Hannah Murray - ‘Everything Fell Apart’

0:00Now I can understand all of this as undiagnosed bipolar. And I remember thinking as I was experiencing it, like, this is so amazing. Why have I ever taken drugs? This is so much better. And I just thought, this is it. This is the magic solution. This is the silver bullet. This is the thing that will fix me. And then everything fell apart. When the word sectioned was used, I just remember kind of thinking, that doesn't really make sense. That doesn't really fit in with what I understand is going on. This episode of How to Fail is brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day.

0:37This is the podcast that believes every time we fail, we also learn something about how to succeed better. Before we get into this episode, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation.

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1:34Join the Nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. Hannah Murray worked as an actor for over a decade and developed a reputation for tackling emotionally complex characters with great sensitivity from a young age. At 17, Murray starred as the self-destructive Cassie in E4's Skins. Later, she juggled an English degree at Cambridge University alongside playing Gilly, an abused wilding who births her father's child in HBO's Game of Thrones. Her film roles include Detroit, directed by Catherine Bigelow, in which she played a survivor of police abuse, and Charlie Says, where she portrayed a real-life Manson family member.

2:29When the physical and mental stress required from these roles began to take its toll, Murray sought treatment from a Reiki healer. From there, her life began to spiral as she became heavily involved with a healing organisation whose promises of real-life magic and enlightenment were increasingly seductive to a highly vulnerable Murray. She ended up being sectioned after a psychotic break and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now she has written her first book, The Make-Believe, a memoir of magic and madness, is a deeply personal account of these events, written with compulsive lyricism. It takes readers on a journey to the edges of reality, where magic seems possible and where the liminal space between what is real and what is imagined becomes ever more porous.

3:25It has already rightly been heaped with praise from, among others, Dolly Alderton and Sophie McIntosh. The events the book details, says Murray, were intensely challenging to live through. But, she adds, the process of writing them down was powerfully rewarding. Hannah Murray, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's my honour, having been lucky enough to read a proof copy of The Make-Believe. I concur with all of the praise that you have had. It is an astonishing book and one of the best memoirs I've ever read. I couldn't put it down. I felt so compelled to read every page.

4:07I think the gift you have with language to explore some things that are so difficult to explain is astonishing. And I appreciate that today we're going to be talking about a lot of really difficult stuff. And I wanted to start by saying that I acknowledge that. And I also want to thank you for the gift of your communicating it. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. That's all, it's all really wonderful to hear. And I think, yeah, I sort of felt like if you're going to go on How to Fail, you have to come with some real failures. I wanted to respect the format. The book in many ways is about things that felt like failures that I've managed to transform into something else over time, largely by writing about them.

4:53Well, I notice in that quote that I ended on, you said rewarding, but not healing. yeah there are certain words that I I I will use occasionally but I find healing is a tricky one for me I find gratitude is a tricky one for me because those words feel so strongly associated with that kind of spiritual wellness culture that I'm now pretty uh allergic to yes we'll get more into the meat of that but I was so struck reading your book and doing the research this interview how the acting roles that you had I mean they were never easy comic characters were they? Not really there was one I did a musical called God Help the Girl that was for me my character there are heavy parts of that film too but my character was just a sunny delight and it was the only time I really remember being like getting to be happy all day at work and how fun that was and otherwise yeah it was a lot of really difficult stuff to dig into I guess and also makes you I think question a bit like why am I always being chosen for these kinds of roles and why am I only being offered these kinds of roles and what does that say about me and then you know it was it was strange to start at quite a young age playing those very challenging characters.

