Wordfood
04 Jul 2010 4 Comments
in Childhood Abuse, Mental Health Tags: alcohol abuse, anorexia, belittle, borderline personality disorder, burning, contempt, cruel words, cutting, diagnoses, dissociation, emotional abuse, fear, grief, humiliation, insults, kind words, labelling, numbing, overdosing, psychiatric hospital, psychosis, sarcasm, self-destruction, self-harm, self-starvation, shrivelled spirit, strong spirit, suicidal, taunts, terror, threats, verbal abuse
This film contains strong language and scenes unsuitable for young children. Please send your little ones out of the room!
Also, it could be triggering for some. Please try to be kind to yourself after viewing.
About Wordfood: I wrote, directed and narrated this short film in 2004. It’s a subject I am passionately concerned about – the effects of abuse in childhood on mental health. Themes explored are – emotional and verbal abuse, self-injury, dissociation, suicide attempts, hospitilization, diagnoses and labelling.
The film can also be viewed on the following site, along with a selection of other films with mental health themes. http://www.inspired-stories.tv/ This site is dependent on maintaining funding, so it may not be up forever but until then enjoy the films!
Wordfood was made with Flexible Films (http://www.flexiblefilms.co.uk/) and Inspirational Filmworks. Thank you to all the amazing and lovely people listed in the end credits - wouldn’t have been possible without them. xxx 
Jul 19, 2010 @ 13:32:15
Hi, I don’t think I have left a comment before, although I have been reading your blog for a while.
This short film really touched me and my eyes were glued to the screen from beginning to end. I found myself thinking of myself as a child, where sexual abuse replaced the emotional abuse which you used, and how my life has turned out so similarly to that of the doll used.
I find myself thinking now, that I wonder what I would have thought if someone had told me when I was say, 14, that by the age of 28 I would have become a mental health service user battling with diagnoses and labels and so many negative emotions towards myself. I wonder how I would have felt if someone had said to me that all of the little dreams which ran through my head of meeting the man of my dreams and getting married, having a baby, buying a house, etc, by the age of 28 were infact not going to happen.
Of course nobody could ever have known this is the way my life would have turned out so far, but watching your film made it all make perfect sense. Of course a child who is surrounded by emotional abuse (or in fact any kind of abuse) is going to grow up with massive amounts of confusion and self hatred. Of course it makes sense that some children will enter adulthood and never be able to truly move on from their early experiences. And of course it makes sense that whilst that person is left battling with so many emotions, that other people who caused or contributed towards their trauma will downplay it and/or deny it’s existence.
Sorry I am waffling on a bit here, I am just really touched by your video right now and feeling a bit of a lightbulb moment in my head where so many things are suddenly falling into place. I’m sure there are many other people who can relate to this film and will find it equally as moving as I did.
Thanks for sharing it x
Jul 19, 2010 @ 17:38:29
Thank you so much for commenting – and you weren’t waffling at all! You make a lot of sense. I think that sexual abuse can lead to very similar problems in mental health as explored in this film – but I think also that it leads to other more complicated issues – that would have been very difficult to include in this film because of time limits – and also probably should be a seperate film on it’s own to be able to get across just how horrific this kind of abuse is and the damage it can do in it’s own right. To have included it in this film wouldn’t have covered it to the extent needed and it would have felt like something added in as an after thought, which it definately does not deserve. I’m really sorry that you had to go through that as a child. I hope that you will be able to find something that can help you to find hope in your life – so that the dreams you describe having can feel like a possibility. Long term psychotherapy is something that really helped me a lot, and I don’t think i would be where I am today without it. It’s a space that is just for you to talk and release all that pain. It takes a long while at first to develop the trust to be able to talk like that, but it was worth it for me. I was incredibly lucky to get mine on the NHS, but I know that it’s very hard for a lot of people to get it, a post-code lottery much of the time. Books also helped me a lot, to read about people with similar experiences can give you so many ‘lightbulb moments’ as you describe it!
Tyy not to give up on yourself – I know that’s easy for me to say – but I understand how it is to be in that place – I gave up on myself for a long time. Wishing you all the best, take care x
Aug 25, 2010 @ 22:40:29
That was really powerful.
Aug 25, 2010 @ 22:51:37
Thank you very much, Jessica, much appreciated
x