental Health, PTSD, Sisters

One of the things that Nat (my amazing Sis) and I have created for ourselves are adapted definitions of various words and phrases. For us, they make perfect sense, while others not familiar with them would be just a touch confused/perplexed. You could say that we have our own verbal shorthand.

Here are three terms that we use frequently, yet, I believe many have forgotten the original meanings of them with today’s abuse of the lexicon on social media. We have developed our own adaptation to accommodate what we both require when doing daily battle with PTSD, or when looking through the lens of post-traumatic growth.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines promise as: (Noun) 1 a declaration or assurance that one will do something or that a particular thing will happen; (Verb) 1 assure someone that one will definitely do something or that something will happen.

Our adaptation of this makes allowances for PTSD, anxiety, and depression, etc. There are days when things may shift and plans have to be adjusted accordingly.

Therefore, for us, the definition of promise is similar to the OED definition, but allows room to shift something in what was promised, rebook to another date or time, or have to withdraw from attending an event.

As PTSD warriors, we both know that things can quickly go pear-shaped, and you have to either re-promise or cancel outright. Both of us would do anything to not have to break a promise, but, realizing that things are not always predictable in the world of mental health, we make allowances and contingency plans, just in case.

The OED defines oath as: (Noun) 1 a solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness, regarding one’s future action or behaviour; or a sworn declaration, such as the promise to tell the truth in a court of law.

We are mostly in alignment with the OED definition. Oath is a step up from Promise, with no wiggle room. It is as spoken, period. We are both familiar with swearing oaths, Nat as a Paramedic some years ago, and then as a Barrie City Councillor; myself as an executive member of a service club many years ago, when previously called for jury duty, or in various positions where I have access to non-public information and have been sworn to secrecy to not reveal or discuss.

For us, we upgrade a Promise to the Oath level when it is a MUST happen item.

The OED defines vow as: (Noun) a solemn promise.

We can upgrade a Promise or an Oath to a Vow. A vow is the highest level.

Our definition is: something spoken aloud to the universe to bring it into existence. We have a number of vows between the two of us, those promises that, no matter what may happen, they will always be maintained.

We regularly renew the various vows we have made, making sure they still fit, or if they need to be updated.

One vow is to always encourage each other’s growth (personal; post-traumatic; knowledge). Another vow is to always be in communication, particularly when depression has you by the ankle and is dragging you down into the abyss.

In early 2018, after a particularly rough weekend (continuous ice storms), Nat spoke this to me and to the universe. We both knew instantly it would always be the primary vow between us. “I’ll love you forever and a million days more.” We speak it to the universe regularly. It’s how we wrap up every conversation, by text, by phone, by e-mail, or tweet, it’s our thing, it’s who we always are for each other. We have spoken it on stage, in presentations, lectures, and more. Sometimes it is a brief text at the end of the day, “You were amazing with *insert item* today, I’m so proud of you, way to go! Love you forever and a million days more, sweet dreams. xoxox”

There are times when, to express the level of dedication to something, and how serious we are about causing it to become reality, we will take a promise, a vision board item, or an oath, and move it up to a vow. It is our way of thinking, speaking, writing, and working it into existence.

The world occurs in language. A bit of wisdom from a course I used to teach years ago. We speak things into existence. For example, two people standing in a location, an officiant stands in front of them. They speak a quantity of words, alone or together, and at the conclusion the officiant pronounces them as married, joined, partnered, a completed merger, whatever terminology you prefer. The only thing that changed, was a new possibility or reality was spoken into existence.

Human beings are meaning-making machines. You can hear the gears grinding as somebody tries to figure out the meaning of some conversation that Nat and I are having. We will say something or refer to each other with a term that we always use, and minds explode trying to figure out what it means.

The answer to those who smell smoke from their internal thinking engines overheating – it is what it is, it means something to us that you don’t have a need to know. That’s it. In reality, it doesn’t have to mean anything. If you wish to make it mean something, how about choosing something empowering?

Promise, Oath, and Vow, we adapted the definitions to fit with our being PTSD warriors and how we function every day. If you’re into numbering things, Promise is Level 1, Oath is Level 2, Vow is the ultimate, Level 3.

I think you will find that you have developed some adapted definitions of your own as well, to fit your daily existence and with those people who matter the most in your life.

