GIULIA, 23 Freelancer

Please be aware that this interview may cause distress to some readers. If you experience distress then please seek assistance and lean on your support networks.

How are you feeling?

Good, nervous.

How would you identify yourself?

Fun, funny, generous, excited and energetic.

Describe your happiest state?

I just have a smile on my face, I want to hug everyone, I could jump up and down a bit, I need to be doing something I can’t be sitting down. I need to run around or leave the house, have a fast paced discussion with someone. Yes, I would definitely say I can’t be doing nothing.

Can you tell me about your journey with mental Health?

Mental Health as in mental state, I’d say I’m pretty stable. I do have a short fuse & I can have a lot of mood swings. Go from being happy to being upset quite quickly whether that’s because I’m stressed or because of the people I’m around. Genuinely I’d say I’m a pretty happy person. If anything, I stress myself out.

Do you have strategies to get out of that stressed & short-fused state?

I need to make sure there is no one around me or I will just snap at them. I’m not a nice person. I just direct the stress that I’m feeling towards them regardless of who it is, & if people try to help me, I need them to leave me alone, need them to let me deal with it. I’ll take myself away from the situation to make myself calm down, then when I’m feeling fine again then I can talk to people again. In terms of stress, I have a lot of work, I just need to sit there and focus on the work with no distractions, no one around me, make sure I don’t leave the house, get distracted by social things. If I haven’t finished what I need to do, I’ll still have that stress in the back of my mind. I’d still snap quickly and be aggressive towards other people.  

If you had to, pinpoint any activities that sets your mind at ease?

I love cooking, I feel creative, and I feel like I’m doing something. It’s all positive, your feeding people your feeding yourself. I think that food is such a positive thing. It’s a social thing, as much as you need it to nourish your body. Physically, cooking is fun, maybe not the cleaning up of pots and pans. I love that everyone has to eat, everyone can always have an opinion on whether they like the food or they don’t. Everyone pretty much knows how to cook, so it’s not complicated, but it’s something you can share with other people, as well. I would say, because I do a lot of art work, in terms of whether it calms me down. I genuinely wouldn’t do it if I’m stressed. I feel I need to already be in that stress free, peaceful state of mind to be able to pick up my paint brush, pencil or charcoal and put it on the paper. If I’m not calm, I will be doing aggressive hand movements, or I’m going to stuff something up and get even more frustrated with myself. With my art, I need to take my time with it. It’s not something I can just whip up quickly, if I have things to do, I won’t touch it. I’ll do it when I have me time.

When you picture the future, where do you see yourself?

I would like to not be living at home with my parents, as I currently am. I want to be quite independent and be able to pay for everything myself, support myself. I would love to have a full time job, doing something creative in the design world, as I’m a graphic designer. But not necessarily where I’m stuck behind a computer all day, I want to go outdoors and create something with my hands not just the use of the keyboard. I wanted to be an artist when I was finishing High School, but my parents were like “Okay let’s think rationally about this, you don’t want to be a starving artist. Maybe design is the way to go.” So I went with design, but I still do love the art side of it. I feel quite restricted by the computer and unfortunately with graphic design everything, is on the computer these days. Everything needs to be printed and mass produced. You need a website, that’s all done via the computer. You can still do stuff by hand and then it’s scanned in if you want that side of it as well. It would be great to be living and working in a little studio. Going to my office in a small creative team during the day and be able to go home to my studio at night and work on my own projects/site in inner city Melbourne. That would be lovely. 

Currently, what’s your biggest regret?

Obviously everyone has regrets, but in terms of biggest regret I guess, in general, I listen to a lot of people’s opinions around me. I’ll go from thinking one thing at the start, to talking to someone or two people or three people. Listening to their opinions about my situation, then changing my mind because of that. Whether it be my career, my love life, friendships, or family, in the end it comes down to what you want. It’s not what other people want for you, what they think is best, or what they don’t think you should be doing. I think that’s my issue, I need a lot of reassurance in terms of my actions. “What do you think about this? Should I do this?” If someone says “No, you shouldn’t”, I’ll say “Okay, no, I won’t do it”. Whereas, maybe I should have done it, maybe it would have been good for me. I’ve let other people influence me.

Do you feel you have the confidence to make big decisions without needing others?

I feel I am getting better in terms of the personal friendships, that side of things. I feel when you’re younger, friends have a big influence on your friendship circle and what not. What they think is acceptable, and what they think isn’t. As you get older, you come to make up your own mind. You and your friends don’t have to agree on the same thing, and that’s fine. I’m completely different from all my friends. I still love them, I still get on with them, and I wouldn’t want to lose them despite our difference in opinions. At the moment, because I have concerns about my career or lack of career, I have people, for example my friends and family, saying to me “Well you should be doing this,” because this is what you studied for and ultimately should end up doing, then I may have ideas that are completely contradictory to that. I feel what I want to do isn’t what I should be doing because of what other people tell me. In applying for jobs, I do take into consideration other people’s opinions because a job isn’t something you take lightly. I’m not talking working in a café or working retail in a shop. I’m talking going and getting a proper office job that you want to get a reference from, build your career from. I definitely would say to someone “What do you think of this job? Is it worth applying for?” At the same time, I have to think of what I want, not what everyone else wants. That is an issue for me at the moment, not everyone agrees with what I should be doing, I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time. It’s such a big thing, everyone needs to make money, and I can’t be in hospitality for the rest of my life I’ll go insane.

Do you think that pressure to get the perfect job, has mental repercussions?

