The Impact of Not Listening: Eve’s Story of Self Advocacy (Part 1)

Esi: [00:00:00] Hello. Thank you again for tuning in to yet another episode of The Equality Edit this week with Eve Mujinya. Before we get into the episode, I just want you to know that this episode is split into two parts. When we were going through the edit, there was nothing that we felt we could cut out, so instead, we decided to make it a two-parter.
So the first half is just under 40 minutes, and the second half is just under 40 minutes again. So watch this episode now, and then tune in in three weeks’ time to see episode part two. Okay, I hope you enjoy and look forward to speaking to you soon.
Eve: So that would mean that I would be confronted sometimes by people’s unbiased opinions of me, and sometimes direct racism towards me. And that would just continue to play out in my life in so many different ways, in work, in education, and just socially. So through all of those experiences, it made me become tougher and tougher as [00:01:00] a person.
Esi: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much once again for tuning into another episode of The Equality Edit: Unpacking Equality One Story at a Time. Today I’m here with my colleague, Eve. I’m going to let Eve introduce herself in a second. So Eve and I have known each other, I think… Has it been, like, two years or something?
Eve: It has been two years now.
Esi: Yes. God, it’s gone so fast.
So Eve is a brilliant trainer and consultant with Celebrating Disability. And I always try… Somebody told me years ago, to always try and hire people that are better than yourself.
And I definitely feel that I do that with the trainers I have. Not that I’m not a very good trainer myself, but that, they keep me to account and [00:02:00] challenge myself, so it’s brilliant. But I’d love to hand over to you, Eve, to tell us a bit about who you are and why you are here today.
That was a really lovely introduction, so thank you. That was very gracious. And, yeah, I guess a little bit about me. So as you mentioned, I’ve been working for you for two years under Celebrating Disability. But outside of that, I am an occupational therapist.
I wear many hats, I am an occupational therapist, and I also have a business called Uplift With Her, which is geared to help black women in the community to learn self-regulation techniques and to find a way to transition and to progress in life through self-mastery and rediscovery.
A lot of that has been because of my own journey, but yeah, it’s something I’ve took to later on in life, but I’m really glad that I was able to
have the space to be able to do something as, [00:03:00] as meaningful as opening Uplift With Her. So that’s a little bit about me.
Can you tell us a little bit– I know you gave a really good high-level overview of Uplift With Her, but can you tell us a little bit about what some of those things mean in practice?
Eve: Yes, absolutely. Okay. So I have practiced meditation, as part of my own transformation and journey, for me to master my own skills, and that’s looked like, mastering emotional regulation, mastering breathwork, mastering just being still and overcoming challenges through stillness. So I use a lot of those techniques that I had to implement for myself for other people now.
So that looks using cultural language, cultural practice, cultural word development so that we can understand how language is creating either a positive or a negative impact in how we think and feel about ourselves and others.
It’s also [00:04:00] looking at the goals that we set for ourselves and if they are attainable, and breaking them down into steps, and this is the OT brain coming out now. So that they’re manageable and they’re put into chunks that we can achieve, because you’re less likely to want to create goals if you don’t know how to achieve them.
And then there becomes such a negative vicious cycle in our lives when we aren’t able to just achieve the smaller ones that lead to the larger ones. So we look at goals and how we formulate goals and making them realistic and quite smart. So that’s the… There’s that aspect as well.
And then the other aspect, which is completely linked to my meditation, which is looking at grounding techniques, looking at ways to to fully understand what’s going on inside of your body so that you can understand how to change how you feel.
And we do that through various different meditation and grounding practices.
Esi: Oh wow, [00:05:00] brilliant. Thank you. And it’s so true about goals. I’ve found recently that as long as I can find a strategy to achieving something, I’m more likely to stick at it. But until I know what that strategy is in whatever field it is, whether it’s like work or personal life there’s no way that I’m gonna achieve it because I don’t even know where to start.
So Yeah. And that is relevant, in everything you said with the meditation, with the grounding, and everything you’re saying as well. If you have a strategy to make it work, then it’s more likely to be successful.
Eve: Exactly. Yeah. Completely agree.
