In this episode, Hayley shares her story of resilience, living through abuse, depression, and misdiagnosis. She reflects on what it means to re-write your story, and how nursing has become her tūrangawaewae — a place where she feels grounded and connected to something bigger than herself.
Mentioned in the episode:
📖 Check out Jehan Casinader’s book: This Is Not How It Ends
Come and listen with:
Lucy (She/Her) – A big fan of ice cream and storytelling
Rachel (She/Her) – Social Worker, Dialogical Practitioner, mad footy fan and wildly passionate about transforming the culture of mental health services to be person-led and human rights informed.
🎨 Incredible artwork @sharleencu_art
🍋 Shout out to Amplify for welcoming us into their recording studio
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT- Tūrangawaewae: A Place to Stand
[00:00:00] Lucy: This podcast has conversations around different mental health experiences that may be distressing for some people. If that doesn’t feel like something you want to explore today, you might want to visit another podcast and come back to us another time.
[00:00:13] Rachel: Discovery College acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to lands, waters and community. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to the elders, past and present. They have never ceded sovereignty.
[00:00:32] Hayley: When you’re in an extreme state in terms of illness and things like that, it’s kind of like you sort of are struggling with who you are. And to read that like it wasn’t positive at all, it just feels like sort of in a way that you’re being ripped right open and that someone else is making an opinion about you and what your story is and what your life is like. It was quite hard to read the words.
[00:01:06] Lucy: I’m Lucy.
[00:01:07] Rachel: And I’m Rachel and we’re the hosts of the Extremely Human podcast.
[00:01:11] Lucy: Sometimes we move through big human experiences that others might not understand, like psychosis, grief, addiction, euphoria, or moments that feel completely unreal.
[00:01:23] Rachel: On Extremely Human, we hear from people who’ve been there and share what they’ve learnt along the way. Together we ask, how can we meet the full range of human experience with kindness and compassion?
[00:01:47] Lucy: In this episode, Hayley shares her story of resilience, living through abuse, depression and misdiagnosis. She reflects on what it means to rewrite your story and how nursing has become her Tūrangawaewae, a place where she feels grounded and connected to something bigger than herself.
[00:02:05] Rachel: Welcome back to the Extremely Human podcast. I’m so excited to welcome our new guest, Hayley with us today. Hi, Hayley.
[00:02:11] Hayley: Hi, Rach. Nice to see you again..
[00:02:14] Rachel: Yeah, you too. Thanks for joining us.
[00:02:16] Hayley: You’re welcome. It’s really good to be here.
[00:02:18] Rachel: I think, you know, but we’ve got a bit of a standard opening warm up question that we like to ask all of our guests. What’s something ordinary? That felt beautiful recently.
[00:02:27] Hayley: My mind’s so busy most of the time, so basically just having an empty mind and being able to just be with my two dogs. My two. I’ve got two little dogs just walking, going for a walk around the block. It was extremely ordinary and we were just. Yeah, I had no phone, so no expectations on my time. Just being. It was really nice. Really, really nice.
[00:02:50] Rachel: I love that, actually. Yeah, there’s sort of beautiful, ordinary moments. I agree. What are your dogs? What sort of dogs are they?
[00:02:56] Hayley: So I’ve got A schnauzer, Shih Tzu, cross Lulu, and then a Jack Russell Oscar. And he’s seven, so he’s a bit…
[00:03:04] Rachel: Okay, I’m going to tip that. Oscar’s naughty.
[00:03:06] Hayley: He is. He’s a Jack Russell. Yeah.
[00:03:09] Rachel: So, before we get into things, Hayley, I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit about yourself.
[00:03:13] Hayley: Yeah, I’m Hayley, as you can tell by my accent, and sometimes there’ll be giggles from some of the words that. How I pronounce some words is I’m a New Zealander.
I’m fairly new to living in Australia.
I’m a nurse, I’m a friend, I’m a daughter. I’m a partner. Yeah. There’s lots of facets to me that make me who I am.
[00:03:40] Rachel: What a nice introduction. Yeah.
[00:03:42] Lucy: Well, it’s lovely to meet you. We haven’t met officially, so. So we’re going to hear a little bit about your story today. We wanted to ask if you could take us back to some of the early chapters of your childhood and what were some of the challenges for you growing up?
[00:03:58] Hayley: So, when I was three, my brother joined the family, and my parents were very busy people, raising two children and working. When my brother was three months old, he stopped breathing.
