#he attacks me for my symptoms. judges me harshly and is just very mean in general

[jamiebluewind]

Fantasy High Theory: Fabian has an eating disorder

TW: eating disorder symptoms, anorexia symptoms, abuse mention, death mention, violence mention, gun mention, alcohol mention, drug mention, trauma mention, smoking mention,...

Word Count: about 2100

I know this is a big assumption to make with what we have, but I couldn't ignore all the data and the warning signs. In fact, I think that even if Fabian does not have an eating disorder at this time, he's certainly at risk for one and needs the issues addressed before it gets worse.

Before I get into it, let me remind everyone that I am about to talk about a very heavy subject. Remember, stay safe and consider the warnings before you continue. You can always message me for a summary of the red flags or for an edited version if you need it. I would rather you be safe than to have you're like on my theory.

Okay? Okay. Let's start by defining a few things.

Eating Disorder: Any of a range of psychological disorders in which people experience severe disturbances in their eating behaviors and related thoughts/emotions. People with eating disorders typically become pre-occupied with food and/or their body weight/shape.

ARFID: Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder is an eating disorder characterized by eating very little food and/or avoiding eating certain foods. It does not include having a distorted body image (as occurs in anorexia nervosa) or being preoccupied with body image (as occurs in bulimia nervosa). People with avoidant/restrictive food intake may not eat because they lose interest in eating or because they think eating has harmful consequences. They may avoid certain foods because of their color, consistency, or odor. When it becomes more severe, it can cause substantial weight loss, slower-than-expected growth in children, difficulty participating in normal social activities, and sometimes life-threatening nutritional deficiencies.

Anorexia nervosa: Diagnosed when patient BMI (body mass index which is a rule of thumb measuring body size vs mass) is low for their age and height. Severity is classified as mild (BMI of greater than 17), moderate (BMI of 16–16.99), severe (BMI of 15–15.99), or extreme (BMI of less than 15). Hallmarks of anorexia include limited food intake, excessive monitoring of the calorie and fat content of food, fear of being “fat”, problems with body image, denial of low body weight, excessive exercise, food rituals, cold intolerance, mood swings, sleeping issues, chronic fatigue, distorted body image, and many more. Eventually, the body goes into starvation which cause a lot of bad symptoms.

Atypical anorexia nervosa: All of the criteria for anorexia nervosa are met, except the individual's weight is within or above the normal range.

Again, ANY BMI can still mean a person has an eating disorder. It is NOT confined to those that are underweight. The BMI is only there as a red flag and to help classify severity of anorexia. I want to make this very clear, not just for my theory, but for the people reading this who recognize parts of it in themselves or others. I'm about to give an example that gets... personal in order to show that people who don't fit the stereotype of being underweight can still have an eating disorder. How personal? My own.

I am overweight to obese (depending on the doctor and the range). I don't exercise much. I eat pretty well around friends. But I have an eating disorder. I just... don't get hungry most of the time, so I forget to eat a lot more often than is healthy. A LOT more. I've been to the hospital a few times due to dehydration. I've collapsed because I literally forgot to eat for two or three days. I could have died at one point because despite being overweight, I was eating so little that things just... stopped working. Again, I was overweight. People and doctors thought I was just lazy. I was told to eat less and exercise more. Even my blood tests came back fine until one day, they didn't. And even then, nobody listened. Somebody doesn't have to look how you expect them to in order to have a problem. Also, don't be afraid to reach out for help if you feel like some of this hits close to home or someone you know is showing symptoms. It's okay to need help.

So remember, eating disorders can affect anybody with any body. The important thing is to be kind, supportive, and encourage professional help such as cognitive therapy.

****

Now to list Fabian's risk factors (I only listed the ones I believe he has)

Dysfunction family: This is a big risk factor for Fabian. His father is chaotic evil and (despite loving his son) puts massive pressure on him and tries to make him conform to his ideal for most of Fabian's life. Fabian has seen his father abuse his crew and snap at the drop of a hat. His mother has been a heavy alcoholic and mostly absent his entire first 16 years and when she gets off alcohol, she puts an extreme amount of pressure on him herself.

