SPECIAL ISSUE

brain-soothing activities

lots of handy resources stuff to make you smile

real talk about mental health

 feel-good’s talented contributors
photographic
nina ahn, lauren anne, maja baska, tony evans, bri hammond, sandra lazzarini,
cath muscat, monique pizzica, kate shanasy, carine thevenau, hilary walker,
lukasz wierzbowski, stephanie rose wood

editorial
lucy corry, elizabeth flux, rowena grant-frost, marieke hardy, chris harrigan, koren helbig,
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eleanor robertson, james shackell, anna spargo-ryan, kate stanton, sinéad stubbins,
pui pui tam, jo walker

illustration
charlotte allingham, ève gentilhomme, kirbee lawler, michelle pereira, krista perry,
ashley ronning, casey schuurman, mel stringer, dawn tan

cover artist
editor ève gentilhomme
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Photo rocknwool
 first thought

Brains are rather funny things. One minute you might be plodding
along, quaffing a hot chocolate with marshmallows, telling your
pal about the ridiculous thing that happened to you on the weekend
and generally having a gay old time; the next, you’re racked with
inexplicable anxiety and an overwhelming hunch that everything is
wrong in the world. It doesn’t make sense – even to you, the person
feeling the feelings. But it’s just as real as that elation
from moments ago.
We may not always be able to predict the weird, wonderful and
sometimes wretched things that go on in our noggins, but when
we’re struck by an errant thought or an uncomfortable feeling that
just won’t quit, it can help to understand where it might have come
from. Which pesky hormones might be playing a part; what you can
do to try to shoo it away faster. And hopefully some of the stories
in these here pages – from real-life tales to curious research and
chats with folks who work in mental health – will set you up with
that handy information.
There’s also some fun stuff to give you a boost of good vibes, like a
comforting recipe, a very enthusiastic craft project, some playful art
and hands-on activities. But while we hope you love flipping through
and learning a thing or two, please remember: if you’re having a
rough time, the best thing you can do is talk to a professional about
how you’re feeling. (And if you turn to the very back page you’ll find
a whole list of places you could begin.)
Take care, lovely readers!

xx Sophie and the frankie team

005
 contents

26

92 34

104 78 44 29

ha, ha, ho, ho: language warning :

what’s inside PAGE 26 PAGE 90

What giggling means, Channel your angst into

biologically speaking. these sweary bits.

therapy 101: the mother load:

PAGE 29 PAGE 106

Some basic intel about What it’s like parenting

seeing a psychologist. with a mental illness.

uncovering on the up:

community: PAGE 124
PAGE 63 A bunch of things
Three folks tell us how that are actually
they found their people. getting better.

006
 contents
20
014 will you be my friend?
016 music for the mind
020 felicia chiao’s artwork
026 the science of laughter
029 therapy 101
034 decolonising the wellness world
036 me and my anxiety
038 fragile thoughts
042 a tale of ocd
044 ginger fluff cake, yummo
047 some brain-friendly activities
054 sports for the non-sporty
056 the friendship bench
058 your very own yay
060 let’s get physical
063 how i found my people
070 a tissue road test
072 mmm, feelings
075 mental health first aid
007
36
75
078 a pocketful of bliss
080 in my defence, i have no defence
084 trouble in mind
086 lessons from living through it
090 sweary bits and bobs
092 settle, petal
094 last drinks
096 feelings, illustrated
104 i love my shop
106 the mother load
109 ways to go from crappy to happy
114 the big feels club
116 mental health in a digital world
120 cards for the suckiest times
122 diy self-esteem
124 things that are getting better
126 lots of handy resources
 feel-good bits

hangry like
save your self the wolf
Kansas City artist Lauren Phillips has a few feelings about our capitalist society This Blue Q tea towel is
and the ways it meets our needs – or doesn’t, as it were. Her series Save Your an important PSA of what
Self features a whole bunch of products that promise something we’d love to could happen if the Big Bad
dose up on: sunshine, love, validation, meaningful connection (basically, all Wolf were to be outsmarted
the good stuff). The only problem is that they’re made from painted wood, so by a young girl in a rosy,
you probably won’t get what you’re after, sorry, chum! Lauren wants to get hooded garment. It’s slightly
us thinking about how we meet our basic emotional requirements, as well terrifying, but also completely
as the lack of solutions offered to those struggling with their mental health. understandable – we get
laurenphillips.work it, wolf, we need regular
snacks too. Granted, we’d
take a handful of nuts over
a prepubescent granny-
pleaser, but each to their
own. You do you. Around
$17, blueq.com

party on, dudes

one cushion, Dude! This tee from Sydney
hold the milk sorts Made590 – illustrated
and hand-printed by founder
A cosy cup of tea with Christina Kelly – is an ode
no risk of late-night to nostalgia and the eternal
caffeine highs or wisdom of time-travelling
accidentally missing slackers Bill and Ted. It’s also
a sentiment to commit to
our mouth and pouring
memory: if we all spent a bit
goodie two hues
scalding hot liquid on more time being excellent to Sometimes a warm, comforting cuddle isn’t available
our lap? Don’t mind each other, who knows what when we need it. It’s one of life’s great tragedies.
if we do. Find this kind of bodacious things we But you know what could be within reach? The cosy
lambswool cushion could achieve? (Probably not embrace of a fluffy mohair-and-wool jumper from
busting through the space- New Zealand label hej hej. OK, it’s not exactly the
at donnawilson.com same as human-to-human contact, but it does have
time continuum, but look,
(with a matching mug we won’t rule it out.) $39, sweet balloon sleeves and comes in two soothing
of coffee, too). made590.com.au colours, so there’s that. $276, hej-hej.co

008
 feel-good bits

nice blooming
kicks mirror, mirror
If ‘sneakers that look like Much like the Magic Mirror
your great-grandma’s from Snow White, this looking
curtains’ are at the top glass always tells the truth.
of your wishlist (and Only it’s less about who’s
why wouldn’t they be?), the fairest in the land, and
you’d do well to pay a more about how goddamn
visit to rollienation.com. awesome you are. If gazing
There you’ll find these at your stupidly rad face isn’t
Vintage Flower sneakers enough to convince you,
for $159.95, ready for there’s even a button on the
some serious trundling, back that spouts encouraging
hopping, skipping or messages every time you
mood tea jumping. Or, you know, press it. Because sometimes
just kicking back with you need an inanimate object
Three cheers for MOOD tea. The local brand was
a crossword and a to remind you to love yourself
created with one purpose in mind: to help tackle
Lemon Crisp bikkie. above anything else. Around
Australia’s suicide crisis by making a positive
The choice is yours. $63, doiydesign.com
impact on young people’s mental health. All
profits from sales of the scrummy blends – which
feature ‘mood-positive’ natural ingredients like
lemon balm, peppermint and passionflower – are
donated directly to charities in the youth mental
health space. You can even subscribe to MOOD on
Demand and have tea delivered to your doorstep
every month, giving you no option but to take some
time out, sip on a steaming brew and know you’re
helping young folks in a big way. Check out the full
range at mood.org.au

modibodi
One way to avoid getting
your knickers in a knot?
By ensuring said knickers
were made by Aussie
brand Modibodi. Not only
are their undies leak-
proof so you can lounge
about without having to
fret about errant body
fluids, they’re also super-
soft and an ace alternative
all the feels
to single-use period and Fact: feelings are messy and confusing. Understanding
them within ourselves can be hard enough, let alone
incontinence products, so
explaining them to somebody else. That’s why The School
you can rest easy knowing of Life created The Emotional Barometer: a set of 20 cards
you’re doing good for that will help define your “inner weather”. Flip through for
the world (while feeling a clearer idea of what it means to be anxious, envious or
pretty good yourself, as needy, plus nicer moods like dreamy, happy and confident.
You could even choose your disposition each day and
well). Check out their display it on your desk or kitchen bench to let the folks
full range of styles at around you know exactly where you’re at. Find them at
modibodi.com theschooloflife.com for around $46.

009
 feel-good bits

challenge
accepted
Good job, you! You
made it through
another day without
throwing a full-
blown foot-stamping,
sobbing-for-your-
mum tanty! And
even if you did have
said outburst, we’re
sure it was for good
reason! The point is,
you’re forging on and
a pair from paire doing your gosh-darn
best, and for that you
Hoo boy, the socks don’t lie: Paire sure is packed full
of good feels. For one, the foot covers – designed by deserve this enamel
Melbourne buds Nathan Yun and Rex Zhang – are pin (around $13)
made from merino wool and organic cotton and from Hand Over Your
feature in-built arch support, meaning they’re comfy
Fairy Cakes. High
as all get-out. They’re also socially conscious, using
five! hoyfc.com
sustainably sourced materials and an ethical supply
chain. If you’d like to feel tip-top from your head down
to your toes, visit paire.com.au, quicksticks.
hydrating is
great
This is a reminder to drink
some water. Go on – right
this minute. Pop down
the magazine and head
straight to the tap. That
liquid gold not only flushes
nasties out of your body, it
also improves your mental
health, because dehydration
quite literally puts you into
a state of stress. Guzzling
H2O has a calming effect, so
it’s important to make it a
regular part of your routine –
an eye-catching drink bottle
could help with that. This one
features the striking work of
Irish designer Orla Kiely and
can be nabbed from amara.
com/au for $44, if you like.

an emotional
rollercoaster
Cheeky, chirpy, curious and
nostalgic: the Nine Moods
poster reads a little like
the rejects from the Seven
Dwarves, but it does a darn
good job of introducing wee
ones to the full gamut of
give it a spray
emotions. It’s also rather It may sound like something your parents
lovely to look at (unsurprising would have consumed during their hippie days
given its Danish design), at Woodstock, but the Euphoria Space Mist
and if you’d like to pop it up from Geelong-based Happy Society has no
on a nursery wall (or in an hallucinogenic effects. Rather, it uses natural
adult-friendly space – we’re ingredients like coriander seed, geranium leaf and
never too old to brush up black pepper to add a little something-something
on emotional literacy) you’ll to the vibe in your room. Spritz it on your pillow,
find it for around $77 at clothing or just in the air for an uplifting (and kind
madomado.com of delicious) scent. $26, happysociety.store

010
 feel-good bits

loop de loop
On a scale of one to 10,
where one is quiet and
reserved and 10 is batty
and outgoing, would you
rate yourself a 15? Well,
you wonderful nutter,
Sydney maker Rachel
Castle has a tea towel
just for you. Own your
barminess by paying a
visit to castleandthings.
com.au with $89 in
hand – because let’s face
it: cleaning the kitchen
could use a little more
exuberance.
cool, ok
Did you know the A-OK
symbol has a spooky
significance in the occult feeling of the month club
world? For some folks,
Get a load of this! Feeling of the Month Club is a subscription-
it represents the devil’s
based art project that delivers “emotional exercises” around
number, 666. We’re sure
the world by good old snail mail. Launched in 2019 by New
Stephanie Phillips – the
York-based designer Lillian Tong, subscribers can expect a
lass behind Sydney label
‘feeling’ in their letterbox every month – or more specifically,
Stof Studios – had much
some basic craft materials and instructions that will guide
cheerier intentions for
them to explore an emotional state in a creative way.
her laser-cut wood
Perhaps you’ll collage fabric scraps as a way to honour happy
earrings, though, like
memories or create a rainy day fund of good feelings in a jar to
decorating your lobes
draw on when you’re feeling blue. Though it’s cathartic for all
and assuring you that
involved, Lillian reckons the project started for slightly selfish
everything is going to be
reasons: “The therapeutic aspect is less about me trying to
all good. Those in need
heal others’ wounds, and more about attending to my own
of some encouragement
and wanting to share intimate explorations of feelings with
(or accessory-loving
whoever is drawn to participate.” If that’s you, you can find out
Satan worshippers) can
more at feelingofthemonth.com – subscriptions range from
nab a pair for $25 at
around $13 to $18 a month.
stofstudios.com

light up your life

A doff of the cap from this candle – whose name
is Ramona, by the by – is not just a polite gesture,
but an offer to both hold and strike your matches.
All while filling your room with the scent of citrus,
jasmine, wisteria and white clover, among other
nice-smelling things. How lovely is that? Ramona
comes from the clever minds at Paddywax
in Nashville, Tennessee, but you can take
her home by grabbing $44.95 and heading to
atriptothemoon.com.au
throw down
Swaddling helps infants sleep better by stifling their natural ‘startle
reflex’, an instinct that causes their arms and legs to spontaneously
fling out in response to a sudden noise or movement. But just
because you’re all grown up and proficient in keeping your limbs
from flailing about doesn’t mean wrapping yourself in a blanket
cocoon is any less appealing. Enter this Mushroom Magic throw from
Valley Cruise Press. It’s made from 100 per cent recycled cotton and
prewashed for extra softness, and if you visit valleycruisepress.com
with around $163 it could be yours for the swaddling.

011
 feel-good bits

mask up
Never underestimate
the power of forty winks.
Boffins have found
that sleep-deprived
folks are more likely
to experience negative
moods like anger,
frustration, irritability
a cap with a calling and sadness, which
Look, as far as subtlety goes, this baseball cap is reason enough for
from Sorry I’m Busy has a lot to learn. But its making bedtime as
message is a good ’un, so we’ll forgive all the tranquil as possible, we
shouting. Designed by a team from Melbourne reckon. Kim Stark of
who believe in working smarter, not harder, and Melbourne’s Wheatbags
making time to put your feet up, it’s embroidered Love tends to agree,
with love and available for $40 at sorryimbusy.com so she’s whipped up a
range of super-soft eye
masks to block out the
light and help you get
some top-notch shut-
eye. They’re available for
$25 at wheatbagslove.
com.au, if you wish.
oddballs unite
As a troubled yet wise
young witch once said:
“We are the weirdos,
mister.” Nancy Downs may
have spoken the words in
The Craft, but The School
of Life has immortalised
the sentiment on this
here canvas tote bag.
It’s a reminder that deep
down we’re all a little
odd – ‘normal’ simply
doesn’t exist. To wear your
peculiarity with pride,
visit theschooloflife.com
with around $64.

irregular sleep pattern the good twin

The guys at Irregular Sleep Pattern describe their bedwear as
a “pyjama suit”, which is a suitably spiffy way to think about this
organic cotton, collared two-piece. Available in a range of flashy
patterns – at around $138 for the lone jacket or trousers, or $276
for the full kit and caboodle – the dreamtime duds are boxy and
loose for peak comfort while you snooze. (Also, Jolene and Mil,
the Glaswegian couple behind the brand, are both musos from
way back, so we’d like to think when you slip on their PJs a wee
lullaby lulls you to sleep.) irregularsleeppattern.com
Though we have every faith in you adequately
expressing your feelings to your loved ones, a
greeting card from The Good Twin could definitely
give you a helping hand. Sporting succinct but
heartfelt sentiments like “sorry everything sucks”
and “sending you good thoughts in a bad time”, the
cards are hand-drawn and screenprinted with love
by Los Angeleno Katie Wilson, and can be found for
around $7 at thegoodtwin.co

012
 feel-good bits

prone to
breakage
Feeling a little
fragile? Whack this
patch on your jacket,
backpack or tote to
let the people around
give me an ‘a’! give me an ‘r’! you know your
This is a bit nice. Started earlier this year, Armchair insides are delicate,
Cheerleader is a “reflective listening and self-kindness and should be treated
encouragement service” that lives on Facebook and as such. It’s going
Instagram (@armchaircheerleader). Jot down a supportive for around $6 at
note to yourself and the mysterious do-gooder behind the
account will post it publicly (with a few more pom poms thesearethings.com,
and a little extra pep on top). The idea is to reinforce those if you fancy.
words of encouragement – you know what you most need
to hear in that moment, but it can be rather helpful for the
words to come from someone else, as well.
wilted blooms
Cheer up, little flower
pal. We’re here for you,
whatever’s getting you
down. Did some unruly
rays leave you feeling
a bit parched? Maybe
a boisterous dog gave
you an unwanted golden
shower? Either way, we
hope it’s not long until
you’re feeling blooming
marvellous again. $40,
yippywhippy.com

gravel and gold

Sweating away in holey tights
and a promotional t-shirt you
received in a showbag 10 years
ago is a perfectly fine way to
exercise, truth be told. Whatever
keeps you comfy while you get
your blood pumping. But if
looking a bit schmick while you ghost wares
lunge, squat and run on the spot
Some topics of conversation are highly polarising: they
happens to bring you an extra
make meetings awkward, create rifts in friendship groups
dose of endorphins, allow us
and turn otherwise fun dinner parties into stubborn
to direct you to San Francisco
standoffs. The merit of a cup of tea isn’t one of them.
brand Gravel & Gold. Their
Rather, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that cradling
workout tank and leggings –
a piping hot mug and warming your belly sip by sip is a
going for around $85 and $124
balm for what ails you, from a lonely heart to first-day
respectively – are stretchy and
nerves or a worn-out, tired mind. And Aussie ceramics
supportive without making
studio Ghost Wares can add a little extra to the soothing
you feel like a too-squished
experience with their swish handmade teapots, which will
sausage. Check them out at
set you back $145 at ghostwares.com.au
gravelandgold.com

013
 something to say
will you be my friend?
PUI PUI TAM WONDERS WHY DATES
ARE SOMETIMES LESS COMPLICATED
THAN MATES.
SCENARIO ONE: Two strangers meet at a bar. One buys the other a
drink. They discover a mutual love for a semi-obscure pop culture
item – Monkey Magic, let’s say. One makes a comment about it
getting late; there’s talk of coffee at their apartment. Nakedness
happens and they do intimate things to each other. Then morning-
after breakfast is shared, they swap numbers and romance ensues.
SCENARIO TWO: Two strangers meet at a bar. One buys the other a
drink. They discover a mutual love for a semi-obscure pop culture
item – it can be Wilson Phillips this time. One invites the other back
to their house where they spend a restless night baking brownies,
sharing pictures of their nephews and nieces and being really
supportive of each other’s careers. Then they swap numbers and
vow to be best friends forever.
Our first scene is probably a particularly good weekend. The second
sounds like the first few minutes of a stalker-horror film. The kind
where Person A eventually finds that Person B has been living in
their attic the whole time and has created a creepy serial-killer
montage wall filled with pictures of them drawn while they were
sleeping. This is because once we become grown-ups, it’s far easier
to hook up with someone for sex than it is to hook up with someone
for companionship, support and the potential for recipe-swapping.
Easier, and (strangely) far more socially acceptable.
014
Photo Lukasz Wierzbowski
When we’re younger we live in a friendship-making machine. There
are school chums, teammates, the kids next door. You spend months,
years, with the same people; you figure out who likes the same stuff
as you, who is brave and funny and adventurous, who is great at riding
bikes and sharing secrets, who has parents with a backyard pool. You
spend long, sunny afternoons together, and endless days at school.
You have all the time in the world, but even so, childhood friendships
are made quickly. Growing close as kids can be as easy as saying,
“Will you be my friend?”
Then friendship bracelets and BFF necklaces start to get old, and so
do you. Days fill with work, maybe kids, and new friends are harder
to find. There’s still the same number of awesome people around
you (statistically this must be true), but unless you’re lucky enough
to share an office cubicle with one you probably only see them for
seconds a day. The girl on the bus who always wears cute earrings.
The guy at the café reading the same book as you. The lady on your
street whose cat you secretly talk to when she’s not in earshot.
Chatting up any of these people might take balls, yes, but it would
seem totally normal – flattering even. Pull out the old “Will you be
my friend?” line and you’re looking at either a semi-horrified glance
or a restraining order. Somehow, admitting you want the kind of
intimacy that doesn’t occur between crisp cotton sheets seems a bit
deviant. Like how those ‘just friends’ ads in the personals used to
seem creepy next to the ones advertising no-strings-attached adult
fun. So much time and energy – so many women’s magazine articles
– poured into finding the perfect partner. Don’t we deserve the same
level of attention when it comes to relationships where you never
touch below the belt?
Of course, it’s good to hang on to established friendships, but when
it comes to making new pals, we should all be friend whores. We
should cruise for potential chums. We should talk to the bus girl
and the cat lady and the café guy and ask them out for dinner and a
movie. We should pursue the objects of our platonic affection and
fall in like whenever we can. And we should always be the first one
to say, “Let’s be friends.”
Photo Kate Shanasy
 the helpers
unchained melodies
elly scrine uses music to mess with
our minds (in a very good way).
WORDS ELIZABETH FLUX
There’s something that happens when a talented DJ hits the decks.
They feel out the mood of the crowd, think about where they want to
lift the room, then slowly, through the music they play, build and build
until everyone there is on the same page: on their way to reaching
a euphoric fever pitch. The fact that music and mood are linked is
something we perhaps just intuitively know – but it’s a connection
Dr Elly Scrine has dedicated their life to through their work as a
music therapist, researcher and musician.
“We use music all the time to regulate our emotions,” Elly says.
“I think we have an understanding of how powerful music is because
we feel it through the course of our whole lives. We see how parents
use music to bond or regulate their baby's emotional state. As
children, we learn through music: we learn the alphabet through
song. And in adolescence, music is everything. It’s how we form
and develop our individual and social identities. It’s how we manage
our moods.”
Music therapy, Elly explains, is about meeting people where they’re
at – using music to achieve a non-musical goal. The applications are
broad: music therapists work with all ages and abilities to treat a
range of physical and mental conditions. Tunes can help non-verbal
folks improve communication, children develop or refine their motor
skills, or infants blossom in neonatal intensive care, and can also
improve memory and attention, and even the body’s ability to deal
with pain. It’s a common feature in hospitals, schools, aged care
homes and prisons, among other settings. Elly’s focus is on mental
health – in particular, working with young people.
“I think I would be happy to work as a music therapist in any context,
to be honest,” they say. “But working with adolescents and young
017
people feels really right to me, because adolescence is such an
intense time for your emotions and mental health, as well as your
relationship with music. You’re getting to meet these people when
they’re forming their adult identities and initiating their life paths.”
The impact of music on the brain can be measured in chemistry
and pictures. “We know that music activates the pleasure centres,”
Elly explains. It releases mood-enhancing chemicals like dopamine
and endorphins and lowers stress hormones like cortisol – but that
doesn’t mean it can be applied in a one-size-fits-all manner. The
same song may lift one person up while dragging another down.
The opportunity to turn their life experiences into lyrics, to put their
feelings to song, may be catharsis for one person while leaving
another cold. Much like our brain chemistry, our relationship with
music is deeply individual. “Your response to music is really going to
depend on your mental state, your emotional and physical state, as
well as your life experiences, or your cultural or social context,” Elly
says. “In music therapy, we wouldn’t just be like, ‘Oh, you’re sad.
Let me put on my favourite happy song.’ You have to understand the
person, their needs and their own relationship to music.”
For example: “Often parents might worry that their teenager is
listening to music that seems negative or antisocial – but that type
of music might be relaxing for them. So, what looks negative might
actually be a really healthy way of processing difficult feelings.”
In their work, Elly points to the different ways music can be used to
get to know clients and help them. One thing it offers is a way to
open up honest discussions: rather than asking someone who’s
perhaps withdrawn or anxious to put into words exactly what’s
going on with them, they might be asked what music they’re
 the helpers
through music
we can express
ourselves and
forge our
identities
most drawn to at the time. “It’s a way of approaching those difficult
conversations in a less confronting manner,” Elly says, “and in a way
that can open up a therapeutic relationship.”
A music therapy session could include anything from listening
to music (sometimes even played live by the therapist) to writing
lyrics and songs and actually singing or making melodies with an
instrument. Elly has spent a lot of time working with adolescents in
a group setting, where the focus is on songwriting and performance.
Beyond offering a new way of expressing themselves, the communal
environment also encourages those taking part to build connections
with each other. “It’s more of a resource for them than, say, individual
therapy, because they’re building community that can exist and keep
existing outside of any kind of institutional space.”
The impact of music on individuals and society at large is far-
reaching. It doesn’t matter whether you’re performing, writing
lyrics or listening to songs. It also doesn’t really matter what kind
of music it is; whether it’s upbeat or mellow, has lyrics or is purely
instrumental. What matters is the specific relationship you have
with what you’re making or listening to, and the impact it has on
your own mood or mindset. Understanding this in yourself can go
a long way, because the way we use music to temper or complement
our mood isn’t always healthy. Playing a song that brings out darker,
sadder memories can help us work through things – but the line we
walk is narrow.
“Listening to a song you know makes you feel good has benefits
for your mood, but you have to choose to put that song on,” Elly
explains. “And alternatively, playing a song that makes you feel
worse, or causes you to internalise or get stuck in the really hard
018
stuff – that’s called rumination.” Dissecting music is Elly’s job
in more ways than one. On top of their work as a music therapist
and researcher, they also make up one third of electronic act
Huntly. “We refer to it as ‘doof you can cry to’,” they reflect with
a laugh. “Essentially, I think of it as dance music that allows for
emotional catharsis.”
Though they describe therapy as their day job and being a
musician as their night job, “it’s quite beautiful to look across my
life and see music as the thread that ties all my projects together,”
Elly says. “I use writing music as a way to process my own heavy
feelings. Sometimes that means the songs are more upbeat or
dance-focused, while others are slower.”
While Elly’s parallel careers are linked and, together, offer insight
into the impact of music on the mind, the two are also distinct.
“My music is my art, so it’s more for my own personal growth and
identity work,” Elly says. “And, you know, hearing that people listen
to or get something out of it is such a thrill. But my work as a
music therapist is super-different, because it’s not about me – it’s
about using music to support a client’s health and wellbeing.”
There are two key messages that come through most clearly
while talking to Elly. The first is that music and mood, music and
mental health, are undeniably linked. The second is that it’s vital
to understand that the connection is deeply individual. “We feel
music move us to tears at a concert or connect us to a person or
a pivotal moment in our lives,” Elly says. “Through music, we can
be with others and express ourselves and forge our identities –
and as a result, we can feel connected to others, which is crucial
for our mental health.”
 Elly has put together a playlist designed to lift your mood – and, perhaps
surprisingly, it isn’t all toe-tapping, hip-shaking bangers. They’ve applied what’s
called the ‘iso principle’, which is used in music therapy for mood management.
“If I was feeling a bit flat or down, just putting on a really happy, optimistic song
might not work,” Elly says. “It’s about acknowledging where you’re at, meeting
that emotional state, then using a playlist to gradually shift it.”

