It took me a long time, 34 years in fact, to begin to understand that I didn’t have an emotionally safe childhood…..

I didn’t have the opportunity to form a robust and resilient nervous system, and I wasn’t afforded many of the emotional tools that some are taught growing up. I didn’t know how to set boundaries.

Why does this matter? It matters a lot.

It is, in my opinion, the root cause of my burnout, breakdown & mental/physical health issues. I see them as all intertwined, as we cannot and should not separate the mind from the body.

In my former career, for years I was drawn to high growth start ups as, of course, Trauma attracts Trauma. I knew nothing else. It felt familiar, albeit it was literally killing me.

I first had a panic attack in January 2018, I left the office at 12pm when I was meant to leave around 4pm. Nobody asked if I was ok or if I needed help. This is a trend I saw in every workplace that followed.

I thought I was strong and that a few weeks holiday a year, and that some exercise and yoga would sort it. Oh and add in 10 years + of very heavy drinking.

I was completely disconnected from my body, I hadn’t cried in over a decade and thought this again, was a sign of strength, much like lifting weights in the gym.

I got married to the love of my life in 2018, and even then at my wedding, my body had started to show some major warning signs; tired all the time, illness, stress, and yet I thought I could keep going.

I did 4 CBT sessions that same year to try and resolve issues I was having coping my mother’s mental illness amongst other things. They barely scratched the surface.

The pandemic hit, more stress in work and personal life endured (like most of us?!) and then in mid 2021 I started having severe panic attacks, cripplingly long ones.

I wasn’t sleeping and my mind and body were wrecked (photo above). I was then desperate to get back to some kind of health and back to work. I took a few months off (working as a consultant) and did 4 life changing subconscious hypnotherapy sessions. They got me back to sleeping a bit and I thought that was it. I had no idea of the accumulated trauma I had stored under the hood.

I then thought that was me, the panic attacks had subsided, but the anxiety was still there. I thought to get healthy I would start running again. Couch to 5k here we go! And yet, my body wasn’t responding. I couldn’t complete it. A former ski instructor who could run a 5k no problem at all. What was going on here?

I then caught covid in Dec 21, my body was already very low and it hit me hard. I got more tough family news during that time where I was riddled with fear, following the scary news headlines, and the panic attacks started again, this time for 2 hours. I couldn’t get them under ‘control’ and soothe my system. I couldn’t face the emotion and I had no idea what It meant to feel into what was going on.

I couldn’t walk 100m. I was a shadow of my former self. Burnout & Anxiety out barely describe how low I felt. My wife was 6 months pregnant at the time (I speak more about it affected her in my podcast here). This was the main drive for me to recover or attempt to.

I didn’t want to be an absent father……