Abuse: This is another big one. His parents have been verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, neglectful in a variety of ways, controlling, manipulative, isolating, and his mother rested his food intake. He could have also been physically abused in the guise of sparing.

Genetics: Fabian's mother is very slim. Using images of weights and comparing it to her shape, she in fact fits the underweight shape which may or may not imply a genetic component depending on if the normal body shapes are different for high elves or not.

Exposure to warped body ideals and weight stigma: Exposure to "body ideals" in places like the media (especially if at a young age) can increase body dysfunction and eating disorder risk. Weight stigma can make this worse due to discrimination and stereotyping based on a person’s weight. Fabian has actually been exposed to this a lot due to his father and the crew. He's a kid around very strong muscular people and he feels pushed to get stronger to live up to his dad. It's also very easy to imagine that crew members who were not strong or active enough got a very bad reaction from his father, which would reinforce the ideal. Some of this is conjecture, but it's not so far outside the realm of possibility to be impossible.

Participation in sports: He's on the Bloodrush team and is a fencer.

Pressure to have a certain body shape from family: I think this risk factor is there too, especially when his mother takes over training.

Bullying/Teasing: Fabian was actually bullied by peers when he first starts school, but I believe his parents were bullying him long before that.

Trauma and PTSD: Oh boy, is this solid. He was most likely traumitized by his parents before high school. He saw two new friends die the first day of school and nearly died himself, only saved by Riz. He watched two teachers die by gunshot right in front of him (and a staff member killed by bludgeoning). Fabian mentions having nightmares about Riz killing Daybreak which might have been due to it being via gunshot. He was forced to kill people due to the situation he found himself in. The person who was supposed to have been helping them the entire time (Biz) turned out to be an evil dude who trapped one friend in a palimpsest and wanted to capture another. He was stuck in jail for weeks! His family was attacked, his home was damaged, and his dad died (and by his hand no less). He and his friends almost died to a dragon. That's a LOT of trauma for a kid to try to process and Jawbone mentioned that he never came to visit him, so he probably dealt with a lot of it on his own.

Low self-esteem: This is unfortunately something else he has. Despite all the bravado, he doesn't know how to be a friend or have people like him for who he is (instead of who his parents are or how much money he has). He tries to put up a cool front, but he judges himself very harshly.

Perfectionism. One of the strongest risk factors for an eating disorder is perfectionism, especially self-oriented perfectionism, which involves setting unrealistically high expectations for oneself. If they fail to meet their high expectations, the person becomes very self-critical. Fabian has this type of perfectionism.

History of an anxiety disorder: This one is reaching, but possible. People often show signs of an anxiety disorder (generalized anxiety, social phobia, OCD,...) before the onset of an eating disorder and Fabian stays on edge a lot, worries excessively, puts up a front, and deals with nightmares.

Substance abuse: Fabian has had alcohol and drugs before the age of 16, his parents almost encouraging it. He smokes regularly. Addiction runs in his family as well with his mother being an alcoholic and his father doing multiple drugs. Neither parent even hides the fact that they take drugs and drink alcohol to excess, the crew probably took drugs and got drunk in front of a young Fabian, and Bill offered drugs to his friends upon meeting them.

History of using weight-controling methods and dieting: Fabian exercises a great deal. He skips meals. He has a limited number of things he will eat. There is a lot of evidence to back this up.

Limited social networks: This was a HUGE issue before high school. Fabian was very isolated. He had no friends, limited social activities, and lacked proper social support. Recently, he's been skipping class exclusively which on top of smoking a lot, puts distance between him and other people.

Long story short? Our boy is at risk. Big time.

****

List of common signs of eating disorders (including anorexia)

Limited food intake: Seen when he has mostly protein smoothies, his mother tries to give him limited rations, and when he refuses to eat with his friends more and more as the series goes on. The first incident of it was in Cool Kids, Cold Case where Fabian refused the food he was offered on two separate occasions, passing it to Riz both times. Once was after the battle with Daybreak and being stuck at the police station a good while. The other was when the teens were hanging out at Riz's appartment when Sklonda got takeout. Fabian's mom also makes him earn food as seen in the live show. This mentality could have very well been internalized, even with Cathilda there to try and give him more.