Scan the QR code to link directly to the playlist on Spotify.

“Send Me” – Tirzah

“anything” – Adrianne Lenker

“Remember” – Smerz

“Get Me Out” – King Stingray

“Grand Ideas” – Alice Skye

“It’s Okay to Cry” – SOPHIE

“Do My Thing” – Erika de Casier

“Take It All Back” – Sui Zhen

“TRY” – Madison McFerrin

“Flex” – Komang

“So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” – Caroline Polachek

“All Made Up” – Squidgenini

“Wiggle” – Huntly

“Higher” – Budjerah

“In the Image” – Beverly Glenn-Copeland

“Fellowship” – serpentwithfeet
 pretty pictures
beauty in the
humdrum
felicia chiao’s artistic world is both
peaceful and a little melancholy.
INTERVIEW SOPHIE KALAGAS
Hi Felicia! Tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you and what do you
do? Hi! My name is Felicia Chiao and I’m an industrial designer and
illustrator! What that means is I work 9 to 5 at a design firm and
draw at night and on weekends. It’s a bit hectic doing both jobs,
but I’m managing!
Why do you make art? I’ve been making art since I was a really
little kid. Besides the fact I genuinely just enjoy making things, art
has always been a way for me to process feelings and decompress
from everything else happening in the world. I would be making art
regardless of whether people saw it or not – it’s just something
I have to do to survive. Everyone else is just along for the ride.
What techniques do you use? I draw with Copic markers on brown-
toned paper for all my work. The brown paper brings out a lot of
warmth in my designs, and I enjoy blending the alcohol-based
markers to create soft tones. I also use a lot of perspective in
my drawings, which I learnt as an industrial designer.
Talk us through some of the themes explored in your pieces.
There are definitely some themes around mental health, as I have
always struggled with my own, but I tend to think about my work
in terms of more tangible themes like lighting, tile work, clouds,
water, perspective, etc. I repeat a lot of these themes in different
compositions. They’re just what I enjoy drawing.
How much thought do you put into the message when planning each
design? I cannot stress how little I think about the drawing while I’m
making it! I just kind of feel my way through it and draw what feels
good. Sometimes I’m inspired by a mood or a beam of light on the
wall. I’m sure there’s a deep psychological meaning behind each
piece, but I don’t think too hard about it.
021
Who is the character you’ve created? The main character I draw in
most of my pieces is just like a stick figure. It’s a representation of a
person. It could be me or you or anyone else! I wanted a character
that people could use to project themselves into my pieces.
Where do you find inspiration? I get a lot of inspiration from music,
film, photography, and life in general. Sometimes I see the sun cast
light in a cool way or spot patterns I want to draw. I really like
to highlight the beauty in the mundane, everyday things that
surround us.
Is mental health something you struggle with personally? Oh yes,
big time. I’ve talked about it here and there in my posts, but take a
little bit of anxiety, add a little bit of depression, and sprinkle in some
bipolar 2 and you have me: a mess. I really don’t like to romanticise
the idea that mental illness fuels art, though. I’d like to think that
I can make art despite my illnesses. They are something I’m
constantly trying to control so I can live my life and make art.
What makes you truly happy? Locking eyes with someone’s dog out
in public. Eating good food with friends and family. When a new leaf
grows from my plants. A good cocktail.
Any wise words for someone going through a rough time? Man, I’m
going through a rough time, so words for me would be appreciated!
All I can say is what I always have to tell myself: this will pass and
things always work out one way or another. You just have to trust that
stuff will work itself out, even if it isn’t in the way you expected. Hold
on and stay strong!
Where can we see more of your stuff? The best place is on Instagram
at @feliciachiao!
 learn something new
the science
of laughter
sophie kalagas investigates what giggling
means, biologically speaking.
There’s nothing like a good chuckle to lift your spirits. But not
every LOL is created equal. There are two main kinds of laughter:
impulsive, natural laughs triggered by something you find truly
amusing; and voluntary, posed laughs brought on in social situations,
like when your boss makes a not-all-that-funny joke, or you want
to fit in with a group of chortling peers. Research shows these
different types of laughs spark activity in separate parts of the
listener’s brain, so be warned: you might think you’re an expert
schmoozer, but your boss will instinctively attempt to decipher
the purpose behind your laughter.
A hearty laugh gets the whole body involved, starting with a network
of muscles in the face. When something funny hits our eyes or
ears, the brain tells these 15 pulleys to crinkle the eyes and contort
the cheeks, resulting in a gleeful grin – meanwhile, the brain stem
is informed that hilarity is ensuing, and the lungs will need to manage
the dual tasks of laughing and breathing. A splutter of air and noises
bursts forth, in the form of ‘ha’s, ‘ho’s and the occasional ‘heh’.
The heart pumps faster to replace expelled oxygen; the stomach
muscles tighten; and the rest of our muscles relax, allowing the
laughter to hijack the body’s energy.
All this happens in approximately 75 milliseconds – moments later,
our endocrine system kicks into gear. Cracking up sends the stress
hormone, cortisol, packing, while a stream of happy-making
endorphins floods the brain. Basically, laughter is your body’s
side-splitting, snort-inducing way of relieving anxiety and tension,
which is why it’s been trialled as a form of physical and emotional
therapy. In offices, hospitals and even your local park, ‘laughter
coaches’ do their darndest to get people chuckling. The outcome?
Supposedly, a stronger immune system; the ability to make more
rational decisions in stressful situations; and an overall sense
that pain or mental anguish is more manageable.
026
Scientist Robert Provine has been studying our sniggers for years.
What he’s discovered is that babies laugh approximately 300 times
a day, while adults only let out about 20 titters. Alas, laughter peaks
at the age of five, so savour any gag that has you rolling in the aisles.
It’s not just humans that get the giggles, either. Apes and rats have
been found to emit laughter-like sounds in the form of pants, chirps
and high-pitched squeaks. These are particularly brought on by a
good old tickle (or even a tickle-primed finger wiggling near them).
From an evolutionary standpoint, animal LOLs are thought to be a
sign that a threat isn’t as dangerous as it seems – or it could just be
about teaching baby critters how to play and bond with their peers.
Laughter has a highly contagious effect – look no further than a ’90s
sitcom like Seinfeld for proof. These TV comedies employed a laugh
track – ‘canned’ audience laughter that marks the show’s punchlines
– to subconsciously inspire a chuckle in the viewer. Think about it:
you’re far more likely to crack up over an onscreen gag when you’re
in the company of a chum who’s also in stitches. In fact, Dr Provine
found we don’t even need to witness the joke to start laughing – just
the sound of your pal’s glee is enough for your own brain to mirror
the emotional reaction.
An extreme case of contagious laughter transpired in Tanzania in
1962. Three girls studying at a village boarding school began to laugh.
Then, they experienced ‘emotional incontinence’, aka laughter tears.
The symptoms spread quickly from classmate to classmate, until
95 of the 159 students were uncontrollably chortling. The laughter
epidemic was so powerful that the school closed down for a time,
and even on reopening, the giggling continued. Two and a half
years later, the outbreak finally came to an end, prompting deep
investigation into why it occurred. Sadly, we can’t blame a prank
gone viral – it’s believed the laughter was a case of mass hysteria,
brought on by stress. Which is no laughing matter.
 getting into it

nasalifya namwinga is a clinical psychologist

and founder of pola psychology. here, she talks
us through the basics of therapy and how
to check in on your mental health
(and your mates’, too).
INTERVIEW JO WALKER ILLUSTRATION MICHELLE PEREIRA

029
Hi, Nasalifya! What’s the first step to getting into therapy? How can you get the most out of therapy? Being consistent
In Australia, your GP will do a brief assessment and is probably the best way to get the most out of it, because
gather lots of info. Then, between you, you kind of decide therapy isn’t like seeing a doctor where you turn up, they
if a therapist might be helpful. They’ll write up a mental tell you what’s wrong, you get a script for something and
healthcare plan and you can go choose a therapist, or you you come back in five months if the problem persists.
can get one recommended to you by the GP. Medicare Usually therapy is ongoing, and you need to be relatively
reduces or completely removes the cost for 10 sessions, consistent, especially at the beginning. That’s when
but you can see a therapist without Medicare – you don’t you’re establishing a rapport with the person and also
necessarily need a referral. If you’re someone who isn’t in just unpacking what’s actually going on. It takes a little
a place financially to just pay out of pocket, definitely tell bit of time, and sometimes it’s hard. When it’s hard, try
your GP, because they’ll know of other services that might to keep going – be consistent even then.
cater to you. There are a whole bunch of non-profits for
How do you know when it’s time to finish going? What do
different demographics.
you do? If you feel like you’ve got everything you need out
How do you go about finding the right therapist? If you of it, talk to your therapist. Usually we agree with you, and
like the idea of someone with a certain gender or we come up with a plan. Some clients I touch base with
cultural background, is that something you can put on twice a year, and that’s just to make sure they’ve kept on
your shopping list? I say put everything you want on your top of what they’ve said they’re going to do and they’re
shopping list! Finding the right therapist is kind of like going OK. Some people have got the tools they need,
dating. You go online and you swipe left and right and you and they may or may not come in at a later stage.
have your shortlist of people you might want to see for
a first date, and then, for the most part, you can be a bit
more specific. See who’s available and maybe even shop
around. See someone for a single session, and if it doesn’t
work you can actually say, “Oh, this isn’t really a fit for
me.” Then they can help you clarify what it is you’re
looking for. Clients sometimes feel a bit anxious about
when it's
that, like you might offend the therapist, but sometimes
we’re not the right fit. And that’s OK. hard, try to
What do you actually do in a session? Do you lie on a couch
and talk about your mum like on TV? Usually people don’t
lie down on a couch, and usually we’re not as problematic
keep going
as the therapists on TV. There’s very much a Hannibal idea
out there, which is not real! For the most part it’s just a
chat, and a good therapist will tell you exactly what you’re
in for. I have a little spiel that I give at the start of sessions.
I say, “I’m going to ask you lots of questions,” or I might
ask you to just tell me if you’ve got a narrative – something
you’ve been dying to tell someone – and I will give you
the room to say that. But if you don’t, I can ask lots of
questions and get lots of information. Then, by the end
of the session I can say, “This is what I think might
be helpful. These are the things I can do. These are
the things I can’t do.”
 getting into it

Let’s talk about some of the big reasons people might get
into therapy, starting with depression. How is it different
to regular sadness? Feeling sad can be part of depression,
but sadness is an emotion, and emotions come and go.
Depression is usually a consistent number of things that
pop up and persist over a two-week period. Sadness is one
of them. There’s also low motivation, feelings of guilt. But
if you're consistently sad for more than a period of about
two weeks, there's probably something more.

What kind of symptoms might you see in yourself or in

someone else? A really easy symptom to look out for is self-
care. Has self-care gone down? That's showering, brushing
teeth, washing hair, all that stuff. It’s also significant changes
in appetite, so that might be an increase or a decrease. Sleep
habits, too: increase, decrease. Low mood, concentration,
motivation, feelings of worthlessness. If you’re someone
who’s never felt like this as an ongoing thing, any significant
changes to your mood are worth paying attention to.
Let’s talk about anxiety – what does that look and feel
like? Anxiety is more than just worry. Worry can be a
symptom of anxiety, but it’s persistent worry outside of
what is the norm socially. For example, uni during exam
period is stressful. It's understandable. That’s within
the socially accepted norm. But persistent worry about
things like going outside or being around people is
different. Usually, anxiety is a combination of worry
and an anticipation of negative judgment from others,
so thinking, “People are going to see me and people
are going to think badly of me.”

any significant
changes to
your mood are
worth paying
attention to
031

How can you tell if your worrying is the persistent version,
or the more regular one? It’s like uncontrollable worrying.
If you can kind of park it and say, “I’m stressed about
this one thing. I can park it, go on with my life and come
back to it,” that's probably within the realm of what is
normal and OK. But if you’re so unable to park it that you
can’t do something you need to – you can’t work; you can’t
concentrate on getting things done; you can’t leave the
house or go to social events – then I’d say it’s worth
having a look at.
What does it mean to be stressed in a way that you
would seek help for it? Everyone experiences stress, and
there’s actually nothing wrong with it as long as it doesn’t
completely debilitate you. There’s something called an
adjustment disorder – that’s one of the descriptions I
tend to get from GPs, along with depression and anxiety.
An adjustment disorder might be prolonged stress after
a change in your life – the end of a relationship, birth of a
child, loss of a parent – but you’re not able to get yourself
back to what you’d like to be to re-engage with your life.
When does everyday stress become something to see
a therapist about? Chronic stress is pretty difficult and
unhelpful for you mentally, but also physically. It also
depends on how well you manage the stress. Are you
someone who works a high-stress job and you still enjoy
life and maintain a balance? Or are you so stressed that
you can’t live your life? That’s where it becomes clinically
significant. Something is clinically significant if it stops
you being able to do what you need to do.
What are some of the other reasons to see a therapist?
Mental illness is not the only reason to come see a therapist.
I think that’s important to know. You could just want to
improve or process an area of your life. Things like, “I
want to improve my self-esteem”, “I want to improve my
confidence speaking in public spaces”, “I want to improve
my relationships with my family”, “I want to reduce my
substance use” or “I want to better understand sexuality
or gender”. It could just be big life changes, or you want
to process something you’ve been through.
What does it mean to be diagnosed with a mental health
disorder? Diagnosis is just a label to help understand
generally what the symptoms might be that you're
experiencing, and also to say that this causes significant
challenges for you. The diagnosis itself tends not to be
a big shock, because usually you’ve lived with these
symptoms. You kind of know there’s something going
on, so it’s actually a relief to be like, “Oh, this is what it
is, and this is what might help with it.” I think people are
generally relieved when they hear the news, apart from
having to deal with the social stigma or the ideas they
have around what it means.
Is it better to manage mental health with drugs or
therapy or both? There’s lots of research on this! Depending
on the diagnosis, it’s usually therapy, or both therapy
and medication. There can still be a stigma attached to
medication, and people still have a viewpoint like, “I want
to try it, but it’s only a short-term fix.” That can be helpful
sometimes, because it means people don’t rely solely on
medication to fix everything, but sometimes their journey
to recovery would have been a lot easier with medication.
Sometimes I see people and part of their therapy is just
helping them accept that it’s OK to take medication.
Sometimes that’s what you need.
diagnosis is just
a label to help
understand the
symptoms you're
experiencing
 getting into it

Who is therapy for? Are there certain ages, cultures, types

of people who feel more comfortable seeking therapy, your mental
and are there people who feel locked out? Well, I think
everyone can benefit from therapy at some point in their
life. I’m very biased as a therapist! In terms of who feels
health doesn't
more comfortable, I think it’s generally the population
that's been depicted as being in therapy through media –
often a white middle-class demographic. But that’s shifting
exist in a vacuum
quite a bit as more and more people in the spotlight who
don’t fit that demographic talk about mental health, and
as more and more therapists who don’t come from that
separate from
background appear and are seen.
How can we support friends and family with mental health
your economic
issues? Be willing to listen, with caveats of understanding
how much capacity you have. It’s OK to say, “Hey, I want to
talk. I want to hear you,” but scheduling it within your capacity
status, migrant
is pretty important, otherwise carer burnout is something
that happens. That’s when the person is told, “I’m here all the status, gender
time, whenever you want to talk. I’m always here 24/7,” then
you get burnt out and you disappear because it’s too much.
You never want to veer into being someone’s therapist.
presentation
You’re their partner. You’re their sibling. You’re their child.
You’re their parent. You’re their friend. You are all these or sexuality
things, but you never need to be someone’s therapist. In
fact, we make pretty shit therapists for the people in our
lives, because therapy is a very one-sided relationship
intentionally and the rest of your relationships shouldn’t
mimic that.

What’s something you wish everybody knew about mental

health? Mental health, like physical health, is something
you have to work on irrespective of whether you have
a chronic physical illness or a chronic mental illness.
We all live on a spectrum of maintaining levels of health,
and that’s OK, and sometimes we’re doing better than
other times. Also, I think it’s important to contextualise
mental health happening within the sociopolitical context
of a person. Your mental health doesn’t exist in a vacuum
separate from your economic status, migrant status,
gender presentation, sexuality. All those things are part
of the context it exists in. I think that’s a really important
thing. You don’t have to strip away all those other aspects
of identity, and you shouldn’t have to in therapy.

