The Courageous Journey

"Why don't they just leave?"

It is one of the most common questions asked about people experiencing domestic violence—and I believe it may be one of the wrong questions.

Last week on The Courageous Journey, we talked about how behavior is information and looked beyond labels like difficult, manipulative, attention-seeking, angry, noncompliant, lazy, and self-sabotaging. In this episode, I take that same curiosity into a behavior society often judges incredibly harshly: staying in—or returning to—an abusive relationship.

But this conversation isn't only about domestic violence.

After more than 25 years as a paramedic, I've responded to plenty of 911 calls where I knew clinically that someone probably didn't need an ambulance. Years ago, I sometimes wondered why they called. Why didn't they call their doctor? Why didn't someone drive them? Why didn't they go to urgent care?

Healing changed the question I ask.

Maybe they're scared. Maybe they're alone. Maybe they don't have transportation. Maybe they couldn't get an appointment. Maybe they don't understand what's happening in their body. Or maybe I simply don't have enough information to understand the decision they made before I arrived.

Clinical assessment and judgment of another human being are not the same thing.

That realization changed the way I care for patients—and it changed the way I understand my own story.

In this episode, I share pieces of my childhood and what it meant to grow up with an ACE score of nine. I talk about the little girl who once flinched when her dad coughed or sneezed, and what I now understand about the day that flinching eventually stopped.

The absence of the flinch didn't necessarily mean the presence of safety. The chaos didn't become safe. It became familiar.

I talk about becoming wired for protection instead of connection, learning to read rooms and moods while never really learning how to deeply connect with safe people. And when people later asked why I didn't simply leave abusive relationships, there was another question nobody seemed to ask:

Leave and go where?

We also talk about the practical realities that can make leaving extraordinarily complicated: housing, finances, financial abuse, children, transportation, pets, employment, isolation, threats, attachment, family dynamics, and safety concerns surrounding separation.

And I talk honestly about something else: I wasn't always healthy either.

I was angry. I was reactive. I hurt people. I made unhealthy decisions. Those behaviors became mine to understand, own, and change. But my unhealthy behavior did not make someone else's decision to abuse me my fault.

My behavior was mine to own. Their violence was theirs to own.

Accountability and compassion can exist together.

Ultimately, this episode isn't about providing one simple explanation for why someone stays. It's about recognizing how dangerous it can be to assume we understand someone's choices when we're only seeing a fraction of their life.

We may have enough information to see the behavior without having enough information to explain it.

Maybe that should make us curious before it makes us critical.

So instead of asking:

"Why don't they just leave?"

Maybe we need to start asking:

"What is making leaving difficult, and what could help make safety possible?"

One question asks us to judge a decision from the outside.

The other asks us to understand the human being living through it.

Healing begins with understanding.

00:00 — Why Don't They Just Leave? Why I believe we may be starting with the wrong question.

00:38 — Behavior Is Information Taking last week's conversation about labels and applying it to staying in or returning to abusive relationships.

01:59 — What EMS Taught Me About Judgment Why I no longer ask, "Why would someone call 911 for this?"

05:03 — From Judgment to Curiosity The question that changed how I see patients and other people's behavior: "What am I missing?"

06:44 — My Childhood Didn't Introduce Me to Safety Growing up with an ACE score of nine, chaos at home, and the experiences that shaped what felt normal.

08:33 — The Little Girl Who Stopped Flinching What I now understand about my body's response to my dad—and why familiar doesn't mean safe.

09:48 — Wired for Protection Instead of Connection Learning to read rooms, moods, and people while struggling to build deep, safe relationships.

11:39 — Leave and Go Where? Why walking out the door isn't the whole story when there is nowhere safe to land.

13:21 — How Abuse Can Become Part of "Normal" Generational patterns, early experiences, and the messages we absorb about relationships.

14:53 — When Family Sides With the Person Who Hurt You What happened when my father supported men who faced domestic violence charges after hurting me.

16:04 — Everyone Could See My Behavior The bruises and injuries were there—but my anger and reactions were easier for people to judge.

16:47 — I Was a Victim—and I Was Unhealthy Why accountability for my behavior and responsibility for someone else's violence are two different things.

17:53 — Familiar Harm and Unfamiliar Safety What I mean—and don't mean—when I talk about familiarity, predictability, and the nervous system.

19:36 — Leaving Is About More Than Trauma Housing, money, children, transportation, pets, employment, threats, isolation, love, attachment, and safety.

22:27 — We Don't Know the Whole Story Why seeing someone's behavior doesn't mean we have enough information to explain it.

23:05 — I Used to Judge Younger Me Moving from "What was wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?"

24:31 — Understanding What Shame Never Could Why telling the whole story matters—and why survival behaviors can be complicated.

26:43 — What Professionals Need to Consider What happens when the people working with survivors still ask, "Why don't they leave?"

27:09 — Maybe We Need a Different Question "What is making leaving difficult, and what could help make safety possible?"

27:38 — Healing Begins With Understanding

What if the labels we give people describe the behavior we see—but completely miss what is happening underneath it?

I've been called lazy, angry, manipulative, attention-seeking, self-sabotaging, noncompliant, and difficult. And here's the uncomfortable truth: at different points in my life, some of my behaviors gave people very good reasons to use those words.

I hurt people. I pushed healthy people away. I created chaos. I lied to avoid confrontation. I looked for validation in unhealthy ways. I missed appointments, questioned providers, struggled to follow through, and sometimes fought against the very people trying to help me.

But the labels didn't tell the whole story.

In this episode of The Courageous Journey, I'm going deeper than I usually do into the woman I used to be and what I understand about her now. We talk about childhood trauma, intimate partner violence, brain injury, chronic exhaustion, hypervigilance, people-pleasing, relationship patterns, healthcare experiences, and what can happen when survival responses become so familiar that we no longer recognize them as survival responses.

This isn't about using trauma as an excuse.

It's about understanding something I wish I had understood years ago:

Understanding why we behave a certain way doesn't remove accountability. Sometimes understanding is what finally makes accountability possible.

I can have compassion for the woman I was and still hold her accountable for the people she hurt.

Whether you're a survivor, healthcare professional, first responder, advocate, educator, or simply someone trying to understand your own patterns, I hope this conversation encourages you to look beyond the label and ask a different question:

What is this behavior telling us?

Because the label may describe what you're seeing.

It doesn't necessarily explain what's happening inside the person.

Healing begins with understanding.

00:00 — Behavior Is Information: Why Labels Aren't the Whole Story Why I'm sharing some of the hardest parts of my past and the seven labels we're exploring.

03:12 — Understanding Is Not an Excuse Why understanding behavior and accountability can—and should—exist together.

