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Ep.86: Surviving a road traffic collision
267 Plays9 months ago
"The only person who can help you is you"
Harriet Barnsley survived a serious road traffic collision in 2014 when she was 21. She was hit, as a pedestrian, by a car travelling at 101miles per hour. She woke from a month-long coma to learn that her best friend had been killed at the scene.
Harriet lives with a long list of injuries and is physically disabled. She suffered a traumatic brain injury in the collision, and went on to develop bipolar as a result.
2:00 - Being bullied at school for being good at her work, wanting to do well, and not conforming to the tough girls' standards. Harriet says what a relief it is as an adult to realise that we're "not trying to ruin each other's lives" any more!
8:00 - Proof that we're all feeling as insecure as each other - no one is invulnerable.
11:00 - How time makes hard things easier to bear, and the joy of finding a real connection in friendship.
14:20 - Harriet describes the incident she was involved in.
19:45 - Recovery from severe injuries and how it affects mental health.
22:00 - Is it tough love? How parents can support an injured child - the tricky balance between empathy and resilience.
25:00 - Why worrying doesn't help your teenager, and how to make peace with your anxiety as a parent and be present for your child.
28:00 - What it's like to live with life-changing injuries.
29:00 - The mental health effects of ignoring the emotional impact of a road traffic collision. Harriet describes her psychosis and mental health breakdown, and how it "set her free".
34:00 - What it's like to live with bipolar.
36:30 - How to get through the worst thing you could possibly imagine. Making the choice to do hard things.
40:00 - How to get through a parent's worst nightmare.
49:00 - Harriet's main piece of advice: if you're struggling with something, TALK to someone. Trying to ignore your feelings never works.
Harriet is now writing a memoir - Thrown, about coping when your life is thrown off course. She volunteers for a number of mental health and disability charities and is training to be a counsellor.
More from Helen Wills:
Helen wills is a teen mental health podcaster and blogger at Actually Mummy, a resource for midlife parents of teens.
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the Teenage Kicks podcast to hear new episodes. If you have a suggestion for the podcast please get in touch.
You can find more from Helen Wills on parenting teenagers on Instagram and Twitter @iamhelenwills.
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Please note that Helen Wills is not a medical expert, and nothing in the podcast should be taken as medical advice. If you're worried about yourself or a teenager, please seek support from a medical professional.
Episode produced by Michael J Cunningham.
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Transcript
Introduction to Self-Reliance and Personal Improvement
00:00:00
Speaker
But I knew instinctively that the only person that could make it better was me. And I could lie there for as long as I wanted and say it's not fair, I don't want to have to do this. But then I'm really in my own life. Welcome to the Teenage Kicks podcast, where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager.
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm
Meet Harriet Barnsley: A Story of Survival and Transformation
00:00:30
Speaker
Helen Wills and every week I talk to someone who had a difficult time in the teenage years but came out the other side in a good place and has insight to offer to parents and young people who might be going through the same.
00:00:44
Speaker
Harriet Barnsley survived a serious road traffic collision in 2014 when she was 21. She was hit as a pedestrian by a car travelling at 101 miles an hour. She woke from a month-long coma to learn that her best friend had been killed at the scene.
00:01:03
Speaker
Harriet lives with a long list of injuries. She's physically disabled and suffered a traumatic brain injury in the collision, going on to develop bipolar as a result.
Harriet's Teenage Years: Bullying and Self-Sufficiency
00:01:15
Speaker
She's now writing a memoir, having graduated her degree in philosophy, and she volunteers for a number of mental health and disability charities and is training to be a counselor. Harriet, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
00:01:29
Speaker
Harriet, as with all of my guests, I wanted to start with a little run-through of what your teenage years were like. That's a broad question. What were my teenage years like? Hard. OK.
00:01:49
Speaker
I mean, teenage years are hard, but was there anything in particular that was hard for you? I was really badly bullied in primary school and it kind of carried on in secondary school and it was the
00:02:06
Speaker
just every single day going to a school where people weren't exactly nice to me for five years was kind of soul destroying. Yeah, that's a lot. So I'm guessing school years were just not happy for you at all.
00:02:23
Speaker
school years. No, I was okay. I learnt very fast to be self-sufficient and the problem, I think one of the main problems was I was a bit of a teacher's pet. I wanted to do this, I wanted to do my work well and I was
00:02:42
Speaker
quietly confident, so I wouldn't kind of go along with what everyone else was saying, or just, you know, conform. And that caused a lot of problems because people, you know, the tough ones don't like it when you don't do what they say. Well, because you weren't kind of cowering under their spell, you were just getting on with life and doing well. Yeah. People don't, yeah, no, you're right.
