Mentally Interesting: ‘I don’t get a holiday from myself’

This is the full transcript of Ouch – Mentally Interesting the cabin fever podcast as broadcast on the 14th May 2021, and presented by Mark Brown and Seaneen Malloy.

 

[Music]

 

seaneen - This is Mentally Interesting, a podcast series from BBC Ouch. I’m Seaneen Malloy.

 

MARK - And I’m Mark Brown. Seaneen and I are friends, we’ve been friends for ages, we’ve both experienced mental health difficulties for ages, and we both have a professional interest in mental health and the wider world too. Does that leave us uniquely placed to tackle the awkward stuff so you don’t have to? I don’t know. What do you reckon? We’ll soon find out.

 

SEANEEN - As travel restrictions start to ease in the UK we’ll be talking about holidays and travel. If you’re like me and you’ve got self-harm scars you might start screwing your face up at the idea of shedding your regular clothes in favour of beachwear, so we’ll be talking about that, and also my knowledge of toilets around Europe.

 

mark - We’re also going to be meeting identical twin travel bloggers with generalised anxiety disorder who say that seeing the world beyond their own house is what helps them to stay well. And there will also be a question from… Wait for it… [Creaking] the Book of Awkward Questions. Now, believe it or not, that was actually the sound of a book opening, it wasn’t just a squeaky door or a nervous emission of gas.

 

SEANEEN - Ouch@bbc.co.uk is our email address, and we’re on Twitter and Facebook @bbcouch. We’d love to hear your awkward questions, and any ideas for things you’d like us to explore in future programmes. Email us and we promise we won’t read out your email unless you say it’s okay.

 

MARK - So, Seaneen, all of these exciting, very necessary restrictions imposed upon us by the pandemic are coming to an end. People are talking about coming back to the world, getting back out there, going out and exploring, getting away from our homes. How do you feel about moving around more? Because I still remain absolutely terrified at the prospect of getting onto a bus or a train full of other people, and I think it’s going to take ages for me to move on from the habits I’ve acquired during this pandemic. How do you feel about it?

 

SEANEEN - I haven’t got a bus for a year because of the weird dystopian feeling of travel generally at the moment with masks and kind of distance and stuff. That said, I mean, if I had the cash right now I think I would be trying to book a holiday, because I miss it, you know, and I feel like the world has shrunk to about a mile around my house in the past year. And I feel like I’ve sort of forgotten that there’s the rest of the world out there, and the only thing I kind of know about other countries right now is what’s going on with COVID.

 

MARK - Yeah.

 

SEANEEN - Which sort of makes them, in a sense, less interesting, because it’s like if they’re the same as the UK then what’s the point in going? But the point in going is the rush of heat outside an airport or having a drink at 11 o’clock and justifying that, saying that’s the holiday experience.

 

MARK - I’m on the mainland of the UK and I didn’t leave, not even to go to an island off the coast, until I was about 35. There’s a weird thing with mental health difficulty where, if you haven’t travelled already in your life when you become unwell you sort of begin to think that travel isn’t something you’re going to do, isn’t something that’s going to be there for you. And I was like that. In my early 20s I spent a year where I didn’t leave the postcode that I lived in. I literally went to the Job Centre to sign on, I went to the Post Office to cash my giro, and occasionally, if I felt really, really good and it was a very sunny day, I went and fed the ducks in a park that was very, very close. And I did that for about a year.

 

seaneen - You already had the kind of pandemic experience didn’t you? You sort of did the practice run.

 

MARK - Well, I did. I just sat amongst the cat hair and the dust and read books and sort of dreamed of other places and far off lands, and I thought that was going to be my life. We didn’t go anywhere outside of the UK when I was a kid for holidays. So I kind of just assumed that someone with challenges and difficulties, who was also, like, dirt poor, wouldn’t ever get the chance to travel. And when the opportunity came up I didn’t know how it was going to go. I was flying to Australia for a conference, and it was the first time I’d ever left the UK. It was a 24 hour flight, and I remember my sister saying that she sat up all night and most of the day, waiting for me to get in touch to say that I’d managed to travel, because she was, like, “I don’t know what’s going to happen to you on a plane because you’ve never done it.”

