Thanks for listening to The Fat Psychologist Podcast. Join me to decode wellbeing research so it can have a real impact in our lives. Let's make decisions based on information we understand, not based what others say we should think of ourselves. I will explore themes that have been important in my life, as I search for happiness and belonging. This is our journey, I would love you to contribute too!

The Fat Psychologist Podcast

Coming out of a dark place: resilience with Angela Mae Morrison

When I am down, I say to myself: "I can do this"

Season 1 Episode 3

In this episode

In this episode I talk with author and nurse Angela Mae Morrison about resilience and her book Coming Out of a Dark Place. We discuss the importance of social support and share our stories of supporting our children through difficult times in their lives.

Guests

Angela Mae Morrison-AKA Darnell is a Registered nurse by profession. She attended Wolverhampton University and Birmingham City University. Writing has always been an ambition/passion, and she is delighted that it has now been achieved. Angela continues to work part-time as a nurse as well as pursuing her independent writing. She published her first book in 2022. We talk about her second book "Coming out of a dark place" which published in April 2023 on Amazon KDP, which tells the true life gripping story of her son's experience with an eczema flair that forced him to be house bound for over two and a half years. Angela has also published poetry and children's stories. Her latest book "The Case of the Missing Burger (with the bun) is a must read. Angela lives in Birmingham England with her husband Roy and their three children.

Find heron TikTok @Angela Morrison419 and YouTube @angiemorrison3910. Buy her books on Amazon.

Ninna Makrinov, aka The Fat Psychologist, is a teacher, trainer, coach and the author of The Fat Psychologist Podcast. A critical thinker by nature, Ninna is an activist who questions knowledge from a feminist, fat inclusive, disability informed, anti-racist perspective. By day, Ninna works as Assistant Professor (Research Methods) at the University of Warwick and Chair of Governors in two Birmingham Primary Schools. She has been an academic in Chile, Mexico and the UK. Ninna is passionate about the development and well-being of people and the organisations they are part of.

Ninna is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She holds a BSc Psychology and Professional Title in Organisational Psychology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, an MSc in Occupational Health Psychology from The University of Nottingham and a Masters in Business Administration from Tecnológico de Monterrey. She has most recently completed the Postgraduate Award (PGA) Curriculum Design in Higher Education and the PGA Technology Enhanced Learning at The University of Warwick.

In this episode, we talked about:

Angela's books
Coming out of a Dark Place
Sunny and Moonie
The Case of the Missing Burger (with the bun)

The amazing digital artist
Patrisha Boncales

Transcript

Ninna: Welcome to the Fat Psychologist Podcast. Join me to the decode well-being research so it can have a real impact in our lives. Let's make decisions based on information we understand and question, not based on what others say we should think of ourselves.

For today's episode, I have picked the term "resilience". You might have come across this concept before. I'd love to know where and what it means to you. Weirdly, there is no single definition of resilience that is accepted in psychological research. However, in this context, the term relates to the ability to bounce back from adversity, to come out of dark places. Resilience also refers to the physical capacity of materials to reshape. So for example, an elastic band is more resilient than a coin. This comparison brings another aspect of the term to the background. Resilience is not the same as toughness, while I believe these terms are usually confused.

I have a love and hate relationship with this concept. I first heard about it while studying at university over 20 years ago, as the ability to overcome trauma related to sexual abuse in childhood. Indeed, the term was coined in the late 70s as an explanation of how some children were able to survive many kinds of early trauma and adversity. Many of us have faced trauma. In 2017, a study by the World Health Organization reported that around 70% of people in the world have experienced lifetime traumas such as those coming from war, physical violence, sexual violence, or life threatening accidents.

