Speaker 1: The Zitim podcast network.
Speaker 2: So I started on the show. I was nineteen, she
Speaker 2: was sixteen, and I was basically the vehicle for any
Speaker 2: teen issue you could have playing a character five days
Speaker 2: a week and going where do you start? And where
Speaker 2: does she stop? And so yeah, I think that was
Speaker 2: probably the polarizing bit for me.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, here we are again.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to another episode of Hope is of the podcast,
Speaker 3: the podcast designed to help you feel a little less alone,
Speaker 3: a bit more inspired, and of course, as always a
Speaker 3: lot more hopeful. Now today's episode, we have an icon,
Speaker 3: a legend. I would go as far as say New
Speaker 3: Zealand Royalty Angela Bloomfield. You may have seen her on
Speaker 3: your screens growing up on Shortland Street. You may have
Speaker 3: seen her on such shows as Celebritish Treuter Island Dancing
Speaker 3: with the Stars, and as a matter of fact, on
Speaker 3: this podcast we both talk about our experiences on their
Speaker 3: kind of sharing.
Speaker 1: We both did those two shows.
Speaker 3: I didn't do Shortland Street obviously, but she did, and
Speaker 3: she talks about a whole bunch of different stuff, I guess,
Speaker 3: kind of living life in the public eye, but then
Speaker 3: also dealing with anxiety, panic attacks and doing that on
Speaker 3: set in front of a bunch of people, she talks
Speaker 3: of an experience that she had where she began to
Speaker 3: realize that this was more than just anxiety, that she
Speaker 3: was really getting pushed into the side of panic attacks.
Speaker 1: And not really knowing how to deal with that.
Speaker 3: Angela opens up about her divorce and her postpartum depression
Speaker 3: and everything that happened along those times.
Speaker 1: For her.
Speaker 3: It was a really difficult time that she managed to
Speaker 3: really fight through. She's got some beautiful moments, some beautiful
Speaker 3: realizations in this episode, and it's been such an honor
Speaker 3: to be able to sit with her and hear her
Speaker 3: story as someone that I grew up watching. I remember
Speaker 3: watching her when I was younger on the TV, and
Speaker 3: to sit with her now and kind of hear her
Speaker 3: wisdom has been incredible. So I hope that you guys
Speaker 3: enjoy this episode. As always, If anything and here triggers you,
Speaker 3: please it's okay to take time, It's okay to talk
Speaker 3: to people, but other than their Angela's story is coming
Speaker 3: up right after this.
Speaker 1: Angela, Welcome to Hope It's All the podcast. First of all,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm great? Thank you for having me to meet.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited for you to be here.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm setting amongst New Zealand royalty right now.
Speaker 2: Really I do will skip it up and died. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: It used to be.
Speaker 3: No, you still are, like I just anyone who kind
Speaker 3: of has watched TV in the last twin When were
Speaker 3: you first.
Speaker 2: Cast on Shortland Street ninety two?
Speaker 1: That's before I was born.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a little bit older than you.
Speaker 1: Wow, so many mini years.
Speaker 2: Many years that you. I feel like that beginning a.
Speaker 3: Lot of people have just kind of grown up with you,
Speaker 3: which is Yeah, that's a vibey gear, yeah, which is amazing,
Speaker 3: and I want to I want to talk about that
Speaker 3: so in kind of that even just your hold journey
Speaker 3: with that, so you're there for such a long time.
Speaker 3: But before we do that, as I was kind of
Speaker 3: researching for this podcast, I realized we've got two exactly
Speaker 3: the same TV shows, reality TV shows that we're cloth done,
Speaker 3: Dancing with the Stars and Slebrity Treasure Island.
Speaker 2: This is correct.
Speaker 1: I've got to ask which one did you prefer.
Speaker 2: It's funny because so I did Dancing with the Stars
Speaker 2: like fifteen years ago, and then so when I reflect
Speaker 2: upon it. I'm like, I feel like I couldn't do
Speaker 2: that now because it's really rigorous, as you've experienced, and
Speaker 2: so I think I would probably right now do a
Speaker 2: Treasure Island again because I feel like it's not that
Speaker 2: whole performing live on a dance that you've taken a
Speaker 2: week to learn. Likes that's next level kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's amazing achievement stuff like really pat yourself on the
Speaker 2: back stuff, but it's it requires so much of you
Speaker 2: physically and mentally.
Speaker 3: I feel like people need to know like it's live,
Speaker 3: like it's as live as gets and I think people
Speaker 3: don't sometimes understand that. And I don't know about you,
Speaker 3: but like when you do the big like light the
Speaker 3: rehearsal right before the live show, and I feel like
Speaker 3: everything tends to go wrong there the amount of times
Speaker 3: that we caked lifts on my finale dance, we did
Speaker 3: the dirty dancing lift and in the rehearsal right before
Speaker 3: I went right over into the judges desk, like, did
Speaker 3: you have any incidences like in those rehearsals where you
Speaker 3: caked it?
Speaker 2: We didn't have. I didn't have anything like that, but
Speaker 2: I certainly had that feeling of like not maybe not
Speaker 2: quite heading it or still not being where I needed
Speaker 2: it to be. And then I don't drink coffee. And
Speaker 2: there was one night I know, I don't know how
Speaker 2: it got through life, but so there was one night,
Speaker 2: this is fifteen years ago, where I was feeling quite
Speaker 2: low in energy. So I had like a three month
Speaker 2: four month old baby when I did Dancing at the Stars,
Speaker 2: so she went from three months to six months over
Speaker 2: that time. And there was one weekend I was feeling
Speaker 2: real tired. It was a two dance show and I thought,
Speaker 2: I'm going to have a red bull. I don't drink
Speaker 2: coffee and I've never really can know, and I suddenly
Speaker 2: it was oh, I remember. I still feel like really
Speaker 2: angry at myself, but I did it because I got
Speaker 2: really floppy and I couldn't hit anything sharply and I
Speaker 2: knew it was the red bull. And that was the
Speaker 2: night I went home and it was just this whole
Speaker 2: kind of like, yeah, this whole kind of like why
Speaker 2: did I do that? I could have been so much better?
Speaker 1: Well, how far did you make it through?
Speaker 2: I was only not in two shows, so wow, it
Speaker 2: felt good?
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty far.
Speaker 2: But at that time it was an early days I
Speaker 2: got eliminated. It felt like the shortened street person was
Speaker 2: eliminated at the female was eliminated on the same show.
Speaker 2: I know that's controversial to say it's not actually about that,
Speaker 2: but it would just so happen, not Mariamah or people
Speaker 2: later on, but it was the same week. It was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we've got bums and seats, now you can go.
Speaker 1: It's so ruthers.
Speaker 3: When I was doing it, I genuinely can't comprehend how
Speaker 3: you did this with a three month old, Like I
Speaker 3: had no humans that I was looking after and I
Speaker 3: couldn't function, or.
Speaker 2: I had two humans I was talking after. One would
Speaker 2: just happen to be a little baby. I think for me,
Speaker 2: like if you know me, well, you know that I
Speaker 2: tend to pack it in, not intentionally, but like, well,
Speaker 2: this just seems to be the right time to do it.
Speaker 2: And when they asked me to do it, and my
Speaker 2: brain I went, oh, third season, such a synic, probably
Speaker 2: won't do more than four. I've got to do it now.
Speaker 2: There won't be another chart retrospect. I was so wrong,
Speaker 2: and so I just and I hadn't been on Telly
Speaker 2: for a couple of years, and I hadn't been working,
Speaker 2: I'd been a mum, and I think there was a
Speaker 2: piece of me that wanted to earn some money and
Speaker 2: have some worth in that space, and also just wanted
Speaker 2: to get back out there and do something that was
Speaker 2: me centric. But I don't want to boys who not
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: Not at all, do you.