Excessive monitoring of the calorie and fat content of food: He worries about empty calories, how fattening something is, and removed the cheese from a slice of pizza and dabbed the oil

Fear of being “fat” or in a shape that is not the ideal: In episode 1 of season 2, he is very preoccupied with staying trim and tight.

Excessive exercise: He exercises who knows how long every morning plus for Bloodrush plus the times outside of that

Food rituals: This is interacting with food a certain way (like small bites or how it's prepared) which causes anxiety when not followed. The pizza event might be one, but it's hard to say without a pattern.

Sleeping issues: Fabian has issues with sleeping, dreaming, and nightmares. His father confirmed this and he himself mentioned his nightmares.

Weight loss: By comparing his previous official artwork with his new official artwork, it's easy to see that Fabian looks visibly thinner. He's also VERY cut. (very defined muscles requiring very little fat) for his age. He was muscular last year sure, but his chest and abs are much more defined this year. Being that cut means that despite how muscular Fabian is, he has been eating less and probably doing fat burning exercises, getting a lot of his nutrition from multivitamins and whey, and would have less energy than normal.

Negative energy balance/chronic fatigue: This is only a possibility, but it deserves being mentioned. If this is going on, it puts a spin on some of Fabian's other actions in season 2, episode 1. He showed up late on move in day and didn't really move anything (just carried a book), which might have been a character thing, but could have also been because Fabian is running on empty and capable of things like adrenaline fueled busts of energy, but otherwise dealing with low energy and fatigue.

Also, Fabian is smoking now which works as an appetite suppressant as is common among those with eating disorders.

(Signs with no evidence as of this post: problems with body image, denial of low body weight, cold intolerance, mood swings)

~*~*~*~*~*~

TLDR: Fabian is showing a lot of symptoms of an eating disorder and also over a dozen risk factors. The number of both is substantial enough to see a pattern. Enough that I sincerely hope that it's acknowledged during the season because if Fabian does not have an eating disorder, he is at substantial risk of developing one.

PS: I know it's data heavy, I might have missed a few things, and it could be totally wrong, but I seen enough there that I thought it might make for a solid theory. D20 is no stranger to heavy subjects and I think if they do cover it, they will do a good job (as always). If they don't, I still learned a lot making this theory and maybe a few of you will as well. ^_^

[shifting-motives]

(Notes:

- Black Hat is... un-canonly nice but hopefully still ‘recognizable’...

- A bit of ‘angst‘ at the beginning and it’s,,, personal because it’s based on a real nightmare I had

- In general this is based on what I imagined originally after that nightmare

- This is very self-inserty and not as reader-inserty as it could have been, sorry, hope you can still enjoy it even though it’s not really “character x reader”

- Writing isn’t... my usual creative medium, so I’m sorry if things still sound awkward/unnatural in this, even after I tried to fix it up

- Did I write too DRAMATICALLY at the start? I don’t hecking know and don’t feel like I want to change it)

-------

.

...

It was happening again. Why was it happening again? I had thought it was gone from my life. I was seeing and hearing it again, and it definitely felt too familiar and real not to be true.

The other children were all either laughing at me or paid no attention. First one of them had bullied me and now they all treated my hurting reaction as their entertainment. They found me standing up to myself against their bullying pathetic and  hilarious. They found separating me from all people into being just some kind of free entertainment hilarious.

Why was this all happening again? It hurt and I didn't understand why I had to deal with this again. I began shaking but not crying, not yet. It physically hurt in my chest, a common panic attack symptom for me.

I wasn’t worth being one of the people once again

...

.

I woke up still in panic, staring at my own shaking hands and trying to rationally understand it was all just a nightmare brought on by past trauma and it was all long gone from my life.

As I was looking at my hands, I inevitably noticed what they were close to. A bright red dress shirt and a pitch-black tie. That's right, I remembered then, he had agreed to laying down with me in bed, even though he did not need much sleep himself. My head was resting on top of his chest and my left hand was on top of him too. This being whose presence being this close to them, especially when already in a paniced state, some others would not have found as comforting and calming as I did.