00:03:11
Speaker
I don't know if it's changed, but I like to think it's changed, but school was very hard for just the people side. The work was fine. I've got good grades. I'm just socializing and having to be around people and all the different dilemmas and problems and arguments. I went to a girl's school for second school, secondary sutures. I don't know if that's easier or harder, not having boys there.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, both probably easier in some ways, harder in others. But yeah, I mean, girls do seem to go through typical age-related stuff that is unfathomable once you're out the other side. And even those girls that are perpetrators of it will come out the other side and often say, I cannot believe I was like that. I don't know why. I've had these conversations with friends of mine who've been those girls
Friendship and Loss: Coping with Grief
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, I can't believe having come out of it that the world, the real world, the adult world isn't like that. And I don't have to have this stress all the time. And it's not like people are their own people. And unless you hang out in big groups of people, I struggle with big groups of people.
00:04:28
Speaker
But we're all kind of skating on with it and not trying to ruin each other's lives anymore. It's such a relief. God, that phrase you said, not trying to ruin each other's lives anymore. It can feel like that in school sometimes, can't it? It's so sad. Did you have any friends?
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah. So my closest friend was my friend that was killed next to me in the car crash, which was, she was my oldest friend. I got on with people. I have a few friends from school, but I just, I didn't do, so I had friends from like different, different cliques, but I didn't have one big group that I was happy in. And that's kind of how it feels in life now. I don't have one big group. I just have a few different people and it kind of works better for me.
00:05:15
Speaker
I feel like that's what most people have. You narrow things down. I think when we're in school as girls, it can feel important to be part of a big gang. It's all about finding your tribe, isn't it? I'm also doing counselling training at the moment.
00:05:33
Speaker
there's a real biological urge to find a tribe where you fit and are accepted so that you're safe, I suppose. But in reality, in a school situation, there's nothing safe about those popular tribes. And I think the reason everyone settles down once we're all adults is
00:05:54
Speaker
Because those people who were doing the bullying, who were really cliquey, are more able to acknowledge that they've got vulnerabilities as well. I think back in school, you just want to be invulnerable as far as everyone else in the room's concerned. You don't want any judgment or weakness to show.
00:06:15
Speaker
It's funny, it was yesterday I was thinking like, I've got a few, my friendships have changed a lot over the years and I've got like friends from school that I've kind of drifted away from and it feels quite painful to not, I just, I've thought of like, I've got a few friends from uni and they have, you know, they have their groups that they have from school still that they're held onto and I'm
00:06:37
Speaker
weirdly jealous of that like that they just have like someone you know because my one friend my closest friends died and like we had a few people they'd gone with but I don't have anyone to kind of be like oh you know school days so I could yeah. Right to reminisce and yeah that shared connection from history. I thought that's the point the group at school that of the people like I don't know the ones that get on fine and seem to do well like
00:07:08
Speaker
It's always enviable. I don't know how to not envy that, even though I don't... I know it didn't work like that and really they have their own struggles. That makes sense.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, it makes complete sense. And actually my counseling tutor did an exercise with us a couple of weeks ago where, and it was based on horoscopes and he'd printed out what for all of us felt like a personalized character description for our horoscope. He asked us how much we identified and all of us identified with our own write-up.
00:07:45
Speaker
at the top end of the scale. And that's when he said, it's exactly the same piece of paper that you've all got. It says the same thing. So I found it really comforting that actually all of us
00:08:00
Speaker
think we're good at some things, don't think we're so good at others, feel a bit vulnerable. That was the bit that really, I feel like we're getting things wrong. We all feel the same. It's just how much we show it to the world. Yeah, no, that is really comforting.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah. Is it okay if I ask you to, and do say anything that I ask you in this podcast, you don't have to answer, but is it okay to ask you a bit about your friendship? Who was your friend? My friend was Rebecca McManus and we met in primary school in the first year nursery, so age five. Oh, wow.
00:08:47
Speaker
We always, we just got on. Everyone was really horrible to me in primary school. It was quite like a really bad time in my life. My mum wanted to get involved and obviously you can't get involved in what, I don't know, but Becky was always, we always got on and we just hung out and had sleepovers all the time. Went birthday bowling and her birthday was close to mine in January. So we'd kind of celebrate together and just
00:09:12
Speaker
Then we went to the bus to school every single day in secondary school and we did different schools after that, but kept in contact. We'd have long phone calls and like hour long phone calls and then just always, she was just always a constant. I feel like, um, I'm sorry, I'm probably being a bit counsellor here, but I feel like when you said she thought she was always a constant, um, there was, there was something there that I thought, what did she, what did it mean to you to have her friendship?
00:09:42
Speaker
No, it's just that it was there regardless. So no matter how much we kept in contact or how much we drifted or were busy with our lives, we still would pick up at the exact same place every single time we hung out. It's hard to find that.
00:09:57
Speaker
It really is. As you were describing it, I was thinking about a friendship that I still have actually now.
The Accident: A Journey of Recovery and Resilience
00:10:07
Speaker
We didn't meet until we were 14, but she said something recently that resonated along the lines of what you just said. She's the only person now
00:10:20
Speaker
She's the only person that knows the me of that age, because all my other friends have come since then. So we have that kind of secret club of two.
