Curiosity and Future Outlook

Hello everyone, it's John here, just letting you know that I have written a book. It's called Thirst, twelve Drinks That Change My Life and it's out now. In many episodes of How Do You Cope, you'll have heard me talk about my relationship with Alcohol, and in writing Thirst, I wanted to explore what alcohol means. Why did it mean more to me than other people? Why did it mean some things felt better and why did it mean so many things went wrong? I also talk about lots of other things you'll have heard me and my guests discuss on how do you cope? Meditation, physical pain, gratitude, trauma and therapy. There's even a chapter about my bum and its relationship with Buddhism. So if that piques your interest, thirst is out now, and the audiobook, read by me, is available where ver you get audiobooks from. Hello and welcome to How Do You Cope with Me John Robbins? This is the show where I sit down with special guests to talk about the difficult periods in their lives and the coping mechanisms that have helped them along the way. Today's guest is Kelsey Waghorn. In twenty nineteen, Kelsey was working as a tour guide around White Island , also known as Fakari, an active volcano off the coast of New Zealand's North Island. It was a job she'd been doing for five years born out of a profound love of the ocean and marine science. On december the ninth, whilst Kelsey was leading a tour of the island, the volcano erupted. The massive release of steam and volcanic gas caused an explosion, launching rock and deadly ash into the air. Forty seven people were on the island at the time, twenty two of whom lost their lives. Many of the twenty five who survived suffered injuries that required long term intensive care for severe burns. Kelsey was one of those . She received full thickness burns to forty five percent of her body and has undergone numerous surgeries and countless months of rehab since that day. In March, she released her book Surviving White Island, which chronicles what happened to her that day and describes the grueling journey of recovery both physical and mental that she underwent as a result . In our conversation, we spoke about her experience of PTSD , which her book so brilliantly documents , how it impacted her and those around her , and how she came to find the form of therapy that worked best. We also talked about pain and how physical recovery and healing can be a form of trauma in itself. Before we get started, don't forget that you can now watch every new episode of How Do You Cope on YouTube, just search for How Do You Cope Pod and you can, of course, listen to all episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're watching or listening , please hit subscribe so you don't miss any future releases . For more info or to get in touch, head to howdycopepod. com . But for now, here's Kelsey Wagorn. I do hope you enjoy our conversation . Well, it's a very warm welcome to How Do You Cope to Kelsey Wagorn? Hey Kelsey, thank you so much for joining us from New Zealand . Are you in New Zealand? I am in New Zealand, yeah. Yeah, yeah. What time is it with you? Seven AM. So I've got my coffee with me so if you hear the clinging of ice it's me having a drink of coffee Ice in coffee that's very, very cool and very New Zealand. It's also like nine degrees outside, so I don't know, I prefer ice coffees to hot coffees. So this is a matter of time of year . So we're going to talk about the experiences you describe in your book Surviving White Island . And I think the information the eruption is available to people if they want to look into it. There's a documentary . There's obviously a lot of coverage of it . So I don't want to spend too long actually sort of taking you back to that specific moment, but if you don't mind giving us a description that I'm sure you've given many times before about where you're working and what happened ? Okay , so I work for a company called White Island Tours and through to its name we took tours to White Island, which is a live volcano off the coast of Faktane, which is where I live in New Zealand . And on december ninth, twenty nineteen , we were taking a tour out to the island as per usual . The island was at a higher risk level or alert level, but we'd been out there multiple times at this high alert level and nothing had happened and alert level doesn't always mean it's going to erupt, but it doesn't mean it won't not erupt if it makes sense . And the tour was absolutely totally normal until we were just over halfway and then the island just went into full erupt ion . It was more or less silent, which was really weird . And my group , which was one of three on the island at the time , was probably the better located of the boat groups and we were happening to be down in some stream beds where there was some sort of rock coverage and so we were able to take cover for the duration of the eruption and the pyroclastic surge that came with it . And the other group from my boat was sort of right out in the open walking away from the eruption. So they had a lot less time coverage to get away from the eruption . And then the other group which was a helicopter group on the island , they had a run for the sea and I think only two of them ended up with burns out of five . So there was forty seven of us on the island at the time . Most if I think all of my group made it off initially anyway and we walked back down to the boat wharf or jetty and got back onto one of our other boats because the boat we came out on ended up engulfed in the pyrocstic surge so we couldn't take that one home. We went home with a group that had just come off the island and made it back to Fakatan and went to hospital straight away . I was there for until about ten PM so maybe about three or four hours and then I was airlifted by Air Force helicopter down to Hut Hospital, which is the other end of the North Island where I live , and I was there for I was in hospital for about sixty something days with burns to forty five percent of my body. You'd also had two other incidents when you were working for the Tour Company, which for anyone else would be like the defining emergencies of their life, I think . And I think you come to realize that they'd had an impact on you as well as you're digging into your PTSD later on. Maybe you could just also tell us about those because they're pretty extraordinary too . I know. Like the company ran for thirty years and they really only had three major things go wrong and I was there for all three of them unfortunately. So So my first one or the first one was our boat caught fire about a kilometer from the river entrance on our way back from the tour and we got everyone off we had abandon ship and jump into the water . Everyone got off the boat. I think a couple went to hospital with smoke inhalation and we lost the boat entirely it burned to the waterline and sank and then the next one which was two years later , I was on another island whale island and I had a seventy three year old passenger fall off a