#26 Emotional Flak Jacket: Tales of a Journalist

Text transcript

[00:00:00] Amy: Welcome, welcome. . I’m Amy. 

[00:00:02] Angus: I’m Angus. And we also have here from Headtorch, we have the lovely Liz Clarkson and our colleague Nick, is doing all things technical in the background as well,

[00:00:12] and of course we have our superstar guest, Hannah Storm, who I will introduce more, fully and more formally shortly. For those of you that don’t know who we are, we are Headtorch, we are experts in workplace mental health. We work with senior teams. Line managers, frontline people. We work locally, nationally, globally, helping organizations to develop a mentally healthy culture.

[00:00:36] It’s all about being proactive is where we are coming from, enabling people to have those supportive conversations when they need to. Let me, then just give you an introduction to the layout, if you like, of this session. So I’m going to introduce Hannah to you quite formally, could tell, let you know all about her.

[00:00:58] And then, she will then introduce herself with a mystery object. And then she and I will move into conversation. After some time, Hannah is gonna pose us a question and that will then be your opportunity to respond to that question and indeed ask her any other questions that may have come up during our conversation.

[00:01:18] Hannah and I will then move back into conversation where she will share some of her top tips for us. I’ll then ask her some quick fire rapid questions and then hand over to Angus, who will give the more formal thanks and let you know what’s next in the Headtorch calendar. Gives me great pleasure then to introduce to you Hannah Storm, 

[00:01:41] Hannah is a media consultant, award-winning author, speaker, and marathon runner extraordinaire. She’s the founder and co-director of Headlines Network, which promotes open conversations around mental health in journalism. Just before the pandemic, Hannah was diagnosed with PTSD and she combines this lived experience, including surviving sexual assault, with her expertise in journalism, to work with newsrooms to create cultures where people feel safer to share their own stories.

[00:02:14] Hannah began her career at Reuters, has worked for other news organizations, including the Times, ITV News Channel Four News, the BBC as a staff and freelance journalist. She’s covered stories including environmental disasters, civil unrest, gender-based violence, sports, politics, climate change, and humanitarian crisis.

[00:02:35] Hannah’s is the former chief exec of the International News Safety Institute and the Ethical Journalism Network. She’s co-authored the first study Into Moral Injury and the Media for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and she’s written extensively at the intersection of gender, mental health, physical and online safety.

[00:03:00] Gives me great pleasure to introduce Hannah Storm. Hannah do introduce yourself with your mystery object. 

[00:03:08] Hannah: Thank you, Amy. Gosh, it’s always really intimidating hearing yourself, kind of hearing the bio of yourself, but I’m really, really grateful to be here and, and thank you for having me. 

[00:03:17] Amy: Yeah. Thank you for coming.

[00:03:18] Hannah: Mom always says, I don’t do things by halves, so therefore I’m going to give you two mystery objects. My first mystery object is, you’ve seen it already on the cover. This is not just about self-promotion. This is my book, the Thin Line Between Everything and Nothing. The reason I’m sharing this is I wanted to be, a storyteller since I was a child.

[00:03:39] Since I can remember. I was fascinated by other people’s stories, and I wanted to share stories myself as well, and that drew me into journalism. Throughout time I’ve realized that stories are something that brings us together. Stories are things that unite us. Stories are things that help us realize that we’re less isolated.

[00:03:57] Stories are things that bring us humanity. The title of this book is really important as well in terms of kind of, I suppose, explaining a little bit about me. It’s called the Thin Line between Everything and Nothing. And the reason I chose that title is that actually sometimes life does spin on a dime.

[00:04:13] Sometimes things, the difference between coping and not coping is, is very kind of tiny. We have to navigate that tightrope as well. So that’s really important to me. and I think the other reason I, I, I chose this is. As you mentioned, Amy, I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2019 just before the pandemic began.

[00:04:30] And the only way I really managed to process my PTSD was by writing stories. So this, this entire book of flash fiction, very, very short stories came about as part of my therapy. I wrote, I wrote into my therapy. Very briefly, the second one, this is a lot bigger. This mystery object, sorry. Is this, I’m gonna step back a bit.

[00:04:49] This is, There we go. Hang on that way. Comrades Marathon route closure. Sunday, fourth June, 2017. So the Comrades Marathon is the world’s highest mass participation ultramarathon, for nerds. People who are non marathon nerds. I’m a marathon nerd. An ultramarathon is anything longer than a traditional marathon.

[00:05:10] A traditional marathon is 26 miles 42 kilometres. This was 88 kilometres, so two marathons back to back. I ran this from my kind of related to my 40th birthday, and I loved it and it was an absolutely life-changing experience. It was when I was in the depth of PTSD and that was quite profound for me too.

[00:05:27] Running and writing have saved my life. The reason I also wanted to show you this one, there we go that way, route closure. I think that that’s really important too, because often we come across, across obstacles in our road and actually different times in our life, those obstacles can feel quite profound.

[00:05:45] It can feel like the road really is blocked in front of us. But actually sometimes by, by reframing our kind of the way we see that root closure, we’re actually sometimes taking time to pause, can be really helpful for us. So, two, sorry, like to break rules occasionally. but yeah, those, those are kind of probably the best explanations in terms of what brings me here.

[00:06:06] Amy: Wow. Running and writing. Fantastic, amazing, back to back marathon, what? 

[00:06:12] Hannah: honey. Nuts. Yeah. 

[00:06:15] Amy: Good for you. so let’s, let’s step back a bit. You said you’ve always, you know, as a, you’ve, you’ve always wanted to, to write stories. So when, when, when did you first think, I, I want to do, I want to do this, I want to be a journalist?