I love that when we talk about resilience, we are trying to understand the positive mechanisms that help people thrive in adversity. These include individual characteristics, social support, and many other environmental factors. What I hate is that many people use the term as an individual's capacity to adapt to challenges and perform well under pressure. I see it often in job adverts and this makes me wonder why not create work environments that are safe for people to thrive rather than expecting people to adapt to what I imagine will be terrible working conditions. Resilience is not only a personal characteristic, it also varies over time and in different situations. In my view, it cannot be a requirement to do a job because I don't expect to be exposed to trauma at work. Moreover, in the UK employers have a legal duty to protect workers' health, including mental health. I know this is not what people mean when they ask for resilience in a job advert, but it completely puts me off applying.

I have faced discrimination and bullying due to being fat. My family told me constantly that no one would ever love me unless I was thin. They meant well, but these has made me feel that they didn't love me either. I am happy and content some of the time. Much of the time, even when I'm happy, I am in physical pain due to anxiety. The world is an amazing place. It is also a scary place. When I am feeling anxious or depressed, I say to myself, I can do this. I can get out of bed and have breakfast. I can tell my story. I can help others feel better too. I can be loved. And that helps me see that I have been doing this for years and I am loved. More importantly, I love myself enough to trust that I will continue to survive emotional pain. Rest, swimming and meditation are also important to me. To me, resilience is also about giving myself permission to not be well. Hence, I would like to share this quote from a poem I copied when I was 17. It is written in Spanish by Juan Ramón Jiménez and roughly translates to "To provide relief to the griefs that break my brow and my soul, I have been looking at the moon through delicate acacias." I hope this podcast can provide relief to your griefs as it does to mine.

I am super excited to welcome Angela Morrison today. The title of her book "Coming out of a dark place" inspired this episode. And I actually have your book today, Angela. Just to get us started, would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?

Angela: Hello, thank you Ninna for inviting me to your podcast today and as she said my name is Angela. I'm a nurse by profession and I'm still doing work. I work part-time as a free-up nurse and writing has always been my passion, from youngster. So during the Covid I decided that I was going through a lot because I used to work lots of nights, years of nights shift and during the Covid I decided that the things has been happening mentally, physically, emotionally and medically. Give me the drive to write my book. That wasn't my first book, my first book was a different title.

Ninna: Actually it's really interesting because as a nurse I think that's a profession that's so tough. Where actually these ideas that you need to be resilient, you're dealing with pain, so often aren't you?

Angela: Yes and I think for me my worst, the worst part of my nursing was during the Covid. I've never felt so stressed, depressed, anxious and it was really turbulent with one of the worst times of my life and I would really never like that to happen again. You go to work, you don't know what will happen, you hear your colleague dying, patient dying and you just don't know what to do and you know when you get home you just really feel nervous, you have to wear your mask with your family. The patients, they are relying on you, they are relying on you for everything and what can you say to them? The first part of the Covid was really stressful but as a nurse you try to comfort them, you try to make sure all your patients are... your colleagues because of the staff to they come into you, you have to work together as a team and that was really for me the worst thing but I love my profession, I love my nursing, I love I love at the end of the day the patient look at you and they say thank you. The admiration for everything nurses and everyone in health professions. Yeah, definitely. D id during the pandemic and do all the time.

Ninna: We will talk about issues with healthcare because of the stories we share and we'll talk about that in a minute. Just the work, day on, day on, in being there even when the system is breaking is amazing.

Angela: Yeah, it is, it is because you sometimes you have nothing to work with, but you have to. The patient that they rely on you, you can't say to them you know you just have to do what you can you just have to make sure they're comfortable.

Ninna: And in your book, you tell us something about your story and I know you've written other books, but I picked this one because I love the title. Can I read a little bit.

Angela: Yeah.

