Caroline Flack

Poor Caroline. I don't condone what she's alleged to have done but she must have been in turmoil. If only someone could have persuaded to take residential therapy.

My heart goes out to her family and friends, and Laura Whitmore's words were powerful on her radio show.

Opalfruit8 said:

Oh I know with the suicide thing but it’s the depression/BPD/anxiety people are throwing out I can’t see where it came from aside from her own actions with smashing the guy with a lamp while he slept x


Sure, but were there concerns before it all came out about the abuse?

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I'd privately wondered before what with her car crash of a love life, her inability to be without a relationship, what seemed to be stories of mood swings and immense anger in her relationships, the constant drama, her reliance on alcohol and drugs, and now the stories in the past few weeks of self harm. I'd been thinking BPD for a while but I didn't want to Internet diagnose.

DowntoearthDawn said:

Joe Swash.....attention seeking. All these bloody celebs dining out on her misery, makes me sick. Suicide isn’t fucking brave, battling cancer is brave! Battling sepsis is brave. My opinion.

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Maybe you need to rethink this comment as it's very triggering and perpetuates a stigma around suicide/mental health
It's not cowardly or brave, tying actions to psychological states doesn't make sense, not everyone has the same mindset when doing an action

bl0wingbubbles said:

Final year psychology student here and I think the exact same, which is really heartbreaking because it's one of the hardest things to treat

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Am I right in believing that it's also one of the disorders/illnesses where suicide is an extremely high percentage?

Blurp said:

Am I right in believing that it's also one of the disorders/illnesses where suicide is an extremely high percentage?

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10% of people with BPD will die from suicide
The percentage of attempted suicide is much higher..

Plus it's a postcode lottery for accessing high intensity psychological interventions designed to treat BPD, even in places like the priory successfully accessing DBT can be extremely difficult

Ner_Nikki_Ner_Ner said:

I totally agree with this. It would have taken an extreme amount of courage to end her own life. She must of been in a really bad place.
Mental health isn't the same as cancer. Cancer is in its own court. Both horrible but different.

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Totally agree and I think your post and the one you responded to from @indescribe are really important for as many people as possible to see in this conversation.
We can’t create hierarchies of suffering - comparing suicide to cancer or sepsis is not relevant or helpful. It doesn’t make sense. Just like we aren’t about to compare cancer with sepsis either.

Admittedly I used to find suicide a hard one to understand too. Without personal experience it seems impossibly selfish when imagine the pain it leaves behind. But from talking to people, especially a close friend who was on the brink for close to a year, I see that severe mental illness messes up your brain chemistry and you don’t see the world like a healthy person.
So you can honestly believe friends and family don’t really love you. You honestly believe they would be better off without you. That’s how malignant and destructive an illness it is.

Influenced said:

You can still feel empathy for the fact that someone has died so unnecessarily

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It’s very apparent that this ‘person’ cannot.

Luce0331 said:

Wow what a disgusting comment, Joe worked with Caroline on I’m a celeb so I can understand he’s upset. I’d hate to have you as a mother and be met with an eye roll when I’m sad about my friends death

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I’m a great mother who has seen her own mother beg for life when in agony with cancer. I cherish life. Caroline wanted attention, she’s got it.

Greatbutton said:

He quite clearly rang the paps and posed for these photos. Ridiculous. As if the paps are gonna know his location without him telling them.

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Paps can be very devious. They have long lenses. Very very likely he had no clue they were there. And they will know where he is staying, he will have effectively been stalked over the last few months. They are patient and they will pounce. The photos have made money, they have generated an article. Anything about Caroline will right now, the paps know this and so they will wait for their prey. You have to live your life, as there are 24 hours in a day it gives plenty of opportunity for the paps to get something which can be strung into a narrative (even if it's made up and all insinuations). Bigger celebs, those with money, experience and connections, will be more prepared to be able to avoid the intrusion into the daily minutiae, but even they fail and photos get taken.

No matter if he said things about Caroline in the past, it seems unfair to label him now as trying to make money without any insight. Most likely, he is just as shocked as we all are. He did have a relationship with her at one point, with strong feelings to the point of engagement, that won't have all gone away. So let him grieve too. Just like people are ganging up on social media to Burton for having called the police in the first place and telling him to fee guilty which is awful, this feels very similar.