Speaker 2: But for me, the contract was I'm a real contract person,
Speaker 2: and it basically said, we're in Wellington all weekend and
Speaker 2: through the course of the week, you need to do
Speaker 2: ten hours of dance training. And I was like, I
Speaker 2: can do that. I can do that with my babies.
Speaker 2: And then it was about the fifth show and I
Speaker 2: was talking to I think Lorraine Downs's partner, dance partner,
Speaker 2: and he was just like, I don't know how you're
Speaker 2: doing it, and I said, it is. We're all doing
Speaker 2: it the same way, aren't We's like two hours of
Speaker 2: dance a day and he was like what, and I
Speaker 2: was like, well, the contract like two hours of dance
Speaker 2: training a day was like on a lorrain and I
Speaker 2: are in the studio eight hours a day, six hours
Speaker 2: a day. And I went I went, well, I didn't
Speaker 2: kind of go, you're cheating, but in my brain it
Speaker 2: had never been suggested to me that we could dance
Speaker 2: more than ten hours, and I committed to ten hours
Speaker 2: a week and on a two dance week, that was
Speaker 2: not a lot of time for Johnny. And he didn't
Speaker 2: ever say to me, hey, have you got more hours
Speaker 2: than you? And I just cried and cried and cried,
Speaker 2: and I lost all well to live and went well
Speaker 2: if I know when you know, it was just and
Speaker 2: that was it. It just it just fell over. Oh.
Speaker 1: I we were doing like.
Speaker 3: We were in the studio up to ten hours a
Speaker 3: day for were eleven weeks straight. Didn't have a single
Speaker 3: day off because were you doing two shows or one show?
Speaker 2: We did one show?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we did the two So we were doing
Speaker 3: the Sunday Mondays and then yeah, Davi your dancing by
Speaker 3: like the Wednesday, and so we literally had no days off.
Speaker 1: It was crazy.
Speaker 3: And by the end of it, you're just like so
Speaker 3: exhausted and just so ready to be done.
Speaker 1: But I felt like I felt that same exhaustion.
Speaker 3: Ready to be done when I did Treasure Island as well,
Speaker 3: which was more recent for you.
Speaker 1: When did you do Treasure Island?
Speaker 2: I did Treasure Island in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Wow, Oh, so that would have been the COVID twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: No, so that's when we came out. It was the
Speaker 2: one out of the COVID. Oh yeah, so no, so
Speaker 2: we meant to do it twenty twenty and we did
Speaker 2: it twenty twenty one, right, so it got ditched and
Speaker 2: then reprised. And yeah, when I look back home, man,
Speaker 2: that was a whole different kind of broken. And it's
Speaker 2: for me, And it seems so basic to say out aloud.
Speaker 2: And I don't know why I didn't think of it
Speaker 2: as going to be the niggle point. But I think
Speaker 2: a lack of food, a lack of sleep, and a
Speaker 2: lack of connection to people that mean something to you,
Speaker 2: for me personally just derails me. And I didn't think
Speaker 2: about that as a thing. I was so obsessed with,
Speaker 2: you know, perception and people going they're going to try
Speaker 2: and bait you and turn you into this agitated person.
Speaker 2: I was like, no, I can, you know I can.
Speaker 2: And it just wasn't about that. It was stripping away
Speaker 2: basic need no food, no sleep, a real sense of
Speaker 2: like I'm having to survive and no person there that's
Speaker 2: like your person. Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It sounds like we had kind of similar Rish experiences
Speaker 3: with Treasure Island and then even kind of the aftermath.
Speaker 3: I was talking to a of mine this morning saying
Speaker 3: that I was about to interview and they were just like, man,
Speaker 3: I think she had a real rough time on the
Speaker 3: island of what that whatever they eat it was, which again,
Speaker 3: people do not comprehend that reality TV is not reality,
Speaker 3: Like there's so many things that can be edited and skewed,
Speaker 3: and like, I know that for me, a lot of
Speaker 3: the times the producers would really kind of try and
Speaker 3: pull out a story or be like, well, did you
Speaker 3: see those people like over there talking and when you're
Speaker 3: tired and you haven't eaten and all of that, you're like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, everyone hates me, Like I was, just
Speaker 3: it was it was so hard. Did you when when
Speaker 3: the show then came out, what was the response like,
Speaker 3: and how did you feel?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That's a whole different ballgame, isn't it. And and
Speaker 2: that's also the thing that I was very unprepared for.
Speaker 2: And that was the worst part of it because when
Speaker 2: I was we still call it the island, even though
Speaker 2: in nor the Island. When we were on the island,
Speaker 2: I thought I was pretty good at well not pretty good.
Speaker 2: It's my default. If there's a camera there, then we're working,
Speaker 2: you know, if there's a mic on me, then we're working.
Speaker 2: And as soon as they went I was in rest mode.
Speaker 2: So I think a lot of people were like, oh, wow,
Speaker 2: you really got into it. And I was like, when
Speaker 2: the camera was there, like when the camera's not there,
Speaker 2: I was just sitting there, you know, chilling, doing nothing.
Speaker 2: So I definitely gave good I'm here to play a
Speaker 2: game for you know, the show, But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: When it came to air, I was just I was
Speaker 2: really thrown by what other people had said about me,
Speaker 2: which I didn't expect to be thrown by and also
Speaker 2: didn't expect to have it said about me, and it
Speaker 2: felt so it felt so left of field because I
Speaker 2: couldn't see the person that they were seeing, and they
Speaker 2: almost had created this really competitive person. I was like,
Speaker 2: it's just not me. I'm just you've asked me to
Speaker 2: play a game. I'm here and I'm playing it when
Speaker 2: you were here filming. But that's the beginning and the
Speaker 2: end of it. And yeah, I think for me, I
Speaker 2: was started off with a whole lot of you know,
Speaker 2: Sports Stars was a very different sort of personality type
Speaker 2: to mine, and it was all and we got very
Speaker 2: quickly into what you're here to offer, what you bring,
Speaker 2: and it became really clear immediately that they felt I
Speaker 2: bought nothing because I didn't have any physical strength, and
Speaker 2: I was just like so thrown by, Oh, I'm in
Speaker 2: this space nothing that you see of value. And so
Speaker 2: it did take a good sort of eight days or
Speaker 2: something for them to be a team adjustment. And then
Speaker 2: I found people but were also not sports stars, that
Speaker 2: were just having fun and doing best thing ready for
Speaker 2: and which is something that actors do, like basically, you know,
Speaker 2: the best thing about your day or something that you learned,
Speaker 2: and I felt really comforted and that for me was
Speaker 2: where the fun happened. And watching it was exactly like that.
Speaker 2: So it started off being really hard to watch, and
Speaker 2: I literally would watch it with all my family and
Speaker 2: all my friends, so we'd all be watching it at
Speaker 2: the same time and in like a zoom so that
Speaker 2: in the ads we could mute it and they could
Speaker 2: sit there and I could debrief and they were going,
Speaker 2: no that read well and like because I just needed
Speaker 2: so much kind of off the ledge chat and I
Speaker 2: didn't think I thought I was stronger than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really, I mean I literally felt the same.
Speaker 3: Like watching I think what was really hard about something
Speaker 3: like that is one everything that you experience is obviously
Speaker 3: so long before it even years, like it's everything that
Speaker 3: happens on the island, and then suddenly you're seeing it
Speaker 3: back and it's kind of different to what you remember.
Speaker 1: And I was.
Speaker 3: Really taken aback by the fact that I didn't know
Speaker 3: how it was going to come across or how people
Speaker 3: what people were going to say. And I was actually
Speaker 3: pretty much fine through the whole thing until they there
Speaker 3: was a storyline that didn't actually happen that came out
Speaker 3: for mine.
