How Blake Auden Helps Others Cope Through Poetry

Through the pandemic, poetry has turn into a technique of speaking emotions. While you don’t have the phrases to say what you’re experiencing, it all the time looks like you’ll find somebody who is aware of find out how to say it, and a lot better than you ever might. If you’re feeling anxious or brokenhearted, look no additional than the work of Blake Auden. For the previous 2 years, he has shared his work each day on Instagram along with his 142,000 followers. He additionally has written two collections of poetry, his most up-to-date, Beekeeper, focuses on love, friendship, loss, and psychological well being. The title, he explains, describes him nicely. 

He says, “Somebody as soon as mentioned to me my head was a colony of bees…[and I thought] I assume that makes me a beekeeper, then, making an attempt to take care of all these anxious ideas.”

However, coping with anxiousness out loud was not all the time one thing he was in a position to do. Like many males, particularly these raised in army households, Blake grew up prescribing to the angle that you must “powerful it out” and issues like crying or worrying are usually not issues {that a} man does. He additionally felt he wanted to cover his feelings to guard others, particularly his mother and father, from fear and self-blame. He speaks to this in a single poem and writes, “I’ve learnt to interrupt softly/to catch the items of me earlier than they hit the bottom/so the folks I like imagine me after I smile and say I’m okay.” In different phrases, he felt that even when he was falling aside, he wanted to catch the items in order that no person would hear them break and no person would discover. He usually coped alone and in silence.

Nevertheless, he discovered that it was not potential to keep away from or ignore anxiousness and it worsened to the purpose of it taking on his life. He gave up taking part in music, stopped seeing mates, and reached some extent the place if something may make him anxious, he stopped doing it for worry of getting a panic assault or being anxious about it. About 2.5 years in the past, he virtually by no means left the home, which trying again now, he says, really made it worse.

At some point, he reached his tipping level. He had a panic assault and missed with the ability to go to along with his finest pal since he was three years previous and he had beforehand missed his wedding ceremony for a similar purpose. After that, he determined that he was by no means going to not be concerned so he wanted to face it. He reframed his anxiousness as a wolf, which it’s now characterised as in any of his poetry. He explains the metaphor as the next, “Anxiousness is all the time there, even once you’re not anxious…It’s there…simply within the timber, simply behind the treeline the place it is darkish. And, I all the time considered it as one thing that stalks and hides and stalks and picks its alternative to assault you once you’re weak and that each one felt like a wolf to me.” As a substitute of working from the wolf, he made the choice to simply accept it (anxiousness) as part of him and study to deal with it. He even acquired a tattoo of a wolf on his hand to remind him to not run away from laborious conditions. He feels that since he has tailored this angle, regardless that he nonetheless will get panic and anxiousness, he has total been so much higher. He has additionally been far more comfy speaking about his psychological well being overtly with others with out disgrace. 

He attributes a few of that consolation to initially speaking about his anxiousness within the secure area of remedy. He thinks remedy, the place he went for 18 months, was the place he discovered it was OK to speak about his psychological well being, and that he wouldn’t be judged for it, or have folks make character assumptions primarily based on it. He notes, “It made me really feel that really, perhaps this is not as uncommon a factor as I believed it was and perhaps, I am not the one one feeling it. And, I believe that began me on the street to being extra comfy speaking about it.” 

Now, via his poetry, Blake overtly talks about his experiences and his ache with anybody who reads it. That is significantly poignant provided that it’s November, and mental health and suicide prevention is highlighted as one of many three males’s well being causes within the Movember motion. Blake provides, “I do not suppose it impacts my masculinity to say, you realize what? I burst into tears within the grocery store earlier than. I might slightly not do this, but it surely occurs and I’ve acquired no downside admitting that. I undergo from anxiousness, I undergo from panic assaults, and these are issues that all of us need to undergo and there is nothing anti-masculine about speaking about it.” 

Although in some methods it might seem to be writing might really feel cathartic or assist with processing his feelings, Blake says the writing course of is definitely fairly emotionally difficult and even upsetting. He notes, “You are partaking with feelings that historically I’d have in all probability buried for a few years. I am now forcing myself to have a look at [them] once more and deal with them, which, you realize, could also be useful in the long term…It’s laborious to do whereas I’m doing it, however I’m glad I’ve completed it afterwards.” 

Blake acknowledges, nevertheless, that the profit from poetry for him comes largely from sharing it and understanding that he helps others along with his phrases. He describes having fun with seeing how folks on Instagram have interaction along with his poetry and interpret it. Many inform him it helps them really feel like they don’t seem to be alone or helps vocalize how they’re feeling. The suggestions from readers has even helped Blake to normalize his personal experiences and make them really feel extra acceptable.

As somebody who explains their largest worry is being forgotten or dwelling a life with out influence, objective, or that means, it helps Blake to know his phrases is perhaps his objective. It helps him to suppose that his struggling, ache, and hardest experiences may even have that means. It additionally helps him really feel that perhaps he’s going via all of it, or has gone via all of it, for a purpose.

And, that purpose is to assist others cope. To present them hope or validation of their emotions, and to allow them to know they don’t seem to be alone, particularly proper now once we all want it a lot. He provides, “Now when I’ve a foul day, I believe nicely perhaps what I am going via will flip right into a poem subsequent week that may actually assist somebody who’s struggling far more than I’m. By which case, it is value it.”