A visualization Travis's therapist taught him. Every ugly thought gets crumpled up like paper and floats downstream. He talks about how simple it is, and how it helped him watch his own mind with a little more compassion.
Travis talks about an intense stretch of therapy and the breakthrough that came out of it, learning how to actually be there for himself. Years of managing everything alone, and then something shifted.
Travis describes dissociation as an out-of-body experience. You're there physically, and mentally you're gone. He talks about the drive home he can't remember, and how his mind went to the one place that had always felt safe.
The medication meant to control Travis's seizures gave him hallucinations. He talks about the neurologists, the psychiatrist who ruled out mental illness, and the hard choice he made to taper off against medical advice.
After the diagnosis, Travis went back to a therapist, found a functional medicine doctor, and changed the way he ate. None of it happened fast. He talks about those first real steps toward feeling like himself again.
Travis talks about the moment he understood that stress was what set off his seizures. It changed how he saw everything, and it's where therapy finally came into the picture.
After his seizures, Travis walked out of jobs mid-shift and never went back. He couldn't find the words to explain what had just happened. He talks about the shame of that, and about slowly building a career again from the ground up.
In late 2024 the seizures came back all at once, and this time doctors had a name for it. PNES, stress firing through the body in a pattern that looks like epilepsy. Travis talks about what it was like to finally hear that word.
He woke up surrounded by paramedics. The first question was about drugs. The full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDxQHt6Z75w
Please note: this story includes seizures and medical trauma, described plainly. Travis White was twenty-three and newly engaged. He was working on web development homework when he started to feel off. His chest was beating strangely. He kept zoning out. When he got up to turn off the light, it…
Travis White shares his story of surviving sudden, unexplained seizures and the disorienting path of medical recovery that followed. At 23 and newly engaged, Travis woke up surrounded by paramedics with no memory of what happened. What followed was a month of intense struggle, featuring dozens of seizures and a…
Content note: this episode includes discussion of suicidal thoughts and a crisis hotline call. Travis White was twenty-three, newly engaged, and by his own description living the dream when his body started sending signals nobody had taught him to read. One ordinary night, studying for a web development class, he…
Months after his third child was born, Travis hit a breaking point. He called 988, and then his brother-in-law called too and told him plainly that he mattered. Travis talks about how much that one phone call changed. Content note: this clip mentions a crisis hotline call.
Angela was on a small boat in the middle of the ocean when the pandemic began. Every day she checked in with her family. Then she learned the virus had already reached them. The full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfranGk5cNw
Content note: the full episode includes discussion of sexual assault and an abusive relationship. This clip does not. Angela Harger Thompson left Panama on March 7, 2020, on a small sailboat headed for the Marquesas. Five people were on board, along with a dog. A week out, news of the…
Angela slowly came to see that her relationship was abusive, and she left. Then he claimed the documentary she filmed at sea was his. She talks about hiring attorneys and fighting for her footage until he finally backed down. That footage became Quarantine at Sea.
Angela talks about the devastation after the assault, the feeling of being completely alone with it, and the slow work of taking back control of her body and her choices. Content note: sexual assault.
Angela realized she'd been living in a place where she was waiting for someone else to say, okay, you're in. Out on the water, that changed. She talks about creating her own opportunities and doing the inviting herself.
Sixteen days with just two people on the boat, and a storm near the equator straight out of Castaway. The boat heeled over to forty-five degrees, and Angela looked out the galley windows and saw nothing but water. She talks about the dream she held onto in that moment.
After the assault, Angela decided to heal right there in Los Angeles. That meant therapy, yoga, and the first anxiety attacks of her life. When a rush of drink tickets hit, she'd step into the back, throw up into a napkin, wash her hands, and walk back out to make…
Angela went straight to the police after the assault and sat for six hours while detectives picked apart her story. One of them looked at the marks on her neck and called them hickeys. She explains why so many women never report, and after hearing this, I get it. Content…
Content note: this conversation includes discussion of sexual assault and an abusive relationship. Angela Harger Thompson moved to Los Angeles at 30 with a Honda Civic full of everything she owned and a dream she'd had since she was four. Two months in, a producer who promised to keep her…
Angela packed her Honda Civic and drove to Los Angeles at thirty with a big dream and no connections. Two months in, a producer who told her he'd keep her safe drugged and assaulted her. She talks about how it started, and how everything she came for went quiet while…
Content note: this episode includes discussion of sexual assault and an abusive relationship. Sometimes the yes that changes everything looks, at the time, like an escape. Angela Harger Thompson has been a storyteller since she was four, waving a feather duster in her sister's home movie. At 30, she packed…