Speaker 1: And then finding out and seeing.
Speaker 3: It with the rest of the country I think is
Speaker 3: a really hard thing as well, Like you're hearing these
Speaker 3: things about yourself alongside everyone else, and it's it's really difficult.
Speaker 3: And I mean, but there are such fun moments on
Speaker 3: that show as well, right, but I do think like
Speaker 3: it it just tests you so much with like you said,
Speaker 3: not eating, not doing any of that, and not having
Speaker 3: people like there was one night I went up with
Speaker 3: the producer and just like lost, like bawling my eyes
Speaker 3: out to the point of like I need to quit,
Speaker 3: Like I cannot do this.
Speaker 1: She's like no, stay And I ended up.
Speaker 3: Getting eliminated a few days later anyway, so which I'm
Speaker 3: very thankful for now. I mean, my first shower after
Speaker 3: that show, and it was like brown as it was
Speaker 3: like as the showers going. It was so gross because
Speaker 3: we were in Queen, Wanica and the lake was freezing,
Speaker 3: so like we didn't want to be out there, but
Speaker 3: you know, it was just disgusting.
Speaker 1: But how doy TV's weird?
Speaker 3: Do you think it was also hard for you because
Speaker 3: you've grown up, like you've done all of your a
Speaker 3: lot of your on screen stuff.
Speaker 1: You're playing someone else and all these shows it's you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that's been And I don't want to
Speaker 2: take anything away from the people that watched the show
Speaker 2: and watched me and supported me and actually enjoyed me,
Speaker 2: because that that's important. But we're breaking it down into
Speaker 2: actually what it was like. But I think, yes, since
Speaker 2: since doing stuff outside of scripted work, which has only
Speaker 2: happened in the last set of ten years, I and
Speaker 2: also doing my new job, you know, real estate, it's
Speaker 2: that real thing of like who am I? Who am I?
Speaker 2: Playing a character? Five days a week and going where
Speaker 2: do you start and where does she stop? And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that was probably the polarizing bit for me.
Speaker 2: I was myself on TV, but it was me and
Speaker 2: I was saying it, and there was nothing, you know,
Speaker 2: and I didn't say anything bad about anybody or anything,
Speaker 2: but you could see that I was emotionally fraught and
Speaker 2: struggling and watching yourself in that space and knowing that
Speaker 2: everyone else is watching as well. It's just like opening
Speaker 2: your diary or opening your ribcage and going come in
Speaker 2: and see all the that layers underneath. And I was
Speaker 2: just like, oh, I don't know if I can have
Speaker 2: people see me this fragile.
Speaker 3: I fully understand that, and I think, you know, for me,
Speaker 3: that's kind of been what I got. I hate saying
Speaker 3: it's such a weird thing to say. What I got
Speaker 3: knowing for was literally like, here's all of my life trauma.
Speaker 3: And so people saw that. But for people that have
Speaker 3: grown up or have kind of lived careers like yourself
Speaker 3: or like sports stars or people that have been in
Speaker 3: the public eye, and there is this kind of way
Speaker 3: that you need to hold yourself when you get used
Speaker 3: to holding yourself to kind of be able to, I
Speaker 3: guess handle that. To then have people see some of
Speaker 3: the stuff that you're struggling with is like it's hard,
Speaker 3: and it's frightening and it's scary. But I also think
Speaker 3: it's what humanizes you. And it's like you can be
Speaker 3: this rock star five days a week on TV and
Speaker 3: also be a real life human and I think people
Speaker 3: often disconnect that and only see you as this person
Speaker 3: who they were seeing on TV, but actually there's so
Speaker 3: much more behind there.
Speaker 1: How old were you when you got cast on Fallen Street?
Speaker 2: I was nineteen woweah?
Speaker 1: And you were on it for how many years?
Speaker 2: I mean about twenty five? But sometime some parts of
Speaker 2: that I was directing, and then most of the time
Speaker 2: I was acting.
Speaker 3: Dang, I was reading. While I was doing the research
Speaker 3: for this. There was kind of someone who did like
Speaker 3: a roundup of your character, which I was just like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh. It was not like a round but
Speaker 3: just like the things that your character went through, and
Speaker 3: I just I was shook by all of this. You
Speaker 3: survived full marriages? No, it says you survived full marriage.
Speaker 1: Did you know? Was it a lie? Well?
Speaker 2: I mean, let's see, she got married to Nick Harrison,
Speaker 2: for the the what do you do in university to
Speaker 2: get the money when you're married. I didn't go to university.
Speaker 1: I don't know. The yeah allowancy.
Speaker 2: Thing, yeah, something like that. So that wasn't a that
Speaker 2: was a wedding. It was like a you know, a
Speaker 2: protesting thing. Okay, so it wasn't a real wedding. And
Speaker 2: then there was no one else. And then before they
Speaker 2: brought me back. At one point I came back for
Speaker 2: like a special birthday or something and so and had
Speaker 2: an affair with Chris and I had I don't know
Speaker 2: if I was married to him, but I had a partner.
Speaker 2: And then Chris Warner is the person that I married, So.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know where they got marriages from. Four people.
Speaker 1: Cautless explosions.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's always an explosion. There's always on Shorty Street.
Speaker 2: I've been in a part of them and I've filmed them,
Speaker 2: and they tend to be pretty awesome but also very
Speaker 2: you get one hit at it, right. So I had
Speaker 2: the major one one day where Rachel is an alcoholic
Speaker 2: and she'd been driving drunk and she caused a terrible
Speaker 2: accident and there was a burning car and there was
Speaker 2: a baby in the back of the burning car. Oh,
Speaker 2: I had to get the baby out and then I
Speaker 2: had to run away, and the key shot was me
Speaker 2: running with the baby and the car exploding in the background.
Speaker 2: You get one shot it at multiple cameras, and I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, you just don't want to do anything terrible
Speaker 2: that's going to muck it up. And I feel like
Speaker 2: my reaction or my physical arch to the bang was
Speaker 2: just a little bit overcooked. And I'll never forget it.
Speaker 3: How many explosions can one hospital like, it's quite concerning,
Speaker 3: you know, well.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a soap opera, and I know, thirty
Speaker 2: years old, and it should be at least it There
Speaker 2: should be at least an explosion a year, so you know,
Speaker 2: if we're talking about a rate of.
Speaker 3: I mean this is her alcoholism was in this as well.
Speaker 3: I read an eating disorder. Was that a part of it?
Speaker 2: Definitely? So I started on the show, I was nineteen,
Speaker 2: she was sixteen, and I was basically vehicle for any
Speaker 2: teen issue you could have. So, you know, she was
Speaker 2: the daughter of separated parents. She had bolimia and anorexia,
Speaker 2: she had STDs, she hadn't it's anything. It was just
Speaker 2: that thing of like every couple of months. Okay, what
Speaker 2: do teenagers go through this? So yeah, but alcoholism was
Speaker 2: the resounding because her dad was an alcoholic, Right, how
Speaker 2: was that portraying that? I mean, this sounds terrible but
Speaker 2: fun but also at times, and I suppose this is
Speaker 2: where we're unpacking it. Right when I was probably in
Speaker 2: the depths of one of the longer times that they
Speaker 2: traversed the alcoholism, I got really unwell, and so my
Speaker 2: body because you're basically telling yourself that you have nothing,
Speaker 2: You're worth nothing, you know, And so that was the
Speaker 2: state I was sitting in for a couple of months,
Speaker 2: because that was what my character was doing, just having
Speaker 2: outbursts and being in a really bad place and everyone
Speaker 2: was trying to help, and she's pushing people away. So
Speaker 2: it lasts for quite a while, and I remember just
Speaker 2: getting this rational over my body and just feeling crap
Speaker 2: and going to the doctor and they you know, did
Speaker 2: tests and things. But it was just that I was
Speaker 2: feeding myself the message that I was a piece of
Speaker 2: shit and my body was trying to survive. So that's
Speaker 2: when I started learning about meditation and power of thought,
Speaker 2: and I got some strategies courtesy of another actor, which
Speaker 2: I still share with people to other actors to this day,
Speaker 2: about how to sort of breathe yourself back in and
Speaker 2: breathe the character out, and just little rituals that you
Speaker 2: can do so that when you do finally walk in
Speaker 2: the door, you're as close to you as you can
Speaker 2: be as opposed to because you've got to think, when
Speaker 2: I go home, I'm learning my lines for the next day.