[00:06:30] Hannah: Oh, I think I was one of those. You know, I have a 16 year old now and my 16 year old, she wants to be a history teacher, but she’s only kind of settled on that in the last couple of years. I wanted to be a journalist since I can remember. I was born at a time where in the late seventies where there were a lot of really, really big news stories in the early eighties.

[00:06:47] So my first moment of consciousness in terms of news was things like the miners strike. It was things like the Herald of Free Enterprise sinking. it was things like the assassination of Indira Gandhi. it was the, the, the kind of moving onto the Balkans conflict, but it was the first Iraq war, so there was a lot of international and national news that was going on.

[00:07:05] We always had a TV on in the house and it was the start of 24 hour news and I was just fascinated. I just, you know, wanted to see the world. I wanted to be part of other people’s conversations. I’m so nosy, honestly, I just I’m constantly kind of, or I think, let’s be polite about it. I’m really curious. I’m a really curious person and so for my entire life I wanted to be kind of just, meet other people and hear their stories and know about them and, and kind of like, you know, the more people I’ve met, the more stories I heard, the more I realized that there’s so much that brings us so much that, you know, unites us. and we can learn from each other as well. So yeah, pretty much from, from the, from the beginning and I was one of those very annoying probably, very, super high achieving kids and some of that backfired on me in later years, but who did the work experience from the age of 13, 14, 15, 16, et cetera onwards. I, I pushed myself very hard and I think in, in later years, that’s been a really strong lesson to me in terms of knowing when to take the foot off the pedal a bit in terms of pushing yourself less hard. 

[00:08:06] Amy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But just going back to that word you used, there curiosity, I think it’s such a, such a powerful and valuable

[00:08:15] skill to have, isn’t it, to have that, just that sense of curiosity. What, what do you think that has given you? 

[00:08:22] Hannah: I think curiosity has given me a sense of empathy as well. I think that empathy is so important. So I, I now run an organization which you’ve referred, so I’m looking about like an angel, my halo on right now.

[00:08:33] Cause there’s a really bright roof light here. I am not an angel by any stretch of the imagination, but, I think it’s given me a sense of, empathy. And I think it’s given me a sense of, realizing that everybody’s story is valid, in different ways. And it’s also allowed me to kind of withhold judgment, more easily, I suppose.

[00:08:50] It’s been, again, a, a learning curve and process, but, I think that empathy is so important. So I was just saying that Headlines Network, the organization I run, we work with news organizations to help support folks, managers, people across the journalism sphere to have more open conversations around mental health. And one of the things I hear a lot of the time is this kind of like this sense of, you know, what makes you a good journalist is empathy, is your connection with the person whose stories you are sharing, right? But often we don’t turn empathy on ourselves. And so what I’m working with news organizations to understand is that if we can kind of create spaces where we have greater degrees of empathy and often you can’t teach empathy, but then that is gonna be helpful for other people’s mental health.

[00:09:33] So, so yeah, curiosity for me in many ways equals empathy as well. 

[00:09:38] Amy: Yeah, absolutely. And that, that chime chimes in with, you know, the, the work that we are doing in different organizations in terms of actually sometimes empathy can be hard for, for people to, to, to develop. But it, it is something that can be developed right. And, and actually if you can think about it as a, being curious, then, then that can bring that sense of empathy with it can’t it?, 

[00:10:01] Hannah: It is, but it’s also, I think kind of just knowing when to step back as well and not ask too many questions. I think that for me, empathy is a little bit like, if I go running by myself, that’s fine, but some days I have days where I’d love to have somebody running alongside me.

[00:10:14] And so it’s kind of that sense of kind of somebody running alongside you and, and knowing that they can keep, they’re not saying, I know how it is to run in your shoes, but they’re saying, I’m gonna run alongside you and be, and be with you, and kind of have the empathy. You know, I, I can’t live your perspective, but I can kind of share something of that, something of that environment, I suppose. 

[00:10:35] Amy: Sure, that’s right. It’s about being intuitive, isn’t it? About how much somebody wants that engagement or not. Absolutely. So let’s roll back to when you, when you were first working in, in journalism, how would you describe the culture within that industry? 

[00:10:51] Hannah: I’m writing a book at the moment on mental health and journalism for Routledge, which is the academic publisher,

[00:10:56] and, you know, it’s, it’s a lot of work and my deadline’s in a couple of weeks time. But, it’s interesting cause one of my chapters talks about how the culture of newsrooms has changed over the years. And so I went into news in 1999 and back then it was very kind of, Fleet Street, very kind of, macho.

[00:11:15] It was driven and owned and kind of, you know, by a certain type of person. And that person was kind of, White, cis male university educated. And, but, but aside from that, it was also really macho. And so it was kind of like, there was a lot of drinking. There was a lot of unhealthy coping, “coping ugly” as some people call it. Cultures, which basically were people suppressing some of the experiences they’d had.

[00:11:38] I remember my, one of my second or third job I can’t remember which one , it was the first week in the office. I was on the home news desk of one of the news organizations and, and the home news editor just came in and just yelled, absolutely yelled at me for nothing other than the fact that he couldn’t cope with his own behavior.

[00:11:57] And it made me cry and, and kind of, so I think that things have progressed. Things haven’t really progressed perhaps as much as they might have done, but there has been a real change from that. You know, don’t admit vulnerability, you know, macho, stiff upper lip, go and get drunk to process your trauma. yell at people,to, to, to kind of more of a sense of kind of, you know, perhaps what we’re gonna talk about.

[00:12:20] Amy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. so big impact on people’s, the, the job itself, and the way people coped with it had a big impact then on people’s health and wellbeing at that time. 

[00:12:33] Hannah: It did. And I think it’s, I think it’s important to say cuz, you know, from all the research, we know that journalists are by and large resilient, you know, so, so actually it doesn’t necessarily mean that every journalist is gonna develop PTSD or a mental health condition.