6:20Yes that was going to be my question actually do you think you were drawn to those roles or do you think that casting directors were drawn to you? A bit of both but more the latter because there was definitely a point in my career around the time I sort of around the time I did Detroit before that I was sort of saying to my team I would really love to do a comedy because they sort of ask you like you know what do you want to do next I was like I would really love to do a comedy and they're like yep brilliant great and then they'd be like we've got this and obviously it's Catherine Bigelow and you of course you're going to say yes and I was I was always thrilled to get to play these roles and they were meaty and they were substantial and they were challenging but I think I had back to back I did four films in a row Detroit was the third of those four that were based on true events and those true events were extremely harrowing and I do think it had started to take its toll even before I did that movie and then that movie yeah set me on this path that um that really is what the book's about and I'm going to come on to filming Detroit in a second because that's how you open the book but just before we do so many people have such personal relationships with your work with Cassie from Skins with your role on Game of Thrones what's that like for you now now that being an actor for you is a thing of the past Yeah.

7:42Do you still get people having quite visceral reactions to you? And how can you handle that? It's something I do feel relatively disconnected from in that, like, people don't really come up to me in the street, recognise me anymore. And it happens occasionally. And when it does happen, it is clear that often that person has loved, whether it's Game of Thrones or Skins or both for a really long time and that it means an incredible amount to them um and I think for me it's always just felt quite surreal that I was in these shows that were so popular and meant so much to so many people because my perception of myself is only that I am me and I can't possibly be in a huge you know it's like you can't hold the two truths at once that you're in a TV show and that that TV show happens to be a huge cultural phenomenon.

8:39So I think I'm kind of constantly surprised and quite moved by how much those characters still mean to people. I said in the introduction that your book, The Make Believe, is written with compulsive lyricism and it was the closest thing that I could reach for because it's sort of poetic but pacey. It's so good. How did you go about learning how to write? You did an English degree at Cambridge but I don't know whether that's helpful or not it could be intimidating yeah I think I spent many years after doing my English degree desperately wanting to write and feeling so inhibited by the things I had learned about literature there and I think whenever I did sit down to try and write something whether that I you know I tried writing screenplays I tried writing short stories and novels and nothing would ever get very far because I would immediately put on my kind of analytical Cambridge brain and tear whatever I had written to pieces.

9:37And I think I had to kind of get a bit of distance from that undergraduate degree to really be able to write in a less inhibited way. How are you feeling about it being published? Mostly really, really excited. Like a little dose of terrified as well. And I think that's quite healthy. But I mean, yeah, I spent seven years writing it and to now be in this moment that it's a real book and it's about to be read by other people who I don't even know. Like, it feels phenomenally exciting. Before we get onto your failures, I wanted to go back to that scene that you opened the book with where you are filming Detroit.

10:22Yeah. And I think this displays the power of your writing because I have been lucky enough to interview a lot of actors, but I suppose I'd never really thought about the physical and emotional cost of constantly having to replay a scene for filming purposes. And you write about this particular scene very powerfully and the impact it has on your body and then how it ends up with you and the events that we're about to explore. Do you mind just telling that story for us? When the role I played in Detroit, you know, I was playing a real woman and the biggest sort of moment that happens to that character in that film is that she is sexually assaulted by a police officer.