033
Photo Tony Evans
 the helpers
making space
ALLIRA POTTER IS ON A MISSION TO
DECOLONISE THE WORLD OF ‘WELLNESS’.
Words Sam Prendergast
Allira Potter is a 30-year-old Yorta Yorta woman who’s shaking up
the world of ‘wellness’ in Australia with a heavy dose of real talk
and a dedication to making sure spaces are inclusive, diverse and
culturally safe. When the billionth COVID lockdown hit Victoria
last year, Geelong-based Allira made a few simple plans: do some
work, pull out the yoga mat and, to the surprise of her friends, cry.
“When someone asked what I was doing for lockdown and I told
them I might cry a lot, they were like, ‘Um, are you joking?’” Allira
laughs. “My response was, ‘No, my body is going to release a lot,
I can just feel it!’” The honesty is all part of Allira’s commitment
to normalising mental health talk and debunking the idea that
‘wellness’ means living a perfect life. Online and in person, she’s
quick to remind everyone that hard days are a normal part of existing
as a human. “Yes, I’m in this wellness space,” Allira says, “but I
suffered from really bad depression as a teenager, I still suffer from
severe anxiety, and I’m going to do what I can to normalise it.”
In her current life, Allira is a meditation teacher, a reiki healer,
a life coach, a writer, a model and an advocate for women’s
empowerment. On any given day you might find her working with
a client in her “healing space”, providing readings and guidance
over video chat, facilitating an event or hanging out with her puppy
Cosmos. Things haven’t always been this way, though. A few years
ago, Allira spent some time struggling with drugs and alcohol.
“In my early 20s I met the man I thought was the love of my life,”
she recalls. When the marriage ended, Allira initially felt a rush of
possibility. “I was like, OK, life is going to begin! Unfortunately, I fell
into this really dark space and it wasn’t until a year or so ago that
I thought, you need to stop and look after yourself.” For the next
eight months, Allira went cold turkey. “It was really uncomfortable,”
she says, “but I knew I had to do it to change my relationship with
alcohol and also get my shit together to stay afloat.”
Around the same time, Allira came across a kind of family heirloom:
a set of oracle cards gifted to her by her mum. When Allira was 17
and in the middle of end-of-school exams, her mother was diagnosed
with terminal cancer. “She was a single mum who did absolutely
everything for us,” Allira says. “I remember at one point she was
working three jobs just to put food on the table, so when she
passed away, it was like, oh my god, what am I going to do? I’m
going to have to grow up really quickly.” At first, Allira wasn’t
quite sure what to do with the oracle cards her mum had left
her. “Mum was really spiritual growing up, but being a teenager
and super-sassy, I was like, I don’t want a bar of this. I’m too cool
035
for you!” When the cards popped up in her life again, it felt like
a sign. “I just started reading them and thought, this feels really
nice, this is what I need to lean into. So I started tapping into the
spiritual side of things.”
From there, Allira pursued her own reiki training and began
exploring what the wellness world had to offer. Pretty soon,
she noticed gaps. “I remember walking into a yoga class and
thinking, why am I the only Blak person in this class? Where is the
Acknowledgement of Country? This is supposed to be a safe space
for everyone,” she says. It wasn’t just yoga classes, either. Across
the spectrum of health-related events and spaces, Allira noticed an
overwhelming whiteness, even when folks were integrating a mix
of ‘cultural practices’ into their work. (Allira says non-Indigenous
people using the didgeridoo is one of the most common examples
of cultural insensitivity in the field.) “I started engaging wellness
spaces in my town and asking questions,” Allira says. “Why are
you doing this? Why are you using that tool? Do you understand
the origins or cultural protocols?” It was an important step towards
a conversation about who feels comfortable entering a yoga room,
a healing space or even a psychologist’s office. “I want to know
that I can be looked after. Because there’s nothing worse than
walking into a white-dominated space as a BIPOC and wondering,
‘Am I safe?’”
Part of the problem with what Allira jokingly calls “white man’s
wellness” is a lack of education. “I think people need to be
uncomfortable with the minimal knowledge they have on Black
culture, on Indigenous culture or Maori culture,” Allira says.
“Be uncomfortable that you don’t know a lot and then do your
research. You don’t have to throw out all your sage and palo santo,
just understand why you’re using it.” Allira’s keen to remind folks
that when it comes to research, Google is your best friend. “You
wouldn’t believe the number of people who slide into my DMs
on Instagram asking, ‘Can you help me with an assignment, can
you answer this question?’ I’m like, no, delete. Absolutely not.”
Maintaining boundaries is a vital part of Allira’s approach to taking
care of herself while she works to decolonise wellness spaces.
“I’m always setting boundaries, because my emotional energy is
my number one priority,” Allira says. “If I could give any advice:
if you’re having a shit time, the best thing you can do is give
yourself space. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself to fix
whatever is going on, and if anything feels like a half-arsed yes,
then it’s an automatic no!”
 experience
me and my anxiety
ROWENA GRANT-FROST TRIES HARD
TO KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.
It starts with an idea: one tiny little thought that sprouts like a seed
inside my head. “You’re going out tonight,” the idea will drawl. The
idea always speaks casually, as though all of its observations are
no big deal.
“Yep,” my brain will answer back. “I am. What of it?”
“Well,” the idea will continue. “How many people are going to
be there?”
And, from this moment, the idea shoots and grows until it’s not just
a sprout, but a jungle of tangled vines and thickets that suffocates
everything else. My brain – the part of myself that I like to think is
logical and rational – tries to keep it under control, but can’t. The idea
has taken over.
“It’s going to be fine!” my brain will shout. “Just because there will be
a lot of people there doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen.
Just relax! Be yourself! It’s going to be fine!” But in the background
the idea keeps rumbling. It doesn’t go away. “How many? How many?
How many?” it whispers over and over and over again.
By the time I get to where I’m going I usually feel sick and faint and
reluctant to be there. Sometimes I’ll tip right over and have a panic
attack – my heart will race, my stomach will churn and my whole
body will feel like it’s surging towards something catastrophic. On
some level I know that what I’m feeling is nonsensical, and maybe
even a little bit silly, but brains and ideas don’t always make sense.
Sometimes they just make anxiety.
036
At some point we all experience anxiety – the nerves before a big
test, shyness around strangers, the fluttery stomach before speaking
in public. A lot of the time these nerves can be helpful, but for
some people, including me, these feelings can be consuming and
quite debilitating.
For me, the smallest things can act as a trigger: crowds, scrutiny,
situations without a clear escape. Any combination of these three
can be especially difficult; being seated in the middle of a crowded
theatre, for example, is hard. The pangs of lightheadedness start
when the house lights go down and when the curtains open, the
heart palpitations kick in and my stomach will rage and gurgle like
a squally sea.
When these feelings start, I want nothing more than to get up and go
as far away as possible. Many times I have wished for a portable flying
Segway so I can zoom up, up and away without having to push past
people to get out. But on some level I always know that I should stay
– that I need to – because if I give in, if I get up and leave, everything
will just get worse.
It took me a long time to deal with what was wrong. I was convinced I
could handle anxiety on my own; that I could cure myself with positive
thinking and high fives. But I couldn’t. I tried and I tried and I couldn’t.
Anxiety draws you in and holds on tight. You can’t just shake it off like
you would a bad movie or crawling insect. Coming to terms with my
own anxiety meant adjusting my concept of self: I had to accept that
I was emotional. I had to accept that I could be irrational. But I also
had to accept that this was OK.
With help I learnt how to weed out thoughts and silence ideas.
Shutting down anxiety can be enormously satisfying, but it’s also a
constant battle – anxiety is always lurking, just waiting to resurface.
You start a new job; you have to give a presentation; you’re in the
cleaning aisle of the supermarket. These battles can be difficult and
tiring, but every day I am winning. What keeps me going isn’t the
small victories, but the knowledge that one day I won’t have to worry
at all. One day I will win the war.
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 my project
fragile thoughts
marie-claude marquis likes to
make stuff and feel things.
INTERVIEW SOPHIE KALAGAS
Who are you and what do you do? My name is Marie-Claude
Marquis and I’m an artist from Montreal, Canada, with a rather
multidisciplinary practice. I particularly like the reappropriation of
antiques through typographic interventions, because I can give the
objects a second life, prolong their existence and reduce my own
environmental impact. I also have a company, Merci Bonsoir, for
affordable gift ideas. In this line, I offer cards, notebooks, mugs,
home accessories, bags, stationery, games and more!
Where did the idea for your decorative plates come from? At first,
they were a small part of a wall install I made for a show in 2014.
Each piece of the installation was inspired by a different sentence
from my diary. I wrote quotes on plates addressed to the boy who
had broken my heart – the plan was to present them broken, but
logistical problems made me leave them intact. Those artworks
generated a lot of reaction, so I started making more. The contrast
between the in-your-face wording and the cute and fragile material
is what I find interesting. Showing vulnerability with a mix of
strength and fragility.
Where do you find the plates? Do you hunt them down or stumble
across them? I find them in different thrift stores, flea markets,
antique shops, church basements and garage sales. It’s one of my
favourite parts of the work! I love the search and the rush when I
find a beautiful piece. I rarely buy the plates online because it takes
away all the fun! I’m always looking for floral, romantic, kitsch and
Rococo aesthetic plates. I also love when there’s imagery on the
piece, so I can give it a second degree of meaning with the quote.
What techniques do you use? The plates are hand-painted with oil
ink under two coats of varnish. People are sometimes disappointed
that they can’t eat off them… but yeah, no. They’re for decorative
purposes only.
Is it cathartic for you to make these pieces? Yes, it definitively is.
What I create is always related to where my head (and heart) is at
in that moment. Since most of my work is done alone in my studio
while thinking a lot, I’m inspired by my relationships, what I’m
039
feeling, which podcast I’m listening to and what’s happening in
my friends’ lives. Creating and writing stuff helps me have an
outside look on how I feel (I think that’s often what we lack in
understanding ourselves).
How do you want people to feel when they look at your stuff? I think
I just want people to feel something, period. Not all the plates will
speak to the viewers, but if one piece is the little push they need that
day or makes them laugh, I’ve achieved my goal, which is to connect
with them. At my shows, I often ask people what their top three
pieces are and it tells me the mood they’re in. It’s quite enlightening.
What kinds of things stress you out the most? Generally speaking,
I would say things I have no control over, because that’s at the root
of all stress and anxiety. But more precisely, in the past few years
romantic relationships have brought me a lot of stress. Watching
all my friends having kids and making big moves and not knowing
where I stood in all that really put a weird and unnecessary pressure
on me. But something kind of switched in my brain recently and my
outlook has changed. Quarantines have taught me a lot about myself
and made me enjoy spending time alone. They made me realise
we don’t have control over much except ourselves and our own
happiness, and that must always be prioritised.
What makes you truly happy? Creating, being around people I love,
starting new projects, meeting nice and inspiring humans, when
someone cooks for me (because I suck at it), travelling, sleeping,
playing board games, secondhand shopping, the summer and
dancing with my friends.
Any wise words for someone who’s going through a rough time?
Open up and talk about it. Staying alone with your unhappiness and
keeping it inside does nothing good in the long run. Vulnerability is
what allows us to make real connections with people and should be
celebrated. I’d also say to listen to your gut feeling, because it often
knows much more than your head.
Where can we see more? Online at marieclaudemarquis.com
and mercibonsoir.fun, or on Instagram at @marimarki.
 my experience

FOR RHIANA JAY, HAVING

OCD IS LIKE BEING AT ODDS
WITH HER OWN BRAIN.

I was 10 years old, standing in the shower at my dad’s place, when the thought “What if I
hate my mum?” first popped into my head. I’m not sure where it came from – maybe it was
random, or maybe I’d watched a movie with a character who hated their mum – but I found
the concept distressing. I was a real mummy’s girl, and hating my mum was just about the
worst thing I could imagine. If the thought hadn’t filled me with so much anxiety and shame,
maybe I could have dismissed it. Instead, it morphed into “I hate my mum” and became
something giant and all-consuming. Something I dwelled on for about two years. Some days,
it was all I could think about. Other days, it would pop into my head when I least expected
it. I’d be mid-sentence with my friends, chatting about playing Buffy on my Game Boy
Advance SP, and I’d suddenly remember I hated my mum. The thought never came
alone – it was always accompanied by a sinking feeling of dread.
To prove to myself that I loved my mum, I’d compete in fun little challenges. “If I make it
to the shop without stepping on any of the flattened gum on the road, I do love my mum.”
“If I see a black car in the next 30 seconds, I don’t love my mum.” “If I get to the end of
level 16 in Buffy, I do love my mum (and I’m really cool).” When I managed to ‘prove’ that
I did love my mum, I’d have some brief peace of mind. When I didn’t, I’d panic and keep
doing the challenges until I won.
I took part in these mind games discreetly, so none of my friends or family knew about them.
I wanted so badly to tell someone what was happening – to get some form of relief – but
I had no idea how to articulate my experience. All I knew was that something very bad was
happening inside my head, something that felt evil and dirty. I especially wanted to tell my
mum – she was the person who absolved all my (numerous) anxieties – but how could I explain
to her that, according to my brain and against my wishes, I might actually hate her?
Eventually, the thought became so distressing that I spilled my guts to my dad (“I’ve been
having bad thoughts,” I confessed). I remember finding it very difficult to convey the gravity of
the situation, so my dad didn’t have a clear picture of what was actually happening. “You do
love your mum, I know you do,” I remember him saying. “You just told her you love her on
the phone!” After my big revelation, he told Mum what was going on, and I remember seeing
her crying in the bath a few days later (perhaps because she thought I hated her, perhaps
because she was upset for me, or perhaps because of something entirely unrelated).
For me, this only cemented how truly horrible the situation was. My worst fear had been
realised. I’d told the grown-ups what was happening in my head… and they were just as
upset and confused as I was.
So I didn’t tell anyone about the thoughts that came next. For a while, I was worried I would
kill someone in my sleep (which would have made slumber parties kinda awkward). At about
12 years old, I remember genuinely contemplating how I could arrange to spend every night
tied to a bed in a psychiatric hospital. I also spent a lot of time convinced I had a terminal
illness. I can’t even bring myself to write down some of the thoughts I’ve obsessed over
throughout the years, because I don’t want to be associated with them.
Being at odds with your own mind is particularly distressing. When things were at their
worst, I remember feeling totally helpless, confused, sick, exhausted and alienated from
everyone around me. To cope with the situation, I distracted myself whenever I could. Usually
by watching hours and hours of movies. Every ‘Cheap Tuesday’ I’d go to Civic Video, rent as
many films as I could (10), then stay up night after night watching them. Sinking myself into
those narratives – and not having to think about my own life or mind for a moment – was
such a relief.
I’m 27 now, and I still watch an absurd number of movies. I still get anxious and obsessive
sometimes, too. But I’m 1000 per cent better than I ever thought I’d be, and I no longer spend
all day immobilised by notions that disgust me. In fact, getting caught up in distressing,
intrusive thoughts for long periods of time is quite rare for me now – so rare that my therapist
told me I don’t currently meet the criteria for having OCD. I’ve also been thinking about

042
 my experience

things I wish I’d known when I was younger, when it felt like my thoughts would kill me.
Maybe I’ll share these with my younger siblings or my future children so they don’t have the
same experience I did. For now, though, I’ll share them with you.
I wish I knew there was a name for what I was experiencing – obsessive compulsive disorder
– and that I wasn’t the only person living through it.
I wish I knew that I wasn’t my thoughts. People have about 6200 thoughts per day – if you’re
the one who hears and reacts to them, the one who can be pleased or repulsed by them,
how can you also be responsible for their contents?
I wish I knew there were tools that could help me: meditation, yoga, therapy. These days,
when I have a distressing thought, I do a 10-minute meditation where I observe my thoughts
coming and going. Or I listen to a podcast about philosophy of the mind. Or I schedule an
appointment with my psychologist. The sickening sense of doom is gone, because I know
there are solutions.

take your passing brainwaves with

a grain of salt. you are not your
thoughts – you're the mysterious
'something' that witnesses them
I wish I knew it didn’t matter that I was losing some of my childhood to darkness, because
it would only fill me with the need – the determination – to find peace. Plus, in my mid-20s
I’d rediscover a child-like sense of curiosity and awe, and seriously get off on going to the
museum to look at dinosaur bones, giant squids and rocks from the moon.
I wish I knew that one day I’d tell a therapist about all my worst thoughts – the ones
I never thought I’d be able to say out loud – and she wouldn’t lock me up in jail. In fact,
she’d tell me they were common for people with OCD, reassure me I wasn’t a bad person
and devise a plan to help.
I wish I knew that I loved my mum. That I wouldn’t kill anyone in my sleep (well, not as yet,
anyway). That I wasn’t terminally ill. That my days wouldn’t always be consumed with what
seemed like life-or-death challenges.
I wish I knew that, at age 27, while procrastinating from studying music theory and
receiving a foot rub from my partner of 6.5 years, I’d write an article about my experience
for a magazine.
And most of all, I wish I knew not to lose my Game Boy Advance SP or Buffy the Vampire
Slayer: Wrath of the Darkhul King game, because they’d be worth about 500 bucks one day.
If I can leave you with one message, it’s to take your passing brainwaves with a grain of salt.
You are not your thoughts – you’re the mysterious ‘something’ that witnesses them. And if
you have kids or younger siblings and they come to you muttering something about “having
bad thoughts”, please remind them everything will be OK. (And perhaps book them in with
a psychologist.)

043
 pots and pans

sugar and spice

WARM YOUR BELLY AND YOUR HEART
WITH THIS CLASSIC GINGER FLUFF
CAKE FROM THE COUNTRY WOMEN’S
ASSOCIATION OF VICTORIA.
Photo Cath Muscat

INGREDIENTS

4 eggs
3/4 cup (165g) white sugar
pinch of salt
1 dessertspoon (12ml) golden syrup
1/2 cup (60g) cornflour
2 dessertspoons (24ml) plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
whipped cream, to serve
chopped glacé ginger and icing sugar

HOW TO

Beat eggs, sugar and salt for 20 minutes using an electric mixer.
Add golden syrup.
Sift the cornflour, flour, spices, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and
cream of tartar together twice. Then, fold into the egg mixture.
Pour the mixture into two greased sandwich tins, approximately
21cm x 6cm deep.
Bake in a moderate oven for 15 to 20 minutes. To test if a sponge
is done, gently press the centre of the sponge with your finger.
If an impression remains, the cake will require more cooking;
if cooked, it will spring back when lightly pressed.
When taking a sponge out of the oven, run a knife around the edge
immediately to free the cake, or it may collapse. Turn the cake out
onto a wire cake rack covered with a tea towel.
Once the cake is cooled, spread whipped cream between the layers.
Dust with icing sugar and top with glacé ginger, or ice as desired.
Makes one 21cm layered cake.

This is an edited extract from From

Our Kitchen to Yours: 185 favourite
recipes from The Country Women’s
Association of Victoria Inc. It’s available
for $36.99 from murdochbooks.com.au
and we’re thrilled to have five copies to
give away – enter the draw by visiting
frankie.com.au/win

045
 hands on

and now for some

ARTWORK CASEY SCHUURMAN

047
 STUCK FOR IDEAS?
Ask your friends and family!
Or think back on some of the
nice things people have said
about you in the past.

clean out take some

your bag
deep breaths
change your focus
write down make your bed
nice things move your body
get some fresh air for five minutes listen to music
make a list of mini goals
ask for help watch a funny
challenge your dog video
thoughts text a friend drink some water
 Draw some stuff that makes you smile
1.
2. 3.
4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

Who can you ask for help

or support if you need?
listen to calming music knit a beanie

drink lots of water see a gig with a pal

 something
smooth and
round
jot down some things you’ve achieved
that past you would be very proud of
Photo Lukasz Wierzbowski
 try this at home

sports for the non-sporty

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY CAN FLOOD YOU WITH
HAPPY-MAKING HORMONES, BUT DON’T
BE PUT OFF IF YOU’RE NOT AN ‘ATHLETIC’
TYPE – THESE PASTIMES DON’T REQUIRE
SNEAKERS OR BALL-HANDLING SKILLS.
Words Rowena Grant-Frost

THROWING A FRISBEE IN THE PARK (MAYBE AT SUNSET WHEN

THE LIGHT IS NICE) I own a bright pink frisbee with a hole in the
middle, which glides through the air like a big spinny ‘O’. There
are lots of benefits to playing frisbee: you get to leap dramatically
through the air; you attract lots of pooches who want to join in;
and even if you can’t catch or throw or jump, you can still breathe
in the twilight air and play in the shadows of tall gum trees. Which
is maybe nicer than being good at a weird disc game, anyway.
DANCING Here’s the most important piece of dancing advice you’ll
ever receive: throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care. The
first part is easy (put your hands up); the second part (give yourself
over to the music and rhythm without self-consciousness) is a little
harder. I’m a very bad dancer, but when I’m home alone, I like to
bop and stomp and jump until I forget about whether I’m good or
bad, and just feel joy from wriggling. (This can also be achieved at
a dance class, if the ‘without self-consciousness’ part comes
easier to you.)
HULA-HOOPING AND/OR SKIPPING If twirling is your idea of a very
good sporty time, then you’re going to enjoy the mighty hula-hoop.
If jumping up and down is your idea of a very good sporty time,
then get your hot little hands on a humble skipping rope. Both
hula-hoops and skipping ropes are an extremely good way of doing
something a little bit sporty without having to do anything sporty at
all. Plus, you don’t need to involve anyone else. Bonus.
NEIGHBOURHOOD HIKING One of my favourite hobbies is wandering
around, looking at houses and imagining what it might be like
to live in them. They don’t have to be nice or anything. You can
still imagine what it would be like to live in a lopsided, cat-filled
flophouse. You also don’t need a plan or a map: you can just
walk out your front door and go in whichever direction you like,
and discover something new or old, unexpected or wonderful.
BOWLS, BOWLING OR BOCCE Bowls is such an excellent non-sporty
sport that sometimes you drink beer and don’t wear shoes when
you’re playing it. Same with bowling, only you have to wear two-tone
clown shoes. Bocce is a bit like bowls and bowling, only it dates
back to the Roman Empire (apparently). Basically, your choice is
between: 1) no shoes; 2) shoes; 3) pretending that you’re living in
the 1st century.
SWIMMING AND/OR FLOATING Water is about 800 times denser
than air, which is probably why swimming is at least ONE MILLION
times harder than walking. Oh, and swimming also makes breathing
very difficult. Terrific. But swimming is also very good: it’s soothingly
repetitive; silent; uses a bunch of different muscles in your whole
entire body; and when you finally figure out how to coordinate your
legs, arms and breathing at the same time, you feel so happy and
accomplished, like you’ve just done something momentous.
KICKBOXING OR KARATE OR WRESTLING OR SOMETHING
In light of my reluctance to dance in public, I’ve recently taken up
kickboxing, because I thought it might improve my very, very bad
coordination. I’m hopeless at kickboxing. I also don’t care. Every
week I’m getting better at figuring out my left from my right, and
I can now do tiny combinations of arm and foot movements. If you
ever see a lady wildly punching and kicking her way around
a dancefloor: that’s me.

055
 the helpers
the friendship bench
in zimbabwe, a special program encourages
therapy with local grandmas.
WORDS KATE STANTON
Dealing with depression is hard enough, but what if – on top of just
getting through the day – you had to compete with a million other
people to see a therapist? What if you had to travel hundreds of
kilometres to pick up your meds? It would be pretty damn difficult
to get the help you needed.
In Zimbabwe, there are fewer than 20 psychiatrists working in a
country of 15 million people. It’s similar in much of sub-Saharan
Africa, where there’s about one psychiatrist for every 1.5 million
individuals. Though folks all over the world struggle with lack of
access to mental health services, the consequences are especially
dire in low- to middle-income countries, where nearly 80 per cent of
global suicides occur, according to the World Health Organization. So,
where do you find hundreds of much-needed mental health workers –
or at least, people with great listening skills and lots of empathy?
Dr Dixon Chibanda, a University of Zimbabwe professor, has come
up with a clever solution: grandmothers. Dr Chibanda was one of
the country’s few psychiatrists back in 2005, when a 26-year-old
patient named Erica never turned up to her appointment. Erica, who
had severe depression, lived about 250 kilometres from his office in
Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. When Dr Chibanda asked Erica’s mother
where she was, he found out she hadn’t been able to scrape together
her $15 bus fare to the city. Sadly, Erica had taken her own life.
“It struck me at the very core of my being,” he said in a 2017 TED Talk.
“It made me realise that it just wasn’t going to work, expecting people
to come to me.” Around the same time, President Robert Mugabe’s
campaign to clear out the highly populated slums (described as
an operation to “remove the filth”) had displaced and traumatised
hundreds of thousands of people. Dr Chibanda knew that distressed
Zimbabweans needed help, and they needed it closer to home. As it
turned out, the perfect people for the job were hiding in plain sight.
“It suddenly dawned on me that, actually, one of the most reliable
resources we have in Africa is grandmothers,” he said. In Zimbabwe,
056
grandmothers are some of the most respected members of the
community. Older women are often the keepers of local wisdom and
caretakers of large families, so folks are used to going to them for
help. Plus, Dr Chibanda was already working with a group assigned
to primary health care clinics as health promoters: they organised
vaccine drives, HIV testing and other initiatives.
He figured he could teach these hard-working nannas to be a
frontline mental health resource for people who would likely never
see a professional psychiatrist. In 2006, he brought together his first
group of matriarchs and trained them in an adapted form of cognitive
behavioural therapy (which focuses on challenging negative thoughts
and developing problem-solving strategies). There was no space
inside local clinics for them to work, so the grandmothers met with
clients outside, on designated wooden benches under the trees.
Thus, the Friendship Bench was born.
In the years since, the Friendship Bench team has trained more than
700 lay mental health workers in problem-solving therapy, which they
deliver for free across more than 70 communities in Zimbabwe. So
far, they’ve seen over 65,000 clients. And it turns out the grannies do
a bang-up job. A 2016 clinical trial found that people who met with
them for just six sessions significantly reduced their symptoms of
depression and anxiety. (Alas, initial attempts to train grandfathers
proved less successful; they just weren’t as good at listening.)
“The grandmothers were kind of the perfect group,” says Dr Ruth
Verhey, the Friendship Bench’s director of programs. “They were in
touch with a lot of people and were very respected, especially because
they actually live in the same communities where they work.” The
Friendship Bench’s form of talk therapy is unique, Dr Verhey says,
because it helps Zimbabweans work through their problems in a way
that makes sense to them. The grandmothers helped Dr Chibanda
and his team understand that Western-style therapy doesn’t always
translate. In Zimbabwe’s Shona language, for example, there’s no
direct equivalent for ‘depression’, but they do have a concept called
kufungisisa, or ‘thinking too much’.
“The Friendship Bench is different to when you go to your therapist,”
Dr Verhey says. Mental ill-health in Zimbabwe is often associated with
witchcraft or other superstitious beliefs. There’s little understanding
that depression and anxiety are common, treatable illnesses, so the
grandmothers have to help the client recognise how kufungisisa has
affected them. “We have to normalise that experience for the client
so it doesn’t seem so scary.”
When a client sits down on a Friendship Bench, a grandmother
welcomes them and builds a rapport, before asking them to share
their story. They then assess the client for mental illness using a
14-step questionnaire, which asks about the client’s sleep, whether
they cry regularly and other simple questions (if a higher level of care
is deemed necessary, they’ll be guided towards appropriate services).
The grandmother and the client work to identify the sources of their
distress. Together, they pick one issue to tackle, such as owing money
or losing a child, then the grandmother guides the client towards a
plan of action to help with the problem. “The grandmother is trained
to help them classify their issue a bit,” Dr Verhey says. “Maybe they
have a financial problem, or a marital problem, or a parental problem.
They try to show the client how a bigger problem can be broken down
into smaller ones so they’re not so overwhelming.”
The simple act of giving someone the space and time to air their
feelings – and to work through them with another person – helps
them think more creatively about ways to deal with their issues, and
become more empowered in the process. “It’s about being listened
to, having a space to turn to and not being judged,” Dr Verhey says.
She’s found the grandmothers benefit from the program, too. For
one, they earn an income, which helps them support their children
and grandchildren. And they’re also pleased to help people who are
suffering in their communities. “We thought it might be hard on them
057
to talk to people about terrible stuff,” Dr Verhey says. “But there’s
hardly any depression or anxiety among them. It’s because they feel
that sense of worth.”
Friendship Bench clients who’ve finished their counselling sessions
are introduced to a peer-led support group called Circle Kubatana
Tose, which means ‘holding hands together’. Participants bond and
share personal stories while working on income-generating projects
like gardening or crocheting bags from recycled materials. The
groups provide ongoing support and a sense of community – each
member now understands the benefits of both opening up and
listening. But they also address a fundamental hardship at the root of
many of their problems: poverty. About 60 per cent of Zimbabweans
are going hungry, according to the World Food Programme. Food
insecurity exacerbates mental illness, but the reverse is true, too:
mental illness can prevent people from working, making money and
taking care of their families. That’s why accessible mental health care
is such an important part of anti-poverty and public health measures.
“We can all get depressed, no matter where we grew up or
what we have, but the Friendship Bench operates in the poorest
communities,” Dr Verhey says. “People are struggling and
disenfranchised and everything hits them harder.” The program
has proved so successful in Zimbabwe that it’s expanded to other
countries in Africa – such as Kenya and Malawi – and beyond.
There are even three Friendship Benches in New York, brought to
Harlem and the Bronx by folks familiar with Dr Chibanda’s work.
Dr Verhey says the Friendship Bench is an affordable and accessible
way to approach a universal problem. There are nearly 300 million
people around the world suffering from depression, and they might
just benefit greatly from someone to talk to. “If we talk to someone
who has really listened actively, paid attention to what we’ve said, and
is interested in what we're going through, we do feel better, right? You
can see things more clearly from someone else’s perspective.”
Photo Hilary Walker
 crafty

your very own yay

MAKE YOURSELF A SET OF CHEERFUL
AND SUPPORTIVE PILLOWS THAT WILL
ACT AS A VISUAL HIGH-FIVE EVERY
TIME YOU’RE NEAR.
Words and project Pip Lincolne