 

And what actually transpired was I absolutely loved it. It was amazing. I was doing all the classic stuff, gripping the arms of the chair and all of that sort of stuff as we took off. And then when we got into the sky I was like, this is incredible, I feel like God. I am doing what every single generation of humans up until about 1940 dreamed of doing, which is to fly above those clouds like a bird. And I just thought this is an amazing thing. How about for you? I get the feeling you travelled a lot more than me when you were younger?

 

seaneen - Well, it’s because I lived in London so I would have to get the flight back to Belfast, so that was kind of like my introduction to travel, which was needing to go home from London. And I really wish I had the same experience of flying that you did. I have to say, a 24 hour flight for your first one is like boss level, so well done. I’ve never, ever been able to fly without freaking out. I’m technically banned from very well-known budget airline, because…

 

MARK - How did that happen? What did you do?

 

seaneen - Oh God, don’t… I just want to preface this by saying I’m not proud of it, but I had a massive panic attack on a flight. This was back in the day, you know, before vaping, but still when smoking was highly illegal on flights, and to try and chill out I tried to light up a fag in the toilet, thinking I would get away with it, forgetting that cigarettes, you know, it’s a kind of potent smell, and also, fire alarms in toilets. And I got caught in about 15 seconds. So the flight attendant - I didn’t realise they could open a door from the outside either, there is another fact for you - opened the door, and I was sitting with my pants up on the toilet with a lighter and with, like, the just burning tip of a cigarette.

 

And I was hauled out and sent back to my chair while I completely freaked out, thinking oh my God. Then at the end of the flight, you know, when everyone was kind of marching down the aisle to get out, I was pulled to the side by the pilot and the flight attendant and thankfully only very, very sharply told off. They said they could phone the police on me and arrest me. They didn’t, but they said I wouldn’t be able to take flights again. But nothing actually came of it.

 

So yeah, I do not have good experiences flying. And I do love travelling. I mean, I haven’t, like, travelled the world, I’ve never been to Australia or anything, I’ve gone about as far as Europe, like Spain and Rome and stuff

 

MARK - Australia’s a bit like hot Croydon. [Laughter] I went to Perth, and it was just like, if you wanted to have the same experience you could kind of go to Croydon and put two coats on and then occasionally mist yourself with water from a spray bottle. That was kind of my experience. It was amazing. Like, I went to a supermarket and I took loads and loads of photographs in the supermarket because they had an entire aisle that was just filled with baked beans.

 

seaneen - Travel when you have mental health problems, it can be tough because you don’t really feel like you’re getting much of a holiday from yourself. And I look at photographs, especially on one trip when I was in Barcelona, just sort of like standard holiday photographs, but I can see my eyeliner’s kind of smudged and I look a bit exhausted. And remember that all the kind of, like, nice food I was eating, I was throwing up again in toilets. So yeah, I’ve puked in a range of European toilets and…

 

MARK - The glamour.

 

seaneen - The glamour, the glamour. It’s because… And this has happened even with every sort of holiday season and stuff, and it’s because you have an eating disorder and you are in a new place, which is sort of a bit of a perfect storm because you have barriers to understanding what you’re eating. Like at least when I’m in the UK I can read the menu or go through the nutritional information and sort of understand a little bit more about what I’m eating, but when you’re somewhere different and there isn’t the same sort of safety it can be kind of scary.

 

So I would really try my best on holiday to try and get into the spirit and eat the food and try new things. But my brain telling me that I was going to gain weight from the food and I was going to go back to the UK, like, three stone heavier would still be stronger than my desire to cut loose and enjoy myself. So unfortunately, bulimia didn’t stop on holiday. And it makes me kind of sad looking back at pictures and seeing that I’m obviously still not very well, even when I’m away. And because I have pretty serious self-harm scars on my arms as well I can’t do that sort of Kodak – this is showing my age, Kodak?

