Welcome to the Big Feels Club

Getting help costs way too much, and I don’t just mean money. Let’s change that.

Graham Panther
Jul 22, 2017 · 3 min read

I’ve worked in mental health for over a decade now — in support roles, in policy work — and I recently had an uncomfortable realisation.

Of all the great services I’ve been lucky enough to help build, I myself wouldn’t go to a single one if I needed help.

Shit! Why? Because even in the most welcoming, friendly services — there’s an unspoken cost to getting help. I’m not just talking about money. I’m talking about the cost to your sense of self.

Because here’s the thing, we still make people feel like shit for feeling like shit. And that’s not just stigma, it’s the whole way that we think about this stuff as a society. It’s all about what’s wrong with people.

I’ve picked up a few diagnoses in my time, and tried a lot of treatments. Some helped, some made things a lot worse. The thing is, the mental health system didn’t just ask me to swallow a pill. It asked me to swallow a whole way of seeing myself: as a problem to be fixed.

The language of mental health can make it hard to hear yourself think, or to see yourself as more than a set of symptoms. And that can leave you feeling really, really stuck.

This isn’t any one person’s fault. There’s a lot of compassion in this broken system, and a will to do better. It’s just so hard to change things.

Mental health workers have a tough gig after all. You go to them at your absolute worst, desperate for something they almost definitely can’t give you: answers. Answers to the biggest questions our little minds can dream up. What do these experiences mean? And why are they happening to me?

What changed my life wasn’t finding answers, it was finding other people asking the very same questions. It was FINDING. MY. TRIBE. And sharing different ways of thinking about this stuff too — cos there are many! Existential therapy, Intentional Peer Support, human potential, you name it. Many of which have a much more optimistic view of the value of human distress as part of a good life.

I want to make it much easier for people to find their tribe. I want people to have access to more ways of thinking about their big, uncomfortable feelings, so they can find what works for them. I want to create a resource that I’d actually want to use!

So, drum roll, here’s what we’ve been working on. Entering the world on shaky little legs, with a few little bets on the go: The Big Feels Club.

Right now it’s mostly online — in your inbox in fact. Click here to sign up for our newsletter and you’ll get a fortnightly dose of new ways to think about about feelings, crisis and distress.

We’ve also got some IRL events and other experiments happening in Melbourne, and a few other places in NZ and Oz later in the year. They’ll be places you can meet fellow travellers, and dive into the existential goo with us.

If you want to stay in the loop, or you just like the idea — sign up, and tell your friends!

Graham Panther

Written by

Mental health advocate/consultant in Straya and Aotearoa. Live-in dog enthusiast. Co-founder http://bigfeels.club

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