Speaker 2: And at the point at that time, I was living alone,
Speaker 2: and so it was just very immersed in a lot
Speaker 2: of self kind of achiness, and my body just didn't cope.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's such a like a physical example of
Speaker 3: what the power of thoughts is, right Like the fact
Speaker 3: that obviously, for you, it was a character that then
Speaker 3: morphed into you weren't able to get away from those thoughts.
Speaker 3: And then for people who may be struggling with these
Speaker 3: thoughts themselves, and then to be constantly dwelling on it
Speaker 3: and thinking about it like that literally your body starts
Speaker 3: to believe it and have those responses to it. And
Speaker 3: the fact that you, who were portraying another character, that
Speaker 3: started to kind of leak over to your everyday life
Speaker 3: is such a crazy kind of representation of that, like
Speaker 3: how how do you separate those things when you've got
Speaker 3: this character going through so many crazy things and like
Speaker 3: you said, you're at that point, you're living alone and
Speaker 3: you're learning lines and next. I don't know people know
Speaker 3: that Chortland Street at that time was or is the
Speaker 3: fastest like what's it called moving TV show?
Speaker 2: Like multi camera? Yeah, like Last turn Around TV. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we do it really fast, and I think, yeah. I
Speaker 2: also got my training on the set of Shortened Street.
Speaker 2: So I didn't go to a drama school where you're
Speaker 2: taught how to manage building a character and a toolbooks,
Speaker 2: a toolbox of sort of like ways of finding your emotions,
Speaker 2: and so my way of finding my emotions and teaching
Speaker 2: myself was to think bad things. And I remember when
Speaker 2: I was very young, I reveled in it. I remember
Speaker 2: me and my brother were brushing washing the dishes and
Speaker 2: I was on washing and he was on drying, and
Speaker 2: I was like watch this, and I sort of turned
Speaker 2: away and I was washing the dishes and I was
Speaker 2: just thinking awful things, like about our parents dying and stuff.
Speaker 2: And then I turned around and I'm like crying. He's like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm like, I know, so impressed with myself,
Speaker 2: but like, you need to learn safe ways of engaging
Speaker 2: emotion and it eventually needs to come not from source
Speaker 2: spots or your own trauma. And as an actor, yeah,
Speaker 2: once you've experienced this a few times and you know
Speaker 2: ways of doing that. And I think the other thing
Speaker 2: that I was sort of traversing around that time when
Speaker 2: I was playing those sort of more challenging storylines was
Speaker 2: there was kind of the height of shortened Street and
Speaker 2: so at the same time, whenever I left the house,
Speaker 2: there was just eyes on me. And it was also
Speaker 2: a fun time in the nineties where we were getting
Speaker 2: invited to parties and there was just this very strange
Speaker 2: world that I was suddenly a part of. So on
Speaker 2: the one hand, I'm just trying to be a really
Speaker 2: good actor and was very invested in my character, and
Speaker 2: on the weekends, I'm sort of trying to blow it
Speaker 2: off and partying, and yeah, it was just a lot.
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine, like, especially at the peak of
Speaker 3: that show, like literally the whole country was blooming watching it,
Speaker 3: and I know, like even for me, since I came
Speaker 3: out of Lockdown and TikTok Blew up, Like I have
Speaker 3: so much social anxiety now because I just there's eyes
Speaker 3: on me all the time, and I can't even imagine,
Speaker 3: for you going eyes on you on the screen all
Speaker 3: week and then step outside your house and more eyes
Speaker 3: on you again.
Speaker 1: Like it's a lot, like a lot to deal with.
Speaker 3: And I know that you've spoken a bit about this
Speaker 3: in an interview that I read anyway about starting to
Speaker 3: experience panic attacks.
Speaker 1: Can you kind of explain the first time.
Speaker 3: That you remember feeling anxiety and then the first time
Speaker 3: that you experienced a panic attack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny because I knew we were going to
Speaker 2: be chatting about it, and so I sort of had
Speaker 2: a little dig around my memory banks, and I think
Speaker 2: I do healthy or not sort of clearly do by
Speaker 2: what I'm about to say. I just I block stuff out,
Speaker 2: you know. So for me, I remember being on set,
Speaker 2: and mine stems from not getting it right, So me
Speaker 2: myself feeling like I'm failing, which is actually such a crippling,
Speaker 2: stupid headspace to be in for a creative because now
Speaker 2: I know the whole point of being better as an
Speaker 2: actor is to get it wrong, is to start and
Speaker 2: not know where it's going to go. That's the beauty
Speaker 2: and the good stuff. So I was constantly trying to
Speaker 2: and as I was untrained, I didn't want to get
Speaker 2: it wrong, so I was constantly trying to control everything.
Speaker 2: And I remember being on set and something had happened
Speaker 2: and we were behind, as we are often, but that
Speaker 2: can get stressful when you're behind, and people can get
Speaker 2: stressed and push that out there, you know. And I
Speaker 2: just remember and they were getting ready to film and
Speaker 2: the scene started with me in the middle of the
Speaker 2: space and no one else, and I just remember feeling
Speaker 2: my whole body going really weird and going, I'm about
Speaker 2: to cry something. Something bad's happening to my body. And
Speaker 2: I got something, you know, like I hadn't failed it before,
Speaker 2: and multiple cameras staring at me darkness, people were about
Speaker 2: to and I just my instinct was just you need
Speaker 2: to remove yourself, and so I just slowly stood up
Speaker 2: and I just walked away into the darkness and just
Speaker 2: lost it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And it probably wasn't yet till years later that I
Speaker 2: and I had experienced it. Since that someone told me
Speaker 2: that it was a panic attack. But I was speaking
Speaker 2: to my mum in the weekend and she kind of
Speaker 2: told me about something that started much earlier I was
Speaker 2: on the show, but much earlier than I remember. She
Speaker 2: recounted a story that we were in a maw and
Speaker 2: I just and I was around the corner kind of
Speaker 2: like bent over, just like not breathing, and I was
Speaker 2: just like.
Speaker 1: Ohow, And you don't remember that. Wow. So your brain
Speaker 1: and your body is literally just kind of blocked blocked
Speaker 1: it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 3: I think it's really interesting that you talk about, especially
Speaker 3: as a creative, and that it wasn't it was around
Speaker 3: not being able to get things right. I think I
Speaker 3: speak and the hundreds of schools every year, and you
Speaker 3: see so many kids that go through that just from
Speaker 3: the pressure of even just with their parents and trying
Speaker 3: to get into the best schools or get the best grades,
Speaker 3: and especially around exam time, and people go on to
Speaker 3: this full fledged panic attacks around just not being good
Speaker 3: enough or not being able to kind of meet expectations.
Speaker 3: And for you to have been doing that kind of
Speaker 3: earlier than you even remember, what was how how long
Speaker 3: do you think you were experiencing kind of that that
Speaker 3: heightened time of panic attacks when you were on the show.
Speaker 1: The whole time, whole time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I just got better at managing it and
Speaker 2: learned strategies around it. But I think my kind of
Speaker 2: default of getting it right happened very early on in
Speaker 2: my life, like as a little in you know, And
Speaker 2: so it really is the making of you as a person.
