Recovery and healing through trauma.

Want to know how I’ve stayed well over the past 5 years after surviving multiple suicide attempts, 25 years of drug addiction (without relapse) processed out years of unresolved childhood trauma, borderline PTSD poor mental health and burnout.

First I want you to know this is not about selling anything, this is about offering hope, however, if you want me to deliver mental health training for your organisation after reading this then hit me up.

It’s taken 44 years to be able to write this post, the first 25 years of my life painful, I suffered emotional and physical abuse almost daily.

I lost my brother in a tragic car accident when I was 15, he was 16 years old.

In 1991 talking to a therapist or mental health specialist was like telling people you had a direct line to Father Christmas.

So you didn’t say anything in fear of being locked up, thrown into a straight jacket and into a padded room away from society.

Growing up on a council estate in the ’80s was bloody tough, dodging knives and bullets were the norm, and no I’m not kidding.

You were either being bullied or were a bully.

It was a life I never wanted or asked for.

For years I thought I was abnormal, not like the other children I envied at school whose parents show them love in the ways I never knew or had.

I would carry this emotional baggage around for years.

Then one day all that baggage got to be too heavy, I lost my house, family, friends, everything that had meaning I pushed away because a habit I couldn’t kick, a habit that didn’t question me, that loved me for who I was and allowed me to escape reality.

That habit came before everything, and it almost cost me my life.

There was only one way to end the pain, it would be quick, nobody would know, nobody would miss me, I made sure of this by alienating myself months before my attempt at suicide.

Not just one attempt, 3.

Clearly I wasn’t meant to die.

3 attempts at taking my life, and on the third I cried like a baby and begged, pleaded for something and someday to help rescue and save me.

I then had to do the single most hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, ask for help and tell somebody, anybody that would listen to me, I had to tell them I was an addict.

And that’s where my journey of recovery began.

The day I made an appointment with my G.P and asked for help.

I was heard, I was thanked for coming in, I was acknowledged, I wasn’t judged, god knows what would have happened if I had been?

And so my journey began, my journey of rediscovery, self-discovery and finding out why I had been through so much and survived.

It took many forms of interventions, including counselling, CBT, trauma therapy, hypnotherapy, timeline therapy, coaching, NLP, nature, diet, exercise to get me back to some kind of normality.

I attended events, read books, listened to podcasts, watched endless hours of videos about self-development, trauma recovery, anything that would help me understand myself.

You may think that’s a lot, and it is, but the choice between continuing to suffer or face and process the past was a no brainier.

It needed to be done.

Step 1 is recognising there is a problem, to begin with.

Step 2 is asking for help.

When I started my recovery journey I was not aware of the importance of a 'mental health' first-aid kit.

It is not something that is taught.

The more work I did on my own trauma, the more aware I became of how important it was to create a mental health first-aid kit in case I experienced a 'wobble' down the road.

I use a self-care tool kit with neuroscience-based techniques to quickly decrease emotional overload, to quieten the critical inner voice and an overactive mind, to stop panic/anxiety attacks and generally help when things get too much either at work or home.

It’s worked well for me and kept me well for the last 5 years.

It may well be the case that you will not experience a 'wobble'. But I like to be prepared, just in case.

I also use additional supplements, oils, and for the most part, I eat very clean, you have to when you’ve been through what I’ve been thorough as everything that enters your body affects you, your mental health and wellbeing.

As do the people you have around you, if they aren’t helping you grow they have to go, this was a huge part of my recovery focus.

Setting healthy boundaries and removing toxicity from my life, that meant family too.

I only realised this when I started to explore the 7 dimensions of wellness. The 7 dimensions of wellness are: social, emotional, spiritual, environmental, occupational, intellectual, and physical, that meant addressing all 7, everything had to change if I was to change.

These are the things you have to work on, DAILY.

To this day it’s served me we well.

The thing with recovery is you have to find ways that work for you, what worked for me won’t necessarily work for you.

I’ve never been so happy or healthy.

It was a lifestyle change that changed me.

It was the therapy that changed me.

It was unlearning and relearning that changed me.

It was love and loving relationships that changed me.

It was time that changed me.

It was me that changed me.

For mental health, workplace wellbeing and suicide first-aid training drop me an Dm or email me [email protected]