[00:12:47] But there, there’s a lot of, you know, I say to people, news is, it’s news isn’t nine to five, news is by nature of the word of news, it’s something that exists outside of the norm, right? So we run towards danger. We run towards stories that are kind of on the edge of what humans do to each other. So, so it’s kind of like, it would be weird if we didn’t get impacted by that,

[00:13:12] and I think it’s very natural. It’s a very natural thing to have a reaction to something awful. And we need to have that reaction. We need to healthily have that reaction. But what is not healthy is when we can’t process that and we don’t get the support. And I think for a lot of the time, even now, unfortunately, in 2023, I hear too many people saying, I’m scared of admitting this is, this has impacted me because I’m worried about my, you know, fill in the gap, reputation, next deployment, career progression, what people are gonna think of me.

[00:13:42] And so and it’s particularly the case of people who are marginalized by our industry, which tend to be people who are people of colour or people from the LGBTQI a plus community or, and women to an extent as well. 

[00:13:54] Amy: Yeah. So, you went on, you worked at the International News Safety Institute. Mm-hmm. Tell us a little bit about, about what you were doing there.

[00:14:05] Hannah: Yeah. INSI, it’s known as for short, it’s like Incy Wincy Spider, but, so I went to INSI in April, 2010. Three months after the earthquake in Haiti, which I’d, covered as a TV news producer. INSI is an group which brings together some of the world’s leading news organizations to share information around safety, to keep people secure or to mitigate risks in some of the world’s most dangerous environments.

[00:14:30] And that can be everything from, start in 2010, I left in 2019, you can imagine, perhaps reflect on some of the biggest news stories then, we had Syria, we had the Arab uprisings, we had the, the triple disaster in Japan. We had various other, you know, we had one of the Ukraine wars. lots of stuff going on. At the same time, we had a rise in social media that was bringing attacks on journalists, so, you know, we were talking about physical, attacks on journalists. We were talking about psychological attacks on journalists, and we were talking about digital attacks on journalists. So I went into INSI in 2010, and over time I developed, It’s a little bit about the story, a little bit like the storytelling.

[00:15:07] One of my favourite things that I do is connecting interesting people with interesting people. And so I, I, I created forums, which I still do now with news organizations and other groups, kind of created conversations where we, I facilitated those discussions around good practice and around, okay, what’s your story?

[00:15:25] Okay, what have you learned from this? What can other people learn from this? And the kind of nine years at INSI was extraordinary, But, not, not many people kind of know this, but you know, there’s on average for periods of time, when I was at INSI on average, there were two journalists being killed in their work every week.

[00:15:45] And so that took a toll on me as well in terms of vicarious trauma, which is kind of, you know, some of you may be aware of that secondary trauma, this idea that you can be exposed to other people suffering and experience a degree of trauma yourself. So that took a toll on it, and I think that was a cumulative effect as well of seeing

[00:16:04] colleagues die and seeing awful stuff happen to people. And so that was kind of, you know, it was a powerful and amazing time. And it was a time at which I didn’t realize I was suffering from PTSD. I think for many years I had PTSD, I had the symptoms. I didn’t get a diagnosis probably until I was recovering anyway.

[00:16:21] But I think that, you know, over that time, it kind of just built up and it crept up and crept up and crept up. And ironically, running a journalism safety organization, I wasn’t safe. I wasn’t safe from the kind of own experiences that I’d that I’d endured. At the same time, I kind of, I, I, you know, I did things to try to process, like I wrote a book called No Woman’s Land, about women and gendered violence against women

[00:16:43] and the pieces of research you’ve mentioned as well, but, I think I was constantly trying to, I was kind of constantly fighting this cloud, you know, this kind of all like running away from the black dog, but not really kind of prepared to process that either. 

[00:16:54] Amy: Yeah. So the people around you when you were working there were, were they noticing? Was it spoken about in terms of the colleagues working there and the impact of what you were hearing and seeing?

[00:17:11] Hannah: So it’s interesting, we, we talked before about the macho nature of, news, how it was back in the nineties and how things have changed a bit. If you take journalism, it’s macho. If you then take safety in journalism, it’s like triple macho, right? So most, I was pretty much one of the only women working in this space and I’m also next not ex-military.

[00:17:29] And so, you know, the, I was a little bit of an outlier even though I was the director of the organization and I think, still think that I felt perhaps, that I didn’t necessarily have that really strong community around me for with whom I could speak. Now, I spoke to colleagues about my experiences and they were incredibly helpful, but I don’t feel like I necessarily had somebody who I could directly go to and go, you know, I’m really not coping.

[00:17:53] And to be honest, a lot of people I was working with were kind of a generation, that you just suck it up, right? So if you suck it up, which is not right, obviously, and that’s a generalization, but if you suck it up, then you’re not necessarily gonna say to somebody, Hey, Hannah, must have been a really tough day for you.

[00:18:12] You know, you’re just supposed to have this flack jacket that we talk about, this kind of, you know, this bulletproof vest. and nothing’s supposed to get in. But I, I guess, you know, using that analogy, taking it one step further, the really thing that’s important to me is the sense of, you know, back to one of my early therapy sessions in 2020.

[00:18:31] I was talking about flack jackets and the those that I’ve worn in war zones. And my therapist said to me, it’s no good, Hannah. If you are injured already, if you have an injury underneath your flack jacket and you’re wearing a flack jacket on top, unless you actually take the time to take off that flack jacket, fix that wound, and then put the flack jacket back on, it isn’t gonna serve anything.

[00:18:52] So I think that you know, a lot of the time the folks who I was working with, probably had their own work to do as well, you know? 