06:06 — "Lazy": What Nobody Could See Sleeping through EMS shifts, overwhelming fatigue, trauma, brain injury, and what looked like laziness from the outside.

10:41 — What "Lazy" Looks Like in My Life Today Learning to recognize overload instead of judging myself for needing rest.

13:45 — "Angry": What Was My Nervous System Protecting? Childhood violence, hypervigilance, the 2006 assault, and why fighting became such a powerful response.

18:32 — "Self-Sabotaging": When Safe Felt Unfamiliar Pushing good people away, creating chaos, leaving relationships and places, and learning that familiar doesn't necessarily mean safe.

21:58 — "Manipulative": Survival Strategies That Followed Me Into Adulthood People-pleasing, lying to avoid confrontation, testing relationships, and learning to read other people's emotions for safety.

25:41 — "Attention-Seeking": What Was I Really Seeking? Old Facebook posts, validation, reassurance, appearance, relationships, and the deeper need beneath the attention.

30:33 — "Noncompliant": What Was Getting in the Way? More than 50 providers, missed appointments, forgotten bills, cognitive struggles, medical mistrust, and the danger of stopping at the label.

34:36 — "Difficult": Questioning People, Systems—and Myself Why healing hasn't made me blindly trusting and how I've learned to distinguish discernment from old survival responses.

36:51 — When Survival Becomes Your Normal How childhood adaptations can become so familiar that we stop recognizing them as behaviors at all.

40:48 — What Courage Means to Me Now Owning not only what happened to me, but also what I did because of what happened to me.

42:33 — What Is the Behavior Telling Us? Moving beyond labels and becoming curious about what's happening inside the person.

43:47 — A Different Question Not only "What's wrong with you?" or "What happened to you?" but "What is happening inside you because of what happened to you?"

What if the behavior we see on the outside is only part of the story?

Last week on The Courageous Journey, I talked about changing the question from "What's wrong with me?" to "What happened to me?" and eventually, "What happened inside of me because of what happened to me?"

This week, we start answering that question.

Trauma isn't only something that happened in the past. Our experiences can influence how our brains and bodies respond in the present—including our nervous system, perception of safety, attention, memory, emotional responses, decision-making, sensory processing, and behavior.

In this episode, I break down what can happen when the brain perceives danger and why the danger can be over while the brain and body are still responding to what they learned during it.

I also share my own experience of beginning to understand reactions I once judged in myself, including the "Bob Evans story" I often use in my professional trainings. It's an example of what can happen when the past and present collide—and why understanding what is happening underneath a behavior can completely change the questions we ask.

We also talk about an important distinction: understanding does not remove accountability.

The goal isn't to assume trauma explains every behavior or to diagnose someone based on what we see. It's to recognize that behavior is visible, while the mechanisms producing it often are not.

Sometimes the most important thing we can do is replace certainty with curiosity.

• How trauma can affect the brain, body, and nervous system • Why the brain prioritizes survival when it perceives danger • Fight, flight, freeze, and survival responses • How past experiences can collide with the present • What we really mean when we talk about "triggers" • My Bob Evans story and what it taught me about trauma • How perceived danger can affect memory, processing, communication, and decision-making • Why someone may appear difficult when they are actually having difficulty • How understanding my own brain changed the way I approach healing and rehabilitation • Why curiosity is not diagnosis • Why understanding and accountability can exist together • Questions professionals, families, and all of us can ask before judging behavior

00:00 — What happened inside of me? Introducing this week's question and why understanding what happens beneath behavior matters.

03:18 — What do we actually mean by trauma? Moving beyond words like "triggered," "dysregulated," and "trauma-informed" to understand what may actually be happening in the brain and body.

04:05 — Your brain is constantly processing safety How the brain takes in information and why survival can take priority over reasoning, planning, memory, and social expectations.

05:30 — Fight, flight, freeze & survival responses Understanding these responses as protective mechanisms rather than simply personality traits or conscious choices.

08:14 — When the danger is over but the response remains Why the end of an event doesn't necessarily mean every system in the brain and body immediately returns to baseline.

09:46 — My Bob Evans story: when past and present collide How the smell of bacon, childhood trauma, exhaustion, and a difficult EMS call came together in a reaction I didn't understand at the time.

11:52 — What is a trigger, really? How smells, sounds, voices, facial expressions, environments, medical procedures, and other sensory information can become connected to previous experiences.

13:44 — What perceived threat can change Attention, concentration, memory, processing, emotional regulation, decision-making, communication, and the ability to organize thoughts.

14:44 — Looking at behavior in real life Using real-world examples to understand what difficulty organizing thoughts and processing information can look like from the outside.

16:08 — What EMS taught me about the brain under stress How even trained professionals experience changes in attention and priorities during critical situations.

17:43 — What might actually be underneath the behavior? Anger, distraction, forgetfulness, shutdown, agitation, inconsistency, avoidance, and overwhelm may not tell us the whole story.

19:00 — Replace certainty with curiosity Why "being difficult" and "having difficulty" can look remarkably similar from the outside.

20:08 — Behavior is visible. The mechanisms often aren't. Understanding why curiosity doesn't require us to diagnose someone—it simply asks us to acknowledge what we may not know.

20:50 — Looking back at the version of me I didn't understand Reflecting on the years when my symptoms, reactions, and limitations were judged by me and by people around me.

22:09 — What changed when I started understanding my brain Learning about trauma, brain injury, strangulation, sensory processing, memory, and neurorehabilitation helped seemingly random experiences begin to make sense.

24:03 — Learning to recognize my own patterns Moving from "Why am I like this?" to asking what information my brain is receiving, what is overwhelming it, what it needs, and what I can change.

25:19 — Understanding does NOT remove accountability Why understanding a nervous-system response isn't an excuse for behavior—and can actually give us more opportunity to respond differently.

26:53 — Turning the question outward What healthcare, EMS, law enforcement, courts, advocacy, schools, families, and relationships can learn from looking beyond behavior.

28:48 — Your challenge for this week Don't diagnose yourself or someone else. Start noticing. What are you assuming the behavior means, and what information might you be missing?

Behavior is something we can see. The mechanisms producing it often aren't.

Curiosity doesn't require us to know exactly what is happening inside another person. It simply requires us to recognize that we may not know.

Understanding isn't where responsibility ends.

Sometimes, understanding is where responsibility finally becomes possible.

And sometimes the behavior is the part we can see.

The story underneath it is the part we still need to understand.

Healing begins with understanding.

— Paula Walters The Courageous Journey

For years, I asked questions that already assumed something was wrong with me.

Why was this so hard? Why couldn't I remember? Why did my brain and body respond the way they did? Why couldn't I just make myself do things that seemed so simple for everyone else?