Ninna: It says: "One evening it was around 5.45 pm, I was getting ready for work, I started working at 7 pm. While sitting on the bed getting ready, I realised that my trouser waist was tight. I was at a little concerned, my waist was size 22, how could that be tight? I thought. Probably it was because I just returned from my wonderful holiday in Jamaica and after eating all those nice exotic foods, not to mention tasty patties, I thought I'd gain some weight, however not too worry. I had a size 24 which I was going to take to the tailor to reduce to size 22 so I just put on the size 24 and if it fit comfortably. I was not happy, but what could I do, I had to go to work. I sat on the bed staring in the mirror, looking at my size and hated the image that was looking back at me." So, what do you think about that?

Angela: Um right, I think, I think sometimes when you look of yourself, you're looking at the mirror, you realise that, oh my god, what is happening to me? And for me is not just the weight was affecting me but physically, not else, um yeah, my health was um because the GP say it, HbA1c going up, cholesterol is going up and I was getting steroid injections on both knees. And it was really, really stressful for me because I think I felt, I don't want to be a diabetic and um all those issues that really, that are in the family, but my mum is slightly diabetic but it's from, you know, ages is controlled but for me at that time, when I think of that, I put it aside because of what was happening to my son, so you know, you just get up, it's okay then, I have to go to work. Yes, you look for it for 10 minutes, you feel sorry for yourself, sorry for yourself for 10 minutes and then I say okay then, I've another something else, I have to go to work, and you put that aside, and you go to work, you put 100%.

Ninna: And I see the issue with health because obviously carrying more weight, particularly with your knees would be harder, physically, on our legs, so that's a completely fair point. I think what I worry about everyone is this idea that we are not worth being because we can be... we are fat or we were fat. And I think that's not where you were coming from at all.

Angela: Because I think I realise that it's because of my health, and my weight, it was affected my health and then when you work nights, it's not just that. Because, as I said, I can, before that I was, you know, if you put on weight, but it's what you eat and I realise when you wear it night, I have to eat to keep awake, not because I'm hungry, and when that happens, you eat a lot of junk food, you eat crisp, sweet, chocolate, just to stay awake, so just imagine every night, five nights a week, every night, every month, a year, if you keep doing that, t's not really affecting you, mentally, everything's affecting you, so you have to stop and say on myself: no, I can't do this. You go to get Lucozade, every evening, the Lucozade, crisps, chocolate, and I'm thinking, you're supposed to work but you are tired and want to sleep. You can't sleep, so if you get up and go down to the pantry, so you can have something, coffee, tea, sweets, biscuits, just to keep yourself awake, and that sort of thing.

Ninna: Yeah, and working nights must and impact on your mental health, you know, as well.

Angela: And it does.

Ninna: I mean, that basically goes like me being younger and worrying about the kind of food I eat and sometimes even hiding, food in the car, because I didn't want my family to see what I was eating, now I'm like much more relaxed about it, but again, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care about the quality of the food we eat, so I wouldn't worry so much about the weight itself, except in your case I understand because of the knee pain. But I agree with you, there are certain things about... that are healthy behaviours that we can all do, and it doesn't matter how big or small we are, so moving a bit more and, I know, choosing to eat nutritious food sometimes, and obviously it's a balance. It's a balance.

Angela: It's not stopping eating, it's a balance, because if it's affecting me, it's okay, then let me cut that out, I've found it, you know, in the middle of chocolate, our, of course, you can have it chocolate, because I'm not working night, I'm not having every night, and three, four times the night, you know, that's the difference.

Ninna: And I think with every kind of change we want to make, it doesn't need to be weight, it can be anything, like any habit, change, or any change in your lifes, if it's coming from a place of love, and I'm doing this because it's a good thing for me, and it's something that I want for myself, that's brilliant. I think the issue sometimes, from a mental health perspective is that a lot of these things we do from hatred to ourselves, and I don't see that in your story so much, or at all, but for a lot of people, when we say, I don't know, I want to be better at maths, because how can I be so bad at maths? I'm like, I'm a horrible human because I'm bad at maths, then that's very damaging, so in terms of depends on how and why we're doing this.

Angela: definitely, yeah.

Ninna: We started talking about the book, so tell me a little bit about "Coming out of a dark place".