00:10:31
Speaker
where we remember the school, we remember the people, we remember the people around because we don't socialise with our... I mean, I am still in contact with other people from school, but they're not close friends. Yeah, that must be a really difficult thing to miss now, having had that. Well, it was...
00:10:56
Speaker
So I woke up from the camera and didn't land for a while, that Becky had been with me and that she died.
00:11:06
Speaker
It's been almost 10 years now, and the thing I've learnt about grief is that time, unfortunately, does make it easier to bear. So I've just kind of gotten with it. I've been trying to find a person to kind of subconsciously or unconsciously try and find a person to fill the gap. And I've sort of managed to do that.
00:11:35
Speaker
on, you know, you've heard of Bumble, the dating site. Yeah, yeah. Bumble has a section called Bumble BFF, which is to find friends, not date. Ah, right. Oh, what a great idea. Hmm. Like, it feels a bit weird swiping on people being like, will they be my friends? Or do we? But you write your shared interests, like, if you'd like, wish you want to meet and do yoga or meet for coffee shops or whatever.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I met someone last year and she's also had, we kind of sat there when we first met and we had an exercise class first and then we went for a coffee and we sat and shared like our stories of our lives and why we're on the app and what we're trying to find and it was beautiful and then we've kind of been hanging out.
00:12:18
Speaker
every week or two since we met half a year ago. Amazing. I'm seeing everyone Sunday. It's just a beautiful acceptance and support and it's really nice. Unfortunately, she's moved back. She went to Australia and got married for six years and then moved back and hasn't got any friend here, so I'm like her one friend. But we all said, yeah, it's just really beautiful. I think it's really important to have
00:12:47
Speaker
at least one person with whom you can show up in all your glory, with all your vulnerabilities, and just be exactly who you are and know that they're doing the same thing. I agree. I don't think it happens for most people, actually. I'm not sure that a lot of people really have that, so I'm really pleased you've managed to find that again.
00:13:12
Speaker
I'm nervous it'll go away, that's I suppose just like link to, but she's like trying to assure me that she'll be staying in Birmingham. But it's foreseeable.
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that is the vulnerability again, isn't it? When we have someone like that in our life, when we have that lovely connection, it's a risk, isn't it? Because there's a risk of loss. We just have to learn to be okay with that. Well, especially with what happened to me, it's kind of how I'm a lot more open about death and kind of just, I've had quite a few people since die or have taken their own lives and it's kind of become...
00:13:54
Speaker
if I focus on it more, I don't know. So I'm just, you know, I'm sat there waiting for everyone to kind of die, but in a kind of accepting way. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it's a fact of life, as they say, isn't it?
00:14:13
Speaker
OK, is it OK if we go back to the day that the accident happened and what happened to you? Can you describe a bit about what was happening that day for you? Where were you going? So I had just come back from completing my degree in philosophy at Reading University and came back to my family's home
00:14:38
Speaker
This is all what I've worked out because I don't remember the day or the weeks before, thanks to the brain injury or trauma. But so I met Becky at my house, my parents' house, and we walked through our local park and did a bus stop waiting to go to the centre of Birmingham to go to a friend's hen party where we were both due to bridesmaids for the wedding. Right.
00:15:04
Speaker
And then I wake up a month later from a coma to learn what happened. Right. And you want to know. And what had happened was two cars were drunk racing on Saturday night. It was about 7.30 at night down a 40 mile an hour road.
00:15:26
Speaker
on lost control and smashed into the bus stop that we were stood at. And then we were throwing about 50 metres into the park behind the bus stop. I bet it was killed instantly and I was thrown into a coma. Wow. I'm so sorry that that happened. That never feels an effective enough phrase. It's absolutely horrific.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, there are no words. I couldn't comprehend it for ages. So the way you described it, it sounds like all you know from your own experience rather than from the facts that other people can tell you is that you had gone through the park with Becky to the bus stop and the next thing you woke up in a hospital. So you have no recollection of anything that happened.
00:16:24
Speaker
I woke up in a hospital from a month-long coma where my Glasgow Coma Scale was about three, which is the lowest level of unconsciousness you can be without being dead. We're all like Glasgow Coma Scale. I think the maximum number, 13 or 15, you and me are at the top and so I was closest to being dead, brain dead. Woke up, didn't know
00:16:50
Speaker
I couldn't remember anything so I didn't know where I was, how old I was, what I'd been doing, that I'd been with Becky, that I'd been at uni, I'd forgotten. I did remember but I woke up and felt like I was kind of just in this weird simulation with these people pretending to be like nurses.
00:17:11
Speaker
Right. That must have been so confusing. I didn't, well, I had like the brain injury was the bratwood hemorrhage was the brain bleed, brain bruise, that's the brain, that's the stroke of the brain.
00:17:25
Speaker
So I just kept falling in and out of consciousness for a long, long time. So I didn't really have the energy to work out what was going on. And eventually I turned and my head, I couldn't move any part of my body, but eventually I looked to the left and saw my mum sitting there and just trusted that if my mum was there, that what was happening was real and that I was fine. And how long were you in hospital for?