Over time, I began learning to ask different questions. Instead of only asking, "What's wrong with me?" I began asking, "What happened to me?" Eventually, that became an even deeper question: "What happened inside me because of what happened to me?" And now I'm learning to ask one more: "What do I want to do with that understanding?"

In this episode of The Courageous Journey, I talk about what changed when I stopped beginning with judgment and started approaching my own struggles with curiosity. I share how years of unexplained physical, neurological, memory, and emotional symptoms led me to create explanations about myself that were often far less compassionate than the truth.

We also explore why this matters far beyond my own story. A patient may not simply be "difficult"—they may be having difficulty. A survivor's decision may be influenced by circumstances we cannot see from the outside. A witness struggling with chronology may need another question before we make assumptions about credibility. And someone struggling to follow instructions may be experiencing cognitive overload.

But this conversation is not about explaining every behavior through trauma. Curiosity isn't diagnosis. Trauma, brain injury, fear, cognitive load, medical issues, exhaustion, environmental barriers, or financial barriers may matter—or none of them may explain the behavior at all. Sometimes boundaries and accountability are still necessary.

For me, understanding has become less about finding an excuse and more about finding somewhere to begin. My past can explain pieces of who I became without determining who I have to remain.

This episode also marks the beginning of the next season of The Courageous Journey, as I share where we're headed through the rest of 2026 and invite you to come along as I write, build professional education, speak, learn, continue my own rehabilitation, and keep asking better questions.

00:00 — Welcome: Reframing the Question Why I stopped asking "What's wrong with me?" and began asking different questions.

02:05 — The Questions We Ask Matter How the way we frame a question can determine where we go looking for the answer.

04:19 — When No One Could Explain What Was Happening Years of physical, neurological, memory, and emotional symptoms—and what happened when I began creating my own explanations.

06:49 — Turning Symptoms Into Character Flaws Why unexplained struggles can become labels like weak, anxious, difficult, lazy, or broken.

08:15 — Reframing "What's Wrong With Me?" Moving from judgment toward curiosity and asking, "What happened to me?"

10:28 — What Happened Inside Me? Why knowing what happened wasn't enough—and how questions about the brain, nervous system, memory, processing, brain injury, and strangulation began connecting the pieces.

13:09 — Being Difficult vs. Having Difficulty How I began reframing my own frustration with memory, processing, overwhelm, technology, and learning new things.

17:13 — Curiosity Isn't Diagnosis Why becoming trauma-informed should not mean automatically explaining every behavior with trauma.

19:11 — Understanding Has to Lead Somewhere Responsibility, growth, brain rehabilitation, writing, speaking, learning, and challenging myself in new ways.

22:37 — Where The Courageous Journey Is Going Next The thread connecting the work and the themes we'll explore through September, October, November, and December.

24:48 — The Different Perspectives I'll Bring Paramedic. Professional. Survivor. Educator. Student of my own brain. And sometimes simply a person living the journey.

25:40 — Finding My Lane Why I spent years trying to figure out where I belonged—and what changed when I finally recognized how the pieces fit together.

28:05 — What Question Are You Asking? An invitation to identify a question you keep asking and consider whether a better question might lead somewhere different.

What is one area of your life—or one person you work with—where you may have been asking the same question over and over?

What might change if you asked:

What might be happening underneath this? What don't I understand yet? What might be making this difficult? What information am I missing? Now that I understand more, what do I want to do with that understanding?

Sometimes changing the question changes everything.

Healing begins with understanding.

#TheCourageousJourney #TraumaInformed #BrainInjuryAwareness #HumanBehavior #HealingJourney #TraumaRecovery #BrainHealth #NervousSystem #DomesticViolenceAwareness #BrainAware #SurvivorVoices #PaulaWalters

I Don't Want to Be an Influencer. I Want to Leave Breadcrumbs.

For a long time, I thought I needed to figure out my "lane."

Was I supposed to talk about childhood trauma? Domestic violence? Brain injury? Strangulation? The nervous system? Healing?

The problem was that none of those things felt separate to me.

Then I realized something even bigger:

I don't want to be an influencer.

When I first became more intentional about social media, I found myself thinking about followers, reach, monetization and how people build careers online. Somewhere along the way, I started believing that maybe I could build something big enough to eventually leave EMS.

But when I really looked underneath that goal, I realized I wasn't necessarily building a new career.

I was building an escape route from something I actually love.

That realization forced me to rethink what success looks like for me — and why I share any of this in the first place.

In this episode of The Courageous Journey, I talk about my relationship with EMS, the boundaries I have learned I need, and why serving my local community still matters deeply to me.

I also share the story of one of the most important "breadcrumbs" in my own healing journey.

Years ago, while searching desperately for answers about what was happening to my brain, I found another woman's brain-injury story online.

Her injury wasn't like mine.

Her story wasn't my story.

But something she shared gave me another question to ask.

That question opened another door.

And eventually, those breadcrumbs helped lead me toward functional neurology — a pivotal part of my own healing journey.

She didn't know me. She simply shared what she had learned. And somewhere out there was a woman searching for answers who needed to hear it.

I was that woman.

That's when something clicked for me:

I don't need a million followers. I need the right information to reach the right person at the right time.

Maybe a survivor recognizes something in themselves.

Maybe a family member understands a behavior differently.

Maybe a paramedic asks one additional question.

Maybe an advocate recognizes a possible brain injury.

Maybe an attorney begins thinking differently about memory.

Maybe a healthcare professional looks beyond the symptom in front of them.

That's what I want The Courageous Journey to become.

Not a place where I pretend to have all the answers.

A place where we keep asking better questions.

A place where survivors can find language for things they haven't understood.

A place where families can begin connecting pieces.

And a place where professionals might encounter one idea that changes how they see the person sitting in front of them.

I don't want to be an influencer.

I want to leave breadcrumbs.

Because somebody else's breadcrumbs once changed the trajectory of my life.

Maybe that's enough of a reason to keep leaving them.

Healing begins with understanding.

Maybe I Was Never Broken: What Healing Is Teaching Me About Shame, Survival & Who I Really Am

What if some of the things you've spent years believing were wrong with you weren't evidence that you were broken at all?

What if they were adaptations?

In this episode of The Courageous Journey, I reflect on something that happened while speaking at the National Domestic Violence Hotline Conference in Texas. I walked into a room I had been invited into—and still found myself wondering whether I belonged.

I noticed everyone else's degrees, credentials, titles and accomplishments. I questioned whether I was educated enough, professional enough, or even looked the part.

And then a question hit me:

Why am I standing in a room I've already been invited into trying to prove that I deserve to be there?

That realization opened a much bigger conversation about shame, trauma, survival, and the stories we learn to believe about ourselves.

