Casper Green Creative Services

Unpacking complexity, inspiring change, writing that delves deep to unearth new perspectives and directions

My Portfolio

I’ve been writing about aging, caregiving, and mental health for more than a decade. Much of this work has looked beyond conventional advice, highlighting ways to empower caregivers and help them improve their situation. Beyond this, I have worked with clients in a variety of capacities, including creating website content in the fields of nutrition and making money online, assisting students with academic writing, and some more formal and professional projects.

The sections below highlight some of my most interesting and engaging projects. You can also visit my featured content page at Kapok Aging and Caregiving Services to see specific content examples.

Mental Health

As someone who has experienced lifelong challenges with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, the topic of mental health is close to my heart. There’s now a staggering amount of knowledge out there about mental health, yet this just seems to make things even more challenging to navigate.

Seriously.

There are countless theories, tools, and techniques out there - all with their own strengths. Many are powerful for some people or situations, yet useless or even damaging for others. Techniques like mindfulness and yoga are great examples. They’re powerful ideas, yet for people with body-based trauma they can sometimes be harmful, unless the trauma is accounted for.

Some of my passions include:

Analyzing techniques and making them more accessible. I spend considerable time analyzing and comparing different self-help and therapeutic modalities. Not only am I interested in how these compare, but I’m also looking for tools that can be applied fairly easily to real life struggles and situations.
Neurodiversity. This term highlights the many differences in how our brains work, differences that can have dramatic effects on our lives. Unfortunately, mental health research often doesn’t account for neurodiversity and there’s little information about how to adapt strategies to meet such differences.
Awareness. My history and self-awareness make me well-positioned to talk about the specific challenges and complexities of living with mental illness, particularly what it’s like to appear functional but still deal with multiple severe symptoms.

Difficult Family Relationships

My work on caregiving has often delved into family dynamics, particularly difficult relationships between adult children and aging parents. This has included issues like parents who want too much, stubborn parents, siblings who won’t help, and times where no one sees eye-to-eye.

The content has included specific advice for the various situations, along with valuable general principles, such as:

Acceptance. Learning how to recognize that a family member may never change and working with them as they are, instead of looking for something different.
Communication strategies. Ways to talk about tough topics, including the balance between practical and emotional conversations, and the importance of shared decision making.
Values and perspectives. Family members may noticeably differ in key values, which can lead to different decisions and frustration with others. Getting people on the same page can require recognising that individuals have the right to their own value systems, but compromise may be needed when multiple people are involved.
The impact of history. How past experiences influence current relationships. Some effects can be surprising, as people can interpret the same events in very different ways.

Complexity

In the context of my caregiving writing, complexity refers to how challenging situations contain a variety of intersecting factors. Teasing out the different factors and examining them and their intersections can be an empowering strategy for caregivers, helping them to improve even the most overwhelming situation.

Within caregiving, a few of the factors I’ve examined include:

Social pressures. Caregivers often feel like they’re not doing good enough due to unrealistic social expectations. These expectations can also be internalized, where the caregiver has unrealistic expectations of themselves.
Family dynamics. While some families work together well, others are at odds, with different ideas about the best care. Old resentments and dynamics can easily rise to the surface, potentially leading to mistrust and conflict.
Emotional impacts. Family caregivers may experience a large range of emotions, including frustration, sadness, anger, and grief. Such emotions can hit at frustrating times and impact the caregiver’s ability
Cognitive impairment. Effective caregiving relies heavily on communication, but cognitive impairment can make this much more difficult. Seniors with dementia will also display behavioural changes, which complicates many caregiving tasks.

Coming Out as an Aging Gay Man

I worked with a client on an extensive project that examined the unique challenges associated with coming out as an aging gay man in the United States. The work relied heavily on combing through academic literature to examine theories and interventions that related to the topic.

It was a challenging and fascinating project, as few papers considered the specific combination of coming out, aging, being gay, and being male. To address the topic, I needed to delve into multiple themes independently, while looking for intersections between them.

Crucial themes included identity, masculinity, ageism, generational differences, and the importance of in-groups. The work also highlighted some important intersectional challenges, such as:

Aging gay men coming out late in life may have lived decades identifying as a hetrosexual male, possibly with a wife and children. Coming out can involve a considerable internal shift in identity, plus downstream implications for family and friends, who may initially feel betrayed.
Aging and being gay can both make men feel less masculine under hegemonic masculinity, which can contribute to low self image, depression, and may make it more difficult to form authentic friendships.
Being part of an in-group of people with shared values can be important for a sense of belonging and mental health. However, some people do not fit easily into a single sub group. For example, older gay men may feel they can’t be authentic among people their own age, but may experience ageism among the LGBTQ+ community.
Found families can play a crucial role in mental health and support for people who have limited family support or who struggle to find an in-group.

Other Projects

Nutrition

I have spent years creating ghostwritten content for two different nutrition sites. Content included food lists, recipe descriptions, and more complex pieces looking at nutrition science and the accuracy of popular nutrition advice.

Making Money Online

I’ve been making money online myself for more than a decade and have ghostwritten on the topic extensively. Much of the work has involved critically analyzing different potential methods for earning. I captured many of those insights in my eBook How to Earn as a Caregiver.

Academic Writing

I've helped many students with the challenges of academic research and writing, from entry level papers all the way up to PhD theses.