MATERIALS Now, pin the paper letters to the two layers of fabric and nicely
2m x 1.5m of calico cut out two Ys and one A.

a roll of brown or white paper or newspaper to make your ‘pattern’ Pin and sew the trim and embellishments to the front piece of
your letters. You can hand-stitch them in matching cotton or
pins machine-sew them in whatever thread you have in your machine.
scissors Just go crazy here and do whatever looks nice to you.
2m of various pretty trims Now pin the back of the letters to the front, sandwiching the trims
needle and thread to match fabric inside and matching all the edges neatly.

1 large bag of toy stuffing or some repurposed stuffing from an old
cushion or pillow
sewing machine and thread to match fabric
OPTIONAL:
sequins, beads and other fancy things to sew on
HOW TO
First up, fold your calico in half so there are two layers. You want the
long, 2m bit to be the folded edge.
Next you’ll need to draw your letter templates onto the paper. For this
project you’ll obviously need a Y and an A! (Feel free to make up your
own words, though: wow, rad and ace could work well. Or fan-dabby-
tastic for those with time on their hands.)
Your letters need to be about 3cm larger all the way around than your
desired end result. Choose an angular typeface if you like, or channel
your primary school bubble writing. Keep in mind they also need to fit
onto the folded-up fabric, so double-check before you get too happy
with the scissors and make any required adjustments to letter size.
Stitch all the way around the Y letters with a 2cm seam allowance,
leaving a gap of about 10cm so you can pop in the stuffing. Then
stitch around the outside of the A in the same way, leaving a gap
again. Don’t stitch the middle ‘hole’ in the A, because if you do,
you will have trouble turning it out the right way again.
Turn right side out. See how cute that looks already!
Now you’ll be left with one gap in each letter and the centre of
the A still unsewn. Hand-stitch the centre of the A, sewing the
front and back together and tucking the raw edges in as you go.
(Or machine-stitch the A’s centre and let the raw edges hang out,
rustic-style.)
Next, stuff your letters evenly and neatly using the 10cm gap you
left. A chopstick or large knitting needle might help with poking
the stuffing into awkward bits.
Finally, fold the raw edges under and hand-sew each letter closed.
Trim any loose ends, plump up your pillows and cosy up to your
very own YAY!
Note: You could make these much bigger or much smaller, too!
It all depends on space and how much yay you want in your life.

059
 learn something new
let’s get physical
science proves your feelings aren’t all in
your head – they’re in your body, too.
WORDS CHRIS HARRIGAN
Feeling sad for no reason? Check your spleen: it may be overflowing
with bile.
That, at least, was the diagnosis you would have received in Ancient
Greece, where everything from the common cold to mental illness
was blamed on one bodily fluid or another. Anxious? Too much
phlegm in your brain. Manic? It’s all that blood in your liver.
Apply a couple of leeches and get some bed rest. You’ll feel
better in the morning.
It’s easy to laugh at these ideas now, but the theory that our health is
connected to the amount of phlegm, bile or blood in our organs only
fell out of favour in the 1850s, when it was discovered that germs,
not disgusting liquids, were responsible for many of our physical
ailments. It’s taken science a bit longer to crack what’s going on with
mental illness (in many ways it’s still only scratching the surface). But
while the Greeks may have been wrong about phlegm and bile, they
were right about one thing: our emotions, moods and mental states
actually are the result of very real, very physical – and yes, very slimy
– substances residing somewhere in our bodies.
Nowadays we call these substances hormones: proteins and amino
acids responsible for much of how we feel day to day. The rush of
happiness when you’re reunited with a loved one? That’s a hormone.
The moment of panic when you realise you left the stove on? That’s a
hormone. The fleeting sense of satisfaction when someone likes your
Instagram post? You guessed it – that’s a hormone, secreted into your
bloodstream by a gland in your endocrine system, and pulling the
emotional levers in your brain to make you feel a certain way.
When everything’s going well, these hormones help you get on with
the task of staying alive. A boost of cortisol in the morning helps you
wake up, while a shot of melatonin at night helps you get to sleep.
There are hormones to tell you when you’re hungry and hormones to
tell you when you’re full. And then there are the hormones that make
you relax and ones that make you freak out – those are the chemicals
we need to keep an eye on if we want to live happy, emotionally
balanced lives.
060
Picture a cavewoman, chilling in the low winter sun of some ancient
forest. Suddenly, a leopard jumps out from behind a tree. Before our
hero even registers what’s happening, the emotional centre of her
brain – her amygdala – identifies the leopard as a threat, triggering
the release of adrenaline throughout her body. Her heart starts to
race and her breathing speeds up. Her blood vessels dilate so her
muscles have enough oxygen to spring into action, as do her pupils,
so she can take in more information. At the same time, energy is
diverted away from her non-essential functions. She stops digesting,
her mouth stops producing saliva, and her nerves go mute. She’s
ready to fight or flee, making it more likely she’ll see another day.
This is the textbook example of hormones working in our favour. But
while leopards are no longer the textbook example of a day-to-day
threat (at least, not in Australia), our flight-or-fight responses have
found plenty to replace them with. Work, bills, traffic – these minor
annoyances all register as stressors, each one soaking our brains
in little bursts of cortisol. And over long enough periods of time,
that cortisol can start to change the way our bodies interpret the
world around us. Scans show that the amygdalas of anxious people
routinely identify leopard-like threats in everyday situations, causing
their bodies to run hot with adrenaline, which results in what we call
a panic attack.
A similar glitch may be to blame for depression. When you feel happy,
your brain is swamped with serotonin, a feel-good hormone usually
stored in the gut. According to one theory, depressed people’s bodies
produce inadequate amounts of serotonin, which causes them to
feel down. Simply up the amount of serotonin in their brains using
drugs such as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or
‘antidepressants’) and – hey presto – their world suddenly starts to
look a little sunnier.
That, at any rate, was the received wisdom around depression for
much of the 20th century. But the psychiatric community is far
from united on this view. According to a growing body of research,
depressed people’s bodies actually have more than enough serotonin
swooshing around in them – yet they’re depressed all the same.
 learn something new
The real culprit may be society itself. According to anthropologists,
humans evolved to live in small communities with strong social
bonds, doing practical things like hunting and hut-building. Many of
us now live in big cities with increasingly small social circles, and
spend upwards of eight hours a day producing intangible things
on computer screens. This may be the reason we’re so unhappy:
because our deeply ingrained needs for purpose and connection are
no longer being taken care of (even if our biological needs are).
If that all sounds a bit hippy-dippy, rest assured that genes certainly
play a role as well. Anxiety and depression run in families, leading
many scientists to argue that “diseases of the mind” are as
inheritable as asthma or diabetes. That said, not everyone who has
a family member with a mental illness will develop it – and many
with no family history do. At most, your genes may make you more
or less susceptible to developing a mental illness, but they’re not
your destiny.
It’s been over a hundred years since Sigmund Freud started asking
people about their mothers, and we still don’t know whether the
causes of poor mental health are chemical, environmental or genetic
(or to what extent and in what ratio all three may be to blame). But
we do know one thing for sure: being unhappy, whatever the cause,
is no good for you in the long run. Depressed and anxious people
often complain of feeling nauseous, a sign that their fight-or-flight
responses have diverted too much energy away from their stomachs.
Lethargy is also common: a full-body hangover from constant
adrenaline surges. Meanwhile, too much cortisol in your system can
cause your hippocampus to shrink (and your amygdala to enlarge),
leading to memory loss, disrupted sleep and changes to the way you
process emotions.
How, then, to keep our brains from turning against us? On this
topic the jury is sadly still out, though there are a few lifestyle
tweaks we might consider. Recent studies have shown a strong link
between depression and inflammation, leading some researchers to
speculate that depression may be caused by an overactive immune
system. If true, cutting down on pro-inflammatory foods like refined
061
carbohydrates and trans fats may go some way towards helping us
feel better. (Though, like genetics and brain chemistry, diet is only
one piece in a complicated puzzle.)
Caffeine has also been in the spotlight. While someone with no
history of anxiety is unlikely to experience a panic attack over a
cappuccino alone, those susceptible to the experience might want to
monitor their intake. Caffeine’s side effects – jitteriness and irritability
– closely resemble those of generalised anxiety disorder, and their
mere presence is thought to be able to reverse-engineer actual panic
attacks in people prone to the condition. (Vigorous exercise, along
with other activities that increase your heart rate, can have the
same effect.)
But before you give up your morning ritual, there’s also evidence that
coffee can be good for you. Caffeine allows the feel-good hormone
dopamine to flow more freely around your brain, leading to enhanced
feelings of wellbeing in many drinkers. We have the numbers to back
this up: a Harvard study of over 50,000 people found those who drank
at least four cups of coffee per day had a 20 per cent reduced risk of
depression. All of which is… confusing. Drinking coffee makes us feel
happy, except when it doesn’t. Exercising boosts our endorphin levels,
unless it triggers our cortisol to spike. And SSRIs flood our brains
with serotonin, except maybe serotonin’s not the issue.
It’s difficult to know exactly what to do with the advice. And that
confusion is broadly representative of where science is today
regarding mental health in general. We’ve come a long way since the
days of blaming everything on phlegm and bile; we know which parts
of the brain are responsible for our feelings and emotions, from the
lobes to the chemicals, right down to the individual neurons. Yet we
still don’t know what causes depression and anxiety, or how we
might hope to cure them once and for all.
What’s clear, though, is that something is happening inside our
brains when we’re going through a bad patch. Your head, like your
spleen or gallbladder, is a physical thing that needs taking care of.
Just leave the leeches out of it for now.
 experience

community can be discovered in unexpected

places. for these three, they include online
chat groups, drag competitions and (literally)
their own backyard.
AS TOLD TO EMMA DO

