In this special episode (the first one Bianca recorded almost 18 months ago!) host Bianca Welsh introduces us to her dear friend Emily Judd. They delve into Emily's poignant journey through grief following the stillbirth of her son, Jack at full term, while she was on maternity leave from work.

Emily shares the harrowing experience of losing Jack, the process of healing, and her ongoing quest to navigate life after loss. They also explore the coping mechanisms, both adaptive and maladaptive, that Emily has employed and offers insights into what has and hasn’t worked in her healing journey.

Psychologist Dr. Mai Frandsen joins the discussion to provide professional perspectives on the topics of dissociation, avoidance, and the importance of acknowledging grief. This episode is a profound exploration of loss, resilience, and the power of storytelling in the grieving process.

ABOUT Emily:

Emily is from Launceston where she lives with her three children (two living, Lydia and Adeline) and her husband Nick (pictured). She is a senior criminal lawyer at the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and in the small amount of spare time she has she enjoys spending time with her family at the beach and has devoted a huge amount of time to the creation of her baby loss resources - A Little Help From Jack, a booklet with all sorts of resources for a family experiencing a stillbirth from helplines, professional resources, to books for mum, dad and kids, podcasts, memory making ideas and so much more. The guide has expanded to A Little Help From Remy, specifically for TFMR and recently A Little Help From Lily, specifically for child loss and paediatric palliative care. Emily has become a well respected and valued voice in the Stillbirth community contributing to research, advocacy and awareness.

Follow: @fromexperience_ or @biancaleewelsh @alittlehelpfromjack @maifrandsen

Website: fromexperience.co | alittlehelpfromjack.com.au

Resources

Bears Of Hope Ph: 1300 11 4673

Red Nose Ph: 1300 308 307

Gidget Foundation Ph: 1300 851 758

Resource Companions: A Little Help From Jack, A Little Help From Remy, A Little Help From Lily

Music Credit: “Denali” by Bryant Lowry.

Written by Bryant Richard Lowry (BMI).

Published by Boss Soundstripe Productions (BMI).

Licensed via Soundstripe Inc.

Cover Image: Eden Wilday

[00:00:31] Bianca: Hello, and thank you for joining me on this podcast From Experience: the Grief Collection. I'm your host, Bianca Welsh. I'm a mom, a loss mom, a restaurateur with a behavioral science degree and a proclivity for all things to do with trauma, grief, and mental illness. I've got a lot of personal lived experience, and this is the podcast I wish I had after experiencing my own grief and loss.

[00:02:14] Bianca: Just a heads up on today's episode, we'll be talking about stillbirth among other topics. If this is too much for you today, maybe come back another time. If you need support or resources, please see the show notes or reach out to your loved ones who make you feel safe and seen.

[00:02:51] Bianca: I express my gratitude in being able to live, work, and play on this beautiful country. Sovereignty was never ceded. I honor the rich tradition of [00:03:00] storytelling as a vital way of passing down knowledge, culture, and history through generations.

[00:03:11] Bianca: Today I have my very dear friend, Emily Judd here to chat to us about her story. We have become incredible friends and an incredible comfort each other through our journeys. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:06:03] Bianca: And I think I know where they get that strong spirit from knowing a you now. So there's so much to unpack here. Perhaps one day we can do a whole interview about pregnancy after loss. Mm-hmm. As that is a really full on and traumatic process it's, um, and as my therapist had said, it's the highest form of exposure therapy you can go through after loss.

[00:07:04] Emily: So we didn't know, like with all of our children, whether we were having a VO or a girl. I was already on maternity leave with Jack having decided that I, 24 hours wasn't quite enough with Lydia, so I was on maternity leave.

[00:07:50] Emily: Um, but for whatever reason, we went to the hospital for a check because things just hadn't felt quite right. So [00:08:00] we made our way to the hospital. We didn't take anything with us. I really did think that I was going in for a routine check. I had done so with Lydia and I really did think that that was all we were going in for.