What’s called sudden, unexplained death of an infant. He stopped breathing and my mum had to resuscitate him.
And after that, he had a lot of challenges with development and challenges that my mum needed to. Needed to be there for him and be present for him.
So I spent a lot of time, sort of like, in a way, raising myself without that sounding horrible. When I was three and a half, I was sexually assaulted by someone. So that sort of changed the trajectory and my. In a way, my development of how I developed as a child. I spoke to my mum about it as an adult after I’d healed and dealt with that part of my story. And I said, how come you didn’t, how come you didn’t understand or didn’t realize that things were, you know, weren’t there any signs or anything? And she said, Hayley, you are such an independent little girl that there just never seemed to be an issue. You just sort of got on with things. I was very much into my dolls and my teddy bears, so I spent quite a bit of time as a younger child. I think I blocked everything out. In fact, I know I blocked what happened to me out.
And I just. I spent a lot of time with my teddies and my dolls in my room. And then later, music and reading and my friends became my sanctuaries and my safe spaces. I was also affected in other ways by how I. How as a child, I perceived what was safe and what wasn’t. I suppose as a child I could see as well, like, my mum and dad were extremely busy with my brother. And, well, when my mum wasn’t busy with my brother, my dad was working to keep the family financially going.
And I just. I think maybe I intercepted that and thought, oh, well, I can’t talk to Mum about how I’m feeling or what I’m. What’s going on. For me, it’s not important. What’s important is her with Blair.
My parents, despite their challenges as humans, and I have carried this into my professional life and in my personal life, particularly when I worked in the education space, that parents do the best they can with the tools and resources they have at the time.
So, like, I don’t hold any blame or anything as to how I developed or how I. Or what happened to me, to my parents. It just is what it is and we learn and we grow from situations. I remember telling my dad as an adult and I remember distinctly putting.
Putting it out there and I just said to him, you can’t do anything about it. It’s not. It’s not for you to take on any blame or anything like this, but it’s just for understanding, because I want you to know, part of me was like, I’m kind of glad that Dad’s physically unable to deal with this as a strength thing because he went all primal and all dad on.
He’s like, oh, I would have done something about it type thing. And I was like, I’m kind of glad I’m telling you now in a way, because then you.
You can’t. And Mum. Mum sort of went a bit silent and she goes introspective when dealing with a lot of, like, big emotional things, basically because she doesn’t. Just doesn’t know how to respond or she doesn’t know what’s right. And I just said to her, I just wanted to tell you, for understanding as to how certain things have happened in my life and perhaps give you an understanding as to why they happened. We haven’t really spoke about it again, but that’s just who my parents are. Like, they feel like it’s just who they are as people. It’s like, what. Once it’s spoke about, that’s it, that’s done, we finished, move on. Yeah, I think it’s kind of a generational thing as well, yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah, so. And that was fine.
[00:08:13] Rachel: My gosh, I feel really moved hearing you speak of your parents, actually, Hayley, and just your generosity, just that generous way of thinking of what it would be like for them to hear this and thinking about how to share it with them.
[00:08:28] Hayley: I spent a lot, maybe three sessions with a counselor dealing, who was. Dealt with sexual abuse, on how to even approach my parents about it.
And she kept, she was, she was very persistent and very resilient in the sense that she was like, well, what if, like your dad, you know, he doesn’t keep good health, passes away and you feel like you haven’t told him? How do you think you would feel then? And that was quite a big, probably defining moment in me understanding that I needed to actually share that with him because I would have felt that guilt, I think, from not sharing. I think the counsellor, in her wisdom and knowledge knew this as well, that it was part of healing, being able to stand up and like, not feel like you’re keeping things in.
[00:09:23] Lucy: It’s okay if I ask if your parents knew who that person was who abused you? Did they have any relationship or was it.
[00:09:32] Hayley: Yeah, they did, they did, they did. It was someone that they knew, friends of theirs, but not, not the friend, a relative of, of their friends. Yeah.
[00:09:44] Lucy: Okay. So not in the close inner circle.
[00:09:46] Hayley: Not. Yeah. And then after about four, four, three years after that event, they moved away.
So it was kind of like, oh, it’s finished now. I don’t have to keep looking around to make sure that I’m safe type thing.
