PODCAST QUESTIONS
Can you choose an animal that best represents you today? How do you deal with your anxiety? How did you manage to have the strength to come out of the situation? When do you feel safe? Does taking antidepressants lessen your feeling of feeling judged? Did you experience any withdrawal symptoms? Do you like to work within a group or on your own?
Transcript
Frederique
How are you?
Linn
I’m alright, thank you!
Frederique
Yeah? How you feeling?
Linn
Yeah, it’s.. one day is… one day closer to the end of the pandemic, that’s how I see things at the moment. It’s a tough time we’re living in, and I’m not ignoring the hardships, but it’s just, you know, I just have to think that it’s going to be over one day and just roll with that for now. Things are gonna get back to normal.
Frederique
Or things are going to change forever.
Linn
Yeah, but hopefully we’ll soon be able to hug each other and meet up outside and go for coffee, and all those little things that we took for granted. But yeah, I mean, things can change forever. But hopefully, that human touch and the human contact will come back to what it was.
Frederique
So, how do you feel about doing this podcast episode?
Linn
Excited. It’s my first time being on a podcast, so that’s really cool.
(Introduction music plays then stops)
Frederique
Before we start chatting, can you choose an animal that represents you today? The way you feel? And tell us why you chose this animal.
Linn
Today… the animal that is representing me is… uhhhh….oh, I don’t- that’s a difficult one. Today I feel… it’s a cow. I would say, I want to go for a cow. Because a cow is calm and balanced. And if you’re around a cow…
Frederique
Yeah.
Linn
or in a field of cows, like, unless you’re scared of them, because it’s very calming, I find. And they sort of, they have that maternal, feminine energy. Yin energy, like, if you think in terms of yin yang, so yeah, I feel like a cow today. Which can be taken two ways.
Frederique
But that is very sweet. Very sweet. I like it. So, talking about anxiety and depression…
Linn
Yeah.
Frederique
…with creativity… How being depressed affected your life? So, in general, when you was feeling… if I can say, at your lowest point, how did the anxiety and depression (affect you)?
Linn
Okay, so I am totally blind. Anxiety and depression has always played a part in my life. Because I’ve grown up in a mainstream society, and I’ve always had to prove myself twice as hard as other people, when it comes to employment, when it comes to… well, being a teenager was really not a nice experience. Because, you know, yeah, with boyfriends and friends and everything, you have to prove that you’re normal. So I think it’s always been something at the back of my mind. I did have one episode where I got really depressed at 22, and I tried antidepressants, but I hated it. So I never tried it again. But I think my low point was three years ago, when I managed to escape from a really harmful, toxic, toxic situation. I came back to England from Nigeria and I… honestly, I know this is not necessarily a spiritual podcast, but I can honestly say God saved my life, because if I had stayed any longer in the situation I was in, I would have died. And I believe that and I think that was my low point when I just realised, you know, it can’t get any worse than this. Yeah.
Frederique
That is very interesting. So how did you manage to, to have the strength to come out of the situation?
Linn
It was a friend of mine is… is… actually funny because I was in Nigeria, as I said, at the time, and one of my best friends, he’s Sierra Leonese, and he’s also blind like me, so we knew each other through that. And he called me and he said, ‘oh, I’m going to be there and do you want to come and perform?’. Because I’m a musician, singer, and I said, ‘yes’, and the people that I was with tried to stop me from going to Freetown, because I think they… which is the capital of Sierra Leone. And I think they realised that when I went there, I would find that the life I had was not good enough for me, and that’s exactly what happened. I also met my husband when I was out there, that’s a different story. But then my friend said to me, ‘come back to… please come back to England, I just… we really want you to go, we want you back, all of us, all your friends. Just come back’. And I said to him, ‘but I don’t have a place to live. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m really lost’. And he was like, ‘you know what? Just come stay at my house, and we will sort it out from there’. And then, that’s kind of pretty much what I did.
Frederique
That is, I mean, I’m a bit speechless, you know? Because it must have been very, very hard to, to move from one country to another country, and from one continent to another continent, I can’t even, you know, grasp my head around it. So you must have been really, really strong, I would say, to do that.
