My story

Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation, Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence

What am I passionate about?

Sex, relationships, neurodivergent brains, mental health, psychology and the menstrual cycle and how nutrition affects each one of these things.

I became deeply intrigued by the brain during my nutrition degree when I took some psychology electives. I became even more so when I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder in 2016. I had battled with depression on and off since I was a kid but it wasn’t diagnosed until my 20’s. In my early 20’s my psychologist was worried about my binge drinking and weed smoking, but I was young and so of course sober partying was out of the question…I was also using other drugs like LSD, MDMA and nangs. I had no idea just how sensitive my brain was, I also really didn’t consider how drug use (including alcohol-which is also a drug) would affect my future. I was using these substances to cope with my trauma and living in a society built for neurotypicals. By 21, I had experienced several abusive romantic relationships, a sexual assault at 16 by a trusted adult friend and a stressful home and family life.

Growing up, communication styles ranged from aggressive to passive aggressive, there was rarely any upfront communication. This led to me having poor boundaries and lack of assertive communication, I essentially became a doormat. I rarely felt safe in my own home and even in my own body.

I frequently dissociated as a child. I would look at my hand and it didn’t seem like mine. I was a quiet and shy teenager at school, but at home I was angry and had big emotional outbursts. Anger which I took out on the tennis court. My system was constantly under stress, but my theory is that because I ate so well and exercised a lot I managed to keep the depression and anxiety at bay for the most part. I did, however, struggle immensely at school: I was smart and paid attention in the classes I really enjoyed. But in classes such a chemistry and maths, which required a lot of problem solving and working memory, I struggled. No one ever seemed to pick up that I was struggling and if they did, nothing was done about it. In Oct 2023 at 27, I was diagnosed with Autism which explains the meltdowns…

With TikTok and a better societal understanding and awareness of ADHD, if I went through nowadays it would of been picked up for sure or at the very least I would of picked it up myself…but we are talking 20 years ago when I first started my schooling, my teachers thought I was just a quiet, slow “girl.” Cause it was only boys who had ADHD back then…So even though throughout my entire schooling I exhibited symptoms of ADHD, no one picked it up. Instead, in primary school, I was forced to finish my work at lunch time which isolated me socially and drastically reduced my self confidence.

In 2017 I was raped again in a bathroom cubicle in a club while intoxicated. I’m unsure if it was how drunk I was or if my brain made me dissociate to cope with the situation, but I only remember a second of it. Because the perpetrator was a woman I didn’t think of it as rape until years later.

I was traveling with friends in Canada in 2018 when I became extremely unwell. My anxiety levels were through the roof and I was crying a lot and so depressed, I felt very little joy. When I arrived home after a month of travel I was experiencing frequent suicidal ideation and severe anxiety and panic. I went to see my psychologist, who suspected I might have manic depression (bipolar). While overseas I had ended up spending hundreds of dollars on clothes and shoes that eventually left me broke. My boyfriend at the time was a huge support for me, but our relationship was unhealthily codependent and I relied on him to soothe me when I was anxious. I was still at uni during this time and was struggling to keep my life together; surprisingly, I never failed a subject. It was also around this time that I started experiencing disturbing intrusive thoughts. I was put on an antidepressant by my GP. My psychologist sent me to a psychiatrist who then, to my surprise diagnosed me with ADHD. I was put on Ritalin which killed my appetite. Then I started abusing it. My friends and I would snort it while partying and drinking. I eventually started getting severe depressive come downs from it and stopped. After being on the antidepressants for three months I started feeling super flat and barely left the house. On the positive side, I was no longer suicidal and my intrusive thoughts and anxiety had decreased a lot. I made the decision to come off them and my life went back to normal. I eventually broke up with my boyfriend and successfully completed my final year of nutrition in 2019, which was a full year of practical placements. During this year my family lost my beautiful Aunty to whom I was very close to cancer. I repressed the pain caused by her death and didn’t really talk to anyone about it. I had never lost someone I was close with before; I was devastated and didn’t even go to her wake as I couldn’t face it. I was so used to repressing every painful thing, every traumatic event.