00:17:49
Speaker
six months, which was significantly shorter than they predicted because I worked really, really, really hard physically to get out of the rehabilitating hospital. And the second one, as fast as possible, it was horrible. And also like that, I've always been athletic and sporty. Like I was like, this is the one thing I can do is I can't control what's happening. I can get my body stronger.
00:18:16
Speaker
Okay, yeah, so you work quite hard. Do you have any memory of how it felt when you started to learn about what had happened and that Becky had died?
Mental Health Struggles and Family Support
00:18:28
Speaker
Well, like, I'd had messages
00:18:31
Speaker
from all of my friends because I'd just come back from doing a four month term abroad in Canada and I could just finish university so I had friends all over the world at this point and I had all of them got in contact like checking in and Becky never did and I kind of had a low level thinking I was like maybe she's at university and she's busy like enjoying the last
00:18:56
Speaker
bit of her university, but like kind of that sneaking like, I was like, it's strange that she's not spoke to me. So like when my mum told me it kind of made sense, but like, so I just cried a lot. Hmm. Understandably.
00:19:15
Speaker
I don't really know where to go, whether to go down the physical recovery route because I'm interested in hearing about that or whether to stick with how it all felt emotionally. I think as this is a mental health podcast, I'd like to ask you if you're able to say a little bit about how you must have felt very fragile emotionally. How did you start to
00:19:42
Speaker
How did you feel throughout all of that time when you were in hospital?
00:19:46
Speaker
Okay, I can focus on the mental health side of it. I just got on with it. I lay there and my mum was a pediatric nurse at the time and that helped a lot. My sister was born physically disabled, learning difficulties, lots of things.
00:20:12
Speaker
and stone cold death. So we already kind of knew the disabled world. And like, we're a tight unit as a family. So we just, and my parents had met through running. So like, if you're like, athletic, athletic, like, people that are very into exercise and stuff, I kind of like, you know, that it's discipline, and we're just like, driven. I don't know, like, it's just kind of, so we just had the comfort, and my dad was just like, comforting me that I'd be able to
00:20:42
Speaker
get better. I mean, it was a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot slower than you'd ever expect. It wasn't a case of waking up and being like, oh, at first we thought I could get back to normal. Then after a while I got brain injury, chronic fatigue for the rest of my life, so I'll never be able to do what I did. But
00:21:05
Speaker
We just support that. What really helped particularly was how my mum broke the news and how my mum handled it in terms of, you know, they were like, you know, you can do this one rather than
00:21:20
Speaker
being really upset at me. They didn't show how hard it was for them going in every night and dealing with it, which is one thing that I think my mom was a pediatric nurse. So when I would hurt myself as a child, she'd say, come on, get up. And I'd be there. I'm like, no. Other people's moms say, oh, poor you. I like that one, so sympathy. But sympathy doesn't help you get better. And if it makes you wallow in someone, so that's what they did.
00:21:48
Speaker
I didn't talk to me and say, oh, this is horrible. I feel so bad for you. We have to protect you forever. It's not fair. They were just like, you can do this. And that was really important.
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense that, well, it sounds like they'd embedded some resilience in you already before this even happened as a child. And yeah, there's a really fine balance, isn't there, between empathy and understanding that you're going through something incredibly difficult and motivating you to keep going and having faith and showing you that they trust that you can get better.
00:22:27
Speaker
It's quite a tricky line for a parent to tread, I think. If I was ever going to be a parent, the fact that my mum, I idolised my mum, it was the best mum that I could possibly imagine. I can't imagine
00:22:42
Speaker
being able to keep up to the sanders. Just like all of her reactions to me throughout my life were just exactly what I needed. I don't know how. And when I started, when I turned 18 and started going out to the bringage tonight, my dad really hated it and my mum was worried, like lying awake worried about me. She'd never like say like, oh, don't go out. She'd let me like, you know, become a person and everything. I just
00:23:06
Speaker
Oh, that whole becoming a person, letting you become a person, my God, that's really profound because that's the sort of thing that... It's really hard. Yeah, I think parents of teenagers are really going through it because it's really hard to let go and let people become a person when they've actually been your child for so long.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, I saw some of my parents' friends the other day and they were telling me about their teenage children and they were saying things like, their daughters just turned 18 and was going clubbing and her boyfriend left her in the middle of town on her own because they had a fight and went home and just left her and they were just like,
00:23:53
Speaker
So just that one scenario, having to navigate that, like as a parent, let alone everything else, because you can't get involved, you can't get too involved. Yeah, well, I always say this, at some point you have to trust and it really is blind faith that they will make whatever decisions they make and it will turn out OK. And if it doesn't,
00:24:20
Speaker
you will be able to get through it. That's my motto with all of it because you can't control kids and you can't control young adults and you can't predict what's going to happen to them as is evidenced by your story.