[00:19:01] Amy: Mm-hmm. So when you’re working with journalists now, how can, how can you encourage them safely to take their own emotional flack jackets off? 

[00:19:16] Hannah: So I’m not a clinician. I think it’s the first thing to say but I, I would also say that, you know, and, work, we work with experts in the mental health space. So there’s some of, you may know of Sian Williams, now Dr. Sian Williams, who is, a counselling psychologist as well, NHS psychologist as well as a, as a fantastic TV presenter. She often uses the phrase emotional flack jacket.

[00:19:35] So I have her to be kind of grateful for, for the, for the use of that phrase. But I think that it’s about, it’s not just about the individual. I think mental health is a community process. And I think that, you know, I do often say to some people, you know, you have to, you have to be conscious and aware of yourself.

[00:19:52] So mental health does start with two letters, me, M E but actually we also have to be kind of part of a, wellbeing starts with we, right? So, I mean, we have to be kind of part of this, kind of this, this team. And actually it should, the onus should not necessarily be on the individual, but the onus in some ways

[00:20:09] you know, the way I’ve learned through my mental health is recognizing when things are slightly outta kilter. So, you know, what am I doing differently perhaps that I, you know, wouldn’t normally do? I feel this kind of, I, I feel differently. I physically respond differently. I eat differently, I sleep differently.

[00:20:29] So it’s kind of, for me, the emotional flack jacket is kind of about being aware of where I am with things, what my emotional load is. You know, if you’ve got a glass like this, for instance, you, many of, you’ve seen this analogy before, but you know, if your glass is like this, you know who’s pouring more stuff into my glass?

[00:20:49] And what can I do to kind of like, take down some of the, some of the kind of the water in that glass? And so, so that’s, I think for me and working with people around that is kind of identifying what their coping strategies are and working with them to identify what the coping strategies of their organizations are.

[00:21:05] And from the physical safety side, the flack jacket. You, are given a flack jacket before you go into war zones or conflict, and you keep it, hopefully it keeps you safe and you keep it in one piece throughout, and then you give it back to somebody afterwards and they give a debriefing. So for me, it’s a process before, during, and after,

[00:21:25] in terms of kind of helping people navigate that emotional burden I think. 

[00:21:30] Amy: There’s definitely, obviously it’s, it’s definitely useful to understand our own triggers, if you like. Do you ever find that you don’t notice when things are changing for you and actually it’s, you need people on the outside noticing, asking how you are, asking what’s going on?

[00:21:50] Hannah: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I think that you cannot underestimate the power of somebody saying to you, you know, are you okay? Are you really okay? So that kind of double question. I think that, you know, I have a variety of people who I trust massively in different areas of my life. So I have got my running friends and I have my work friends, and I have my social friends and I have, you know, my family.

[00:22:14] And so people clock different elements of my kind of like emotional climate I suppose. And so I think that that can be really helpful because I do have this tendency, as you’ve probably gathered, to kind of push myself very hard. And I have, and I love to set myself a challenge, but sometimes the setting of a challenge is not a healthy thing to do.

[00:22:34] It’s kind of like, it’s just too much. And so sometimes I need people to reign in. Like my friend messaged me the other day and said to me, something, but then actually when I saw them in, in in person, they said, you know, are you taking time for Hannah? And I was like, ah. Probably not as much time for Hannah as maybe I should do.

[00:22:51] So that was a really nice reminder to, to kind of, you know, we can advocate for mental health, and I tweeted something about this the other day. You know, we can advocate for mental health and we can work in mental health, but sometimes that itself can be exhausting. And I think it’s super important that we recognize that we’re not superheroes, that we are human beings and we need to cut ourselves some slack sometimes.

[00:23:13] Amy: Yeah, absolutely. And often also if, if we’re unwell, we can have a sense of isolation. Right. And Absolutely. I mean Yeah, totally. That’s what I’m hearing, yeah. Is that power of your social network, that power of your, the people that you feel safe and you with the people that you trust, the people you can have conversations with.

[00:23:33] And you don’t have to have hundreds of people, right? You just need to have even just one person that you feel okay to talk to. 

[00:23:39] Hannah: So like we run a podcast with our, with Headlines Network and we speak with famous journalists because we know how powerful that story is, you know, of hearing somebody else’s and how it is in terms of kind of diminishing some of the isolation.

[00:23:52] But I remember we had talked to Briony Gordon who’s written several books and, you know, has a various columns. But Briony was saying actually to us, and I really strongly believe this, that you know, sometimes when you are really feeling low, it’s the hardest thing to connect with somebody else. It really is.

[00:24:07] And that really resonates with me. It’s so important that we can actually have somebody who checks in with us that we don’t necessarily have to re reach out.

[00:24:13] sorry, American term, to them, but actually they check in with us and, and make sure that they’re proactively doing that, rather than us having to kind of like take the onus on ourselves to kind of go, oh, I need to go and connect with somebody. 

[00:24:23] Amy: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you, you, you said, you know, writing, running, those have been, the things that have really supported you.

[00:24:29] Can you, can you tell us a bit more about that? 

[00:24:33] Hannah: Yeah, I mean, I actually think that they’ve probably saved my life. I mean, I think that, you know, I, I’ve had times when I have been suicidal and, and so, you know, and that’s not an easy thing to, to discuss or kind of mention, but, you know, I think it’s super important that we do kind of try to break those taboos because You know, we need to talk more openly about them.

[00:24:52] So I’ve had these times where it’s been, it’s been awful. It’s been terrible, and, and, you know, I’ve been through therapy, which has been great. so different things work for different people. I, I’ve tried antidepressants, they didn’t work for me, so, so kind of running for me has been this sense of getting out with nature, which I love,

[00:25:09] escaping kind of, you know, not necessarily running. For us, sometimes it was running from things, right? It was running from my trauma, it was running from my past, awful domestic violence experiences. It was running from things, but now I like to think of it, it’s kind of running alongside things and so kind of like running with something.