[00:09:54] Emily: The room was utterly silent, and in a lot of ways I feel [00:10:00] like that has been quite symptomatic of my grief and my experience. I have found it really difficult to articulate and find the words for how I'm feeling, and I find it difficult to find the words to convey receiving that. Those news, that shock and that trauma but after hearing that news, things happened really quickly and I do, what I do remember about that time is this sudden firm resolve that I needed to focus on what was happening right now and not think ahead because I could feel the anxiety and the panic, and I could feel it all just below the surface.

[00:11:30] Emily: So for the next 24 hours, it was five minutes at a time. And that's something that I come back to even now. When things are really difficult is I just remind myself that I don't need to focus on tomorrow or next week. Just focus on the five minutes that are in front of you. So that's what I did

[00:12:17] Emily: Yeah. Yep. I, I still do, but it was a really big, um, well, it's clearly a really big thing, but I could feel, I could just feel that, that underlying panic and emotion, and I just knew that to get through it, that's all I could do is just focus on the five minutes because I had to get through delivering our baby and meeting our baby and I also knew that it would also mean saying goodbye to our baby. And so if I let my mind think about [00:13:00] any of those things.

[00:13:17] Bianca: I'm so sorry. No matter how many times I hear your story and others, I mean, we talk about our boys often and it still flaws me that this actually happened to you. Happened to me and how we survived it, like we're still here talking about it today. I think in that moment you really feel like you are not going to survive it.

[00:14:00] Emily: That's right. Yeah. Yep.

[00:14:32] Emily: And his story is also not just a sad one which I'm sure we'll get to. And what we've talked about lots is our boys have also brought with them things that were really quite unexpected to our lives as well. And so we wanna share Jack with the world.

[00:15:02] Bianca: That something in a time that must be so incredibly painful and there's a smile. But I've got now pictures of my husband and I and we, we have a little smile because it is still this strangely joyous thing to meet this little person that you made that was made with a love and they're a part of you.

[00:15:44] Emily: That is so true, because, and when you think about that moment when you are meeting your baby for the first time, when you know you're not gonna bring them home, that's exactly what that moment is.

[00:16:19] Emily: You've both created this beautiful little baby. You know, you think it's the most perfect look looking baby, and you look back at photos later, but you, there's no other feeling like it. And when I met Jack, that feeling was no different when I met Lydia. But it also comes with. There is joy and there is love, but it comes with that immense sadness because you know you're never going to bring them home, and to me to hold that love and [00:17:00] that sadness together at the same time.

[00:17:24] Bianca: It's almost like a physical sensation as well as psychologically, mentally, everything you can almost feel your heartbreaking in two.

[00:17:33] Emily: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then of course comes the time that you know, you're going to have to say goodbye to your baby and that will forever remain the hardest thing that I have ever done.

[00:18:06] Bianca: Yeah. Can you share a little bit about the time you spent with Jack in hospital? I think the logistics of it is something that I wasn't prepared for. Mm-hmm. I know that for my husband was quite confronted and was not aware that we would actually spend some time in hospital with him. And unfortunately we're not well prepared or educated as to what we can do and what we probably should do in that time when we're incredibly traumatized, we're in shock. We're physically, we've just been through birth. There's so much that's going on, how important that short, short window of time is and how you spent it with him.

[00:19:13] Emily: And I'm still working through that, but I have to remind myself that we did the best that we could at the time with the information that we had. And that is why I am, for want of a better word, really passionate about letting people know what their options are and the resources and memory making and all those kinds of things, because whilst I can't fault the care and the service that we received.

[00:20:49] Emily: And that's something I've really had to learn. And I've had to learn how to not only parent him, but include him in our family. I wish we had done things like read books to him [00:21:00] because then we could read those books with our girls and talk about it in that way. So we didn't do enough with him but there was never gonna be enough time and there was never gonna be enough memory making but there were some things that I wish that we could have done. We did do some things like some immediate family came to meet Jack, and I'm so glad that they did because, uh. One thing that's really difficult about the death of a baby is that there are no shared memories. So even if you can't, you can't share that that time they did something with other people.

