Kindness, Patience, Mental Health & Content Warnings on the Fediverse

CONTENT WARNING: mental health struggles, me talking about elements of my newly unearthed PTSD, reference to witnessing suicide attempts

I'm just going to get straight to the point here. I'm starting up writing again. I have a lot of thoughts that sometimes I feel like writing into the ether. What better place than primarily, the Fediverse?

You've probably seen from the content warning already, but yes- I'm going to cover some stuff here. I promise I'm not going for the shock factor and to make you feel shitty, I'm genuinely just sharing- and because I want to join in with this modern day trend of actually fucking talking about our feelings and experiences for the benefit of looking out for one another.

Some background here before I get into it for those who don't know me: I spent 8 years as a senior nurse in a busy, overcrowded and understaffed inner city Accident & Emergency Department.

Recently, I had what you could probably call a “relapse”. Or a “trigger” if you will. There's this scene in the TV series Handmaid's Tale (no spoiler, promise) where someone is hanged. As I watched it happening, I felt an intense panic building up inside me, willing it to stop. “No turn it off, stop it, turn it off” I repeated, over and over until my scrambling and trembling hand found the remote to turn off the TV completely.

Hangings, while of course distressing even in fictional situations, wouldn't have usually affected me so much, as in- I was somewhat sadly using to dealing with them, whether that was dealing with the after effects of them or worse in this case, having immediate flashbacks of finding a patient in a cubicle hanging, still alive and with both of their wrists slashed. In the moment of scrambling to grab the remote control, I was at the same time reliving slashing at the makeshift bandage noose with my scissors as I tried to hold the patient up over my shoulders.

Actually, it’s only in writing this post that I’m reminded of another time I had an unexpected “trigger” flashback- which my brain had again conveniently forgotten. The TV series Stranger Things, (again, no spoilers coming up don’t worry) I was having a riot binge watching this with my other half. Totally fictional, out of this world stuff that is easy to disconnect from. All of a sudden, there’s a scene where there’s a baby crib on fire, and it is alluded that the baby is in there still. The scene only lasted all of 5 seconds, but it was enough to send me into a shaking panic and repeatedly urging for the TV to be turned off. I don’t need to detail what the flashback was.

How can TV series and Movies do a better job of warning people beyond “some scenes some viewers may find distressing”? Maybe that’s one for another day.

Since the most recent one, I've been coming to the realisation that I am no longer the same person that I used to be. Quite some time has passed since I last stepped foot off an A&E department and yes, as I am often asked, I miss it. A lot. So why did I leave? Maybe that is best left to another blog post some time, or perhaps, more pressingly, my book that I’m currently working on that spans a whole host of my career. Let me know if you’re ever interested.

Well, I miss the job- just not the situation we were in. That is, increasingly understaffed, underfunded and hideously overcrowded. I lost count of the amount of times I was dealing with a cardiac arrest in the middle of a waiting room or corridor, with no physical bed space anywhere at that moment in time to take said person- we just had to work on them on the floor while some poor bugger was kicked out into a temporary corridor space so we could use their bay full of life saving equipment.

Back to the point of this post- the scene that I saw that I did not expect to affect me the way it did. As a general rule, seeing things like that in perhaps, a game, or as a photo- doesn’t seem to have the same effect. The fact is, the scene in question seemed to so closely resemble what I experience for real that it literally was as simple as a trigger. The last time I felt something close to a trigger was a few years ago when I was in a crowded shop, and felt in increasing sense of panic as I felt as though any of of the people swarming around me was going to suddenly run up and thrust a floppy and unconscious child into my arms.

I should point out, I’m working through this. I’m doing ok. I know the people that will be reading this are most likely the kind of people who’d reach out and ask if I’m ok. Honestly, I’m obviously not fine, but I’ve got it in hand and am working through it. If anything, I’m coming to learn that this experience is actually somewhat humanising- that I’m now starting to lose that numbing, desensitising protective factor that my brain perhaps filtered everything I saw with- and actually for the most part has made me forget a lot of what I’ve seen, until that totally unexpected trigger happens.

Which leads me on to Content Warnings on the Fediverse. I used to find them a bit over the top, and feeling as though it felt like treading on eggshells whenever you posted. I still to some extent think content warnings have been over used, likely as a result of people on fedi over policing other people’s posts and creating a bit of a hostile and unwelcoming environment- however: I land on the side of the idea that it costs literally fuck all to be kind, and respectful. Content Warnings are NOT censoring, as some might shout until they’re blue in the face. It’s just a way of going “ey, just a heads up there’s probably some shit behind this you might not like, you sure?”. And that’s it. What’s the harm in that?

I for one, am learning to respect this way of thinking. It never came from a place of malice, but because I became so used to seeing a certain degree of grim things day in day out, I almost forgot that the majority of people are fortunate enough to have not experienced those things and that they may find them actually quite distressing. How do I know this? Well, because still, every once in a while, I become that person. That person I was before I set foot into the underworld of emergency nursing. That vulnerable, emotional, wearing my heart on my sleeve person. The one that didn’t find a fictional depiction of something on TV too close to home that I couldn’t function properly.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever become that person again.

Perhaps, one day, it’d be nice.

Look after each other, peeps. X

H