But I do remember when I was about 8 or 9, they, including the offender, came back to the town that we lived in and. And they were also friends with mum and they were friends with mum and dad’s other friends who are in the circle. And I remember I didn’t quite understand the context of everything, but I just, as an eight year old, I was like, danger, danger. That person’s not safe. And I could, I couldn’t place it or put it together as to why this person didn’t feel safe.
And I remember distancing myself and I remember running over to my mum trying to get protection as a child, as you do, you’re feeling hurt, you’re feeling scared, you want to be nurtured. And she was, just didn’t understand and I didn’t have the communication tools to tell her either. And she was like, what are you doing? Go out and play. And yeah, and then I never saw that person again after that. So, yeah.
[00:11:07] Lucy: Thank you for sharing that with us. Such a horrible thing to happen at such a young age as well.
[00:11:10] Hayley: Yeah.
[00:11:10] Lucy: And to carry that around. What was that like, to have something that big, like, weighing over you?
[00:11:17] Hayley: I didn’t perceive it as hard until I started, like, putting it together. Like, I kept. I made all these. My. The way I dealt with things was to just keep working, keep pushing it to the back of my mind. No, nothing happened. Nothing. Denial. Denial. Because it’s not just a river in Egypt, when it came to me with that, if I just keep doing things and working harder, it’ll get further away and I won’t have to deal with it anymore.
But that wasn’t the case. And I kept making these. I looked back and I kept seeing that I was making these patterns in my life. Part of my professional working life. And the studies that I had were working in the humanities space, so working in teaching with children and then in the health space. And I was like, yeah, this is starting to sort of like, not. Can, like, not confront me, but in just sort of, like, little ways, it was like, ah, okay.
And then there was something that I wanted to achieve as an adult that I thought, wow, if I don’t actually deal with this, I’m not going to be able to achieve what I want to achieve.
So that’s what took me to taking the step to. Yeah. Seek the help and support to heal from that. Yeah.
[00:12:35] Rachel: So if we just go back a little. I’m curious, Hayley, how do you think those early experiences shaped how you saw the world or yourself?
[00:12:46] Hayley: I think I became more of a people pleaser. Like, I always wanted to do good and be good. I needed to be the good girl, make sure they didn’t upset anyone, because if you upset people, then they’ll get mad. I think I developed quite an anxious way about myself because I was always looking for danger.
And I had trouble trusting men in particular and placing where the people were safe or whether they weren’t. I remember really struggling with that as a child. And then when my granddad died when I was about seven as well, I had real trouble with that. When my brother was sick, my grandfather was there for me. I spent quite a bit of time with him. And then when he passed away, I was like, there’s my safe person. He’s gone. And I couldn’t bring him back. Like, so I think that kind of. Yeah, it was finding those safe people that I really struggled with as a young person after what happened.
Yeah.
[00:13:52] Rachel: Hayley, you’ve talked a little bit with us previously about some intense time you went through in your early 20s that included, you know, mental health crisis and some time under the Mental Health Act.
What do you remember most about that time?
[00:14:09] Hayley: I remember the catalyst being that my grandmother on my dad’s side had passed away earlier in the year.
And again I used the coping strategies and tools that I had had been deploying my whole life, really, to that point where if I just work more, if I just add more papers into my double. I was doing double degree at the time. I add more papers, if I work longer hours, I won’t have to deal with these thoughts that keep coming into my head and I’m just. I’ll just keep going and going and it’ll be fine, they’ll just disappear.
How wrong was I?
It got to a point where I’d been seeing the psychologist for a bit through the university and then she had referred me to the psychiatrist.
And then I remember coming to a point, going to a meeting and I said something and the psychiatrist at that point went, well, I’m going to place you under the Mental Health Act.
And I distinctly remember everything about that time.
I reacted quite extreme in a quite extreme way because I felt my autonomy was going to be taken away and that I had lost all sense of control.
So, yeah, they placed me under the act and then I was taken away for five days under the. In New Zealand it was under the compulsory treatment hold for five days and then it was reviewed after that, to which point that’s when I was discharged from it. And I remember the whole five days just sticking with the same narrative and the same goal to every professional that I spoke to in that time. I need to get out of here, I’ve got exams to sit. I need to get out of here. I have exams to sit. That’s what I remember the most, probably being under the act was probably. Actually that whole year had been probably over hang and continuation of what had. I’d first been diagnosed with depression when I was 16 and I remember the year before, watching this teacher because I went to a high school in a regional area in New Zealand. I was like, gosh, this teacher, he. He’s always racing around, he’s always running places. And I was like, wow, he’s so busy. And then he just wasn’t there for a period of five months and. And the following year I had him as my form teacher and I came into that class at form time and I was quite. Just very low. And he said, you okay? And I said, yeah, I’m Fine.