00:24:35
Speaker
Well, yeah, I had two separate things to say to that one, but my mum said, you know, you can worry about all the different scenarios of what's going to happen to your child when they're out and about in the world. But not at any point was my mum worried that I was standing in the bus stop that we'd got, me and Becky got the bus to school every single day for five years, standing in that bus stop that we'd lived by. She was never
00:25:00
Speaker
in a million years scared that I was going to get hit by a car whilst deliver stopped. Being worried about things doesn't stop them from happening. No, exactly that, yeah.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, and we all worry about things that actually never do happen,
Living with Disabilities: Acceptance and Resilience
00:25:17
Speaker
isn't it? There's some statistic, like 81% of things we worry about never happen, so that's a lot of wasted energy. But also, I know you're thinking about parents and kids, but I can apply that to what you're saying to say,
00:25:31
Speaker
Okay, so now I'm a worst case scenario in my brain all the time because the worst case scenario happened. So I often think that something bad, like a parent, I can imagine that if you can't get in touch with someone, I'm about half scared, they're dead. Like my boyfriend comes home from the pub at like 12 o'clock at night drunk and I'm like, he's going to fall down the stairs. And I've had to lie in bed and make peace with the fact that again, you
00:26:01
Speaker
If something was going to happen, it's going to happen. You can't, just not to anything in life, you can't worry about like, I have to just have like faith that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You can't prevent things from happening. You can take precautions and you can be sensible, but. You can't control everything. That mother can't stop that girl's boyfriend from leaving her in town after a row. Stuff happens. I mean, how would you react to that?
00:26:28
Speaker
Oh, I'd be quite angry with him. And then I would probably say something and my daughter would then get angry with me for trying to control her life and demonstrating and telling her she should have done something different, telling her to ditch him.
00:26:45
Speaker
And it would just not serve any of us when all she really wanted to do was vent about how she'd been let down. And that's the hardest thing for parents is if your kids are going to share something difficult with you, you have to be able to just listen to how it feels for them and not act on how it feels for you. And as a parent, you feel all your children's feelings as well as your own. And it's really tough.
00:27:15
Speaker
Well, can I ask you, is it okay to ask how you've been left in terms of injuries from this horror? I want to call it an accident, but I really don't want to, because it's not an accident, is it? No. Let's talk about, we'll talk about that in a second, but have you been left physically as a result of it?
00:27:43
Speaker
had a brackled hemorrhage, bleed bone bruise, I broke six or seven bones in my neck, broke my left humerus, my left arm, my right hip was shattered, my sacrum was broken, which is your tailbone, my left leg, the
00:28:06
Speaker
top bone and the bottom bone. So the femur and the tib fib were both broken. My sciatic nerve was severed in my left side, so I can't move or feel my left foot. I require a wheelchair, can't walk distances, never be able to. I used to be an athletic, I used to run, I can't ever run again. I use crutches all of the time.
00:28:36
Speaker
have a shower chair rather than being able to stand in the shower because I can't use my one foot so I can't stand safely. And then five years after it happened, because I'd just got on with it and not dealt with any of the pain that, you know, I just, you know, I woke up from a coma, learnt what had happened. I was like, well, I didn't know how to feel all that, so I'm going to just ignore it, or not ignore it, and just carry on. Squash it.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah. And then I met with a neuropsychiatrist that said, I'm boxing my emotions and if I don't face what's happened, there's going to be catastrophic consequences. And I thought to myself, that's all well and good, but how do I sit down and let myself feel it?
Bipolar Disorder: Emotional Management and Balance
00:29:18
Speaker
Because I'd focus so much on my physical recovery. And then five years later, I developed psychosis and thought that I had been killed in the crash and was living in hell.
00:29:30
Speaker
And that is when I first really understood mental health problems. I'd woken up from hospital and one of the healthcare assistants turned to me and joked, what if none of this is real and it's all in your head?
00:29:49
Speaker
Okay, helpful. I think about it the other day, I was like, you don't say that to someone who's just woke up from a month on camera and where their friend's been killed, like you don't, that's just, well, so it planted a seed. So it planted a seed and eventually I thought, yeah, okay. If you hit someone at 30 miles an hour, there's like an 80 or 90% chance, no.
00:30:12
Speaker
I can't remember the statistics. There's like an 80 or 90 chance you'll kill someone if you hit them at 30 miles now. No, it is 30 and then the opposite is true. If you hit them at 20, I remember it was a road safety ad when I was growing up.
00:30:29
Speaker
So what I said to myself in all of the years afterwards, repeatedly, whenever I'd tell someone, whenever people ask me all the time, I've got a foot split, a crutch and a wheelchair, so people always say what we're doing. And I just repeatedly say to myself, you know, no one survives that speed as a pedestrian, no one survives that speed. So I therefore didn't
00:30:55
Speaker
And that was when, yeah, it's like a system finally had a real taste of what real mental health, like really severe mental health problems is where I got put in hospital so I couldn't function.