Esi: So how did you come into this area of working?
How did you come into kind of the healing space?
Eve: It was through my own life difficulties, in all honesty. I didn’t grow up very educationally equipped. I went to school and I came out with two GCSEs C and
I started off as this child who didn’t really have much [00:06:00] motivation to achieve much, but I think that’s because I found school just very structurally hard.
And we didn’t really have language around, neurodivergence and just difficulty in, in learning styles. So I flew under the radar for such a long time until I got it, and then I was in a supportive environment, and then I just ran with it and I was like, “Okay, actually I do learning.
I do like education.” But through those different experiences I had to kind of– I was confronted by lots of difficulties with teachers that would tell me I’m not gonna amount to anything. Th- quite literally a teacher did tell me that in college.
Esi: Wow.
Eve: I know. You’d not think that would be how people approach motivating students, but-
Esi: So– it’s so weird.
Next week, a trainer’s delivering a session on inclusive education for neurodivergent students, and one of the things she’s gonna ask them [00:07:00] to reflect on is when a teacher has helped and has created barriers to their learning through attitude. And it’s just– it’s so scary in this day and age really.
But I suppose it’s, the methods of teaching still remain the methods of teaching, don’t they? But it’s so scary in this day and age that teachers feel that actually if you’re not doing it in the same way, then you’re obviously not good enough, you’re wrong, and you can’t, rather than maybe it’s me, the teacher, that needs to relook at how I am educating this student.
Eve: Yeah, absolutely. And that comes with crossing a line as well, because I think teachers, maybe more so back when I was growing up, were– had a lot more flexibility around crossing that line without the repercussions or consequences of being unprofessional. But but yeah she threw out some very harsh words and told me to leave the [00:08:00] classroom.
And I was a fully– well, not fully formed adult. I was 19 at the time. But I was amongst my peers and, that’s quite an embarrassing thing to do to someone. But what she didn’t account for is just how much I love proving people wrong about me. So I ended up being this is quite an Americanised word, but valedictorian of my class, and ended up having the highest grade in my class.
And I was asked by my form teacher to come back and to tell next year, like, how my journey was and everything like that. So yeah, despite her harsh words, I somehow managed to overachieve and excel. And maybe that was the thing that I needed to get into the right head space to, to prove her wrong.
But that was something that was not uncommon in my life. People– I found that people would always have negatively reinforcing words to say or behaviors towards me, and that would [00:09:00] materialise in so many different ways because I’m quite– I’m dark-skinned, and that’s something of my identity that I cannot change. So that would mean that I would be confronted sometimes by people’s unbiased opinions of me, and sometimes direct racism towards me. And that would just continue to play out in my life in so many different ways, in work, in education, and just socially. So through all of those experiences, it made me become tougher and tougher as a person.
I had to wear this very protective armour to be able to feel like I was managing my life as appropriately asas best. But but that also meant that I was carrying around literally the mental manifestation of, big tinned soldier armour, and that’s quite heavy. It’s really heavy to carry around.
And there have been, I’m sure with all of the conversations we’ve had, numerous [00:10:00] times where people have behaved and said things in such I will say vile ways that even I couldn’t comprehend it as an empathetic person. I just couldn’t understand why they would be so venomous.
So I feel like I was forced down this line of work because I had to really look at myself, and I had to look at the effects of carrying around this armour, constantly being in survival mode, and constantly feeling like holding my breath and holding my body tight for the next time someone was going to say something or behave in a way that was quite offensive and discriminatory.
And, and I just knew I couldn’t live life like that.
So that was when I took things into my own hands and decided to move out of my own safe zone in London, and, and that was really the start of my journey, it [00:11:00] was really at that point that everything started to change and started to turn around for me.
Esi: How much of that do you feel as though you have to carry with you now?
Eve: That’s such a good question, Esi, because I think I carry it differently now. So I was able to once I made that change, I was able to expose myself into different environments, one.
That affected the difference in how people behaved with me because changed the culture- Yeah … of the environment, you’re gonna change
…
Eve: Yeah, what happens in that environment. So that was one thing. And then also it led me down, like actual helpful routes. Like being able to go to my GP and discuss carrying this level of trauma around with me and how it’s affecting me enabled me to gain access to therapy, which was amazing.