twelve meter cliff onto the rocks and I stopped with him for about an hour , maybe closer to two hours and yeah he unfortunately died about thirty six hours later . And you were with him through awful moment that some people may know, which is like after an injury but before help comes, it's an extremely traumatic experience, you know, not knowing what to do , having someone conscious in a great deal of pain . Did you get any kind of help or was there any suggestion of getting some sort of couningse afterll that because that's a bit that was like that's big . Yeah, I 've been seeing a sight since after the boat fire . So I did get help after both of them and then went back to the same site after the eruption as well. So yeah, I've been getting psychological help since the bow fire . Did that psychological help give you any sort of basis I'm thinking about the incident with the tour passenger who died . Did any of the like what you'd learned through that kick in at that point or were you just sort of reacting It was all reaction . I'm lucky to now know about myself that I cope very well under extreme pressure . I don't quite well under mild pressure, but I cope well under extreme pressure . So it was just yeah, it was just action and I mean all I could do at the time for Lynol who fell , all I could do was comfort him and just keep pressing for them to hurry the helicopter up really that was all I could do. Like I was twenty three I think at the time I was young, twenty three, twenty four and yeah, absolutely not equipped to deal with that. And it's not like I could move him . The only comfort I could give him was put my jersey under his head as we waited for the helicopter. So yeah, I mean there wasn't a lot I could do other than just keep sort of talking to him and reassuring him that help was coming even I felt like it wasn't coming . But yeah, I mean I don't really know how you can actually prepare for that situation as sort of someone in their very early twenties who the only sort of first aid sort of given was sort of stuff where help was it like in mainland first aid, I suppose is what we ended up calling it . We sort of called the ambulance and all you had to do was kind of fill in sort of ten, thirty minutes before the help got there and then this was like major, major injuries and help was yeah, an hour and a half, two hours away . And did you find that you had any sort of what you would now recognize as PTSD symptoms from that incident before the eruption? Yeah, looking back, definitely it took me a long time. Even after the boat fire, the way I was a guide was a lot different before the boat fire. I was a lot more safety orientated, I was a lot more rules focused . People weren't allowed off the track or buy watch, stuff like that. So I definitely sort of like ranged in my what I could control, which I didn't know that that's what that was. I just sort of thought okay things do go wrong. Like we need to just reign this in a little bit more because I don't want that to happen again . then And after the fall I never went back to that island. I just couldn't do it. And my work wanted me to because they were like, well, you're the senior guide. Like, you need to be doing both islands and it was like I can't do it. I was like I won't go back there and thankfully I never had to. But yeah yeah I definitely had PTSD after that one I just didn't know that that's what that was . So of the, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but forty seven people on the island, twenty two unfortunately lost their lives and your injuries were so severe that for the first week or so of your treatment you were in a coma and for a long period after that you were on very very sort of strong and disorientating pain medication. Yeah . And I was struck by how because of that , you missed a lot of the ceremonies that we as human beings develop to process grief so memorials and funerals and moments of community . How has that impacted you know, when you when the news was broken to you that you'd lost colleagues people who you were , you know, showing round the island . And have you carried out your own sort of ceremonies since ? I think not having this ceremony sort of like using Hayden as an example who he was one of the guides in the boat who died and they actually never recovered his body . He was a good friend of mine and he worked with him the whole time. I was there. He trained me and everything. So we were good friends and I guess not going to his ceremony , which was like the twentieth of December . So I still had no idea what was going on back home then and it sort of kept this distance between sort of what had happened and what felt like had happened . I don't know, there was like a bit of me when we left the island and I still hadn't seen Hayden the he's sorting his group like he's just getting his shit together before he comes off the island the way that I have. Like I had intended to go back and find him and help him but by the time I got back to the boat I was in so much pain that I couldn't go back and probably if I had gone back I maybe maybe wouldn't have made it so yeah there was this disconnect between leaving the island and not have seen him and sort of thinking , I Well made, it of. course So he's made it. He trained me, of course he's made it . So then getting into hospital and even in Fucker Tani Hospital and my family came in and I was asking about Haydn . They just kept changing the subject because by then they knew that he hadn't made it but they didn't want to have that conversation with me while I was in the state that I was in, which was fair. I was in a lot of medication and a lot of pain . So they wanted me to focus on me not, sort of what else was happen ing because they didn't want it to sort of like exacerbate things, which was fair and I agree with their choice entirely . And then after the com a I was still asking about Hayden and they just changed the subject which was really easy to do because of the medications I was on it was very easy to distract . So when I did finally get told sort of it was right before Christmas it, would have been maybe a few days after Hayden's ceremony . It still just felt like this big disconnect and even now like he went away to summer camps in America and so it was not abnormal for him to sort of not be around or sort of not hear him for a week or so while he was working overseas . So for years, like even a year , it still just felt like he was just at a summer camp and we just hadn't heard from him. So there was this massive disconnect sort of not being able to have that very formal good guy and sort of like the line in the sand of like no this has happened. This is how we're saying goodbye . Since then have I had my own ceremonies ? Yes, sort of probably less formal in the sense like I've been back to the island on bo ats a couple times and we always pour a beer out for Hayden at the island . Yeah , I don't know. Nothing sort of formal, but yeah, just little things like that where it's sort of like a token of like