Angela: Okay, "Coming out of a dark place", it's about my son, Dalmar, When we was 17, he wanted to be a professional footballer. He've been playing some other football and he was doing great, until while training, I realise that something is not right, keep up, and so everything is okay, mom, fine. Until one day I went to this room and his skin was shedding, I've never seen anything like that, and I thought it's something, now I realize that if you have any medical issue and you get too stressed out in place, it flare up, and it can manifest the more. When he was a child, he used to have just slightly eczema in his palm, back of his leg, no problem going to college, high school college, no problem, taking a school until the stress of the football and the team, and going every such and such, and I realize that you have to flare up, so it happened that... it's gradually, it's a lot, it's a lot, you have to read the book, like Ninna I read the book, to see this stages that he went through. Nothing else from the GP, the consultant, the cream, nothing, you just get to stay at home, in bed, not going out. So I was concerned for him. I'm thinking to myself, why not me, I'm an adult, you know, I'm a professional, I can't handle it, and why him?

Ninna: Yeah, it's not something like, again, in the book, you talk about how these last such for two and a half years, and even kind of... and I think I resonated with your story when we first met, I was saying we met by serendipity because actually, if you see the book cover, the same artist, Patricia Boncales, did my drawings for my website, so that's how when we met... I said: "Oh, I love your book cover, and I hadn't read the book yet, but it did resonate a lot because we have lovely children, who have allowed, given their permission to share their stories, and as you also know, because we've talked about this before, my son Victor has really struggled as well, different reasons, so he's just hopefully getting a diagnosis for ASD, so Autistic Spectrum Disorder, for those of you who are listening. He's not been able to go to school, he's been at home quite a lot of the time. And as a mom, going through a lot of children can be really tough.

Angela: Yes, definitely.

Ninna: And again, a paragraph from your book that I thought was really powerful from chapter 22 this time, you say, "One day, Dalmar asked me to wash his hair, due to his hands and the tenderness of his scalp, he was having great difficulty doing it, I tried to wash it, but his scalp was so flaky and tender, his hair was just falling out in chunks. How is it, mom?" he asked, "I just told him he was not too good."

So that other bit that came across to me was your constant protection of him and his mental health, while you were stuck in this, we can't do anything from his physical health, but you still wanted him to be as well as he could be.

Angela: Yes, because I know that if I say to him, it's coming out in chunks, he's going to get worse... stress more and depression, it will get worse. Because his skin already, don't have any protection barrier, and he's flared up a lot.., infections, we have to go to the... we went to A&E, walk-in centres, the GP, many, many times. And he replied on me, and he appreciates, and he knows that if I'm honest, when I say it, and I say, "That's not good, Dalmar, but I'll make sure," I said, "We will find something for it, I will, we will, and I spend every day, seven days of week, out at the chemists, online looking different things, I've spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds buying different products, I could never believe that, and I never give up, faith or hope, and he relied on me so much. Medication wasn't working, you just get where, and it just, it's like his hair, his face...

Ninna: Poor child, I mean...

Angela: Yes, yes, his skin was oozing, I had to change the linen, like, also come out in scales, and just all over. It was really, really sad for him, and in real sad, he said to me, "Mom, you don't know the half of what I was going through, you know, so I did ask his permission to do the book, and he said, yes, I said, I really want to, because so much youngster, not just young people, I don't go into medical... and if they don't have support and help."

Ninna: And I think that is a lot as well, I think... I mean, I love the NHS, and I think it's one of the best things we have in the UK, and it's so broken, so many of us are not receiving the support we need. You're talking about this months waiting for an appointment, and then I had that experience with my children too, where I've gone to the doctor, and I would like, there's nothing wrong with them, and you know there is something wrong with them, I mean this child is not going to school, there is something wrong with him or I, again, I don't know, because professional women, but again, I got a lot of this, you know... "but you're already doing the right thing", but that's not good enough, I'm clearly not coping, and I really need that additional support.