It’s been such a [00:12:00] cornerstone in my life, having access to therapy, because that alongside all of the things I was doing became like a powerhouse. So it felt like there was a big clean out after I did therapy because I was doing all of these things, the meditation, the journaling, all of the reflective work, exposing myself to new cultures, being more creative and artistic in how I expressed myself.
But I knew that I was able to lead me up until a certain point in that path before I needed someone else to take me the rest of the way, and that was what therapy was for me. So I do feel like that helped to clean out all of the debris, all of the extra baggage, and so my load is lighter now for it.
But it doesn’t, it definitely doesn’t negate the fact that I still have those experiences in micro doses. But I feel like because of all of those experiences, I’m able to manage that load differently [00:13:00] now, if that makes sense.
Esi: It does make absolute sense. Yeah. It’s really interesting that you say that, Eve. I come across a lot of people that are great advocates for therapy, but also a lot of people that are really against therapy.
Personally, I think that therapy is brilliant. I think it’s like going to a spa. It’s giving yourself kind of the luxury that your body and your mind deserves in order to move on, no matter what your previous experiences have been and what trauma is for you. I think it’s brilliant.
I trained as a therapist actually, and actually having that background knowledge in therapy, I trained as a psychodynamic therapist and having that background knowledge has really, given me the ability to see holistically about what’s going on with the person, which helps in my everyday life with friends and family and interactions, but also through my business and seeing what the kind of the barriers are, the blockers are in organisations and [00:14:00] everything.
And personally, I’ve had therapy and find it really helpful just to really find a way to understand why I’m stuck at a certain point, and give myself that kind of break I need before thinking, “Okay, you need to move on now.”
Eve: Yeah. I love that because I think we all get very stuck in life, and that’s when we end up realising that we’re carrying so much
on our plates, and then our bodies start to go we’re finally stopping. We’re finally resting.” Okay, that’s when all of the things start to happen. The health starts to, go up and down and sideways and, there’s so many things that become revealed in those moments when we stop and realise that we’re stuck.
And so it’s really useful to have therapy or someonethere in that journey to just like help to- unpick what’s happening and to [00:15:00] like just give us a bit of foresight into what it could look like if we attempt to move forward next. And that’s what I love about therapy.
It’s literally just having someone who has the skills to enable you to move forward and to become unstuck sometimes. And- Yeah … and so I’m a huge advocate for therapy as well, Esi, I love it.
You’re doing all of the hard work. They’re just here to help readjust you slightly. If it was a dress fitter, they’re here to just take in the seams, but it’s your garment, it’s your material, and they’re just trying to make sure it fits properly.
Like that way. I got really lucky with my therapist as well, ’cause she was the kindest person and the most compassionate person, and I didn’t, I think sometimes as like an independent and strong-willed Black woman, you look at the help that you need and you think it has to also be quite strong-willed and just as outspoken as [00:16:00] you.
And that would’ve been a disaster, I think. I think we would’ve just clashed heads. But she showed me in those moments just how amazing it is to have someone that’s showing you positive regard- … consistently whilst also being soft and compassionate and kind. And we don’t appreciate how a, having an, a professional, someone just like what you’re saying, outside of your friendship circle and your family circle can show you something different than what you have already experienced
in your life. And so it is beautiful when they can shine that mirror back to you and bring out the kind, soft, amazing qualities up to the surface because especially as we talked about being in survival mode and carrying that armour, you don’t realise it’s still hidden in there because you’re constantly going from one thing to another, having to [00:17:00] protect yourself and like I said before, brace and tense up for that next moment that’s going to inevitably happen.
Esi: Thank you. I think all of what you’ve said links back to what you were saying in the beginning as well. So what you were saying at the beginning when, in the before when you were going through all of that negative stuff from the environment was that you recognised that and then you changed environments, you changed your community you changed your outlook by doing different things, and you were able to move forward and empower yourself in that.
But I think that’s a very, in itself, a very kind of confident thing to do. You need to have a certain level of resilience, a certain level of confidence to know that it’s gonna be positive, a certain level of ability and bravery to be able to do that, and cognitive awareness as well.
