Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
How a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a husband saved Dianne.
Have you ever found yourself saying quietly, "I am in a mess" while continuing to push forward? Dianne Saker's powerful story might be the wake-up call you need.
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Just excuse us. We're not going to cut that out, but that is Yo-Yo having a voluptuous drink, which she must be allowed to do. Just let everybody hear that he doesn't care. He doesn't care about your stroke. You are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones From relationships, career choices, finances to faux fur jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones. I'm your host, annie McCubbin, and as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though. I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which I'm recording and you are listening on this day.
Speaker 2:Well, hello smart women and welcome back to the why Smart?
Speaker 1:Women podcast. As usual, we are broadcasting from the northern beaches of Sydney in Australia, where it is a beautiful, bright, sunny but very cold day. Well, when I say cold, I'm talking Australia cold, not Europe Canadian cold. So you know, don't email me and tell me I'm an idiot. Anyway, so today I am interviewing Diane Saker, who is a corporate management consultant, specialist in transformation, mergers and acquisitions and restructuring, and she has a very, very interesting story to tell. She had a life-changing event, which was a stroke, which led her to having PTSD and a severe anxiety disorder, and today we're going to talk about what it was that led her to this, to these occurrences in her life, and maybe, if she'd had her time over again, maybe what she would have done differently and what she's learned. And I think you're going to really enjoy it today, because many of us lead very high pressured corporate lives and you know, before we know it, we're 50. Anyway, hello Diane, Hello Annie, good to be here. Thank you so much for traveling from.
Speaker 2:Cabarita yes, inner west of Sydney along the foreshore.
Speaker 1:Yes, so Diane lives in the inner west in Sydney and I live on the northern beaches and there is this very unfair perception that people that live on the northern beaches in Sydney never leave it. They call it the insular Peninsula and the inference is that we just stay here and refuse to go across the Harbour Bridge. But I even went over the Harbour Bridge last night and went to a play. Well, you're the exception, annie, I am. Do you want to know what I saw? Love to know what you saw. I saw timon of athens, which is a very um, an under produced shakespearean play, and it was amazingly awesome and but unfortunately, I don't know why, I'm telling you that because it closed last night. But anyway, it was at the Seymour Centre and if they do happen to remount it, it's put on by Sport for Jove and it was, it was oof, it was really gobsmacking. Anyway, enough about me and my theatre outing. So where do we start with your?
Speaker 2:story. Well, annie, a few places to start, but why don't we just start with a little bit of background on my career and some of the events that led to the stroke which I actually didn't even know I had? Good Lord, yes, exactly, there was a lot of oh my God, that happened. So I have 35 years, just dedicated. I've been a bit of a cross-country athlete pole vaulter, long jumper for all my clients.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're talking metaphorically. Yeah, yeah, it's metaphorically.
Speaker 2:Metaphorically, because where I'm going to get to is that I've ended up now being the coach, not the athlete, and that was not by design. But I'm loving where it's at, loving where it's at now. Um, anyway, I had, um a big career. I was a partner in a consulting company. Left that ran my own business, have always traveled, had clients in different countries so, but you're a bit, you'll be.
Speaker 2:It was a big, it was a big career, big career worldwide travel, interesting, fascinating, lots of different clients, yep all of that, all of that a lot of pressure days, lots of pressure, glamorous some days, but others not so, uh, yeah, so in um january 2023, I had a episode of 4 am in which was, of course, hang on, hang on, hang on, back it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so January 2023,. We were in the middle of the pandemic, we were just coming out of it. We were out of it.
Speaker 2:We were out of it because I was back traveling on planes and trains. Is that right? Is that?
Speaker 1:right, right, okay, yep, right, yeah. So you were just out of it, and so you were still traveling, and you woke up at four o'clock in the morning and what happened?
Speaker 2:so it was a um. I was spinning around for about four minutes uncontrollably, so it was just this severe dizziness and I had to hold onto the bed and my husband steve I had just said I don't know what's happening. And it went away after about four minutes, but then the next 24 hours I felt incredible sick, nauseous, uh, vomiting uh, vomiting, oh god yeah, all the all of that, and then Hang on. So I've had.
Speaker 1:I'm a migrainer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I also have had episodes of vertigo, where if I sit up in bed, the room literally spins and then I hit the walls like a drunk person. Is it like that?