And then at the end of form time, I don’t know what made me do it, but I said, I can’t cope anymore. And he went into complete action and was like, what do we need? We need to get you to see counsellor. We need to do all this. We need to do all that. And at the end of that year, he wrote on my school report, I was a bright young woman with a bright future ahead. Don’t forget to smell the roses. Watch the highs ride the lows and go on with my very best wishes. And. Because he told me that he’d had a breakdown that year before. So what I was seeing with him was him rushing around was hit the start of his breakdown. So for him to share that experience with me to show that he. When at that point I was really low, that you could come back from something, was quite moving, really. And even as an adult, I rang him up maybe like five years ago after I’d healed all the. That earlier part of my story. And I just said, I just wanted you to know that you were one of the people that really meant a lot to me and just, I want you to know that you were really there for me when. When I needed you at 16. And I really appreciate what you did for me and thank you. And this is what I’m doing with my life now.
[00:18:09] Rachel: Wow.
[00:18:10] Hayley: So, yeah, it was a really nice thing.
[00:18:13] Lucy: What was his response?
[00:18:14] Hayley: He was very much like, ah, wow. Sort of like a man of few words, but not. And he was like. First he was like, he’s like, I don’t know what to say. And then he’s like, thank you so much. It’s really nice to hear from former students because often you go on and you wonder what happens to certain students. He said, not all of them, but most of them. And you wonder what happened. So it’s nice to be able to hear from a former student and to hear that you’re doing so well. And so I think that experience sort of maybe contributed to what happened in my early 20s and being under the act, because I think I didn’t solve anything from there. I just continued working really hard.
But it was nice to know that I had someone at that point that could see me and was there for me. Yeah.
[00:19:03] Lucy: Such a small act can change someone’s life or like just the power of believing in someone and showing them that you believe in them. Lucy: Yeah, you can really hear it in your voice as well.
[00:19:19] Rachel: Hayley, you said earlier that you were diagnosed at 16, I think you said depression.
[00:19:23] Hayley: Yeah. That’s right, Rach. So I was diagnosed with depression at 16. I was given some antidepressants at that stage. My mum and dad were quite resistant to the idea of a 16 year old being on medication because mum was worried that it would change my brain chemistry.
And I kind of like, knowing what I know now, I can kind of understand her fear. But I was kind of like, well, it was probably the best course of treatment for me at the time. From what I was presenting with, my motivation came back. I started like interacting with people again and interacting with life and, you know, really wasn’t as help feeling as helpless as I was before going on the medication for the depression.
But different when I was 20 and was under the Mental Health act because they diagnosed and treated me with the medication.
And then as it turned out, I was a psychiatrist. Six months down the track, another psychiatrist was like, no, you don’t fit that.
[00:20:29] Lucy: So what was the diagnosis?
[00:20:31] Hayley: And it was borderline personality disorder.
[00:20:33] Lucy: I don’t know too much about it. Would you be able to just give us a brief?
[00:20:39] Hayley: It’s kind of like in the. It’s awful. It’s an awful way to call it that, I think, because it’s a lot to. It’s a lot to do with mood challenges and having intense feelings around relationships and like having people and losing them and then doing extreme things when relationships, for example, end.
[00:20:57] Rachel: And some people prefer to have it referred to as experiencing unstable emotions.
[00:21:03] Hayley: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Rachel: Or having difficulty in relationships.
[00:21:07] Hayley: Yeah.
[00:21:08] Rachel: But they’re people that tend to reject the diagnostic definition, if you like. And you. And think this describes the experience better.
[00:21:18] Hayley: I just think there’s a lot of stigma around this diagnosis and I just think maybe if it was renamed something other than borderline personality disorder, because that to me is highlighting or indicating that there’s something wrong with that person’s personality. Yeah.
[00:21:34] Lucy: That’s what I feel when I hear that. And not knowing anything about it. It’s like something inherently wrong. Yeah. With your character.
[00:21:43] Hayley: And it’s not the case at all. Yeah.
So.