Eve: For the longest time, a lot of people used to say, “Eve, you’re so brave,” and I just couldn’t like, I couldn’t [00:18:00] see that label as being like an integrated part of myself because I feel like making the change was so necessary.
It felt like there was no other way forward other than to make the change. Yeah. So , it’s not like I felt forced to, but I knew that was the next step. Yeah. And so I can either lean into it or avoid it as much as possible, and, i have a very interesting relationship with change because I actually quite like change.
I’ve learned how to be such an adaptable version of myself in different environments, to different roles, to… and that is, I think, one of my skills as being Eve. I feel like that’s one of the things I like about myself or love about myself and cherish, because I look at that as a bit of a challenge in a really good, positive way.
What can I make of myself this time, like, how is this gonna make me learn or grow or, and it’s difficult. It’s always difficult. It’s always the same. It’s always that you jump [00:19:00] and then you’re like, “Oh no, I’m scared.” And all of the difficult things happen, but then you peter off and then you stabilise and you find a nice soft cushion somewhere to, be yourself and you enjoy a new environment, which is lovely.
I think there’s lots of kind of negative connotations around the word brave, and it’s a bit like inspirational, isn’t it? You’re so brave.” Why? Because I remembered my own name. But I think- … I think when I was sa- and then that’s what people say, “Oh, you’re so brave.”
Esi: Why am I brave? But I think in this way, what I was really referring to was what you said. I think so many people in the same or d- not nobody has the same situation, in similar situations or different situations are so stuck in their situation that they can’t move out for one reason or another.
I think we were talking the other day about fight, flight, and freeze, and it’s that freeze. And you seem to be really good at moving forward. Almost maybe fight, [00:20:00] but, I want to change. I want my situation to be different. So that’s, I think, what I was referring to because it can be a very scary thing for people thinking I don’t know what it’s gonna be like, and at least I know.”
It’s like better the devil you know kind of thing.
Eve: You’re so right. And this is where I guess I’ve had to really soften in using different language to, to describe, Eve. Because the reality is there are aspects of bravery and courage that I show all the time when I’m making those changes, and that is that is definitely something I can assign to myself.
Leaving the country and living somewhere else for three months by myself, was not something I thought I was able to manage. But I didn’t disbelieve that I couldn’t do it either. So I was like, “There’s no evidence that I can’t do it, but there’s no evidence that I-
…
Can do it.
So let’s [00:21:00] just go with it,” kind of thing. And I’m– my brain is a very evidence-based system, so if I don’t have answers for either side, then I’m like, try it anyway.”
Esi: That’s awesome.
Eve: So that’s what led me to Thailand, which actually when we were talking earlier, that was the big trigger in my life.
It was leaving my safety and going somewhere completely different culturally speaking. Everything, even the weather, every day was different, which is something that you have to manage. I’m really glad that I did it. It felt like the first month I was trying to overcome all of my fears of controlling everything, and it got me into more silly situations than safe ones because you’re being overly precautious and-
tiptoeing around, just enjoying the flow of life. And when I realised that I’m putting myself in more danger being overcautious, I just let go. And and then I [00:22:00] had the best time. And so when I came back from Thailand, that’s when I decided London’s not for me anymore. I think I spent such a long time masking and when I got back from Thailand, it was like I could hear and feel everything so intensely for the first time.
you’ve got the underground, and then you’ve got the planes and all the helicopters ’cause there’s, what, three or four different airports and there’s probably loads more heliports in London. So you’ve got all of that sky noise, and then you’ve got- So many people living in London, all the people.
And then you’ve got cars and traffic, and everything was just it was just a lot. Everything was like the sounds, the vibrations, every- I just felt so sensitive to it. But I think I had always felt sensitive to it, I just
Esi: Okay
Eve: … masked so much- Yeah … and I was exactly so desensitised to it that I just didn’t realise that was what was going on.
I was so dysregulated. [00:23:00] So that’s when I was like, Okay, fine. Now I have this new information, time to jump, time to leap, time to do something different and give myself the environment that I need for myself.