The theme that runs through all three levels – being your word. At the Promise level, being your word could be putting your self-care requirements first, and re-promising an item; at the Oath level, it’s a gotta do it no matter what; and the Vow level is spoken to the universe to bring it into existence, that it shall be always. Being your word is having integrity, and when you do this consistently, people will come to you because they know when you say you will do something, it will get done, or you will be in communication to find a way to make it work.

This is one thing that Nat and I know with absolute certainty, at our soul level:

Choose the people who choose you. That’s where the real magic happens.

Love, sunbeams, and kitten dreams,

Christine 💙💙

Dear Kathy English

Tags

Education, Feedback, In The News, Language, Mental Health, PTSD

Ms. Kathy English, Public Editor, Toronto Star.

Dear Ms. English,

I am writing this open letter to you to outline my concerns about a column published by your newspaper on Monday, 2 March, 2020, written by Heather Mallick, titled, “Post-traumatic stress isn’t a disorder, it’s life.”

I first came across this in the early morning, and normally something of this nature would go out on my daily e-mail to contacts in Canada and the US, but, this one gave me pause. I honestly had to read it through multiple times, and then again while making notes.

When I was still writing regularly for a certain magazine based in the US, had I ever submitted something like this to my editors, they would have laughed me out of the building. If I delivered a lecture at Ryerson (Criminology) or Humber (Police Foundations) or University of Toronto Medical School (transition to residency), based on the “facts” of this opinion piece, I would not be asked back ever again.

So, I am then left with the mystery of how this “opinion” piece ever was approved for publication in your newspaper?

Allow me to illustrate:

PTSD is not “supposedly rampant”, and it is not only “reserved for extreme cases”. Those of us who work in and around the mental health field have been hard at work on eradicating the stigma associated with mental health and mental illness. It is because of the tireless work of hundreds and thousands of activists and advocates that the conversations are even happening. Because it is more openly discussed – not like when I made my appearance in this world in the early 60s, where such things were not discussed in polite company, but in hushed tones behind multiple closed doors – it may appear to be increasing. It is not. It is simply more public and not hidden, or reserved only for veterans of war who returned home in severe distress.

Let me be crystal clear on this point, labels are useful for jars, tins, boxes, and bins, not for human beings. Labelling people or conditions, negates that person’s existence, and reduces them to a label only. Labels are distancing phenomena.

PTSD is a psychiatric or psychological diagnosis. Both professionals are equally capable of correctly diagnosing the condition, according to the standards set out by the World Health Organization (see ICD-11 published in 2019 for the latest revisions) or in the DSM-V (current, albeit, dated volume, which will require updates from ICD-11). You can find statistics in various forms and reports, depending on which group, genre, subset, etc., that you are looking at. Instead of using “allegedly”, quote your source for the numbers, because frankly, they look like nothing I have seen or read in recent years.

The paragraph containing “according to Veterans Affairs Canada” is paraphrasing, not an exact quote. For the content being discussed, only a direct quote is appropriate, not the heavily biased opinion of the columnist.

Where Ms. Mallick parts company with established science, is her opinion that this is not a disorder, but a reaction. What she refers to in the previous paragraph is what is known as hyper-vigilance, not what she dismisses as something as simple as not being happy with the current president south of the 49th, or being in a large grocery store. This is highly dismissive of the experiences of those with PTSD, who have great difficulty functioning in crowded or noisy spaces. Whenever I am out with my most favourite human on the planet, I always have scoped out multiple ways to get us out of a space if it gets to be too much for either of us to handle. We both battle PTSD on a daily basis, caused by an array of traumas and work, and we still get up every day and do our damnedest to leave the world and the people on it, better than we found them. You could say that we have both been there, done that, and have a box full of t-shirts that neither of us ever wanted.