Speaker 2: Like I still have it now and I have to
Speaker 2: kind of just I just blow it off, do you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? I go, it is what it is.
Speaker 2: I still I'm still incredibly driven and ambitious, and I
Speaker 2: try and make it as good as it can be.
Speaker 2: But at some point I go not to the level
Speaker 2: we were going to get deranged about it, but and
Speaker 2: often it isn't. I you know, watched my daughter her
Speaker 2: first year of exams at high school. And I don't
Speaker 2: put any pressure on my children to be anything other
Speaker 2: than the best that they want to be. You know.
Speaker 2: It's really like I'll say to them, I feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a space between what you're applying yourself,
Speaker 2: but I feel like there's a bit more to give.
Speaker 2: But that's on you. You know that that's totally up
Speaker 2: to you if you want to if you want to
Speaker 2: stop at that level. And I watched Maya just wrap
Speaker 2: herself up in nots and and a lot of emotions
Speaker 2: and a lot of dysregulation, and we talked about it
Speaker 2: a lot, and that was just her dance up to
Speaker 2: something that meant a lot to her. So we worked
Speaker 2: a lot the next year about just changing the dance
Speaker 2: because you get to decide what it looks like.
Speaker 1: I really love that saying change the dance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's really cool. Well, well, we all do it, right,
Speaker 2: and I think actors do it, and so often in
Speaker 2: acting terms, I talk and like movement and dance and
Speaker 2: whatever your your thing is. But and everyone has their
Speaker 2: thing and some people, some people do need to turn themselves.
Speaker 2: I choose not to, you know, yeah yeah, and to be.
Speaker 3: Able to even just kind of go through and experience
Speaker 3: those feelings. But I really love that the way that
Speaker 3: you just worded that because I also think that it
Speaker 3: it gives the power back to people that are going
Speaker 3: through that as well too. You do have the ability
Speaker 3: to change that response and to prepare yourself. And when
Speaker 3: I was going through kind of everything, when treas railing
Speaker 3: came out for me, I remember someone saying it's pre
Speaker 3: warned is pre armed. And I think when you've gone
Speaker 3: through something like that before, and you've kind of got
Speaker 3: that pre warning of that's what has happened. You can
Speaker 3: be pre armed, and you can kind of put in
Speaker 3: the work and do the things to be able to
Speaker 3: I guess, change the not necessarily the outcome, but change
Speaker 3: the way in which you respond. And I think sometimes
Speaker 3: with anxiety and with with panic attacks, it can feel
Speaker 3: so overwhelming and all consuming that you feel like it
Speaker 3: will never it could never change. And I would love
Speaker 3: to know what your advice would be to anyone who's
Speaker 3: listening to this that might be dealing with panic attacks
Speaker 3: themselves and just like this is like at the peak
Speaker 3: of it, this is what I'm going to live with forever.
Speaker 1: What would you say to them?
Speaker 2: Oh, so much. I think it's doing it's talking to
Speaker 2: people sharing. Obviously it's a cliche, because it's true. You know,
Speaker 2: a problem shared is a problem haves So finding someone
Speaker 2: anyone in your life that you can share it with,
Speaker 2: because saying it out aloud is half the problem because
Speaker 2: then you go, oh, you know, it's not admitting it,
Speaker 2: but it's going it's safe enough to talk about. And
Speaker 2: then that person, hopefully or someone in your life, will
Speaker 2: give you some strategies around managing panic attacks, like I
Speaker 2: know that there's some that you can't think yourself out of,
Speaker 2: but there is definitely ways that you can minimize. So
Speaker 2: grounding as one having that truth in your head that
Speaker 2: no state stays the same. Every state moves, everything evolves,
Speaker 2: nothing stays the same. So this the state will evolve
Speaker 2: and move. But I think grounding is probably the thing
Speaker 2: I do the most when I feel like I'm getting disregulated,
Speaker 2: and it just it's just an immediate kind of like
Speaker 2: stops the brain and lets the body rest, because that's
Speaker 2: what it is. You just have to let you stop
Speaker 2: your body and let it rest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really love that, And it's just so it's
Speaker 3: so relevant to so many people. And I think that
Speaker 3: for people that are watching, like I said, people on
Speaker 3: screen or sports fields or whatever, it may be just
Speaker 3: this assumption that they don't struggle with anything.
Speaker 1: It's just it's not true.
Speaker 3: And I mean we were just talking before we started
Speaker 3: recording that you were at an event that I was
Speaker 3: supposed to be at not too long ago, and I
Speaker 3: literally couldn't go because of the panic and anxiety that
Speaker 3: I had, which has kind of escalated more so recently.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've ever had a situation like
Speaker 3: this growing up on Shorten Street.
Speaker 1: But I had a stalker situation.
Speaker 3: But this guy flew over from the Netherlands to find me,
Speaker 3: found my house within two days, located me with sending
Speaker 3: very threatening, scary messages, and then I had the criminal
Speaker 3: behavior forensic psychologist from police who specializes in psychopaths basically
Speaker 3: talk me through what to do if worst case scenario happened,
Speaker 3: like it was terrifying, and this was only about a
Speaker 3: maybe two months ago, I think, And so then being
Speaker 3: out in public situations.
Speaker 1: Like the panic is so real.
Speaker 3: But having to do these things again and remind myself
Speaker 3: and grounding myself and trying to not let it take
Speaker 3: over my social life has been a really kind of
Speaker 3: big journey for me, and also why I was really
Speaker 3: excited to also have you one. I think around the
Speaker 3: idea of anxiety and panic attacks and still having to
Speaker 3: live your day to day life knowing that this is
Speaker 3: something that you can experience, but also just breaking down
Speaker 3: the stigma of it of like we all go through
Speaker 3: stuff and it's really about learning to manage it and
Speaker 3: to deal with it. And grounding has been such a
Speaker 3: massive thing for me that's really helped as well, did
Speaker 3: you ever have any kind of when you're on kind
Speaker 3: of the peak of shortened street like scary interaction with people?
Speaker 2: Remember I'm a good blocker, OUs.
Speaker 3: Pointing, just dig right back into that art.
Speaker 2: I mean, nothing, nothing that compares to We've just been
Speaker 2: not not at all. I mean I've certainly been yelled
Speaker 2: at in the street and yelled you know, yucky things
Speaker 2: like you've got chlamydia and oh yeah you know. But
Speaker 2: and I mean, fear just keeps you walking, right, do
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? What? What? What are you?
Speaker 2: What am I going to? What was I going to? Do?
Speaker 2: You just carry on walking? I suppose for a week
Speaker 2: while there, if someone called out Rachel, I wouldn't turn around.
Speaker 2: But if someone called out it was kind of my
Speaker 2: little rule someone new. Was someone going to call out Angela,
Speaker 2: then I then they get me. I can I'm going
Speaker 2: to turn around. But if they call out Rachel.
Speaker 1: It's not my name, Well, people struggle.
Speaker 2: I'm allowed to keep walking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that still to this day.
Speaker 3: People struggle to see the difference between a character and
Speaker 3: a person. And like some of my friends who were
Speaker 3: actors that were just like, yeah, people would like attack
Speaker 3: me on the Street for someone that my character did,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, it's not me, like I'm just acting
Speaker 3: someone like it's I mean, I've never been an actor,
Speaker 3: so I don't know what that's like, but I can
Speaker 3: imagine that would be quite frustrating.
Speaker 2: I have the benefit of time, so because I've had
Speaker 2: a long time on that show, she evolved into a
Speaker 2: capable woman, a step mom, a wife, a professional who
Speaker 2: ran a business, and people got to watch that in her,
Speaker 2: and I supposed to put that on me if they
Speaker 2: couldn't see the difference. And then I also evolved as
Speaker 2: a person and so and did enough Woman's Day articles
Speaker 2: that most interactions start with a you Angela, not are
Speaker 2: you Rachel? It starts what did you play Rachel? So
Speaker 2: time has allowed people get excited, but I don't really
Speaker 2: get called Rachel anymore. Oh that's nice, So it is.