Esi: So it sounds and I want to talk about what happened next, but it sounds if you didn’t go to Thailand, you would never have moved out of London.
Eve: Yeah, absolutely.
It really gave me the push that I needed.
Esi: Amazing. That’s so cool. I feel the same about Robbie Williams. If I didn’t go to my first concert- … then I wouldn’t have ever reached my 14th and fallen off the pavement. So yeah, exactly the same.
Eve: Exactly the same. I can see the similarities.
Esi: Absolutely. So when you moved out of London, I know that you trained as an OT and went through the … it’s a master’s degree you have, isn’t it?
Eve: I do, yes. Yes.
Esi: So tell us about that experience.
Eve: Yes. I’ll be honest in saying, Esi, it’s, it, my university experience has probably been one [00:24:00] of the most challenging experiences of my life because you, you apply to these courses expecting the best out of the situation, and the best for me was I’m gonna learn and come out of this just with more learning in my brain.
But through my journey, as I mentioned, there was so much learning about who I am neurodivergently- … and my sensory differences and that was one thing I didn’t take into consideration. So I was working actually in recruitment for some time after I had taken the leap away from London and I moved to Manchester.
And, when the funding became available, I think it was around 2017 or something like that I took the opportunity to do a master’s ’cause I was like, “I was never gonna be able to afford this before, so I’m gonna take the opportunity.” And I was so lucky, I was accepted to Chester University. I [00:25:00] was i- living in Manchester, working in Leeds, and commuting to Chester –
Esi: Wow
Eve: to do this course. Insane, isn’t it? It’s
Esi: Sounds good though …
Eve: ridiculously insane. So I have no idea when I was sleeping, how I was resting. Yeah, minefield. That lasted for as long as it could and it was really unfortunate because I remember I was with this company working in recruitment, and I was finally offered the position I had been working so hard for.
I had to shift, I had to transition, and I did say no to that contract, and decided to move to Chester- … so that I can fully put myself into the course, do it right, and excel in it. But yeah I didn’t really know how much support I actually needed and in that– during that course,
it was like a five-minute walk to uni. I was still very much a person that can sit on a [00:26:00] laptop and a computer for a very fixed long period of time and fixate on just doing the work and producing because there was all this “You have to do this master’s,” and but then I also loved the subject a lot.
So that experience was my first experience as an adult learning in an institution and realising that there were things hidden in how I processed, how I articulated my thoughts how I researched. Just all of the learning difficulties came up to the surface in a very lovely way, though.
It wasn’t really a boiling point at Chester.
It was later actually ’cause I did go ahead and graduate from that course, but it was later when I was doing my training for OT that a-all of the difficulties came up to a boiling point and perhaps that was for various different reasons. But the course was not entirely [00:27:00] research-based like the psychology course I did at Chester.
It had so many different components. So it was research-led. You had to also do a very different style of learning, which was inquiry-based. You also had to do lots of different case study related essays and reports, as well as, doing extended essays, presentations, and also placements, work placements- in the NHS. And all of these things just brought out a-all of my challenges all at once whilst I was going through other personal things at the time. As my mum was ill during that time and so I was back and forth between Oxford when we came out of the pandemic, ’cause that was actually still during the pandemic that time.
And so I was traveling back and forth between Oxford and Ipswich at the time. And and just having that as an outside role [00:28:00] that I was contributing towards whilst having this very focused occupation, which is the OT training was quite difficult to juggle.
I feel like the support that I had was just nowhere near what I would’ve expected from professionals who were also teaching you about this amazing, profession that you’re going into, which, it, you have to collaborate with people to ensure that you’re looking at their goals and, giving them strategies that can help them to excel to achieving their goals and, having better ways of working.
So it was quite difficult to fathom that actually I’m going into this profession and I’m really finding it difficult to cope in these moments whilst being taught by people who have the tools to help you to walk through this journey better. and that I think I still can’t grapple with to be honest, because I would’ve [00:29:00] expected those people to be the very people that would’ve been able to help me along this way.
Esi: It did occur to me until you were just explaining how ironic it is that you were training, people were training you to be in a profession that is all about collaborative working and finding solutions that, and they discriminated against you.
