The Art Escape - Tiffany

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Amjits podcast the how I survived series. In these mental health episodes, I'm creating a space for real conversations about the things we often keep to ourselves, our struggles, our healing, and the stories that shape who we are. Hello, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today on another mental health discussion. Um, before we begin, can you give yourself a little introduction?

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Good afternoon. My name is Tiffany. I am a licensed paralegal with who owns her own legal firm. Um I'm originally from up north, uh, close to Timmins, and moved to Ottawa for school and never left.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Oh, nice. Thanks for the introduction. Um, so the goal of this podcast is to talk about mental health struggles. I'm just wondering what your journey has been like mentally okay. This one is a little hard.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

So my struggles with mental health. Um, they started when I was young. I felt things a lot stronger than others. Uh, the simple hello by a family member could trigger hours of crying for what seems to be no reason. Um I grew up in the 90s. Uh, I mean, mental health was still a taboo thing. Uh, but unless it was like really evident, um, parents didn't just go to a psychiatrist and try to diagnose their kids so early with these uh these issues and quotation marks. I was always brushed off as just being a drama queen, too sensitive, I overreact. And it was it was that it was left at that. I was never no one ever took the time to actually try to understand or try to help me cope with all these big emotions. Um, and so in 2014, when I got my diagnosed of borderline personality disorder, it shed so much light as to what was going on with me and what was going on with me when I was younger. So that explained to me that I wasn't being overdramatic, I wasn't being too sensitive. It was just my brain of not knowing what to do with the strong emotions, because that's what borderline personality is. You struggle with emotions. Your emotions are so big, even though it's a grain of salt to everyone else around you. To us, it's a big mountain. So when I got my diagnosed in 2014, even though I mean I still struggle up to this day, I I have kids now, so my emotions are even worse, um, even though I try not to let it get that bad. Um it's that diagnose still sheds so much, so much light. It answered so many questions as to why do I feel like this? Why do I have a black and white thinking? Why why do I feel so strong about everything? Why do I why is if someone's crying in front of me, why do I feel sad? Why do I feel like I like I should be crying? In that moment, I was able to really understand and really try to understand myself and and try to be better. Some days are worse, some days are better, and I mean it's always going to be a struggle, but now that I have that diagnose and now that I can talk to other people about it, I can allow people to understand what it is that I have, it makes it a lot easier to navigate and to stop it from being a stigma.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Yeah, I think knowing what you have is an important first step to healing. I'm glad you were able to find out your diagnosis. It must have felt really relieving. Now, how do you cope with it today? Do you have strategies?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

So, art has been a huge factor in my mental health, into how I cope with things. Um, I have a very hard time explaining things as a normal person does. Um, so I feel like I can explain myself a hundred percent better with an art form. Um, I'm indigenous from Northern Ontario. I am Metese, and so I learned how to bead. I learned how to do feeding tapestry. And that alone, each bead that I sew into that canvas relieves so much tension and so much it it takes away so much of that pain that's in the moment. Um, now I do still have I call them my um my attacks. They don't happen very quickly, they don't happen often as much as they used to. Um I was in a bad relationship, I was in a bad marriage before. And so that made it a lot worse because I basically had no one to talk to. And that's where the art came in. It basically saved my life. Um, so at a young age, that's what I would do. Because I couldn't communicate properly, I would write poems, and so growing up the art became another form. So now I bead. Um because I have younger kids, I don't have that much time to do beading anymore. Um, but I fell in love with junk journaling, I fell in love with making books. Um that alone, just the concentration, just it just takes everything away. And so when I know that I'm about to have one of those overwhelming, overstimulated um moments, I grab pieces of paper and then I make a book, or I'll grab a bunch of drawings that I have and just stick them in a book, and that becomes my journal for that moment, and then I date it. No one can probably understand it, but I mean it's not important, right? I understand it.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Wow, that's awesome. Um, you actually remind me of myself. Um, my escape is poetry. Um, they say that creativity is uh acts like a distraction raid. So I always love meeting new people who are creative as well. Would you say that expressing yourself through art is kind of like talk therapy in the sense that it releases a lot of tension?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Absolutely. I a hundred percent agree with that. It it is a I do more, I do better at art than I do talking to people. Um, even my psychiatrist. I mean, I have a hard time because I have borderline personality disorder and because I have abandonment issues, I have a hard time opening up to my to people. And so art becomes that path for people to understand what I mean and for people to to understand how I communicate.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Oh, nice. So when you do create an art piece, do you incorporate uh how you feel in that art piece? Or do you just go with the flow?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

I think it depends. So I do like putting into my my my feelings into my art. Um obviously it depends on when I'm doing it, right? So I mean, I try to be artsy every day, um, just because it is my Zen, right? It is my self-care. Some people like you getting their hair done, some getting like getting their nails done. I'm not that kind of person. Um, so my self-care is basically art. Um, so I guess that quite like to answer that question, it really depends on when I'm creating my art. So obviously, if I'm having you know that overwhelming, um, overstimulated feeling, then yes, I will put my emotions into my art. Sometimes it just sometimes I just go with the flow.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Okay, cool. So if you could give advice to my listeners who might be feeling alone or to those who haven't found their uh strategy yet, who would your advice be?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

I think the biggest biggest advice that I would give um would be don't suffer alone. Try to find that one person that you can open to and that you can talk to, whether or not you have a diagnose. I mean, a diagnose is nice to have to be able to exactly pinpoint exactly what you can do. Um, but in the meantime, that person, that listener makes you feel like your emotions, that your experience is valid. And, you know, we all suffer from the same thing, but we suffer differently. And you know, it it's nice to to know that other people around you feel similar to what you feel, even though they have a different experience. So that would be my biggest, my biggest advice was would be to find that person that you can open up to that can, you know, listen to you for hours. And maybe that would give that's the first step to finding that diagnose, to finding the help that you need.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, I think that's really great advice. I think having a support system definitely makes a big difference. Listen, Tiffany, I'll end it here. Thank you again for joining me today. Keep doing what you're doing and take care. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day.