The thing that gets me (and I suffer terribly with my mental health. Suicidal thoughts, ideation and numerous attempts) is how low and desperate she must have felt in that moment she attempted.
I don’t care what she did and yes I know there are consequences for whatever happened that night but for someone to feel so bad they are at the point of no return. Something so drastic to end it all. Alone and probably incredibly distressed with no one to talk to. That’s the most horrible part about it.
feeling suicidal and feeling like that is your only option is a horrendous place to be in.
No matter what her actions were towards Lewis, towards any of her previous boyfriends, everyone deserves someone to confide in at their lowest point. That was hers and she felt like she had no one.
Or maybe she reached that point and attempted, as a cry for help but was actually successful. If she had survived I’m sure she would have been called attention seeking. That’s what’s wrong with this world. Not enough understanding for how people really feel to end up reaching the action of irreversible suicide.
It’s so sad. She’s not the first and won’t be the last.

Greatbutton said:

He quite clearly rang the paps and posed for these photos. Ridiculous. As if the paps are gonna know his location without him telling them.

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I work in journalism - a very very different brand to this type of work (investigative). But still, I use open source material all the time to scrutinise where someone might be or deduct some other bit of evidence / theory and put together clues from social media. Or even just other reports in papers. Let alone other public source documents. That's without having the resources and will of the tabloids and paps who WILL physically go along and effectively 'stalk'. The depths some of these types of journos will go to is very low. Have a look at the whole phone hacking saga and the dark arts. Most of it is just human arts.

Edit; My point for posting this is to try and demonstrate how easy it is to find someone using their social media. The amount of data that people put out into the public domain, even accidentally, is incredibly vast. There is also something called 'jigsaw identification' - where drawing on different clues you can hone in on or confirm something. The little details are very revealing. In RL I warn as many of my friends as I can about how easy it is to do this and to protect themselves. Again, that's without those that will be devious, make phone calls pretending to be someone else to confirm if someone is staying somewhere, or speak to friends / bystanders / pay people for little bit of tips to help them along the way.

Long time reader here but never had anything to add to posts till now. I have a very different take on Caroline Flack and it comes from working with and studying narcissistic personalities and narcissistic personality disorder.

Obviously, I can’t say for sure/could never diagnose but here is a different take on what may have happened. Caroline appears to strongly fit the personality traits of a narcissist, and follows the traits of a domestic abuse perpetrator to the letter almost. Targets men whom are much younger, whom she can make believe they are lucky to be with her, whom may be financially dependent on her due to age etc, and other factors. She looks much younger than she is (a common trait amongst those who groom younger victims) and is deemed young and beautiful. When a person is labelled this way, people find it hard to associate them with a crime or the capacity to do bad things. This is especially true of a woman. However, Caroline has a history of very questionable relationships (eg Harry Styles) and quite often, if she had not been a woman, or had not been labelled a young and beautiful woman, would have had much harsher criticism (many times, rightly so).

A narcissist will do anything to avoid criticism and what they feel contradicts their own high opinion of themselves.They revel in adoration, make their victims feel like things are their fault and I have known of many cases where a narcissist will indeed attempt suicide, or actually has committed suicide, in order to complete the ultimate act against their intended victim; to make their victim feel it was their fault, they caused the death, they're a bad person etc. This then causes so many issues for the victim and prevents them often from speaking out against any potential abusive relationships in the future.

Considering that Caroline has committed suicide prior to the impending court case, her lawyers (apparently) having told her the strong possibility of a custodial sentence, the fact further details which may be quite harrowing will come out and so on, this may have been too much for her to consider as it doesn’t equate with her own view of herself. In addition, it could just be a further act of violence against her boyfriend. A case of “Look what you made me do” so to speak. It could also be that she never actually intended to commit suicide but that she attempted it to make those around her further feel how isolated she was etc and for the press to then change the way in which they report. None of these things would be uncommon in such a personality.

