DSTRESS Podcast

Episode 1 - Silent Battles: Understanding Stress And Survival

• D

Share episode

Send us a text

 Stress doesn’t always roar; sometimes it creeps in, stacks quietly, and leaves you convinced you’re the problem. We open up about the moments that nearly ended us and the simple, body-first tools that helped us find our footing again. From postnatal freefall and agoraphobia to sudden loss and the numbness of shutdown, we trace how overwhelm hijacks attention, blurs thinking, and turns everyday life into survival mode—and why that’s not a character flaw but a predictable stress response.

You’ll hear D’s turning point with a psychiatrist who refused to label her “broken” and instead named her reality: too many changes, too fast, for a body doing its best to cope. We talk through the spinning plates of modern life—work strain, family pressure, money worries—and how micro-stressors add up to anxiety, burnout, and depression. More importantly, we share the actions that start to unwind the knot. Think regulated breathing that extends the exhale, short walks to discharge adrenaline, naming feelings to cool the amygdala, and removing a few plates before adding new ones. No fluff, no jargon—just clear steps that a “10-year-old brain” can follow when the adult brain is flooded.

This is a space for anyone who thinks, feels, or behaves in ways they don’t want to anymore. If you’re dealing with postnatal anxiety, relationship conflict, workplace burnout, grief, or the low hum of “I can’t cope,” you’ll find language that makes sense and tools you can use today. Our promise is simple: you’re not weak, you’re overloaded, and there’s a way back to calm, choice, and connection.

If the conversation helps, follow the show, share it with someone who’s struggling, and leave a quick review so others can find it. Tell us one small change you’re willing to try this week—we’re listening. 

Speaker 1:

Stress is the biggest killer in the world.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to DStress with D and Caz. Both are crowning achievements for not ending in alliance. So we're talking about mental health.

Speaker 1:

Too many of us are suffering silently. So go grab yourself a cup-up.

Speaker 2:

And let's get real and raw because you are worth so much more. So Kaz, we're back for another episode. D? That's me.

Speaker 1:

That's your name.

Speaker 2:

That's who I am. D. So what is today's episode about? As in being the first one, we believe, because we've recorded so many things now, we have no idea what we've got, what we haven't got, what's on them, what's not on them, but this is the first proper episode. Mic drop. Bingo. First and foremost, let's do the who. I'm D, and she's my sidekick. What else do we call them? Co-host. Soul sister. Soul sister. That's the one. And we have um had the brilliant opportunity, the most amazing opportunity of meeting each other 18 years ago, and that's where we really start expressing what it is we're about and why we do what we're doing and where it comes from. So, first me, D. 35 years ago, I experienced a series of traumatic events. Let me just say before I go any further that up until that point I truly believed I was a normal person. Absolutely normal. I didn't think there was anything wrong with me at all. However, a series of traumatic events happened which reduced me to an emotional and physical wreck. And when I say wreck, I'm talking complete and utter. Not wanting to live life anymore. Suicide wasn't something talked about very much at all back in the day. And not only did I not want to live anymore, I also had two children at the time, and this is a hefty one.

Speaker 1:

very small children.

Speaker 2:

Baby babies, yeah, very small. And because of the way I felt, I can say now quite okay, um, and and I don't feel ashamed or guilty about it because I understand it so much more now. But I actually wanted or contemplated taking my children with me. Now that's something that most women who are mothers couldn't bear to even hear, let alone contemplate. But I'm being real and raw, as Caz will repeat lots of times about this podcast over the next few hundred years. R and R. R and R, yeah. Um, and as a result of that, cutting a very long story short, I ended up having to get some serious help because I didn't really want to die, but I also couldn't live the way I felt because it was the most painful physical and emotional experience I and anyone else out there going through it right now knows, and life cannot be lived and survived through that. Uh, the fact that I did what I did was because I knew I didn't really want to die, as I said, and I ended up getting some great advice from the most amazing psychiatrist. I'd never known anything like it. It was it was a terrifying experience to have to admit that I was not very well. But this psychiatrist told me quite categorically there was nothing wrong with me.

Speaker 1:

Can I just say though, 35 years on, even to this day, I s I believe that people still don't want to say out loud I'm not in a good way, or even though mental health and stress is used quite flippantly, I still believe that no one wants to admit that I'm not in a good place, that I'm not well.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, because it's it's the worst, it's the biggest form of failure that you can possibly experience in every respect.

Speaker 1:

I believe before before I met you that it was a sign of weakness. Most people do. Until I came to see you.

Speaker 2:

I've actually got a bit of a tear coming out there. Right, let's get rid of that. So the psychiatrist gave me the best advice, the most worldly advice that I've ever been given, and took the advice and did what I needed to do, and I recovered. And what I did to recover is something I realised absolutely every human being on this planet can achieve when they know the right information. So I dedicated the rest of my life to um we all have basically it's what you're saying.