Speaker 2:Exactly like that, yeah, but probably find yourself spinning even a little bit more. Right, very spinny, very discombobulating yeah, it's, it's vertigo and what I'll come to in a moment a small stroke, uh uh, present in very familiar ways, exactly so caution. Caution for everybody, because I didn't find out until six months later that it was.
Speaker 1:Just excuse us, we're not going to cut that out, but that is yo-yo having a voluptuous drink, which she must be allowed to do. Oh no, it's rider having a drink. You're right there, rider. Just let everybody hear that that's him. Yeah, he doesn't care.
Speaker 2:He doesn't care about your stroke, so you've, you're spinning, your, your vomiting, which is like I'd rather die, but anyway, yeah, go on yep, and then uh, within 24 hours I was fine and all I was concerned about is I had to get to fly to New Zealand that night for client meetings and board meetings the next day. That was all I was concerned about, so I got, I got better and got on a plane all right.
Speaker 1:So let's just go back to that moment, because I guess that's indicative of um some of the thinking that goes behind us making these poor decisions is did anybody say to you, like your husband, maybe you should investigate this or go to the doctor? And you didn't, or what?
Speaker 2:uh, my husband did say let's investigate this, and I, when I got back, I did go to the doctor because I'd realized that this was the second event. I'd had a similar one 18 months before oh now we'll never know and the neurologist has said this that we'll never know if it was another small stroke or not, because it had, whatever it was had dissipated at that time. But it was very likely that. Um see what I had was it's a tia trans ischemic attack.
Speaker 2:Exactly so basically what that is. It's, uh, it's an interruption of the blood flow to the brain. It's only temporary, it does only last 24 hours, but it is a warning sign that a big one could be coming. Exactly, exactly. So that's, and it's considered a small stroke on the spectrum, and the fact that I can even say the word stroke now is remarkable.
Speaker 1:Okay, so these trans is trans ischemic attacks are often a prelude to a bigger stroke.
Speaker 2:Well, they're a warning sign that could and were you told that? No, I wasn't. I wasn't told that because I didn't actually find out that it was a TIA until June of that year. And that was through no fault of anybody in the medical industry, it was just me dragging my feet. No fault of anybody in the medical industry, it was just me dragging my feet. But I had a great GP who just wasn't comfortable that it was a vertigo episode and she sent me for a CT scan right, so okay.
Speaker 1:So what month did you wake up at 4am in the morning? January and then in June you found out you'd had a TIA how did they find that out? There was a little scar. How do they do that? That's interesting.
Speaker 2:Well, I had the CT scan which didn't show anything. But it did show some calcium in the brain which for a 50-year-old is probably well. I was 53. 53-year-old was a bit too much calcium. So my GP said look, you're over 50, you've got a cardiologist for regular catch-ups. You should probably get a neurologist on your books. So I went and saw the neurologist.
Speaker 1:Get the team happening right. Get the team happening.
Speaker 2:But more is preventative. But anyway that that medical team has become amazing and part of the success. So I saw my neurologist and she immediately said I can't do anything with a CAT scan, Go and get a brain.
Speaker 1:MRI, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That took a few months because scaredy cat me went into the tunnel and hit the button and said get me out of here. I couldn't do it. I am claustrophobic.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, so this is really interesting. So in order to get a proper diagnosis, you need an mri, and for anybody who's unfamiliar with an mri, it is a very claustrophobic experience. I'm also claustrophobic, and once you get into this, they sort of slide you into this tunnel. It's very, it's very low and it's also very loud. There's these weird clanging and banging. It's like a, it's like an orchestra gone wrong, isn't it in there?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's like orchestra gone wrong and pots and pans endlessly yeah by the time I had my third MRI, which was you're like asleep, right, you don't care I was. I was used to the noise that I quite liked it. But my the thing is it took another four weeks for me to get the mri done because I needed to be sedated, which requires a nurse. And is that because of the claustrophobia? Exactly awesome, exactly so this.
Speaker 1:This is a. This is a brilliant, brilliant example, um, of how experiential avoidance so the degree to which we do not want to experience something often can result in this situation where we're putting something off that actually we should be doing because it's going to protect us. So I have another friend who's avoiding having a breast scan for the same, for she finds it painful. So experiential avoidance, where we just want to stay away from anything uncomfortable, has real-world consequences, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Sure does, it sure does, and the message as well is that CT scans aren't enough, and a lot of people will just say that is enough. And if I had believed that, then I wouldn't have been in the position today and probably worse off, maybe not even here.