[00:22:01] Emily: But in our case, it just looked like he was sleeping. He was a perfect little baby with this round face and these gorgeous chubby cheeks and definite chin and dark hair and these beautiful pouty lips. And so Lydia met her little brother and she still talks about it to this day about what he looked like.

[00:22:55] Emily: Um, because it was hard enough when we came home and you and I have talked about this in the past [00:23:00] as well, people's reactions. You know, we know it's a really difficult thing to deal with, but so many people will often not know what to say, and so you're left with almost them. Pretend, not even acknowledging it.

[00:23:19] Bianca: which adds to the experience of the trauma to have it not acknowledged. We've both come so far in learning how important it is to be seen, acknowledged, and heard. And for someone just to say, and I know some people who've experienced loss don't like the term, I'm sorry for your loss. But I think we've both agreed that that is just a simple enough in a conversation at some point for that other person to acknowledge that we have lost something.

[00:23:48] Bianca: And then you can just carry on with a conversation. It doesn't have to be dwelled upon. It doesn't have to be this really big thing, but as long as they've acknowledged you've just been through birth, like you've been [00:24:00] through one, a huge physical feat.

[00:24:22] Bianca: Did you? That's right. You question what's wrong with the person. And we've got this invisible, this invisible trauma. We've often talked about it after we had had the boys and you would walk down the street because we were visibly not pregnant. We didn't visibly have any wounds on us. We didn't look like we were in pain, but we were in so much pain.

[00:25:06] Bianca: Of what has happened to you can go such a long way in the healing process of someone who's been through this experience.

[00:25:26] Emily: And there is just nothing. There is absolutely nothing that you could say to make that. Better. If you think that you can do that, it's just impossible. So I know that when I approach people who experienced, you know, that, that now just that recognition that I, there's nothing that I can say and I'm so sorry.

[00:25:56] Bianca: And it goes to what trauma informed practice [00:26:00] is being trauma informed is that you're essentially just trying to make someone's day less shit than it needs to be.

[00:26:27] Bianca: Well, how can we forget? We can't forget. Such a misconception. The love of our life being taken away from our arms. We can't. That's not something we can forget. You don't forget that you've got a kid. Like, that's just not something that can be erased. Mm-hmm. So you can never upset us anymore. What we've been through is the worst.

[00:26:52] Bianca: Exactly. But you can make the experience harder for someone. There's a difference I think between [00:27:00] upsetting someone and you making that harder. And by making it harder is not acknowledging it or by saying something really inappropriate. Um, you know, being surprised that you haven't moved on sort of thing or some, some terms have come up and some questions that you and I have been asked over the years.

[00:27:25] Emily: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And it's so important because one thing that was said to me early on not a particularly kind or sensitive comment, but it was along the lines of, well, there are always going to be triggers or things in your life.

[00:28:02] Emily: And I don't think people realize that. And it can be as simple as for example, I will never be able to go to a kid's birthday party and hear happy birthday being sung without feeling an intense grief that Jack will never get to grow and will never sing Happy Birthday to him driving past schools and seeing school kids come out.

[00:28:45] Bianca: That's right. And it's those secondary losses that we're essentially talking about, and they come thick and fast, and it's not just the primary losses, the losses of them, and those secondary losses you experience every single day. I know for me to see brothers play [00:29:00] together because we have an older son, it just, it, it, it's like a dagger in my heart when I see that.

[00:29:08] Emily: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:31] Bianca: But it, but it is because he still, he did still exist. Mm-hmm. So it's, it's, it's those two things at the same time. Yeah. Again, it's that light in the light in the dark. Yeah. That's really hard to hold sometimes. It's like a hot plate. Yeah. Sometimes it's, it's just warm and you can hold it and it's okay.

[00:30:29] Emily: So I think what, perhaps if I start with what didn't help, 'cause it kind of leads into what did, but what didn't help was there, whilst we were in the hosp hospital you're told about this is a really big thing and it's really important that you look after yourself and there's, um, and all kinds of things and they really mean well. Then there's no aftercare. There's no continuity of care. There's no linking you into those services.