[00:25:26] So more mindfulness. So that’s been, and I love, as I said, you know, this challenge of, I’ve done 19 marathons, can I, you know, if I’m gonna do, you know, is there a certain time I’m gonna set myself? I, I like to push myself, but I also like to know when I’m pushing myself too hard. So, you know, on the running thing, and I’ve written a lot about kind of running and mental health and, and how important that is and what it’s also talking about is pacing myself.

[00:25:50] You know, a lot of the time, you know, if you run a marathon, you do not set out running the first mile of the marathon at the same pace you would if you were going to go and run a mile or three miles. So you have to learn to pace yourself. And, and so I think that’s super important from what I’ve learned of running too. From the writing side,

[00:26:10] and there’s, I think, as a bit of correlation between the two in terms of, you know, what running and writing both bring to my mental health. It allows me to with the PTSD I had, for instance, a lot of the PTSD does weird things to your brain just in terms of memory. and so by writing out my experiences and reliving my experience as I did through therapy, I was allowed to kind of, I was able to bring back together pieces of the jigsaw and put them back together.

[00:26:37] I was able to kind of step back outside myself. So I write both fiction and non-fiction. I kind of write versions of things which were kind of partly related to me, but not related to me, if that makes sense. 

[00:26:49] 

[00:26:49] Amy: Can I just jump in there? For those that maybe don’t un understand what, what does that PTSD do to your memory?

[00:26:57] Do you wanna just share a little bit of that? 

[00:26:58] Hannah: Yeah. I mean, You know, I’m not a scientist, so the best way I can explain it is if you imagine you’ve got a cupboard in front of you. I dunno if you have cupboards where you store your clothes, right? And imagine it’s got a whole load of drawers in there. PTSD basically, and all your clothes are memories, right? PTSD, ba, and this is what my therapist, how he explained it. PTSD basically opens all the drawers, pulls out all the clothes, chucks them all on the floor, or up in the air and they all fall down like this. Right, so then your load left with whole load of scattered memories that you just dunno which drawers they’re going to.

[00:27:32] If your brain is a drawer or drawers and then putting them back in place, it allows, that would be the normal way you understand memories. That would be the normal, this happened then that happened, then that happened. But so for instance, when I was, assaulted, there were moments of that that I can’t remember because my brain went into protective mode.

[00:27:51] My brain was like, I just can’t deal with this. So it wanted me to survive. So, and then I think when you don’t process that over time, you know, the, the memories become more fractured because you are in survival mode. So, so that’s, and then other things that happen with PTSD connected with that is, and some of you may, may be aware of this, like things that trigger those trauma memories impact you physiologically the same way.

[00:28:17] So let me give you an example. I spent a lot of time, as I said in Haiti after the earthquake, And there was a lot of low-flying planes coming into the, air airport at the time, bringing aid. But for some reason in my head, my head doesn’t like low-flying airplanes because it, it associates me with that awful experience where thousands and thousands of people died.

[00:28:37] So for a long time, if I heard any kind of low flying plane, I would be like, oh my God. I’d literally be on the floor. Gunfire as well. For a long time, if my little boy had balloons, I just could not deal with a balloon because the idea of a balloon bursting or a car backfiring took me back to that moment.

[00:28:55] so, so I think it’s, it’s the two different areas of memory which are kind of really important. So being able to write about those in healthy ways is helpful. 

[00:29:02] Amy: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. really, really powerful. And I think, yeah. So it sounds like by writing, you’re sort of putting the bits of the jigsaw back together.

[00:29:12] Am I right? 

[00:29:13] Hannah: I think so. But I think that, also the thing that’s really important is you own your own narrative, right? You own your own story. So whether it be a fiction story or a non-fiction story, you are able to kind of like take control over that.

[00:29:28] And we all probably know that one of the most helpful things when we’re struggling with our mental health is identifying what we can control and what we can’t control, and focusing on the things we can control. So for me, writing, and maybe that’s a bit kind of like, you know, egocentric, but for me it’s focusing on what can we control and I can control that art of writing.

[00:29:49] Amy: Yeah, it’s absolutely not egocentric. It’s fabulous. Hannah’s writing is fabulous. We might even hear a little bit later on. thank you so much, Hannah, for just now. Let’s, just gonna show everybody your question and just if you wanna talk to that question, and then we’re gonna invite Q and A from everybody here, who’s with us today.

[00:30:11] Hannah: Yeah. So the question is, what does an emotional flack jacket look like in your work environment for you and others? And just to describe a little bit about, so a flack jacket is a bulletproof vest. it’s the kind of thing that you give to journalists when they go into war zones to protect them. But I guess an emotional flack jacket is what are the things that we’re doing to support ourselves?

[00:30:34] What is the equipment we’re using, the resources we’re using, the support we’re using, the structures we’re using? How are we aware of kind of that? so yeah, the question, as I said, what does an emotional flack jacket look like both for you personally and for those in your environment?

[00:30:50] Amy: Lovely. Thank you Hannah.

[00:30:51] So the, the floor is open, folks. do respond to Hannah’s question and, or of course, if, you have any other questions for her, then now is your opportunity. If you want to use that, reaction so I can see that you’ve got something to say.

[00:31:07] Then do, put your hon up as they say here in Glasgow.

[00:31:12] Any questions? Any thoughts

[00:31:14] Does an emotional flat jacket look like in your work environment for you? For others? 

[00:31:20] I

[00:31:20] Angus: have, a thought Amy. I think, my emotional flack jacket is when I feel most alive. And I feel most alive when I’m doing things like riding motorbikes or riding mountain bikes or running in hills or when I’m doing bootcamp or when I’m with lots of people and I’m connecting and I’m laughing.