Speaker 1:

We you know, we all have the tools, we just don't know how to use them too.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And that is the biggest problem of all, just the lack of information and guidance. And even though there's all this information out there, it's blatantly obvious it's not working because the problem we're talking about is uh increasing by the second throughout the world for everybody. Absolutely terrible. I mean, obviously, we're talking about mental health. It's become a buzzword, isn't it? Mental health or buzzword buzzwords, and really it's it's it's very much to do with what this show is named D Stress. Um, it's all about the stress in our bodies, and ultimately I went away, learned what I learned, and realised that I wanted everybody that I loved and cared for in the world to know this. But unfortunately, you mentioned anything about that 35 years ago, and people look at you like there's something wrong, or you think you're something special, or she's lost her mind, she's delusional.

Speaker 1:

She's crazy.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. So I ended up um doing it on a private basis. I put some adverts in the paper, and um I was inundated with calls from people back then, and as a result of that, within two years, I established my first business, and what I taught people and how I went about it was very natural and very honest, and they kind of took to me, and I just had this most amazing following, which again was all very under wraps.

Speaker 1:

And I agree, when I first came to see you 18 years ago, I was in um a very bad way unable to cope, and I felt like my life had turned upside down. I mean, stress is is is sneaky to a degree because it creeps in. That's very polite. Yes, and but all of a sudden stress creeps in and then it flips you, and all of a sudden your world is turned upside down, like mine was, and how you explained to me about the spinning plates. You know, you've got one, two plates spinning, and before you know it, um, and I I guess people that are listening will understand this, you've got a thousand plates you're trying to spin, and you become overwhelmed, unable to cope. And I think that's the problem, it's the whole I cannot cope that is the but you don't realise it's happening.

Speaker 2:

It's like in my case, I had uh, let's say 20 challenges and changes in my life that you think are very on their own manageable, but when they come at the rate and pace on top of each other one after the other before you know it, your brain and body is overwhelmed, and that's when the problem of stress begins, because it's just not possible to manage that without understanding it.

Speaker 1:

Well, stress is the biggest killer in the world. Don't we know it?

Speaker 2:

And um it didn't get us, did it, darling? It didn't, because our biggest achievement in the world has been for both of us not to have committed suicide. Yeah, and that's what makes us very close and have this amazing connection, which we hope is gonna ooze out to you and give you the confidence to do what you need to do to get back on track with your life if you are overwhelmed with this thing called stress.

Speaker 1:

Well, when um D asked me to do the podcast, I was so excited because I've been wanting to shout from the rooftops for the last 18 years about D. Everybody's gotta have a D. Everybody needs to understand this. Um, and at the time when I first um I came back to my husband at the time. Um, we're now divorced. Um, I'm single, just putting it out there.

Speaker 2:

Now, now this is not one of those shows.

Speaker 1:

Um and basically I said to him, it is common sense, but what really drew me to um to D is listening to her story, um, which we're gonna go into detail about. But it was a not in this episode necessarily. But it was when I listened to her and understood D's story, I was so wow, she's a human being, she does understand. Um, and I felt for the first time that all the thoughts in my head, I wasn't alone. And that's why I'm so excited about sharing our experiences with you. Because for you who's listening, I just want you to know you're not alone.

Speaker 2:

No, darlings, you're not. You are the most beautiful souls out there. Anyone who's listening has experienced anything like we have with the degree of stress in your bloodstream that gives you the sensations and the feelings and the emotions that make you feel even remotely like you don't want to exist anymore. It's all manageable. Please don't worry anymore. There is the solution for you, and that's what this podcast is all about: giving you the opportunity to get to know yourself and understand how you tick and what's going on in your brain and body when you are dealing with massive overwhelm and overload.

Speaker 1:

And why you behave in certain ways that you do, and how to change patterns. Because stress does bend you, but it can also break you.

Speaker 2:

That's saying something, isn't it? Really? You don't say. So why and who sorry, not who and why, but this podcast show is for those people who think, feel and behave in ways they really don't want to anymore. There's lots of people who know they behave and think and feel in ways that are unacceptable or just simply uh unmanageable.

Speaker 1:

But I think the the the the key point to this, and this is why I believe that you're the person that's listening, or the people that's listening to us now, is they recognize and they're actually aware that this is happening to them and they want help, and we want to share and help them, and I want to share how you helped me and saved my life. Now, I understand not everybody is at that stage with their stress levels, but this isn't just about people with stress levels wanting to commit suicide. This is about everyday stress that affects your behaviour and your patterns and your relationships. And your relationships with family members, with partners, with children, work, absolutely, health, the whole lot, dealing with financial bills, this covers the whole story. I'd like to um get the listener to um hear your story, Dee, on um exactly what happened to you. I know you went to see the psychiatrist, but I just want them to understand, like you explained to me 18 years ago, how your st how your journey began and to as to where we are today.