 

MARK - Technicolour.

 

seaneen - Konica. You know those adverts, but you can’t do the, you know, on a beach with flowing dresses going in the breeze kind of thing when you have self-harm scars, you have to just keep your coat on or your jumper on. And when I have kind of pulled my sleeves up on holiday because I’m dying of the heat you get a range of reactions, you know, some funny looks like you would get in England. And once in Spain a Brazilian guy told me my self-harm scars were sexy. I have no idea why that is.

 

MARK - Oh!

 

seaneen - And I haven’t actually self-harmed for 13 years, and really annoyingly that phase of my life where I wasn’t coping very well and kind of took it out on myself has meant that I’ve spent the rest of my life not being able to wear floaty dresses and short sleeves. But I did get support to stop and I’m really pleased that I haven’t self-harmed in such a long time.

 

MARK - When you were talking there it made me think of something you said right at the start about how you don’t necessarily get away from yourself. And I think one of the things that always put me off the idea of travelling, and which still affects me now, is the feeling and the worry of being weird in another place where I can’t hide it. I travelled quite a lot for work back before the pandemic, and I would often end up staying in cities or towns where I had family and I would stay in a hotel or a bed and breakfast rather than staying in an auntie’s house or an uncle’s house because I felt like my work self and also my mental health difficulty self might be a bit weird. And I was just kind of stricken with this sense that I don’t want to be in someone else’s place and find myself needing something that feels to them strange or odd or demanding.

 

SEANEEN - I’ve had a couple of experiences on holiday where I’ve felt that thing you’re talking about which is I’m being weird somewhere I shouldn’t be weird. Like, we were in Prague and we were staying in an Airbnb in a room instead of, like, having a place to ourselves. I’m never making that mistake again because of this. It was really hot. I didn’t think it would be so hot there, but that was when I was taking antipsychotic medication and I had no idea that hot weather could make the side effects of those things much stronger.

 

And I already struggled with the side effects, so I was sort of caught short and I basically looked like someone with a really severe drinking problem, because I woke up about four hours after I should have done and I was slurring my words and tottering around the kitchen banging into stuff. And I was just absolutely scundered, to use a Northern Irish word. I was so embarrassed. I was like, what do they think of me? And you don’t want to have that feeling on holiday, you don’t want to think about what anyone else is thinking about you or how your behaviour is affecting people around you.

 

It’s like, what’s better, that they think I’ve been drinking in my bedroom for four or five hours or that I’m taking medication for psychosis and it’s hit me very hard? I’m not sure which of those explanations is the better one. So basically, instead of giving any explanation I just hid. [Laughter] I just left and then didn’t say goodbye when we checked out.

 

MARK - So it feels like if we’re sort of talking about travel and we’re talking about holidays and we’re talking about mental health difficulty we should probably talk about the elephant in the room as well, which is the kind of sense that the opportunity to travel and to go to other places is a kind of privilege that won’t be extended to a lot of people who experience mental health difficulties who might have difficulties that are too much of a challenge to travel, or as we generally end up, spend their lives being absolutely skint.

 

And it feels sometimes almost embarrassing to say, “Oh, I’ve been here, I’ve been here, I’ve been there,” when other people are, like, “Well yeah, I’ve been unemployed for 30 years and I can’t even manage to get on the train because I have terrible, terrible anxiety.” And it does sometimes feel uncomfortable talking about the possibility of travelling to places, but I kind of feel like we should be able to travel. I kind of feel like the world doesn’t make enough adaptations for people who experience mental health difficulty to make it easy.

 

SEANEEN - But I think it’s very difficult when you have mental health difficulties, or any sort of disability or chronic illness, to be honest, is to get out of your comfort zone, because it’s comforting for a reason, it’s not that you are being weak or overly anxious, it’s because that space around you is set up completely for you. And therefore you’re comfortable because it’s right for you and to move away from that can feel really scary. If you do become unwell where do you go? What do you do? Who do you talk to? I mean, how do you even communicate what’s happening to you?