[00:31:27] Emily: The only option for myself, at least at the time, was to be referred back to my gp, go on a mental health care plan be referred to a psychologist, which had an immense waiting time. So firstly, it was just the arbitrary fact that I had to go back to my gp, explain what happened, and justify the trauma and grief of losing our son to go onto a mental healthcare plan. I was told that I could be waiting six to nine months, but I was [00:32:00] fortunate in that through a private referral through a friend, I was able to get an appointment with a psychologist four months later. And when I did, she really did acknowledge and recognize the fact that it wasn't, it was less than ideal that there needed to have been some earlier intervention.

[00:32:37] Emily: They can help you with the practicalities, like organizing forms with Centrelink, registering birth and death certificate. Funerals, which is another thing that you and I have spoken about before you all the things that people don't think about, you actually still need to go through all of that with your baby.

[00:33:24] Emily: There's this incredible mother's guilt that we all carry that guilt was present right from the early days and carried me right through, and I'm still dealing with that so I really wish that I'd had access to some professional services earlier and so that that didn't work well.

[00:34:06] Emily: Um, it is exposure therapy at its finest, but it also means that a lot of the therapy that I needed to have couldn't be done because I was effectively pregnant again, and I was managing that so I'm still working through all of those things and. Now just trying some alternative, or different forms have really, has really helped.

[00:34:35] Bianca: I think you need to preface that you're quite a cynical person and that doing these alternative things have been really quite surprising. Yeah, for everyone. Definitely.

[00:35:52] Bianca: Fantastic. And would you say that the avoidance stuff served you for the [00:36:00] period of time that it needed to serve you?

[00:36:29] Emily: Mm.

[00:36:49] Bianca: I know for me, going back to work was one of the hardest things I was trying to face after the loss of our son. What did you do [00:37:00] physically, mentally, in preparation and then was there anything that you did in communicating with your team when you were going back as to what you needed?

[00:37:23] Emily: So I was on maternity leave without a baby. And I had a lot of shame around that. It didn't feel right and I was really struggling with what to do and that's where I think it's really important with as connections and storytelling because unfortunately there are a lot of people on maternity leave without a baby.

[00:38:15] Bianca: Yeah, that's a quick, that's a quick turnaround. It was, yeah.

[00:39:03] Emily: So I worked from home for a little while and then gradually returned to the office and it was really, really difficult and it isn't, I, I don't wanna be I'm certainly not critical of my workplace. I think that it really is a, a reflection of society as a whole, not knowing what to do or say. Um, not knowing how to have those difficult conversations and those kinds of things.

[00:39:49] Emily: So I really wish that something that I was able to do after returning with Jack just having that guidance and that help and once again, I think that's really missing, when someone [00:40:00] experiences a grief and trauma, that transition back to work can be really difficult and it's really important to get it right.

[00:40:30] Bianca: It's a really challenging couple of years, but I think that that's really great advice for people listening that to set boundaries that you feel safe. And that can still get the job done, but that ultimately protects you. Is that kind of a good summary of

[00:40:48] Bianca: In terms of what advice you would give if you were sitting here now with yourself at that time of losing Jack, what piece of advice would [00:41:00] you like to give yourself to know that you can get through it?

[00:42:02] Bianca: A plus griever.

[00:42:12] Emily: Just like I said before, Jack's story, it is a sad one, but it's also a really beautiful one. Of course if we could have Jack here in our family present, physically in our lives, we would, but he's not. But that, that his story isn't just a sad one. And I wish people knew that and could talk to us about him and all the things that he brings to our lives that he continues to bring to our lives.

[00:42:55] Bianca: And I think that's something we're trying to figure out every day, isn't it? How do we parent [00:43:00] for children that aren't here? Because it is, we can't hand that to anyone else. You can't get someone to babysit your lost child we've gotta figure that out, out ourselves. There's no break from that, is there?

[00:43:13] Emily: Yeah.

[00:43:30] Emily: Yeah, definitely. Thank you. So when we left hospital, I think I mentioned before we just didn't know about all of these amazing resources.

[00:44:00] Emily: Like I said before, I found it really difficult to put the words to the pain that I was feeling, but often I would read something that someone else had posted on Instagram and I think, yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly how I've been feeling. So I found all these amazing things and I just thought, I just wish that they could be in the one place for someone so that they could, you know, not everything is going to work for everyone.