In this episode, I explore the difference between believing "something is wrong with me" and beginning to ask "what happened to me?"

We talk about how trauma can influence the brain and nervous system, why survival responses can sometimes look like personality flaws, why chaos can feel more comfortable than peace, and why understanding our past doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior.

Because two things can be true:

Trauma can help explain our behavior—and we are still responsible for what we do with that understanding.

Maybe healing isn't about fixing a broken version of ourselves.

Maybe it's about finally understanding the person who survived, having compassion for who they were, and teaching our brains and bodies that we are allowed to respond differently now.

00:00 — Maybe I Was Never Broken? Why speaking at a national conference brought old feelings of inadequacy to the surface.

01:32 — The Lifelong Need to Prove Myself Working harder, doing more, being needed—and the question underneath it all: Am I enough yet?

03:07 — Guilt vs. Shame The important difference between "I did something I regret" and "there is something wrong with me."

04:10 — Changing the Question Moving from "What's wrong with me?" to "What happened to me, and what did I learn because of it?"

05:32 — What If My "Flaws" Were Adaptations? People-pleasing, hypervigilance, difficulty trusting, rejection, overworking and the stories underneath our behavior.

07:18 — What Trauma Can Change How trauma can affect threat detection, attention, memory, emotional regulation, relationships and our ability to return to baseline.

08:17 — When the Past and Present Collide Why a tone, facial expression, silence, smell, sound or situation can trigger a response before we consciously understand why.

09:28 — Why Chaos Can Feel Like Home Why familiar doesn't always mean healthy—and why peace can initially feel uncomfortable after living in survival mode.

12:09 — I Don't Want to Hate Her Anymore Looking at previous versions of ourselves with understanding instead of shame.

14:28 — Two Things Can Be True Why understanding trauma does not eliminate accountability.

16:15 — Recognizing What I Brought Into the Room Moving from comparing what I didn't have to recognizing the experience, knowledge and story I already carried.

17:25 — Five Questions to Ask Yourself A practical way to interrupt "What's wrong with me?" and replace shame with curiosity.

19:04 — Looking Back With Compassion, Forward With Responsibility Maybe you're not broken. Maybe there's simply more to your story than you've understood yet.

The next time you catch yourself thinking "What's wrong with me?", try asking:

What happened to me?

Where did I learn this response?

What am I trying to protect myself from?

Did this response help me once?

Is it helping me now?

What would I like to learn instead?

We don't have to hate ourselves into becoming healthier.

We can look backward with compassion and forward with responsibility.

Healing begins with understanding.

If this episode resonates with you, share it with someone who may need the reminder that understanding why we became who we became doesn't mean we have to stay there.

We are allowed to learn something different.

— Paula Walters The Courageous Journey

Paula Hello Everyone and welcome to The Courageous Journey. I have an exciting episode with for you today. I am actually going to be talking with doctor Mike Hennes from The Neural Connection. He is the doctor that if you've been seeing any of my social media, or you've listened to me talk about in any of my speaking engagements, I often refer to him as doctor Mike.

And the person that I have worked with, I had get a lot of questions about my care with him, so I brought him on, especially since I'll be speaking at the National conference on the hotline Conference against Domestic Violence here in a couple days. So I want to say this. I gave him a bunch of questions, and I know that we have a limited time, so I'm going to kind of just frame it as this in what a lot of my, my talks are about.

So as a survivor of childhood trauma, a score of nine domestic violence, I had a near-fatal strangulation and had multiple, you know, diagnoses when I first went to functional medicine in 2019. So I'm going to doctor Mike was the third doctor that I saw, and I have seen him three times. I know that one of the things, Mike, that people ask is like, what exactly is functional medicine?

And one of the things that I think that I have a really hard time explaining to people is that like that I can that you can heal and kind of like what you guys actually do. Like, how did I go out? How do I come out there so symptomatic? And then I come back in just a few days with you guys so much better.

And I think the other thing that I have a really hard time conveying to my audience is that can emotional trauma cause physical symptoms. So and I guess I'll say one more thing. I used to think that I was a unicorn, you know, with this DV hit to the head chronic illness thing. And I am not there are so many people that are getting lost in the medical system.

Can you also kind of help address that? Sure.

Dr. Hennes So let's take a one at a time. What is functional medicine? Functional medicine is more or less a different way of thinking about health care. So instead of trying to tailor treatment based on an individual test and something you find on that test, it's about looking at the whole picture and really tailoring care toward one person. And we're optimizing for function rather than looking for the deficit.

So blood tests are a classic example of this. I'm not looking to see if you're sick. I'm looking to see how far away from perfect something is working and function. And then my specialty is a subset of functional medicine we're in specifically. So I'm very concerned about brain health brain function. And how do we make the individual parts of the brain work better.

And how do we make all of the parts of the brain communicate with each other and your body as a whole, so that you can tell what's going on around you? And then there are a bunch of questions in there. The one I remember was emotional trauma. Interestingly, the brain, there's part of the brain, the that works specifically on emotion.

But what's really interesting about the brain is that you can. If you think something your brain doesn't really know, the difference between what's in front of you or just your thought process. So stresses the classic example if you're anxious, if you're stressed, if you're thinking about that all the time, your brain is going to be stressed out. You're going to have physiologic changes, things that you can measure and see those things.

If you wear any kind of fitness tracker, you'll see these things. When you're stressed, your sleep is going to be, or your heart rate variability is going to be not doing as well as it should. Your heart rate is probably gonna be higher. All of those sorts of things. So emotional trauma, damage, stress, whatever realm that you currently fit into is certainly going to impact physiology.

And that's not necessarily going to show up on an MRI, right? If you have a long term and your blood pressure is high and you're having a lot of construction of blood vessels, you might end up with some microvascular disease. It would have to take a very long time. But, you know, long term down the line, you might start to find some of these things.

You had a couple more questions in there, but we had a bunch at a time.

Paula So for women listening to this and yes, men have the same things, but this is predominantly a woman thing. So there's women out there who have been victims of domestic violence. They've been hit to the head. They've had, you know, strangulation in those types of things. And they're being told, oh, you're hormonal. You know, your your seat looks fine, your blood works fine.

Oh, you probably got anxiety, depression. And, you know, they just they have chronic illness. They just can barely get out of bed. And I try to explain them like neuro fatigue. But why is, you know, I think that I, my title is often invisible injuries because that's what it was for me. They people couldn't see it. And so what does that look like for the women that are listening to this that like maybe they're there, they've heard me talk somewhere and they're like, could this be me?

And how can all those things, those hits to the head and maybe those, you know, things where they've had something placed around their neck lead them to start having being misdiagnosed, I guess I would say. And where can they go to, like, how do you get those answers?