00:31:09
Speaker
Thank you for sharing that. It's almost like a dissociation, because it makes sense to me, actually, that if you're so focused on recovering your body, that you effectively abandon your emotional recovery. But that makes sense, because how do you recover from something like that? Surely it must feel easier to box it up and put it away.
00:31:34
Speaker
If I could do all of it again, I would do exactly the same. So I became really mentally ill and then
00:31:46
Speaker
And then I was putting the hospital against my will, but not against my will, so I sectioned. And getting mentally ill and getting put in a hospital and having to surrender to it, and the police took me into their van and stuff. They're put in a police cell while they couldn't find that they were awake, put in a hospital bed. Oh, God, that feels so hard. I don't remember it at all. I was living in a nightmare instead.
00:32:14
Speaker
So that set me free. So it happened in the start of 2019 and from then I felt I could grieve myself and that kind of led it all out.
00:32:24
Speaker
like the nightmare that I lived in my head from my illness where I just, I feel like I experienced actual hell. And like for like a few days, I didn't know if my eyes was living in this nightmare. And then coming out of it and realizing it wasn't true was the most, it's the most freeing thing that could possibly happen. I'm just really, really grateful for it for kind of finally coming out. And also not having to, I don't feel like I did, I mean, I know,
00:32:52
Speaker
I know I did a lot of hard work, but I don't feel like I did a lot of hard work emotionally in terms of I blocked it out for five years and then phased it really fast. It was the most horrendous thing I've ever experienced mentally, like the delusion or hallucination or whatever it is in my head. But it was over and then now I can move forwards.
00:33:14
Speaker
And have you worked with a counsellor to figure that out, or was it just as you described, like a light bulb moment coming out of that? Coming out of it and realising that I hadn't actually done all these horrible things, so I thought I'd been evil and was getting punished for being... It's really hard, I've not explained it very well. That makes sense.
00:33:41
Speaker
So, so I coming out of it and finding out that I hadn't actually killed lots of people. Yeah, you're not a terrible person. Yeah, was the biggest relief in the world. And then like a year later, I developed the same illness, but from being too excited and happy about life.
00:33:59
Speaker
because it's really hard not to rejoice that you're alive all the time. The fact that I can stand up just brings me joy every single time I stand up, so it's really hard. Then I got too excited and then got ill again and got put in hospital again. Then they said, I've developed organic bipolar from the brain injury. Now I know to watch both ends of the spectrum rather than just the downs.
00:34:24
Speaker
OK, that's interesting. So, yeah, I don't really know very much about bipolar. I'm aware of the lows and the highs. But this is something that you... Does it take up a lot of your headspace managing? Are you just constantly aware of how you're feeling? Yeah, I'm just constantly assessing how I feel. I'm like low level manic all the time, which I really, really like. My mum says people would pay good money to feel how I feel.
00:34:54
Speaker
That sounds like you're happy most of the time. Yeah, I am. I am. Post-mental illness, even the struggles and the hospitalizations and the thoughts I had, and I've had lots of paranoia, lots of
00:35:10
Speaker
really, really horrible thoughts. I went to A&E three times, begging them to put me in hospital again because I couldn't cope with it. But now I know what it is. And even while it's happening, I'm still really excited that I'm alive. I happened the whole time since the crash. I suppose it's partly I've just channeled myself to be like that.
00:35:35
Speaker
Well, I mean, hats off to you. I can't begin to imagine the work that you've had to do. You say it hasn't felt like work, but you must be having to work daily. It sounds like you are to just be like that. And you could so easily have gone the other way and been completely depressed because actually when you were saying your mum
00:36:01
Speaker
sort of supported you to be really resilient about it. Part of me wanted to ask, but it's not fair. Do you not ever have those days when you can be really angry? Or did you go through a phase of being really angry? Because it just isn't fair. Okay. So when you said it's like, when I said it doesn't feel like work.
00:36:25
Speaker
it feels like I don't have a choice. Like I just have to focus on the positive and or just because the alternative would be to have woken up from coma, in fact not been able to move a single part of my body. Like I just had like 70 hours of surgery so far. I may need more in the future and just woken up and said, this isn't fair. I don't want to deal with this. Why should I have to deal with it?
00:36:53
Speaker
But I knew instinctively that the only person that could make it better was me. And I could lie there for as long as I wanted and say, it's not fair. I don't want to do this. But then I'm really in my own life.
00:37:07
Speaker
That really speaks to me. Yeah, absolutely. And I think people listening may be able to relate. Like, it wasn't a choice because it's a choice I choose every single second of the day. I choose to cope with it. And that's the kind of message that I kind of want to put out when I talk about things in general is that like...
00:37:25
Speaker
It's the worst thing I could have ever possibly experienced physically in my entire life. And then five years later, the mental illness was the worst thing I could ever have possibly experienced mentally. And I just kind of want to set the tone and show people like that you can cope with stuff. You can cope with whatever happens. You can cope. That's kind of just what I want to. Yeah.