063
 experience
I’ve been doing live music photography for around seven years now.
About two years ago, I joined a Facebook group called Girls in the
Photo Pit. Music photography is a male-dominated space, so this
group is essentially for female-identifying photographers to share
their experiences and successes, as well as job opportunities. We
talk openly about things like how much to charge for a job too, which
is really helpful. Initially, I thought it would be a good way to network
and just meet new people, but then I felt like I needed to see if my
experiences in the industry were normal, because there’s a lot of
sexist stuff that goes on.
The classic scenario is when you're out on a job at a show and the
manager – or not even the manager, just some random – comes up
to you and says, “Are you dating the drummer?” And you’re like, “No!
I’m here because I’m working!” Everyone assumes you're sleeping
with the band! There are also a lot of opportunities I’ve missed out on,
as a woman. For example, I’ve asked my male photographer friends
how much they charged for a job or how they got a certain job, and
they’ve said, “Yeah, I just asked them for $500.” But when I asked the
same person, they wanted me to do it for free! And they refused to
pay me when I asked for money! There are a lot of stories like that in
the group, which has helped me see that I’m not the only one. I used
to have trouble asking for money and shot for free because I’d rather
avoid the situation. But this group has encouraged us all to make
people aware of our process, so they understand we’re professionals.
Seeing other people share their experiences has been comforting.
It’s nice to not feel alone.
When you go out and take photos at a live show, there’s no chance
to talk to the other photographers. It’s dark, you can’t really see
them, you’ve only got three songs to shoot and you’re stressed about
getting the shot. You don’t talk afterwards, because you’ve always
064
got something on. So this group has helped us connect properly on
both a personal and professional level. You might message someone
with a question, then you just go on and talk about your personal lives
after that. I’ve become close friends with a couple of people through
the group and we talk pretty much every second day now.
Outside the online space, we try to meet up every couple of months.
There are around 250 people in the group, mostly from Melbourne,
and around 30 rock up to hang out. It’s usually at a pub – we book a
couple of tables, get drinks and food. It’s like catching up with a big
friendship group. It’s really nice for me because my family and friends
don’t do what I do, so I’ve always felt alone, in that people don’t
relate to my work. When I meet with the group, I don’t have to explain
everything, which is refreshing. I just breeze through a story and
they’ll understand exactly what I mean. And of course, they can relate
and add to the conversation so I don’t feel like I’m boring them with
pointless information like I would with other people.
Finding this group has been super-important for my confidence.
I actually hate talking! I’ve always felt like such an awkward person,
so I would never have branched out socially or gone and met up with
someone I met online before this. I would have just stayed in my
little bubble. But over the past two years, the group has helped
me realise that I’m not an idiot. I’m smart, I’m actually good at
what I do and I should be confident in that. It comes down to reading
other people’s experiences and not feeling alone.
I don’t think you necessarily need to ‘put yourself out there’ to find
your community. Just surround yourself with people within your
interests. You’ll end up feeling more included, more confident, and
you’ll find your people. I did it through a Facebook group because
I hate talking to people, and in the end, that gave me more
confidence to go out and socialise.
Photo Monique Pizzica
Photo Lauren Anne
 experience
I grew up in Kurri Kurri in New South Wales. It’s small and
predominantly white, and I always felt like an outsider because there
weren't many other Indigenous people (or Indigenous-presenting
people). For the longest time, I hated the colour of my skin. Kids are
absolutely savage. They’d say racist things they’d clearly heard from
home and I copped a lot of it. In response, I developed a very quick
wit. If someone tried to say something racist or mean towards me,
I would fire back with something equally humiliating. That was my
way of defending myself without getting physical.
Towards the middle of high school, I got to a point where I stopped
trying to deny it. I was like, “I’m Indigenous and I’m not going to be
ashamed of it anymore.” But I really didn’t want to come to terms
with my sexuality. Unlike my skin colour, I could hide it. I didn't fully
accept my sexuality until I was about 22 and living in Dubbo. I just got
tired of fighting with myself. I’d moved to Dubbo to study and work
at 18. When I came out, I was thrown at how easy it was. My family,
friends, nan and pop were so supportive. I thought, “I’ve done the
hard part, now it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”
In 2015, I was at the Dubbo council chambers during the marriage
equality debate. One of the council members said he didn’t believe
homosexuality was part of Indigenous culture, so for the Pride march,
I wore a dress made out of the Indigenous flag and the gay pride flag.
It was a little ‘f– you’, and the first time I did drag. I wasn’t planning
on it – I was just trying to do something that would piss him off and
send a powerful message that the queer Indigenous community
wouldn’t stand for his bullcrap thinking.
I had a few friends who also did drag, but I didn’t know that many
people when I started. I didn’t meet any other Indigenous drag
queens until I did Miss First Nation in 2017, which just blew my mind.
I spent the week sharing a room with Nova Gina and we got along
067
amazingly. That was when I started to find my community and some
of my closest friends. When I did Miss First Nation for the second
time in 2019, all us queens who competed created a group chat that
we’re still in today. We talk pretty much daily. We live in different
cities, but we see each other any chance we can. And when we do,
it’s like no time has passed.
Now I have this sisterhood of Indigenous queens who I consider my
family. We've always got each other to turn to, whether it’s problems
with other queens or just in everyday life. We’re our home away
from home. We get each other more than a non-Indigenous drag
queen would, because we know the struggles: the stigma we face as
Indigenous people, as queer people, and as drag queens. The First
Nations sisterhood has lived it, so there are certain things you
don’t need to preface in conversation. It makes it so much easier
to share experiences.
I think I’m less of a shithead now that I’ve been brought into this
community. I used to be a bit of a troll who shit-stirred for shits and
giggles, but now I see things from different perspectives and am
not so quick to judge or attack someone. I’m a lot more confident
in my drag, as well. I’ve got this support network where we’re
constantly uplifting each other. My favourite crowd to perform for is
an Indigenous crowd, because no matter what you do, they live for
you. Seeing you up there doing your thing and not hiding makes
them so proud. The energy is absolutely electric. Other pockets of
the queer community want to see you succeed, but sometimes don’t
want to see you do better than them. In the Indigenous community,
a win for one is a win for all. Even though we’re just men in dresses
having a good time, we’re all aware that we’re paving the way for
the next generation, and that it’ll be easier for the next person.
That fills us with joy and purpose.
 experience
rosie shepherd
My partner and I moved from Sydney to Lawson in the Blue
Mountains around three and a half years ago. I didn’t really know
anyone and hadn’t spent heaps of time there, but was so certain I
wanted to move. In the first year, I was still travelling back and forth
to Sydney for work, and Sydney friends would come stay with us for
a holiday, so we had people visiting every week. Because of that,
I hadn’t invested much time into meeting locals.
By the time I had my daughter Nell, I’d stopped travelling to Sydney
and most friends had already stayed with us. The novelty wore
off a bit. I couldn’t remember the last time I had to actively make
friends and didn’t know where to start. I ended up doing a gardening
workshop at Lyttleton Stores Co-operative – my local grocery store –
and got to know Manu the garden coordinator. She then started Farm
It Forward, an initiative that connects landowners who have excess
land with young people who have or want to gain farming experience.
When Manu asked if I’d be interested in having my garden as part of
the initiative, it was a no-brainer.
During one of those Farm It Forward sessions, I was talking with a
volunteer about how great it would be to have a separate session for
parents and kids who want to get their hands dirty. I’d started going
to some of the community-run parent groups in the area, but because
they’re based on demographics (you live in the same area, your
children are the same age) rather than a common interest, I didn’t
find many like-minded people. The Farm It Forward group was keen
for me to have this separate initiative, so I started with two or three
people at my place – just friends of friends or people who knew the
Farm It Forward coordinators. Then it kept growing, and now we
have 10 families who come on different weeks.
That’s when I felt like I found my people. They’re all here because
they’re interested in learning about how to grow vegetables, and
068
want to expose their kids to that. It’s nice, because there are kids of
different ages, which is something they wouldn’t get at day care.
If there’s something to do in the garden, we all get together and plant
seedlings and do some weeding with the kids. Or if there’s a parent
who needs help setting up a garden at their place, we go over and
do that. When it slows down in the winter, we just chat while the kids
play. It’s amazing because it means my daughter’s not asking me for
my attention every 10 seconds, and I can actually hold a conversation.
I’ve found some of my closest friends in this group, which wasn’t
something I expected. When I first got pregnant, people suggested
I start a meal train (where people volunteer to cook a meal for a
new parent), but I’d just moved up here and didn’t feel like anyone
would jump on board – I didn’t feel deserving! It feels so different
now that I’m pregnant with my second child. I’ve actually spent time
jumping on other people’s meal trains and making an effort to give
to the community – as a result, I feel better about asking people to
contribute to mine. I don’t think you volunteer to get something in
return, but when you try to help the community in some way, these
things naturally happen.
I’m so grateful to have met these mums, and was surprised to hear
that some of them had been here even longer than me and not found
their people until this playgroup started. It can be hard to make
friends in the Mountains because it’s quite spread out. You might sit
next to someone at a café, have a good chat and think, “We could be
friends,” but not feel comfortable asking for their number. It’s like
dating! I’m quite introverted and am not very good at putting myself
out there, but I’ve realised other people are after the same thing:
connection. They’re probably thinking what you’re thinking: we got
along really well, so how do we hang out again? They’d be thankful
if I approached it first.
Photo Maja Baska
 road test
ah-choo-choose you
BENJAMIN LAW GETS UP CLOSE
AND SNOTTY WITH SEVERAL
PACKS OF TISSUES.
Illustrations Dawn Tan
FINESSE UNISOFT SOFT WHITE
These tissues definitely know their market. Hydrangeas (unofficial
flower of grannies) are plastered all over the box; they’re also
cheap as chips and rough as guts. Ladies and gentlemen: we
now have an official tissue for seniors on the pension! A bog
standard two-ply, there’s nothing gentle or glamorous about
the texture of this tissue, and I also detected the faintest whiff
of mustiness, like they’d been stored in a cellar along with old
clothes, mouldering books and possibly bodies. On the plus
side, at least it’s got one of those crafty origami push-up-
from-the-bottom doohickies at the base, so you don’t have to
desperately scramble around for the last few tissues with a pair
of chopsticks. ECO CRED: Made in Australia; FSC-certified.
VERDICT: A great purchase if you’ve recently lost all sense of
smell and touch.
070
SORBENT EUCALYPTUS
Look, I always appreciate the fragrance of eucalyptus when I’m
bedridden with a cold, but let’s face it: you’re not a koala, it’s
going to cure fuck-all. What you need when you’re near death is
a lovely, soft aloe vera infusion to ensure your nose doesn’t feel
lacerated every time you wipe it. Happily, this tissue combines
the best of both worlds, and throws in refreshing peppermint
and sinus-cleansing camphor too, just because. As a result,
this smells like Minties, Vicks VapoRub and your granddad all
at once. Even though this is only two-ply, the quilting is decent,
and the packaging is mild and inoffensive – the kind of thing
you’d find at a mid-price, three-star family hotel. Next to the tiny
soaps and inexplicable shoe horn. ECO CRED: PEFC-certified;
made in Australia. VERDICT: Buy it as part of a care package
for someone sick or in hospital.
 road test
DAISO MINI POCKET TISSUES
An admission: I’m one of those idiotic people who’s a sucker
for all things cute and kawaii. Even though I’m a 30-something
adult, I own a thermos in the shape of a penguin where the water
passes through its beak, much to the irritation of my partner.
Which is why you’d think I’d be into these objectively cute tissues.
But the studied naïveté – the phrases “café time” and “time of
healing” are all over the cartoony packets – is a little irritating.
Which is to say, these tissues are excellent if you’re the parent of
young children. But if you’ve been through puberty and want to
be taken seriously in the actual world, avoid them. ECO CRED:
Made in Japan, which means they travelled a fair way to get to
you. And nowhere does it say that the pulp is sourced from a
sustainable forest. Fail. VERDICT: Even if you are buying these
for kids, there are better options for the environment.
This article first appeared in frankie issue 66.
SEVENTH GENERATION
God, you really have to be a committed environmentalist to find any
decent 100 per cent recycled tissues on the supermarket shelf, but
Seventh Generation promises to do the job. Only problem is, these
tissues are thinner than the Shroud of Turin after a heavy wash
cycle. Snot/tears/blood/whatever won’t quite absorb into these
tissues. Instead, they’ll filter out any major proteins, before allowing
everything else to pass through like a sieve. Still, nice packaging.
ECO CRED: The 100 per cent recycled aspect might make it seem
like these tissues are an environmentally decent choice, but keep
in mind they’re from the US. That’s a lotta petrol burnt up to get
these snot rags to your face. VERDICT: Buy them if you want your
colleagues and friends to know you love trees and shit. Just hope
they ignore the fact you’re tearing through the tissues at twice the
rate because they’re so thin.
071
QUILTON ALOE VERA
Like Finesse, Quilton also has that neat origami lifty thing, but
they have a name for it! (The Tissue Elevator!) It also boasts a nifty
opening (a phrase I promise never to use again) in the shape of
Quilton’s logo, and as for the tissues themselves, my god. I don’t
know if it’s the aloe vera or the fact they’re three-ply, but this is
what you need when you’re having a sob, or at the arse-end of a
cold where you feel like Michael Jackson in that phase when his
nose could’ve blown off with a mild breeze. It’s the closest you’ll get
to rubbing a newborn’s arse over your face without going to prison.
ECO CRED: After an exhaustive stint of investigative journalism (i.e.
an email to Quilton HQ) I can confirm that all their tissues come
from “either PEFC or FSC-certified sources”. VERDICT: Sure, the
packaging is a little ‘1980s family resort’, but this is the best of
the bunch when you’re feeling down in the dumps.
KLEENEX MANSIZE
OK, so from what I gather, these are MANSIZE tissues because
MAN is BIG and only MAN CAN USE BIG TISSUE because MAN
HAS BIG HANDS or whatever. (I’ve also seen them in an alternative
cricket-themed box, because MAN PLAYS CRICKET and let’s just
ignore the fact that Australia has the most successful women’s
cricket team of all time.) Honestly, the retrograde marketing of this
product is making me feel unexpectedly irritated. It’s a pity, because
these giant tissues are actually great when you have an epic cold.
But let’s face it: the only reason they’re calling it ‘man sized’ is
because these tissues are far better at absorbing semen after a
sad wank. And that’s what I want all of you to think of whenever
you see these tissues. ECO CRED: FSC-certified. Weirdly, made
in Australia and packed in China. VERDICT: Get these tissues for
your chauvinist grandfather.
 rant
mmm, feelings, yum
ELEANOR ROBERTSON EXPLORES
EMOTIONAL EATING WITH A SIDE
OF MASHED POTATOES.
Do you eat your feelings? Are you eating your feelings right now, you
rascal? It’s OK, you can tell me. Eating your feelings is often thought
of as poor emotional regulation, and if you let someone know you’re
about to drown your sorrows in a bowl of pasta topped with pasta
topped with cheese, they’re probably going to assume you’re in the
early stages of an eating disorder. But I think it’s OK to occasionally
mash potatoes until your arms hurt and eat them alone in your
bedroom, if that’s what it takes to help you deal with the fact you’re
a slow learner who makes the same romantic mistakes over and
over again. Why did I ignore that obvious red flag? Eat a spoonful of
mashed potatoes. What the hell is wrong with me?! More potatoes.
Repeat this process until the potatoes are gone, and you’re so sleepy
from the carb consumption that all you’re good for is sending dog
videos to your friends and thinking how funny it is that Muppets
have people’s arms up their bums. Problem solved!
Although my go-to home remedies for having a feeling are listening
to Portishead and mutilating my hair, there’s something soothing
about filling the gaping hatchet wound in my heart with a carefully
calibrated mix of fat, salt and starch. I suspect this is partly because
072
Photo Nina Ahn
I know I’m not supposed to, and sticking it to the diet cops by
upending the food pyramid and stuffing it whole into my mouth
induces a sense of delicious rebellion. Sucked in, nutrition
authorities! I may not be able to control the incontinent flow of my
tears, and if anyone knew how much I relate to Adele lyrics I’d lose
whatever minimal respect I have from my friends and family, but by
God I have the power to consume a whole wheel of cheese in under
an hour! What’s that? I’m placing a risky burden on my kidneys and
making a mockery of the precious gift of lactose tolerance? Sorry,
I can’t hear you over the dulcet tones of my hardening arteries.
Every time I go to the supermarket I’m struck by just how much shelf
space is taken up by edibles whose primary utility is in the service of
pleasure, and yet most of the time we’re all committed to pretending
food is, or should be, a neutral fuel for our bodies. But eating is
always emotional, whether we’re sitting down to a bowl of steamed
kale or squirting aerosol cream directly into our mouths at one in the
morning. That trough of greens is probably going to make you feel
eligible for canonisation, whereas I’m pretty sure there’s a long, cool
German word meaning ‘the mix of shame and satisfaction obtained
after digging icing sugar out of the bag with a teaspoon’. Simply
acknowledging that we eat for reasons other than avoiding death can
be scary, because we’re constantly told that this is weak, gluttonous
and inadvisable for anyone who doesn’t want to become corpsified
a lot sooner than most of us would like.
We all have to negotiate the intersection of our hearts and our
intestines, using our brains, while surrounded by other people trying
to do the same thing. This whole food/feelings issue is basically
a huge slew of organs, which is a gross image that I’m sorry for
creating just now. Sometimes our priority might be making sure our
bones don’t dissolve, or not aggravating our wheat sensitivity so we
can leave the house without having to act like a public-toilet orienteer.
And sometimes the aim is to eat a banana muffin the size of a
small aircraft carrier while imagining it’s the still-warm liver of our
most hated foe, which is also fine! Take that, Brad, you bad and evil
shitbeak! OK, I’m going to go eat that muffin now.
The new way to period.
 the helpers
Photo Carine Thevenau
on the job
ROISIN TRAINOR IS A MENTAL
HEALTH FIRST AID INSTRUCTOR.
As told to Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
075
My background is in public health and health promotion. I’m Irish
and when I moved to Australia, I started working with an immigrant
program, supporting people with all kinds of social welfare issues.
We were seeing people who unfortunately had died by suicide and
were helping to get them repatriated back home, picking up the
pieces for friends and families here and overseas. We were also
involved with people who had come to Australia and ended up
unwell and in mental health hospitals.
The vast majority of the work I was doing was in mental health at the
crisis end, helping people because they hadn’t gotten support, didn’t
know what they were entitled to, and maybe their social networks
didn’t understand either. I didn’t plan to get into the mental health
side of things originally, but it’s one of the biggest public health
issues we have at the moment, so it naturally draws you in if you're
in the health field. There’s just so much that needs to be done.
Within the program I was working in, we wanted to do something
more at the preventative end, where we could help people before
they got to crisis. We looked at different options and found mental
health first aid. I’d done the training back in Ireland before I came
to Australia, and I used those skills all the time. So, we started to
deliver mental health literacy for that organisation.
The training is accredited through Mental Health First Aid Australia,
which is a national not-for-profit organisation focused on mental
health training and research. They don’t train the public in mental
health first aid directly, but run intensive courses to teach suitable
people to become instructors and deliver their program to others.
Sometimes people work for organisations, and other times they do
it privately. Sometimes they do both – that’s how I work through my
business, Mind Yourself. If participants pass the assessment after
the training, they can become accredited mental health first aiders.
 the helpers
More than five million people in Australia are across CPR first
aid, which is fantastic, but the figures for mental health first aid are
much, much lower. And yet, mental illnesses are so common – one
in five Australian adults will experience mental ill-health each
year – so it’s much more likely that someone’s going to need to use
those skills and be able to spot when somebody is experiencing a
mental health problem. A lot of people don’t even realise that mental
health first aid exists and how useful a skill it is. It can be provided
to a person who’s developing a mental health issue, experiencing
worsening mental health, or in a mental health crisis. You learn
things like ways to recognise the signs and symptoms, possible
risk factors, how to give appropriate initial help and what action to
take if someone is suicidal, having a panic attack, a trauma reaction,
overdosing or is showing threatening psychotic behaviour.
Anybody can do the course, if they want. It’s quite intensive – the
standard course is 12 hours and covers depression, anxiety, psychosis
and substance use, and the crises associated with that. It’s really
hands-on and the learning environment is very interactive – there
are roleplays where we get people to practise actually having the
important conversations, plus lots of other scenarios that people
are likely to experience.
Mental Health First Aid Australia has also created videos that feature
people with lived experience of mental illness. That does wonders
in addressing stigma, particularly the one on psychosis where
they have three people who live with schizophrenia talking about
how they manage it and what they’ve been through. They also have
video content where actors show how mental health first aid should
be applied to somebody who needs that support. It’s not the sort of
course where people can just come in, sit there and get a certificate
at the end – they have to demonstrate the skills.
The training is useful if you have family members you’re concerned
about, or work colleagues, people in your community, or even just
strangers you meet on the street. People can apply it in every aspect
of their life. It’s just like physical first aid – you’re not a paramedic or
a doctor or nurse or anything like that; you just apply that initial aid
until either the person doesn’t need any more support (for example,
putting a bandage on a cut) or the appropriate help is received (like
going to the hospital or the ambulance coming so you can hand over
to them). It doesn’t fall on the individual to fix everyone’s problems,
and we don’t encourage them to do that. It’s really just about letting
the person who’s struggling know they’re not alone; that people want
to help and support is available.
There are a few different courses, including an Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander-focused course, which is delivered by Aboriginal and
076
it's about
letting the
person know
they're not
alone
Torres Strait Islander people. It’s very specific, because we know that
Indigenous people have completely different models of health. We
can learn so much from that. Within the course, there is guidance on
providing mental health first aid to somebody from a different cultural
background – it’s being aware of things like how body language
can differ in different cultures, and even stuff like confidentiality.
In Australia, many people are very well educated on mental health
through school, which is brilliant, but in some countries and cultural
groups that doesn’t happen, and there’s a lot more shame and stigma
as a result.
Normally we have a classroom of 10 people, so there’s going to be
some there who have their own mental health experiences they’re
going through. For them, actually understanding mental illness is
really important. It’s not designed to be a therapy group and we’re
very clear on that, but if somebody has been experiencing anxiety or
something for a while and they don’t really know what's happening
in their body, then they get an understanding of it, that’s really
empowering. It’s not the intention of the course, but it’s always
something we have coming up in discussions – that they find it really
educational and empowering for themselves. Mental Health First
Aid Australia has done research into the impact of their training
because it’s been around for more than 20 years now, and one of
the clear benefits is that it’s been shown to improve the wellbeing of
participants, as well.
The thing I love about mental health first aid is that you get a group
of people who have preconceived ideas about what mental illness is –
they have a fear of intervening, they don’t know how to help someone
and they’re so afraid to speak up and ask people direct questions
about their mental health. Over the course of the training, there
is such a marked improvement in their confidence, attitudes and
knowledge. By training one person in mental health first aid,
you could actually be helping hundreds of people they’ll come
into contact with. The ripple effect is huge.
Sometimes when I’m lucky enough to come across people I’ve
previously trained, they tell me they were worried about somebody
before the course, but after they’d done it they felt ready to speak,
and now they’re getting help and support because they knew how
to communicate properly and had the skills. It’s so good to see the
immediate impact the training is having. Knowing that’s going to be
sustained over time, and it’s going to reach so many different areas
of people’s lives that I won’t even see, is really cool.
To find out more about mental health first aid or to become an
instructor yourself, visit mhfa.com.au
 are you concerned about
somebody’s mental health?

a change in mood, behaviour unusual levels of fatigue

or appearance
difficulty concentrating
no interest in plans for
the future withdrawal from loved ones

feelings of rage, shame increasing alcohol or drug use

or hopelessness

self-destructive behaviour

A PPROACH THE PERSON, ASSESS FOR RISK AND ASSIST

WITH ANY CRISIS

L ISTEN AND COMMUNICATE NON-JUDGMENTALLY

G IVE SUPPORT AND INFORMATION

E NCOURAGE THE PERSON TO GET APPROPRIATE

PROFESSIONAL HELP

E NCOURAGE OTHER SUPPORT STRATEGIES

HOW ARE YOU FEELING AT THE MOMENT?

HOW LONG HAVE YOU FELT LIKE THIS – IS IT

AN ONGOING ISSUE?

WHO DO YOU FEEL YOU CAN GO TO FOR SUPPORT?

ARE YOU HAVING THOUGHTS OF SUICIDE?

IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP?

KEEP CALM AND REASSURE THEM YOU WON’T LEAVE INVITE THEM TO SIT DOWN
SOMEWHERE COMFORTABLE
ACKNOWLEDGE HOW SCARY IT IS
TELL THEM THEY’RE SAFE
REMIND THEM IT WON’T LAST LONG
ENGAGE IN LIGHT, SLOW CONVERSATION

Avoid saying flippant things like “Snap out of it” or “It’s not that bad”. The best thing you
can do to help someone is stay calm, be patient, listen carefully and show empathy.
Let them know you’re there and you care, and make sure you feel supported, too.

for more guidance on helping someone

in crisis, visit mhfa.com.au
 something to say
a pocketful of bliss
MARIEKE HARDY LEARNS HOW TO
HOLD ON TO HAPPY.
Something very, very strange happened to me recently. I got happy.
Boy, did I get happy. I got so happy I would wake up each day
smiling, smile through my breakfast, smile at my computer, smile
at my vitamin supplements. I even smiled at the passing oddballs
at the end of my street who usually responded by flinging pigeon
faeces in my direction and screaming, “THERE’S A RADIO IN MY
SKULL,” which I think means they really liked me.
I don’t know what brought it on exactly – a combination of being
back in my hometown, being madly in love, feeling robust and
healthy and well rested for the first time in years. I was eating
awesome food and reading lots of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Robert
Louis Stevenson. And there it was: an all-pervasive warmth and
sense of optimism about the world and everybody in it.
Which lasted… oh, I don’t know. Three days.
“Oh,” I eventually said to myself. “I see what happens now. Our
house will burn down, Tim will get hit by a bus, and our dog will
lose both back legs and have to wheel herself around on a little
trolley like one of those dirt-smeared urchins in Oliver.”
I may have been happy, yes, but like all of us I have an irritating
built-in fear that for some reason this happiness is undeserved.
078
Photo Sandra Lazzarini
And so, instead of continuing my merry march around the
neighbourhood frightening winos and small children with startling
grins, I simply waited pessimistically for the spell to lift and everyday
misery to return.
Why is it we’re so afraid of lasting happiness, friends? And how the
devil do we keep it? There they are, those elusive, fleeting, gorgeous
moments when everything in our universe suddenly falls perfectly
into place and we look around at our family/significant other/wee
little pet with warm, breathy exhalations. Our bellies are full; there
is a song in our hearts. And yet, two days later we find ourselves
marching down the street with a mobile phone jammed to our ear
crying and yelling, “I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU’RE SAYING NOW, YOU
TOLD ME IT WOULD BE FINISHED YESTERDAY!” And our little pocket
of bliss is but a distant memory that we firmly believe will never,
ever come around again.
We are such masochists by nature. We go into life expecting to
be hurt, and certainly on occasion that sharp stab to the abdomen
does occur. It’s good for us. Character-building. We can use that
aching soul to write heartsick songs and sobbing love letters and
the sort of revolting woe-is-me poetry everybody should burn before
it’s ever made public. Does it mean that our wallowing will last
forever? No. It passes in a sad, undulating little wave like everything
else in life and the next cycle begins. Often, this new chapter will
bring you unmitigated bliss. So it goes.
My advice? For what it’s worth, hold those happy remnants close
to your heart at all times. On those awful, awful days when you
want to punch an almighty crack in your bathroom window and
dissolve in helpless floods, you must think of smilier times and
know they will come to you again. I have continued to remind
myself of this on those days when I don’t wake up smiling, when
I cry through my breakfast, curse violently at my computer, flush
my vitamin supplements down the toilet and growl meanly at the
aforementioned oddballs. They pause, pigeon faeces in hand, and
decide to leave me alone. Even they know I’ll be back to my happy
self before long.
 something
to say