Dr. Hennes Sure. Let's talk on a lot of levels, because in healthcare in general, your goal is to measure something. And a lot of the injuries we're talking about, there's just not unless there's bruising or there's outward sign, you're exactly right. It's invisible. And even if you run something like a CT or an MRI, you're not necessarily going to find anything.

One of the things we worry about in the concussion space, the brain injury space is the sub concussive impact. So you got hit in the head. Maybe it wasn't a catastrophic injury, you weren't conscious, etc., etc. but it happens frequently. Or you become hypoxic. You're strangled frequently, but not enough to cause outward sign. Now we're starting to worry about prolonged function being declined in the brain as far as what you do about it, or why it gets dismissed.

Women's physiology is generally just more complicated. Your hormones are more complex than men's, and there's a lot more that goes into keeping that normal. So it's very easy to dismiss things as hormone. And I think that's part of it. The other part is.

There's a there's a, an aspect of we just we don't know how to deal with it as a society.

The other thing is that as a provider, talking about things like domestic violence or abuse, or if we lump this into the realm of mental health on both sides, is we just we don't know how to talk about this yet, because to the average person, I've been guilty of this in my own very personal relationships is I don't you just leave and it's never that simple.

And if you're not in it, you will never understand it. I don't pretend to understand it. And that, I think, makes it hard. So as far as getting resources, if someone's not in a position to leave or they're not ready or they don't think they mean to, it can be very difficult. Especially if you have someone looking over your shoulder or going through your phone or and things like that.

Right? I can't consult with someone that can't talk to me open and freely without fear of retribution. So I think that's also a piece of it is as providers, we're not equipped to have that conversation or just as people we don't have the emotional intelligence to. And then likewise on the flip side, not being ready to seek that help or admit there as a problem or assuming things will change or.

Misguided notions of of what's fair and what's not. And I think that's that's probably the bigger piece of it, is realizing when things can change, realizing things when they won't change, and being okay, getting help.

Ever want to get into the point of sounding like I'm victim blaming? And that's not it at all. But it's it's it's tough to force help upon someone.

Paula So going along with that is so you and your colleague Doctor Reese have both like, explained this and you've done so well. But me explain it to people about like the three friends, the three parts of the brain. I've learned by working with both of you that when one of those parts is not working well, I don't have a cognitive function.

Like that's when I start not trusting myself as a paramedic, and I try to explain to providers that are taking care of, you know, the police advocates, those type of people who are talking with these survivors that they're kind of like just trying to stay upright when one of those pieces are off and they don't know that those pieces are off because they haven't been evaluated like you were.

And I think that that is probably you guys explaining that to me. It's probably been the pillar in the foundation of my healing. Can you kind of some that up here for maybe the people that are working with victims or the survivors themselves that are kind of listening to this and how important that really is?

Dr. Hennes Sure. So brain is essentially built on layers. Everything has to communicate back and forth so that different parts of the brain can make good decisions. If we make this on a most basic level, the brain's job is to tell you where you are, where your body is in space, how you interact with the world. And if you can't do that, you can't make good decisions.

This is obvious if someone has something like a head tilt or a lean, or they walk with a limp and they don't know how to control that body part appropriately, and you end up with bad biomechanics, right? So you don't know where you are. You have a forward lean, you're trying to lift a heavy gurney or something like that.

You've got bad mechanics and you hurt your back. That makes perfect sense to most people. What becomes more abstract is when your vestibular system is off, or something along those lines, and there's no outward sign of it on a on a.

Simple first glance. So the three friends we really talk about are the eyes, the singular system which is your inner ear, which is your ability to tell when you're moving, when your eyes are closed, and then your muscles and joints and all of those things need to give. You give your brain similar information about what's happening. So we explain it as three friends that went to a party.

If three of your friends went to the same party, they should tell you the same story. And if one of your friends tells you a different story than the other two, you're going to start to wonder if they were really there. So who's at the party? What kind of music was playing? The kind of food is that? How late did everybody stay?

Was it a good party, was it not? And the brain works the same way. If my eyes tell my brain one story and the muscles of my neck tell my brain a different story.

Who's telling me what really happened? And the longer your brain has to decide which information is the good set of information, that takes a lot of energy, and it takes a lot of thought away from higher functions. So instead of thinking about the complex problem in front of you, your brain is now spending time trying to keep you upright and interacting with the world.

And that just becomes exhausting, especially in a high stress career where you're driving a two ton vehicle at 70 miles an hour down the road with life threatening emergency in the back. Been there, done that. And if you're not concentrating on what you're doing, that becomes dangerous. So what our job is, is to make the things that you shouldn't be thinking about become automatic again, so that you can actually work on higher brain functions.

Paula Yeah, I can't believe. So I came out to I thought I was doing so well, and I came back out to you guys in May, the end of April, beginning of May of this year, in 2026. And I didn't realize how much that input was. We found out it was more the muscular. When you start talking about that and what a difference that has made.

And I literally, you know, do that stuff every day. And I can tell and I don't know if maybe you can can explain this to people, or maybe I'm just imagining it. But when those muscles get tight, I almost start feeling like anxiety, I, I quit, not that I'm questioning myself, but like I'm not as strong on my feet.

I can really feel it in the back of the ambulance and so like it. And you. I just was so tired. And that's just something that was so simple that you made can like, can you kind of talk just a little more of that? And I think that the other part is people do not understand the difference between tired, oh, I worked a lot of hours in neuro fatigue like I wanted.

There were days like when I have neuro fatigue, man, I'm in bed for days and there's not enough sleep. So I think that those three friends really not telling that story. I think that that's probably why I got the the major depression diagnosis. Yeah.

Dr. Hennes There's two parts to that. So the most of us have had the experience of knowing we should work out. We don't do it. And so finally we we work up the motivation to go do it. And we go to the gym and we try to work out like we did when we were teenagers or in her early 20s, and you just push too hard.

And that workout felt amazing. But before you even get sore, getting solar takes about two days, but the next day you're just tired. You're fatigued, you sleep for three hours. The reason that happens is neurologic fatigue. Your brain is not used to coordinating that much movement in a day. And so now if you amplify that because you did that voluntarily, you amplify that by that is your daily life because you're not able to process that information.

Now you are starting your day with half a battery, right? I don't know about you. My cell phone battery doesn't make about the day. If I only had half a battery, I'd be done by about noon, right? And that's essentially what you're dealing with as far as we know. You also talked about muscles. We talk about muscles and joints.