[00:21:48] Lucy: So you got diagnosed with this, but it was later revealed that, that.
[00:21:51] Hayley: Yeah. And the psychiatrist that I saw six months after the diagnosis was like, well, I can see why they kind of would have needed to. Because under the pressure of the five days to treat and diagnose and treat and they only they’ve taken one part of the. The definition that was like sexual abuse.
And he’s like, there are bits of emotional dysregulation, but not enough to fit that criteria. So he was just Like, I don’t. I don’t believe you do.
[00:22:23] Rachel: When were you told that you had been given that diagnosis?
[00:22:26] Hayley: Because I was going overseas. I was going to live overseas, going to do what these young Kiwis and Aussies do and go and have an OE experience over in the uk. And I wanted to obtain my notes in case I felt something potentially went wrong and that I needed a professional, needed to seek professional help. So I requested my notes through proper channels and then I was reading through them and there were a few things in there that actually made my eyes pop almost.
One of the clinicians was very subjective and they.
They actually ended up pulling her up on. It was. She’d put in there, she’s acting like an angry 3 year old.
And it was like, wow. Yeah.
Like, that is so subjective. And just feeding into that stigma, really, of how people treat people with borderline personality disorder.
So that’s how I found out. I was also a bit taken aback as to why their diagnosis weren’t shared with myself at the time. After being taken off the Mental Health act and with my support people..
[00:23:40] Lucy: I’m just feeling terrified about how people can have so much power over someone else’s story and how that impacts their future and the way other people perceive them. That is frightening.
[00:23:53] Hayley: Yeah. And we had a review meeting after reading these notes. I was like, question the health area. And I was like, I need a meeting to bring this all up because I don’t think it’s right and it needs to change.
And. And that’s what my support people at the time said. Like, if we’d known, we would have treated Hayley a lot differently. We would have known where to get support. We would have, knowing what we were dealing with. And we could have made the experience a whole lot smoother than what it was.
[00:24:21] Rachel: Such a brave thing to do to call your notes. I mean, it shouldn’t feel like it’s being brave. What was it like for you other than discovering the diagnosis?
[00:24:32] Hayley: It just feels like sort of in a way that you’re being ripped right open.
[00:24:36] Rachel: Yep.
[00:24:36] Hayley: And that someone else is making an opinion about you and what your story is and what your life is like and what they think of you. And you kind of like when you’re in an extreme state in terms of, like, illness and things like that. It’s kind of like you. You sort of are struggling with who you are. And to read that, like, it wasn’t positive at all. It was. Yeah. So it was quite hard. It was like being ripped, ripped open and hearing all these opinions of people who they thought I was.
It was quite hard to read the words.
[00:25:10] Rachel: What would you say to people who write in files.
[00:25:16] Hayley: Use open dialogue, do it collaboratively, Nothing with me, without me. I can say this because that’s a professional myself now, in that space, like, I always think, and even before I worked in the mental health space, I worked in the physical health space. But when I was writing notes, it’s such a privilege to actually be part of someone’s experience that I always thought, well, what would I think if this was being read about me? So I always carry that, even to this day, as to, like, how much of an honour it is to be part of someone’s story and to be part of their experience and to just hold that, like, hold space for that and treat it with respect.
[00:26:06] Lucy: Hayley, was there a moment or a time that you can remember where you started to shift from survival mode and towards something more?
[00:26:13] Hayley: Yeah, Lucy, there was. When I finished my training working in the health space, I started questioning myself, going, oh, I’ve had all these experiences and it really is a privilege to hold space for someone and I need to be sturdy in who I am to be able to hold space for other people.
So I need to start thinking about and making a move to healing my story in order to get to be there, fully 100% present for the people that I will be walking alongside. And then in 2019, I’d been a nurse for a year, I think, and I picked up a book by a New Zealand journalist. His name was Jahan Castanada. It was Jahan Castaneda called this Is Not How It Ends. And Jahan had spoke about his experience of depression and he had tried all sorts of methods in dealing with his depression, talking to his friend, medication, exercise, therapy, all sorts of things.
But none of those things seem to be really hitting the spot in a way. And so he thought, there’s got to be something better than this. So he started. He quit his job and he took six months out to write a book. And he shared stories of people going through extreme experiences to highlight that.
You can rewrite your. Your story doesn’t have to end with that experience. You can rewrite your story and change your narrative to make it bitter and better for you. So one story in particular in there for me was he spoke to a woman who had been sexually abused.