Then I heard his familiar, slightly growly voice from behind my head.

"Another nightmare, dear?" He said, putting his left arm around me.

I couldn't bring myself to answer, the memory of my nightmare still too fresh in my mind. But hearing and feeling him so close to me did make me feel a bit better.

"You were shaking and it looked like you were in pain" "Not that looking at you and feeling you stir were the only ways I could tell you were having a nightmare"

Now he had my attention and I had calmed down a bit.

"W... What do you mean?" I said in a quiet voice, mentally and physically tired from the restless dream.

I heard his familiar smug chuckle, and also felt it with my head on on top of his chest.

"Don't you know this already, my dear? That I can sense things in much more ways than humankind can?" He said with a bit of mockery in his voice, but for whatever reason it didn't sound like he really meant to be mean this time.

"Yeah but... dreams?" I said, turning my head a bit towards his voice, intrigued and eager to get something, anything else to think than my past.

"Yes, I can sense others' dreams. I can... see them if I just concentrate" "Nightmares are my favorite things to witness, as you could probably guess"

He all of a sudden started petting my head, his ungloved and surprisingly comfortingly warm hand slowly and gently moving across my forehead and up to the top of my head, then repeating the movement over and over again. Again, someone would have been concerned about this. His claws, to be exact. But he was being careful with them. I was enjoying the gentle gesture, but was at the same time slightly concerned about what he had just said.

"Did you... like seeing me in pain just now?" I said, my voice obviously cautious.

He just chuckled again, this time my head moving even more from the force of it.

"Oh, believe me, usually I LOVE to see others helplessly writhing in pain, but..." He trailed off in the end of the sentance and went silent. He had also stopped petting me.

Why didn't he finish? Did he mean- He admittedly had been... showing affection but hearing him say genuinely nice things to me still took me by surprise nearly every time.

"But what?" I said, my eyes widening a bit. I freed myself from under his arm, turned myself around to face him and stared him in the eye, both my hands resting on his chest now.

He didn't say a word, just stared back at me with a blank, yet thoughtful expression on his face.

He then looked away from me, his blank expression turning into a small and... sheepish? smile...?

I couldn't believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I had just interpreted from his silence and strangely sheepish expression. It couldn't be that. I really didn't believe this. Did I deserve to be seeing the great Black Hat smiling in this kind of vulnerable way? Did he really care for me unlike any others? And was he actually going to admit that out loud?

"...Come on, say it" I said, teasingly pointing my right index finger close to his face. I didn't know why, but I couldn't help being a bit childishly annoyed at his silence and wanted him to either confirm or deny my suspicion right away.

He bared his sharp teeth a bit with an annoyed scowl and glanced for a moment at my finger, which was impolitely close to his face. He then looked me in the eyes again, pushed my hand away with his own and I placed it back on his chest. "...I will only do that if you take me seriously first, child"

I didn't like him calling me that, but letting him speak was more important.

"I'm sorry, I'm listening, sir"

He let out a small huff, his expression softening a bit, but I still got the feeling that if I did not listen to him closely right now and compose myself the best I could, I would come to greatly regret not doing so later.

"I...care for you and...I do not like seeing you suffer from the past actions of those around you, as well as just accepting all that" He sounded... genuine.

"What am I supposed to do then? What are YOU gonna do about this, then??" I said annoyedly and lightly hit his chest with a fist, but I was not angry at him, I was just frustrated at having to deal with my mental illness.

I think he understood that as well because he did not snap back at me like I thought he would have, just frowned at my hit a tiny bit. He then just smiled a strangely reassuring smile.

"...I cannot erase your nightmares or trauma, dear. And neither can you" "But there is a certain, very simple solution to your pain"

He paused and his smile became wider, fully baring his monsterous teeth  and his eye squinting. It was his iconic evil smile that might have striken a great amount of fear into someone else, but I was just strangely excited whenever he made that face.

He continued in a quieter voice, from between his tightly clenched teeth, "We beat up whoever hurt you within an inch of their pathetic lives. Brutally."

That was pretty much what I had expected from his expression, yet it still surprised me. And my surprise wasn't... negative? I was... smiling? I felt happy that he had suggested doing such a thing for me?

