From Chaos to Healing: Stephanie Foo’s Experience with Complex PTSD

Sometimes, bad things happen (obvi, right?). Many times, we know what’s happening to us in the moment is awful and wrong. We know that it’s painful. But sometimes, we don’t know how bad those things were until that pain shows up again in our lives, maybe years later, in a completely different way. And when these seemingly bad things come up, our lives are thrown into a tailspin—creating chaos and unhappiness and we’re not even even sure why. So how do we begin to identify the source of the darkness? How do we walk toward healing when the muck of our trauma is so deep we feel like we can’t move forward? Our guest this week has navigated through this very thing (and is still navigating it). The chaotic parts, the hard parts, the painful parts. Author and This American Life producer Stephanie Foo had found success in her thirties–working at her dream job and in a loving relationship. But behind her office door she was having panic attacks daily and sobbing at her desk. After years of questioning what was wrong (and blaming herself), she was diagnosed with complex PTSD–a condition that happens when trauma occurs again and again over many years. She was determined to understand this diagnosis, and the result of her findings is a beautiful and powerful memoir called What My Bones Know. Jen and Stephanie have an illuminating discussion around these topics:

• The difference between PTSD and complex PTSD and why that’s an important distinction when it comes to healing
• How an unresolved mental health issue can impact our physical health, which can manifest (as it did for Stephanie) in panic attacks, joint issues, migraines, and endometriosis.
• How our traumas can be handed down through previous generations through our genes, but also through how we were (or weren’t) nurtured.
• What it feels like to pull back the curtain on our coping mechanisms to reveal why we react to things the way we do, or why we put up walls in safe places with safe people

Join us for this very real, raw, but gentle conversation as Stephanie’s story sheds light on how to walk away from chaos into healing.

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Thought-Provoking Quotes

“You can get traditional PTSD from a single traumatic event. So if you're in a car crash, you can get PTSD. Complex PTSD is kind of like if you were in that car crash every week for five years; it's when the trauma occurs over and over and over.” - Stephanie Foo

“I felt scared all the time and I was burning out at work. I felt unable to actually produce. It was around 2018, and work had always been my constant source of comfort. And no matter how depressed or anxious I was, I would always be able to be productive. So when I found myself struggling to do that, I felt sort of lost.” - Stephanie Foo

“I may have inherited my grandmother's desire and ability to hustle and that might be in my genes. It might be through nurture as well, not nature, and what I was taught as a child. It's kind of a mystery, but it certainly would explain a lot.” - Stephanie Foo

Guest’s Links:

Stephanie’s Website

Stepanie’s Instagram

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Complex PTSD

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