11:06Her dress is ripped off. This happened during the night of the Alge's Motel murders during the Detroit uprising in 1967. And so to shoot the scene that you, my dress was ripped off me. But that doesn't just happen once. You do it again and again for multiple takes from different angles. I really didn't want to be distressed by that. I really didn't want to be traumatized by that because I was like, this isn't happening to me. It's not real. and the woman who I was playing was on set and it had really happened to her and I was very conscious of the difference between doing something for pretend and as your job and actually having you know lived through that experience but at the same time your your body doesn't necessarily know that it's fake your your brain knows that it's fake and then it just keeps happening and you have to kind of get your makeup retouched and then they put the dress back on you and I remember it was kind of sewn with like very loose thread so that it would rip off easily and it was just um yeah I just remember having very physical reactions to that that I could not shake and then I thought going to see an energy healer was a really good idea yeah in response to that and I could so relate to that feeling like a good idea as someone who also has dabbled in I've had Reiki yeah yeah and um I I think you do such a a good job of sort of describing each one of the steps which in isolation doesn't seem that big of a deal until suddenly you're in too deep let's get into it now yeah your your first failure and you preface this in such an eloquent email to me saying that you don't consider these failures you wouldn't consider them failures in anyone else no and you've reframed them but they felt like failures at the time very much so at the time yeah your first failure is failing to be happy all the time yes tell us about that it's specifically usually with being in your 20s isn't it yeah on the surface like everything was great and I had a very enviable successful life and career I had this kind of quite glamorous like probably slightly too much partying kind of lifestyle but I loved it but a lot of the time I was really miserable and I didn't feel like I had a right to be miserable ever and I thought if I was unhappy there was this constant sort of in a monologue of like you're so privileged what do you have to be sad about why can't you just be happy um that made the sadness only more extreme because I was then sort of beating myself up for it and I just think I sort of thought that happiness was something I had to figure out and achieve and arrive at and then I would be permanently happy and it was my fault that I couldn't find the kind of perfect recipe for that in my life and so it was always like well I need to exercise more I need to get up earlier and do more of a morning routine or I need to eat better or I need to quit smoking or I need to it was always like there was some solution that I thought would give me this state of constant perfect happiness which really no one is ever going to be in all the time but I thought it was my kind of duty to achieve that and I thought it was fully my responsibility yeah and then spirituality and meditation was something I kind of hadn't tried yet and so started exploring that as maybe that's the thing that's missing and then started to go down a bit of a rabbit hole that then quickly fell all the way down into a quite extreme obsession with that sort of world.

15:02Before we get on to that part, which is a major part, I want to ask you a bit about the tenor of your unhappiness. Yeah. You write very movingly in the book about knowing that your mother had five miscarriages before she had you. Yes. How much do you think that informed how you were feeling? I think it was a huge factor. I mean, the reason why I've written about that in the book is because it felt to me when I look back on my 20s, like that was hugely informing my understanding of my place in the world, I suppose. and it was something I wrestled with a bit about including in the book because I felt like maybe this is my mother's story but it also impacted me and my understanding of myself from quite early childhood and I had this feeling from quite a young age I think I had a kind of existential wrestling with what that meant that there were five pregnancies before me and so potentially I sort of interpreted that as five people who could have lived lives and I was the one that got born and so I felt this I sort of I think I describe in the book as survivor's guilt that I had to then sort of like atone for and that I had to live six lives worth of experience and I guess six lives worth of happiness too that it wasn't just enough to be alive I had to be wonderfully gloriously alive all the time and be making the most of every day and I did feel like I had to include it in the book as part of why I went down the path that I went down I'm glad you did and you express that so well alongside this feeling of unhappiness survivor's guilt like having to live the life of six you also describe moments of rapture what were they like absolutely incredible there were moments so many moments and they could be when I was working um and my life was kind of obviously fabulous and incredible and creatively fulfilling to be on set with these incredible actors and having these kind of strange glamorous experiences but there were also I could just be walking down the street and it would be raining and I'd be listening to music and I'd suddenly feel like being alive is the best thing in the world and I'm having the most like the best possible version you know when you've you're walking down the street you feel like you're in a movie yes that sort of feeling and I what was so frustrating was that I didn't know I couldn't control when that feeling came and went which now I can understand all of this as undiagnosed bipolar but I didn't have that diagnosis I didn't have that information about the way my emotional and mental landscape was operating and so I felt like I should be able to feel like that all the time that feeling is like what I want all the time and again that's not sustainable or realistic but um I was always chasing after that kind of that kind of magic I suppose yes and then I remember a therapist saying to me when I was really depressed she was like well what happened before you got really depressed and I was like well I felt incredible everything was amazing I was on top of the world and she said it's like you float up into the sky when you're that happy and so when you get knocked back down you fall even further and there was a very yeah I'd say very kind of ungrounded unrooted nature to how I moved through the world I suppose.