Linn
There is strength, there’s also the fact that, like I said, oh… because I’d actually come from Norway three months earlier, three months prior, because that’s about my native country, but I’ve lived in the UK before, and to Nigeria, and what led me to go there was… because I was doing music there anyway, and the style of music took me to that place. But what led me to try and live there full time was… I was so depressed, in Norway, I was drinking, I was very lonely, I couldn’t get any work and whatever I tried to do… and I’m a very, I mean, I have a master’s degree and I’ve worked for the BBC, and I couldn’t get any work and it was very much I, I believe directly related to my blindness. And then when I left Nigeria, it was kind of like, I’d sunk even lower in a way, and it was a point where I was like, well, I’m, like I said, I’m either gonna die, or I’m gonna go. So it was kind of like choosing my life and that’s why I say God saved me because I wouldn’t have had that strength on my own. It was something divine in that strength for me to be able to go back, because I had to go back and take my things with me and tell them that, ‘you know what? I’m going to England’ and… you have to get on that plane and start, it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever done as well.
Frederique
Well done you.
Linn
Oh, in a narrative sense, it might be a bit messy.
Frederique
So what type of things makes you.. you know, makes you anxious?
Linn
Feeling that I can’t do something, and the feeling that I might be judged, not as me. But as a blind person, because that’s what I’ve experienced all my life, I’ve been judged because of something that I am, or something that I have, that I can’t change. I would love to change it, just to fit in, but yeah… When I feel like I’m going to be in those situations, I feel judged. So, for example, in job interview situations, like on top of the whole needing to prove myself, to prove that I am qualified, I also have to prove that I am a blind person who can survive in a mainstream world…. and it’s not just job interviews, but that’s a really good example. And sometimes even going out can be terrifying, like it can be mentally draining because I know that people will approach me and sometimes grab me, because they think that because I can’t see, I don’t have intimate boundaries, which is wrong and I need to think before I go out, ‘am I in the mood to talk to people today?’. Because I have to talk to strangers a lot more than other people .’Am in the mood, how will I handle it when somebody invades my space?’ Yeah. So it’s all those things when my disabilities kind of becoming bigger than me, in a sense, in quotation marks.
Frederique
So when do you feel less judged?
Linn
When I create, even when I create things. When I write, when I sing, when I write music, when I record in a studio, either alone or with other people, and we create things because of who we are, like when I’m with other musicians, when I am with… yeah, when I’m working on a creative project with people and disability, or boundaries, or whatever isn’t something that is discussed, because it’s not relevant. So that’s when I feel less judged.
Frederique
And when do you feel safe?
Linn
I feel safe in those same spaces, because I don’t have to prove anything to anyone and very often, especially with creativity, people will want me in that space, especially if it’s a collaborative thing, if people want me in that space. Yeah, and I feel safe with my family and with my true friends, who… also I don’t have to prove anything to, I can just be myself.
Frederique
So, talking about.. because um, earlier, you said that you took some antidepressant and you didn’t like it at all? I was just wondering, do you think that taking them would lessen your, your feeling of, you know, being judged, and not being safe? In a public space or not?
Linn
It’s really hard to answer that question because when I took antidepressants, and the reasons I don’t like them, is because they made me numb. So whilst I didn’t feel depressed, I also didn’t feel happy, so I didn’t care what happened to me. And for me, that was a much scarier space to be in than actually being allowed to feel every feeling that I had.
Frederique
I see. And did you discuss that with your GP at the time, or you just decided to stop them?
Linn
I stopped them because at the time I was taking them I was 23… 22, rather, and the beauty of that age is that you think you know everything and you think you can just do everything. And, in a way you can, because there’s not all of those boundaries in your head saying you can’t do something. So I just stopped taking them and it was fine. I probably should, I mean, if it was now, I would have consulted a GP, but back then I was just brave enough to just do that, or stupid enough depending on how you see it.
Frederique
But did you, did you had any, do… I mean, I don’t know if you, if you remember, but did you experience any withdrawal effects?
Linn
No, because I wasn’t on them for long enough. I remember the first time I felt happy after taking them. I remember the first time I genuinely could laugh at something and feel good about it. And I stopped taking them in a safe space as well.
Frederique
Okay. I think it would have been interesting to have another podcast about this topic, because I’m very curious about, you know, how people feel when they are under medication, and when they’re not taking them. Well, if for the audience right now, just feel like saying that. Please take your medication, follow your GP’s advice, but we are not here to let you, you know, to encourage you to stop taking anything, but I just feel that it’s interesting to have the opinion of people who do not like medication and why it is so disruptive for their mental health, if I say, if I can say, and physical well-being. So that’s really interesting. I love that.
