this talk: is about the devastating impact of losing someone you love - with Annie Wade Smith
My name is Annie, I’m 24 and I work in mental health with young people and also as a curve model.
I was always a mentally healthy person. I had good friends, had lots of hobbies and enjoyed school. I’d been through a lot with my family and learnt a lot of life lessons from my mum. Helping others was natural to me. However, I soon became a ‘fixer’.
I’d spend hours of my day either at school or over the phone talking to the people I cared about, friends and family, about what was going on for them, using my emotional energy on other people’s problems and generally avoiding my own. This behaviour continued into my relationships. I had majorly toxic relationships where again I became a fixer, and the balance was always unequal.
Photographer: Anna Taylor
At University, my mental health went on a huge decline. My Dad passed away from a brain tumour. Although he’d been ill for a while, nothing could have mentally prepared me for the grief. I threw all I had into distracting myself. I shut off my close friends and family. I fixated on other people’s problems. I spent hours each week volunteering and taking part in plays and other projects. I couldn’t concentrate or listen in lectures, I couldn’t do my work.
Eventually I couldn’t distract myself anymore and my grief grew into a long depression. I couldn’t get out of bed, or get dressed. I either ate everything or nothing at all. I didn’t enjoy anything anymore and I didn’t care about anything. I sometimes thought about giving up completely. It was so far from what I’d ever experienced before. The only times I felt happy or alive is when I was drinking or doing other risk taking behaviours. I tried one session of bereavement counselling and hated every second. I was so uncomfortable and I wasn’t ready to address how I was feeling inside. I wouldn’t talk or accept help from anyone, instead I put everything I had into finishing my degree because I didn’t want to waste it and I knew if I took a year out I would never go back.
After University, I moved home and got a dream job working at a mental health charity. My life was suddenly quite simple and calm with no pressure and no distractions. I had time to reconnect with the friends I’d pushed away. I’d developed quite a bit of social anxiety from disconnecting and still felt quite unemotional.
I plucked up the courage to try counselling again. This time it was so different, it was such a safe space to explore without judgement. I talked about things I’d been avoiding from as young as 10 years old, I talked about things that had happened to me during my spiral of grief. Things that I hadn’t felt ok telling anyone else.
Photographer: Alia Rose
Photographer: Olivia Lennon
Once I learnt I was a fixer, I was more self-aware of how I formed relationships with others. Now I can create equal relationships with others and share honestly how I’m doing. Now I help others and have empathy, but I also have boundaries and protect my own mental health.
Grief is still such a taboo subject, and it’s something that will impact everyone at some part in their lives. We need to talk more openly about grief, because feeling like you have to be silent when you’re going through it sometimes feels more painful than the loss itself.
Counselling is different for everyone. For me it was a space to just talk without guilt of burdening someone else with worry. It was a space for me to reflect and to explore how I really felt. It was freedom.
However you feel and whatever you’re experiencing is valid. You don’t need a clinical diagnosis to ask for help. It’s okay to talk, it’s not weak or selfish.
You can find Annie on:
Instagram
Headshot Photographer:
@marionmidnight