18:56Yes you knew that these moments of rapture were available and that sense of wanting to make them consistent yes and the fact that they weren't consistent was somehow your fault yes yes so you're now filming Detroit you have this re-traumatizing really experience of filming this scene again and again and again and someone recommends a Reiki healer you go along and you have a great experience oh the best I mean I thought it was in a life that had been filled with a lot of really great experiences I would have I left that thinking this is the best thing I've ever experienced and this is the best day of my life and um and I just wanted more and more of that feeling which was a very literal kind of magical invisible force moving my body like a thing that I still can't quite comprehend how that could have felt so real and I remember thinking as I was experiencing it like this is so amazing why have I ever taken drugs this is so much better and I just thought this is it this is the magic solution this is a silver bullet this is the thing that will fix me um forever and now I will be able to be happy always and there were further courses to take and there were more healings to get and there was a wonderful kind of ever-expanding path that I could follow um through the organization this healer was part of and so I started following very diligently the sort of the path and the instructions and took another course and then took another course and then everything fell apart.

20:38And you were taking these courses back in the UK in London. Yeah. And you were paying for them. I was paying for them, yes. And the price increased kind of each level you progressed through. It got more expensive. Will you describe one of those courses? Yeah, so the first one I took was two days. It was in a basement room in a hotel, but a very beautiful basement room that was all blue, like blue carpet, blue wallpaper, blue chairs, and everything was kind of immersed in this very calm, gorgeous colour. We meditated a lot. That was a big part of it. And I had been doing some meditation on my own or sort of through like guided, like, you know, like meditation tracks and things like that.

21:25And I'd done a course in transcendental meditation. So I was kind of, I was like, oh, I know what meditation is like. And this was something else. It was like these deep kind of visionary journeys that took me into these. I saw fabulous things in my head. I meditated in a way I never could have imagined was really possible. you know I think we'd meditate for sort of like like that for sort of 45 minutes to an hour and you'd come out of it feeling like a completely altered person and then we were also learning rituals which we were supposed to perform twice a day every day which I did uh very diligently after I took that course and then there was also information about the world and the universe and And fun facts like dragons and unicorns are real.

22:17And didn't you know that they are? And I remember kind of having a certain degree of skepticism about some of it. But it just felt so incredible. It just felt so good. And I thought, well, maybe. I mean, I can sort of like, I think I thought I could sort of take what I needed from it and maybe figure out the other stuff I wasn't sure about later. and then just got kind of deeper and deeper and more and more immersed. Looking back on it now, and we're going to come on to what happened and how harmful it was for you. Looking back on it now, do you think it was cult-like? Yes, I think so. I think I'm very wary of that word in that I think, you know when people say in a film if you take your top off, you have to be very careful what you say for like three minutes afterwards because no one's going to be listening to you they're just going to be looking at your tits I did not know that that's really interesting yeah it's like if you're going to do a topless scene um no one will hear anything that comes out of your mouth kind of thing and I slightly think that c word can be similarly distracting in that I think it carries such weight and such power and I feel like it can slightly erase nuance.

23:42I chose to call them the organization in the book and that feels better to me to use that term because it allows for gray areas I suppose and I still can see why I was so seduced by it I suppose there was a time when I really judged myself for falling for it for want of a better word and now I'm like no you you thought it was wonderful it felt wonderful of course you were like all in it felt like everything I'd ever wanted was suddenly being handed to me I can totally understand by the way and that's that's a testament to the quality of your writing and your explanation of it, that there were some great things that came out of it.

24:29Like meditating for 45 minutes is probably a great thing. Not that I've ever done it, but it's a great thing to do, I hear. And then I can understand how the allure of that and that feeling and the connections you're making and the community you're forming with other people leads you somewhere where suddenly you've got a wand and you're chanting and you're believing in dragons and unicorns. Yeah. It makes complete sense. I'm glad it makes sense. It does. That was the big thing I wanted this book to be able to do was make sense of it, both for myself and then also for people that read it, that people could see why I took the steps that I didn't.