The other thing I really liked about reading your story, you said, one is that, and that, again, that strength and resilience that Dalmar had himself.

Angela: Definitely.

Ninna: Then it's the one you had to keep supporting him, but then that brings me further into, again, how we support each other, so in your case, your family, and you talk about your church being really important... or your faith, being very important in getting you out of that really dark place.

Angela: My faith, and also my husband, not forget he was really... without him, I don't think we could have done it, because he's always there, he's really there, like, I know that I drive, but there are times enough even, I don't know, what can I drive, but there can, there are times when, like, if you take that much of the walking centre, and even that coming out, he's staying in the car, so I have to go and sit in, and when his name calls I needs to go in the car and get him, and we were both waiting with him. And he needs that support to see the consultant, each time. I have to go, he needs us there.

Ninna: And you just use the word "resilience", which is the word I picked for this episode.

Angela: It's all Dalmar, hope and how he gets through this dark place he was into. If we buy a medication online, and they said, "let us try it", and once he tried it and he said, "mom, it's not working, but I'm going to try again, I'm going to try something different, mom, I'm going to try see, be a vegan, I'm going to cut out meat and see if it's that what's causint it, I'm going to try this also om, so you'll try all of them, working with me, working together, trying different things, to see what can come back with this, and when I say try certain things, you'll also try to, so we work together to get out of that dark place that he was into. Mentally, and make sure that you're okay, sometimes it kind of difficult to do, because it doesn't want anyone to seem like that, and he has friends that he can talk to, he said to me, you can trust in me, he said, "mom, think of all of that, you know, a couple of friends, really know, all that I was, you know, going through", and that is also important when you have one or two friends to talk to, that can help you.

Ninna: Yeah, and I think again with Victor, my son, I noticed this element of... at some point when he was not going to school, so it felt like maybe he's not making an effort, you know, and I was wondering, should I cut his internet, so he actually has pressure to go, and he told me "but mom, that's the only friends I talk to, the only people in my life that is not you, is through the internet", and he was right, and I think these friends were actually protective factors for your son as well.

Angela: Yeah, really tough, yeah, you know, you can't, you just, not, he said "yes mom, I have friends, you know, friend that I talked to, and they understand" what he was going through, because I taught him, you know, some time, I don't want to say anything to anyone or people, but I think, and that is why I said in part of my book, you know, not to keep... the last part of my book, I talk about stress, what is stress, the quote of stress, and because I have known people that's going through depression and family, and one of the things I didn't want for them, what I want to do is to go to an admitted kind of like tablet for depression and stress because to come in the land, but he was really, this is resilient, to do things, then to get out of that place.

Ninna: Let's go back to you to finalize our conversation. "This book is not just about my son's illness, and he's time in that dark place. But for me, I just want to share with people out there in our society today, that no matter what you're going through, there's always light at the end of the tunnel". When I read that, I was thinking about the power of stories, and the power of storytelling, as a way of connecting and of healing, and of healing shame as well. You haven't just done this book, you kept doing things, so if you want to tell us about what drives you?

Angela: I think from a young age I always love to do things and just to continue, and I think being my faith, it's just something to just keep telling me to do in it, just keep your passion, just want you to do it because I didn't even plan on doing a second book, when I did the first book. But when what happened to Dalmar, and did that second book, and then one night I was sleeping, and then it just like some, some vision, I would come to me and say, right, the children look about sun and moon. So my next book, the sun and moon, a children's book, it's amazing, and it's like, I just keep continuing, it just keep continuing.

Ninna: And you have a poems book as well?

Angela: Yeah, a poems book.

And I just say this, something happened, it's not real, a real thing, I've been in my family, one of my son, I made a burger and for two days he couldn't find his burger, and I said to him one day, is the case of the missing burger, with the bun, and he had a laugh, he was upset "mum, I can't find this burger", so I wrote a book.