I quickly shook my head, worriedly and absentmindedly squeezing his shirt under my fingers a bit and tried my best to regain a more neutral expression. As if I could hide my reactions from someone like him. Of course I couldn't.

He chuckled once again, seemingly pleased at my split-second excited smile at his suggestion.

"I am serious, dear, wouldn't that raise your spirits and general self-confidence quite a bit? Doesn't violent revenge sound nice?" He said in a smug voice.

"I don't... have the confidence or heart to hurt someone back, especially not that... harshly" I said, smiling wryly at him.

"Perhaps, but you would have much more confidence if you were getting your revenge with me by your side, am I not right, dear?" He said, still smiling gleefully.

"... Well, yes, but-" I started.

"And, it made you really happy and excited to hear me suggest that just now, didn't it?" "Didn't imagining the people who have hurt you in horrible pain themselves for once feel satisfying in a way?" He interrupted me. He wasn't going to let my initial reaction go.

I hit his chest lightly again and made a small pout. He just chuckled.

He knew it was really just an act.

"Come on, say it" He said, repeating my exact demand from earlier, his smile widening again in glee.

I laid my head on his chest, stared him in the eye and sighed.

"I won't say it. Not since you said yourself that you can sense things in other ways anyway" I said with a sassy smile.

"Say it, darling, please" He said with a sly and annoyingly charming smile, even leaning in his head a bit closer to mine.

Damn that smile. Damn him calling me "darling". Damn him being so close to me. He had won. I might as well say it at this point.

"...Yes, it did sound really nice" "And I feel much better now than I did before talking with you.." I said sheepishly.

"That is good to hear, dear" He smiled contently.

Then he quickly but lightly kissed me on my forehead.

I immediately became even more flustered, most likely blushing a bit, judging from how hot my face felt. But I also all of a sudden got a bit suspicious of all this affection he had been showing. Was this really true? I thought and furrowed my brows.

He chuckled a bit, amused at my reaction. "Do not look so suspectful. Do you think I'm some fool who would spend my time with and use such gestures on someone who I didn't think truly deserved them?"

"Wh-what?" I was not ready to be hearing this in my already flustered state, but I also eagerly wanted him to continue.

"All of this is genuine, you have my word" He said sternly, yet smiling and I just stared at him in awe. His eye was full of... genuine affection?

"Now please, dear, try to sleep at least a small bit more. And remember my offer of violent, brutal revenge if you see those people in your dreams again" He continued, petting my head for a short while.

I rolled back into the position I had been sleeping in before. Facing towards his feet, my head on his chest and my right hand on top of him, about on the level of his waist now.

"I love you..." I didn't intend on saying that, but it was undeniably true, so I decided to let it be.

He put his left arm back around me and ´petted´ me lightly with his thumb.

"...I love you too, my dear" That I could not let be. I twitched a bit from surprise, which he definitely felt.

But I was too sleepy again to respond in any other way.

He chuckled one last time, it was the last thing I heard and felt as I was already only half-conscious at that point despite my inner flusteredness at his words.

Then there was only silence, but not the anxiety and panic-filled kind like there had been when I woke up.

It was good, calm, protecting and warm silence.

Silence that I could feel was full of

...love

-END-

[fitnesswomenshealth-blog]

Brave words: a photographic project is helping people with mental health issues express how they truly feel

New Post has been published on https://cialiscom.org/brave-words-a-photographic-project-is-helping-people-with-mental-health-issues-express-how-they-truly-feel.html

Brave words: a photographic project is helping people with mental health issues express how they truly feel

The thing about mental illness,” says journalist Bryony Gordon, “is that it doesn’t want to be on the outside. It wants to be in your self and it wants you alone, isolated, thinking you’re a freak. That’s how it thrives. It does not want you to talk about it being there.”