25:03And as you said earlier, I think that it is incremental, that each decision along the way doesn't seem that major and definitely doesn't seem like it's going to take you where I ended up. There is a character in the book called Steve who is the most senior person in this organization. Yes. And you develop a fixation on him. Would that be fair to say? Yes, a very intense fixation. There was a kind of incremental thing. And then there were certain moments where it was like a huge leap in my devotion and belief. and meeting him, which happened when, so I took this two-day course, then about five or six months later, I took a week-long course.

25:51And on the penultimate day of that course, I met Steve. He came to give a talk to the students. And then it was like a whole different ballgame because I already believed that magic was real. and then I met him and I was like oh this is what someone who is a magician is like and I said it's weird to think about that those that encounter with him because it was so it always it almost sounds cliche it was hard to write about without it sounding overblown because I just was like I've never met anyone this confident or this magnetic in my entire life. And that was the first time, and this is in the book that I thought, oh, maybe this is a cult, because I thought they have charismatic leaders.

26:49This man is incredibly charismatic. He's surrounded by all these women. He was something else. And I definitely developed very quickly a kind of intense, yeah, fixation or obsession with him, really wanted his approval his attention um and then quite quickly decided I was completely in love with him and we must be soulmates before we get on to your second quote-unquote failure yeah I wonder if you could talk to me a bit about your 20s more broadly because I wonder if part of you was also looking for um a community of like-minded people because you were already separate from your peers because of the life that you were living and the acting jobs that you got since you were a teenager was it difficult sometimes to connect with your contemporaries yes it was I mean I think I have like I have some really close friends from university who are still my friends and I have really good friends from the acting world but a lot of friends you make in film and tv can be quite fleeting transitory friendships and so I think that sense of community was something I was struggling to find and then I think also yeah there was a a way in which my life was very unusual to a lot of my friends from university who would like doctors and lawyers and management consultants and various things and worked in marketing and whatever and they would kind of be quite baffled by my life and um and I was often I was unemployed for long periods of time kind of waiting for the next job and I think they found that very hard to wrap their head around and they was kind of like be like well what do you do I don't understand what do you do all day and I was like I don't really know it's that interesting feeling that happened to me very much when I got the part in skins of you have been chosen and you are special and that we have seen something in you that means we are picking you over everyone else and that's an incredible feeling but it can also be kind of isolating you know it's exciting to be special and chosen and it's isolating to be special and chosen and then also you want to keep being chosen and then a lot of the time you're not and so it was again I mean I the highs and lows I was experiencing anyway um in terms of my mental health in terms of my kind of search for happiness I think was definitely exacerbated by working in that industry which is all highs and lows all the time.

29:28Fascinating this sense of specialness being attractive but also crushing that you had the specialness of being the child that your mother so desperately wanted the specialness of getting that part and skins the specialness of a Cambridge interview allotting you the position of chosen one to study that degree Yeah. And and now in this wellness organization, the specialness you hope of being chosen by Steve. Yes. So can I just ask you a final question on this? Yeah. About addiction. Yes. You you mentioned earlier that you liked to party. I did. Yes. Do you feel in some respects that the wellness experiences you were having?

30:11And I put that in quotation marks because it's not real wellness. yeah but were they a substitute for the partying and the drugs yeah I mean a thousand percent you know I had a very addictive relationship with various substances with you know alcohol cigarettes recreational drugs and then and I kind and I sometimes was like that's fine that's just who I am and I'm in my 20s and loads of my friends do all the same things and sometimes I was like desperate to give those things up and I just found that meditation spirituality and then particularly this organization was something else to get addicted to yes I thought it was a healthy addiction you know I thought it could only bring good things into my life but I think it was exactly the same kind of piece of me that was being activated um that just wanted kind of more and more and more of a rush of a high of a good feeling that was kind of made me very vulnerable to that.