Speaker 1:Really, so tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Well, having realized that I'd had the TIA, I changed my life. Basically I had to. So the medical team I had whether it was the neurologist, cardiologist, psychiatrist, psychologist, gp all said if you don't change your life and what you're doing and your work, you'll die okay, it's likely within you know you will most likely have a stroke, and it's as simple as that. No matter how small the TIA is, it's that signal.
Speaker 1:So what was it about your lifestyle that was sending you in that direction? What did you have to change? What's the problem with what you were doing?
Speaker 2:The problem with what I was doing is working too hard, too long, late nights, bad food food, too much wine. Um, as I said, just like traveling, not enough exercise. And I knew, I saw, I felt the signs, and also the thing that was one of the most difficult things was I was in a business partnership at the time, which I knew was wrong. Okay, it was wrong for me, let's just take this apart.
Speaker 1:So we hear there's a lot of sort of generic talk around. You know, lifestyle, you've got to eat properly, you've got to sleep properly, you've got to exercise, um, but there's plenty of people that that don't do any of that. And then they, you know, they just live lives and they, you know they're 85 and they seem to be okay. I guess there's maybe another element on top of it, and that is this business partnership. That was what didn't work for you. In what way?
Speaker 2:yeah, it was, and my husband, steve, had kept had kept warning me about it. The the contract arrangement we had wasn't wrong, but I was so determined to make it work. It was about helping grow a business and actually being a part of that. But what really was happening is the partnership was becoming less and less a partnership and I was being treated more like an employee, although I was bringing in some very serious and new business. And I let this happen and it ate at my core values, and I really feel that I think your point, annie, the the food and diet and drinking and long nights and travel is a bit of a cliche. I don't think that on its own would have caused it. I do think it was for me, a lot of the internalising and messing with my core values and just ignoring it and knowing that I was pushing ahead with something that was not workable and not good for me.
Speaker 2:So your partner in this business was male, female, so you had a female partner it's female partners, her business and I'd gone into an arrangement with her to help her build up her business.
Speaker 1:It's a consulting, a consulting business and I enjoyed working with her and helping her grow that company, but it shrunk me so I guess, look at the real specifics around those interpersonal dynamics that resulted in you going against your core values and shrinking. So what were they? What was it like on a day-to-day basis? So, on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 2:It was like any other good day as a director of a management consulting firm and helping growing. We were bringing in new clients, I was bringing in my contacts. I was doing it all. Everybody in the company was respecting me and at some times, revering me. But over time, the, the business partner whose business it was started to really dig at me with. It's my risk. I have to wear the risk. I, I, I. But I was in this partnership with her and it was starting to erode at me. But I was so hell-bent on making this work from a reputation perspective and everything else, and my, my husband, steve, was in the background saying this is not good for you.
Speaker 1:So and I wasn't listening. So, yeah, well, we don't, yeah, so you're not alone in that. So, just in in a, at a really granular level, I mean, we're talking about a combination of things that we're saying caused you to have a neurological event, so it's quite serious. So, on a really tiny moment to moment level, what was the problem? What were you swallowing that you shouldn't have?
Speaker 2:I was swallowing my my independence and my reputation and how well I was starting to allow myself to be treated more as an employee, not a partner. So, for example, I wanted the flexibility. It was always in the arrangement that I could work anywhere. I could go to Queensland, Noosa, Burley Heads, work from there, run my clients.
Speaker 2:Oh, so you could work like you could do it zoom flexibly flexibly and and I had a client in brisbane so that would make that easier as well. But I could no longer do that because the partner felt like the optics were a problem for the rest of the practice and it would send the wrong message and what was that?
Speaker 1:what was the problem with the message that you were working flexibly and other people weren't Correct?
Speaker 2:But they were 30 years. My junior hadn't earned their stripes, didn't have the clients or the contacts that I had, so I was slowly being treated more and more like an employee and losing the independence that I'd had for the last 20 years.
Speaker 1:It sounds to me like it's an issue around power. So, instead of you sharing power, which seems like the most reasonable thing, it sounds like she was taking a higher status position than you, which meant you were in a lower status position and you didn't feel you had the capacity, the right to push back.
Speaker 2:Is that right? That's correct, and I was being reminded of it so often because it was her business, her risk, but I was also risking profit and loss for me as well, so it just wasn't working.