And while I’m acutely aware that her story, that my story, it resonated.
And I was like, well, if she can do it, maybe I can.
And it just Seemed like such a simple concept to me as well, because I was always like, oh, it’s got to be more complex than this. And I think that was part of why I never healed it straight away, because I was like, oh, it’s too complex. I can’t do it. But then the idea of just turning the page and rewriting a narrative was just like, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, I can do this.
[00:28:31] Lucy: I really like that reframe.
How did you rewrite your story?
[00:28:36] Hayley: I actually was like, well, if I’m going to work with people, I need to heal my stuff, because otherwise I’m sort of like a hypocrite. Like, I’m telling them that they can do it in the physical rehabilitation space, but then I’m not healing what I need to heal. So I sought out a counsellor specialising in sexual abuse, and I spent three years with her. This is quite funny. There was one part in there where she said, I want you to write a letter to little Hayley. And I was like, what? Like, I remember getting really internally angry with her, in a way. And I told her this when we came to the end of our time together. I was like, why does she want me to do that for? That’s ridiculous. That’s stupid. Like, how is talking to little Hayley going to solve anything? Like, this lady doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
But to her credit, like, consistently, it took her about six sessions, but she. She would be like, have you started that letter? Have you started that letter to little Hayley? And eventually, I just got sick of her asking me, so I was like, yes. And I did it. And she’s like, how did that make you feel?
[00:29:51] Lucy: Classic question.
[00:29:53] Rachel: Was it therapeutic?
[00:29:54] Hayley: It was therapeutic, yeah. Because I let go of a lot of that guilt, and I was able to apologize to little Hayley and to tell her that she was actually an okay child. She was doing the best that she could.
Yeah. With what challenges had been set in front of her. Yeah.
[00:30:11] Lucy: What were some of the other things that helped you in your healing?
[00:30:15] Hayley: A lot of Indigenous practices in New Zealand, in the humanities, social work, teaching, other health professions, nursing, are embedded with. Yeah. Indigenous practices and stories. And a big part of the Indigenous Mori is storytelling and concepts. And one of the concepts that helped me with healing was Tūrangawaewae, which means finding a place where you stand, and it’s a connection to something. So you always have your tūrangawaewae, and it means that you’re connected not only to an Indigenous Māori culture, you’re not only connected to yourself or your people or your ancestors, your Whānau. Whānau’s family or ancestors, your whakapapa. Or. It also incorporates, like, attachments to the physical environment, like your river and your mountains and those connections to those spaces that incorporate who you are and your place in the world. Tūrangawaewae. I thought about this practice when I was. I’ve been nursing for about maybe three years, and I was like. Because I was kind of like, do I want to go back teach and back into the teaching space, or do I want to stay in nursing? Like, where am I going to go?
And I had a moment with a patient in the rehabilitation, physical rehabilitation space. She had healed from a stroke. We had her for six weeks while she healed from a stroke. And she said at the end, like, thank you so much for being your bright, bubbly self, coming in every day and positively encouraging me and holding that space for me that I would get better and that hope for me that I would get better and I would be able to walk out of this building. I was a little bit taken back because I was like, I don’t. I don’t. I’m just little old me. I’m not. I didn’t think I’d had that much of an impact.
And then it was after that time, I was like, wow. I think nursing and nursing. I have found my tūrangawaewae. So that sort of settled that thought about where I was going to go career.
It certainly wasn’t to go back to teaching that sort of sealed that. So that’s so cool.
[00:32:26] Lucy: I love that concept. And it’s just making me think about how your teacher in high school gave you that glimmer of hope and support, and then you went on to do it for someone else.
[00:32:37] Rachel: Goes around, comes around.
[00:32:39] Hayley: Yeah. Pay it forward.
[00:32:41] Rachel: Pay it forward, yeah.
How do you think your experiences have shaped the way you try to support and be with others? Now?
[00:32:49] Hayley: I’m definitely aware that because I think if I hadn’t dealt with my experiences and stuff, I probably would. There would have been a potential for me to get over involved and people’s stories and people’s healing. I possibly could have burnt out or anything. Something like that. I’ve learned that my story is not their story.
I’m there to walk alongside, but I’m not there to fix. Like, it’s not my responsibility to fix. Just like it’s no one else’s. It was no one else’s responsibility to fix me. And I remember someone saying to me once, don’t Let their story become your story and vice versa.