I’ve had a few similar experiences, but the one I’m gonna share today was years ago when I was delivering training for a local authority. I was delivering, training on support planning, with service users who were getting direct payments. And halfway through the training session there was an unexpected fire alarm.
So it was treated obviously as an emergency and a real fire alarm. So as a wheelchair user, they escorted me out to the kind of the safe place to wait when you’re disabled. And this woman that was waiting with me, and we were on the second floor so I [00:30:00] think this building had six floors and as people were par- ’cause everybody was coming past us obviously, ’cause we were like on the second floor and everybody was running down the stairs.
And as they’re running down the stairs she kept asking people that she recognised, “What do we do in this situation?” And, the, and people, “I don’t know,” while they were running to save themselves. Gosh … and she said to me at one stage, “What do you think we should do?” And I said, as a joke, I said I could throw myself out the window.”
And she was like, “Oh no, I don’t think we should do that.” And I was like no, nor do I.” There was an absolute, my God, no. No one would wanna do that. You need to come up with the solutions here. Yeah. So eventually the fire brigade came upstairs and this very, it’s stereotypical that they’re hunky.
This guy wasn’t hunky at all in any way, shape or form. Sorry guy if you’re listening. and said, “Oh, it’s fine. We can go down the lift.” And by this stage I was [00:31:00] like out of my wits panicking. Like I was crying. And as a 44-year-old, I cry quite easily. As a 25-year-old, I didn’t cry at all.
And so it was a sight that I was crying and they didn’t know this obviously, but I was like, oh my God. And when we got outside, I couldn’t stop shaking. And then it was a, false alarm, I went back upstairs in the lift. . And the very next thing that I had to deliver in this training session was empathy and compassion. And I just looked at the slide, and I looked at the delegates and I was like, “I’m really sorry, I need to go home.”
And I couldn’t… And it was just one of the first experiences that I can remember as an adult where I just thought, I can’t continue here. I’m so shaken, I can’t continue. And I just found, on the way home, I called my boss and explained what’s happened. And also actually asked to still be paid.
[00:32:00] And, I just couldn’t, I didn’t think I could get my head around the irony of what I was there to deliver and then what I experienced at the same time. And it sounds like a very similar situation that you just articulated.
Eve: 100%, because even you saying in that moment, actually there was access to the lift, there was just no protocol or process- that was, like, thought about in advance, and that’s direct discrimination to you because you were then left there when actually there could have been things that were done, or at least by the very, very least communicated to you so you didn’t have to sit there in your fear, feeling anxious, feeling afraid of what’s coming next, and I hope that was a learning curve for them so that they can get their act together, because that just makes my blood boil.
Esi: They were quite scared of me for a few weeks after that. But yeah, I think they did take some learning and the [00:33:00] organisation that I was working for to deliver the training ensured that they did something as a result of what happened.
And as you say, it was about communication because nobody knew that it was a false alarm, so I couldn’t have gone down the down the lift, , until it was signed off by the by the fireman or the fire brigade. However, the communication about the fact that I was safe would have been enough.
Eve: Yeah. 100%.
Yeah.
Esi: So you, I’m guessing because you told, the story that you told I guessed about halfway through that it wasn’t going to be a a positive experience. So what happens in your experience, and what was done about it, if anything?
Eve: One of the hardest ones was during placement. So we have 1,000 hours of training that we have to do as part of our, our training degree, and I think 1,000 hours of research and taught outcomes as well. So my– it’s blocked [00:34:00] up into three different placements that you have to do across three different services, and the first service was great.
It was an oncology ward in one of the top London hospitals, and it was such a great experience. Everyone in an oncology department are the best people ever, and I think you have to be if you work on an oncology ward … because I wouldn’t want to see a terrible, unempathetic person on that kind of a team.
So it was the right level of people with the right level of skills and, personalities. And that was brilliant. I actually got offered a job after, which was nice, but I couldn’t do, I couldn’t do it all. I couldn’t do it all.
So the second placement that I was in was, I was sent to was a stroke ward in Oxford,
…
Eve: Not London. And I remember it is, it was a 10-week placement that I had to be on, and I remember going in the first day, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, coming from my first placement thinking, “This is gonna be great.