respect or just sort of like thinking of you and like day to day there's things that I'll do that I'm like oh I wish I could tell Hayden about this because he never would have assumed that I would do this so little things like that. So yeah, I guess there is a big sort of disconnect not having been able to go to those In your book, you describe your rehab a lot of transcripts of family WhatsApps and doctors notes because obviously you're not really present to really tell that story early on in your recovery . And it works so well as a device reading it because we're able to understand reading what's going on in perhaps language you might not have used about your own situation and we can all like tune into the way families talk about things or perhaps try to put on a brave face which in a weird way like reveals the severity even more because we know how mums might talk about our difficulties to other family members and something your mum writes is especially moving where she's sort of writing to you in the book and she says your mind is going to be your best weapon . And I wondered if you could maybe speak to your experience of that, I know that's quite a big question but I guess that weapon can work for you and against you . And that really is the experience you document is you can be your own best friend and your own worst enemy because you're going through something so extreme . So maybe you could tell us a bit about what that phrase means to you. Your mind is going to be your best weapon . Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head with that one with it yeah you forged for you and against you. So initially sort of in hospital I guess I had my head on side I suppose for lack of better description , but yeah, because a lot of that early stuff was all focused on physical recovery . So there was a lot of focus on sort of just rehab and rest, which was very easy to sort of focus on because it was all you could do, that was all I could do from bed. It was rest and physio . And then sort of once that intensive period of physical rehab calmed down . That's when my brain sort of started demanding a bit more attention, I suppose , which I thought I was giving it because I was still seeing the psyche . I'd been seeing a psyche in heart hospital as well while men come and see me in my room and we're just head but as I found the hard way sometimes we actually need to change what you're doing based on sort of the outcomes you're getting, not just sort of go I am seeing a therapist. This must work at some point. This is just taking a bit longer than I thought or getting impatient with it sort of thing. So yeah, things got significantly worse for me. I ended up pretty much with every symptom of PTSD other than nightmares, which I'm quite grateful for. I had a few but overall not really that many which is good but yeah just like massive deterioration and yeah I think The way that PTSD is sort of portrayed in movies where it's like there's no good outcome it's always like a really nasty horrible end was sort of how it felt like it was going to end for me as well either by my own hand or yeah I don't know it just it didn't seem like there was a good way out and it didn't seem like there was a way out because I thought I was doing all the right things and I tried EMD R and that had made things worse . I've been seeing a psych since twenty sixteen and that didn't seem to be helping . And so you kind of get stuck in your head and like you have these reactions and then you sort of you sort of cave in a little bit on yourself a bit more and you hate yourself a little bit more, which sort of I guess adds fuel to the fire, which you don't really realize you're doing at the time is when you've kind of got this negative cycle going. It just sort of makes things worse and worse. I was getting worse and worse . And it took a breakup with a friend and my partner at the time to sort of like really jolted me back into sort of getting my brain to go No you've made it through things you weren't supposed to make it through there's got to be something else and so thankfully my, mum found someone that helped sort of get things back under control and I changed my psych to someone with that a lot more trauma experience . Even just going outside and seeing the sun of it more. Like I was so depressed I didn't sort of move off either my bed or the couch just going outside and like just treating myself like a flower and it was like drinking some water get some sunlight like just taking it down to such bare minimum and just sort of really just starting everything again and that yeah was ultimately what sort of made things turn around for me and so yeah that I've never actually really thought about that one little comment in the whole book and the whole thing my mum's ever told me. That one little sentence , it does hold a lot of weight when you put it like that. Just to take you back to the physical healing . And I'm almost like hesitant to call it healing because I didn't understand what recovery from severe burns is like it's not a linear process of I'm burned, I'm healing, I'm healing, I'm healing, I'm healed . It's I mean the skin grafts , the pain , the setbacks, the grafts not taking, the sort of moving the wrong way in the shower and setting yourself back two weeks and two operations and that kind of thing . And at one point you say, I'm sick of healing . Could you talk about recovery fatigue? That's another phrase you use. Because I think people who are going through any kind of medical recovery or treatment , which is not as simple as there's something wrong with you. Here's the pill, or here's the exercise to do and then you'll be better , would get a lot from hearing your take on recovery fatigue. Yeah, I I mean also had no knowledge on Burns recovery which is a good thing and like I had this conversation with my best friend the other day about something totally different but it's like someone not understanding , you can view it as really isolating which is what I used to do or you can view it as they've never had this happen. What a blessing for them . And like it's trying to shift that sort of mindset from no one understands this to thank God no one understands this . So for them, obviously because obviously it still feels a bit shit for you, but trying to like reframe it to like thank God they don't know because otherwise it means that they've been through it and I wouldn't wish Boon's recovery on my worst enemy. Like it's unbelievable. It's horrific . Yeah, with burns like the burns were the easy part which sounds like a really twisted sort of joke but the actual burns were nothing compared to what happened in hospital to sort of like get over it and even the photos of my burns compared to like when I left hospital with healing grass, like they look like they should be the other way around. Like they look horrific . But yeah, like the initial burns like you come in and you've got all this burnt tissue that has to be removed so that the first surgery is called a debridement . And