[00:44:46] Emily: So it kind of. It really did organically happen. So we created this companion, we've called it, it's called A Little Help from Jack, and it's just full of all of these resources that we wish we had access to. So [00:45:00] even things like sibling books Now that was really helpful for Lydia, um, a little book to explain what had happened to her brother and that she could still continue that sibling relationship.

[00:45:42] Emily: And it has really helped me at least. I don't, I don't wanna say this, thinking that, you know, people need to do something with their grief. I think that is a really big misconception that you need to start some foundational charitable cause, or write a book or do something amazing. You really don't.

[00:46:35] Bianca: It's beautiful and it's a beautiful way to keep him here as loss parents we wanna find ways of talking about them as much as we can. We wanna say their name as much as we can, and to have that companion and Jack's name's out there all the time.

[00:47:13] Bianca: It's a part of the healthcare system that numbers haven't improved for decades and termination for medical reason anecdotally is probably going up and so I think it's just, it's such an amazing thing that you are doing and yeah, I'm very proud of you. Oh, thank you.

[00:48:14] Bianca: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much, Emily.

[00:48:23] Bianca: Joining me to unpack the last interview is Dr. Mai Fransden. She's a psychologist, health behavior change, consultant and researcher based in Tasmania. She earned her PhD in psychology in 2012 and is internationally recognized for her work in promoting health behavior change using incentives. Dr. Fransden is the owner of Trig Psychology, a private practice located in Tasmania, where she focuses on health behavior change, working with first responders, adolescents, and adults, navigating significant life transitions.

[00:48:59] Bianca: She uses a [00:49:00] range of psychological treatment paradigms to get the best outcome for her clients. In addition to her private practice, Dr. Fransden serves as a psychologist in schools and is an associate researcher at the University of Tasmania. Her research primarily focuses on smoking cessation, particularly among pregnant women, and has led Tasmania wide clinical trials exploring the efficacy of novel incentive based interventions.

[00:49:45] Bianca: Hello, Mai. Hello, Bianca. Welcome. Thank you. So we've just listened to Emily talk about her awful and tragic loss of her son Jack. And I wanted to start with the silence she [00:50:00] experienced when she was delivered the news about Jack and when she told me about that, I felt like that is a classic example of dissociating.

[00:50:12] Mai: Yes. And ah, just, just listening to her and hearing her describe that moment trying to place yourself in her shoes and even how painful that is as someone who's outside of that I could just imagine, I, I was, I guess I was imagining the survival part of her brain, just hitting the emergency button and going, I'm outta here.

[00:51:12] Mai: That was her wonderful brain's way of keeping her alive in that moment and when you think of the fight, flight, freeze response yes, it feels good to be able to run away or to fight, but sometimes we know that's not going to help and that the fact that our wonderful survival, lizardy brain is able to make that instantaneous decision and go, yeah, now we can't outrun this thing. Can't fight this thing, so let's just pretend that we are not even here in our body.

[00:51:56] Mai: When I think in that freeze response, and that's why it's such a unique response, [00:52:00] it's that there's a quick assessment of this is beyond our capacity to deal with and that actually there's nothing that we can do to deal with it.

[00:52:28] Mai: We don't get that when the trauma the triggers is way beyond our capacity to deal with it. And that's what's happened her body's gone, Nope, there's nothing, we don't have the resources for this right now. So the only way I can protect you is pretend we're not here. And so what I thought was absolutely phenomenal with the way Emily was describing it was, despite all that her beautiful brain said, so what can we [00:53:00] deal with and we can deal with five minutes at a time? I think my takeaway from all of that, and man, we could talk about so many things. But I think that my takeaway from that was like, trust your brain and be gentle and be grateful and have compassion for the decisions you make, for the things you say and do.