Definitely, 100%. It makes you think that you’re not succeeding. You’re not doing what’s expected of you, you’re doing something wrong. I don’t think that’s something you should say to someone, at all. I’m not a bad person, I don’t get myself into trouble, I still have a job. It might just not be the job that I’m supposed to have, or that people think I’m supposed to have. At the end of the day, I’m only 22 years old, I think that each person, on average, will have a career change seven times in their life. I believe there is a lot of pressure on people in their twenties to have it all figured out, and you know what, no one has it figured out. Everybody is just as lost as the next person. You go to talk to someone about it and they go “I feel the exact same way”. Whether it’s because everything is online these days, there is a lack of jobs out there, everything is so competitive. It goes up on SEEK, and you have 1000 people applying for it, so that’s not a good gage on whether you’re good or not. My parents’ generation, you get a job through someone you know, and because they know your family you’ll be a trusted worker. It’s not like that anymore. It’s all very competitive and there’s not enough jobs for the amount of people applying for them.

Do you start to doubt yourself about whether you can handle it all?

For sure, even throughout Uni. Design is not like Maths, there’s no right there’s no wrong. It’s all based on opinion, and I hate that. I loved maths for the fact that you turn to the end of the textbook and there’s a right and wrong answer. If it’s wrong, you know why you did it wrong. Design’s not like that. Someone can look at your work and say “That’s absolute shit”, or someone can say, “I absolutely love that”. That’s where I get influenced by other people. If someone turns around to me and said I don’t like something I take that to heart whereas in actual fact that’s just one project. You could do a thousand projects in your whole life. My confidence levels definitely drop and because you start to apply for all these jobs, and you don’t hear back from them. You can’t harass them over the phone, “Do you want me? Did I get it?” You can’t do that, there’s a difference between putting yourself out there, and being needy and annoying. When you don’t hear back from the jobs, you do get disheartened. With my field, you have to make a portfolio, you have your resume and with all jobs you have to write a cover letter. You could spend half a day applying for one job and you put all this time and effort for them to not even give you a response not even an “I’m sorry, you were unsuccessful in the job”. It’s definitely disheartening, how much longer am I going to have to spend on this before I do get a job. How many more days am I going to put into this? Then you think, maybe I should stick to hospitality because I can make money, you put in the hard hours, you work, you get the cash. It’s very tedious. You hear of everyone our age struggling to find jobs in the field they want.

In regards to mental health, do you think we have more resources available now compared to 10 years ago?

Yes, definitely. I think everyone is a lot more aware of it, and it is a lot more accepted. Whereas, I think people in the past would address it with comments like, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself”; “Stop sulking”; “Stop this, stop that.” There was a lot of negativity towards it, so you didn’t get the help that you needed because it wasn’t acknowledged. Whereas now, it is acknowledged as an illness, and there is a lot of help for people out there. There is a lot of different outlets, if someone doesn’t feel comfortable talking in person, you can go online, there’s numbers you can call. I definitely feel like it’s a lot better these days. At the same time, with the internet, people can feel even more lost because there’s so many different avenues. You’re blasted with a lot more information. There’s a lot more factors that can impact you negatively, as well as positively. Genuinely, as a whole I think it’s more recognised, there is a lot more help out there, there is more funding going into it, whereas in the past it wasn’t considered a thing. I definitely am quite close with my friends and family and I know that if I was having any issue, I could pick up the phone or text someone. I could call them and say “Hey what’s up? Can we chat?” “Sure, what’s going on?” I’m definitely very lucky in that sense, because I know not a lot of people have that.

In terms of society, what more can we be doing for mental Health?

I haven’t really looked into as much as I don’t suffer from mental Illness, myself. Providing funding for awareness, for those people who are suffering to be able to say, “Hey, I am going through this too”, and not feel ashamed of it, or have to hide it. I think that’s extremely detrimental to their health. I feel like that’s what can make them feel worse about themselves. To break that cycle and be able to say “Hey, you’re not the only one, other people are going through this as well” Whether that’s through more ads on TV or more interviews with celebrities. Figures in the limelight who are going through the same thing. You hear about it, celebrities suffering, but only after they committed suicide. You rarely hear them coming forward and saying “Hey, I’m going through this.” People you watch on the TV, hear on the radio or in the music world it makes other people feel okay for those suffering with mental illness. Honestly, I think awareness is key.

Do you love yourself & would you be in a relationship with yourself?

Yes, I’d say I do. I think I am a good person. I think I would be friends with myself, obviously everyone has faults, I have many. I’m not disappointed in myself, I’m not angry at myself for anything. I always try to look out for others. I guess I do love myself. I think I would make a good partner. I strive to make the other person happy, and by making someone else happy, you make yourself happy. I’m not the kind of person in a relationship where I just want to take, or I want them to do everything for me, I believe it should be equal. You should be there to lift someone when they are feeling down, just be able to hang out with someone, and have a good day. If I could do that to myself, then I would be happy.

Do you have a quote that helps you through bad times?

No quote, more feel good songs. If I’m in a bad mood, ‘Walking on Sunshine’. You play that, and I’m instantly happy, I’m tapping my feet and dancing around the room. I think music has a lot of power over someone’s mental state. I’m not a fan of death metal myself, and if I listen to that myself, I’d feel angry and almost anxious and on edge. Whereas, you listen to classic music you may feel calmer or you listen to something with a funky beat you may feel like this is fun. Music definitely puts me in different moods.

How are you feeling?

Good, not so nervous. Questions are not too hard; I guess it’s just like chatting. It helps that I know you and you won’t judge me for what I’m saying. If I didn’t know them and they were interviewing me, I guess it would be different, but I definitely feel comfortable.