[00:31:40] Yeah, that’s when I feel most alive. That’s when all the weight lifts off my shoulders, and that’s when I, I feel better. That’s my, my emotional flack jacket. And it’s sometimes it’s doing very dangerous things. Riding motorbikes is very dangerous, there’s no, no getting away from that, but it’s, a really important part of my life.

[00:32:00] Amy: Thank you Angus. Jim Boyd, you got your hand up? Tell us where you work. Thank you. Share your, your thoughts with, with Hannah and me and everyone else. 

[00:32:11] Jim: Thanks Amy. Thanks, Hannah. Yeah, I’m Jim Boyd, I run my own continuous process improvement company, Unravel This Ltd. So I work, most of my work’s been in the kind of manufacturing sector, but I do work in, service and knowledge based areas as well. and, and in, in the line of work, we’re often looking for, people to discover, inefficiencies, defects, anything that’s costing the business and the customers time and money. And, and so, so the, the, the thing here is that it requires people to be honest and open about, you know, showing issues that have typically been there for a very long time.

[00:32:54] So there’s a huge element of trust required here, and what I’ve tend to find is that, you know, that that can take some time to develop. It’s one thing people say in it, particularly leadership and management. So it’s one thing for them to say, and there will be no repercussions for people who blag you know that there’s a, you know, an issue over here in this part of the business.

[00:33:14] So it takes time for that to really come through and for people to believe it. Is that something that you’ve discovered, Hannah in, in your line as well? 

[00:33:24] Hannah: Yeah, I mean, just, I think just, you’ve really touched on something there. It’s all well and good, somebody talking the talk, but you’ve got to walk the walk as well.

[00:33:32] So I think that this, you know, trust does take time to. Takes awfully long time to build up and takes very little time to destroy, right? So I think, so that is really important, walking the walk and talking the talk, but also having in place a kind of like plan. Again, you know, I talked before, during, and after, but having almost like a crisis management or business continuity plan for people’s kind of wellbeing as well is super important too.

[00:33:55] I think that, you know, and honesty and candour, can go a long way, but often their heart, it’s hard for people to admit vulnerability. 

[00:34:03] Amy: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Jim. Steven McAllister. 

[00:34:10] Steven: In terms of emotional flack jacket, I think for me it’s acceptance, and what I mean, by that is that getting to where you’re in that moment and, accepting that that’s the circumstances you’re in to notice and, and, and then, you know, to plan ahead in relation to that.

[00:34:26] I think acceptance is, is a great emotional flack jacket, not accepting, you’re being treated cruelly or badly, but where you’re, at that moment in time. I was gonna ask Hannah, I don’t know if you ever came across, Gabor Maté is a Canadian psychologist and he talks about

[00:34:43] trauma producing addictive behaviours, and, they’re pretty obvious ones and it’s alcohol or drugs misuse, but running, writing can be viewed as an addictive behaviour. And I don’t know if you’ve seen or if that you view that in your terms or some things that, obviously the success you’re having, you potentially view that as addictive behaviours that have helped you overcome the trauma,

[00:35:06] and if that’s the case, when do you know you’re, you’re, you’re kind of getting into a space where it’s actually not good for you? 

[00:35:13] Hannah: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. You know, and, and so, so Gabor talks about that and Anthony Feinstein, who I do a lot of work with, talks about, he’s written a book about, you know, the fact that a lot of journalists, a lot of what makes good journalists, journalists is there, they have an element of an addictive personality.

[00:35:28] But it’s, it’s being able to control that addictive part. So the notion of control and addiction, obviously, you know, it’s kind of complicated, right because, you know, you would say that one can’t, that they’re kind of completely different from each other. But what I would say is kind of like recognizing that when you are coping well and coping less well. So, so I know now kind of when I’m pushing myself too hard or pushing my body too hard, my body will do certain things that means that it’s kind of going, ah, ah, Hannah, you know, cut back. But I completely see the, kind of, the fact that they can be addictions. They also call them maladaptive behaviours, right?

[00:36:03] So I think that it’s just getting, somebody also mentioned awareness, just being more aware of things as well. And I’d like to say that kind of, you know, I, I would suspect that kind of healthy doses of exercise are probably more healthy than, you know, drinking too much booze, doing drugs, extramarital affairs, which is a lot of the other stuff that happens in, in, in, in journalism.

[00:36:24] But Angus’s point about also just kind of, you know, sometimes the things you do are dangerous. Sometimes the things we do are slightly risky, right? But I think some, and I think that’s fine. I think it’s actually, you know, I do risky stuff, but actually I try to measure it with a sense of, you know, possibility.

[00:36:40] What is the possibility that this is gonna cause real danger for me, versus what is the benefit that it’s that kind of, it’s that cost, benefit analysis that I, I’m constantly playing out in my head, I suppose. 

[00:36:50] Amy: Fabulous. Yeah. And I, I think it also goes back, doesn’t it, to what you were saying about having what we were talking about, about having that support network that those people around you to, to spot when you are perhaps going just that step too far.

[00:37:04] Thank you Steven, who is, former divisional commander, Police Scotland and a hostage crisis negotiator, so he knows his onions. Yeah, Jim, You have put something in the chat here. It’s important to know and share your personal triggers with work colleagues. This also allows those who care to let you know that your behaviour has changed.

[00:37:22] You want to share a little bit more, Jim? 