 

And holidays are sort of the perfect storm of things that can make you unwell anyway, because you have, like, the change of routine, often your sleep has gone sideways because you might be crossing time zones or just the excitement of being somewhere where there’s sunshine. And also worrying that you’re going to run out of medication and don’t know where to get it from if you do. And even in some countries, like your medication being illegal. For example, say you take diazepam you can’t take that to some countries. And it sets you up almost to an extent that you could become quite unwell.

 

So I can see why there would be a big anxiety around even going on holiday because you need to mitigate all those things. And you shouldn’t have to completely moderate your behaviour when you’re away because it is meant to be a holiday. So what kind of adaptations do you think the world could make to make travelling with mental health difficulties easier?

 

MARK - I kind of feel like what there should be is an agreed international standard for looking after people, or certainly when people are travelling internationally via plane and stuff like that, there should be kind of things that you would be able to expect when you’re travelling. I would love to see that customs officials were a bit more sensitive to people’s mental health difficulties, that would be absolutely wonderful. But I think in terms of adaptations, the adaptations are often similar to the adaptations that you might need to make if you experience other chronic conditions, like it being okay to break your journey on a train if you experience mental health difficulties.

 

Because so often, the thing that causes me panic attacks when I’m travelling is the knowledge that I need to get this train at this time and I can’t just get off for 15 minutes at a particular station and get my breath back and then get back on again, it’s that sense that you’re on this conveyor belt that’s kind of taking you towards your destination. Travel insurers could do a lot more to look after people’s mental health while they’re travelling rather than setting a load of traps to not insure you when you are travelling.

 

Because there’s a lot of questions around mental health difficulty and stuff like that in insurance, travel insurance, and often you find yourself having to bend the truth a little bit to get travel insurance that will cover you for physical difficulties.

 

Bizarrely, I absolutely adore cabin crew in airplanes, which is a bit different from you, Seaneen, obviously, but I love the fact that ultimately that entire experience of being on a plane is a piece of theatre that’s meant to allay your anxieties. It’s basically like being a 1950s husband because you sit down, someone brings you a paper and then every 15 minutes they ask you whether you want a drink or something to eat. It’s because it splits up the journey and it gives you a series of things to move through to take your mind off the fact that you’re in a big metal tube above the clouds. They often are ready to deal with mental health crises, but it would be lovely to have a much more explicit statement and code of conduct in practice for that so you’re not actually… If you do feel ropey on a plane here’s how you signal it, here’s how we might help you.

 

seaneen - So you don’t end up in the toilet trying to light up a cigarette.

 

MARK - Yeah. The stuff about access in domestic travel within your own country is it’s kind of the same. I would love it if that more people who experience mental health difficulties could get far more discounts on their travel, so you can actually do the thing and go places, rather than worrying about, oh my God, I’ve only got the money for this train and if I mess this up that’s it, I’m out.

 

seaneen - If you’re interested in taking a trip you can find specialist money advice on travel insurance at mentalhealthandmoneyadvice.org.

 

 

[Music]

 

mark - This is Mentally Interesting from BBC Ouch with Seaneen Malloy and me, Mark Brown. We’ll be hefting down the Book of Awkward Questions from its shelf later on, but first we’ve got some guests for you.

 

SEANEEN - We’re joined by bloggers, Claire and Laura, known online as Twins that Travel. They’re the identical kind and have both lived with interesting mental health stuff for many years.

 

claire - Hello.

 

laura - Hi there.

 

SEANEEN - Hello.

 

MARK - Hello. You, Claire and Laura are both together, sat very comfortably next to each other with a little person.

 

claire - Yeah, hopefully you won’t hear anything from her.

 

MARK - Excellent.

 

SEANEEN - I’ve got my little person nearby as well so I would sympathise.

 

claire - Oh good. Congratulations by the way.

 

SEANEEN - Thank you. And also congratulations.

 

laura - Thank you.

 

claire - Thank you.

 

SEANEEN - So this kind of leads me on to a question really. What do travel bloggers do in lockdown, which I think so far is have babies?