Speaker 2:

Okay. So I was what would be considered an ordinary person in an ordinary life. However, my first husband and I were pretty successful back in the 80s, it was quite uncommon for two young people to have their own home and business by the time they're in their early twenties, which we did, and we were very proud of the fact that we were in that position. But I knew, and let me just say now that I didn't understand then, but I understand now that I had a very, very um adverse childhood, and the experiences that I got from that were the precursor and the cause of my actual, let's call it, breakdown later on.

Speaker 1:

That's actually to do with um childhood trauma, but we're gonna be discussing that later on in different episodes.

Speaker 2:

Correct, but I had no idea that my later experience was not the problem, that it was a very much more childhood experience problem. That doesn't sound right, however, none of us are perfect. So um I had my first child, which was very normal and natural, and it wasn't brilliant because I wasn't very happy, I didn't realise at the time how unhappy I was, but then very in a very short time I had my second child. There was only 15 months between them, and during that birth, I just knew something had changed and life was different. And by the time a week later, so within seven days, I was suicidal after giving birth to my second child, and when I say I was suicidal, I'm seriously telling you, I couldn't see me surviving beyond that day because of the way my body and brain felt. It was as if I was on a roller coaster coming down at 95,000 miles an hour and not being able to stop it. My body was just in massive panic mode. And coupled with the fact that I was depressed beyond description is such a contradiction, it's almost impossible to describe to people how you can be both overly massively in a position of fear and panic, and yet at the same time exhausted, fatigued, depressed, and down. I know there's terms and terminology for it, but I couldn't tell you now what that actually is for most people because we're all different. But I was very desolate.

Speaker 1:

Would you say that you went into autopilot and you lost control? Total.

Speaker:

Rivian is more than a clothing brand. It's positivity in motion. Kindness is always in fashion. Cozy comfort wear that reminds people they're never alone. One drop of kindness can change a life. You wear the drop. You become the ripple. Together, we make the wave. The Rivian Ripple Revolution. Check out the Rivian Clothing Ground on our Shopify store.

Speaker 2:

I had no control over anything that I was doing. All I knew was how I felt, and that was like death on legs. And um I begged my husband to help me, bless him, and he said all he could do was like take me somewhere to see a psychiatrist, which I did. And um he was brilliant. And well, I say he was brilliant. He he obviously is a psychiatrist, but he was not just willing to throw me on medication. He said, you know, what you've described to me, your life has just been so frantic, you've had so many challenges, so many changes, lots of things have happened too quickly, two pregnancies in two years. It doesn't take much for a body to be overwhelmed and behave in the way that you're feeling right now. And um, I left there with the instructions from him to change my life. And I went home, my husband was with me, and we decided that was it, and we made lots and lots and lots and lots of changes, and it was mentally very good to be in a position where I knew I could change things, but the physiology was horrendous, and I still didn't feel any better, and and it was just the feeling that I felt that if I could just unzip myself, take out the feeling and put it on the side, that I knew that if I could get rid of that feeling, I would be okay. Um, and obviously that doesn't happen, so we had to go through the process and the motions of changing our life, and you know, the story will come later on. I did write a book in 1995, which is still sitting there waiting for publication. Who knows what's going to happen with this podcast? And um within three or four weeks, I didn't feel any better physiologically, but life I could see was changing.

Speaker 1:

This is after you saw the psychiatrist. This is after I saw the psychiatrist, yes.

Speaker 2:

And then um five, six, seven weeks later, I started to feel like I could manage to leave the house again because I had absolute horrendous agrophobia. I couldn't even begin to leave the house or meet people.

Speaker 1:

Um which, as you say, after having two very successful businesses and being out in the public, very difficult to deal with.