Meaning, like, keep. Keep your boundaries as such. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be a great clinician or anything like that. It’s just being mindful that. Yeah. Because you can’t fix otherwise.
Yeah.
[00:33:44] Lucy: It’s a really powerful reminder.
[00:33:47] Hayley: Yeah. Very powerful.
[00:33:53] Rachel: Hayley, if you could speak to someone who feels stuck in the hardest part of their story, what would you want to say to them?
[00:34:01] Hayley: Take a deep breath and turn the page.
And when it feels dark and the world’s against you and you feel lonely, find the light.
Even if it’s just a small light, find it and hold on to it. Hold on to hope that it will get better. Even if it’s like a little candle, just hold onto it. Hold that hope and turn the page.
Yeah.
[00:34:27] Lucy: I’m loving this turn the page concept. Yeah. It’s a real theme. What did you say? I don’t know if you said it in the podcast or before the podcast. It was a shit day, not a shit life?
[00:34:35] Hayley: Yeah. A bad day not a bad life.
[00:34:38] Lucy: Yeah, I like that.
So we’re gonna ask a question that we ask everyone to close the episode. Can you tell us about an act of care, big or small, that’s really stayed with you?
[00:34:50] Hayley: Seven years ago, and I really, like, I had a really difficult situation in my life, and it was quite late at night, and I lived on the outskirts of a regional town, so sort of in a rural area.
I rang a friend of mine, and she was like, right, I’m coming to get you. And she just. She drove 20, 30 minutes to come and get me, took me back to her house, and she stayed up most of the night talking to me. And she’s like, we’re not going to bed until we’ve come up with a solution and a pathway and a way to solve this. She. You know, she’s just. Just. The fact that she stayed up with me so late while I was in, like, distress just felt really big to me. But then when I. When we’ve talked about it, she’s like, oh, it wasn’t that big of a deal. She did another huge thing for me this year, which was. It was just. It was a phone conversation, and I thanked her for it, and she was like, that wasn’t a big deal either.
[00:35:46] Lucy: She’s just. She’s just an angel. Just on the reg
[00:35:49] Rachel: She’s like, whatever. This is just being your friend.
[00:35:53] Hayley: She’s like, don’t make a big deal about it. Come on, Move on. What shoes are we going to buy?
So, yeah, I might have had some really bad experiences or perceived bad experiences, but I wouldn’t have got through those bad experiences if it wasn’t for some of these people.
Like, the trajectory could have been so, so different. So very different. Yeah.
[00:36:14] Lucy: You have an amazing attitude to everything, though. You’re actually such a breath of fresh air speaking to. You are such a joyful person. And you’ve taught me so much about turning the page, finding a place to stand in.
[00:36:30] Rachel: I would say seeing good in others, too.
[00:36:32] Lucy: Yeah, seeing.
[00:36:33] Rachel: Yeah, seeing the good in others, which.
[00:36:36] Lucy: Is hard to do sometimes.
But thank you so much for this delightful conversation, Hayley.
[00:36:48] Rachel: That conversation with Hayley has really stayed with me. Me, you know, I just experienced her with such generosity and this optimistic and really lovely way of seeing the world and people.
[00:37:04] Lucy: I know. Incredible. And it felt really hopeful as well.
[00:37:08] Rachel: I think I’ve always had a hope for myself that I can try and see the good in people and. And see the best in people.
[00:37:16] Hayley: Yeah.
[00:37:17] Rachel: And she’s like my role model.
[00:37:19] Lucy: I’ve been thinking about a couple of themes that have come up throughout the episode. The idea of rewriting your narrative. It’s something that I’ve thought about a lot recently, this concept of rewriting your narrative. And I’m reminded by this quote by this author, Don Miguel Ruiz, and the quote is: Humans are storytellers. It is our nature to make up stories, to interpret everything we perceive. Without awareness we give our personal power to the story, and the story writes itself. With awareness, we recover the control of our story. We see, we are the authors, and if we don’t like our story, we change it.
[00:37:58] Rachel: It really makes me think about how a story isn’t fixed. Like a story is a different story each time you tell it.
You can’t tell the same story twice, really, can you? There’s always going to be changes and shifts and influences of present moment or learnings that change the perspect perspective over time.