Speaker 1:So if we can take apart at a really super granular level, because that's where all this starts, right. So if in a moment where she was saying to you this flexible work arrangement you've got is not working for the rest of the business because of the optics let's just say you were having that discussion with her yeah, your impulse would be to say what, if you're in your sort of feeling, quite confident in yourself, what would you normally say to that my impulse would be this is not what we agreed, this is not the arrangement.
Speaker 2:I'm not those people. We have a different, we have a different relationship, and that is what I said, and that is what you said.
Speaker 1:That is what I said. What? What transpired from?
Speaker 2:nothing changed.
Speaker 1:Nothing changed, and so I guess that in that case, if nothing changed, it was incumbent on you to then hold the line on that right right, and say no, I've said that, but you didn't, and which is often what we do, right, we think we're going to respond in a normal way, in the way we should respond, and then we don't. Can you remember at all, if you don't mind, what was going on in those moments when you actually didn't hold the line?
Speaker 2:I do remember this is awesome. This is what what happened. We tried to renegotiate the next year's contract to be more flexible and deal with optics and try to come to arrangement. I doubled down and traveled a lot more, so I went to see my clients in New Zealand and in Queensland because I just wanted to run away from it.
Speaker 2:From this dynamic, Yep from this dynamic and took shelter, where I usually take shelter with my clients and with my work. So I remember being holed up in a hotel room in New Zealand, in Wellington, just before I got the news, just before after I'd had the MRI and before I went back to the neurologist and just said to myself I'm in an absolute mess, I'm just not in a good space.
Speaker 1:And how? So what was going on for you that knew that? You knew you weren't in a good space?
Speaker 2:Well, there was a combination of things. Things one is we were trying to do the new contract and the end of that week I had to sign it. I had to sign it, and the day I was meant to sign it is the day I I'm going to call it crashed and burned, which ended up being three weeks after I found out I'd had a stroke. Right Right, it is tricky. Nothing happened in a normal sequence of the bed scheme.
Speaker 1:I don't think things do yeah. I think we think things are really neat.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And linear? Yeah, and they're often not. They're often chaotic yeah. We're just pausing for a minute to hear a word from our sponsor.
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Speaker 1:if you want team training or a conference presentation, reach out for a confidential one-on-one conversation using the link in the description for those of us, I think, who would describe I mean, I would be the same. I would describe myself as a confident person who is very capable of holding my own, and I think you would describe yourself as the same. Is that right? Exactly, and that was the shrinking bit and that's the shock to the system, when you find yourself in a context where, suddenly, you're not the person that you thought you were and you're not behaving the way you anticipated you would. Is that right, yeah?
Speaker 2:that's you're right, spot on. That's just made me a little bit emotional and that's totally fine that you're emotional, it's totally fine.
Speaker 1:and I think this idea that once we've discovered this, I you know, once we've sort of coalesced into the person that we think we are, we are going to it's sort of immutable and we're going to be able to be resilient in regard to all assaults that come in and we're not, and then we don't forgive ourselves because life's tricky, right and non-linear, and we are often shocked that we didn't hold the line when we always would have assumed we would have.
Speaker 2:I couldn't have put it more perfectly yeah, so this is what happened. As a result of that, I had the stroke, which was earlier. I found out about it in June. I went into some sense of denial but knew, yeah, I'd be okay, and it was just a little thing, and I'll recover from it. And and then, three weeks later, the shock set in. Exactly as you said it, annie. The shock had set in and it manifested in, and this was the weekend I was meant to sign the contract. I couldn't lift my head up, I was dizzy, really sick. We thought I'd had another stroke. We went to the emergency and it wasn't.
Speaker 2:It wasn't another stroke, but it basically ended up being a body and mind breakdown which then turned into the PTSD and the severe anxiety disorder, but the body and mind breakdown and I know I don't want to use the word burnout because I agree with some of your sentiment on that. I'll tell you what it looked like.
Speaker 1:I couldn't lift my head for three weeks it's almost like what they would have referred to as a nervous breakdown, when which they don't anymore, do they? But is it like that?
Speaker 2:like you just can't function look, if I was talking to you back then which I wouldn't have been able to I'd have said I don't like that term, my mother had a few of those and I it. It freaks me out, but yes, it was. It was a nervous breakdown in terms of the mind, but from a body perspective, and this is why it was fortunate that I got the most amazing psychiatrist who went down the holistic path and did a whole lot of bloods with me and said your body's breaking down okay, so when you will just be very super uber clear on what you mean by holistic, because I get very wary about the notion of people going.
