‘Grippy Socks Vacation’ and Our Media Diet

Written by Asher Chambers

Graphics by Wendy Lan

Our diet isn’t just the things we eat, it includes everything we consume and absorb. What we watch, what we listen to, the jokes we tell and the language we use all contribute to our diet. Our language is a key aspect of this diet, it can reinforce negative beliefs and views we hold, or, it can change them for the better. 

The language we use to describe our life experiences specifically is something very important to consider when we want to understand how to move on from them. 

This is why I think it’s important to bring attention to the phrase ‘grippy socks vacation’ and other jokes like it that are used online in spaces for those with mental health issues. 

If you’ve spent any amount of time online in these spaces, especially tiktok, you’ve likely come across ‘grippy socks vacation’ before. It’s a phrase used to describe an admission to a psychiatric hospital/ward. The phrase is meant to be ironic, because obviously such an experience is not a vacation by any means, however, from what I’ve seen, it seems to have lost it’s irony somewhat, and has instead dominated these online spaces. It's become a huge part of many people’s identity. Instead of advocacy work, testimonials about the true nature of psych ward admissions, fully acknowledging their devastating effect, and healing from that trauma, there are jokes that use language that (unintentionally) diminish the very trauma so many who use this joke have been through. 

Psych wards are inherently traumatic. They completely disrupt your life, strip you of your control, your privacy and your identity in a matter of minutes and often for an undetermined amount of time. That's all without touching restraints, forced medication, unjust admissions and patient mistreatment, abuse and neglect. It's a distressing, dehumanising experience no matter which way you look at it. People die in psychiatric hospitals, and inside, you are often acutely aware of this fact because you can easily see how. 

I’m also aware that because of this trauma, many people use humour to cope with this, and that its likely the very reason the phrase ‘grippy socks vacation’ exists. I don’t think anyone should be stopped from making this joke, but rather I question how this affects us. We are subconsciously diminishing something that traumatised millions, myself included, and spreading a false narrative that does reach people who have never been admitted into a psych ward. 

Psych ward trauma, like any medical trauma, is difficult to come to terms with because how can something that is meant to help you, heal you, actually make you worse? It’s underestimated and ignored, belittled and not believed. ‘What do you mean a doctor hurt you?’ ‘A nurse would never do that!’ ‘Yeah, but you were unstable at the time…’ But doctors do hurt you, and nurses do do that, and yes we are ill, but we should still be treated like humans. 

This is why ‘grippy socks vacation’ has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. That subtle connotation of ‘vacation’ that has existed before the joke. Psych wards are often diminished outside of mental health circles to hotels, or a rest, or an escape from real life. On more than one occasion I have been asked if I enjoyed my time in hospital, as if I was there of my own free will, and not under threat of my rights being taken from me. 

Its that connotation that seeps into our own subconscious, it slips into our thoughts and we end up belittling our own experiences in the name of humour. What starts out as undercurrents and connotations often grows into ‘it’s not that big of a deal’ and ‘other people had it worse’. All this does is push it down, but it hits harder than you think it will. I convinced myself using this kind of language that what I went through was nothing, and a year and a half later it collapsed in on me. 

As I said before, sometimes this is our way of coping with it, I’ve coped the same way for a long time - but is it healthy? Should it be our only coping mechanism? Should we be creating identities around these jokes? 

Our diet is important, our language is important. Are we being too reckless with our words?