Linn
Yeah, and I think for some people, they… it can really save them because they need to be in that space. It is very interesting to see where people come from. And yeah, there are definitely safer ways than mine of going off the medication. So I would also encourage the audience to speak to your GP, and not do what I did.
Frederique
So, how do you deal with your anxiety? I remember the first time we spoke, you were talking about music and writing, and how those two activities were… alleviated your, your anxiety level, and bring your creativity into light.
Linn
Yeah, that’s right. So, I have been blessed with a very creative mind and a creative personality. So when I can create something, because very much of my depression and anxiety stems from being…. okay, so I’m going to start that sentence again, sorry. So very much my anxiety and depression stems from the fact that I am being judged on something in my life that I can’t control, and with a creative process, it turns that around for me, so I can control a creative process to an extent. So with true creativity, sometimes things come up, so I may decide, ‘okay, I want to do a song and it’s going to sound like this’. And then during the process, the harmonies will be completely different, or I’ll arrange certain parts differently. But at the same time, I am in control of that process, I follow it, and I follow my new ideas and instinct, but it’s something that I can do something about and I think that’s why I find it so comforting, because it is actually… I can improve my creative work and I can change it. So it’s the opposite of why I’m anxious or depressed.
Frederique
And do you like to work within a group or on your own?
Linn
I like both because there is beauty in creating by yourself because that’s when… and there are different things I can create. So maybe when I’m by myself, I write the most personal songs, so I write some great stories. When I’m with people as well, having that input and also working together because the creative process, but if you work on your own can be quite lonely. So that can be a bit depressive again, or depressing rather sorry, and yeah, I definitely think there’s… I like doing both.
Frederique
I personally like to work on my own. Even on the creative level, I feel I need… I think I need the silence and the space. Well, I’m… I really love having time on my own and just think about what I can do, how I can do them and… but I found it difficult to work within a group. Even in terms of creativity, I just feel drained by the energy of others. But that’s just me. I mean….
Linn
I think for me, I can relate. I think the main kind of creative things I can work in a group would be music. So for example, with live musicians jamming in a studio, back and forth with producers. But I think on writing projects, yeah, that’s a more introvert activity where I feel like.. I will just rather do the process by myself. So for me, it definitely depends on the process that I’m working on, or what it is that I’m working on.
Frederique
So you are an ambivert?
Linn
I suppose. Yes. I like that expression. I’ve never heard it before. But I do understand what it means.
Frederique
I think you have both, introvert and extrovert i think is ambivert something under..
Linn
I’m gonna start using that. That definitely describes me I’m both.
Frederique
Yeah. Oh, good. So I think we can come to a close in terms of this episode, but I really enjoyed the conversation it was really relaxing and helpful, especially in terms of your experience of taking the medication, but also the creative processes and how this helps with your depression and anxiety and I understand how it could be depressing to have people coming around you and touch you and telling you stuff that you don’t want to hear perhaps, sometimes people, you know, they’re not really the best of themselves. They don’t give us the best of themselves, especially when they know that they can get away with it. That’s not really… that’s not nice and I really am glad that you are able to tell us about your experience today. I really do.
Linn
I have been so honoured to be on the podcast and as for that experience, I think it’s so necessary to keep repeating this to people because it keeps happening and enough people can’t hear about it, if that makes sense. So I would say just one very simple principle that everyone should follow. If I look or if I Nels who’s blind. Or anyone for that matter. Looks like they need help, ask! Never make assumption because the question makes a difference because then the person has the chance to say yes or no and make that choice for themselves and, yeah, keep that in mind. I always say to people unless you see that I’m walking towards a cliff and I’m about to fall to my death. Don’t grab me, just ask.
Frederique
Oh, yeah, definitely. So, um, okay, so would you be able to answer the following questions within your best abilities?
Linn
I will make a try, yeah!
Frederique
Yeah. Okay. So notebook or piece of paper?
Linn
Notebook.
Frederique
lilies or roses?
Linn
Roses
Frederique
Yellow or blue?
Linn
Blue.
Frederique
Morning or evening?
Linn
Evening.
Frederique
Me too.
Linn
I had to think about that one. Because sometimes there’s something beautiful, especially about summer mornings getting up before everyone else. But then evenings are great as well.
Frederique
I love evenings. The twilight. I love it. No, thank you so much.
Linn
Thank you. It’s been great.
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This podcast was edited by Airglow Audio. Find out more at airglowaudio.com. Professional creative audio.
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