for me I could show but I've got long sleeves on but you have to because I had circumferential burns so burns that went all the way around my limbs. I had to have what are called asperotomy cut in and so I from basically my shoulder right down to where the burn stopped. So on my right arm it was all the way down through my thumb and on my left arm it's right down to my wrist because I had a band age on my hand that day so my left arm not burned as bad as my right basically because as that burnt tissue constricts it restricts blood flow and it can actually kill the limb . so And by the time I actually got to Hut Hospital, so sort of I think it was about one in the morning that I got there and the eruption happened . So let's say this has been about twelve hours before I got to surgery . Slowly over those twelve hours my all that burnt tissue is constricting and actually restricting all that blood flow. So in my medical notes from Heart Hospital, my first notes are my extremities are cold and clammy. So it's like they're running out of blood or they've run out of a blood supply. So they have to kind of cut these giant big scars in to release that pressure and then they have to take all the burnt tissue off and obviously they have to put something there . And so I had burns to forty five percent of my body. So I had fifty five inch of unburnt skin, which they had the potential to be used as donor skin and so they basically harvest that skin and stick it over where you don't have any skin anymore , which in itself is horrific even just describing it sound.s It like some sort of medieval thing that they don't do anymore because it's just I also want to know who was the Sicko that figured that out that you could just sit like coffee and paste skin . But it's like you 're doub ling your wounds in a sense because every area that's getting treated you are creating a painful wound somewhere else. Yeah . So I went into hospital with like my arms burnt, my legs burnt, my lower back burnt. I left hospital with my arms legs and lower back sort of covered in skin. But my entire back thighs everything , always sort of raw wound as well. So it's like yeah almost double your wounds but yeah so they have to and because they didn't want to in females they don't like to use your front if they can avoid it because if you get pregnant or have a baby obvious ly stretched scar tissue is going to look pretty it's going to get pretty nasty so they try not to use your front so immediately they didn't want to use the front of me . Apparently the best skin to use is from your scalp because you have so many like blood vessels in your head . So they like to use a scan from your scalp if they need to , which they don't like to in women again because they have to shave the head if so luckily they were able to avoid those two spots that they like to avoid . But it meant that after that everywhere hurt. Because they have to move you on bed and so that you don't get pressure sores on your back when you're laying in bed for sort of I don't think I've moved for about a month . So they're moving every day and it's like they can't grab my arms, they can't touch my back, they can't grab me by my legs, they can't touch my hip because it's a burn there. So it's like at the end of the day, it was like, We just have to grab a fast and it's gonna hurt. And so it was just the most excruciating pain. Like I will never ever be able to do it just how much pain that was compared to the burns . Like to this day I think that was probably more traumatized than the actual eruption itself and because they had to do my graftings in two sets. It meant that I had my first lot of major grafting while I was in ICU in the coma but the second lot I had up on the ward so I was lucid and sort of was on a lot less pain medication by then and so I knew what was going on, I knew what was coming and so that was really awful to know that that was coming and sort of have a vague recollection of how uncomfortable and how much pain I was in ICU . So yeah it's kind of like you take two steps forward and you take quantum leak back it feels like and that's just in hospital and then you get out and you got to restretch all this new skin because I had it over pretty much all my major joints so you have to restretch all that skin which is about as pleasant as it sounds . Yeah it is the it is awful and I hope no one ever has to go through it . So in that time are you aware that you're forming sort of coping mechanisms for pain , physical pain ? Are you having is there some kind of relationship with your pain forming in order to cope with that . Do you are people giving you, I don't know, do you have like a pain coach? Do you is there any visualization you're doing to just get through that? Because it's like pain is really bad and then bad and then really, really bad and then bad. So you know it's coming . So how were you sort of stealing yourself for that and were there any sort of techniques you had ? I mean , it got to the point where I just started to expect pain . So I guess my relationship with pain became I come to expect it and everything so that they come to check my catheter and I'd expect to be an excruciating pain. They'd check my feeding tube up my nose and it would pull on the stitch of my septum and I'd end up in pain and they'd take a lure out and I would have an absolute fit because I was expecting excruciating pain, so I just came to expect pain . And so one thing that I really struggled with when I left hospital was desperately avoiding anything that made me remotely uncomfortable and the fear of being in more pain because I was just sick of it. I was sick of being in pain. I was sick of being loaded up on medication to try and get through it . I was sick of telling people telling me to breathe slow to breathe through it and it's like, you're not here , you're not in this position. Don't tell me to break through it's quite funny even now like you hear the comments that people saying you're just like oh I know you're trying to help , but you're making things infinitely worse . But yeah, I just I came to expect pain and everything and so I that was one of the reasons I sort of shut down so much and I became quite a firm it was because I was so desperate to avoid anything uncomfortable and painful because I was just so sick of it . In terms of coping mechanisms with pain, avoidance was probably my biggest one Yeah , other than that, it was just it was part and parcel, unfortunately. There was a lot of it. I couldn't avoid like as much as I begged the nurses not to turn me in bed. They were like, Well, if we don't, then you're going to end up with pressure sores which are going to be way worse than this on top of what you're already going through. So it was like it's this brief moment of pure pain to avoid prolonged pain down the line . So it was kind of, I guess, trying to put it in a realistic mind frame and just but then I also didn't really have a choice because they were like, We're doing this with all without your consent because