 

laura - Yes. I mean, there was only one thing to do really wasn’t there? So we had both our babies. But no, it was a really strange time and I think very much so, the carpet was kind of pulled out from beneath us, not least in terms of our business and what we were doing. We were about to go to Petra in Jordan actually just when lockdown happened, but also our way of staying mentally healthy and the routine of travel and what it was giving us, that was taken away.

 

MARK - How did both of you become travel bloggers? Laura?

 

laura - Well, we started the blog probably when I was at my lowest in terms of I wasn’t leaving my home town at all and travel was probably the last thing I honestly wanted to do. I think I was on such a level of anxiety which was I guess manifesting itself as panic attacks and panic disorder and generalised anxiety, and I just got in a state where, you know, going round Tesco’s was a white knuckle ride.

 

So I wasn’t travelling at all, but yeah, I started a travel blog and I think at the time Instagram was a nice, lovely, warm place to be and lots of pictures of travel were coming up all the time and I was just sitting there looking at them just thinking, oh I just wish I could go, but there was no way I was going to be able to go because I couldn’t drive down our local duel carriageway really without having a panic attack.

 

And I was seeing a therapist at the time who was talking about exposure therapy and the idea of putting yourself where you feel most uncomfortable and also anxiety as being sort of a smoke alarm in your kitchen that’s going off when there’s not a fire, it’s just a bit of burning toast. And that actually if I sort of wafted away the smoke and the alarm life’s fine on the other side.

 

So we had a small collection of photographs I’d say, from like, holidays we’d done as couples or as friends, you know, just France, just really city breaks and some were from like way back when, and we just started putting some photos up. I liked photography anyway, and then weirdly it just became a thing, it became this alter ego and we began posting more. And then one day we thought, well we’re just going to have to actually go and we’re going to actually have to travel.

 

claire - We’re going to have to travel now.

 

Laura - And yeah, we booked a trip to Washington and that’s where it began really.

 

claire - We should say, our brother lived there so I think it felt kind of like the safer trip. We knew there was someone on the other side.

 

SEANEEN - So how was that first trip?

 

Claire - I think I cried… This is Claire speaking actually, I think I cried every day for a week leading up to it, and I remember the night before just lying under a blanket thinking no, no, I can’t do this. Even on the plane I think I don’t remember being relaxed once. I remember thinking I needed a chiropractor by the time I got off because I was just so sort of rigid with anxiety the whole way over. But the actual trip was one that I’ll remember forever now because, like Laura said, it was smoke and mirrors. I was beside myself the week leading up, but actually getting there, you know, I just felt entirely elated I guess that I’d actually done it.

 

laura - Similar to Claire, the build-up I actually… I didn’t even ask my doctor, I just doubled my dose of sertraline which is not advised.

 

SEANEEN - Yes, not advised.

 

laura - Threw money at the situation and upgraded us to business class.

 

claire - I went to business on some credit cards.

 

laura - Didn’t have that money at all. But no, like Claire said, I remember the first morning due to jet lag we were at the Lincoln Memorial about five a.m. and I just remember thinking it’s true that on the other side of those fears and that narrative there is actually a life that’s amazing and we’ve done it. I guess it was a turning point for us both.

 

claire - Yes, very much.

 

MARK - Did it feel like exposure therapy or did it feel like a holiday?

 

claire - A bit of both I think.

 

laura - Yeah, I think a bit like we’ve discussed about how tiny your life gets. I was aware that my life was becoming so small that I had to do something, and ironically, like the local John Lewis terrified me, I remember actually holding the hand of a mannequin in there [Laughter] because I was just having a panic attack and the ground feels crazy doesn’t it, it feels like it’s moving. I guess in terms of Washington, it felt like it was such a different place, so far removed from where my anxieties sort of lived and haunted me, like John Lewis, this was a new place where they hadn’t been I guess and maybe they might not be. So in a way it felt like exposure therapy but also escapism I think.

 

claire - Definitely in terms of exposure there’s no other way to experience a flight than get on a flight. So that was definitely exposure therapy. Eight hours of exposure therapy.