[00:53:41] Bianca: It's a phenomenal technique and it's remarkable that she was able to do that. In terms of Emily talking about how she's a classic avoider and I know her quite well now, and that's definitely been something that she has grappled with and has been quite harsh on herself [00:54:00] about being a classic avoider. But I guess the way I view it is that's her, that was a coping mechanism and would you say was it an adaptive coping mechanism,

[00:54:39] Mai: And hopefully the answer is no so avoidance is an adaptive function to a certain extent, and for other clients they don't feel they're avoiding they could so often work with clients around Christmas time or anniversaries and things like that, which is a great time to avoid people because for certain clients, because they [00:55:00] don't know if they're going to have the capacity to deal with the stress that might ensue.

[00:55:26] Mai: And then of course some people avoid, avoid, avoid, so much that it doesn't help, doesn't help them heal, doesn't help them move forward. If I'm working with clients, how they identify that is to teach them to check in with themselves, to teach them firstly, which is really hard, especially if you're being great at avoiding, is to kind of dip in and they talk about pendulum, right?

[00:56:07] Mai: Right? Um, and the first one is the number one rule, and then we'll work through the second one. But sometimes that actually takes a lot of unraveling versus like, why am I avoiding this? Is it because I don't think I'm ready? Is it because I don't have time, or is it because I'm scared of failing?

[00:56:41] Bianca: There's two things there that I picked up is prioritize yourself, is that if you need to avoid certain family situations, certain social situations, you put yourself first and you do avoid them because that's going to be healthier and better for you. Yep. Uh, and that there's such a fine line of how long you [00:57:00] do avoid and that really requires a professional or someone experienced in mental health and wellness that can identify if someone's perhaps had too much. Avoidance that it's become maladaptive and detrimental to their life and to their health. Yeah. I used to love the show Hoarders and I still do, I still love to see a transformation clean I love that there's short reels and stuff that show that these days. It's a quick fix. Uh, but I, I remember watching Hoarders as a bit of a nesting thing as I was preparing to have our third child, Rani, and I was so dissociated because, pregnancy after loss, for me, that was a really, really, really hard time and so I was doing everything possible to distract myself. So I was doing a million different things around the house and I had hoarders on in the background 'cause it had just hit binge, it just dropped all the series into binge.

[00:58:13] Mai: Mm mm yep. I haven't watched hoarders. I have my own guilty pleasures that's not one of them. But there, there is, I think probably without very many exceptions, there is always an underlying reason for for these sort of more unique characteristics or, or behaviors that we do. It takes you to be brave to actually to unpack that and for Emily to recognize that within herself, is it's tricky and it's scary and yeah, absolutely working with a professional in this or I think just talking to someone that you feel safe with because I think what's really, really cool about talking, whether it's with a therapist or someone you're really close to , where the language center is in the brain our internal monologue, our how we talk to ourselves is stored in a very different part of the [00:59:00] brain to where we speak and our spoken word.

[00:59:22] Mai: Whereas when you're having a chat or vent to a girlfriend over wine that's when stuff puts into place. And that's not just 'cause your friend's amazing and so is wine. It's actually because speaking it out loud, articulating your feelings, how you're thinking and your different options and alternatives, whatever.

[00:59:44] Bianca: I'll take that advice every single day of the week. And, uh, Emily touches on that journaling was suggested to her and that was not for her and that goes to show that different things work for different people.

[01:00:05] Mai: Yep. And I, and thank you, I. I guess journaling is, goes in the same boat as, as speaking out loud to someone. It's putting it out there. It's putting into a much more sort of, um, formalized expression of thought.

[01:00:19] Bianca: My last question for you from Emily's chat is her and I have experienced a lot of uncomfortable conversations mm-hmm to do with baby loss because it is such a taboo topic. People feel so uncomfortable to, to raise it, to acknowledge it and it's caused us a lot of grief.

[01:00:59] Mai: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. [01:01:00] I'll start with that to validate, that absolutely I was and am sometimes that person who finds immense discomfort in sitting with someone else who, you know has experienced something huge or is in distress and sure now that I'm a psych and get deal with, you know, I'm exposed to certain things working with people who are suicidal or doing risk assessments with people. So I'm really comfy in that space now 'cause I've had the training and I've had practice, right? I'm practicing having those difficult conversations every day. But I know what it feels like to have that horrible feeling of like, I want to, I wanna be able to express to this person how sorry I am. But that sounds lame. Is that enough? Is that person, if I say that, are they in a safe place right now? I'm reminding them of that. What if I don't say anything if I ignore them? Does that make me a jerk? If I say something, who am I to come into this space?

