The WOW Factor: Olivia Shares Her Story
Olivia, now 15, joined a Waves of Wellness (WOW) program in October 2019 in Sydney. Today she is a youth mentor for new participants joining WOW on the northern beaches.
“I was at my lowest point when I went along to the first session of the program. Afterwards I was hooked and the happiest I’d been in a long while. It helped me to talk openly about my mental health issues with strangers.”
Olivia’s Dad encouraged her to join the 8 week youth program and through WOW she discovered a passion for surfing and met her next best friend. They continue to surf together, long after the program has wrapped up.
“I felt alive. For the first time in months, I had a real smile and felt happy. I knew from then on that this is where I belonged.”
WOW takes your usual clinical therapy setting and places it on the beach where mental health issues can be talked about in an open environment. Using trained mental health professionals as surf coaches, WOW delivers innovative mental health support programs on a whole new level. What WOW does is straight forward, really, it saves lives through surfing.
"If I wake up having a really bad day, I always think, ok I have surfing today, that's something to push forward to.
Olivia has been dealing with mental health challenges for many years. She suffers from OCD, anxiety and PTSD. She found that WOW was an outlet for her troubles, a place where she could be rid of them temporarily. At WOW we call the shoreline the ‘bullshit barrier’, a place where our issues can be washed away by the ocean, where we can get some much-needed respite from the chaos in our lives.
“I'm normally very alert and shaky. But when I'm on the waves I feel really calm and relaxed, and all my worries leave my head.”
Through WOW and her new found love for surfing, her confidence bloomed. She began to make new friends and she was able to open up to people who understood what she was going through.
“I was definitely introverted, I didn't have a lot of friends. I didn't know how to act around people and had very low self esteem. And so when we got out surfing and I stood up on my first wave I found some confidence in myself. Surfing is just where I can relax and escape from everything, and it just makes me feel really whole.”
At WOW the facilitators use a lot of metaphors to help better understand our mental health. Sometimes describing what's going on in our heads is difficult. But through metaphors we can attempt to paint a picture of the thoughts swirling around inside. We use the sand, the waves, and of course the act of surfing to evoke images and better label our emotions. This can help us reframe things in a new light and it allows others to understand the journey we are on. As Olivia says...
“When you get knocked off a wave, it's like a metaphor for life. Like when you have a downfall but then you try again and you finally make it and you can finally stand up on your own."
Thank you for sharing your story, Olivia.
We’re all about bringing the WOW factor to mental health, so keep an eye out for these magic case studies in the future as we dive deep into what makes people tick, and the essence of their experience with WOW. If you'd like to share your story, drop us a line!