they were like it's for your better like it's for your ment . My family would just be like, well hold her down. And so it was just it happened whether I wanted it to or not. So yeah, I guess you just sort of had to try and reframe it in your brain and I guess it comes back to that your mind will be your biggest your best weapon is that trying to reframe it is like it sucks now but it could be way worse if I let it get worse if I don't do this now it's going to be worse . And yes, yeah, it's just that realistic sort of mindset of it's unavoidable and you just have to do it . And sort of constant ly reminding yourself that this pain will bring about the end of pain somehow. Yeah. Well, it doesn't feel like it at the time. No, I was gonna say it must not feel like that at all. Yeah. You're in week three and they're like, it'll get better. And you're like, wang . Yeah. And yeah, and it sucks and then because it's like you just start getting better and then you've got to have your second lot of grafting. And you're like, cool, so I'm starting from scratch again . And so that was where it was pretty heartbreaking . And then I mean, like you said before, like I had there was a wavering period where they didn't think my second lot of grafting had taken which meant that there was going to be a third on my horizon . So all the pain that I was going through in that moment it was like I have to do this again in a couple weeks I have to do this again and it was just the most heartbreaking thing for me and my family who are having to watch me just absolutely writhe in pain anytime someone touched me so it's yeah it's pretty brutal there is a bit , I remember a reading where you go for a shower and you just move awkwardly and you look down and there's like blood and as a reader you're going no way I pass the shower . Yeah Yeah, I'm real exident probably on a problem You know, we talked at the start about the three incidents , the fire on the boat, the death of the person you was in your tour group, the eruption itself . And I guess your healing has become a trauma irony . Were you aware that must, like you said you were avoiding any situation which might cause you pain , so that there are, I guess, symptoms of PTSD that are coming from to the outside world is oh she's in hospital, she's getting better, she's getting the treatment she needed. That's when we as kind of like maybe if we've read about it on the news or we're relaxed then because okay she's, in the right place. She's getting better not knowing that it's actually like you said, as more traumatic than being burned. I actually got a lot of messages from burn survivors in those first few months just saying like awesome to see you out of hospital and doing well just be aware this is going to happen . And so I kind of had a head up from a lot of people that the mental side of it would hit at some point, but I didn't quite realize it was going to be quite the freight train it was and so all consuming and because I was seeing a therapist. I've been seeing a therapist for so many years. I was like, no, I'm working on it. It's going to be fine. Like it's all good and I very naively sort of thought that I would breeze through it and it was all going to be okay, but yeah, it was not . Well, you do say in the book that you would rather be burned again than have PTSD . Yeah . And I think that state ment is only truly comprehensible to people who've experienced it . And you really do as good a job as I think is possible to do of communic ating that experience to someone who hasn't been through PTSD . Do you remember looking back now the sort of first symptoms or the first and it may well have been when you were still in hospital that you recognize from the work you've done was PTSD . I don't think I ever realized that that's what it was because I'd never sort of been diagnosed with PTSD the eruption . But yeah, I think looking back now , I think hypervigilance was probably my first symptom. I was just always ready to run, always watching doors, always sort of watching anyone that was kind of like coming towards me or walking behind me. Like even though I never even got attacked by a human, like I was just always looking for threats. Like it didn't matter what that threat could be. It was like I always had a way out planned. I was always near where the exits were that was probably my biggest one. And so obviously being that alert twenty four seven is exhausting. And so then you're tired all the time so you sleep a lot more so you go out a lot less and that just sort of spiraled from there and then yeah my nervous system was just so ready to fight or run that it just basically little thing it just hit the panic button and it just all kicked off . So yeah, I would say that the hypervigilance was probably my first inkling that things were not right, but I didn't know that's what it was until sort of much later . And I think probably we have an idea those who haven't been through it of some common tropes of what we might have seen of PTSD in films . So like waking up in the middle of the night in sweats during a nightmare or really like a carback fires and you sort of jump and I'm sure those things are big features of some people's PTSD . What you describe so well are the things that perhaps wouldn't make sense to a film director who was trying to show these symptoms like sudden anger , uncontrollable crying over very small things Could you talk about some of those symptoms that have made , you know, that led you to say, you know, I would rather get burned again than go through this because it sounds awful . Yeah , it was pretty much it was like the ext remes of emotions so I'd be just like violently happy and then it would swing back the other way just like something very minor could happen. Like I remember quite early on, I remember dropping a teaspoon on my way to the couch and I just burst into tears and it's just like these really like unrealistic sort of reactions to and it's just like this huge yeah overreaction to pretty much everything . So like your sadness is just like absolute deep grief , your anger is full on rage . I didn't realize but I dissociated a lot which I just thought I was just exhausted or tired or having these sort of like depressed days it was like , No that was full on dissociation where it was like I couldn't feel anything or yeah I just couldn't feel anything and it was just I didn't realize that that's what that was so I didn't really know what was going on sort of at a core level other than it was part of PTSD . And so even though I had a diagnosis in the sense that I knew that that's what that was , I didn't understand it , which made it really hard as well because it wasn't until I sort of had what my nervous system was doing properly, fully broken down and described for me that it was like, oh, okay, well that actually makes sense. I don't like it, but it makes sense and it's sort of taking that confusion and unknown out of it sort of helps kind of lessen the hurt of it and you have a little bit more empathy