Speaker 2: It's really nice. She's definitely part of the conversation. And
Speaker 2: sometimes they're like, did I go to school with you?
Speaker 2: And I went, I don't think so, and I'd pecked
Speaker 2: my moment. If I help people out of it, I
Speaker 2: help the most nine times out of teen, and I
Speaker 2: help them. But I don't want to be that person
Speaker 2: that goes I was on a two big so I
Speaker 2: you know, I just go you know, but yeah, look,
Speaker 2: I've just been overseas with my daughter and I haven't
Speaker 2: been on screen for a really long time, and you know,
Speaker 2: still a thing. Yeah, a thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is so.
Speaker 3: You absolutely don't have to short about this at all.
Speaker 3: But I just again saw it when I was doing
Speaker 3: all of the research.
Speaker 2: And the fairly open book.
Speaker 1: Well this is good. You went through a divorce.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I thought you were going to go in
Speaker 2: a different direction. I did go through it. I do,
Speaker 2: I am, I'm a separated person.
Speaker 3: It was one of the first things that kate when
Speaker 3: I was searching.
Speaker 2: It was what you googled angela Bluefield and divorced it?
Speaker 1: Did it?
Speaker 2: Did? I'm sorry to algorithms, geez, but.
Speaker 1: There was, But there also wasn't a lot.
Speaker 3: It was assuming someone were probably just doing some clickbating
Speaker 3: title with what had been said in it.
Speaker 1: But the only reason that I wanted.
Speaker 3: To bring it up was that there's even a few
Speaker 3: people there I know that are kind of in the
Speaker 3: very very beginnings of a divorce and feel like their
Speaker 3: entire world is crumbled, and there is just no, there's
Speaker 3: no step out of this, and that's the only reason
Speaker 3: that I wanted to bring it up. And again, you
Speaker 3: don't have to talk about it, but if you are
Speaker 3: willing to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, I think I wouldn't. I wouldn't wish separation
Speaker 2: on my worst enemy. It is. I think there's so
Speaker 2: many layers to this conversation, but I will say for me,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of learning and a lot of
Speaker 2: growth and realizing that life is a gray area, it's
Speaker 2: a big there's just no black and white, and I'd
Speaker 2: become really bound by sort of self belief statements that
Speaker 2: were not helping me. And I suppose one of them
Speaker 2: was I'll never get divorced, and I'd say it out
Speaker 2: aloud and it was almost like I've you know, it
Speaker 2: was just a really silly thing. I didn't say it
Speaker 2: a lot, but I was saying it, and it's and
Speaker 2: it's just a really unhelpful thing. Because then when when
Speaker 2: that's one of your key things and then it actually
Speaker 2: is not right, you become really destabilized by it and
Speaker 2: you go, who am I am a failure? So I
Speaker 2: had to walk through so much learning and the fact
Speaker 2: that be careful what you say about yourself. And I
Speaker 2: did feel like a failure, and I did feel like
Speaker 2: I would have effectively broken my children and broken my
Speaker 2: a bit of my life and a bit of you know,
Speaker 2: this other person's life. And I would say, it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's literally taken me the ten years that I was married.
Speaker 2: It's taken me another ten years to unravel separation. And
Speaker 2: I remember when I turned fifty saying to my mum,
Speaker 2: I feel like my life can start again now. I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm allowed to have a life now again,
Speaker 2: which is a really annoying thing to happen. But I
Speaker 2: really had gone You've had your joy, that's it. You
Speaker 2: wrecked it. You have to sit in that, and it
Speaker 2: was it was really unhelpful.
Speaker 1: It makes me. I am a little bit teary.
Speaker 3: It makes me a little bit emotional just what you
Speaker 3: just said then about what you said to your mom
Speaker 3: that you can start your I know I.
Speaker 2: Forget, but that's but and I don't know why I
Speaker 2: needed it to be so long. But the thing I'll take,
Speaker 2: I'll say to you now in the same breath, is
Speaker 2: it's starting again. And instead of saying like I'm only
Speaker 2: fifty one and I've got so much more ahead of me,
Speaker 2: and that includes in love. Yeah you know, or it's
Speaker 2: just so it's so for you to say that as well.
Speaker 3: I was so hopeful for those that are in the
Speaker 3: middle of it, like the fact that sure it took
Speaker 3: you ten years to get to that point. That the
Speaker 3: fact that you can look at that and go, no,
Speaker 3: I can I can fall in love again. I can
Speaker 3: I can start my life again. That that says so much.
Speaker 3: And I hope that you kind of you see this
Speaker 3: the strength in that, because I mean, I haven't been
Speaker 3: through marriage separation, but like just to be able to.
Speaker 1: Have that stance and be like I'm okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm okay, the kids are okay, Chris is okay.
Speaker 2: That said, I you know, maybe I did make it
Speaker 2: harder on myself than it needed to be. So you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not here to give unsolicited advice, but to anyone
Speaker 2: that is traversing that, I would say, go easy on yourself.
Speaker 2: And the thing I learned that's resonated most in my
Speaker 2: life that helps me out the most is if you
Speaker 2: can refine the ability to truly live in the moment,
Speaker 2: that is where that's when you start living. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't have to beat yourself up for ten years.
Speaker 2: You can start living earlier than that. Yeah, it's up
Speaker 2: to you. Yeah, Yeah, it's so true.
Speaker 3: And I also think like, even when you were saying
Speaker 3: on the kind of beliefs that you had in that
Speaker 3: in those ten years, and how much even just I
Speaker 3: think behavior and things like that. This is something I
Speaker 3: was thinking about recently, actually talking to my therapist about
Speaker 3: there was a lot of things that I would do
Speaker 3: or things that I would respond to, and I'd be.
Speaker 1: Like why do I do that?
Speaker 3: And I'll get so mad at myself for these responses.
Speaker 3: And she just said, Jazz, I want you to think
Speaker 3: of like five year old year. I was like why,
Speaker 3: and she was like, all that kid was trying to
Speaker 3: do was survived the best way that she knew how to,
Speaker 3: and that's how she did it. So these behaviors that
Speaker 3: you're hating in these beliefs and these responses that you're
Speaker 3: so like, why am I Like this.
Speaker 1: Just came from this little kid who was trying to
Speaker 1: protect herself.
Speaker 3: And I think it's so important to, like, even in
Speaker 3: responses when we're going through things like that, to be like,
Speaker 3: this is just this little kid who dealt in some
Speaker 3: whatever situation it may have been, that these behaviors and
Speaker 3: responses and beliefs they come from somewhere, and often it's
Speaker 3: just a younger version of ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm so sorry. I was just trying to
Speaker 1: do the best.
Speaker 3: I could, and they were so healing for me to hear,
Speaker 3: and I was like, dang, Like that's so true, because
Speaker 3: our responses when we go through like this, we can't
Speaker 3: control half of the time that we were like in
Speaker 3: the middle of this kind of turmoil thing to be
Speaker 3: like how am I responding? But to go you know,
Speaker 3: for you to have gone through all of those ten
Speaker 3: years of marriage and then ten years of that and
Speaker 3: then be like I'm okay, and like I probably should
Speaker 3: have gone easier on myself.
