I didn't become a therapist because I wanted a career

I'm Anne.

For years, I lived with Complex PTSD.

On the outside, I looked like I was coping.

On the inside, I was falling apart.

I grew up surrounded by alcoholism.

Then I became a binge drinker myself.

I'd drink until I was on the floor.

Not because I loved alcohol.

Because, for a few hours, it shut my brain up.

My anger became so explosive that I frightened myself.

You see.... Trauma doesn't stay neatly contained.

It spills into everything:

• Your relationships.
• Your health.
• Your decisions.
• Your children.

Looking back, I now know I could only parent from my own level of wounding.

Then life hit me again.

My sister lost her battle with her own mind.

I was going through a divorce.

At the same time, I was single-handedly raising seven children aged between one and sixteen.

Then severe Rheumatoid Arthritis struck.

It hit so hard I could barely move.

Some days I couldn't even get myself to the toilet.

I had no help.

I had no support.

I desperately needed someone to show me a way through.

Instead...

I found myself sitting in counseling room after counseling room...

Talking...

Talking about the trauma.

Talking about the memories.

Talking about how I felt.

Every session seemed to drag me further into the pain instead of out of it.

I'd leave feeling more broken than when I walked in.

I remember thinking...

"If this is help... I'm screwed."

The harder I searched for answers...

The further I spiralled.

Until eventually...

I reached a point where I genuinely believed everyone would be better off without me.

In 2007, I attempted to end my own life.

When I survived...

People probably expected me to feel grateful.

I wasn't.

I was furious.

Furious that I was still here.

Furious that nobody seemed to know how to stop the mental torture.

I didn't want another conversation or another person asking me how I felt then leaving me dangling. 

I wanted the thoughts to stop.

I wanted the uncontrolled anger to stop.

I wanted the pain TO STOP.

Then, a couple of weeks later having been told yet again... 

"Sorry Anne there is nothing we can do to help you"

Something changed.

I started laughing hysterically. 

Then a  switch suddenly flipped in my head and I knew nobody was actually going to help me and I had a decision to make. 

I'm either going to sink... or I'm going to swim.

If I carried on doing what everyone else was telling me to do...

I already knew exactly where I was heading.

I refused to become the next statistic.

That moment changed the direction of my life.

The laughter was hysterical, but the moment itself wasn't. 

I stopped searching for ways to cope.

I started searching for ways to recover.

If I had to travel the world...

I'd travel.

If I had to spend every penny I had...

I'd spend it.

I was going to find a better way.... a way that worked. 

I travelled and trained extensively in some of the newest, most cutting-edge methods I could find.

Then I paid the very people who trained me...

...to work on me.

I refused to ask anyone else to trust a process I hadn't trusted with my own life first.

I needed to know whether it was genuinely possible to neutralise trauma...

Instead of endlessly talking about it.

It was.... I recovered.

Years later, tragedy struck again.

My beautiful daughter Shelley died from pancreatic cancer at just twenty-four years old.

Then my niece lost her battle with her own mind.

Those losses broke my heart.

But they never broke my belief that people deserve more than simply learning to live with suffering.

People often ask me whether, knowing everything I know, if I still needed the help after my daughters death.

Absolutely.... yes. 

I went straight back to my own trusted practitioners.

I had my own grief treated, along with any attached trauma. 

To this day, I walk my own talk.

I always will.

I refused to accept that "learning to live with it" was the best anyone could hope for.

Because I've lived the alternative.

I've lived the despair.

The hopelessness.

The fear of becoming the next statistic.

I've also lived the freedom that came after it.
 

That's why I created the X-Terminate® Method.
 

That's why I work with people who have been told they are too traumatised to be helped and they'll probably have to manage their symptoms for the rest of their lives.

I don't just understand trauma professionally.
 

I understand trauma from the inside out.