Facing Life's Challenges: Parental Support and Independence
00:37:48
Speaker
We can do hard things. Yeah, we can do the hard things you can like that.
00:37:53
Speaker
You don't have to, but not doing them is worse. Yeah, it's really profound. I was listening to somebody the other day saying he got through a difficult thing for himself by taking the attitude of, you know, I could complain and I could wallow and I could be depressed, but it's easier to play. This is the hand I've been dealt. It's easier to play that.
00:38:23
Speaker
Well, no one was going to do all the physical hard work for me. Well, no one can take it away from you.
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's what you've got on your plate. And my mum had to come see me every single day and just kind of support me as much as she could, but she couldn't do it for me. She couldn't make it better. And like, all you can do when someone's going through something horrific is support them and just champion. It's difficult, isn't it? I don't know. I don't know how I'd, I just kind of say that you can, you can do this.
00:38:58
Speaker
because we can. We're extremely resilient creatures that are designed to... I know that mine was of a hopefully rare occasion, but I've dealt with it. You can deal with whatever comes at you. Yeah, while you're living proof that we can do the hardest of things.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think what you said earlier might be the title of this podcast episode. It's like the only person that can help you is yourself. Actually, the sooner people can realize that, the better. As a parent of a teenager going through something difficult, a young adult or anyone going through something difficult,
00:39:48
Speaker
You just touched on it. I think the only thing we can do is have empathy, acknowledge that it's difficult and cheerlead. My sister is mentally and physically disabled and will always stay with my parents. Me and my mum talk about her quite a lot, the situation, because she's very difficult.
00:40:15
Speaker
And we've kind of like, spoke about it's disabling to do everything for her. Like you need, like she needs, she needs to.
00:40:26
Speaker
I don't know where I was going, but like, you can't, like, so if your child's having a hard time, you can't, even though when I was at school, mum would try and want to do and talk to the teachers about it, you can't get, you can't, you getting involved and kind of trying to put a cushion around them, stops them from being able to be like, Oh, I can do this myself. Like, you know, I can do it. I can do it. You can't always be there for them. And
00:40:49
Speaker
trying to do everything for them to kind of like, or trying to do as much as you can to make their life better, you know, give them lots of money so that they don't struggle, like will make mean they don't know how to learn the skill to earn it, you know, that or everything you can't, if you the more you do, the more you stop them from being able to be like their own person. That's a really important point. Yeah, you can help a little bit, like, by all means, but you can't
00:41:17
Speaker
You can't just give them a living wage and let them not work the rest of their life. How is that going to serve them? That sort of thing. Exactly. How does it serve them? So yeah, parents have to do hard things as well in those circumstances. Some people call it tough love, don't they? But yeah, you're not going to learn to live this new life you've got if somebody lives it for you. Very poignant.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, so tell us, so what made you decide to go into counselling? Tell us a bit about your counselling course and then we can move on to your book as well, if that's okay. Yeah, counselling was because I, so I very quickly got
00:42:11
Speaker
uh, fed up the word of, of having to tell my story to every new person I meet over and over and over again. And I was like, I would rather like sit and listen and support people through their traumas. I started to do, I used to just, when I was
00:42:30
Speaker
I used to, when I was living on my own, I used to go to the pub and just sit in the pub and just sit and just let people talk to me and just tell me some really quite dramatic things because people don't have someone to listen to them. I grew out in the world and I did a degree in philosophy. I finished it the day before I got hit by a car. It's helped me because it helps to be deep and look and analyze things.
00:42:58
Speaker
And I like to ask questions, but from what I've found so far with the world, I suppose it depends who you meet, but people are so absorbed in their own stuff and their own problems that they don't really think about you or how things are going or think to ask. So I'll ask lots of questions and people don't tend to ask them back.
00:43:18
Speaker
And I quite like that. I want to talk to people about their stuff because I've worked through my trauma. I'm all right. But it's something that's important. I couldn't do it before I'd worked through it. And then it just helping someone or supporting someone while they're getting through something that they're struggling with. It's beautiful. It feels really nice. Yeah. It's quite rewarding, I imagine, too.
00:43:48
Speaker
to know that what you've been through can help another person just simply by the way you're able to be with that person.
Becoming a Counselor: Empathy and Understanding
00:43:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's why I'm really grateful for particularly mental illness because I've forgiven me the understanding because before I used to think
00:44:02
Speaker
Ah, if you're like depressed, can you just like do some exercise and make yourself feel better? I couldn't relate to it at all. And then I had this massive explosion of really bad mental health that's at the most severe thing I could ever possibly experience. And now when people tell me they're going through something quite intense, I can immediately know where they are and get it. And that really, really helps. So I want to continue using that skill, which is where I'm training to be a counselor.
00:44:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You just said you've done all your own work. It's one of the requirements of my counselling course that I have weekly therapy and I can completely see how doing your own work
00:44:47
Speaker
is important to being able to show up in the world for the people that you care about, not just as a counsellor with clients, but as an individual. It benefits all your own, all your relationships. There's no downside.