 

laura - Yeah. But in business class, so it was okay.

 

claire - And quite a lot of drink.

 

laura - It was manageable.

 

MARK - For listeners at home, exposure therapy is something where you on purpose by increments expose yourself to the things you’re worried about or you have phobias around to kind of reduce your anxiety and reduce your sensitivity to it.

 

SEANEEN - So when you are on holiday how do you manage your mental health? Or do you not need to because you do have that escapism?

 

laura - No, we absolutely still need to, and I think we’ve had a few trips where we’ve both been…

 

claire - Yeah, not so great.

 

laura - Not so great, but I think for me the only way is through, so I just have to get up and focus. I think mindfulness, I mean it’s touted as this kind of panacea for anxiety but honestly when I’m away, and photography as well, I’m so caught up in trying to look around, take it all in, and distract myself from my thoughts. That in itself is really helpful. We’ve had anxiety, we’ve wanted to stay in the hotel room…

 

laura - Yes.

 

claire - But I’ve known that if we can get out and get through something we’ll come back and we’ll feel much better.

 

SEANEEN - Well, how’s that been in the past year with lockdown? I mean, how have you been managing your mental health and have you been supporting each other as well?

 

claire - Yeah, very much so. And I think for us, travel isn’t just about, you know, getting on a plane to Australia, it could be 30 minutes down the road, 20 minutes down the road to a sort of National Trust. So I think managing mental health is still making sure we leave the house every day, it doesn’t need to be in a different country, but it’s leaving the village that I live in. So obviously that was very hard when we weren’t allowed to travel sort of anywhere, but walking and nature obviously are hugely beneficial to most people.

 

laura - Yeah. And going round John Lewis as well, I mean, because they’re my old kind of fears and they can come back so quickly to haunt me.

 

claire - We always talk about John Lewis.

 

laura - And floor three, I’ve made it up there twice I think in three years, because there’s no escape route that’s fast.

 

claire - It is actually, it’s a claustrophobic floor.

 

laura - So still practising, and I think anxiety is a habit but also I think overcoming anxiety is a habit.

 

SEANEEN - Yeah.

 

laura - So just maintaining that, right, we’re going round John Lewis today on your own. This time I’ve got a baby with me which just adds a whole new level of stress, and it would be very easy in lockdown just to go back to my old ways of thinking well, I need to go to Tesco, I’ll just go to the little one down the road, I don’t need to go to the big Tesco, and thinking well no, you need to go to big Tesco, you need to face your fears. So yeah, it’s a routine for me now, I think, managing agoraphobia on that front.

 

MARK - As twins you are both similar and different from each other and it must be a very interesting experience to both experience kind of similar difficulties as well. How does it work between you?

 

Laura - It’s a strange one. What always plays around my head is the sort of nature versus nurture thing and were we both going to end up anxious or was it that we spent so much time together we kind of learnt each other’s habits almost, or fears. But I guess for us it’s a blessing to both have it at the same time, though there’s always a hero and a victim in it, so when I’ve been low Claire’s been high, for example, and vice versa. And that’s incredible in having that support and knowing that that person gets it immediately. However, I guess it means that we’re both perhaps never heroes at the same time.

 

claire - I think that’s exactly it. A lot of therapy I think has sort of concluded that this sort of hero victim thing is quite common in siblings, especially sisters, and yeah, it’s actually far healthier to both be heroes, I guess, independent of each other. And for whatever reason we haven’t quite managed that yet.

 

laura - I think having babies has perhaps helped that.

 

CLAIRE - I think it might be a changing point for us, yes. We have other siblings that we love dearly, but having a twin is very different, and when Laura’s low it’s very hard to be happy yourself.

 

laura - It’s almost like therapy, this, isn’t it?

 

claire - Yeah.

 

MARK - How does this play out when you’re travelling? Has there ever been, like, a trip you’ve taken together where one of you has felt kind of rubbish and then the other of you has also felt rubbish because my dear beloved sister is feeling terrible as well?