[00:38:23] Lucy: I also heard about memories being recreated every time you remember something as well.
[00:38:28] Rachel: Yeah, right.
[00:38:28] Lucy: So I wonder if that plays into the way we think about our past as well. But that idea has made me think about how. How sometimes it can be really hard to keep your sense of self and to not let what other people say about you or what you think other people think about you, to become part of your identity or part of your story.
It reminded me of when I had gone through some big mental health challenges. You know, you sort of come out of that and hear Words about yourself as being unwell or sick. It’s really hard to not let that become how you see yourself.
[00:39:07] Rachel: Gosh, that feels important, Lucy, to really think about, you know, from a professional perspective. I think a lot about the power of professionals or, you know, the power other people can have over people, other. Over others, particularly others in vulnerable or disempowered states.
But I guess what’s really coming up for me is the responsibility of people not to author other people’s stories and not, you know, this power that we have as professionals or as services to define the problem that someone is experiencing and therefore definitely define them.
Yeah, in some ways. And, you know, I think we should really question that.
[00:39:53] Lucy: And I think that’s why I have so much admiration and respect for Hayley. When she shared her story around going to access her notes and then seeing that that didn’t align with how her experiences, but also calling it out and calling a meeting and challenging that and saying, hey, I don’t think this is right.
I just have so much admiration for her.
[00:40:17] Rachel: You know, I don’t know if you know this, but there was, you know, in the royal commission that happened to Victoria into mental health services, one of the biggest themes that came out of that was those that have lived experience of mental health care described the trauma they experienced when they accessed their notes, you know, and that I find that so upsetting, you know, and I’ll just say it again. Accessed their notes.
[00:40:45] Lucy: Yes.
[00:40:46] Rachel: So we refer to them as their notes, but who’s the author? And if they’re their notes, nothing should be in there that they’re not part of authoring. It’s been very powerful for me to hear of Hayley’s experience. And as someone who writes in people’s files often, I will take that with me. Lucy, you said something before that I just want to go back to, if that’s okay. I’m really curious, you know, when you talked about other people defining your story or authoring your story and therefore maybe defining you in a way, how did you reclaim your sense of self or how did you, you know, kind of reclaim your story agaon?
[00:41:26] Lucy: Sort of when I was, like, starting to recover from what I’d experienced, I ended up going overseas to travel. Potentially a bit of a form of escapism. But I realized that when I was overseas, no one knew who I was.
No one knew what I’d been through or any of that kind of thing. So they sort of just took me exactly as I am in that moment, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but that in itself was incredibly healing, and it gave me that little circuit breaker just to reassess and to give me some hope, you know, because I didn’t feel trapped in that identity of being an unwell person. So, yeah, it can be a real gift, I realize just to meet someone exactly where they’re at can be difficult sometimes, but if you can, it’s. It’s an amazing thing just to see someone with fresh eyes.
[00:42:27] Rachel: Kind of think, you know, I’m just curious. You use the word escapism in a bit of a joke, but I think that’s really appropriate, you know, escaping a situation for a period of time.
[00:42:37] Lucy: Yeah.
[00:42:38] Rachel: But also I wonder if it helped other people recalibrate how they saw you as. Well, you know, seeing you as not someone that’s sick, but someone who is traveling the world and, you know, kind of doing things that are courageous.
[00:42:57] Lucy: I don’t know. We don’t know what other people are really thinking about us, do we?
[00:43:01] Rachel: Yeah, but it was.
[00:43:02] Lucy: Yeah.
[00:43:03] Rachel: Interrupting something that was, you know, kind of starting to be influencing you.
[00:43:09] Lucy: Yeah. It’s not something that people necessarily have to say with their words. It may be a way that they’re treating you, and it can be coming from a loving place.
[00:43:19] Rachel: Well, I think mostly.
[00:43:20] Lucy: I think mostly it is coming from a loving place.
[00:43:22] Rachel: Someone you love kind of fall apart a bit and not be managing their life. It’s reasonable to start to, you know, respond to them differently. But it’s hard to get it back on track again, isn’t it? Thanks for sharing that bit about you. And thanks, Hayley.
Discovery College acknowledges that the views shared in this podcast reflect personal experiences and are not a substitute for professional mental health advice. They do not represent the views of Alfred Health.
[00:44:04] Lucy: Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you wanted to stay in touch or learn more about Discovery College, please head to our website: discovery.college.