Speaker 1:I want to go holistic, so I'm going to go to a healer, I'm going to go to a naturopath, which I detest so what you did was you went down a really, really, really solid medical path, but he covered everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was a she and look, one of the success factors was Was it a, she it's a she oh, how's that for unconscious bias on my part?
Speaker 1:Well, there you go, there you go. I just assumed it was a male, Annie, oh my.
Speaker 2:God, okay, well, the medical. So yeah, a couple of things here, and this was, is what a key success factor.
Speaker 1:I recall that Steve had said to me because the this is your husband, yeah, my husband.
Speaker 2:He's obviously really supportive he was my number one, number one reason for getting through this and how.
Speaker 1:How long? Can I just ask? Sorry to divert. How, how long have you been together?
Speaker 2:we've been together 20 years, married for 14. We were late bloomers, uh, no children, but we love our 18 nieces and nephews. It's fine.
Speaker 1:There's no rule to say you have to have children they're very expensive yeah, okay. So now, now I've diverted myself. Oh yeah, so that's what I was saying, that you got a really fantastic medical team together and so the psychiatrist did bloods.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she was. And just the point with Steve is that he had just looked at me one day and said as non-functional as you are, you have got to now take on the project of your life which is managing this medical team. So the context is neurologist amazing, but they're great in their lane. Nothing wrong with your brain, I'm done.
Speaker 1:Got it, got it, got it, got it. Same with the cardiologist he found nothing to indicate In their lane.
Speaker 2:Got it Anything vascular?
Speaker 1:in the lanes.
Speaker 2:So, in terms of finding a psychiatrist and it was a miracle we found one in 72 hours um, who was willing to take on my case and this is it's a good four, five month wait for, even urgent. So we found her and the holistic nature that I talk about is she spent three hours with the diagnosis and she with me and after three hours, diagnosed me with the PTSD, with severe adjustment anxiety disorder so the severity was quite, quite steep.
Speaker 2:And then she um, interestingly, she got me onto medication. She immediately got me off sleeping tablets which I'd been on for 16 days because my gp, fair enough, had said yeah, yeah, yeah sure you know if you don't sleep. Everything's worse. So she was brilliant in doing that through magnesium and uh and some other things. And then she asked me. She obviously got me onto the anti-anxiety medication and shared with me the the path to getting perfect up there, and that that's.
Speaker 1:That's a horrendous, hellish path as well, trying to, uh, get to the right level, of um that medication, I um after the birth of my second child and it makes me feel the same talking about it. I um developed. I was very, very ill for nine months during the pregnancy and I just never got better after she was born. And, interestingly, I had a very similar experience where I just became not very functional, and I can feel it now. Talking about it, I'm like what To this day? I go what was that? What happened? Who was I? And I ended up at a psychiatrist and he said do you walk down the street and do you wonder that?
Speaker 2:people, are you sure?
Speaker 1:it was a he, it was a he it was. And he said do you walk down the street and wonder that other people are just it was a he, it was a, he it was. And he said do you walk down the street and wonder that other people are just walking around looking normal? I said, yeah, I can't believe that it's getting on with it. I feel so terrible and he medicated me because I couldn't eat and it's sort of, but it took about 18 months to get over that. Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's interesting we're talking. We're talking about this because this is what I would say truly traumatic and I've been doing a lot of posting at the moment about, because there are things that are truly traumatic and people really do have PTSD and people really do become non-functional. We have to stop referring to people just having a blip as being traumatized, because there's people that have actually been traumatized and then there's people that are just having a bit of a day and someone's irritated them. It all gets under the same umbrella and then, when people do have ptsd or people really are traumatized, it's harder for them to get help because the system's now getting crowded yeah, what I mean yeah, not everything is trauma.
Speaker 1:Yes, um, it must really. I mean, obviously, looking at you, it must really surprise you that this happened till this very day.
Speaker 2:Yes, it does surprise me because I I went from and to your. I went from being a highly functional individual person, social, corporate, to non-functioning. I couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't leave the home or the cave I had. It was a complete hijacking of the amygdala.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the amygdala's gone right, it was just and the amygdala I believe it startedala's gone right, it was just. And the amygdala I believe it started to was on its way to the hijacking. As soon as I'd found out I had that stroke and uh, went into a bit of a denial. But I was, and I also went from a highly confident person in any environment to just not being able to to cope and also from um, you know, I, I pretty much, I was, you know, out from outwardly being put together to broken and it's. And that's why did you feel humiliated. I, I felt embarrassed because and this is where um Steve was key and my and we will still come back to the holistic thing but part of the recovery was I'm not going to hang around and wait for medication to work. I'm not going to sit here and let the amygdala keep me in the cage.