I’m gonna advance my [00:35:00] skills.” And it was such a stark difference because I went from being in this team that… and everyone was there, to entering on the first day and only my placement educator was available as the only person in the OT team.
Esi: Wow.
Eve: A placement educator is someone who’s assigned to you when you’re on a placement so that they can sign off your skills, they can teach you and advise you on what to do and be the ideal golden model standard of what you should be learning and doing as an occupational therapy student.
So she was assigned to me for the entire 10 weeks, and I remember that first couple of days, because no one was there other than her and me, I was used as a, as like a personal assistant at that point, and she would just send me to get gloves, and I was just running back and forth-
Esi: Wow
Eve: Back and forth. It was the strangest way of starting my placement. Yeah. But I think she was obviously quite out in the lurch because of the fact that there was no other members of the team available [00:36:00] on these days. So as my placement went on, I was starting to become very aware that actually seeing people who have had severe strokes, because- it was just something completely new to me, seeing the vast amount of people on this ward coming into our services with extreme like physical manifestations of what a stroke will do
to someone’s body. And that, I think being confronted with that was just a lot for me to take in. ‘Cause you have to manage your own emotions, but so that you can still act professionally. But it really was wearing and tearing on me, and I didn’t realise how much it was triggering me actually, because it was just some of the patients just had such severe symptoms.
So one of my hugest challenges was to overcome this. So [00:37:00] they grade you on a few different occasions during this 10-week period. The first grade is given in the first two weeks, which to be honest, you can’t really take seriously because it’s just to understand what your baseline is.
And then you’re marked in the middle to see how far you’ve come from your baseline to the halfway mark, and then at the end to give your official final grade of how you’ve done during the entire placement. So I had received like a bog standard grade at the beginning. It wasn’t high, it wasn’t low.
It was somewhere floating around in the middle. And then during that time, I had to put some goals in place so that I can work towards what I wanted to achieve by the halfway mark. But this is when all of the things started happening, and I was quite triggered, and I didn’t really know how to really do the job without feeling completely affected on the inside.
So I did actually speak to my [00:38:00] placement educator, and I said, Look, I’ll be honest in saying this is actually affecting my, like my wellbeing quite a lot. My mental health is starting to suffer a little bit because this is, I’m being asked to take on a caseload, but some people in my caseload are actually really complex, and I don’t know how to manage my own wellbeing whilst being professional in this setting because it’s quite triggering.
And so we came to a middle ground in my, halfway mark so that I can work on having a caseload of some of the people who would come in with less severe stroke diagnoses that were able to rehabilitate very quickly, like within a three to seven-day window.
I was gonna grade everything down, as we say in OT terms so that it was manageable for me, and I can build the confidence and, practice without feeling like I’m unable to practice because of all of the, [00:39:00] like emotional tension that I was building from the more complex cases.
So that was working, that was happening, and then I got very burnt out and then needed some time because I was fatiguing very quickly. the change in direction came too late because I was already overworked before the change happened. So then I had a bit of fatigue and burnout, and I took some time off.
And when I came back and we did a return to work I was told by my placement educator that I had to take on the more complex patients that came onto the ward.
Esi: Wow.
Eve: And I said, “But I don’t feel like I’ve done enough- Yeah … to build to that yet.” ‘Cause we were really just over the halfway mark.
We hadn’t really, we weren’t any closer to week 10,
Esi: Yeah …
Eve: than we were to the middle of the placement. So she said to me, “That’s what you’re gonna have to do.” And I said, I don’t think I can do that yet. I know my own ability, and I’m– and I feel like [00:40:00] I’ve been building my confidence in doing some of the less severe cases, so why can’t we do that and then continue to build on this at a later stage?
Because for me, it wouldn’t matter if I was doing that for two weeks or for four weeks-
… As long as I can show that I was doing that. And she said to me, if you do not take on the more complex cases, that I am gonna fail.
Esi: Wow.
Eve: Yeah. Really quite shocking for me to hear that kind of
It, it was a threat wasn’t it?