Throughout my entire life I had struggled with tiredness and tired eyes. I was diagnosed with Irlen’s Syndrome in early 2021. I now wear special tinted lenses in my glasses to help (there is a video on my IG going into more detail).

Around 2017 I started getting migraines and my eyes would feel so tired like I just needed to close them. I was incredibly sensitive to light (especially artificial fluorescent) all of the time, but when I had a migraine they burned. Sometimes I get a black dot in my vision and feel like I’m going to pass out if I don’t lay down. Sometimes the back of my neck gets tight and painful and sometimes I get super nauseous. The one thing that is always consistent with my migraines, even though they have changed in nature (since starting Chinese herbal and acupuncture treatment in 2021) they always affect my mood. I experience low mood, feel super depressed, sometimes even anxious and the negative thinking patterns can kick in. I still experience these today, sometimes for a week straight when I’m premenstrual. Which leads me to mention premenstrual exacerbation (PME) and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). I recently did an Instagram Live with Holistic Counselor and Psychic Healer Sarah Callaghan on these premenstrual conditions which you can find here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZdrfhsckJYXkDbKu9.

Migraine became more and more debilitating as time went on. it wasn’t until I started acupuncture and Chinese herbs (prescribed by my acupuncturist) in 2021 that they finally started becoming less severe and less frequent. Before I started acupuncture treatment I was taking preventative migraine medication which did help for the first few months in 2020, but then eventually stopped working, so I decided to double the dose, which is totally safe and what most people also do. Unfortunately, my body reacted badly. I started getting violent mood swings, severe depression and intrusive thoughts worsened. I decided to stop taking them all together. This caused me to go into a state of withdrawal. I went to visit my family and had a huge mental breakdown. I remember being so dissociated and feeling so unsafe in my body. Looking back now I believe I was experiencing an emotional flashback. I couldn’t be alone. I could barely sleep, I was getting fevers and intense episodes of panic. None of my health professionals seemed to take this seriously and I felt incredibly lost. I continued to take a strong migraine painkiller, Sumatriptin, for when I had a migraine attack. I would feel really good for the rest of the day after taking them but then I would feel terrible the next day, like my serotonin was completely depleted. I would have huge mental breakdowns and just cry and cry. Eventually I had to decide between having a migraine or a mental breakdown. I decided to stop taking all medications. It just wasn’t worth it for me.

Later in the year in 2021 I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), with the main sub-type causing me distress being; Pure OCD. There were definitely signs of OCD from a young age, and it also seems to run in my family. I always liked having things a very specific way and if they weren’t in that way I felt such a great sense of unease so I had to fix it. The obsession being the need to have things a certain way and the compulsion being moving, rearranging or manipulating situations and things to ease the discomfort. Little things people would do that would irritate me actually stemmed from my OCD and the positive was that a lot more things made sense. My intrusive thoughts were the main struggle and drastically reduced my quality of life, leading me to become extremely socially isolated and withdrawn. For the second half of 2021, I barely left the house.

It was also around this time that a couple of friends suggested I might have Complex PTSD (c-PTSD). I looked into it; I had been diagnosed by my psychologist several years back with PTSD but I’d never heard of c-PTSD, turned out I have all the symptoms. So here I am at 26 finally fully (I think) and accurately (I hope) diagnosed. The c-PTSD explained so many things: my dissociation, periods of nervous system activation and heightened anxiety and depression with no known triggers…Which I now know to be emotional flashbacks. These are incredibly distressing and hit with no warning, unlike PTSD flashbacks you usually don’t know what the exact memory is, adding to the confusion and distress.

I also battled for years with an anxious attachment style (if you want to learn more about attachment styles, I highly recommend the book “Attached” by Dr Amir Levine & Rachel Heller) which has fueled my interest in sex and relationships, not only romantic and sexual ones but platonic and familial ones too. It wasn’t until I met my current partner, Brodie, after over two years of being single, that I was finally able to zoom in on my attachment under a new lens. Brodie also had an insecure attachment style and together we worked hard with the tools we had gained form a more secure attachment style. This was HUGE for me.