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 something to say
help!
SINÉAD STUBBINS KNOWS THERE’S
A BETTER VERSION OF HERSELF LYING
JUST OUTSIDE HER GRASP. SHE JUST
HAS TO SCREENSHOT THE RIGHT
INSTAGRAM QUOTE.
I will read every single ‘How to Be Better at XXX’ article you send me.
I will bookmark it. I will take handwritten notes. I will study it like a
Catholic child in grade 4 looking for the vulgar bits of the Bible in
between the complicated bits about how we’re sinners even when
we’re babies. I will make it my religion.
I will read about the morning rituals of CEOs, productivity tips from
artists and skincare regimes/breakfast-sandwich recipes from
celebrity psychologists. I will try to incorporate these tips into my
commute, into my lunch break, into my friendship catch-ups, into
phone calls with my family and during my sleep. Maybe if you saw me
slumbering, I would be knitting (mindfulness!) or doing yoga poses
(fitness!) or writing a short story for no one else, just for me (creativity
should be a gift to yourself!). I don’t have a camera in my room, so
I can’t tell you for sure. My boyfriend might be able to tell you, but
he’s a heavy sleeper and, in any case, he probably hasn’t read all the
articles I have read, so wouldn’t understand the deep importance of
my deeply healthy rituals.
I don’t know a lot about self-help books, not because I am healthy but
because I don’t have the attention span to read them. I’ve tried – boy,
have I tried. I once bought The Happiness Trap because being happy
sounded like an absolutely delightful, if quaint, thing to be. (I ignored
the ‘trap’ part.) I bought Quiet by Susan Cain to make myself feel
better about being an introvert and less inclined to “betray” myself by
giving away my “recharge time”, despite still feeling that if I cancelled
a plan out of tiredness the world would explode and the skin would fry
and sizzle off our bones and we’d all be dead dead dead but I would
still be conscious enough to know that it was all my fault.
I don’t think I read more than a chapter of either.
I do have some positive associations with the whole self-help
book industry, though. Back when I worked late nights at Borders
bookstore, I would sometimes hide in the self-help section when
I was tired of approaching customers and begging them to buy
something. I would squat between two tall shelves stuffed with dusty
books called Get Organised – Now! or Stop Feeling Sad! and pretend
to be looking for something whenever my manager walked past. It
was a very big store, so I could usually keep that going for about 45
minutes, particularly if it was after 9pm, an unwholesome time to be
buying self-help books. Customers barely ever entered the section,
and when they did, they went straight for the book they wanted and
scurried out – as if I was going to stop them, inspect the book they’d
picked up then loudly exclaim, “RIGHT – YOU’VE GOT TROUBLE
GETTING SOMEONE TO LOVE YA, DO YA?”
The self-help section was next to the cooking section – which seemed
to me like very passive-aggressive genre placement, because cooking
well is hard and we all know it – so while I was squatting in the self-
help aisle I could also watch videos of Jamie Oliver making Christmas
080
hams or Nigella Lawson cooking biscuits made out of chocolate bars.
Sometimes, the old Italian men who hung out together in the store
late at night and read magazines they never bought gave me Ferrero
Rochers to eat while I sat on my invisible chair and watched the
cooking shows. I was never tempted to crack the spine on any of the
mountains of self-help books that surrounded me, though, given my
lax work ethic, perhaps it would have been a good idea.
Self-help advice from Instagram psychologists, however, has had
much more of an impact on me. I love to see their tiles appear in my
newsfeed: tiles with graphics ranging from minimalist custom type
on chic blocks of emerald or navy to swirly self-care statements on
cream rectangles with a blurry background photo of a woman walking
on an empty beach. Instagram psychologists only dole out advice via
a graphic designer’s business card or the cover of a romance novel
from the 1980s. There is no in between.
Instagram psychologists have explained boundaries to me and given
me phrases to try out whenever I am confronted with someone
who is taking an emotional jackhammer to my boundaries (like,
“No, thank you!”), and they’ve told me how bad it is that I like the
feeling of fixing other people’s problems. They have handles like
‘Spirituality Susan’ and ‘Holding Space Hannah’. They say soothing
and grandiose things about my ego and how “the ego knows”, and
even though I don’t really know what ‘the ego’ is, I suddenly imagine
it as a buxom woman with bleach-blonde pin-curls in a floor-length
gold gown, swaddled in a mink coat that seems to be perpetually
falling off her shoulders. My ego says things like, “Darling – it’s five
o’clock somewhere!” as she sips a martini at 11am, and never sits
on chairs, only pianos, and has been married five times and widowed
in ‘mysterious circumstances’ four of those times.
The only problem is that the more Instagram psychologists I follow,
and the more I’m confronted with different philosophies of living,
the more I start to feel like I’m behind on emotional homework. I’ve
taken notes, I’ve saved posts, I’ve screenshotted so many tiles that
my phone has become too clogged to download any more podcasts,
and who knows how to use the iCloud anyway? It’s gotten dire.
I know I don’t need these slogans, and that they’re just gentle
reminders rather than commandments to live by if you wish to
succeed (the Ten Commandments, another complicated bit of the
Bible). But there is comfort in someone telling you what to do,
because survival can feel quite, quite difficult sometimes. I mean,
I’m fine! It’s just that sometimes it does feel like the expectations
of the people I know and the people I know on the internet and the
people I haven’t even met yet but who still expect something are
crushing me like bricks made out of mercury, but I can’t really focus
on that because I’m so busy ‘Leaning In’ that I am perpetually at a
right angle, just leaning and leaning and leaning, until my face and
 something to say
my knees touch and my butt becomes my face and I lean into the core
of the Earth and become a fungus statue like in Annihilation. But I’m
OK – look at all of these self-help slogans I’ve screenshotted. Look,
it’s the background of my phone!
I can understand why so many of my friends have turned to astrology
apps to make sense of it all, believing that our glittering, ancient
cosmos can offer more insights into the human condition than any
individual person could. I’ve done the same. The only problem is that
for every warm rush of identification sparked by an accurate star-sign
meme, you must also reckon with the raw chaos of a robotic app
sending you patronising and sometimes menacing push notifications.
Everything doesn’t happen for a reason; everything happens because
it happens, period, an astrology app once told me. Don’t be sneaky,
it said another day, as if it had seen all the texts and notes and
messages in my phone, which is the same as seeing into my soul,
and had found it all to be quite sneaky. God didn’t create humans;
humans created God, was another puzzling one.
“What does this mean?” my sister once texted me, along with
a screenshot of her astrology app advising her one Thursday at
10.42am to hold two opposing ideas in her brain all day. It is hard
enough to hold one idea in your brain – now we were all expected
to have two at any given time? I imagined that all of this advice was
being written by a giant old man Zeus made out of stars, who was
sitting in a chair made of suns and trying to get us all to do the
stupidest things for his entertainment, because space can be quite
boring sometimes.
The aim of following all these Instagram accounts and downloading
these apps is to make me a better and more mentally balanced
person, but given how much of it hinges on how to deal with other
people’s bad behaviour, I do have some fears about becoming
too mentally balanced. What if I follow more and more and more
psychologists until my whole feed is just filled up with advice about
how I am always right and the others are always wrong and it makes
me too confident and too secure and pretty soon I am an arsehole?
What if every time someone does something I don’t like (cracks their
knuckles, recites an entire scene from The Simpsons, etc) I get to tell
them off because of boundaries, or something? What if I become the
sort of person who says things like, “It’s self-care time, bitches!”?
What if I decide that self-care is about nourishing yourself, no matter
the cost? Skip that line! Keep that wallet you found on the tram! Steal
other people’s lunches! Ignore your loved ones when they ask for a
kidney, and refuse to feel bad for being the kind of person who just
likes the feeling of having two kidneys! Giving away a kidney is the
enemy of self-care!
Is it possible to get too healthy? I am scared to find out. Strangely, the
ideas I’ve found most comforting don’t come from books or slogans
081
by experts who have figured it all out, but from people who have made
a real mess of things and just sort of raised their arms in a shrug
and got on with it. The book Adult Fantasy by Briohny Doyle – which
explains how the traditional markers for adulthood have changed,
which is why many adults feel like they’re just pretending – made
me feel much better about not knowing how to do things that other
30-year-olds seemed to know how to do. In her song called “Pilot”,
the musician Aldous Harding sings in a strange, strangled voice:
“I get so anxious I need a tattoo / Something binding, that hides
me,” which was the sort of embarrassing feeling I felt when I got
my second tattoo, though I couldn’t quite define it then. The poet
Frank O’Hara wrote things about feeling nervous and restless and
like everything that was happening around him was sort of boring,
and he did it in a way that is so funny and beautiful that reading his
work feels like my brain is being zapped with electric currents.
He was part of the ‘New York School’ of poets in the 1950s and ’60s,
until he was hit by a car in 1966 and died. He had worked at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, first at the information desk in
the lobby and later as a curator of painting and sculpture (he had no
formal training), and would write poems on his lunch break. His 1964
book Lunch Poems was the first collection of poetry I ever owned.
His poetry has nothing to do with self-help, but somehow it’s
helped me make sense of things.
The first thing of Frank O’Hara’s I ever read (which I discovered
on Instagram, in between boundaries tiles) was a bit from his
poem “Mayakovsky”:
Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to
seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.
There has barely been a day since when ‘catastrophe of my
personality’ hasn’t rolled around my head, or sat on my tongue like
a toffee melting in my mouth. It makes me think that Frank would
probably find self-help books boring, too.
This is an edited extract from Sinéad
Stubbins’s book In My Defence, I Have
No Defence, out now through Affirm
Press. We have five copies (worth
$29.99 each) to give away, so visit
frankie.com.au/win to enter the draw.
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 learn something new
trouble in mind
JAMES SHACKELL LOOKS BACK ON SOME
LESS-THAN-LOGICAL TREATMENTS FOR
MENTAL ILL-HEALTH.
HYSTERIA THERAPY Unfortunately, the history of psychiatry is
mostly the history of men looking at sick women and saying things
like, “Quick, fetch more leeches!” And you can trace a few thousand
years of misogyny all the way back to hysteria therapy. The Ancient
Greek ‘healer’ Hippocrates, whose medical qualifications were
sketchy at best, basically decided that all psychiatric symptoms in
girls and women were the result of something called ‘hysteria’, where
the womb literally ‘wandered’ around the body like a lost sheep.
For eons, people tried everything to ‘calm down’ these wandering
wombs. Women were given gross things to smell (because wombs
are sensitive to that stuff and would be repelled from the upper part
of the body). Others had their genitals stimulated. Plato’s brilliant
idea was marriage and pregnancy, which would somehow ‘reset’
the womb and, incidentally, fix that pesky schizophrenia thing at
the same time. Yikes.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
EXORCISM Mental health services today aren’t always great, but they
still beat your treatment options in the Middle Ages. From around
1400 to the late 1600s, mentally ill people were either diagnosed
as witches or demon-possessed monsters. Those were your two
choices. Witches were tried in courts and usually burned at the stake
– it’s estimated tens of thousands of people met their end this way
– while demon possession scored you an exorcism. Your body would
be restrained, a priest would come and mutter incantations, incense
would be burned, and you might swallow some mysterious holy goop.
Religious exorcisms declined in the 18th century when it became
more fashionable to lock sick people in cages, but they actually made
a comeback in America in the 1960s and ’70s. Sadly, exorcisms are
still used as a form of mental health treatment by some Pentecostal
religious sects.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MAGNETS In the 1770s, Austrian doctor Franz Mesmer took an
almost Jedi-like approach to mental health. He believed there
was an invisible force, ‘Mesmerism’, that flowed through all living
things, and disruptions to this force led to pain and suffering. The
solution? Magnets. Mesmer would give his patients high doses of
iron, then place magnets at strategic points on their body. But wait,
it gets better! Eventually, Mesmer started to believe he possessed
quasi-magnetic superpowers, chucked on a purple magician’s cape
and treated patients by waving his hands and gazing deep into their
eyes. A lot of people thought Mesmer was the real deal, but King
Louis XVI of France wasn’t impressed. He ordered an investigation
into his techniques, which thankfully debunked the whole thing.
These days, Mesmer is known as the grandfather of modern
hypnotism, and also a bit of a weirdo.
TREPANATION Trepanation is the oldest known mental health
treatment, and arguably the grossest. The logic goes like this: people
have problems in the head, right? So there must be something in
there messing things up, right? So maybe if we drill a hole in their
skull we could let those nasties out… Yep, trepanation basically
involved boring a hole in people’s heads and leaving all the pink
wobbly stuff exposed to the elements. Archaeologists have found
evidence of trepanation dating all the way back to the Neolithic era,
when they didn’t have anaesthetic but did have plenty of really sharp
rocks. Trepanation was used to treat epilepsy and seizures during
the Renaissance, and evidence suggests many people actually
survived the procedure (whether it fixed their epilepsy is debatable…).
Interestingly, trepanation is still used today for stuff like haematomas
and monitoring intracranial pressure. Psychiatry, not so much.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
ROTATIONAL THERAPY In the 18th century, Charles Darwin’s
grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had a not-so brilliant idea. He
decided mental illness was caused by too much “brain congestion”
and could be fixed by the scientific application of centrifugal force
(aka spinning people around really, really fast). ‘Rotational therapy’,
as it became known, was considered dodgy even by 18th-century
leech practitioners, but it eventually found a fan in English doctor
Joseph Cox, who designed a special chair for rotating his patients.
The treatment produced exactly what you’d think it would produce:
nausea, vomiting and the occasional “Faster! Faster!” But Cox also
noticed that people tended to collapse into a deep, refreshing sleep
afterwards – go figure. Centrifugal treatments never really got off
the ground, but Darwin and Cox had accidentally stumbled onto
something else: the first recorded effects of G-force.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
MALARIA THERAPY Before penicillin came along and changed
everything, neurosyphilis was a particularly nasty condition.
Sufferers experienced delusions, visions, paralysis and dementia-
like symptoms, and there wasn’t any magic cure. But then, in the
early 20th century, Austrian psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg
discovered something big: asylum residents became more ‘sane’
after sweating through a fever. So he just started giving people fevers.
The preferred method was injecting malaria, which burned through
the neurosyphilis in a jiffy. Of course, then the patient had malaria,
so Wagner-Jauregg dosed them up with quinine. This whole process
became obsolete after antibiotics were discovered in 1928, but
Wagner-Jauregg was still the first psychiatrist to win a Nobel Prize.
He’d proven something that people had been trying to prove since
the days of Hippocrates: that psychological symptoms could have
natural causes.
085
 experience

what i’ve learnt

from my mental
health condition

086
experience

088
 stuff

language warning
CHANNEL YOUR ANGST INTO SOME
SWEARY BITS AND BOBS.

1 2 3 4

9 13

10
11

12

1. Pretty Sweary I Don’t Give a Rat’s Ass throw pillow, rrp $38.99, society6.com/cynthiaf. 2. F**king Ace air freshener x David Shrigley,
rrp $5, thirddrawerdown.com. 3. Ugh pin, around $13, valleycruisepress.com. 4. We’re In The Sh*t magnet x Magda Archer, rrp $11,
thirddrawerdown.com. 5. Cocky Little Shit sticker, rrp $6, lukejohnmatthewarnold.bigcartel.com. 6. I’m A Delicate Fucking Flower
natural hand cream in hibiscus with a little vanilla, around $15, blueq.com. 7. Shitshow 500-piece puzzle, around $19, genuinefred.com.
8. Don’t Be A Dickhead large vinyl sticker, rrp $6, lukejohnmatthewarnold.bigcartel.com. 9. Breaking News vinyl sticker, around $5,
punkypins.etsy.com. 10. Bite Me Venus Flytrap coffee mug, around $19, lookhuman.com. 11. I Am A Ray Of Fucking Sunshine motel
keytag, around $9.50, hesaidshesaidetsy.etsy.com. 12. Cheer The F*** Up pin, around $13, shop.adamjk.com. 13. Live, Laugh, Fuck Off
felt wall hanging, around $46, alphatown.etsy.com

090
 pretty pictures
settle, petal
melbourne artist kalindy williams
finds joy in a big bunch of blooms.
INTERVIEW SOPHIE KALAGAS
Hey Kalindy! Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do. I’m a
multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. I mostly take
film photos with a bunch of vintage cameras I’ve collected over the
years, but have been known to dabble in graphic design, collage and
illustration, too. Anything arty and/or crafty! I also play guitar
and synth and sing in a punk band called Hearts and Rockets.
What’s your personal approach to photography? It’s 50 per cent
extreme planning and 50 per cent spontaneous! Sometimes I’ll have
an idea in my head for weeks and will plan it all out: the lighting,
the perfect subject, the set. But then the light will shine through a
window in just the right way or I’ll walk the dog and see some roses
in the sunshine and have to snap them! I have a camera with me at
all times, just in case the perfect shot arises.
You snap an awful lot of flowers – what draws you to capturing
these blooms? I just think they’re beautiful. I know it’s clichéd, but
clichés are there for a reason, right? I live in the suburbs and there
are so many amazing gardens, it’s hard not to be drawn to colourful
flowers – especially after the past year of lockdowns. I’ve had so
much time to roam the streets with a coffee and a camera, finding
beauty in my own backyard.
Do flowers affect your mood? They bring me so much joy. I have a
few rose bushes I’ve been caring for and have made a little garden
of pansies and daisies in pots in our backyard. The act of caring for
something and seeing it grow and bloom just makes you happier!
I love having cut flowers, too, especially in my work room. I’ve
collected pretty vases from op shops and try to have fresh blooms
to fill them every week or so. It’s so nice to have a bit of nature to
enjoy inside.
More broadly, how do you use photography to explore or channel
your emotions? Art can be used to acknowledge that your feelings
are valid, and creating something beautiful or ugly from your
emotions (not all art has to be good art) can not only help you,
093
but others who might feel that way too. As someone who’s not the
best with words, I find making art and taking photos a great way
to express myself, without having to say much at all.
What else do you turn to when you’re feeling a bit flat? Getting off
the internet and going outside to soak up the sunshine is a super-
simple and achievable thing I do to lift my mood. Reading, listening
to a podcast, doodling in a notebook, walking the dog, picking
flowers and going outside just make me feel lighter!
Where do you find visual inspiration for your shots? As much as the
internet can be a great big void of negativity and bad news, there’s
also so much positive inspiration on there. I’m quite inspired by the
’60s, ’70s and ’80s, and I love seeking out media from those eras,
too, like movies, fashion magazines and books. I’ve collected a lot
of vintage books, mostly for making collages, but the photography
in them is very cool, especially the ’70s cookbooks and flower-
arranging ones. The way they light and shoot still lifes is really
unique and filled with colour!
What makes you truly happy? I think true happiness can come
from lots of different little things! Adventuring with my partner Kurt,
hanging out with my friends, going to gigs, taking photos, seeing and
patting dogs, phone calls from my mum, making bad art just for fun,
listening to music really loud, dancing, picnics. Also paying my bills
on time, afternoon light in the suburbs, clean sheets and dressing
up for no reason.
Any wise words for someone going through a rough time? Be kind
to yourself. It can feel like hard times will last forever, but they really
won’t! Tomorrow is another day and while it might feel like you’re on
your own, heaps of us are feeling the same thing. We’re all in this
together, and we will see the other side together.
Where can we see more of your stuff? Online at orbitarcade.com.au
or on Instagram at @kalindymillions.
 my experience

A FEW STIFF TRUTHS FROM

A FORMER ALCOHOLIC.
As told to Lucy Corry

My first real, unmoderated experience with alcohol was at one of those parties you have in
the garage when you’re 15, and you’re drinking someone’s dad’s home brew from those big
crate bottles. Being a slightly nerdy, socially awkward teenager who wasn’t particularly good
at sport, alcohol was an equaliser. It didn’t matter if you were a rugby-head or a nerd – if you
could drink, you could have a good time. It allowed you to interact with people a bit better.
I took that approach all the way through uni, then just kept on keeping on.
Drinking makes you feel good in the moment. You can be reckless and provocative and
stupid and almost get away with it, because of the wonderful way that alcohol gives you a
temporary partial lobotomy. I’d built up this idea in my mind that I was no good at interacting
with people. I drank to be social, and so I was social. But it got to a point where I was drinking
so much I couldn’t actually socialise. I wasn’t a particularly good partner. I’d get drunk with
mates, go out, have fun, and I wouldn’t think of the consequences, whether that was staying
out too late, emptying my bank account, coming home pissed, or something worse, like
waking up next to someone when you have no idea who they are. I had no regard for other
people’s thoughts or feelings; I was just one big juggernaut of ego. That realisation is what
led me to stop drinking – the fact I wasn’t treating people around me the way I would want
to be treated.
One night I went out to a mate’s birthday party. I was drunk even before the dinner came
out, then I spent a shit-tonne of money in town. I got home and decided to have a nightcap,
so I drank another half-bottle of scotch, or something ridiculous like that. I thought, “I’m
going to have to sleep this off,” so I took some sleeping pills and didn’t wake up for 14 or
15 hours. When I eventually woke, there was vomit in the bed, and a whole lot of other
things. Then there were the calls and texts from my family and my girlfriend. It wasn’t
good at all.
When you’re dependent on something, you make excuses to yourself and to your friends
so you can keep going. It’s so easy to think, “I’m not the person in the gutter. I’m not going
to be a 50-year-old working a shitty job just to support my drinking habit.” No one thinks
that will happen to them. I didn‘t see that my drinking was a problem until I had my head
in the right place. I realised, “When you drink, you act in a shitty way. When you don’t drink,
you feel shitty about being shitty. So let’s just stop drinking, because that’s the thing that
makes you shitty.”
It was an easy decision to come to, but a hard decision to stay in line with. Thankfully,
when I told my friends and family what I was doing, they were all supportive. That’s what
got me through the first while – it helped me build up a safety net. It’s not easy, though.
I’ve seen people try to stop drinking this way – so suddenly – and it hasn’t worked for
them. In that regard, I know I’m incredibly lucky. I had those positive protective factors
around me – I just hadn’t engaged them. I also worked in health policy, so I had a good
knowledge of what would happen if I didn’t stop.
Of course, problems don’t rectify themselves overnight. You have to make some significant
changes, like the way you do your shopping. There would often be big displays of wine and
beer at the supermarket, so I had to make a list of what I needed and stick to it. My routes
home changed so I didn’t walk past bars or bottle shops. A number of people who I thought
were friends turned out to just be drinking buddies, so they dropped off pretty quickly. I put
on a bit of weight, because I had to look for other avenues to spend my time and money
and attention, and that often involved eating. But the clarity of mind that not drinking
gave me – not to mention the free time and money – allowed me to do things like practise

094
 my experience

mindfulness, exercise and eat better – all those key things that are protective factors
against being a shitty human being.
I had to keep consciously reminding myself that drinking was something I didn’t do anymore.
It was at the forefront of my thinking. Now, four and a half years later, it’s still at the
forefront, but it’s more of a natural instinct, and part of my identity. I have a couple of
strategies for dealing with drinking these days. Most of my friends, colleagues and family
know my circumstances, so if I’m in a social situation with them, it’s not an issue. If I’m
at an event or going out to bars, I don’t hide the fact I’m not drinking. I know some people
will get a bottle of beer, tip it out and refill it with water or fizzy so it looks like they are,
but I don’t do that. Life is too short to pretend to have a drink in your hand in order to
make someone else feel comfortable.
After about a year of being sober, I started seeking out people I’d wronged, and apologised
and tried to make amends where possible. But there are some people who don’t want to
hear it; you’ve hurt them enough that it doesn’t matter if you were drunk or sober. That’s
hard, but it’s their decision. I might not be a better person yet – I might never be a better
person – but I’m trying.

i had to keep consciously reminding

myself that drinking was something
i didn’t do anymore

I don’t feel tempted to drink, but I’m always afraid I’ll start again. For me, that would
mean I wasn’t in a good place. It would mean going down a pretty dark path, and that’s
worrying. Over the past few years, there’ve been one or two occasions when I’ve thought,
“I could go a drink,” but I don’t need it for social reasons or to numb some insecurities
or thoughts inside myself anymore. I deal with the noise in my brain on my own terms,
with focused thought strategies and meditation, rather than just trying to push it down
with a couple of pints. If I miss alcohol, it’s because I remember what it tasted like.
Perversely, not drinking has allowed me to be far more social than I ever was. Sure, I was
going out and talking to people and getting that ephemeral human interaction, but I
wasn’t developing real friendships or able to engage with anyone on anything beyond
banter over a few beers. There was nothing there. The most fulfilling thing about not
drinking is being able to have meaningful relationships with other human beings. Now,
I wish I could go back and give my 16-year-old self a hug. I’d tell myself that everything
will be OK, and that I didn’t need to use alcohol as a crutch.

095
 creative people

five artists show us what it feels like inside their

brain during a tough period in their mental health.

096
 ÈVE GENTILHOMME

Moments of sadness are only a crossing in life, no matter how hard and seemingly long-lasting they may be.
I made this illustration in three parts, like a patchwork where the elements are inseparable. You can see a
woman’s face on the left looking sad – a dark sky seems to invade her head and take up a large space. A hand
– hers or someone else’s – brings her a flower, representing the help we need. On the right is a bird with a
rainbow and a flower with three drops to help it grow. Maybe they’re her tears? Flowers grow after rain – that is
the message I wanted to evoke here. My mental health has become one of my priorities. After a period of burnout
and depression that put me down for many months, I was able to finally go up the slope. I drew a lot during that
difficult period – it was when I found my illustration style and the strength to make it my freelance job. Creating
was what kept me going. I wanted to spread kindness and good feelings through my illustrations and I continue
to do so today. We have a long way to go in speaking about mental health – it’s still a taboo subject. But talking
about it and showing vulnerability is OK. It’s even a strength. It can help you be more empathetic and form
authentic connections with people. By addressing these topics, we will help each other grow.
 CHARLOTTE ALLINGHAM

I struggle with mental health, even on my good days. I know something is wrong with my brain, and I definitely
need to see someone, but even that is really hard for me. I feel like sometimes not looking after your mental
health is expected of an artist – the ‘struggling artist’ trope somehow romanticises it, so I sometimes catch myself
sitting in my sadness because it ‘makes great art’. It’s not good for our souls, though. I feel like my brain
is constantly working. I can’t turn it off, and I think this piece reflects that mess. On bad days, it’s like having a
bunch of different thoughts all at once; all connecting, but with no end point. It’s how I feel most of the time,
though the artwork is much more vibrant and bright. I wish I could just relax sometimes. I feel the best when
I’m creating something. I spent two months sanding and engraving my dining table last time I was overcome
by my mind. It helps to have something to nurture – through that you can nurture yourself. If we talk about our
mental health it’s not so scary anymore, for ourselves and others, too. The feeling of being alone in your feelings
is what makes you sink deeper into them. On the other hand, the freedom of saying that you feel something
negative is a push towards creating an environment that supports good mental health.
 MEL STRINGER

This image shows me sitting on my bed while berating my brain for making me feel overwhelmed and anxious.
My brain is sitting on the bed next to me, clearly upset too, because it isn’t choosing to feel bad. On a down day, I’m
often overwhelmed by tasks and everything feels heavy. I’m more sensitive than usual and can react negatively to
things I normally wouldn’t. Everybody goes through mental health struggles throughout their life. It doesn’t matter
your age or which life stage you’re at. It’s important to speak up when you’re carrying the burden of mental worries,
and to seek help, even if it’s just talking to a trusted friend. Recognising you’re suffering is a huge step towards
feeling healthier. My work is all about documenting and recording things that happen in my everyday life. I draw and
write about observations I have, whether it’s something as simple as a humorous line my husband has said or as
heavy as dealing with grief after a family member has a health scare. My artwork is my therapy, and a huge part of
how I process the world and confronting issues. I enjoy drawing a comic about how I’m feeling, or writing or singing
a song about what I’m going through. Sleep is also great in a rough patch. Lots and lots of sleep. Nice snacks and
comforting drinks make a world of difference, and listening to uplifting music instantly makes me feel better.
 KIRBEE LAWLER

The inside of my brain often feels like a place of comfort: where ideas form, memories are played like a movie
and where I escape to when I’m off daydreaming. Sometimes when I’m going through a rough patch, though,
the bunnies inside my brain go a bit frantic and the sunshine-y things go a bit droopy – and that’s what you can
see here. I like to think of my thoughts as bunnies and my memories like flowers. Most of the time they all get
along happily, but when a bad day hits, things tend to look like this. The bunnies can be sad, anxious and a bit
mean, and the flowers lose their colour and beautiful scent. It all just feels like a whirlwind cycle that feeds off
itself. I have days when I really struggle, and I feel like the last year has definitely added an extra dimension to
them! I deal with chronic pain and living with that has affected my mental health. It’s hard when pain stops me
from doing what I want to do or just generally leaves me feeling really shit! There are also just days when I feel
like I need a big cry – there’s something really cathartic about that. I find stepping out into nature really helps,
especially if I’m near the water. Anything that can stop that cycle of things piling up. Spending time with my
bunny, Primrose, also helps! There’s nothing like her sweet little face to cheer me up.
 KRISTA PERRY