Esi: . My God, I’m just trying to get my head around that. So- Yeah … so where were you able to go from there? What were your choices? Were you told your options apart from fail or do it?
Eve: So it was obviously quite a contentious time because I was just coming [00:41:00] out of burnout and you never really come out of burnout- a week after a sleeping period. You’re still burnt out, you’re just masking through the burnout. And you probably have just a tad bit more energy. So I was still burnt out mentally fatigued by all of this because it was affecting my wellbeing. And then I was tasked with having to problem solve around what was technically a, a- Oh
threatening resignation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
The tricky thing about this was the course is all compulsory. If you fail one component, you don’t achieve your- Wow … your final. Yeah, exactly. So for me, that, it weighed quite heavy on me. But because we had just come away from the mid graded a, like meeting that we had, I didn’t see how I could go from, like that grade that she gave me, which was maybe like a C at that [00:42:00] point, to a fail.
It didn’t, it, for me, it didn’t, the math was not mathing. So I knew exactly what this was and it was a threat just because I wasn’t doing the thing that she wanted me to do.
Even though I had really fully explained and articulated myself as well as I could she did say, go to occupational health through uni.
They should be able to help you.” But as my educator, she’s also got responsibility in helping me too by helping me to manage my caseload.
And that is where she should have been implementing the best and the most proactive support.
Esi: And I imagine also that she knew that you had just come back from burnout because she did your return to work, and so as a manager in that way, she had a responsibility to look after you as an employee.
Eve: Absolutely. [00:43:00] Yeah. Because you are. You’re working, you’re taking breaks, and you’re doing notes just like- Yeah … everyone else on the team. Because at this point, w- the rest of the team did come back eventually, so it wasn’t just me and her in the end. Yeah. So everyone was working towards the same shared goals as a team, and I thought that I was a part of that model.
But but she made it very clear in that meeting that would not be the case.
Wow.
So I had to go away and I had to speak to my own supervisor, because whilst we’re on placement, we also have an allocated supervisor, to help us from the university itself. And I was just very lucky to have my supervisor, because she’s now my mentor and she’s amazing.
But she just got really real with me and she was also supportive, and she asked me what I wanted to do. And she asked… I remember her asking me,can you see yourself going back?” And I said, “No.” No. Not if staying- No, not
Esi: in that [00:44:00] environment.
Eve: Yeah, absolutely. So she made everything happen for me, so that I can be removed from that kind of environment.
and, a- and so that I can just concentrate on, on, on being well again and not being around people who were not really supportive. of progressing my goals. And I remember having that conversation and it being relayed to my educator at the time. And she called me and she said we can make some adjustments.
We can get you working part-time here to finish your placement.” But I felt like that was the only time she worked collaboratively with me, and that was right when I had chosen to, to stop everything because she had crossed the line. Yeah. The sad thing about th- that being the situation is that actually where I was fully committed to making a formal [00:45:00] complaint that unfortunately with University, there isn’t this process where a complaint from a student can be taken to the external organisation.
There was never a process or a policy put in place so that students had a right to advocate and to complain for themselves.
Esi: Wow.
Eve: So unfortunately, my voice was completely diminished in that situation because there just wasn’t a process, so therefore no complaint could be made.
Yeah that’s one of the things that I think they need to look at moving forward. I think they need to do better and be better so that they can have a two-way system in place so that students can complain about their educators
Because it’s not students go in and they’re working for free and, educators do sometimes treat you like a hindrance rather than someone to inspire [00:46:00] and to motivate to come into these professions.
And students should be encouraged and enabled to be able to complain and there should be those policies and process put in place just the same as if an educator wanted to complain about a student-
…
Eve: Which is actually currently in place.

Eve: It’s taken me this entire journey to really get to a position where I have language around it, and where I can identify these situations in real time.
Younger Eve would look at me and would feel safe enough to know that I could advocate for her.

Esi: , What is it that, that gives you the confidence to be able to self-advocate?
Eve: This is where learning about my neurodivergence has really made me understand my mechanisms of a- like [00:47:00] activism. And I think I have a strong, aversion to injustice. That’s definitely something I know. It makes my blood boil.
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