So how did I end up with c-PTSD and an anxious attachment style? Obviously my dysfunctional upbringing and stressful schooling life was a huge piece, as well as the rapes…But what really fucked me up, what really pushed me over the threshold…were my physically, psychologically and emotionally abusive romantic relationships. My lack of boundary setting, self-worth and relationship education are what lead me down this dark road. When I was 18 I was frequently hit and emotionally manipulated by my boyfriend, who also cheated on me repeatedly. I left him and moved to Newcastle, subconsciously repressing it all in hope of a fresh start. I continued to be violated, harassed, slut shamed and taken advantage of by cis men during my first year on campus. I thought it was normal, never really thought about it, and repressed it again. I then started dating one of my friends. It was my first queer relationship and I was so in love. Unfortunately she projected all of her pain onto me. I was a helper, a people pleaser and a doormat, so I tried to ‘fix’ her, behaving selflessly. She isolated me from our friends. I went from a confident, outgoing, loud, happy and social human with lots of friends to feeling like I was worth nothing. She would trap me in my room, not letting me out and I would have panic attacks due to the stress of being confined to a tiny room when I needed space and air. I would tell her I was having a panic attack but she didn’t care. From this relationship I developed many phobias, including severe claustrophobia. This was the relationship that really broke me. . I lived in so much fear even after we broke up. I had a couple of relationships after this, they were healthier but I projected a lot of my shit onto them and they did so to me. I jumped from one relationship to another for about 3-4 years, which allowed me to feel safe and secure.

In 2019 when I broke up with the last boyfriend, I started to look at my limiting beliefs and core belief systems that were keeping me trapped in these toxic cycles. I stopped seeing my psychologist - who was honesty pretty crap - and started EMDR therapy, a type of somatic trauma therapy. I chose this because not only would it help me psychologically, it would specifically target the trauma stored in my body that manifested as chronic pain and migraines. I started investing any spare money I had into my health. Kinesiology, Reiki, Bowen Therapy and massages. I was so determined to get recover and heal. I wanted to be free from mental illness and pain.

But then in October 2020 I ended up pregnant and had an abortion. It broke me even more and I was flung back into the chaos of my mind.

I’ll be honest, I’m still on the journey to recovery and I think it will be a continuous one for me. Healing isn’t linear. This is why I became suicidal, this is why I was so depressed and isolated myself, because I didn’t think it was ever going to end. I still experience most of the symptoms I have mentioned now plus many more. So whats the difference between then and now? In 2021, I began accepting these things about myself. I know that these events are why I am here, where I am meant to be. I am so grateful that I can now get on with setting out to achieve my dreams and exercise my purpose. I no longer get bogged down by my chronic illnesses, I move forward with passion and intensity, I acknowledge shit gets hard sometimes and I still go running after my dreams.

I am here to remind you that through nourishing the body with food, ritual and routine we can heal, we can feel happiness along side the pain. My personal work has involved a lot of deep shadow work. I have meet dark parts of myself and learnt to observe them. You cannot heal without doing shadow work, without facing the parts you dislike most about yourself. Learning to integrate these parts of myself in a healthy way, in other words, by bringing them out of the darkness and into the light has been truly healing. This philosophy and mindset will flow into the work I do with my clients and into my online courses.

So why am I sharing all of this with you? Because all of this is the foundation for my work. I want to help other neurodivergent and mentally ill folks to nourish their bodies, form solid eating routines and patterns and improve their quality of life. I want you to have more fulfilling and joyous sex lives and relationships. I want you to reach your goals, to succeed, to dream BIG.

Thank you for reading my story. I spoke a lot about struggles I face to show you that you an still achieve your dreams having been through so much pain.

Allow me to be an example of that for you. I am running a successful business all on my own when I live with countless disabilities.

Manifesting your dreams is possible even when life is a b*tch.