Speaker 2:

Um, but I did and and I took my time and um if I said I was a hundred percent feeling terrible, I was 96% feeling terrible by then, so it was still terrible. Um and then one day in the middle of the night, I got a phone call um from a relative saying that my husband just um collapsed in the street and he's in intensive care and he has a brain hemorrhage, and it's very unlikely that he's going to survive. And I didn't feel any worse at all. I didn't have one sense of dread, fear, loss, terror, pain, panic because I was in it already massively, and for not having that response to that phone call, I just knew there was something wrong. I was either crazy or that this was a dream, it wasn't real, um, or that I was absolutely as mad as a hatter. How can you not have a response to being told that your husband's on life support? He didn't last on life support, bless him. Um they couldn't save him. He had a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage, and back in the day, I think today they could have saved him, but back then there was no chance. And I had to say goodbye and agreed to have his organs donated, and I just went through the the process as if I was watching it from a um sofa watching the TV as a film. And trust me, when I say not one person in my life at the time had any clue what was happening to me and how I felt, and all I kept thinking was, oh my god, how am I gonna survive this? I wanted to die when he was alive, but how am I gonna survive without him? And how am I gonna make my children's lives worth living with the state that I'm in? And um I'm here. I didn't die. I didn't kill myself because I had to hang on for my kids. I had to do what I had to do. And uh that's just the beginning of the story. That went on for a whole year, but we can talk about that another time.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much. I know how difficult I wouldn't say difficult, but how raw that feeling is with you. And thank you for sharing because when you shared that story, your journey, sorry, not story, your journey with me is when I realised that I wasn't alone in this pain that I was feeling.

Speaker 2:

It's impossible actually for me to look back at that now and actually Realise that was real and that I felt like that, and that that was happening to me, and I know that it happens to millions of people, and we're not all the same, as in we don't all have the same experiences.

Speaker 1:

And I just want to say everybody has a story to tell.

Speaker 2:

They do, they do, but I also want to say to anybody who has survived that out there now and has been through that and come out the other side and that feels the same as me. That nobody in your life and in your family and your friends' support groups, if they haven't been there and haven't had that amount of stress in their body that feels the way that it did, that I'm proud of you. I appreciate you the fact that you're alive and that you didn't kill yourself because it's it's being it's torture, it's absolute torture.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and most people would turn and say it's indescribable, but that's why we're doing this here with you and sharing our our stories and our journeys so that it's not indescribable. You can describe it, you're not alone, and we have been there, and we're here to help. Yes.

Speaker 2:

Phew, take a breath. So that was 35 years ago, and as a result of that, I think I've explained, maybe was it in this episode? Not sure. Um, that I established my first business. It's because I'd learned the the skill, um, the art of actually recognising what was going on in my brain and body and doing something about it, which is obviously what I teach people today, and developing my um courses and the work that I've been doing for the last 33 years. And it's just the most amazing thing, the world of technology to have created these things called podcasts, because I don't have to sit at home now wondering who's going to take me seriously, because I just know it's the time, it's the perfect time for people to hear it from my mouth.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's probably that's what I've always tried and said after I meet you, and we've been side by side. Everybody needs a D. Everybody needs a D in their pocket, but not everybody has been lucky enough, like I have, to have had you to go and visit or be on the phone or text. And I for years, especially all them 18 years ago, I used to think to myself, or we used to mention, you know, sort of you can't talk to a billion people um and share the experiences, but now we've got podcasts. Yes, and here we are. I get to share D with you.

Speaker 2:

There you go. So that's what we're about today. And um I think it's really important to reference the fact that because what I do is not out there for everyone, the problem of stress, depression, anxiety, trauma-based emotions, behaviours, feelings which I believe every human has without a doubt, um, has become the problem it's become today because people are just so unaware of the fact that they can actually intervene on their inner worlds and talk to themselves in a way that actually calms down the stress system, and it's simple, it's a very simple process, and I've managed to put it together in a way that I think I might have mentioned in one of my podcasts about a 10-year-old brain. A 10-year-old brain can understand what I'm talking about when it comes to managing their stress.

Speaker 1:

A 10-year-old brain and a 50-year-old body, how terribly wicked that is for yourself.

Speaker 2:

So, overall, yeah, I know you will, darling. Overall, what we're doing is for all of those out there, all of you beautiful souls who think, feel and behave in ways you really don't want to. And it's not that you don't want to because it's something that's embarrassing, or you know, you'd rather not. It's because you realize that it's unhealthy for you. It's causing you problems in your world, in with your health, with your relationships. And it's quite simply just this thing called stress, which is a perfectly natural response in your body that you just are not understanding. You don't know how to communicate with yourself, you don't understand how your mind and body communicates, and you just need someone to teach you and show you it properly in a very straightforward manner that it makes common sense and is perfectly simple. Because the last thing you need, as I experienced, is when you're so overwhelmed reading a book with big words or explanations and descriptions that you haven't got a clue what they're talking about. You need something very simple, A B C, basic, black and white, and that's exactly what we are. It's raw and it's real, and that's what we're about. Thank you for listening. We'll see you again next week. She's a legend. Stress is everywhere, and it's winning if we stay quiet.

Speaker 1:

If you or someone you know could benefit from hearing our podcast, please follow and share.

Speaker 2:

Because everyone's breaking these days, and silence can kill.

Contributor

D

Host
Contributor

caz

Co-host