Speaker 2: This kind of parts to that isn't there because and
Speaker 2: I think I still have a little bit of work
Speaker 2: to do in the I'm a learner. I'm happy to
Speaker 2: learn till the day I die. I need to learn
Speaker 2: till the day I die. But when I think about
Speaker 2: like my five year old self, I can still feel
Speaker 2: there's some there's some there's some pain there. So I
Speaker 2: still have some stuff to do in that space. Which
Speaker 2: is exciting. Yeah, But also as a parent, I knew
Speaker 2: that before I had children that whole It's not a
Speaker 2: premise that that that that reality of we are the
Speaker 2: person you can see, but we are still the child,
Speaker 2: and that responsibility as a parent to do the best
Speaker 2: I could not not to not to break them, and
Speaker 2: not to do things that were going to cause default
Speaker 2: behavior that was responsive and not helpful for them as
Speaker 2: a teenager as an adult, and I still drive quite
Speaker 2: a bit of dialogue with my children in that space
Speaker 2: and will forever because that's how I talk with my
Speaker 2: friends as well, you know. But yeah, constantly sort of
Speaker 2: sitting back and looking at my kids and going, I
Speaker 2: haven't break them too much. Do I need to talk
Speaker 2: to them about that? Do I need to go on
Speaker 2: and talk to them about that? Because we're just trying
Speaker 2: to survive as a parent, Yeah, but also nurture this
Speaker 2: little being that's just wants to be protected and loved. Yeah.
Speaker 3: There was something I saw on tektok a while ago
Speaker 3: that was someone who had just videoed their mum and
Speaker 3: was like, I often forget this is her first time
Speaker 3: living as well, and it just I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's true.
Speaker 1: Just trying to figure stuff out.
Speaker 3: And I also think that, again, I'm not a parent,
Speaker 3: but I know that like some of my real deep
Speaker 3: rooted trauma came from like these situations that happened with
Speaker 3: my friends when I was younger as well, and things
Speaker 3: that parents just literally can't control and don't have any
Speaker 3: kind of you know, say over, but to be actively,
Speaker 3: I mean the fact that you were aware to be like,
Speaker 3: I need to have these conversations with my kids and
Speaker 3: kind of make sure. It's a big step to what
Speaker 3: a lot of parents don't do, and you know that's
Speaker 3: not a lot of people experienced. So I feel like
Speaker 3: it's massive kudos to you that you were able to
Speaker 3: have these conversations and kind of be aware of what
Speaker 3: impact of what you say to your kids can also
Speaker 3: have on their belief in their sense of who they are.
Speaker 1: Is so huge, And I think as well for I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine what it would be like to
Speaker 1: be a parent.
Speaker 3: I've just got a dog recently, and I can't sleep
Speaker 3: at night the amount of times have to take to
Speaker 3: the emergency vet because she's constantly trying to die on
Speaker 3: me and eat things that she shouldn't eat, and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: I don't know how people do this with a real
Speaker 3: life human being, and then to be doing that with
Speaker 3: a real life human and then doing things like Dancing
Speaker 3: with the Stars with a three months or you're a superwoman.
Speaker 2: That's a really good segue into I suppose something that
Speaker 2: I suppose because I was older, I had more kind
Speaker 2: of like, you know, comparing it to panic attacks, I'd
Speaker 2: say it was it felt harder because I distinctly remember
Speaker 2: being at home with Max on his first night in
Speaker 2: the middle of winter, and there was an All Blacks
Speaker 2: game on, so Chris was watching it, and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, Max was asleep lying there, and I was
Speaker 2: just looking at him and going to Chris, what do
Speaker 2: we do? So do we what do we do? And
Speaker 2: he was like, I don't know. I'm like, okay, we'll
Speaker 2: just sit and wait. You know. But I very quickly,
Speaker 2: and this does happen to people that have I suppose
Speaker 2: a level of expectation on themselves kind of high functioning.
Speaker 2: So I got postnatal depression pretty quickly after Max was born,
Speaker 2: and but for a little bit I didn't know what
Speaker 2: it was, and so I just was just someone that
Speaker 2: couldn't kind of handle being around him and better. But
Speaker 2: I had to. But I was the only person that
Speaker 2: he wanted, you know, And it was just really hard.
Speaker 1: What kind of ways did that, like, what were you
Speaker 1: seeing in yourself?
Speaker 3: What were the kind of I don't want to use
Speaker 3: a symptoms, but you know, the things that you were
Speaker 3: experiencing before you got realized that it was postnatal.
Speaker 2: So I had a little bit of trouble breastfeeding, and
Speaker 2: so we were having quite a painful journey with that,
Speaker 2: and that probably was a trigger in it. And so
Speaker 2: he was he anytime he cried, I'd feel pain physically
Speaker 2: because I was like, oh, he's going to want to
Speaker 2: be fed, and it hurts me and so and so
Speaker 2: I wouldn't look at it. I'd look at him and
Speaker 2: sort of not have this kind of like oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's so amazing. I'd look at him and just be like,
Speaker 2: you know. And so there was that, and then I just, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was terribly upset. I would get angry if no
Speaker 2: one would no one seemed to want to do it
Speaker 2: the way I wanted to do it. And I'm not
Speaker 2: saying I'm not putting that on anyone else. They was
Speaker 2: trying to survive it as well. And so finally I went,
Speaker 2: I can someone just go buy some formula. I just
Speaker 2: need to do a feed that's not you know, And
Speaker 2: it was I remember just you know, my clothes were
Speaker 2: all on and and he was wrapped in a blanket
Speaker 2: and he was feeding, and I was just able to
Speaker 2: go and breathe and feel joy. And then not too
Speaker 2: long after that, you know, we got we got people,
Speaker 2: and we got specialists, and we got fix its and solutions,
Speaker 2: and I carried on brist fitting until he was seven
Speaker 2: months and he's Yeah. Once I was on the right
Speaker 2: medication for what was happening in my body, the whole
Speaker 2: thing changed. And it was a really good eye opener
Speaker 2: for me. I'm segueing myself, I'm sorry, I love it.
Speaker 2: Give me because I knew at that point, because the
Speaker 2: hormonal shift that happens after you have children is not
Speaker 2: dissimilar to when you go through menopause. And I literally meant,
Speaker 2: I said it out aloud. I was like, I'm going
Speaker 2: to go on this stuff when I go through menopause.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go on this medicine, you know. And
Speaker 2: I haven't had to go on any antidepressants or anything
Speaker 2: but I have definitely been more proactive and acutely aware
Speaker 2: of like hormonal shifts and at this point in my
Speaker 2: life and going I'm not going to get there, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to get angry and arranged and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and it was I think it was while I because
Speaker 2: Dancing with the Stars I went through when I was
Speaker 2: with Maya, So by the time I got to her
Speaker 2: and there was no you know, there was Yeah.
Speaker 3: The fact that I mean sharing that experience, thank you
Speaker 3: for doing that, because I also think a lot of
Speaker 3: parents who go through that can feel.
Speaker 1: So isolated and alone and be like, what is wrong
Speaker 1: with me?
Speaker 3: And that's why I kind of asked you to explain
Speaker 3: what it was like for you, because I think it's
Speaker 3: so important for people to know one they're not alone
Speaker 3: in it too. It can literally be a cycle, like
Speaker 3: it's a thing that medication can help and seeing people
Speaker 3: and specialists can.
Speaker 1: Help with that, and that you're not alone in it.
Speaker 3: And I mean the fact that even being able like
Speaker 3: you just did the perfect segue into then kind of
Speaker 3: hitting it with menopause and kind of knowing the similarities
Speaker 3: of what the hormonal stuff can do with that, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being able to just speak. And I think.
Speaker 3: Kind of like we were talking about earlier, I know
Speaker 3: that it can be so hard when you have been
Speaker 3: a character for so long to let people see you
Speaker 3: and let people see kind of different things that is
Speaker 3: not just a different person on TV that I will
Speaker 3: play an act and it's a whole different I don't
Speaker 3: want to say ball game, but it's a whole different
Speaker 3: thing right to be like, this is who I am.
