Pride Week 2021: New LGBT safe space helps people with their mental health – Metro.co.uk
A global queer leadership programme created during the pandemic is hoping to empower a new generation of LGBT+ people to address past traumas and bring about change.
The founders of We Create Space aim to offer a platform for people to meet each other and speak freely in workshops and online group conversations.
Founders Michael Stephens and Maylis Djikalou had just started working on a new idea for a retreat and travel business when the pandemic forced them to reinvent the project online.
They’ve since helped dozens of people and are branching out into working with corporations to address the mental health concerns of LGBT+ employees.
Maylis, 29, said the aim of the organisation was to ‘help people support themselves first and then create the change they wanted to see in their community’.
The transformation coach, who during the pandemic returned to Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa where she emigrated from as a nine-year-old, said the project was developed due to fears that many LGBT+ were ‘facing isolation again.’
‘Some of them were going back to their families, an environment which growing up was probably the place where a lot of initial traumas were set in stone,’ she said.
‘Maybe you’ve run away to find your true self outside of that environment – whatever you needed to do to survive. But you’d left that story there and going back means you have to face certain things.
‘We had other people leaving their jobs or being faced with redundancy…a lot of these people were individuals who had done everything in their life so far to strive and be at the top.’
Maylis said she herself had recognised the way many were feeling due to her own experiences.
She worked her way up in the fashion industry in her early 20s but began using drugs to cope with the stresses of the job and soon developed addiction issues.
After a stint in Holloway women’s prison, she’s had to recover from ‘rock bottom’ and is now a consultant and well-being professional.
‘All we were hearing on the news was that there was going to be a mental health crisis but there were so many conversations that weren’t happening,’ she said.
‘The support on offer was always end of the line – if you were suicidal or an addict or another extreme behaviour, you could get some help. But what about the people in the middle? That grey area of individuals who seem ok but clearly need support. We build these masks that over time get very difficult to shed.
‘We started to put these personal stories out there and say how about we address these issues that we are all facing as a community and unpick them in a way that is safe.
‘We wanted individuals to start seeing their strengths and using this isolation period to give themselves the time to ask some profound questions that might potentially change the course of their lives.’
The project has been working with Rico Jacob Chace, the director of campaign group Transactual UK, who they’ve brought on board as a motivational speaker.
Rico, 28, from London, used to work in the financial sector, where he says he experienced large amounts of homophobia and transphobia.
‘I had people laughing at me, swearing at me throughout the working day,’ he said. ‘I ended up with post traumatic stress disorder – my hands were shaking whilst I was working.
‘I put up with it for two months because I didn’t want to lose my career but one day I went home, had a nap, and woke up with PTSD.
‘No one could really touch me for about an eight month period because my anxiety was that bad. I had to relearn how to read and write because you can’t really focus on anything when your anxiety levels are so high. I went from working in finance to being a bar tender.
‘It shows how someone in a professional setting can lose their entire livelihood just due to homophobia. You almost have to choose between your identity and your career.’
Rico said he wanted to share his story with We Create Space to show ‘this is what happened to me, this is how bad it can get’ and make sure others don’t end up in the same place.
He said meditation techniques and therapy helped him in his recovery, something which he is now encouraging others to try within the wider community.
The organisation’s sessions are being offered free to trans and non-binary people and include tips on how to process negative emotions, breathing techniques and yoga as well as connecting people with others who may share similar experiences.
‘It’s ok to feel down, it’s ok to feel depressed as long as you process those things healthily,’ Rico said.
‘Unfortunately, depression and anxiety is rife within the trans community. We’ve seen some domestic abuse victims who can’t access women’s shelters because they are trans.
‘A lot of trans people are made homeless because their landlord refuses to rent to them.
‘In secondary education, a lot of trans people experience prejudice from their colleagues and they end up dropping out. So if you look at it from a socio-economic point of view, you’re cutting people’s potential income prospects at a very very young age.’
Yoga teacher David Kam, 29, from east London, was one of those to have benefitted from the workshops, and has now started leading some of them himself.
He says he felt like he was ‘surviving’ but wanted to find out how he could ‘thrive’ and get to a place where he feels ‘great’ and We Create Space has set him on a path to achieve this.
‘There’s a lot of intangible, invisible stuff that people are going through’, he said. ‘We’re at a point now where gay marriage and a lot of the stigma in the most obvious sense has disappeared.
‘But we still have troubles and they are often not so easy to see and can be hard to talk about or easily trivialised.
‘To have a specific space like this where you are able to share parallels with other people’s journeys is invaluable.
‘The best way to combat trauma is to have someone acknowledge what you are going through, to know that you are not alone.’
For another participant, Yassine Senghor, 35, getting involved with We Create Space was a ‘real turning point’ after she experienced a ‘mixed bag of mental health challenges.’
The diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) consultant, who runs her own company, Confronting Change D&I Strategies, found many LGBT+ spaces were inaccessible due to the pandemic and, before the outbreak, had often been focused on clubbing or socialising.
In contrast We Create Space looked at self reflection and was ‘deep, intense and personal.’
‘Right now I am going through this massive process of being clear about who I am, what I want to achieve and what I stand for,’ she said.
‘I think being a queer person is one of the most joyous things in the world but there is also a lot of hardship too.
‘This has allowed me to have honest conversations with a group who understand some elements of that. My life has been a lot more balanced having found this space.’
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