Speaker 1:So let's just explain that. The amygdala is a little warning system in the brain. It's really good for short, sharp issues. It fires off and sends you into fight flight. The problem is when it gets stuck right and then we're in a chronic state of as if we're in danger all the time, and when that happens through a series of very complicated neurochemical responses in the brain. When that happens, then you're in real trouble and it sounds to me like you got stuck. It just got stuck. You're in continual firing of the amygdala. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, annie, imagine, and for your audience, imagine this you and this was for a period of at least three to four months you can't get out, you can't leave the house. When you do, you feel nauseous, hands are trembling, face is numb, and this is constant even when you get back in the cave. And it's this constant suffering and pain that just keeps going because you no longer have control of your prefrontal cortex, which is the decision making part of the brain, and while amygdala and, by the way, she's affectionately known as amy now- right, you're by my whole medical team.
Speaker 2:Even my psychiatrist quite likes it. But um, because amy and I we sort of have a thing close yeah, we're pretty close.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:You and I but at the time I had no idea about this, so I needed to try to learn and understand it while going through this suffering. But, um, and just imagine, it was because the tia, this small stroke, nothing cognitive happened, it's not. You know, I saw clearly.
Speaker 2:You look completely fine it's not, clearly it's not a cognitive thing. But with the ptsd and the anxiety disorder I had to teach myself and this is through the cognitive behavioural therapy. I had to teach myself to not walk again because I could walk, but to walk in crowds to go and get a coffee, to catch a train, to just see people, and I was having to, so part of my determination, and so Steve had to give up pretty much everything else for six months to look after me what a good man.
Speaker 2:He would take me outside. I'd walk for 10 metres. He'd wait for me. I'd kind of fall over. Get dizzy, come back. Yeah, but over time.
Speaker 1:And what did when? Because it sounds like it's almost Sounds migraine-y, that dizziness and the vestibular migraine-y sort of thing is it.
Speaker 2:Well it is. It wouldn't be migraine, as you've probably experienced. It's just symptoms that are real around this anxiety disorder and the severity of it, this anxiety disorder and the severity of it. So until I could get my parasympathetic nervous system in sync with the medication, and that took 12 weeks.
Speaker 1:It's long, it's long. I remember not being able to saying to David, I've got to get down to Manly, and then him taking me down to Manly and me going I can't stay in Manly, I've got to go home.
Speaker 1:I distinctly remember it. I look back on that time and I'm like I was a different person. It's like I do not recognise who that was, so I'll just explain for the listeners so, what Diane is talking about. So her psychologist took her through CBT, which is cognitive behavioural therapy, which is you start to challenge the validity of some of the thoughts. So there's two ways we can go. You can go. You can go cbt, which is to challenge some of the validity of the thoughts, and the other thing is acceptance commitment therapy, which is you let the thought be and then go back to something that's doing, something that's aligned with your values, and both are absolutely efficacious in dealing with these sort of profound breakdowns. I suppose you'd call them the system, because once the limbic system so generically the amygdala, the whole thing, the limbic system, takes over. And the prefrontal cortex, which is your executive function system, it literally lies down, doesn't it? Yes, your prefrontal cortex lies down, puts a doona over its head and goes I'm gone, I'm done, don't ask me to do anything.
Speaker 2:I can't do it. Yeah, yes, and that's a um, yeah, it's a complete, it's a complete shutdown and you just become the shell of the person that you were and it at the. At the time, one of um, my niece was getting married and it was just so important. I wanted to be there, but it was in the thick of the storm. Did you go? We got there, we got there, but it was true through the cbt, which I'm that, I'm sort of hardened up person. I thought cbt and self-talk and act acceptance, commitment, therapy was all foo-foo.
Speaker 2:Uh, but it isn't no, it's not when you're, when you're when you're looking for things to hang on to to say I've got to get out of this. They work. So my niece got married at a reception centre on Sydney Harbour. We lived on the other side of that, so the therapy was three days before we went out to the church and I had to sit there. And I just couldn't sit there. I needed to get back and we would, for the week before, go down the hill to have a look at the reception area from across the wharf got it.