[00:37:24] Jim2: Yeah, good afternoon everybody. my background in, in engineering, I do health and safety for, for a living and heavily involved with occupational health as well, including mental health in the past. I, I think the, the, the little trigger for me was, in the past where I had got stressed and, and sometimes you just don’t realize just how bad things are and you need somebody else who can see it

[00:37:46] and it, and it was our occupational health department, nurse who actually just said to me one day, just stop. And, and I said, then she asked me to come take my blood pressure and told me my blood pressure was up. And I said, Sarah what was the trigger? And she says, you just talk. She says, there’s no full stops, there’s no commas, there’s nothing.

[00:38:03] All you’re doing is just talking. And it was just workload at work and, and at home. So when I found that, it was important that I shared that with other people, so that what happens is that when I start to do that, so if I was talking really fast, for example, and I’ve shared this with colleagues, that if I start talking fast, if I don’t have pauses, I don’t have full stops, tell me because then that’s my trigger for, for my stress, and I know it’s coming back. So I think that really, the, the important thing for that is for people to share that, I know I’ve mentioned just work colleagues, but it’s important at home as well that people know what your triggers are. You know, so that, that, that they can advise you, you know, when things are starting to change.

[00:38:45] You never, you never know when your things are changing because it’s really, really hard to to, to trigger them for yourself. 

[00:38:51] Sure. Thank you so much, Jim. 

[00:38:54] Amy: So true. So true. And it’s brilliant if you have that confidence, isn’t it, Hannah to actually speak to your colleagues and tell them, actually, these are my triggers,

[00:39:02] and, that’s where that really, you know, creating a mentally healthy workplace is so, so vital. We’re going to move on now folks, and Hannah is gonna share some of her top tips. Here we go. We have number one. Do you wanna talk us through that, Hannah? 

[00:39:19] Hannah: Yeah, we’ve heard a little bit about this already. You know, we saw, somebody just mentioned they’re sea kayaking.

[00:39:23] You can’t take your phone with you, thank goodness. Right? Make time for joy. We have this thing at home where we do a kitchen disco sometimes. So I have two children, 16 and seven, and sometimes we have a kitchen disco, so we put music on and we dance around the kitchen like, you know, silly people.

[00:39:39] But there are other things we can do which kind of, you know, create, even if it’s five minutes in the morning, and I think ideally in the morning or at the end of the day, create a little bit of time for joy. Whatever makes your heart sing. Super important. My mom used to say to me that there are many people in the world whose epitaphs are, you know, around kind of, you know, they, they thought they were invincible, they thought they were irreplaceable.

[00:40:02] We can all be replaced, unfortunately, in work. We can’t necessarily be replaced around those, you know, for those, for our families. Sorry, I was kind of doing a bit of a hatchet job on that explanation there, but I guess the idea is that, you know, work to live. You know, I know you’re managers a lot of you, but there are more important things in life than work.

[00:40:22] We all have a valid, valid story and we can learn and feel less alone by listening to each other’s. I think that is, self-evident, really. And then communication’s key, you know, I hear from a lot of people that, oh, well I didn’t realize we had those resources, or I didn’t realize this was the case.

[00:40:38] So I would say, you know, keep communicating as, as managers and leaders, keep communicating with folks and take time to realize that that communication is a two way street, right? Take time to listen to people as well. And you can’t, I don’t think you can ever communicate enough, but, you know, to your, to a point about our colleague who just mentioned, talking too quickly, which I do too,

[00:40:58] a lot of the time. It’s really important to take breaks too. 

[00:41:03] Amy: Lovely. And comparison is an enemy of compassion. 

[00:41:06] Hannah: I mean, so often I hear from people oh but my trauma is not as bad as, oh, my mental health isn’t as bad as oh but that person’s suffering. Yes, and this goes back to the story about we’re all valid.

[00:41:18] We all have valid stories, but it can, spending time beating ourselves up and eating up energy thinking my situation is not as bad as or worse than, yeah, really does destroy us our compassion really does destroy our own empathy for ourselves, our self-compassion, but also our empathy with others. 

[00:41:39] Amy: Yeah, we heard a lot about that actually, especially during the pandemic, when it was a lot more, I think people were spending even more time on social media and, and we were hearing a lot of that in terms of people comparing themselves to others.

[00:41:52] what was, you know, what other people were writing on, on Facebook, et cetera, et cetera. So, so damaging, isn’t it? 

[00:41:58] Hannah: It is. It’s really damaging. It’s, and also like, you know, if I’m doing a running race as well, if I compare myself with somebody else, or maybe they had more sleep than me, maybe they, or, or maybe they’re carrying a bug or something.

[00:42:10] You know, it depends on, you don’t know what somebody else’s existence or perspective is, so you can only really kind of like look at yourself and kind of go, am I currently doing the best I possibly can or am I currently struggling? And if so, how do I rectify that with other people’s support? 

[00:42:24] Amy: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:42:26] if you would, Hannah, you’ve got a piece of writing there, I believe. It’d be lovely if you, you’d be willing to share some of that, some of your writing with 

[00:42:33] Hannah: Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. I wrote this last year, my dad was diagnosed with cancer.

[00:42:37] It was one of those awful covid things that got missed. So it was, he’s quite poorly at the moment and it made me really kind of think about what was important. so I wrote this, it’s a little prose poem, so it’s a combination of prose and poetry. It’s called, Have You Lived Your Life? Have you lived your life?

[00:42:55] Have you lived each moment? Not as if it was the last, but the first. Have you felt the wonder, not the fear. Have you counted the seconds? Not years? Have you taken time rather than let time take you? Have you stopped and stared? Not stopped, scared? Have you? But why would you unless you’d been told that warmth on your face, your hands will soon be cold?

[00:43:20] Until that youth you wished would race has left you old, the memories you own for others long ago, pages of a history book you already know. But if you can pause now, look back, ask, is it true? Have you lived your life? Have you loved your life? Have you taken time before it takes you?