And really we always think about muscles and joints is things that generate and absorb force. But really the sensory aspect of them tells us where we are in gravity. Gravity is constantly pulling down on us, and our muscles send signal up to our brain to tell us where the where those forces are being applied. And if you look at the way a spine is actually made, is there's hundreds of little tiny joints and hundreds of little tiny muscles in the spine.

And if you look at each one of those as a sensory organs sending information onto the brain, it's really a mess of just a neurological motor for your brain telling you where it is. So if you are at a point where your neck is moving, it's stiff. You're constantly got your shoulders glued to your ears, and you're just not getting those degrees of motion.

You're no longer getting that information to your brain. So effectively your brain is now being under stimulated. Even though your muscles are tight, you don't know where you are anymore because you're just not getting that information. So sometimes something as simple as getting adjusted or getting a massage, or doing some sort of on yourself, or doing some stretching, getting out and moving away from your computer.

Or I know you like to garden a lot and there's a lot of movement involved in that, so having a hobby that gets you moving will actually help you.

Keep that information heading up to the brain like you should, so that you're never deficient in it. Right? So many of us live behind a computer, live behind a computer during the day, and then you go home and sit and watch TV and scroll on your phone all night. So you're getting all of the stimulation that's visual. There's really nothing muscular to go with it, because the work on a computer, I can type all day long without ever moving my shoulders.

I can type all day long without ever getting out of my chair and movement. Nothing in the brain happens until something moves. That's a remember where I picked that up, but it really makes a lot of sense in every aspect of neurology.

Paula So for survivors that could be watching this, who maybe aren't able, you know, to afford to come see a functional neurologist or aren't even able to get out of their place right now. What what things are important for them to do and till they can kind of get out there. So I know, like for me, sleep is is my like that's my Kryptonite.

Stress management, like nutrition, like alcohol is one of my Kryptonite. Those things like what could they do at home?

To kind of just help get them, you know, get them going on the right direction. Until they can kind of, you know, get to better answers.

Dr. Hennes Yeah. So I have a cute little picture that it's a pyramid. And like the it's kind of like the hierarchy of needs in neurology. And the base of that pyramid is everything metabolic. Right. So think of this like putting gas into your car. If you don't have any gas or you put bad gas in your car, that road trip is going to be very, very short, right?

And so that's where we find biggest bang for the buck. And then once we move up we can get into autonomic systems. We can reflexes visual systems, stabler systems, cognitive systems and all those things are rehab based. And they're very cool and we're very good at them. And that's what we do when you come on to the office.

But if that metabolic foundational layer isn't there, that rehab is going to be really hard. The other thing to say about that is you're never going to biohacking, rehab your way out of poor lifestyle. So being able to recognize things you're doing that are bad for yourself and making small changes so that they stick is how we're going to make traction.

So first things first. The easiest thing to implement is the lowest cost. The highest return is by far sleep. Right. And we've talked about this at length. If you are in a profession where a regular sleep cycle is not possible for you, right, you're an EMS, there's on call, there's overnights, there's high stress situations at three in the morning from a dead sleep.

Like that's real life that is not conducive to good brain health. That's a that's a conversation that gets had. But if you're able to control your sleep and get to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every day, 90% of the time, 80% of the time, more strict when you're starting.

And then you can get some flexibility as your brain becomes plastic or flexible. Then you can you can maintain better after that. Then we start looking at a couple of things. Are you well hydrated? Do you have a decent diet? Do you have vitamins and minerals that are efficient? Right. This isn't complex stuff. Do we give you a multivitamin?

Do we make sure you're staying hydrated with things that aren't caffeinated, that aren't sugar, that aren't full of colors, that aren't just sticky for you? And you can accomplish a lot with basic nutrition and sleep beyond that. Then you can start looking into things like mindful practice, right? And learning how to meditate. I forget the exact numbers on this, but over a very short period of time, 8 to 12 weeks, I believe it was.

You can actually see on MRI thickening of gray matter in the brain. If you know anything about MRI, seeing a change on an MRI in that short time frame is really difficult to do. And so having a meditation or mindful type practice that you're good at and religious with can be very, very good for reconnecting different parts of the brain.

You mix that with sleep and decent nutrition. You're well on your way to being able to start some of this recovery on your own. And then all of the technical stuff that involves rehab and knowing which pathways to activate and which ones don't. That's where we come in. But again, none of that is going to matter if that foundational stuff is really interrupted.

Paula Right? Sounds like you're kind of telling me that I should probably work on that getting out of me a little sooner than later. Oh, no.

Dr. Hennes It's your passion. It's.

Paula I know. Okay. So for anybody that is working with survivors or victims that may be listening to this, what is something what is some advice that you as what you do would give to them? I know that I always tell them there's nothing that you could have done to make me change my mind, but like as far as maybe helping them understand that they probably could potentially have a brain injury, they, you know, it may actually be neuro fatigue.

They may be using everything that they have just to stand up straight. Like, what would you say to those people?

Dr. Hennes The biggest thing is you're never I am never going to change your mind. I can ask leading questions, I can.

I can kind of lead you to drawing your own conclusion, but I can't I can't change your mind for you. Now, if someone is up front about the trauma they've had, whether it be recent or in the past, then and, and we're open to talking about it without causing too much emotional turmoil. I'm not I'm not a mental health provider.

I'm not qualified to do that. So this is something that we have to tread relatively carefully. But if we're willing to take an injury apart and look at it, physiology physiologically. So for example, you had a near-death strangulation injury. We know you were hypoxic for a certain amount of time. We know you had massive stress responses in that moment and leading up to that moment.

So there are things that I can draw conclusions about about that injury. And knowing it was a near-death hypoxic strangulation, we know that there was brain damage that occurred in that moment. And so for me to draw the conclusion that there was brain injury involved is pretty straightforward. It becomes a lot more complicated if I've got a pretty good inkling that there's trauma, but we're not ready to talk about that yet.

We're not ready to admit to that yet. We're not ready to be that vulnerable with another provider, a male provider at that. And so for me, at that point, my job is to try and navigate and.

Maybe I bring it up as sleep apnea, where you just stop breathing for a few minutes at a time. Or we talk about high stress scenarios at work. And I kind of allude to things that are more everyday life for the average person and let you draw your own conclusions from that standpoint. And it's really tough. It's really hard because I, I'm never going to get someone to admit something they don't want to, and I'm never going to change someone else's mind.

So really, just drawing a parallel without ever knowing for sure what we're after is something that's really tough. I have a lot of patients that I've been doing this long enough that I can tell that there's some trauma somewhere in the past. I don't know what level, who the perpetrator was, et cetera, etc. but knowing it's there and just realizing that either somebody's guarding something.

And that there's other factors going into this injury that you can't necessarily put your finger on, but that doesn't mean that they're making it up either. That's probably the biggest takeaway for other providers is just because you can't see it and it's under the surface, it doesn't mean that you can ignore it, right?