Speaker 3: But it's so important because there are so many people
Speaker 3: that have lived to their lives watching you that can go,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, like I'm not the only one, and
Speaker 3: maybe I can still have a successful life or do these.
Speaker 1: Things even though I'm struggling with this.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of the whole reason why we do
Speaker 3: this podcast, so that people, no matter what it is
Speaker 3: that they're facing, can feel like they're not alone. And
Speaker 3: I would love to know you've already kind of given
Speaker 3: advice for people they might be going through panic attacks
Speaker 3: and anxiety. But I just now I want to know
Speaker 3: someone who might be in the very beginning of postnatal depression.
Speaker 3: What would you say to them, Just.
Speaker 2: The same thing. You've got it, You've got to talk
Speaker 2: about it. You've got to find someone you trust. And
Speaker 2: it is hard because you know, I'm a communicator, and
Speaker 2: my husband is husband's a good communicator, and so as
Speaker 2: my mum, and so through through that, I did feel
Speaker 2: like I wasn't being heard, but I probably I mean,
Speaker 2: it's in the delivery, right, But I'm not going to
Speaker 2: beat myself up on me not knowing to have the
Speaker 2: right delivery because I was at the heart of it,
Speaker 2: and in essence they were there to support me, which
Speaker 2: they did. But you just don't have the where you
Speaker 2: just don't have the rational mind to go I'm going
Speaker 2: through something. If I take someone by the hand and
Speaker 2: say no, please stop, you need to listen to me,
Speaker 2: they'll stop right because you just don't have those those functions.
Speaker 2: But I think any time in our life where we're
Speaker 2: feeling like, hey, I feel different to how I would
Speaker 2: usually feel, find someone to talk to. I think I'm
Speaker 2: not scared of going and talking to a doctor. I
Speaker 2: think that's I think that's especially important with these kind
Speaker 2: of key issues because and it's not about throwing medicine
Speaker 2: at it unless that's the right thing to do. But
Speaker 2: doctors can be quite good at steering you in the
Speaker 2: right direction of you know, a variety of solutions and yeah,
Speaker 2: just got to be kind, got to be kind to yourself.
Speaker 2: We're so tough on ourselves.
Speaker 3: Also that especially New Zealanders, like we've got that she'll
Speaker 3: be right attitude that's really just kind of ingrained in us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have that which is so weird that
Speaker 2: this is only happening to me and not in an
Speaker 2: ego way, and so don't share it because you're the
Speaker 2: weirdo that this is only happening to you. And I
Speaker 2: remember we did. We you know, we had a little
Speaker 2: coffee group that was there and out there from my
Speaker 2: Intonadal class. But I was too scared. And then finally
Speaker 2: my girlfriend at about six weeks was like, come on,
Speaker 2: come on, come on. And I remember it, just sitting
Speaker 2: there and listening and watching and they were doing it
Speaker 2: exactly the same as me. They didn't know what they
Speaker 2: were doing, they had had insecurities, they'd been crying, they'd
Speaker 2: felt and just hearing it, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: what You're such a fool land to think that this
Speaker 2: was only happening to you. And I remember with Maya,
Speaker 2: anytime I got up to feed in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night, just taking a little moment to go they're
Speaker 2: a woman right now and soft lit rooms awake, feeding
Speaker 2: their children. You're not one of one, You're one of
Speaker 2: so many, you know, And even though we didn't know,
Speaker 2: you know, just take solace in that we're all doing it.
Speaker 2: We're all doing it together.
Speaker 3: And that's the power of being able to tell these
Speaker 3: stories and the power of that lived experience. And I
Speaker 3: know that for me, when I was in my teenage
Speaker 3: years and was in and out of the psyche wards
Speaker 3: a lot a lot of that time, I would spend
Speaker 3: so much of my time just trying to research anyone
Speaker 3: else who had been through it, just to know that
Speaker 3: there was hope. And back then I just couldn't find anything.
Speaker 3: People weren't talking And so now to be able to
Speaker 3: have these conversations and provide people with this kind of
Speaker 3: tool that allows him to know that no matter what
Speaker 3: it is that you're facing, you're not alone on it,
Speaker 3: and especially the different things in your journey to be
Speaker 3: like you're you're.
Speaker 1: Not the only one going through it.
Speaker 3: And like you said that communication and been able to
Speaker 3: communicate is such a big thing. And this in schools
Speaker 3: when we do the big school assemblies around the country
Speaker 3: that if people like translating what's going on in your
Speaker 3: mind to out here, if people don't know what's happening,
Speaker 3: that no one knows what the hell's going on, like
Speaker 3: everyone's just assuming, everyone's just guessing, and no one can
Speaker 3: help without that information. People can only help you with
Speaker 3: the information that you give them. And so been able
Speaker 3: to be honest and have these conversations and speak up
Speaker 3: is so incredibly important. And I'm so thankful that you've
Speaker 3: chosen to be able to come in and hang out
Speaker 3: and speak on this podcast today. I know we've not
Speaker 3: actually met in person before, but today we did, and
Speaker 3: to kind of dive straight into a conversation like this,
Speaker 3: I know it was kind of an odd way, but
Speaker 3: I'm really thankful that you have. I think it's going
Speaker 3: to help so many people to just feel less alone,
Speaker 3: no matter what it is that they're facing. And I
Speaker 3: just want to ask you one final question before I
Speaker 3: let you go. This podcast is called Hope Is Real,
Speaker 3: and I asked us to everyone at the end of every.
Speaker 1: Episode, what does the word hope mean to you?
Speaker 2: The future? Like, hope for me is like everything that
Speaker 2: exists beyond this moment, that hasn't happened because I'm I
Speaker 2: intrinsically try to be positive and I'm hopeful always, you know,
Speaker 2: for me and for my children and for the people
Speaker 2: and my world and for anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3: I love that so much. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for taking the time and coming here. How can people
Speaker 3: how can people find you?
Speaker 1: Follow you? Not physically find you.
Speaker 2: But social media?
Speaker 1: I know we don't want no one come over from
Speaker 1: the Netherlands. Please thank it.
Speaker 2: I think it's just and Bloomfield.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And then you're also REALI stated, can you
Speaker 3: can you help me buy a house?
Speaker 1: Balloons? I'm so yes, I care, like I'm so sad.
Speaker 4: So I've been needing to for at everyone keeps telling
Speaker 4: me to buy a house, like it's so I don't
Speaker 4: even know where to start, and so I just don't
Speaker 4: if I don't know how to do something, I would
Speaker 4: love to help, like four years without putting air in
Speaker 4: my tires on my car because I did it know
Speaker 4: how to do it. And so when I don't know
Speaker 4: how to do something, I'm like, I'm just not going
Speaker 4: to do it.
Speaker 3: So we can will chat after this, because I genuinely
Speaker 3: need to do that. But again, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for coming. Any for joining means thank you.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Do you have it, guys, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: staying and for listening to this episode. And like I've
Speaker 3: said at the beginning, and I always say, if anything
Speaker 3: in this episode that's been talked about has brought anything
Speaker 3: up for you, you feel like you need to talk
Speaker 3: to someone, then please remember and know that the bravest
Speaker 3: thing that you can do right now is to talk
Speaker 3: to someone, is to ask for help, whether that's from
Speaker 3: a friend, a family member, or if you don't know
Speaker 3: who to talk to, then if you live in Altiola
Speaker 3: here you can call or text one seven three seven
Speaker 3: at any time to talk to a trained counselor. Or
Speaker 3: if you live overseas, go to dub dub dub dot
Speaker 3: the Voices of Hope dot org for a list of
Speaker 3: international helplines. Remember that no matter what it is that
Speaker 3: you're facing, no matter what it is that you're going through,
Speaker 3: that in all things, hope is real and change is possible.
Speaker 1: I'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 4: Instead, stop and stay State