00:45:04
Speaker
I remember at the beginning of the course saying, I'm not sure if I'll be able to be a counselor because I get really tearful when people tell me about the hard things they're going through. And my tutor said, that's because you haven't done your own work. And that's why you go to therapy every week as part of this course. And then about a year later, I was able to start seeing clients and go, God, that's really hard and really traumatic. And I do feel so sad for you, but I don't feel remotely like crying. I went back to my tutor and said,
00:45:35
Speaker
It's true, I've done my own work and now I can handle sad things that aren't mine. That's wonderful and it's important because you can feel the difference of when you tell someone something that you're struggling with and someone replies, oh no, oh, are you okay? And then you're like, am I? Am I okay? Whereas if someone's like, okay, so people would
00:45:57
Speaker
tell me something really dramatic like when I was out and about and I was just because obviously my story is so heavy and I'd be like okay do you want to talk about it like and that this is the sort that's the response you need yeah yeah to be able to show up and hear and see people
00:46:14
Speaker
And like, because you're applying, so kids and their parents, like, no, if a kid turns to their parent and says something really, that's really horrible that they're going through, and the parent replies, oh, no, like, are you okay? Again, it's, you've got to be like, nope, you can, you can do this, like my parent, like you can. Yeah.
00:46:32
Speaker
hear it but don't like. Yeah, what are you going to do? What do you want to do? Explore options with them rather than tell them what you want them to do. Yeah, that's important. Yeah.
Writing 'Thrown': Sharing Experiences and Resilience
00:46:44
Speaker
And you're writing a book about your experiences. Tell me, how far are you in?
00:46:50
Speaker
I've wrote quite a lot of it, but it's hard to do on your own. I've been working with a lady to help me get the chapters ready to send to an agent because I could do it on my own, but I don't know if I have it in me to do all the marketing and all the different
00:47:07
Speaker
but I'm going to call it throne because I was, thanks to this lady's suggestion, because I was thrown, we were thrown 50 metres into the park, which is like what the emergency services said that was so visceral for them was the distance that we'd thrown. And also my life was thrown off course and there's a thing in pottery, it's like throwing pottery is how you make shapes, I think it's quite poetic.
00:47:35
Speaker
Yeah. Just coping with life when you're throwing off the course that you think that you should be on, I think is really hard because we all think our life should be a certain way up to a point. And when things go out of your happen that arrive, your control, it can completely throw you through.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah, really good title. When do you think it might be out? I know you said you've not got an agent yet. How long do you think... I don't know how long these things take. I'd love to read it. Thank you. I'd love to read it. I started it when I came out of Hofstra in 2019, so I'm letting myself do it slowly. I wrote all lots of different things down, but
00:48:20
Speaker
I wrote like 100,000 words, but that's not formed into a book.
00:48:24
Speaker
I don't know. I'm trying to get an agent this year. If I can't get one, I will eventually write it myself and just put it out there into the world. Well, come back and tell us when it's in a purchasable format so that I can add the link. Thank you. It's a huge task. The lady that I'm working with, she's like an editor in several different roles, and I said to her, would you ever write a book? And she said, no, it's far too much hard work. It's a momentous task. I'm like, yeah.
00:48:53
Speaker
Yeah, a friend of mine's just written a book and the conversations we've had about it does feel like she's birthed it because it took so long to come to fruition. Yeah, that's exactly how I imagine it would feel.
00:49:08
Speaker
Harriet, thank you so much for talking to me today. Is there anything else you would like to say to anyone that might be listening? Thank you for having me. It's been really nice. So your focus is on mental health for children and young adults? Yeah. The one thing I'd like to end on is saying if you're struggling with something,
00:49:34
Speaker
don't keep it inside and talk to someone about it because it's the whole like I kept a lot of the I kept all of this like the ill thoughts I had inside me and then it ends up in me nearly dying again because I hadn't because I wasn't in a safe place.
00:49:52
Speaker
When you're feeling particularly low, it feels like the most momentous task to actually say it to someone else. But that's just the most important thing is just to talk. Talk about it, the power of talking. Yeah, really good point. Thank you. I don't need to say any more.
00:50:12
Speaker
Thank you, those are wonderful. Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Thank you to everyone who's already rated and reviewed the podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Amazon, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review. It really helps get the word out, as well as making me very happy to read what you have to say.
00:50:33
Speaker
If this episode strikes a chord for you, please share it with anyone else you know who might be in the same boat and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. If you have a story or suggestion for something you'd like to see covered on the podcast, you can email me at teenagekickspodcast at gmail.com or message me on Instagram. I'm, I am Helen Wills. I love hearing from all my listeners. It really makes a difference to me on this journey.
00:51:03
Speaker
See you next week when I'll be chatting to another brilliant guest about the highs and lows of parenting teens. Bye for now.