 

claire - Yeah. I think definitely…

 

laura - It happened in Vienna.

 

claire - It was in Vienna. Yeah, I was talking about this. I think we had done too much travel back to back. This is Claire speaking. And I don’t really know why but for some reason I was just having a terrible week with a lot of anxiety, and unfortunately we were actually filming something with the Vienna Tourism Board, so we had to be on camera, we had to say certain things and it just tipped in the middle of, like, central Vienna, you know, with so many crowds around us.

 

So of course I then got very anxious and of course was having panic attacks mid sort of filming, and I think that put an awful lot of stress on Laura. And I remember at one point Laura pulling me aside saying, “Can you stop panicking because it’s making me panic?” and that was really difficult because I obviously don’t want to cause Laura to panic, but I can also see why if you’re watching someone have a panic attack and you are an anxious person that could also cause a panic attack in them. So that was quite a hard trip I’d say.

 

laura - Yeah. Yeah, it’s like watching someone be sick, you want to be sick a little bit too. [Laughter] That’s how I felt.

 

SEANEEN - So now that travel restrictions are being eased do you have any plans to go travelling again?

 

laura - We do, yes, actually. We have our first trip with the babies to Portugal in September and they were going to be joining… The thought of five minutes through customs per person is filling me with absolute dread. We need that feeling of being together again and hitting the road together, anxiously together again.

 

claire - Yeah.

 

laura - Anxiously. With trepidation, I think.

 

claire - Yeah.

 

MARK - Now’s a chance for you to plug your stuff.

 

claire - Yeah, so you can find our blog on twinperspectives.co.uk which is filled with destinations and blogs on anxiety and how to manage anxiety when travelling. And we also have an Instagram account, which is Twin Perspectives, so you can find us there.

 

MARK - It’s been wonderful to talk to both of you, thank you.

 

laura - Thank you.

 

claire - Thank you.

 

SEANEEN - Yes, thank you.

 

[Music]

 

SEANEEN - It’s that time again. The time in the programme when we’re challenged to the fullest, thanks to some ancient japester with an unforgiving quill and a pot of ‘I’m going to catch you out’ ink. In my hands is a mysterious book. It’s so heavy I can hardly hold it. Thick and leather bound, corners tipped with brass, it smells of dust and secret places. On its deep red cover in faded gold leaf is the title, the Big Book of Awkward Questions, handed down from generation to generation. Only two copies of the Big Book of Awkward Questions are known to be in existence. I have one copy, Mark has the other.

 

No one knows who compiled it or why, but contained within is every single awkward question that has ever been asked about mental health. Each of its pages is covered with lines of type so small you have to squint to read it and it’s smudged with fingerprints. Each week we’ll open the book and see what awkward question it suggests to us. What’s the awkward question today, Mark?

 

MARK - Well, holding my copy of the book in my hands in front of the microphone, I’m opening it. [Creaking] As you did, I’m looking down the pages, and the question we have today is, we know that nature helps your mental health, so why don’t you just go for a walk? Argh! So for anyone who doesn’t know, we’re recording this on Monday 10th May 2021, which is the start of Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK and perhaps nationally, and the theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is nature. And we’ve been hearing a lot about nature’s good for you, nature’s wonderful, it’ll improve your mental health and stuff like that. It comes up so, so often when you talk about mental health difficulties. If people aren’t advising you to eat kale they’re advising you to go and smell a tree. And it’s not as simple as that.

 

So I think back to holidays when I was a kid. My family decided that we were the kind of family that should go to the Lake District for holidays because my mother’s side of the family came from around Lake Ullswater in Cumbria. Really beautiful, dark, brooding hills, forests, sheep, you know, unknowable depths of lakes. And we used to go every year and my parents were really excited and they bought us all kagools and walking boots, and every single holiday photo is my family, of which only my dad and me remain now, all of us standing in our kagools looking absolutely pigging miserable in the drizzle next to a big lump of slate.