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32:53And it's all happening now on the home of the NBA Finals. Don't miss it. June 3rd on ABC and the ESPN app. Good sleep is everything. That's why Oli's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-theanine for both kiddos and grownups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. Erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Oli's sleep solutions for the whole family at Oli.com. That's O-L-L-Y dot com. This search for that high leads us on to the second thing that we're going to talk about. which is being sectioned yes do you mind describing as you did in the book the breakdown that you had in in the cubicle in the hotel I can try I can try and give a yeah a reasonably short uh account of that so I on the final day of the course there was going to we were all going to be initiated at the sort of next level of the organization's structure and we were sort of getting ready for that and we were performing these healings on each other and and I just something was starting to really really not be right in my head and I was hearing voices I had this kind of darkness closing in at the corners of my vision I was it was really struggling to kind of feel present and because of the context it all felt you know like kind of a magical um spiritual experience but it was very very scary and I ended up going to the toilets in this basement of this hotel I think just to kind of get away from other people and kind of have a moment and then I didn't leave the cubicle for many hours my my sense of time was really not um clear by that point and I thought while I was in the cubicle uh that I was give it basically kind of like giving birth out of the top of my skull uh and I thought I was giving birth to a sort of new universe that would be completely a sort of paradise utopia various people tried to kind of talk to me through the door and then I asked for Steve to come and talk to me and he did he persuaded me to come out of the cubicle and then him and the teachers from the course performed an exorcism on me um which at the time I remember thinking was really hilarious and uh and I couldn't quite there were lots of layers to my understanding It's quite a difficult story to tell because of the state I was in.

35:46But I kind of thought, oh, you know, me and Steve are soulmates. We've saved the world. No one else can know. And so he has to pretend that I've been possessed and they're going to perform the exorcism to kind of cover up what's really happening. And then some paramedics came and took me to hospital. but I thought I was being taken to a palace where Steve was awaiting me and we would get married and become kind of, you know, king and queen of this new utopia. Now, when I look at it, that doesn't add up, but it felt so utterly real to me in those moments. When was your first understanding of the fact that you had been sectioned?

36:30There was a moment where I remember being told I was being sectioned. And I was in a place that looked like a hospital, smelled like a hospital. Everyone had NHS lanyards around their neck. I could kind of get these pieces of information, but it was all in a... I used all that information to support my own narrative. And so when they said, when the word sectioned was used, I just remember kind of thinking, that doesn't really make sense. That doesn't really fit in with what I understand is going on. So it's sort of, I sort of put it to one side. I was in hospital for three weeks and I'd say maybe about a week in, I kind of understood, oh, I'm actually in a psychiatric ward and I can't leave.

37:25But it wasn't until months later, really, that those delusions finally left me. It was just there was an understanding of this is the reality. I don't understand why this is happening, but this must well be part of the plan to save the universe and for me to end up with Steve, if that makes sense. It does. You were 27. I was 27. Yes. Were you scared? There were moments of these experiences that were absolutely terrifying. and there were moments of these experiences that were the most euphoric I have ever been in my entire life it's hard to describe to people how good it felt to feel that that euphoric that powerful that purposeful that kind of destined what was your experience of medication during these three weeks?

38:23So I was very resistant to it early on. In the first few days, I think there was a lot of spitting out pills and thinking people were trying to poison me. And I think I was probably quite heavily sedated at various points, but my memories are quite fragmented around that time. One day, and I don't know why, there was a voice in my head, which I thought was Steve's voice, which told me, it's fine, you can take the pills, it's safe to take the pills. And so I started taking them. And so gradually, once, you know, once I started taking quite a powerful antipsychotic, did start to regain some connection to reality.

39:05But it took a long time, yeah, to fully come back. the reason you told me that you have chosen to talk about this or part of the reason is because you felt so much shame over having been sectioned yeah could you explore that a little bit more with me yeah for sure when I you know was coming to terms with it later when I was kind of much more back in my sense of reality it felt like I had sort of failed at being an adult failed at being independent failed at I guess it felt like the mental health equivalent of going bankrupt or something if that makes sense like this idea that you had sort of gone the furthest you could go to the most the biggest extreme and you had been told you know you don't you're not functional that we have to we have to take extreme measures because you are so not functional and that was really um really difficult to come to terms with that I had gotten to that place and now I have so much more compassion for myself having gone through that and for and I think I'm really I said at the beginning I don't like the word gratitude but I am I am grateful for that experience because I think I think of myself at 25 26 and I was so obsessed with my career.