“Over-medicalization of life.” I find that phrase alone to be a complete fallacy. That, combined with that “suck it up, buttercup” attitude has caused more harm in recent years than is realized. Look, we have all experienced the office hypochondriac, who every time they get a case of the sniffles runs to google to look for their symptoms, and walk away convinced that they are about to die a horrible death from some rare disease that has not been seen in existence in over two millennia. Yes, we’ve all seen it, heard it, experienced it. It is why I begin lectures with a trigger warning (right after I show where the Naloxone kits are – CMHA’s Carry It Campaign) … and then have to define what a trigger is. Ms. Mallick reminds me of some of the “valley girls” I’ve had in class who come out with a typical “ermahgerd, I was like so trigger-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-ed!” No sunshine, you were irked at something I said, or the topic matter was making you uncomfortable. You’d know the difference if you were triggered. Forget that walk a mile in my shoes stuff, that only gets you to every Starbucks within a mile of the starting point. No. Try spending 24 hours in my mind. I bet within 30 minutes you are on the floor, curled in a ball, whimpering to be let out. I tried describing it once for someone who had doubts… they couldn’t handle it after 4 sentences.

There are those out there who are self-diagnosed, they have not seen a doctor or mental health professional for a referral, they just had an off day, read some half-baked nonsense online, and decided that they have it too. They then proceed to tell anyone and everyone they encounter that they suffer from this. Wrong again sunshine, you don’t suffer from it, if you had it, you’d be battling for your very existence on a daily basis. This isn’t the movie of the week kind of thing, as Ms. Mallick hints at so heavily throughout this column. When people pull this nonsense, it lessens those of us who do battle it, in the eyes of anyone who bothers to look.

Ms. Mallick rails against psychiatry in a similar fashion to those who belong to one of the California-based cults. It leaves me to wonder what her experience has been that has caused such a dour outlook on life. Should she ever wish to meet a thoroughly amazing psychologist, send her a few blocks up and one block east of your offices at Number 1 Yonge, and I’ll introduce her to Dr. Vermani, who I have had the pleasure of meeting and having an extended conversation with. I consistently refer people to her for her expertise and assistance. Her knowledge is vast, and her experience covers a wide array of areas. I’m certain she could easily explain this much more succinctly than I can, I’m accustomed to breaking it down into bite-sized chunks for my students in class.

Again, major issues on Ms. Mallick’s part around language, the use of the word stigma or stigmatization. This reminds me of Jordan Peterson’s issues, and they are infinite, around pronoun usage and the modern world. Instead of producing a valid argument, this sounds instead like the petulant whine of the right wing fringe who have issues with everything in the modern world. They live for heteronormativity and a world in which mental illness was just not discussed in polite society. It is blatantly obvious that Ms. Mallick has never experienced the stigma associated with mental health, or any other item in that vein. I can quote chapter and verse from multiple scientific sources that members of the LGBTQ2S communities deal with multi-layered stigma on a daily basis, particularly when battling mental illness. Here’s my suggestion, that Ms. Mallick, in this case, should check her obvious privilege and sit the hell down, and for once just listen without opening mouth, while those who live it, explain it.

Coping with life is not a psychiatric condition, yes, but, PTSD is not caused by coping with life. This is where Ms. Mallick’s circular logic errors are apparent. She supports the damage caused by the work done by first responders, those who have experienced trauma due to war, crime, etc., but rubs suggestively up against “you should have known what you were signing up for” in her arguments, without saying the actual words. By the time I reached this portion of Ms. Mallick’s column, I had become convinced that she had no clue whatsoever of what Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder actually was/is, what causes it, what the diagnostic standards are, and had most definitely never spoken to any kind of expert in the field before launching this load of twaddle upon your readers.

The Edmonton murder case is not the only one where a defendant or their counsellor had attempted multiple avenues until they found the one they thought they could pull the wool over the eyes of the jury with. I can promise you this though, that the first responders who were at that scene have had recurring nightmares about it since, and in at least one case, this was the last straw that broke them. In one well-known case, it was a paramedic arriving on the scene of a satanic cult double homicide, where two women were decapitated, and they had to treat the killer. A police Superintendent explained it to me after the Ontario PTSD bill passed, “I had one officer in my division, had been to, say, 20 blue baby calls in a row. Number 21 was the one that broke him, and he went home and swallowed his gun. You never know what the incident will be.” I have seen regularly, in news, in case files, etc., where someone is up on the carpet for some truly abhorrent antisocial behaviours, and the first claim they come up with is, it’s because of PTSD. They neither have the diagnosis, nor have any clue of what is actually involved. How about this, sunshine, you just admit that you’re a complete and total waste of skin whose antisocial behaviour affects all within reach, take your punishment and sit the hell down.