[00:43:45] And I’ve got it on a little, in little frame here to remind myself of it, because I think it’s quite important. 

[00:43:52] Amy: It’s super important. I can’t stress enough how, beautiful, as you’ve just heard there, Hannah’s writing is, so if you can get hold of this lovely little book, then I would highly recommend it.

[00:44:01] lots of really short flash fiction, you call it, it is called 

[00:44:07] Hannah: Tiny little flashes of something and you fill in the gaps as as, as kind of readers. Just one point I just wanted to reiterate. is breaks, you know, our colleague just there, there before talked about breaks. In news, we call it breaking news.

[00:44:21] And unfortunately, breaking news breaks people, but also there is a positive side to breaks, right? And I think that what the pandemic has taken away from so many of us is the boundaries. And so I think that, you know, so many of you’ll be working with this around boundaries, but it’s so important to step away from our phones, give us ourselves breaks. I put calendar reminders in my calendar sometimes for a meeting with Hannah and I just don’t do anything in that meeting sometimes. I just literally go outside and, and kind of, you know, just think about things.

[00:44:53] Amy: Wonderful. Yeah, absolutely. We’re gonna move on now to quick fire questions.

[00:45:00] Are you ready, Hannah? 

[00:45:02] I’m ready. I’m ready now. All good? All good. Okay. here we go. Hannah, what does vulnerability mean to you? 

[00:45:13] Hannah: Vulnerability means something that makes us not necessarily fire on all cylinders, but I think vulnerability is also a strength. Being able to admit what makes us perhaps weaker can also make us stronger.

[00:45:28] Amy: Lovely. What do you think’s going to revolutionize workplace mental health? 

[00:45:36] Hannah: Empathy. People being empathetic and listening to each other and really taking time to hear people’s stories. Not money, empathy. 

[00:45:48] Amy: What message, Hannah, would you give your younger self?

[00:45:53] Hannah: It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. You’ll hit junctions in the road and you’ll hit obstacles and road bumps, but it’s gonna be okay. And you’ll look back and you’ll realize that it’s okay to be proud of yourself. 

[00:46:06] Amy: Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. And, yeah, if you could wave a wand at the industry of journalism, what would you like to see happen?

[00:46:21] Hannah: I would like, training for managers. We don’t get enough. We you, just because you’re a good journalist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gonna be a good manager. And I see this in other industries too. We feel like we don’t have enough training for managers to help them manage themselves, their time, and folks around them as well.

[00:46:38] And I think that would really revolutionize so many different industries. 

[00:46:42] Amy: Absolutely .Empowering everyone. Hannah Storm, you’ve stormed it. I’m gonna pass it over to my colleague Angus. thank you so much, Hannah. 

[00:46:52] Hannah: Thank you, 

[00:46:54] Angus: Hannah. That was, that was, wow. That was really, really great. It’s one of the absolute privileges of being involved in Headtorch and doing what we do is that we get to meet really fascinating people. And I think what you did today was just wonderful. I love your energy, your honesty, and your frankness. And I also love that you run towards danger. Yeah. We’re kindred spirits in that. Absolutely, right.

[00:47:24] And, The language that you use. You talk a lot about being healthy. You talk about healthy healing, healthy processing, healthy running. It’s a really positive way to look at things. Yeah, it’s really, it’s just the language coming out is really, really nice. Risk versus reward. I totally get that.

[00:47:46] Looking at something, you know, looking at the danger. Is this worth the danger I’m putting myself in? Is it worth it? And it’s a great question to ask, and sometimes we say, yes it is, and other times, well, okay, maybe not this time. Taking your flack jacket off to fix the wound before you put the flack jacket back on.

[00:48:07] And you’ve talked about breaks as well. So giving yourself time to heal and doing that healthy healing as well. The empowering message of own your own story, and take control of it. Yeah. We all have that. That’s a really, really empowering message. And wellbeing starts with we. Mental health is a community process.

[00:48:30] It’s all fantastic stuff. Going in my wall in my office will be “Have you felt the wonder and not felt the fear?” That will definitely be going up my wall. So thank you very much Hannah. It is been a real pleasure. It’s a real privilege, we really appreciate the time that you’ve taken to do this and, thank you from everybody at Headtorch and everybody who’s listening to this and going to listen to this.

[00:48:56] Hannah: Likewise. Thank you very much Angus, Amy, and the folks at Headtorch for inviting me to be part of this brilliant conversation. 

[00:49:03] Angus: Absolute pleasure. Thank you. And on the next wellbeing hour. We have Helen Cross and Helen is a good friend of mine. She is a gardener, a food writer, a farming writer.

[00:49:19] She’s a broadcaster and podcaster and I’ve had to practice this, a horticultural educator and, so I think it’s gonna be a fascinating one. She talks a lot about mental health in her book. It’s a brilliant, brilliant book as well. We are also running the Kindness Counts campaign, so if you keep an eye out for that, it’s a free campaign.

[00:49:40] and I mentioned Helen already. We also have on in September, we’re taking August off by the way, on the Wellbeing Hour. So in September we have Julie Nerney. Julie is a transformational leader. She’s a chair. She’s so many things it’s actually very difficult to describe what Julie is. She’s non-exec director of the UK Supreme Court,

[00:50:02] and she’s also I think, managing director of a nuclear transport authority. So really broad, really interesting, background there with Julie. Stay in touch with us, follow us on LinkedIn. We post these events regularly on there, so you’ll see them there. If you would like to get to know more about what we do at Headtorch, please give us a shout,

[00:50:23] we’d love to hear what you are doing in terms of workplace mental health. That’s my details there. And, I think that is probably it. If there are any questions, please shout now and, you know, we’d be happy to discuss anything further.

[00:50:38] Thank you for coming everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you.