 

And it’s always kind of struck me that there’s an awful lot of idealising nature. When people talk about nature they kind of go, “Oh well, you know, nature’s so wonderful and forgiving and healing.” Right, I was looking out of the window and I saw a neighbourhood cat catch a mouse, throw it in the air, bite it again, throw it in the air. I saw a fox eating some blackbird chicks. All of these things are nature. None of this felt particularly healing, especially not if you’re a mouse.

 

So there’s an idea, you know, back to the Garden of Eden and stuff like that, and the idea that nature will cure you, and I always think well yeah, nature will cure you unless you get dysentery or cholera and stuff like that. There’s a sense that oh, the modern world is so terrible that what we need to do is return to our elysian state of Eden and everything will be fine, and I don’t think it’s as simple as that. But, on the other hand, I pigging love walking through trees and walking through fields and stuff like that.

 

So on one hand I am frustrated that it does make me feel better but whether you can argue that that’s a kind of mental health treatment that I prescribe you 13 milligrams of an antidepressant and 75 ferns and 13 trees and you’ll be right as rain, I kind of find myself kind of bridling against that. How do you sit with nature?

 

SEANEEN - I just think that these conversations leave out the fact that there’s a lot of privilege associated with access to nature. For example, if you live in an inner city, getting to a green space, you might have to take a bus, you might have to drive, you might be physically restricted from going for a walk. And you might not have the shoes to go for a big hike in nature. And I do think nature is good for your mental health in the sense that being somewhere different I think has a benefit to your mental health, but I think that these discussions tend to gloss over the fact that it’s just not that simple for a lot of people and it can kind of make you feel a bit bad that you’re not getting out there and sniffing the flowers and frolicking with sheep and going for hikes when you kind of can’t. It’s pretty difficult.

 

MARK - Going back to my childhood trips to the Lake District, I never really found the countryside to be massively accepting and massively comforting. I’m more like one of those romantic poets of the 18th century. It’s all about the dark brooding hills and the lakes that might swallow you up forever. Like, it doesn’t feel like a big garden, it feels like a place that doesn’t care about you. Whereas, you know, I like walking in nature. I like walking. I like walking around cities.

 

I tried to move away from London and I moved to somewhere much smaller and it was horrible because there was nowhere to walk. It didn’t matter whether there was a park or not, what wasn’t doing it for me is there was nothing that caught my attention and felt interesting to me in the streets and roads around it. And that was next to the sea. I looked at the sea and it was just a big flat bit of water. It was boring. [Laughs] Some of my worst times with my own mental health difficulty, my own depression, my own self loathing and self-horror have been standing under big dark beautiful trees in the shadow of massive hills. And some of my best times have been in a council maisonette on the edge of an estate, deep in the inner city. So, you know, the advice, going out for a walk, is great if you fancy going out for a walk, but I kind of think prescribing it as if it will have a 100% guaranteed affect on you is another thing.

 

But, you know, I really do enjoy nature and I have whimsically become enamoured of all the birds and the insects and the woodlice and the grasshoppers and the foxes, and it’s great to see sheep and it’s great to stand next to a babbling brook and all of those sort of things, but it’s also great to feel good enough in the morning that it feels exciting nipping to the corner shop for some milk and a samosa. And with that, I am closing the dusty pages of the Book of Awkward Questions. [Creaking] And with that final action our journey together has come to an end. Thanks for listening to Mentally Interesting.

 

SEANEEN - If you fancy sharing your travel stories or suggesting a theme for next month’s episode email ouch@bbc.co.uk, putting Mentally Interesting in the subject line. Or you can drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter by searching for BBC Ouch.

 

MARK - If this podcast appeals to you it’ll appear on your device as soon as it gets published when you subscribe to BBC Ouch on the BBC Sounds app, or wherever else you happen to get your podcasts from.

 

SEANEEN - Our next podcast is on in about a month and in between now and then you’ll be treated to a number of other podcasts on this feed which we hope you’ll enjoy, some of which may also be about mental health.

 

MARK - And so, with that, Seaneen and I are going to fly off to the far horizons of our own living rooms and spare bedrooms and we’ll see you again soon.