Visitor reflections

Video transcript

I'm Janina. I came to the crisis support space early last year for three nights in a row. I got to the stage where I realised I was seriously depressed and I needed help, basically. And when I opened the door to come in, I was just shocked. It looked so much like someone's house, someone's lounge room. Walking in here and meeting peer workers was just like, I thought, wow. It just felt so accepting, understanding, supportive, lots of empathy. And I knew that these people had been on the journey, a similar journey too, on their road to recovery. So you feel like you're being heard and seen and that's really important. I felt totally safe visiting this space. I was just able to reveal parts of myself that I felt comfortable with. And to my amazement, I talked about some really personal and hard things that had happened to me previously, and I just thought, you know what, that's okay. They're not going to judge me. I was just able to come to this space and go away with this suitcase of tools.

I grew up drawing little aliens of myself in little doodles in my notebooks at school. I didn't really feel like anyone understood me and what I was, you know, feeling and thinking. And so then, you know, coming here and realising, hey, you know, there's a whole world of people that are just like me, you know, and that actually get me and understand that, you know, it's not just a phase or it's not just like, you know, like, get over it. You can move on, you can, you know, it doesn’t have to cripple and plague your life. I was raised in the mindset that men are supposed to be invincible, so reaching out was really hard for me, both being a man and being Indigenous. I thought, you know, there's going to be another number thrown into the system. It wasn't until my last admission here not long ago that I decided to come into Safe Space. So it definitely opens up, you know, another perspective and another place I can go to get support for my mental health. It's a lot less stressful than sitting in an emergency department. Yeah, for me, the peer workers make all the difference. I struggle a lot with motivation of, you know, why should I keep going? You know, what's the point? You know, I just feel like, you know, I live at the moment between appointment to appointment. You know, just knowing that other people have been there makes all the difference because then I don't feel like a full alien and I don't have to draw aliens in my notebooks anymore. It legit saves lives. I've seen people come in just not in good spaces and then being able to actually go home and leave and not ending up on the wards, not ending up with such traumatic experiences that I know myself I've had and then also like a million other people have had as well.

From my experience, coming here just gets you through that period of initial distress and then like I can then reflect on what's going on and kind of keep myself safe and go home. Like a lot of people are under the impression you go and talk to them about, for example, suicidal thoughts or self-harm, and there are automatically under the impression they're going to lock you up. But here they help you work through it. It avoids hospital admissions, it avoids a lot of judgement and having to explain yourself over and over again. I found also that having the clinician there also made me feel a bit safer. Like I knew that I was really unwell and was developing suicidal ideation and I was scared of what I could do to myself. So having a clinician there in the background was like the backstop.

I think the crisis support space was a lifesaver for me. Life-changing, too. My options were to suffer in silence and try and make it through the night. Whereas now, I can come here and talk about it, you know, and instead of escalating to the point where, you know, I get so bad that I do have to end up in the emergency department. When I first started, I was scared that every time I'd go there, I'd be out in the ward because I thought they'd think I'm crazy. I think a lot of people have that mindset really, but knowing that Safe Space is available, it's definitely a lot easier for me to reach out now and get help for everything. The peer workers and the clinicians here at Safe Space, they've helped me understand that if things happen, that it's not just completely going backwards to the start. You're just like on a little bump on the road and you kind of got to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and just keep going forward sort of thing. There's no shame in the bumps in the road and there's no like judgement from them here. For the future, I'm feeling more confident because it's just like I shed a huge shell when I came in here. I was feeling really down and out. I really wanted to kill myself. They left me feeling more confident. It's just made me realise that there is hope. There is hope for me.