The world we now live in has gone to the extreme regarding mental health. Everyone, everywhere, has a story about it or has a mental health issue or knows someone who does. This isn’t the case. Genuine mental health issues are not as common place and cannot be treated by simply CBT and chatting to a friend etc. They require so much more than that. To downplay them, which the rise of social media has done, has done real sufferers so much harm and has clogged the system.

For people now to be saying Caroline was troubled, she was a beautiful person, be kind yet then blame others or go on her boyfriends accounts and post utter vitriol, is all wrong. The facts are she WAS an abuser, she committed a crime, she WAS violent, and she committed suicide and that was HER choice. No amount of press, ITV, Love Island, the CPS, the police etc will have made her ultimately choose to end her life. I don’t see it as a way out for her, she could have easily come back if she was prepared to apologise for what she had done, complete the court case etc. She would have had PR and/or family/friends advising her what to wear to court/do/say and she choose to seemingly ignore such advice with the actions she portrayed. Although twisted (you can’t understand such conditions without learning you have to view things in a way we would never usually think to comprehend), it may have been a way of potentially exercising more control, over her boyfriend and her overall image, and if that is true, then it worked. a true narcissist will not care that theyhave died as a result, the end result for them is the adoration and positive public view restored.

Again, perhaps none of this is the case, perhaps the majority are right and my view of the world is altered because of my background, but this is just an alternative view, and one that more people should be potentially aware of to spot in relationships where domestic abuse may occur.

DowntoearthDawn said:

I’m a great mother who has seen her own mother beg for life when in agony with cancer. I cherish life. Caroline wanted attention, she’s got it.

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Would you see it that way if one of your children took their own life?

leoladyxo said:

I think we can all agree that there have been a lot of self serving celebrity tributes to Caroline. However, this one is really heartfelt in my opinion and worded beautifully.

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To say she didn’t deserve any of what happened to her is ridiculous! If you assault someone you deserve to go to prison! By law you should go to prison! People have the right to call you out on what you did!

I've been surprised by the lack of compassion shown by quite a few people on this thread (not everyone - thankfully there are some very sensible, supportive and caring posts too).

Even if you're not a fan of Caroline's, it is still possible for people to show empathy/sympathy for someone who, at her absolute lowest point and suffering such all-consuming pain and turmoil has ended up in the darkest of places and seen no other way but to end her own life. Regardless of whatever you think she has done, that desperately sad demise is still a tragic waste of life.

It is not hypocritical, two-faced or giving a free pass just to lay off the negative comments when someone has just died. It is respectful (not just to her memory but more importantly to her grieving loved ones).

By simply not mentioning the alleged sordid details you won't instantly turn her into a Saint, nor will you be turning a blind eye to any wrongdoings, if that's what you're worried about......after all, which of us was there and actually knows what happened anyway?

I can't believe how many people have made remarks like....."It's sad that she's dead BUT I'm sorry, I never liked the woman"......or "Nobody deserves to die that way HOWEVER I still stand by what I said about her (when I slagged her off)" etc. Why the need to stick the boot in? Condolences mean nothing if they're coupled with a dig......why not leave out the "but"s and the "however"s and if you can't say anything nice/constructive/helpful then just don't say anything.

Nobody is telling you to forget whatever it is that you think Caroline has done (because, let's face it, we don't actually know) but I do think that now is not the time for us to play judge and jury and this tragic turn of events deserves a more dignified and respectful response than in many of the comments on this thread. It's easy to become wise after the event and I don't think the general public knew just how fragile she was before but now that the severity of her ill health has come to light you can show new-found compassion and genuinely mean it without being a fraud.

I know that people will say what they want regardless of my opinion........I just wanted to put forward the notion that this tragic turn of events does change things - Caroline can no longer defend herself, the CPS will not get to the bottom of what actually happened and idle speculation is a waste of time at best and hurtful at worst.

Regardless of whether you're male or female, squeaky clean or with skeletons in your closet, nobody deserves to feel that bad that they can't bear to stay alive. I'm not perfect and although I 'own' my mistakes I wouldn't want my worst times to be played out for all to see. Mental health issues are not black and white and do not discriminate. I sincerely hope that none of us ever find ourselves as tormented as Caroline Flack was and if anyone is suffering, I hope that you find the help you need.