There's kind of a paradigm. If you don't tell me about it, I can't fix it. But at the same time, if you're actively not telling me about it, it's my job to pay attention to it. Right? It's it's it's not so difficult to tell when someone's holding something back either.

Paula Yeah. So to the survivors that may be watching. So I try to direct them because you guys have some amazing. Between the three of you doctors inside the office, you guys have an amazing amount of information out on like TikTok, Facebook, that type of stuff. So a where all can they kind of go find you? And can you tell me a little bit more about how somebody, if they want to talk to you and follow up with you, like where they can get a hold of you at the clinic and if they would reach out to you, like, what is that first initial step look like?

Dr. Hennes Yeah. So the clinic is the connection and you can find us on, I think every platform except for maybe Twitter X at the normal connection for everything, and everything's got links to come into a console page and everything like that. And then we all have our own Instagrams and Facebook's. I think everybody's got a website, mine's doctor. Com you can email me.

Hello, doctor. Otherwise, as far as what it looks like, we will talk to anyone and either help point you in the right direction or figure out how to get you in the office. Or is there something that we can do remotely that's going to push you along the way? And we meet people where they're at. We have people come from all over.

We have people come for any length of time. And really my job is to figure out, what do you need? Am I the right provider to give it to you? And are we in a place to be able to work together and actually accomplish something? Right? If we're not in a place yet, then maybe I have some free resources for you that you can work on on your own, right?

We already talked about fully. We already talked about the basics of diet. We talked about some stress reduction techniques that can really go a long way. We have a huge blog library with all sorts of information, and same with social media. There's all sorts of stuff that we have out there that if someone is motivated and has to know how to do it all, you can actually accomplish quite a bit on your own.

Otherwise, consultations are well as long as they need to be, but generally 15 to 30 minutes. We talk about you. We talk about what's going on. How did we get here? For as much information as you give me. And then we come up with a plan that might be to come to the office. That might be to come go to someone that's closer to you.

That might be to go get some lab tests done, or go get that MRI or get the heck out of Dodge if you're not safe. Right. And we just kind of take that conversation based on how that consultation goes and what we need to do.

Paula So for my for my one last question that I want to ask is, so in my a lot of my presentations, I have two videos of you and I working together. And, you know, for the people listening, just a reminder that Doctor Henderson was the third one to see me. But it was my first time seeing you, and you put me on this little foam mat, and you turned my head and I could barely, like, I started swaying.

I look like a drunk person. Then in the video right next to it. I'm actually standing on a ball or whatever you call it, and you have a weight on my head with a light and I'm, you know, kind of doing some eye exercises and you're actually pulling me with a band. I mean, I went from before I saw the first doctor not being able to drive, not being able to function as a paramedic to you, doing all of that stuff to me.

Paula And I'm living the best life. I don't think that I'm the unicorn. Like, I feel like the brain can heal, correct for anybody. I mean, like, it's been a hard work and stuff like that, but like, truly, if somebody is listening to this and, you know, whether they're stroke survivor, I mean, really anything like you guys kind of see about everybody and the brain can't heal, right?

Dr. Hennes The brain can heal. And the, the biggest, biggest misconception is that you're born or you develop all the neurons that you're going to have in your brain at a young age. And that is true. You do grow new neurons in the brain, but it's so slow that it more or less doesn't matter. What can change is those neurons can grow connections between one another, and that happens relatively quickly.

Right? You can do it very fast. We do it in the office and it takes repetition. It takes targeted therapy, and it takes those foundational things to be in place before we start. Right. If you're under slept, dehydrated and haven't had anything to eat for three days, and you come in and try and do rehab, it's going to be a bad day for everybody.

But if all of those things are in place, in case you haven't had your multiple cups of coffee, there's going to be a fear of day. But if all those things are in place, then it's about figuring out which parts of the brain aren't communicating and forcing that communication in a controlled manner so that we don't overdo it.

And we don't always tend, but at the same time pushing hard enough that it's stressing the system out.

Paula So I just want to say first of all, thank you. Like you have. You guys have changed changed my life. And I absolutely love the things that you do. I know that this that this episode was kind of more survivor centered, but I am absolutely fascinated with functional neurology, the brain. And so for those people that are listening, if there's my doctor, harness doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to try to be bringing him back.

So if you have something that you have questions about or something that you would like to ask him, you know, put a comment in wherever you're seeing this. And I would love to invite him back and have some more conversations with him. I know that I sent you a bunch of questions. Is there anything that you feel that would be great or needed for the audience to hear?

And I guess if not, what's the one thing that you think is the most important for people to know about brain health?

Dr. Hennes Sure. The biggest thing I think people need to know is if you're being told that this is just the way it is now, or your test is negative, or you're just gonna have to wait it out, or you're getting answers that just don't seem to make sense. You know something is wrong, but you're getting dismissed. What that really means is that you've exhausted the doctor you're seeing.

You've exhausted the skills they have in that area. That doesn't mean they know how to refer. They probably don't. Otherwise they would have done it by now. And I don't pretend to know everything. I refer out all the time for things that I don't understand, and that's a hard thing to do. And so if you're not getting the answers you want, or you feel like your doctor's gaslighting you into thinking that everything is mental health related, then it's time to find another provider.

It's okay to use up a doctor's skill and go looking for another one. The problem is there is a very wide world of, we call it alternative health care out there, and it's very tough to navigate if you don't know what you're doing or how to get into it. And most allopathic providers don't, and that is the problem.

The other thing is, if you're doing the wrong therapy at the wrong time, that's when you're not going to see results. So it's not that you weren't doing the right thing, you just did it at the wrong time and maybe at the wrong intensity. So biggest takeaway is don't give up. Don't be afraid to go looking for other providers.

Dr. Hennes Ask questions. Advocate for yourself and don't take no for an answer.

Paula Yeah, definitely. I you know, I still to this day, even though I saw, you know, Doctor Cassie in 2019, I still to this day after working with five functional neurologist have some of those diagnoses on my charts about mental health. And I cannot get them. I cannot get I cannot get Ms. still off my, you know, in until sometimes, you know, you just got to go elsewhere and advocate for yourself like, I'm a fighter and I'm going to, you know, keep fighting for myself.

Paula Thank you so much for joining me on this on this podcast. Thank you for everything that you've done for me. You have truly changed my life. I get to fly out to Texas tomorrow, and I get to stand on stage and tell people, survivors that like, hey, it is possible after everybody tells, you know, you talked about gaslighting.