As for the airline example, I have seen consistently, people ordering the fake “service dog” harnesses, leashes, etc., to put on their dogs so that they can take them into any establishment they want to. And, without fail, those dogs are the most ill-tempered, misbehaving, dogs that I have seen. If you have to keep shoving treats in little FiFi’s mouth to keep her from biting other customers in line at Starbucks, then either pick the little monster up, or ditch the fake papers and the phoney “service dog” harness, and just admit you’re too cheap to hire a pet sitter while you go shopping. They have ruined it for those who actually have real medical service dogs, who need that assistance to be able to leave their homes and go out to function in society. Those dogs, while wearing their work vests are not distracted, but are focused on their handler, ensuring their handler’s well-being. I had coffee with a friend, and her service dog, as is typical, curled up under the table, napping on top of our feet, until needed, and then she was alert and doing what she was trained to do.

Whatever allowances are made for people, there will always be some jerk who will try to take advantage of it. Prime example, a good friend of mine, courts officer, Indigenous, and one day we’re sitting on a sunny patio after work, having an iced coffee and laughing about the typical sillybuggers from the 9 to 5. They are telling me about overhearing conversations in the cells, how to get out from under this charge by claiming this … if you’re up on something serious, claim you are native, say Métis, it’s the hardest to disprove, and rather than take the time, they’ll just ship you off to that system instead. For every allowance, there will be ten people looking to take advantage of it, it’s unfortunate, but it is how the world works these days.

The final piece of snark, PTS-19, was entirely uncalled for. Ms. Mallick has just spent an entire column dumping all over the experiences of those who have been handed the diagnosis of PTSD (not self-diagnosed, but by a professional), plus the laundry list of other conditions and issues that co-exist with it. If anything, she sits upon her throne of privilege while heaping endless amounts of stigma on top of those who are already battling to make it through the day. Here’s what stigma around mental health does – it reinforces that suck it up culture that has infected every part of first responder careers, especially policing … to the point where colleagues will stand by and watch someone struggling and yet do nothing, because of the stigma and they “don’t want the crazy to rub off” on them. Then they all comment anonymously in an article in another newspaper about watching this happen, after this person has died by suicide. That is what stigma does. Not the dripping with sarcasm sentence from Ms. Mallick.

This article was disgusting, pathetic, and I quite honestly expect better from those whose writing is published by the Toronto Star. This is more of the quality one would expect to see from the right wing press.

I would suggest, Ms. English, that you obtain a copy of Save-My-Life School by Natalie Harris, put it in Ms. Mallick’s hands, and do not allow one more word she writes to be published by the Toronto Star until she has read it cover to cover and can speak to the contents of that book. Perhaps, then, she would like to meet the author and hear just one woman’s experience of battling for her life, I’ll gladly arrange it for you. Perhaps a chat with one of many specialists in treatment of PTSD/Complex-PTSD and Trauma, Dr. Douglas, Dr. Bouffard, Dr. Lee, Dr. Kamkar, Dr. Abramovich, Dr. Vermani. Or the grandfathers of peer support, Syd Gravel and Brad McKay. How about Dilnaz Garda from Toronto Beyond The Blue? Goodness knows that we are not short of people who know this stuff like the backs of their own hands, and it was blatantly obvious to anyone who read Ms. Mallick’s column, that she has never bothered to speak to any of them, or do the slightest bit of research beyond a few recycled pull quotes.

It has been five years since we last had a chance to speak in person. Let’s plan on a coffee and a chat by the lake when the weather is nicer. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Let’s be honest, you’d never publish something I composed, titled “Heather Mallick is a Clueless Tosser” even if I slapped an Opinion label on top. Ms. Mallick’s column should have never been published in the form it was either – it is dangerous as written.

I expect better from you and your fellow editors and writers. Far better.

Sincerely,

Christine Newman

• Peer Supporter, WeNeverWalkAlone, for US law enforcement.
• LGBTQ2S Peer Support Advisor & Lived Experience Facilitator, Peer and Trauma Support Systems team – Mood Disorders Society of Canada.
• Author, Educator, Public Speaker, 38 year activist and advocate.
• Mental Health Warrior