When I’m having a bad day (which, let’s be honest, sometimes carries into a bad week), I feel like I couldn’t possibly ever
make art again. Of course, this is incredibly dramatic, but it’s a conclusion I always jump to when I’m feeling depressed
or cranky. To me, making art can be a very personal activity requiring a lot of the right ingredients to work, like the energy
to create, the right mood or mindset, focus and desire and inspiration. It can be really draining if you’re working through
rough patches in your personal life at the same time. But sometimes those personal situations can fuel my desire to
create, too. It’s a never-ending back and forth. In my sketchbooks, I feel most free to whine about my feelings and things
people have said or done. If someone is a jerk to me, you’d best believe there’s a bad drawing of them saying something
stupid, or some kind of snarky hand-lettered phrase calling them out on their bullshit! Keeping a sketchbook has been an
incredibly healing experience that expands my skillset while also letting me blow off steam. You can do literally whatever
you want in there! Aside from that, I also help myself feel better with ice-cream or chocolate of some sort, a nap, a bike
ride, a good long shower, and most importantly, throwing on a good record. I think it’s important to continue the fight in
normalising conversations around mental health. Nobody is perfect and everyone is struggling in one way or another.
Have a go at drawing the inside of your own head, when you're going
through a rough trot, or maybe feeling tip-top! The choice is yours.
We'd love to see your creations!
Tag #frankiemagazine to share.
 mind your business
Photographs Stephanie Rose Wood
i love my shop
ANNABELLA DICKSON RUNS MIXTAPE
STUDIO, A TOTALLY RAD FITNESS STUDIO
IN MELBOURNE’S NORTH.
Where is it? 308 St Georges Road, Thornbury, Melbourne.
Describe Mixtape Studio in a sentence. An inclusive space where
people can feel free to express themselves through dance and
movement, laugh, let go of their worries and not take life too
seriously.
What goes on there? Mixtape Studio is a dance and fitness studio.
At the moment I teach the majority of the classes, but we have a
changing timetable that includes different styles of dance with a
number of different teachers – from ’80s aerobics to dancehall,
‘hunkercise’ and burlesque! There are casual classes, short
courses, workshops and performance courses.
How did it all begin? I worked as a performer and dance/fitness
instructor for more than 10 years, teaching my brand of Mixtape
classes across a number of different studios around Melbourne.
After a while, I wanted to create a Mixtape HQ. A place to call home
for all my sessions and ideas.
Tell us a bit about the space. What would we see if we paid a visit?
Mixtape Studio is inspired by the 1980s. I wanted to create a space
that would transport you to a time and place of vibrant colour and
fun. The studio is light-filled and packed with indoor plants, ’80s
memorabilia and knick-knacks. There’s also a geometric mural
(painted by my dad!) that frames an elevated dancefloor. The ’80s
105
was a time when fun, fitness and fashion were at their peak. I want to
make people feel at ease, welcome and ready to let loose!
Who are your regular clientele? Mixtape Studio clientele are from all
walks of life. All our classes are at an open level, so they’re accessible
to anyone and everyone. People come to Mixtape to sweat, dance, let
go and live out their Flashdance fantasy.
What kind of impact do your classes have on people’s mental
health? Dance and moving about gets you out of your head and into
your body. You forget your troubles as you’re sweating it out to loud,
pumping music. Not only does exercise have proven benefits for
mental health, but dancing and moving with people also creates a
feeling of togetherness and community.
What’s been the biggest challenge of setting up shop? The biggest
challenge was having no background in business. I went from being
a performer and dance instructor to being an accountant, a designer,
a painter, a cleaner, a promoter, a receptionist, an employer,
a producer, a project manager and a gardener. It’s been a massive
learning curve, but I’ve loved every minute!
What do you love most about what you do? I love dance and
everything about it! I love to be surrounded by people who share a
passion for movement. I love the feeling of dancing with others. I love
teaching dance. I love seeing what dance does to people, watching
people becoming more comfortable in their own body, stronger and
able to move in new ways! It’s so special to see and be part of.
Are there any drawbacks? I think the only drawback for me (like
anyone who has a business in the creative arts) is the fact that it’s
all-consuming. I live and breathe Mixtape Studio. I’m forever excited
about new ideas or worried that I didn’t lock the door!
Any other tips for helping someone out of a slump? Get your heart
pumping, your muscles flexing and your booty shaking. You will be
flooded with endorphins, which will make you feel great!
Where can we find out more? Online at mixtapestudio.com.au or on
Instagram at @mixtape_studio_melbourne.
 my experience

A TALE OF PARENTHOOD
AND MENTAL ILLNESS.
Words Anna Spargo-Ryan

My mother had a panic attack on the side of the road. I remember because I was late
for school. She might even have indicated before she turned, hard, against the footpath.
The car veered sharply. The wheels crunched as they connected with the kerb.
We sat there for some minutes, me and my little brother and little sister, watching as our
mother beat her face against the steering wheel. She’s dying, I thought, in my nine-year-
old voice, certain there could be no other reason for the way her breath leapt into the
windscreen, the way her hands shook and clawed red streaks in her skin, and the way she
eventually wound down her window and screamed. She’s dying, I thought, and it’s my fault.
In the early ’90s, no one talked about panic attacks. Maybe no one knew what they were.
Just: a big wave comes crashing over your body and tries to drown you for no reason.
Or: there’s an earthquake but it’s inside of you and all the people in your brain are falling
into the fire pit that’s opened up below. Each time my mother panicked, I assumed she was
dying. She didn’t explain it. She probably didn’t have words for it. In those days, the only
way to talk about mental illness was to nod solemnly and say “Princess Di” while having
something called a “nervous breakdown”. Without knowledge or evidence to the contrary,
I could only conclude that my mother was in the process of taking her last breaths.
My own first panic attack happened at around the same time. It was a school day, and I
was in class doing gluing or readers or teasing Sam for picking his nose, and then I was
dying. I slid right out of the world into another different world contained inside a cellophane
wrapper. Air – that good air, the kind I needed for breathing – was torn from my lungs and
I ran into the playground and hyperventilated until someone came to find me.
I was dying, too. Obviously. For a decade, my child self battled against an invisible enemy
no one would explain to me. Every day, I felt certain I would shoot off the planet and into
the sun, and my fried corpse would be stranded there for the rest of time. Every night,
I thought about the inevitability of my death, and how I would eventually lose all the people
I loved, and how history would cease to exist. That is the kind of child I was, which will
come as no surprise to anyone who has met me even in passing.
But this is a story about parenting.
I was 20 when my first child was born. From the moment I found out I was pregnant, people
reminded me to doubt my parenting ability. I was too chaotic, too unpredictable. I could
barely take care of myself, my panic-riddled brain and depression-laden bones. How would
I take care of somebody else? In the maternity ward, a midwife was so certain I couldn’t be
responsible for a whole other human that she demanded the name of my non-existent social
worker and shouted at me when I wouldn’t give it to her.
And it’s true; I did have gnarly postnatal depression. When my second child was born, when
I was 22, I was so tired I could have plucked my eyeballs from my skull without even noticing.
But there was a sense of something growing in me. A memory of being on the side of the road
with my mother, wondering if the three of us kids were strong enough to drag her body home.
I decided then: I would talk to my children about mental illness.

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 my experience

From very early on, I tried to articulate my feelings when I looked scary. It took a lot of
practice. Years of running my double pram from a store because the walls were caving in,
or shouting at an invisible man, or shrieking down an empty phone line. I know it’s hard
to watch. I know I have turned to my kids on more occasions than I can count, wild-eyed,
and panted help me for no observable reason. I know they have had to watch me shout
at non-specific threats: I can’t, I have to get out, oh no, no no no. And I know these visible
symptoms have gotten worse as they have gotten older.
To stop from hurting them – as much as I can, which is not entirely – I have had to learn
to do better. I have had to be patient with my mental illness. Behavioural therapies talk
about it in terms like ‘riding it out’ and ‘floating’. I have had to find ways to identify anxious
thoughts and articulate them while they were happening, so I could protect my children from
blaming themselves. Now, when I’m having a panic attack, I can pull it together enough to
say to them, “Try not to worry. I’m not in danger; my brain just thinks I am.”
I have tried to find enough internal fortitude to say, “You’re safe.”

to stop from hurting them – as much

as i can, which is not entirely – i have
had to learn to do better
It’s been a two-way learning experience – inadvertently, they have also learnt what to
look for in me. I don’t want them to do this but I suppose it is inevitable. They are both wildly
empathetic. Sometimes I’ll be driving along and the road will suddenly look far away, and
my breath will quicken and my heart will race, and everything inside me will want to burst
out and SCREAM I can’t do it! and a little hand (that’s now almost an adult hand) will reach
over and hold mine. Just this morning, my now 16-year-old offered me her ‘bad vibes ring’
so I could drive to school without hurtling into space. And I thought: What will your
therapist say? and How much is this going to cost me? And I thought: I’m so sorry.
For nearly 20 years we have done this. Not me banging my head against the steering
wheel and my children watching to see if I die, but the three of us figuring it out together.
And while there are times the guilt overwhelms me, on balance, mostly I think, thank you.
Not just for bringing me back to earth in the impossible moments, but for all the other
joy besides.

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 try this at home

a few things to
take you from
crappy to happy
sometimes listening to a great podcast,
leafing through a book or spending time with
an entertaining TV series is all you need to
haul yourself out of a slump. we’ve rounded
up some titles that are worth checking out.

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 try this at home

THE HAPPINESS LAB Oh, you think you know what it takes to be NO FEELING IS FINAL You know Honor Eastly from The Big Feels
happy? Dr Laurie Santos is here to prove you wrong. The professor Club? Back in 2018, she created a six-part podcast with the
– who teaches psychology at Yale University, no less – runs through ABC called No Feeling Is Final. It’s a super-honest insight into her
research-backed ways to up the ante on your daily joy, taking experience of living with chronic mental illness, made for “anyone
inspiration from ancient civilisations, kindly grandparents and who’s ever wondered if life is worth living”. A warning: it deals with
even canned-laughter specialists. heavy stuff, including suicidal feelings, but thanks to Honor’s
openness and abundant wit, it’s also pretty dang charming.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THE MORTIFIED PODCAST Just try listening to this show and not
cracking a smile. You simply won’t succeed. The concept is simple: OLOGIES Want to load up on wacky dinner party facts and have
people read out entries from their embarrassing teenage diaries to a a beaut time while you’re at it? Maybe give Ologies a whirl. Each
room full of strangers, and we get to eavesdrop. Some will make you episode focuses on an ‘ology’ or scientific specialisation, featuring
cringe, some will make you cry and many will feel a little too close folks who are experts in everything from kissing (philematology)
to home, but chuckles and a sense of human connection – however to handwriting (graphology) and crow funerals (corvid thanatology).
awkward – are guaranteed. Host Alie Ward is gosh-darn delightful and a font of dad jokes,
which also helps.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ALL IN THE MIND A weekly foray into the brain and all that surrounds
it, this is a curious and fact-packed podcast from the ABC, presented QUEERSTORIES Sydney writer and theatremaker Maeve Marsden
by journo Sana Qadar. You’ll learn things like how psychedelics are has been running Queerstories – a national LGBTQI+ storytelling
used in therapy, surprising ways behaviour can be contagious and the project – for quite a while now, including a book, live events and a
connection between dementia and daydreaming. It’s psychology news weekly podcast. The real-life tales delve into community, identity and
explained in layman’s terms, with the help of a bunch of fascinating the broader queer experience, and they’re jam-packed with laughs
real-life stories. and uplifting vibes (when they’re not quietly making you sob).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
KIND WORLD This radio series and podcast hosted by reporters
HOME COOKING If reassuring comfort is what you’re looking for in a Andrea Asuaje and Yasmin Amer tracks the effect a small act of
podcast, you may like to dip into Home Cooking – a series hosted by kindness can have on someone’s life. Sadly it came to an end in
cook, teacher and author Samin Nosrat (of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat fame) mid-2020, but there’s a seven-year back catalogue to dig into,
alongside Hrishikesh Hirway (who you may know for his podcast Song including the tale of a young girl who wrote an impactful letter
Exploder). In each episode the duo respond to voice memos from to her postie, a ‘stand-in mum’ who attends same-sex weddings,
listeners with home-cooking conundrums, make wholesome and creative ways people have dealt with social isolation.
chit-chat and offer recipe ideas for no-fuss pantry fare.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ALAN CUMMING’S SHELVES Truthfully, we’d listen to anything Alan
BROWN GIRL SELF-CARE Bre Mitchell, the founder of Brown Cumming had to say, if only for that utterly charming Scottish accent.
Girl Self-Care, plainly lists her mission on her website: to affirm But this podcast is genuinely a joy to behold: each episode, the actor
and uplift Black women as they do the important work of resting, takes a trip down memory lane via an item on the shelves in his
healing and living abundantly. Her podcast achieves this through house. He brings guests like Cyndi Lauper, Geri Halliwell and Sir Ian
honest chats about things like body image, trauma and learning to McKellen along for the ride, and the result is 30-odd minutes of
say no, with a comforting dose of warmth and humour thrown in. weird and wonderful anecdotes.

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 try this at home

CHEWING GUM Before I May Destroy You, Michaela Coel wrote and WELLINGTON PARANORMAL If you’re a fan of Jemaine Clement,
starred in Chewing Gum, a comedy inspired by her one-woman stage Taika Waititi and their 2014 movie What We Do in the Shadows,
show of the same name. It follows a repressed, Beyoncé-loving shop you’ll be stoked to hear there’s a spin-off series about police
assistant living in a London council estate with her devout Christian officers O’Leary and Minogue. In Wellington Paranormal, they
family, who’s on a mission to lose her virginity, as well as her naivety investigate eerie goings-on as part of the local paranormal unit
about the world. The series is colourful, a bit gross and very funny. launched by Sergeant Maaka. Expect sentient fatbergs, jean-
wearing werewolves and plenty of oddball Kiwi humour.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL If pastel-hued period pieces packed
with lovable performances are your jam (try saying that five times PEN15 If you fall somewhere within the ‘millennial’ label, you’ll likely
fast), you’ll do well to tune in to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Midge enjoy PEN15 – or, on the other hand, it could make you cringe so
Maisel is a 1950s New York housewife who discovers she has a knack hard that your soul flies out of your body. Best pals Maya Erskine and
for stand-up comedy, and her quest to pursue this controversial new Anna Konkle – both in their early 30s in real life – play versions of
path is not only fun to watch, it’s also chock-full of retro eye candy. themselves in their first year of high school, braces, dial-up internet
and unrequited crushes included. It’s funny in a painful kind of way,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and will have you wallowing in nostalgia.
DERRY GIRLS Yes, it’s another coming-of-age series about . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
schoolkids navigating the pitfalls of teen life, but this time it’s set
in 1990s Northern Ireland, during the violent conflict between Irish WE ARE LADY PARTS Rowdy, sweet and a bundle of fun are a few
nationalists and United Kingdom loyalists known as The Troubles. ways to describe We Are Lady Parts, a new show about an all-female,
Even so, Derry Girls is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, thanks in Muslim post-punk band in London. Between awkward dates, shitty
large part to the incredible (and manic) chemistry of the cast, plus jobs and mid-practice prayer sessions, the group of women form a
the whip-smart script and witty Northern Irish slang. strong, supportive sisterhood, which is underscored by songs like
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “Voldemort Under My Headscarf” and instruments played very,
very loudly.
BLACK COMEDY True to its name, Black Comedy goes to many a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
politically incorrect place within its four seasons of sharp and witty
sketches. The show – which features an all-Indigenous cast and FISK A stripped-back show set in a legal office may not sound like
writing team, including Nakkiah Lui, Adam Briggs, Nayuka Gorrie a laugh a minute, but Fisk – starring comedian Kitty Flanagan as
and Rarriwuy Hick – explores contemporary Australian life from a floundering contract lawyer Helen Tudor-Fisk – is a surprising
perspective not often seen on our screens, and it’s absolutely worth side-tickler. Set in Melbourne, the series sees the straight-talking
diving into if you haven’t already. Helen plunged into a shoddy probate firm called Gruber & Gruber,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . where she’s faced with ageism, sexism and basically a whole lot of
uncomfortable weirdness.
TUCA & BERTIE Following the madcap adventures of two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
30-something bird-women – Tuca, a “cocky, carefree toucan”
and Bertie, an “anxious, daydreaming songbird” – Tuca & Bertie THE CLASSICS If in doubt, turn to a classic to give your mood a
is basically what you’d get if you crossed Broad City with Bojack much-needed boost. Daria’s deadpan cynicism is a fun place to
Horseman. There’s cultural commentary wrapped up in trippy channel some angst, while The Golden Girls’ one-liners will always
animation and loads of bird puns, but at its core, the show is about elicit a chuckle or two. For troublemaking Irish priests give Father
female friendship and figuring out how to be an adult. (And voiced Ted a whirl, or whack on a season or six of The Nanny – for Fran
by Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong, you’re guaranteed some laughs.) Fine’s glitzy get-ups, if nothing else.

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 try this at home

EARLY MORNING RISER BY KATHERINE HEINY This book doesn’t BILL BAILEY’S REMARKABLE GUIDE TO HAPPINESS BY BILL
have a fancy plot or any big twists and turns, but it may just have you BAILEY British comedian Bill Bailey has a few ideas for ways
doing some genuine LOLing, which is the goal here, right? It’s a story to be truly happy. Spoiler: they’re less about doing yoga and
of family, friendship and love through the eyes of a schoolteacher eating superfoods and more about immersing yourself in music or
named Jane, and between its quirky characters and gentle humour shouting your guts out in a peaceful forest. This book is sweet and
it shares an important lesson: that people are complicated and life comforting in the loveliest way, and as a nice touch, it’s also full
doesn’t always turn out the way we plan. of Bill’s own drawings.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL BY JAMES HERRIOT An ace THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY BY DOUGLAS ADAMS
alternative to watching back-to-back dog videos online is flipping If you’re after a lighthearted, silly romp through outer space, look
through James Herriot’s novel All Creatures Great and Small. no further. Reading this pint-sized book feels like a long overdue
The book recounts his time working as a vet in rural England, catch-up with your weird best friend from high school: it’s fun; it’s
and is packed with animal-focused tales (some of which are wacky; it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense; but it’s got a whole lot
tear-jerkers, admittedly, though others will warm the cockles of heart (plus, you’ll finally understand the meaning of the universe).
of your heart).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
SHOW ME WHERE IT HURTS BY KYLIE MASLEN Adelaide writer Kylie
WHEN YOU’RE NOT OK BY JILL STARK Melbourne-based Jill Stark Maslen has been living with invisible illness for more than half her
has written two previous books: one interrogating our relationship life, and this collection of essays – released in 2020 – is for anyone
with booze, and the other our relentless search for contentment. who’s been brushed off by their doctors or forged on through endless
This time Jill is just here with some straight-up tips for getting tests and treatments. Kylie mixes personal tales with pop-culture
through the tougher times in life – ways to muddle through on references, and there are laughs and witty observations between
days when you feel alone, a little broken or like a bit of a weirdo. honest, heartfelt reflections.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE PRINCESS BRIDE BY WILLIAM GOLDMAN Romance, danger, THE NANCYS BY R.W.R. MCDONALD If the idea of a murder
adventure and endless witty one-liners: The Princess Bride has mystery being investigated by an 11-year-old and her babysitters
all the ingredients you need for a zoned-out afternoon of reading. on New Zealand’s South Island sounds up your alley, you may like
You may have seen the 1987 film, but the novel adds even more to to pick up a copy of The Nancys by Melbourne-based Kiwi R.W.R.
the tongue-in-cheek fairytale about a beautiful farm girl reuniting McDonald. It’s his debut novel (the follow-up, Nancy Business,
with her one true love. It’s a literary treasure – timeless and a has just been released as well), and it’s camp, cosy and larger
goddamn joy. than life in the best kind of way.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE MISADVENTURES OF AWKWARD BLACK GIRL BY ISSA RAE
Before there was Insecure (another TV show to add to your happy-
time watchlist, by the by) there was Awkward Black Girl, actress
and writer Issa Rae’s web series. This follow-up memoir is funny
and self-deprecating in typical Issa style, going all in on what it’s
like to be a gawky introvert in a world that glorifies being cool.
(There’s a whole essay on online flirting, FYI.)
ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY BY DAVID SEDARIS Let’s be honest, you
could flip open any David Sedaris book and have a helluva time, but
this classic essay collection (which celebrates its 21st birthday this
year) has too many laugh-out-loud lines to count. It’s inspired by a
move from Paris to New York – the title story chronicles his attempts
to learn French from a teacher who declares that “every day spent
with you is like having a caesarean section.”

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 our project
the big feels club
HONOR EASTLY AND GRAHAM PANTHER
ARE MAKING SENSE OF THE MESSY
STUFF OF BEING HUMAN.
Words Koren Helbig
Big feelings can sometimes make you feel like a total weirdo. When
you’re super-anxious, really scared or experiencing some other
yuck emotion, it’s easy to feel completely alone, like a faulty human
mistakenly set loose on an otherwise normal planet.
Melbourne musicians and mental health advocates Honor Eastly and
Graham Panther have both lived through the pointy end of feelings
like these. About a decade ago, not long after he turned 23, Graham’s
life quite suddenly fell apart for no particular reason. He experienced
episodic breaks in reality, struggled to even drive or go shopping,
and tried all sorts of therapy and pills to get back on track. Honor,
meanwhile, spent 16 days on suicide watch in a psychiatric hospital,
after years of depression took a major turn for the worse.
Having seen the mental health system from inside, and then
subsequently worked in the industry as ‘lived experience’ advocates
and consultants, the couple both gradually realised something big.
Lots of our official approaches to mental healthcare, while hugely
important, can inadvertently make the person going through it all feel
more isolated – and also like a bit of a loser. “For many of us, the only
people we unpack our messy stuff with are professionals who either
haven’t had that experience themselves, or aren’t allowed to tell
us,” Graham says. “So we end up feeling more alone and weird than
when we first asked for help.” Honor’s experience has been largely
the same. “It took 10 years before I found someone else who’d had
similar experiences to me – and it was because I was in hospital.”
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Photo Bri Hammond
In a bid to counter all that, the pair launched The Big Feels Club. It’s
a grassroots attempt at sparking new ways of talking about crisis
and distress, hopefully helping to break down some of the associated
stigma and shame. “Public stories of people who’ve had big, scary
feelings are usually, ‘I was doing it tough, I asked for help and I
got better,’ or, ‘Look at these people who are completely fucked,’”
Graham says. “So we were like, ‘How do we make a space for people
who aren’t fixed, but aren’t fucked, either?’” “Our vision is a society
where hard life stuff is seen as an opportunity to connect with other
people, and asking for help isn’t difficult because it’s not something
only desperate people do,” Honor adds.
Their initial experiments included the Big Feels Book Club, which
began as a one-off event at Graham’s house. “A really random
mix of people came along, some of who identified as having their
own stuff going on, and some who were just interested. It was no-
questions-asked; just turn up, listen to a podcast and have a chat,”
Graham says. In subsequent meetings, members looked at news
stories, YouTube videos and a Tony Robbins doco, all related in some
way to crisis and mental health – but they didn’t read a single book.
“One of the difficulties was how to keep it in the discussion space,
rather than the therapy space. That’s why we called it a book club,”
Honor explains.
The idea proved unbelievably popular, with folks writing in from all
over Australia and New Zealand, as well as Hawaii, Laos, Berlin
and the United Kingdom. Within a month of launching their website
and fortnightly e-newsletter (a cherry-picked collection of the most
interesting mental health-related things Graham and Honor have
spotted or discussed), 1000 people had signed up for more. “Having
access to those kinds of conversations has changed my life. Now
we sort of package it up for others,” Honor says. There’s still the
occasional in-person meet-up, but overall the focus is on creating
meaningful, far-reaching content and partnering with like-minded
organisations. According to Honor, “The Big Feels Club is not
necessarily about finding all the answers, but finding other people
who are asking the same questions.”
 HOW MIGHT
YOUR LIFE BE BETTER
WITH LESS?