Charlie Clift, the co-creator of Let’s Talk, a photography campaign designed to shake up preconceptions about mental illness, knows the feeling. “I had to take a year out at university because of depression,” he says. He was one of the lucky ones. “I could talk to my parents and to my tutors and friends.” Clift took up photography during that lost year. He’d go up to strangers on the street, chat, take their portraits. Fast forward a decade and he’s now putting his photographs on the street, except this time his 17 sitters, who include Alastair Campbell, Sue Perkins, Anna Richardson, Jordan Stephens and Bryony Gordon, have their experiences of mental illness written on their faces. The effect is powerful, poetic, startling.

“I wanted to find a way within visual images of not hiding people’s thoughts,” says Clift, who collaborated with illustrator Kate Forrester in a dynamic creative practice that saw interviewees divulging their inner demons. Forrester transferred their most salient words on to her human canvases and then Clift took their portrait. “Painting on someone’s face is a very intimate act,” says Forrester, “made more so by the sensitive content. But the creation of these images was a surprisingly joyful experience.

“It was humbling that these people had agreed to be so open with us,” she says, “about such difficult and personal aspects of their daily struggles, putting themselves out there to reassure others that they are not alone.”

Not by any stretch of the imagination. Every week, one in six adults experiences symptoms of mental illness, such as anxiety and depression, according to the 2014 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey. One in five adults has considered suicide and nearly half of adults believe that they have experienced mental illness in their lifetime, with only a third of them receiving a diagnosis.

This is unsurprising, given the stigma attached to mental illness in our achievement-driven, externally focused culture. Vulnerability dares not show its face; it is safer to project sanitised versions of ourselves. Clift hopes his 2m-high portraits emblazoned with “oblivion,” “innately sad” and “you have to put on a face” may assure others that our whole – but fractured – selves are acceptable.

“If you suffer with anxiety or a panic disorder it doesn’t mean you can’t also be strong, fun or capable,” says comedian and writer Sue Perkins. For her, having “everything raging” drawn on her face was “very liberating. This is just another part of me – a very human part. There is a fear in us not to disclose problems because we will be perceived as weak. I know I am not weak. We are all a work in progress.” Imagine what it would be like if we wrote our darkest thoughts on our faces, Perkins adds, and bumped into our neighbours. “It would be like: I can’t believe you get anxious, too. I had no idea.”

When Alastair Campbell left Clift’s studio, he kept his make-up on. “My cab driver asked me about it. I then did my whole boxing session with it still on.” Steve Wallington went for a break during the shoot. “A man walked past,” says Clift, “and said: ‘What’s on your face?’ ‘My most difficult thoughts,’ Steve said, and this guy just opened up, about how he’d lost his wife, about being a father, and how hard it was, as a man, to find people to talk to.”

Bryony Gordon

Author and journalist

I have OCD and am in recovery from addiction, but untreated, mental illness snowballs into a million other mental illnesses. I feel like my brain is wired wrong; it doesn’t want the best for me. Left to my own devices, my brain would like me dead. When I am feeling “wrong”, it’s like I am the wrong person, doing the wrong things, feeling the wrong things. I don’t fit. I’m not wired right. So I have to be vigilant. I felt very naked having my words on my face. It felt very uncomfortable. But it’s a wonderful way of taking the shame and fear out of mental illness.

Nathaniel Cole

Freelance researcher

‘I like to write down what I’m feeling when I’m struggling’: Nathaniel Cole. Photograph: Charlie Clift. Lettering artist: Kate Forrester

With depression, it’s knowing that you should be going out to work, or even doing something simple like taking a walk, but you can’t face any of that. It’s like a monster that holds you back. If I’m having a difficult moment, I let my friends and partner know. I like to write down what I’m feeling when I’m struggling.

Oli Regan

Actor

‘Volunteering for a year with Mind made life worth living’: Oli Regan. Photograph: Charlie Clift. Lettering artist: Kate Forrester

I grew up as an only child – or “lonely child” as an eight-year-old me would say – and often felt left out. When I hit 17, I knew things weren’t right. I began taking drugs and drinking excessively. Sometimes the people with the most pain hide behind the biggest smile. I got diagnosed with bipolar, anxiety and severe ADHD at the ripe old age of 25, after years of no help. Volunteering for a year with Mind made life worth living. I’m helping people I don’t personally know every day, which is really humbling.