Speaker 1:It was down on the harbour.
Speaker 2:The exposure therapy and every time, um and Steve still talks about this every time we'd head down the hill, put his hand on my heart. It was racing and I would feel sick, sick it's yeah, and it was like, wow, this is what makes you feel mad doesn't it wt.
Speaker 2:Everybody's happening. I've got to get to this wedding. There was a lot you talked about humiliation. There was a lot about getting to my niece's wedding that I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed because it wasn't going to me and I went to her two hours of her hen's day. My younger sister there's five of us, we're really close my younger sister, who I spend a lot of time with her and the twins. She walked me out, steve was there to pick me up and it took a lot of effort for me to just spend that two hours and she just said goodbye to me and she said look, look, we just miss you. Oh, really sad. You know, she and I, she, she, she still doesn't know the impact that I had and I went into major setback after that and went, went into a hole for a few days. But she said it because she loves you came from a.
Speaker 2:It came from a great place, but I still remember that being a moment of I'm going to do whatever it takes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you did, I got to that wedding and all kudos to you and I stayed the whole night and I danced my little heart away and Amy the amygdala the next morning said I hope you enjoyed that because my next 10 days were terrible. Yeah. But it was worth it.
Speaker 1:And I think your psychologist is kathy ebert and she, um, was my psychologist for quite a long time and she was the overseeing psychologist with the books I wrote why smart women buy the lies and why smart women make bad decisions. So she checked all. She was my psychology advisor. She's awesome and I I think that notion of exposure therapy because the more avoidant that we get, obviously, the more of a monster it becomes right, the more we try and stay away from it those moments where it's tricky, isn't it? Because I don't, I don't really believe there is a a true self, and people say, go, go back to your true self.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't really think there is a true self, because I think we're always developing and always evolving as people and I think our brains are a committee, which is why the notion you know, which is why right, which is why the notion of you know, people talk about meditating and sitting with their true selves. I just don't think it's accurate. Um, but what is accurate is when you continually but swallow your responses which are aligned to your values, and that's clearly what you were doing. You were having to, for whatever reason. You were swallowing your responses and not, in a really simple terms not standing up for yourself for whatever reason, and that so often happens to us in different contexts, and that's a shock to the system, isn't it?
Speaker 2:well, and I I do recall I was. I was hating myself at the time and I was really. I was just, I was just not happy and yeah, it's it, it's just a time you're hating yourself oh yeah, I was.
Speaker 2:I was hating myself and that's not me. And that's not me when you compare that moment in time to where I'm at now. And it's we call it, and all my friends and family, and even Kathy's with me on this one. It's the 2.0 reboot. I like it Reboot of my mind and my body, and that's sort of just coming back on the holistic thing with the psychiatrist.
Speaker 2:She was tremendous in that she asked me to go and do a whole series of bloods, knowing that you know I could barely get out of the house. But she said I really need you to do this. And the reason she did it, and with urgency, is because she fast-tracked those results, called me in and pulled in a colleague of hers who's a doctor in nutrition and she said your body's breaking down. This is what you've got to do. Your biggest focus is on food, nutrition, proteins. Your brain has stopped figuring out how to process food. It doesn't want to do it. You weren't eating, I wasn't eating. I had lost like 10 11 kilos in four weeks as well god um, but my b12 had depleted my cortisol was through the roof um, it's almost like I'd become pre-diabetes, which had never become pre-diabetic.
Speaker 2:Get pre-diabetic and we reversed it all in three months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kudos to you. Okay, so you've now sort of on the other side of this event. What did you learn?
Speaker 2:I and I don't want this to say to be cliched I learned humility and gratitude, two words that are just not.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Well, I had to be really humble in terms of like the example of having to teach myself to walk 10 metres again to go into a coffee shop to talk to people, and when you say humble, do you mean humble in that you can now relate better to other people who maybe aren't functioning well either?
Speaker 1:is that what you mean by humility?
Speaker 2:it was sort of my own humility, but I can now relate to, on that point, that as well, and I'm grateful, and that's where the gratitude is. I mean, I I formed a new relationship with my mother as well, my 85 year old mother who finally stepped up and not I shouldn't say finally, she, she stepped up and really tried to take care of me, rather than it had been the other way around for the last 10 years.
Speaker 1:Okay, so when you're talking about humility as well, you're talking almost about you needed something instead of always being in control.