I know what it's like to feel suicidal and I know that ruminating thought, isolation and seeing no way forward can be a killer. It's not something I would wish on my worst enemy.

All I can say is, DowntoearthDawn, be incredibly thankful you've not walked in those shoes (that's an assumption, because someone who is in very good mental health and untouched by much experience of it usually says such flippant, unsympathetic things), because it is hell on earth, your nerve endings are screaming and you feel not only in emotional agony, but depression/anxiety can also make you very physically weak and exhausted too.

(Long-term insomniac - that's why I'm typing this at 3.30am!)

Kahlarya said:

To say she didn’t deserve any of what happened to her is ridiculous! If you assault someone you deserve to go to prison! By law you should go to prison! People have the right to call you out on what you did!

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I agree people who hurt other people should be accountable for their actions. She obviously had a lot of guilt and really deep mental issues. It’s such a shame she thought suicide was her only option.

lamaitresse said:

I know what it's like to feel suicidal and I know that ruminating thought, isolation and seeing no way forward can be a killer. It's not something I would wish on my worst enemy.

All I can say is, DowntoearthDawn, be incredibly thankful you've not walked in those shoes (that's an assumption, because someone who is in very good mental health and untouched by much experience of it usually says such flippant, unsympathetic things), because it is hell on earth, your nerve endings are screaming and you feel not only in emotional agony, but depression/anxiety can also make you very physically weak and exhausted too.

(Long-term insomniac - that's why I'm typing this at 3.30am!)

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I know this feeling very well. I was so naive when I was younger had no idea. Thought how could people have these mental health issues are they weak people. Nope it’s life and it beats you down.

I personally detest the term ‘battle ‘ whether it be cancer or mh. I say this from my own experience of having had 4 cancers, 3 different types and have had varying mh issues from being a teen onwards at different times . Cancer to me is more likened to a terrorist than a face on battle, it like mh, attacks you , your healing from cancer comes about due to so many variants such as stage of diagnosis, tolerance to chemotherapy , drugs , radiotherapy, whether it has spread to vital organs, whether surgery is successful. It’s the same with healing your own mh, so many variants although a lot harder to access many treatments, a lot of people are unsupported by family and friends ( know this one only too well )

My loved ones who have died from cancer didn’t lose a battle, they tried the best they could to stay alive just like my friends whose lives ended due to their mh, it’s not being weak, it’s not losing a battle, it’s so much more .

My heart goes out to those that loved Caroline, its Evident that her issues ran a lot deeper than what we have been privy too .

I do feel in today’s society in general too many people use mental health as an exuse, I work in social housing and 99% of housing applications the applicant states mental health as a dissability ! At my daughters secondary school bad behaviour is normal my labeld oh that child has an issue such as autism or mental health!! I just think it’s over used and the culture of today can’t except criticism and be called out for bad behaviour!!!

I was a DV victim and the police were called to an incident where my head was smashed against a kitchen tap....... I begged and begged to not prosecute him but the cps chose to and you know what I’m so glad they did ..... or I could of ended up dead eventually.

Caroline flack clearly did have a lot of inner demons and she did need some serious help and that’s the point there are severe cases of mental health that get overlooked because too many people these days uses it as a crutch! But if what happend did happen I’m sorry I’m my opinion does not exuse the violent attack on her partner! The police were called for a reason! And the fact now in the press it’s saying she couldn’t handle the body cam footage being made public, of course that would be harrowing but at the end of the day don’t attack your bf then:..... I’m just sick of all these wanna be celebs crying wolf about mental health, it’s ok for them to show off their latest buys , new gifted lifestyles., flog diet pills etc, have dream non crying babies generally making joe public feel like shit but then kick up a stink when they get called out on their behaviour suddenly negative comments effect their lives and mental health!! Just so hypocritical I can’t take it!
My 15 year old is adamant she wants plastic surgery because of all these z listers?! They don’t think of the impact they have just tag line their new bodies as “new look... who dis” kind of crap

As for CF though she really did need intervention she should of been sectioned before arrest for her own safety !! But should of defo still faced the consequences

Mummaem90 said:

She’s deleted that pretty sharpish!! Bet he told her to! I bloody would of ! Xxx

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who was it?