[01:02:42] Mai: What if this happens? So take a deep breath, try to, to become present and just think about how you wanna arrive. So what's the outcome here? And I think for most of us, the outcome is I want to express that I feel, I want to express, [01:03:00] and I, I don't like the word, sorry.

[01:03:38] Mai: Yeah. And would that be enough?

[01:03:59] Bianca: Yeah. Just to [01:04:00] know that they are thinking about me and my situation and my story and, and more so that they're thinking not so much about me, actually it's thinking about my son. Mm. Um, who's not here. To know that they're thinking about the person that's not here. And I know it, it is, it's so uncomfortable.

[01:04:33] Bianca: Like I, I'm still fumbling my way through it. I only just, I just saw in the street Richard Scolyer, who is now terminally ill. He's been given a short time to live, as we've all seen in the media recently. And he was supporting someone elderly who needed assistance to walk down the street.

[01:05:16] Bianca: He's probably just wanting to go about his day. Yeah. And even though I've been through what I've been through, I overthought it. Yeah. And I walked away and I regret now not having said just a little something,

[01:06:24] Mai: If they're walking down the street, they probably have got capacity. They're probably into the world and are able to they know full well that they're probably gonna see someone. So maybe the, the fact that they're out and about is a sign. And I wonder also just the power of a smile just a, an actual genuine locking eyes with that person and a smile is enough sometimes

[01:07:11] Bianca: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you have any suggestions on when you do feel unseen and unheard and unacknowledged? And it can be really, like sometimes for me, it had sent me into panic attacks. Do you have any suggestions on what could maybe help regulate you in that moment where you aren't able to kind of escape the room?

[01:07:33] Mai: You're not gonna be able to rationalize yourself outta that one. So definitely presence. So the grounding stuff, there's lots of strategies. The five senses I really like. That's a really easy one. So look around what are five things You could see what are five things you can hear five things you can, that's if you wanna be really tricky, smell, touch, and feel is a great one.

[01:08:12] Mai: But it's really, really simplified. Our heart rates go as we breathe in and our heart rates go down as we breathe out. The medical people out there will be able to explain it with fancier words, but that's how it goes. So as long as you are breathing out, if you slow your breathing and breathe out for longer than you breathe that in, you will convince your body that you are safe and you will start to relax. Now, sometimes that requires you removing yourself from the room, but it's those primal physiological hacks, body hacks, if you like, that you need to engage to regulate yourself.

[01:09:44] Bianca: No, and I've definitely been, especially when I've been at work mm-hmm. Uh, had that situation where someone has taken out their frustrations on me and it sent me into a panic attack in those early days when I thought I could handle being at work and the mindfulness sort of stuff, which I know people glaze [01:10:00] over when you say mindfulness, but the Five Senses thing worked really well for me.

[01:10:22] Bianca: I'd be able to have have a moment and then I'd be able to get control and then go back onto the restaurant floor as opposed to in the early days, it would wipe me out completely and I just need to leave. But I would try, I would really try to go, okay, what happened in their day? Hmm. What's going on in their life?

[01:11:03] Bianca: Yep. He doesn't know what I'm going through and I fronted up to work. So he probably thinks that everything's fine and dandy. So it is, it's really challenging. It takes a lot of effort, but I guess with the right sort of assistance and tools. Tools in your toolbox like that. Five senses sort of stuff, and breath work and we could do a whole session.

[01:11:41] Bianca: thank you so much and thanks for joining us.

[01:11:56] Before we wrap up, I'd just like to mention that whilst I do have a [01:12:00] degree in behavioral science and have spent years educating myself and researching the topics of trauma and mental health, I'm not a licensed therapist, counselor, or psychologist. Everything I share here is based on personal experience and things I've learnt through education.