Speaker 2:Correct yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's so interesting around control, isn't it so many of us women that are sort of highly driven motivated? It is hard to go.
Speaker 2:I need something yeah, and I got past the embarrassment so there's the humility and and and um, and it's yeah, so the the other.
Speaker 1:So it was the humility and the gratitude and what would go back because I'm I'm not, I don't love gratitude. So what? What do you mean by gratitude? I didn't think you'd like that, so it was okay. I just think it gets overused. But what do you mean by it?
Speaker 2:grateful for my husband grateful for my medical team grateful for my family who rallied around me perfect. Grateful for kathy, yeah who has just been amazing she's amazing steered me through it, grateful for my medical team, and I've never been able to articulate gratitude in that way no before.
Speaker 1:Well, you've never had to. I've never yeah, you've never had the compulsion to right exactly, you've never been in the situation yeah, I'm grateful to my friends who showed up as well yeah, awesome we've sorted those out.
Speaker 2:So, look, the other lesson for me was just um, I have a whole new respect for my mind and body. Self-care, uh, all of that. When you talk about mindfulness and all this foo-foo and wellness etc. It's for me, it became real.
Speaker 1:I I understand what self-care means yeah, and that's in the reality of it yes, care is not going and having, you know, a nine dollar smoothie in an ice bath, right, it's actually applying yourself to what you need to do to get your life back on track. Yes, yeah, yes, and mindfulness is is. If it's used correctly, is is very, very helpful. It's very, very helpful. That isn't that the notion of how the body and the mind are interrelated. It's such a shame, isn't it, that these, these truisms around sort of mind-body connection, which is true, somehow have been co-opted by AltMed and into wellness, when they don't belong there. Because it's true, it's true, you know, I will get a migraine if I'm under enormous stress. So there's a connectivity there that has to be looked at. And I've learned something from talking to you. I've definitely. You know, I can have a thought and then feel sick immediately. It's real, it's, it's, it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the struggle is real, right? So, um, if anybody is listening to this and I know that I am very big on not conflating minor if you really are in a place where you are genuinely struggling, where your mental health is failing, where you're physically having issues that you weren't prior, if you're having trouble getting your head off the pillow, if, day to day, you walk out the door and think I want to go home, then you need to seek help, but you need to seek the right sort of help. Do not go to a healer, do not go to a naturopath. Go to your GP and get a referral to a psychiatrist and talk to a really properly qualified psychologist, because they are the people that can genuinely look at you holistically instead of telling you that your problems are probably because you're eating too much gluten. Right? So this is real and what happened to you is very instructive, I think, for all of what would be the final thing you'd want to say.
Speaker 2:Look for the signs. They're always there and you will get through it. You will get through it and you can get through it, and for me, I just can't wait for each new day. Now, that's perfect. I've figured it all out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just can't wait for each new day. So and I guess when you say the signs, it's are you sublimating your responses on a day-to-day basis? Are you shutting yourself down in order to get ahead or to preserve a reputation, when actually you need to be saying hang on. This is not working for me yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And if you are saying to yourself in a hotel room on a plane, quietly, I am in a mess, it's because you are yep perfect that has been so instructive.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. I feel like I've really learned something today. I really appreciate you coming all the way across the harbour bridge two bridges, two bridges to visit me today. Um, do apologize on behalf of the grudels. There was an interruption because Ryder had to go out and do a wee, and then so did Yo-Yo, and then there was shenanigans and they both had a big drink, didn't they?
Speaker 2:yeah, but they they're so gorgeous that you can't help but forgive them.
Speaker 1:Well, they are cheeky they're both asleep now, which is they could have done that like 40 minutes ago, because we had to put them on leads. I had to tell them to shut up. It's been bad anyway.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, diane thanks for having me my pleasure and thank you so much for tuning in. Uh, I really hope you enjoyed that episode. I think it was really interesting, especially for women. You know, when do we shut it down, when do we ignore the red flags, the beige flags, and find ourselves in a position where we can't get out of bed. Wherever you are in the world, and for those people that listen to me, that I know are in countries where there is trauma and trouble at the moment, I wish you all the very best. Stay well, stay happy, keep your critical thinking hats on. See you next week. Bye, thanks for tuning into why Smart Women with me.
Speaker 1:Annie McCubbin, I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar or in your own home, work car park in a bar or in your own home. Please, please, respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that.
Speaker 1:And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women. See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, annie McCubbin.
