Jill Stark: learning from anxiety and ditching idealised happiness

- jill now Photo: Julian Meehan Photography

Back in 2014, Scottish-Australian journalist Jill Stark seemed to be living the dream – she had a bestselling memoir (High Sobriety: My Year Without Booze), a good job and "giddy" love life. Then a violent panic attack put her on the floor of a newsroom.

In her new book Happily Never After, Stark writes about what she learned about anxiety and true happiness while rebuilding her life.

In 2014, Stark was 38 and had struggled for years with anxiety and depression, but this new intense anxiety came as a shock when she had in her life everything that she'd been told she needed to be happy.

"When all of those things came to me, I was left feeling quite empty and lost … There was this real sense of loss and longing because I felt like something was missing."

With a lot of help from a psychologist, Stark investigated the roots of her constant quest for external validation and the ideal of happiness.

She came to realise that the lifelong sense of "being broken" she'd carried through life had its origins further back than her teen years when she experienced intense bullying.

On the surface, Stark's was a happy childhood, she says, with a nice comfortable home and loving parents –  but she also had an older brother who was seriously unwell for the first six years of his life, and as a result, her parents were often away at the hospital and distracted.

She doesn't have memories of feeling neglected as a child but a sense of abandonment followed her into her adult life.

"Although my parents were physically there, they were so distracted – as you'd imagine when they had a seriously sick child."

Jill Stark recommends people check out the YouTube video of Dr Edward Tronick's Still Face Experiment which illustrates the effects on babies of perceived emotional absence:

Stark says that her parents expressed their love for her by expressing a desire to see her happy: "I was taught when I was little that the main goal is to be happy."

But as a naturally fretful child, when she didn't feel happy she assumed she must be doing life wrong.

We live in a "very frantic, always-on always-connected world" and social media can help people connect but also exacerbate anxiety, Stark says.

While recovering from the breakdown, she completely took herself off social media – a world where "everyone seemed to be so together and everyone seemed to belong and be so happy". 

When she was still miserable, Stark says she did fall victim to posting a beach photo suggesting the opposite, but she now tries to project an honest image of her life.

 

 

 

 

 

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I first posted this picture in 2014 with the caption #therapy 🙏🏻 This carefully stage managed shot was an attempt to paint a tranquil picture of a woman in control and flawlessly coping with life’s challenges. In reality, I was falling apart, struggling with crippling anxiety that left me unable to work for almost five months and pushed me to a place so dark I nearly didn’t survive. Today on World Mental Health Day, I’m reflecting on how far I’ve come in four years. I have clawed my way back to a life that is wholehearted and honest and underpinned by a deep well of resilience that continues to strengthen me and my relationships. It doesn’t mean that I don’t ever struggle. I do. A lot. But these days, I try to avoid the fairytale filter that airbrushes out flaws and failings, and instead I wear my scars on the outside – embracing them for making me complex and unique, as all humans are. But I am also acutely aware that I am very lucky. So many people are no longer here because the help they needed wasn’t there when they reached out for it. Many simply couldn’t afford their mental illness. Days like today are great for shining a spotlight on mental health. But talking is not enough. Without major investment in research and treatment we will continue to lose people. We have the highest youth suicide rate in a decade. We should be outraged by this today and every day. This is a national emergency and it will take courage, and bipartisan political will to turn it around. So as we continue to knock down stigma and talk about our vulnerability, let’s also demand more from our leaders than cheap slogans. Emotional pain is real and it can kill. It’s time it was treated with the urgency it deserves. #worldmentalhealthday #mentalhealth #anxiety #depression #demandmore #suicideprevention

A post shared by Jill Stark (@starkersj) on Oct 9, 2018 at 5:35pm PDT

Stark still battles anxiety, but understanding where it comes from helps her combat it, she says.

Also, she has help from a "very good" psychologist, meditation most days (via the free app Calm), and exercise most days.

Self-compassion is also key, she says.

She still has an inner critic – which she describes as a cross between Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Regina George from Mean Girls – telling her all the ways in which she's failing in a very loud unpleasant voice, but now she refuses to be bullied.

"I've become more friendly with Regina and don't necessarily buy into the many lies she tells me."