When success = “i’m a fraud”

Salutations! It’s Honor here. I’m here taking over the Big Feels airwaves to tell you about:

A fancy thing that happened (and the impostor spiral that followed)

The fancy thing was a very fancy thing, in fact. 

That prize that Graham talked about last issue, that I was a finalist for? Well, I won it...?!?!

It’s the Australian Mental Health Prize. As the name implies, it's the top mental health prize in the country, given each year to someone “making outstanding contributions to mental health in Australia”.

This was a complete shock. And when faced with this once-in-a-lifetime time thing of course my brain went immediately to... 

YOU-ARE-A-TOTAL-FRAUD-town.

Woop!

I’m not just being humble here. Honestly, being told I’d won this prize caused approximately one week's worth of freak out, culminating in me spending a whole fevered weekend writing an acceptance speech that, even though it was only five minutes long, went through about 30 revisions.

When imposter syndrome is healthy

This response was confusing to some people, but I actually think it made a kind of sense - some of it at least.

There's the obvious thing. That my co-finalists, including the co-winner, Professor Ian Hickie, are all very impressive people who've been integral to some of the biggest mental health reforms in Australia.

It's more than that though. I’m lucky enough to know a few people who have done epic work in mental health - people who’ve started award-winning services (like *cough cough* my Big Feels co-pilot Graham has), who’ve spearheaded long-term grassroots efforts to change systems, all while feeling big feelings of their own, and don’t get any sort of recognition from the mainstream.  

Just recently I finished a project where, at one point, I had to write up a potted history of the major moments for people with lived experience working in mental health over the past 50 years. And man, that helped me to appreciate that I wouldn’t have gotten any of the opportunities I’ve had without the work of people out there slogging it in oblivion while no one in the system really gave a damn.

In this light, some of my fraud stuff seems pretty healthy. 

A reminder to consider that any success any of us might have are just one line, one story, a piece of history that we’re each fitting into as a small part of the whole.

...but a few days after hearing I’d won the award, some of my imposter-syndrome-freak-out was getting ridiculous - like ‘everyone is gonna hate me for winning this’ ridiculous. 

That part? Not so healthy.

Peer support in real time

After days of freaking out, the thing that eventually helped me disconnect the fraud alarm was a chat with a mentor and friend of mine, who’s done this work for a heck of a lot longer than me. She’s about to retire, and is a very fancy person with a bucketload of very senior and important experience.

I told her what was going on and she told me this story.

Just the other day, she had the first meeting of a very influential committee she’s been appointed to. Sitting in her car outside, she said, it took her a full half hour to muster up the courage to actually walk inside.  

Her words (as I remember them): “no matter what age, some days it’s hard to take on the roles you’ve been given. And other days they’ll fit you no problem.”

Hearing these words made me feel a heck of a lot better about my slow-moving meltdown. It didn’t fix the imposter feelings, but it did help me stop judging them for being there.

My brain turned what is objectively an awesome thing into a week-long plight on my self-confidence. It’s hard not to see that as just one more sign that my brain is irreparably bad / different / wrong. After the chat with my friend, instead I realised feeling like an absolute fraud who should not be taken seriously is something that for some of us, never gets old, and that made a huge difference.

The big day

In normal times, the award ceremony would be an actual event where I’d get to meet the PM. Instead, it was all over Zoom, and pre-recorded, so I could even watch myself. 

Oh god.

Lower stakes, but in the end, I still couldn’t even be in the same room when they announced me as a winner. Ahhh #anxiety.

Spot the real Honor Eastly, hiding in a corner

Because the thing is, it’s not just impostor syndrome

Every now and then, my work in mental health gives me an opportunity to say something about this topic on a big stage. And every single time, I find it really hard. 

Past all the imposter syndrome, there’s a genuinely difficult challenge here. How do we tell an audience full of clinicians and politicians about how hard it is seeking help with your mental health, without seeming, well, crazy??

I have by no means had the worst experiences a person can have in the mental health system in the grand scheme of things. But I’ve had some experiences that can only be described as, well, a bit fucked. 

Things that well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) mental health professionals have said or done that have had a really negative impact on my sense of self, and my ability to think of myself as a worthwhile individual. 

Drafts 1 through 8 of “the speech”

It took a long time to unpack all that and work out what was going on. Years in fact. And well... it is very hard to explain any of that in a five-minute acceptance speech!

These are the kinds of complicated, nuanced things we’ve tried to unpack in the podcast we made with the ABC, No Feeling Is Final, and in these very pages, the Big Feels Club newsletter, for the past few years. 

It’s why we started Big Feels in the first place. To help those of you out there doing all the ‘right’ things but still feeling sad or scared a lot, and wondering if it’s just a ‘you’ problem.

A bigger victory

In the acceptance speech, I ended up focusing on how I see this prize not as a victory for me, or for Big Feels, but really as a vote of confidence in fresh approaches to mental health more generally, led by people who’ve lived this stuff.

In Australia there are small and emerging pockets of this ‘something different’. Things like peer respites (alternatives to hospital run by folks who’ve been through similar things), alternatives to emergency departments (which are starting to be rolled out in both NSW and Victoria), warm lines (only very tiny ones of these but in NZ there’s a national warm line that’s like a crisis line but staffed all by people who’ve been through it too).

Often these things are seen as niche, pilot project alternatives. Yet when I speak with people who’ve really been through it - people who’ve been in hospital, on call to crisis lines, been to emergency departments, so many of us want to see more of the ‘something different’.

So I hope that winning this prize is a small cog in this long running move towards the mental health system being a place where people can get the things they really need, and the things they want too(!), rather than just what’s given to them.

You can check out my acceptance speech here in all it’s over thought glory (timecode: 50:20). It doesn’t say all the things I wanted to say (I’m still working out how to say it all!), but you’ll know what I really mean.

Big news coming for Big Feels!

Finally, speaking of new approaches to mental health. . . 

***Big changes are afoot here at Big Feels HQ.***

(Still just our couch. Ahem.)

For the past couple of months we’ve been squirreled away, redesigning our website, and with the help of a few Big Feels Clubbers, completely rethinking what this virtual club can offer its members moving forward. Essentially we’ve been asking, what does *our* ‘something different’ look like, as we continue to grow this little club for big feelings?

We are very excited (read: also terrified) to unveil it all.

You’ll get all the details in the next newsletter. (Ah! So soon!).