Sue Perkins

Comedian and broadcaster

‘I read those words as if they were a stranger’s’: Sue Perkins. Photograph: Charlie Clift. Lettering artist: Kate Forrester

I have a panic disorder kick-started by a benign brain tumour called a prolactinoma. Before medication, I’d feel like my eyes were being pushed out of my head. The pressure was intense, as if everything was about to explode. I felt as if someone had pointed a gun at my head and was about to kill me; that’s how extreme the fear was. I got used to the feeling. I just kept on going. I still get panic attacks, but they are less frequent. Having my face painted was profound. I read those words as if they were a stranger’s, and found myself thinking, “I must help you.” How awful that we don’t make time for self-care. East of Croydon by Sue Perkins (Michael Joseph) is published on 18 October at £20

Steve Harris

Disabled activist

‘Part of my mind assumes terrible things are imminent’: Steve Harris. Photograph: Charlie Clift. Lettering artist: Kate Forrester

I suffer with anxiety and depression. The anxiety can feel like I am constantly howling at myself in my mind – part of my mind assumes terrible things are imminent. The depression can be a relief as it’s the opposite of caring so much, it’s total numbness. When I first realised the extent to which I struggle with mental health , I went through denial and anger. With a lot of education, therapy and support, I’m learning that this stuff is part of being me and that while I can be ashamed of feeling weak, nobody else judges me as harshly as I judge myself.

Jordan Stephens

Rapper in Rizzle Kicks

‘I want to be part of a movement that creates a language to describe how someone is feeling from day to day’: Jordan Stephens. Photograph: Charlie Clift. Lettering artist: Kate Forrester

Running through custard, that’s how a bad day feels. I’ve got ADHD, but my main issue is self-sabotage and taking anger out on myself. I find harmony terrifying, though I am at a point in my life where I am very calm. A bad day is like having dirt on your glasses and you haven’t got the energy to clean them. It’s like I am another person, who doesn’t want to do anything, to write, eat, exercise. Wearing my heart on my face wasn’t unusual for me. I am quite open. I want to be part of a mental health movement that creates a language to describe how someone is feeling from day to day.

Lucy Allen

Counsellor

‘My advice is talk talk talk’: Lucy Allen. Photograph: Charlie Clift. Lettering artist: Kate Forrester

When I’m in a bad episode of depression or a bad life event, I feel the deepest sadness that I just can’t place. It runs right through my body. I feel a lot of shame and embarrassment when I’m low, like it’s not valid. I also see everything through a tinge of darkness. My advice is talk talk talk. Find a therapist, keep trying different ones until you find the right one for you. Don’t be put off. Celebrate the small successes – getting up or leaving the house are major victories sometimes. Be with nature.

Emily Hartridge

YouTube presenter

‘For me, exercise has been a game changer’: Emily Hartridge. Photograph: Charlie Clift. Lettering artist: Kate Forrester

My anxiety was severe and although I don’t like labels, if I was to label myself I’d say I had GAD [generalised anxiety disorder]. So that means you have a general feeling of anxiety all the time. You feel hot, you can’t sit still, your mind is racing. Well, imagine all those feelings every second of every minute of every day… and there you have anxiety. For me, exercise has been a game changer. I do boxing and yoga and have found them to be so helpful because for that one hour you are disconnected from the outside world.

Alastair Campbell

Political aide and author

‘I have bouts of creativity when I come out of my depression’: Alastair Campbell. Photograph: Charlie Clift. Lettering artist: Kate Forrester

On a really bad day – and it’s far from every day – I think, “I don’t really want to be here.” I feel sad, but with an intensity that goes beyond feeling sad. I feel both dead and alive. I am conscious of being alive, awake, breathing, needing to eat – but inside I am numb. The pain is almost physical. It’s not all bad – my resilience comes from my depression. It’s helped me withstand a lot of pressure, from social media or wherever, and now I care about what matters and care little about what doesn’t. I have bouts of creativity when I come out of my depression.

A free outdoor exhibition of Let’s Talk will be on display from 8-22 October in Regent’s Place, London, thanks to the support of British Land and Mental Health UK. If you are affected by any these issues or need help, call the Samaritans on 116 123

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