for yourself and you sort of know what's going on at a sort of my friend and I call it lizard level. So like your very primitive brain which is just trying very desperately to keep you alive . That lizard part of you is just very much trying to just keep you alive. And it's like my brain learnt that after the boat fire , after the fall, after the eruption, after a hospital, it was like you gotta fight like hell every time something goes wrong because that gets you through. And so my brain rewired itself. And so it was like anytime anything went mildly off course in my brain , it just went into full scale flight mode . And then I would take a long time to sort of like calm down and then I would sort of really drop out of fight and to dissociate and then very slowly sort of come back and then try to sort of like describe it as someone who also doesn't understand what's going on with you . There's just so much confusion and unknowing which is really hard as well because it's like I didn't know really what was going on . People around me didn't really know what was going on and there was just like this huge massive confusion which adds to the stress of everything and then it got to the point where it was like I don't know what's going on they don't know what's going on and it's upsetting them so I'll stop telling them what little I know and I'll try and hide it and protect them from it because I hate this, they hate this and at least I can try and sort of nullify it for them but I mean it just sort of internally combusted and it came out anyway, but yeah it's yeah what little I've ever seen of it in movies sort of with war veterans I suppose is is yeah, you can see why it's never portrayed as you don't really ever see anyone getting out of it and I can see why and after having been through it, it's like yeah I can see why people lact theirate own lives when they're PTSD when you're trying all these different things. Like I tried hypnotherapy God I tried everything and things just seem to sort of open Pandora's box and make things worse not get better . But yeah, it was just sort of a core understanding and even just it sounds a woo but meditation and yoga and grounding and gratitude really helped for me and really just sort of like really calm things back down and sort of rewide that nervous system to get my ship back to you there, really ? Well, I want to sort of finish by talking about those techniques you learned, but one question I had before then is you're very honest about the impact of your behaviour on those around you and your relationships . And I guess that must have been such an odd dynamic for a group of people, whether it's your partner your family or your friends who have who are probably thinking, am I allowed to be annoyed with Kelsey ? Because like she's the victim and she's been through so much, but she's also being a pain in the ass . And are you allowed to be annoyed with the people who've been sat by your bed for two months and have taken time off work or whatever , there must be such a strange like people being pissed off with each other who probably feel they're not allowed to be pissed off with each other. Yeah, I think you kind of just have to take it as it comes and yeah, I think you just you have to realise that it's all very extreme circumstances until you are going to have these moments where you just want to punch someone in the face even, though they're doing their very best to help you, like you're gonna want to just throw something at someone on both ends. Like both the person in the bed and the person standing next to the bed, you're going to want to just slap them . And I think that's a valid feeling, but you shouldn't act on it . But yeah, I don't know. I think it's having, I guess that empathy and that respect for the person that's sitting across from you and you know you're doing everything you can . I think space like we mentioned that rehab fatigue like it's hard work like on both ends everyone who's involved in like major burns rehab , like everyone's tired , everyone's sick of it. Everyone is running out and so you do snap at each other because you're like living in each other's pockets because they're trying to help you because you need the help. You don't want the help, but you need the help and you kind of go in this vicious cycle of like, I just want my independence back, but I'm not there yet and you sort of just have to accept where you are and they sort of need to try and give you as much independence as reasonably possible, I suppose . But like my partner at the time ended up being my full time carer as well as a full time dairy farmer. And so obviously that was a lot for him to carry. And I mean, it's in the book. Like it obviously didn't end well. But yeah, I think you need to take breaks. Everyone needs to take breaks took breaks in the wrong kind of way . I gave up. That was my break . But yeah, like when it's constant rehab and psychological , it's like a full time job is just hard work and you do get tired and you do just have to take break s from people, from the actual rehab and like live, still, go and live life, still in amongst all of this shit that's going on, find those moments of joy, make those moments of joy, go and have a picnic, go and have a drink at a bar. Like whatever that is, like actually just properly decompress on both ends of whichever end of the bed you're on. So yeah, I think you're going to get snappy with each other and I think as long as you recognise that it's the situation not the person that you're frustrated with I mean, I might be the person but, yeah , don't check it out on that . So could you tell us about Sam , your therapist and as a reader you're so rooting for you that when you like meet Sam and find a therapy that actually helps you , it's like a real punch the air moment. But some of the things that Sam teaches you are sort of slightly counterintuitive and some are quite simple. But could you maybe talk us through their approach and some of the things that started to give you some relief So Sam hers is what is her title? It's something like a trauma informed formed like well being coach or live I can't remember what her title is some sort of mouthful but she we met in this violently orange room which we still joke about to this day . It was like the most ghastly orange. It was not relaxing at all, which I think help lighten the mood . And she just our first few sessions were her just fundamentally describing what PTD is and how it was manifesting in my body and what that numb feeling was. Like that was the first time I think I'd heard dissociation and her telling me like, well, yeah, of course you flip out at everything. Like look what you've been through it. Your brain's expecting the worst every single time because the worst kept happening . He was like, of course this kept happening. And even just like her telling me that it was a normal reaction for the first time in I think it was about three years that what was going on was actually textbook PTSD. It was actually very