Declutter your life and prioritise

the relationships that matter most
 try this at home
a few ways to maintain a healthy
relationship with the internet.
WORDS JESS HOPE ILLUSTRATION ASHLEY RONNING
Digital technology is impressive, sure, but it’s also kind of annoying.
Underneath its glossy casing is a world of forgetting passwords,
doomscrolling through breaking news and algorithms that
embellish how much fun everyone is actually having. So, you’d
think we’d know better than to spend around 15 per cent of our
waking lives on social media, often popping on and off more than
20 times a day.
Granted, it’s not all bad. The internet allows us to connect
with family and friends all over the world. It helps us maintain
valuable relationships when, say, a global pandemic closes
international borders and the world’s postal network grinds
to a halt. It’s like time-travelling from the comfort of your bed,
or couch, or sometimes the loo. It means we can work remotely,
take a virtual cooking class or study online – not to mention have
disastrous first dates across screens.
But boffins are curious how all this online activity is impacting
our mental health. Understanding the long-term effects of our
digital habits is a work in progress, but research carried out
by psychologists at Leeds University in 2010 found strong links
between heavy internet use and depressive symptoms. Even
social media platforms themselves are starting to recognise
these connections: in 2019, Instagram hid the number of ‘likes’
below each post in an effort to improve the emotional and mental
wellbeing of its users. Luckily, there are ways to take matters into
our own hands, too – small things we can do to care for our brains
in a digital world.
SET SOME SOCIAL MEDIA BOUNDARIES Social media is the first
port of call for 58 per cent of Australians when we turn our phones
on in the morning. (That’s assuming they were ever switched off at
all.) What starts as an innocent Twitter check can soon result in a
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full-on feeling of Facebook-induced FOMO. Before our eyelids have
properly peeled back from our eyeballs, a damaging emotional cycle
has begun that can last all day. So, it’s important to set some limits
on the time you spend trawling social media. Break your scrolling
sessions into shifts (after all, no one wants to start a shift before
9am). Allow yourself up to 15 minutes on socials at a time, and
cap that at 90 minutes each day. Putting boundaries in place and
breaking old habits won’t be easy, so just do your best and be kind
to yourself.
DITCH THE DOOMSCROLLING Hours of our lives are taken up by
endless scrolling through heavy news stories, which can trigger the
release of stress hormones, lead to catastrophising and a negative
worldview, and generally have a detrimental effect on both our
mental and physical health. Over time, even funny cat videos can fail
to lift us up! To prevent injury to your index finger (and grey matter),
set yourself an intentional reason for being online. It could be a
small thing like checking in with a mate, finding a delicious recipe
or gathering inspiration for your bathroom reno. But the moment
you stop enjoying Pinterest and start stalking your sister’s new
girlfriend’s brother-in-law or deep-diving into a foreign crisis,
it’s time to log off.
UNFOLLOW AND UNSUBSCRIBE You know that one person whose
Facebook posts irritate the hell out of you? Or the Instagram
frenemy who makes you feel crap about yourself? Whoever’s
name just sprang to mind: unfollow them. That includes strange
ol’ Auntie Susan, and the school friend you haven’t spoken to in
17 years. This isn’t brutal culling for no reason: research shows
that even a small amount of negative brain activity can lead to a
weakened immune system. Not only that, but Dr Travis Bradberry
(a renowned expert in emotional intelligence) found that negative
attitudes can affect your smarts and ability to think. So, next time
 try this at home
something (or someone) irritating makes you feel a bit fuzzy-headed,
know that you’re not just being dramatic, and you should probably
unsubscribe, stat.
REMEMBER IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL On the other hand, you may
find yourself on the receiving end of an unfollow – sometimes for
reasons unknown. Don’t waste energy dwelling on what you may or
may not have said, or what you could have done differently. Being
caught up in someone’s digital cull can be a real timesaver, actually.
And as much as you hope your daily pet snaps are brightening
everyone’s day, they might not be your old housemate’s cup of tea.
Which is OK! It’s impossible to know what’s going on in someone
else’s life, and their choice to unfollow you is not a reflection on
you (or your pets).
TURN OFF NOTIFICATIONS, QUICKSTICKS In a world where
Facebook pokes are no longer a socially acceptable thing, what kind
of joy could we possibly hope to gain from push notifications? The fact
is, a sudden ping sends our brains into overdrive, triggering anxiety
and hypervigilance – basically, it shuts off the logical prefrontal
cortex and sends emergency signals to the body that a predator
may be about to attack. So, pop open your phone settings and
swipe off all notifications that aren’t essential (which, to be honest,
is probably most of them). If you don’t want to go cold turkey,
begin with the platforms you waste the most time scrolling
through. Then work backwards and enjoy a rare glimpse of
your phone’s wallpaper. It’s been a while.
WHIP YOUR EMAILS INTO SHAPE Now it’s on to tackling that
overflowing inbox. It can feel damn personal to unsubscribe from
brand emails – even the ones you definitely don’t remember
signing up to. There you are, hovering over the unsubscribe button,
wondering whether the CEO on the other end will hate you forever.
117
But here’s the thing: they won’t. And it’s super cathartic to part ways
with all those newsletters you’ll never read, about yet another bed
linen sale or holidays you can’t go on. Once you’ve chipped away
at your clogged-up inbox, set aside 20 or so minutes each day to
read and respond to new mail. It’ll keep your admin from getting
overwhelming and mean you never miss updates on things you
actually care about. (Which may include new bedding. No judgment.)
REDUCE PRE-BED SCREEN TIME There’s been a ton of research
into the impact of using devices before bedtime. Not only is your
phone’s blue light harmful to your eyes, but being on a device before
you tuck yourself in will also leave you feeling too alert to sleep and,
as a consequence, struggling to stay awake the next day. That said,
a blanket ban on technology in the bedroom isn’t necessarily
required. If leaving your device in another room isn’t an option
(phone alarm users, we see you), at least pop it out of reach of your
bed so you’re not tempted to go for a ‘quick’ scroll into the wee
hours. It’s also helpful to place it screen-down so your cosy sleep
space isn’t lit up by random late-night phone action.
EMBRACE OFFLINE MOMENTS Now for the real test: ditching
all technology for an hour each day. It may not sound like much,
but even a little screen-free time will go a long way. Remember
journals and the joy of penning plans on a wall calendar? Or making
a collage from old books while listening to an album all the way
through? Go on, turn your attention to that half-finished novel,
dust off an op-shop sewing pattern or get crafty with your hands.
However you spend your time – even if it’s practising some breathing
techniques or going for a neighbourhood flower-spotting stroll – it
doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s simply an excuse to slow down, catch
your breath and give your noggin time to recharge. How do you know
if it’s working? Well, you probably won’t feel the need to post about
it online.
look what i made

with empathy
EMILY MCDOWELL MAKES CARDS
FOR THE SUCKIEST OF TIMES.

I worked in advertising for 10 years before I started my card

business. In 2013 I had an idea for a Valentine’s card that was
an awkward dating card. The one you give the person you’re sort of
dating, but not really. I found a local printer and I made 100 of them
and put them in my Etsy shop, figuring I would sell a few and maybe
some people would be into it. Then it went viral and I sold 1700 in a
week. I launched a collection and it was really well received. And the
company just sort of grew like crazy from there.
Here’s my philosophy of cards: what I saw out in the world was a lot
of people making cards for the kinds of relationships we wish we had.
But I really wanted to make cards for the relationships we actually
have. Relationships are complicated and messy and screwed up a lot
of the time, and a lot of cards – they don’t resonate with people.
I thought there was a place to go that let a bit more reality in.
Fifteen years ago, I was 24 and living in San Francisco and working
at a dot-com and just had a fun, crazy, 24-year-old life, and I got
diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had six months of chemo and
about six weeks of having radiation every day. And then I went into
remission. I was diagnosed in August 2000 and went into remission
officially in June 2001. So it was almost a year of treatment.
Cancer is a huge shock when you’re that young. And part of what
sucks about it – well, everything sucks about it – but part of what was
super-sucky was none of my friends had ever known anyone our age
who was sick before. And everyone was so scared to talk about it.
People didn’t know what to do or how to treat me. Even super-caring,
well-intentioned people didn’t know what to say. And some of them
disappeared. I had a couple of really good friends who kind of bailed.
At the time, if somebody disappeared, I interpreted it as, “Oh, they
don’t care about me.” Like there’s something wrong with me, I’m not
good enough, they don’t love me. But really, they were terrified and
didn’t know what to do. They came back later and said, “I’m so sorry,
I was so afraid,” and it ended up fine. But it was so hard at the time;
just feeling abandoned by friends. I felt like it was about me, but it
wasn’t. Regardless of the reason, though, it’s still difficult because
that’s a time when you really need people around you.
I remember getting ‘get well soon’ cards from people and feeling like
it was so weird. I totally appreciate the sentiment and thank you for
the card, but this is such a weird card, because: I’ll try! I guess I’ll
try; I’ll do my best! But then, what else are you supposed to send?
A sympathy card? That’s just super-sad. And a blank card doesn’t
help, because the problem is people just don’t know what to say.
That stuck in my head for a long time, and it’s where my empathy
cards came from. I like the idea that something I made is actually
a tool for people to connect. To give them words when they don’t have
any. That’s super-rewarding. I think we almost have a pathological
need to say something to people that’s placating. When someone’s in
a difficult situation, there’s something about our culture that’s told us
to make it better. We need to think of the magical thing to say to make
it all right. And a lot of the time there really isn’t something to say.
But that’s OK. It’s OK to just be with a person and say, “I love you,
I’m here for you,” and just be their friend.
See more of Emily’s real-talking goodies at emandfriends.com

121
 something to say
diy self-esteem
SOMETIMES MENTAL HEALTH CAN
BE AIDED BY GRISLY MURDER FILMS.
OR AVOCADOS.
Words Rowena Grant-Frost
Because my posture is slumped, because my voice is soft, and
because I tend to shuffle around like a patient in a hospital, people
often assume I have low self-esteem. This is sort of true, I suppose –
I know and recognise I am extremely rubbish at a lot of things I wish
I was good at, and sometimes feel like I have been squashed by the
giant shoe that is life. But despite all of this, or perhaps because of
it, I remain eternally and inexplicably optimistic.
People who know me, who understand I am as neurotic as I am
glass-half-full (as long as the glass is clean), have encouraged me to
project a more confident image. “You should stand up straight!” they
advise – kindly, I suppose – but it always sounds mean to me. I stand
up as straight as I can, thank you. Can I help it if rounded shoulders
run in my family? “Just be yourself!” is another big one, as though
‘being yourself’ comes easily to someone who feels most like herself
when no one else is around. Someone handed me a printout of self-
esteem tips once. The first one read: “Powerful people often keep
their hands still.” I threw the rest away.
The way I hold my body in space does not fill me with confidence.
Even if I had the straightest back and the stillest hands, I would still
122
Photo Sandra Lazzarini
not feel powerful and forthright and assured. But there are small
things every day that fill me with confidence. They make me happy.
This is what they are:
1. THE SUN AND THE SKY, WHICH ARE BOTH SO AMAZING I REALLY
CAN’T BELIEVE IT. The sky is a big expansive ribbon that colours the
ceiling of the whole wide world BLUE. Sometimes it is red and pink
and orange and lavender and white. IT IS SO GREAT. It is just about
my most favourite thing ever. The sun is a close second, because it
collaborates with the sky to make this happen. It loses points, though,
because I cannot stare at it directly and lovingly like I can the sky.
Both fill me with confidence and excitement, because I know they will
always be there, but I’ll never know exactly what they’ll look like.
2. AVOCADO, RED ONION, WHITE WINE VINEGAR, OLIVE OIL,
BREAD. This is one of my favourite things. It takes me approximately
one minute to prepare and eat, and approximately several hours to
think about how delicious it was. The predictability of this combination
makes me confident about its deliciousness and feel very happy and
glad and full.
3. THE BEST MOVIES, OVER AND OVER. I was thinking recently about
how much I like Fargo. It is such a terrible film (so much murder
and snow), but has some of the kindest and gentlest characters
(Marge and Norm Gunderson). I like watching great films over and
over: there’s always something to appreciate, observe, admire. There
is confidence to be gained in watching something wonderful and
realising you understand and love it, and, for that reason, it is a part
of who you are (wood chipper and all).
4. FRIENDS. The number of very, very good friends I have is very, very
small, but these are the people I like spending time with the most.
I can tell them things and they will understand and smile and tell me,
maybe, that everything will be all right, or that I’m wrong and being
silly, or that I’m right and I should be angry. My very, very good friends
are people who exist to give me confidence. They exist to let me know
that I am not alone, that there are other people like me. And together
we can get through anything – slumped, soft-spoken and shuffling.
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 learn something new
things that are
getting better
a few very valid reasons to do a happy dance.
WORDS SOPHIE KALAGAS
SEAWEED You probably don’t think much about seaweed beyond
noshing on a salad or getting it tangled around your legs at the
beach, but Aussie boffins have their eyes on the underwater
algae as a key way to battle climate change. The idea is to farm
it on a massive scale – not only does it grow super-fast, it also
doesn’t require nitrogen-heavy fertilisers like earth-bound plants
do, and it absorbs carbon at a much, much faster rate. (Which
is all pretty great for reducing dodgy emissions in the air.) There
are also a tonne of weird and wonderful ways that seaweed and
its byproducts can be used, including biodegradable plastics,
construction materials, artificial body parts and cosmetics.
Plus, adding algae to a cow’s regular diet has been found to
decrease their methane production (aka cow burps and farts)
by a whopping 20 per cent. Not bad for a stinky sea plant.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NOISE-BASED RAGE If the sound of someone casually munching
on popcorn at the movies makes you want to hulk out in a
serious way, you may well have a disorder known as misophonia,
where certain noises trigger intense emotional or physiological
responses. But there’s good news for both you and the innocent
noise-making folks around you: a cause of the condition has
recently been discovered. Research led by Newcastle University
in England has found people with misophonia have increased
connectivity in the brain between the auditory cortex and the
motor control areas related to the face, mouth and throat.
As a result, other people’s mouth sounds feel like they’re
intruding into their own bodies – basically, their brain thinks
it’s actually involved in making the icky noises. Which is very
confusing. Thanks to this revelation, new therapies can now
be developed (and family dinners can go down without huge,
blow-up arguments).
124
TASSIE DEVILS Tasmanian devils have had a rough trot. First,
they were wiped out across Australia thanks to the introduction of
invasive dingoes. Then, while taking refuge in the country’s most
southerly state, they became endangered due to the spread of
a nasty ‘devil facial tumour disease’. And to top all that off, they
were defamed by Warner Bros., depicted as a dim-witted, grunting,
short-tempered cyclone that eats everything in its path, including
trees and boulders. Thankfully, their luck turned around in 2021,
when wild Tassie devil joeys were born on mainland Australia for
the first time in 3000 years. A trio of conservation groups began
the reintroduction process back in 2011 to save the species from
extinction. So far it’s been a roaring success, which bodes well for
other struggling Aussie critters like the brush-tailed rock wallaby
and the long-nosed potoroo.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
VIRTUAL REALITY Once, virtual reality seemed like a far-fetched
technology reserved for the kinds of futuristic films that suggested
we’d all be hoverboarding about by now. These days, the digital
simulations can help pull us out of a mental health funk. Since
headsets no longer cost an arm and a leg, a tonne of research
is being done on VR’s therapeutic possibilities – starting with
treatment for anxiety and phobias. Patients are exposed to their
trigger virtually and can work through their feelings from the safety
of their therapist’s office. A similar approach is being trialled for
folks with PTSD – especially war veterans. As one boffin said:
“We use the best technology to train soldiers for war; we should
use the best technology to fix the mess afterwards.” Yet another
experiment involves using VR to ease symptoms of depression.
The patient first practises expressing compassion to another
human – then the script is flipped when they’re faced with a
simulation of themselves. Whoa.
 learn something new
DOLLY PARTON Sure, Dolly Parton was already a deadset legend.
That’s an undeniable fact. But at 75, the bedazzled country star
just keeps on upping the ante. Consider this: in 2020 alone,
she notched a top-10 track on the Billboard charts (in the ‘hot
dance/electronic’ category, no less), won her ninth Grammy
Award, released a holiday album, starred in a Netflix film,
spoke out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement,
narrated a series of bedtime stories to comfort children who
were scared in isolation and, oh, casually donated a million
dollars to COVID research, which was used to fund one of the
first approved vaccines. Basically, she’s kicking some serious
butt, while spreading her dang light all over the world. (And
her scent too, apparently – Dolly’s Christmas on the Square
co-star Talia Hill claims that when she walks into a room she
“smells like heaven”.)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
OUR FLEXIBILITY No, not the literal kind (unless you’ve been
doing a bunch of yoga and stretching, in which case, good
job!). The flexibility we’re referring to is one of the few silver
linings of this global pandemic we find ourselves in: a newfound
acceptance of technology that has allowed us to do things like
work, have medical appointments and take classes from home.
Upsides include fewer stressful commutes, less pollution from
cars spewing nasty gases into the blue, the option to travel while
you work, and greater access to crucial services for folks who
didn’t have it before. (Those in rural and remote communities
or with limited mobility especially benefit from things like
telehealth appointments.) Plus, you can do your laundry on your
lunchbreak instead of cramming all your chores into that brief
window between getting home and going to bed. And for that,
we are very grateful.
125
‘SKIN-TONE’ CRAYONS In a real ‘why did this take so long to
happen?’ kind of moment, art supply peddlers Crayola have
released a pack of crayons, pencils and textas that represent
a more diverse range of skin tones (40, in fact), so littlies can
draw themselves more accurately. They even teamed up with
a fella who used to work with MAC Cosmetics to develop the
Colors of the World line, because, you know, when it comes to
matching epidermal tints, folks in the make-up world know
what they’re doing. The hope is that kids will feel a sense of
belonging and acceptance right from the get-go, instead of
having to choose between stark white, dark brown and some
manky shade of peach when doodling a self-portrait, or a
picture of their friends. It took more than eight months of
mucking around in the crayon lab (and in field with parents,
teachers and diversity experts) to get the range of shades just
right. And according to excited feedback from art-loving tots,
it was all very worth it.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
HAVING PERIODS IN NEW ZEALAND On the spectrum of
reasons to skive off from school, lack of access to period
products is a pretty un-fun one. And yet, according to Prime
Minister Jacinda Ardern, one in 12 young people in New
Zealand were missing classes because they couldn’t afford
to buy tampons or sanitary pads. To help improve school
attendance – not to mention the wellbeing of said period-
havers – free menstrual products are now available in schools
across the country. Which is pretty bloody great. Similar steps
are being made in other parts of the world, as well: Victoria
and South Australia now provide pads and tampons at no cost
in every government school, and last year, Scotland became
the first country to make the products free, period.
If you or anyone you know needs help, please reach out and talk
to somebody. You’re not alone – there are so many wonderful
organisations that exist to make things easier.

Below, we’ve noted down a bunch of them: places to turn to in

times of crisis, for handy information and fact sheets, or just to
have a chat. This list isn’t exhaustive, but we hope it helps a bit.
Stay strong – you are wonderful.

24-HOUR CRISIS LINES

In an emergency, call 000
In New Zealand, call 111

Lifeline Australia: 13 11 14
Lifeline Aotearoa: 0800 543 354
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
Suicide Crisis Helpline (NZ): 0508 828 865
Beyond Blue Support Service: 1300 22 4636
MensLine Australia: 1300 78 99 78
Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800

CHAT AND ONLINE COUNSELLING SERVICES

Lifeline Australia: lifeline.org.au
Lifeline Aotearoa: lifeline.org.nz
Suicide Call Back Service: suicidecallbackservice.org.au
Beyond Blue: beyondblue.org.au
MensLine Australia: mensline.org.au
Kids Helpline: kidshelpline.com.au
headspace: headspace.org.au
SANE Australia: sane.org / 1800 18 7263
1800 RESPECT: 1800respect.org.au / 1800 737 732
The Butterfly Foundation: butterfly.org.au / 1800 33 4673
Alcohol & Drug Counselling Online: counsellingonline.org.au
 QUEER-SPECIFIC SERVICES
QLife: qlife.org.au / 1800 184 527
Switchboard: switchboard.org.au / 1800 729 367
Living Proud: livingproud.org.au
Twenty10: twenty10.org.au
ACON: acon.org.au
OutLine: outline.org.nz

SUPPORT FOR CULTURALLY DIVERSE COMMUNITIES

WellMob: wellmob.org.au
Brother to Brother Crisis Support Line: 1800 435 799
Yarning Safe ‘N’ Strong: vahs.org.au / 1800 959 563
Embrace Multicultural Mental Health: embracementalhealth.org.au
Transcultural Mental Health Centre: dhi.health.nsw.gov.au/
transcultural-mental-health-centre
Victorian Transcultural Mental Health: vtmh.org.au
Stronger Together: ruok.org.au/strongertogether
iBobbly app by Black Dog Institute: blackdoginstitute.org.au

MENTAL HEALTH FOR CREATIVES

Support Act: supportact.org.au / 1800 959 500
The Arts Wellbeing Collective: artswellbeingcollective.com.au
Entertainment Assist: entertainmentassist.org.au

OTHER ACE ORGANISATIONS

Black Dog Institute: blackdoginstitute.org.au
ReachOut: au.reachout.com
FriendLine: friendline.org.au
R U OK?: ruok.org.au
Conversations Matter: conversationsmatter.com.au
Carers Australia: carersaustralia.com.au
Blue Knot Foundation: blueknot.org.au
Head to Health: headtohealth.gov.au
MindSpot: mindspot.org.au
Support After Suicide: supportaftersuicide.org.au
Children of Parents with a Mental Illness: copmi.net.au
Yellow Brick Road: yellowbrickroad.org.nz
 if there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that you can’t pour from
an empty teacup. frankie feel-good is a collection of uplifting
stories, useful resources and hands-on activities to help you feel
tip-top, even on the crummiest of days. there are honest chats
with therapists, comforting projects and lots of ways to help a
friend in need. you’ll hear from folks who’ve navigated tricky
times in their mental health and learn science-backed facts about
why we feel the way we do. so please, dive in – and we hope your
cup will soon be filled up right to the brim.

VOLUME ONE
AUS: $12.95 INC GST
NZ: $12.95 INC GST