Work with Me

I know this is a topic that many people have opinions about and I do not proclaim to be an expert, or a doctor, I can only speak from my own experiences and what I have learnt from those experiences. There is undeniably a negative stigma attached to having depression and/or anxiety. If people do believe that you have it then you are seen as a liability. If people don’t believe you have it then you are exaggerating your feelings and need to toughen up. It would seem there is no winning. My aim is to turn this stigma on it’s head. I believe that managing mental health issues makes a person incredibly resilient. Instead of seeing Depression and Anxiety as things that set people back, I hope I can demonstrate how they can be used to someone’s advantage. I have been in that deep dark place where life does not seem worth living, where you feel like a burden to those around you, you can’t see things getting better ever, and the pain is so much that you just sleep the days away wishing it would all end. I know that place. I know it well. I have been there more than once. I also know what incredible internal strength it takes to pull yourself out of that place. No one else can bring you back, they can help, but the journey back up is a conscious decision you must make on your own and you will come out of it stronger and stronger each time. It is this strength of character that I have built up over the years that has made me extremely resilient and self-aware and caused me to push boundaries in the exploration of a life that makes me truly happy. I value happiness above all else and my pursuit of a life that I love has taken me to some weird and wonderful places! It isn’t mental health that held me back, but rather it gave me that edge to do some amazing things! In my presentation on mental health I discuss in detail my own personal struggles with this illness and the highs and lows I have experienced because of it. I share the major turning points in my journey to happiness and how I came to view my depression and anxiety as assets rather than weaknesses.

My growth in the realm of social media came unconventionally and rapidly. I started, like most do, with my friends and family as my ‘followers’ which grew one day to 5k followers when fitness guru Kayla Itsines reposted one of my progress pictures. In 2016 I was a contestant on the 4th season of The Bachelor Australia which led to my following increasing to around 30k when the show was airing. After the show, I formed a relationship with one of the other contestants from the show which made International headlines and resulted in my following skyrocketing to over 90k overnight. It then continued to grow organically to over 100k followers which has completely changed my life, but not all for the better. I was completely unprepared for the attention I was receiving both good and bad, especially the bad. The online bullying and trolling was relentless in the beginning and it really affected me. People I didn’t know and who didn’t know me where saying horrible things about me, I received death threats, everything I did was under a microscope and apparently open to public judgement. I learnt many things the hard way - posting things I shouldn’t have, retaliating to the haters, taking things personally and letting social media change the way I was living my life. Social media’s impact on our lives is inevitable and ignoring it means cutting off a massive part of today’s culture and closing yourself off to the benefits it can have. But it is managing these impacts, and better understanding what social media is (what it should and should not be used for) and gaining some perspective that is crucial in this age of social media dominance. In my presentation I share my social media journey in depth, I show examples of the bullying I received, and I speak about the lessons I have learned. My aim is to educate others on the realities of social media, to raise awareness of the impact of bullying through social media and to train people on how to use social media to maximise the benefits and minimise the negatives.