40:32I was so obsessed with my body and going to the gym and how I looked in the mirror and who wanted to fuck me or didn't want to fuck me and whether I was smoking five cigarettes a day or ten cigarettes a day. I felt like all my obsessions were quite trivial and superficial really in my mid-twenties. And then this thing happened that completely ripped me open, completely brought me to my knees and brought me into contact with other people who were having their lives ripped open and being brought to their knees and I just I feel like I'm a much more empathetic person because of it and a much more real person because of it and I also found like it was interesting when people came to visit me because my you know my parents visited me a lot my friends a lot of friends came to visit me in hospital and I could see their fear when they arrived usually and then I could see them over the course of their visit sort of relax and realize that other patients are just people they would sometimes have conversations with the other patients there was a kind of like I could see everyone kind of go like oh this is this is not some kind of nightmare community of people that aren't sort of safe to be around it was just like These are just people going through a really difficult time.

42:01And looking back on that shift that I saw in the people closest to me, their perception, as well as my own perception shifting, I find that quite beautiful, really. I find it staggeringly beautiful. And also because of what you were talking about, about being chosen and birthing this utopia in a way. Perhaps part of your purpose is to have made that so clear. that there is so much othering of things that we can't understand or feel fearful of. And actually, you've reminded these people of their own humanity and how we all exist on this spectrum. Yeah. That's the power of, that's the magic of what you're doing.

42:46Thank you. That's a really lovely perspective on it. And I do, it's something I think about sometimes, because the very first healing I was given, was I was told it would strip away everything that wasn't authentic to who I was and I was told it would connect me with my true purpose in life and I no longer believe in any of the magic of the organization or their beliefs but sometimes I look at what that healing set in motion and where I have ended up now because of it and I think well maybe it did connect me with a purpose and maybe it did strip away things that were not really authentic to who I was meant to be.

43:25The other ring is interesting as well, because we live in a culture. I mean, here we are on my podcast, House Fair Witch Talks, which has a lot of sort of therapy adjacent language to it. And how great that we can live in a culture where we are encouraged to talk about anxiety and things like that. However, I do think that if there is a negative to the overwhelm of that conversation it is that things that exist on a more extreme end of the spectrum get overlooked othered and underfunded yeah and i i just wondered what your take was on that on the kind of mental health language that is so current right now and in some instances quite adjacent to the wellness industry of it all yeah and like real serious clinical mental health issues whether it be bipolar disorder, living with schizophrenia, the impact that has on families, whether you think there's enough attention to pay to that.

44:24I completely, I think there isn't enough attention put on the more extreme end of the spectrum. I think there has been, if I'm honest, I can get quite angry a lot of the time about this. I hear so much, oh, we all need to talk about mental health more and everyone has mental health problems And it's OK if you need a mental health day because you're feeling anxious or you're feeling sad. And it's sort of like, OK, but what if I want to talk about when I was drinking my own urine on a psychiatric ward? And you can't really say that at a dinner party. And I think it's, I just feel like there is still a big taboo around psychosis, bipolar, schizophrenia, other conditions that are less palatable and less kind of cozy and less solved by a hot bath or some mindfulness or some crystals or whatever your, you know, kind of solution or like talking therapies.

45:23Like, you know, I had a friend say to me once when I was struggling with a kind of minor manic episode and then going into a depression and he was like, well, we all have ups and downs. We do. Yeah. But, you know, I think it's just, yeah, I just I think there can be an erasure basically of these types of experiences that people still don't want to talk about, still don't want to look at. And, again, that are more common than we like to acknowledge, I think, a lot of the time. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them.