Ninna: Is it the case of the missing burger?

Angela: It's the case of the missing burger with the bun, yeah, it's for children aged from 8, let me really go at the back, say, when Tommy's burger with the bun, mysterious disappears from the fridge, and no one in the household could give an account for his whereabouts, Tommy sprung into action and decided that he had to do some detective work, armed with his facts, his faithful assistant, Milo the cat, Tommy sets out on a mission to uncover the truth and find his missing burger with the bun. Where is this burger? How and why did it leave it's safe haven? This is a fascinating case, let's take the journey and find out what happened to Tommy's missing burger.

Ninna: Hahaha, I love it, case we actually very similar case, it could be the continuation in your next case, because we put some Oreo ice cream, you know, yeah. The boys, I mean boys, men, are certain that there were two boxes that came to the fridge, one box disappeared, no one's taken, no one's taken responsibility for it, so that could be your next case, the case of the Oreo ice cream.

Brilliant, so if anyone wanted to find your books, where can they find them?

Angela: Okay, all my books in Amazon under the name... the author is Angela May Morrison, or the title by the title.

Ninna: And are you an any social media?

Angela: Yes, I'm on TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Ninna:Are you on Instagram? I need to follow you on Instagram, because I'm not a TikTok so I can't do that.

What would we be your key message from our conversation today?

Angela: It's that, probably when it's out there, and if you feel down or depressed, don't just, it might be just for a while, because then it's a very human, and sometimes in that, I would cry, and it's good to cry, but just remember, you can just get up one day and just do something, talk to somebody, if you're a, be a favourite, favourite poetry, a favourite movie, whatever, I think, family, friend to talk to. Try to, try to get someone, try to talk to someone, at all times, and it's okay to cry, it's okay to feel down, but just don't keep it by yourself.

Don't just lock away in your room, or, you know, I just don't want to share it, because if you get more, it will fix them more, and if you get, it will explode at one time. There are times when I said, "We are human beings, I'm think that way, cry, and it's good to cry, because when you cry sometime, you can just, by yourself, from me, cry so when I cry, I, I talk, talk to myself, I talk to the Lord, and I felt much better, if you are a friend that can talk to friends, or if you have your favourite movie, I feel like, book, you can just read it, and relax, and just think about it, and don't just sit down, and think, you know, yeah, we feel sorry for ourselves, it's okay, it just for a little while, and you can get to go to the okay, then, it's sometimes shining, not shining, not shining, more, and, yeah.

Ninna: And it can be that little thing. It doesn't need to, I think, we need to be compassionate to ourselves as well, find the people, the place where we will find that support, and being allowed to look back, we look back to do, because I think, at least to me, it can be really hard sometimes to ask for help, and that's been a learning process, and I think resilience, again, what I said from the beginning, or coming out of dark places has a lot to do with who we are, but it also has to do with our support systems the others, that they will never know that we need that support, if we don't ask for it.

Angela: That's true, definitely, because I said, especially when you come to teenage and young adult, it's very difficult, they said, I'm okay. And I think, for me, I'm a nurse, and I'm a parent, I'm very observant, I see, I'm talking, and I say, oh, you're not okay.

And, yeah, and I always say in my book, I'm here in the book, I say, don't keep it to themselves, they have the GP friend, family, reach out to all the people, and talk, and help. I think we need to be more helpful in society, to support you, not just for family and for neighbours, even neighbours, more supportive, and sometimes, strangers, it's okay.

Ninna: Thank you so, so much for your time, we too, lovely, lovely, thank you.

Everyone, you know how to get Angela's books and Angela's stories.

If you like this podcast, follow us on wherever you listen. I am Ninna Makrinov, I've recorded and edited of this episode, I look forward to you listening next time again. Find me on my website if you want to participate as a guest, or if you want to support this podcast, so we can take it even further.

Show Notes