Seeing Her Ghosts

Faye Moorhouse, illustrator

I have anxiety. More specifically social anxiety. I was born shy, and I hated going to school — in fact, I hardly ever went. I hated going out with friends; I would cry and my mum would make up excuses so I didn’t have to go. Now I have to make up my own excuses to avoid going out. And I’m running out of excuses. I’d rather tear off my own fingernails than go to the pub, or a wedding, or a party. Sometimes I have to go out: birthdays, special occasions, etc. I beat myself up so much for not wanting to go, not being normal. The price I pay for it is painful.

I spend days, weeks beforehand worrying, catastrophizing, running through all the possible awkward scenarios. I become hyperaware and paranoid and struggle to think of things to talk about, and then afterward I spend days overthinking, analyzing, and worrying about it. Medication and talking therapies have helped somewhat, but I still struggle. It doesn’t get better with age or the more I expose myself to social situations. And it is a really difficult one for other people to understand. I have a dog. When I’m with him, I don’t have anxiety. If I walk down the street or go to the pub with Bear, I feel calm and free. If I don’t have him with me, I go back to being anxious. The problem is, Bear hates busy, social things, too: he barks, pulls on his lead, and won’t sit still. I like to think he’s just excited, but maybe he’s anxious too. Did I make him anxious? Can dogs even have social anxiety? There we go again, worrying.

Black Dog, 2016.

Sophia Weisstub, interdisciplinary artist

Both my parents are psychiatrists and analysts, so I grew up relating to and aware of feelings, thoughts. The existence of the unconscious was real and present. I myself experienced psychic pain; I suffered from OCD from a young age and later, in adolescence, depression. The depths and the experience itself remain painful and frightening. They will always be a part of me.

Heart Hug, 2016.

Marine Fisch, mixed-media artist

Maybe I was too young, maybe it was already in the making … But since then, I’ve always had to deal with this melancholia, with my hypersensibility — more or less, violently. In my teenage years, I had eating disorders. I tried to fill my body. Then I tried to be a bird. I also used to draw on my body, hypnotized by the blood. Above all, I was ashamed. I tried to hide who I was.

I don’t know how or why, but when I was most deeply lost in the darkest spot of my mind, I began to speak. For the very first time, I expressed myself. And step by step, I accepted my being. I know it’s clichéd, but I believe that art — my art — saved me. Obviously, periodically [my struggle] comes up to the surface, but today I manage. And I try every day to use this sensibility to feel the world. In his very entire poetry.

Illegible, 2016. 

Jessica Scheurer, graphic designer and illustrator

I’m anxious. About almost everything, every single day. Today is no exception: it’s here and now, writing these few lines. Tomorrow, it will be playing piano in front of a tiny audience. The next day, it will be facing my colleagues at work, feeling like a fraud, or on a date, feeling useless. It’s as if my entire life is happening on a stage. I have to perform day in and day out. It’s a premiere every day, and I always want to be at my best. And all the time, I don’t want to be there, in the spotlight.

My mind repeats the most vile things about myself as I go about performing, and I’m often unsure about the script. I’m sweating until I’m soaked and cold. I’d often like to shut myself off, but I can never seem to find the switch. Sleep gives me some respite after my worst appearances. I’d be so exhausted anyway after an entire day’s worth of acting my own part, that I’d let sleep overcome me like my savior. A friendly, welcoming fog, all my thoughts are still there, but out of sight and sound until dawn. Curtain drops, at last.

Recently, I’ve come to find a strategy that helps me a little with my reckless thoughts: I listen to a lot of podcasts. It gives me a break from listening to my own mind driving me into dead ends. It also means I get to be inspired by others and learn new positive-thought patterns and tricks. Because I do know what it feels like to be relaxed, to feel like my mind and body are connected and in sync with the universe, my goal will always be to figure out how to reach — or, better yet, stay in — that mental space, leaving all my nerves at bay. In the meantime, I’m training my brain, like any other muscle, a little at a time, one day at a time.

Brain, 2015.

Marta Claret, artist

In my experience, one of the most difficult aspects of depression is to try to explain to others what is happening to me. This is one of the aspects of my illness that I find most difficult: the isolation that you feel because you just can’t put into words what is happening to you. Something similar happens to Kirsten’s mother when she says: “I still have a great pain in me. I don’t know what it is …” Those words accompany one of her drawings [from which this sculpture is based] because they best express her pain and her anger. I’ve found a strong connection in that: our shared inability to put words to our pain.

Her Rage, 2016.

Roger Ballen, photographer

It is hard to explain or understand the complexity of the mind. I use photography as a tool to locate my core mind, my inner world. It is a very mysterious, enigmatic place that defies words and cannot be defined exactly. I now understand that I will never understand reality.

It has always been important for me to probe below the surface, to come into contact with the deeper elements of human consciousness.

There is never only one answer or one moment. Understanding the unconscious part of the mind is a very essential process in better understanding oneself. My photographs are psychological in nature, and the goal is to penetrate the viewer’s conscious mind and lodge itself in the subconscious. Hopefully, the end result will be greater self-awareness.

Replacement, 2010.