normal. Was a relief in itself and that just took a lot of the pressure off because it was like, okay, I'm not some freak of nature with some abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation. It was like, no, it's a pretty normal situation, like a pretty normal reaction to a very extreme trio of situation . So being told that you were very like run of the mill bog standard PTSD sufferer , when I guess the whole narrative have been, you've gone through stuff no one's ever experienced. This is so unusual. You've come through so much for actually for someone to go, Oh yeah, I've seen loads of people like you. Yeah . Was actually really reassuring . Yeah, I know. Like yeah there's nothing quite like feeling like a freak and being told that you're normal and then what you're going through is actually incredibly understandable given what you've been through and when everyone else had kind of been tiptoeing around you and acting like was wrong with you to then be told girl, like this is this is very normal. Like you are not special. Like this is fine. And it's like, are you sure? And it's like yum. And it's like, why are you the first person to tell me that ? And so she's like, I don't know somebody else should have told you this by now. So that in itself was quite nice to just be like, I'm not a freak, which is quite freeing So in the book you actually have this really helpful table where you separate your traits , so I guess your symptoms , the cause and the explanation . Yeah. And I wondered maybe could I share a few of them just because it's so useful. It's funny though because that was never actually supposed to make the book. That was literally wasn't it? That was in my diary . That was literally that's fantastic. I know I've heard a lot of comments about that, but I literally I l'istden to a podcast and I can't for the life of me remember which one it was. I think it was a JSHEDY one but they'd kind of broken it down like that and so I'd done sort of a couple months of work with Sam at this point and so I kind of had a bit more of an inkling as to what each bit of my brain was doing . And so I kind of wrote down all the shitty bits that had happened, which was the trait and then it was like all the explanation it was like, so I mean my major one was loss of control. My trait was I don't know, outbursts of anger for I think that's in there because I don't have I don't have my book here . And then the trait was like well the cause of it I suppose was where you look at the fire, you look at the fall from Mobshore or Whale Island and you look look at the eruption and you at what I was in hospital, I had zero control in any of those circumstances. And so the explanation was like my brain is so desperate to try and control what is around me to try and stop that sort of ship from happening . That the outburst of anger would meet my brain freaking out . So it was like and even just like laying it out like that and it was just sort of like ah well that makes sense and so then when it would actually happen or I feel it coming, it was like, oh yeah, I can see why this is like my brain's correlated this and I was like, No, I'm not doing that. And it was yeah, very free . So were you able when those traits came up or when those sudden emotions happened through understanding what was behind them and also not talking to yourself in a critical way of being like , Oh this is, because of that and it's absolutely normal . That you were able to sort of was it that you lessened the anger, for example, or did it just feel less overwhelming . I think because I'd done quite a bit of work to sort of calm my nervous system down by that point . So it was less frequent and less intense by that point but you kind of got really good at like a self dissection and so things that come up or things would happen and it might be like a postmortem where it's already happened . didn You't have a choice in it happened because it just was a knee jerk reaction to something . But afterwards you're like okay and you can sort of lay in that sort of like moment afterwards where you can sort of like reg ard yourself and you go, okay, why did that happen What happened? Why did that happen? Where did that come from? And you get really good at sort of like that sort of self dissection and you get better at sort of like being into the future I guess in circumstances, which I don't know, maybe that's a hyper vigilant thing where you can go, okay, I can see how my brain might react to this and you can sort of like talk yourself through it and you can kind of like keep it at bay being like, this is not life and death. This is literally just being late to an appointment, like it is fine and sort of just like talk yourself through it and be like, We're not going to die because we're five minutes late to something. Like it is all good. Like we're going to breathe through this. And then so I got taught a few meditations and breathing techniques, which I did a lot. I was doing them pretty much hourly and then managed to sort of like weeding myself off the missling calm down but still have that toolbox of stuff that I can tap into whenever I need to or whenever I feel like which is really cool. But yeah, the traits are really good . Would you be willing to share an example of a breathing exercise because something you said there is like the world's not going to end because you're late to an appointment or you're not going to die because you're late to an appointment, but your body is saying you are going to die . Yeah . And your brain if your brain is going shut up, body, I'm not, you can that can also almost be another like stress of why won't my body do the thing I want it to do, whereas breathing is like it's treating the body and not the brain , is that right? Yeah, and I think it's sort of re syncing brain with your body because your nervous system sort of acts on lizard brain ways compared to lizard brain. That primitive part of you that's just trying to stay alive and so it's resinking like the rational and emotional part of your brain or it's sort of like yeah, so I guess when you're having that sort of like brain body battle where it's like you're trying to like talk yourself out of it I think bringing yourself it's like grounding and so the breathing technique like one that I really like , which I butchered a meditation to make it work for me . But it was I think it's called a Gata and it was my favorite ones so this day it's my favourite meditation. Can't remember the original version, but I remember my vision and basically would just talk myself through it and it would just be breathe in and I'd just breathe in and start like as low as I could and just like bring it all the way up to my chest, hold it for a couple seconds and then breathe out and I just keep doing that and I do it while I'm driving. I do it when I'm like about to go and talk on stage. I do it when I'm going to work, I do it while I'm at work it's one of those ones where you don't have to be like wait wait wait I need to go and meditate. It's just like you can just do it on the go and I just find that that one I find really really, good. And I can do the real one with the actual meditation where I can sit down and do the whole full meditation, but that one I find that I can kind of you've got a sort of like words to focus on, you've got the breath to focus on. You can sort of pull everything back in and sort of just sort of re ground, recenter and then kind of go okay start again and then you can kind of go forward a little with bit more intention and a bit more purpose and a little less raisal . So when you say you start at the bottom, is that imagining or feeling the sensation of breath like filling you up from the bottom of your lungs. Yeah , and then expanding and expanding to the top. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, like breathe into your hips, like breathe down as low as you can first and then fill your belly, fill your sternum , fill your chest and then it's like hold it for a couple seconds and then drop it from your chest, drop it from your sternum, drop it from your belly, empty everything out, hold it for a couple seconds. It's kind of like box breathing, I guess, but I don't put numbers to it . It's like sometimes I always found those early days because I was breathing so high in my chest 'cause everything was such a panic . And like this first few meditations where it was like breathing for four and it was like I ke,pt one and a half seconds in and that was all my body could take. And so you felt like you were failing. So I kind of I don't tend to put numbers to it. I can now because I'm a bit less of a frantic mess, while a lot less of a frantic mess but those early days when things were really kind of quite shaky yeah I couldn't really do those real counted ones because I always felt like I was failing them because I couldn't get that breath in . So I just yeah, I like to just visualize it in my body and you can feel it which sort of I guess helps with that dissociation as well because if you can feel where it is in your body then you can kind of like bring yourself back into your body as well rather than sort of be out of it . Isn't it crazy how like you were talking about how frustrating it is when you're in pain and someone is saying like breathe through it. I'm like yeah but also it's just wild that like the cure in adverted commers for so much of your distress and trauma is something you've been doing automatically since the day you were born. I know. It's like amazing. And so frustrating. Like it's what the answer the answer's always been there guys breathe . Breathe data. You're doing it wrong . Yeah . Well, I guess yeah, 'cause your breathing can also get you into trouble if it can bring on panic and stress and anger and all those things if it's, like you're saying very tight and very high and very quick Yeah . I'm aware we've taken up a lot of your time. I just wanted to end on this quote from the book You can't be afraid if you're curious . I think that is like an amazing thing to I don't know whether Sam told you that or that's something you learned because it suggests I guess almost like a Buddhist view of if you're curious by nature you are observing yourself . Yeah . So you're not necessarily quite identifying with everything you're going through. Is that what that quote means to you? And could you tell us about how that came about? Yeah, and I guess following on from there, like you're not your emotions . You're not real reactions, like you do it and you do actually have contro l over them. Like I'm still it'll always be a work in progress for me because I'm very quick . My brain is very quick to react , which in fairness has saved my arms a few times now but can also get me into the shit a few times because I am very quick to react so But yeah I guess with that one yeah , I listened to a lot of J etti and there's another podcast he listened to as well but I can't remember what it was in those real days. That name sorry that could you spell that out for us? Jay Sheetty , his one's called On Purpose, I think . Okay . Yeah. And he just interviews quite a lot of people about sort of mindset and things like that, which I very much appreciated in those very early days I listened to that on long drives and everything but yeah I guess it's the being curious like that's where the table came from it was me doing a self dissection and it was like why is this happening? Where is this coming from? What has caused this? And you sort of like digging through to the root cause of it and you kind of go, Oh, that makes sense. And so when you kind of and then when it makes sense and you kind of can understand it sort of to a far more core level , it becomes less scary. So like the whole PTSD thing, once I sort of actually had a handle on what was happening and why it was happening, it was actually less scary . And then sort of once you start understanding it you, can kind of start to go okay, well if that's what's causing that , how can I address that so that that doesn't happen? So yeah, that getting curious it kind of helps you dig through it a bit better with a little less emotion, I suppose and a little less attachment which can help make it like you said a bit more observational and a lot less personal which can help sort of yeah make it a lot less intense, a lot less overwhelming and frightening. So yeah it definitely has served me quite well and I think Sandra did tell me that or some version of that anyway, but it always felt very helpful and it still does feel very helpful that you can apply it to anything . Like recently I resigned from my job and it was emot ions that were coming out that I hadn't felt for a very long time that I got curious as to why they were coming up again and I realized that I needed to actually wipe the slate clean, which I'm quite good at doing now and so I've pretty much just ditched everything. I've quit everything, like the book is finished. I finished my job on Sunday I just need a break. And I realized I'm just a bit burnt out and that's why these things are coming up again and so that being curious and dissecting sort of what's going on with my emotions and with my brain has helped me kind of go, okay, that's where I am. I can make that choice now out of an informed place rather than a reaction, a reactive emotional place and that is why I've made these choices and they sit well with me and you can apply it to anything . Wow, that's amazing. Thank you so much Kelsey for sharing your time with us and your experience. And if anyone is interested in what Kelsey has been talking about, I would thoroughly recommend her book Surviving White Island. I lear an greated de al about PTSD and lots of other things and about skin grafts and and love and also you know, perseverance as well. It's brilliant. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thank you. There you are. That was my conversation with Kelsey Wagorn, an extraordinary woman, and another plug for her book Surviving White Island, which gives such a great insight into PTSD