And I think that of all the types of, you know, things that I've been through in my life that is probably one of the hardest to navigate is the medical system making me feel like I was crazy because I think in that craziness is where I really started struggling with addiction and mental health. Not so much in, you know, just because they made me believe that I was wrong about my own body when I was trying to tell him, I don't, you know, I don't have those things.

Paula And so thank you for, you know, telling people to advocate for themselves because I think that that's important time because I think some of us as survivors, we are taught that we are less than and that we don't have a voice, so we don't fight for ourselves. And who am I to say something against the doctor, you know, like doctors are supposed to know?

And sometimes I think that we need to remember that not you guys can't know everything. So thank you very much for everything you do. And again, doctor, hence it is at the neural connection. You can look him up. Amazing information on all their socials. Thank you so much for having us. And again you guys reach out if you have anything that you would like to hear more about.

And thank you for being and joining me on this courageous journey. Thanks.

Hello everyone, and welcome to The Courageous Journey. My name is Paula and I am so excited that you are here. I just want to tell you that this is an off the cuff, not planned episode. You know, you complain as much as you want, but sometimes life just gives you what you need to talk about. And you have heard me talk.

If you've been following me for any length of time about like, the power of one, and sometimes it's one person. Sometimes that's one conversation. And I know that this is going to not be a popular topic with some people, but I kind of want to just talk today about the power of one prayer. And that's because my, like, my life was so changed in inspired by a group of people yesterday that got up and put on their running clothes.

And we're just going to do A5K up in Toledo, Ohio. And they just they inspired me so much. So I have been rebranding myself over the last, you know, a couple of weeks. I know my lane. I know with every inch of me like the direction that I want to go. You know, I've weaved in and out of like, do I do the brain injury thing?

Do I do the domestic violence thing? Do I do in, in, you know, I found where I need to be. And the one piece that I was trying to figure out is I created in my on my professional quality Walter's page on Facebook, I have created two Facebook groups. One of them was for survivors. It's called the Courageous Survivor Community.

And the other one is for the professionals who are working with survivors and victims of domestic violence, child abuse, you no human trafficking like that trauma type of stuff called the Courageous Professionals Network. And like, I wasn't exactly sure, like I knew what I wanted to do with it. I just didn't know how to kind of like frame that for people.

And so I want to tell you about what I witnessed yesterday. So there I am, like working as a paramedic for this five K and this this running group as people finished in this, in this big running group at different stages throughout this five K, I started noticing like some of them were going back and they would go back with other people in the running group and come, you know, come with them.

And then like they kept doing that and then like at the end, all of them, like a huge amount of them crossed the finish line, like went back for the person who was going to be the last one to cross the finish line and did that with them. Like, how amazing is that? That is absolutely. I like I wanted I was inspired so much that like, I, I want to do, I want to run with them, you know, so if you've been watching me for any length of time, you know, I did a half marathon and in that a marathon is on my bucket list.

And like next year I'm going to try to do that in Toledo in September. And I really want to like I want to join them, but like, I just don't think that they know. And so here's what I'm going to talk about. Like, you never know when you get up, how you in the way that you live your life and who's watching and and the way that you may impact them.

Like I, I took a picture of them. I asked the permission. I made a post about them on my page. Actually, I think I did too, but like there, now I'm a motivation board and they like watching. What they did made me.

Realize how I wanted to structure my survivor group. And that was an answer to prayer. Like that. Prayer has been on my prayer list for months. And so like, it's it's just it's just truly amazing because they kept going back and they over and over and like, that was their community. And like, I saw people who were just like, just because I finished doesn't mean I'm done.

Like that was amazing. They went back for those people. And so, you know, there we go. I talk and teach about these, you know, trauma and domestic violence and strangulation and brain injury and nervous system health and healing in my my mission has been to help people understand, you know, what's happening inside somebody when they've been through that.

And like, I know what that work is supposed to look like, but what am I supposed to do with this community? And truly, they answered it because as I watched those runners, I realized, like, that's it. That's the community that I want inside my survivor's group. Not a place where you're standing in front as a person who is supposedly has, you know, kind of worked through your healing, how do you figure things out?

No, not people comparing, like who is healed more. How did you do it? You know, not trying to get people to do it the same way you did, not competing over whose trauma was worse. But like, listen, this is what I wanted to look like. Someone who has learned how to establish boundaries can go back for someone who is struggling to set their first one, like someone who has learned to understand their trauma.

Responses can walk beside someone who still thinks that something's wrong with them, someone who has found their voice can encourage someone who hasn't found theirs yet. Someone who has learned to live with peace can encourage somebody who's nervous system still is believing that you know chaos is home. And sometimes I'm going to be the one going back for somebody else, but sometimes I'm going to be the one who needs somebody coming back from me in that group.

Because healing isn't linear. Nobody becomes so healed that they never need community again. Like I. If you've been watching me for any length of time, I've had to go back out to functional medicine. Things have happened. And some steps forward, some steps back, some steps forward, some steps back. You know, we heal at different pieces. So we got to go back for each other because nobody needs to be left behind and nobody needs to walk healing alone.

And so if somebody is listening to this and you know you are a survivor and you want community center around and centered around healing and understanding and encouragement and connection.

Go look for the courageous survivors community. We actually are going to be working together the first two weeks of October, which is Violence Awareness Month, and we're going to do a reset together in the group, me included. But like I does, runners didn't only answer a prayer about something that I had already created, they planted a seed for something completely new.

So.

In 2019. I was really struggling significantly. I was trying to heal from trauma. I was trying to understand like what was going on with my brain. I was kind of still dealing with addictions on unhealthy coping mechanisms. I was being told how sick I was and like I had had my driving privileges restricted and I wasn't able to function fully as a paramedic.

And then there was this moment that kind of hit me and stop me in my tracks, and I was told that I probably wouldn't see 50 like.

I didn't I didn't know what to do with that. But I knew, like, I knew something wasn't right. Like, I, you know, they're telling me I have an aggressive form of Ms.. And they kept giving me all these diagnoses and trying to put me on all these medications and like are and that's when I began to fight and I began to research.

And, you know, I had Bill smock, who had told me in 2017, like, I think that you could have a brain injury from this near-fatal strangulation. And so I started like, really, you know, knows in the books and in computer actually researching. And like, I decided that I was going to go see these functional medicine doctors and like, my life changed.

You guys, like in the matter of eight days of an intensive it it led me back to work and all this stuff and like to prove those doctors wrong. You know, I came back, I was back to work. I was doing so much better. And I'm like, I'll show them. I decided to do a half marathon. And, you know, it was a part of motivation, but, you know, it was also disturbing this because, you know, it's it's like in some way I wanted to prove that I wasn't sick as, as they were trying to tell me.

And so, like, there's something about when I finished that half marathon in 2021, two years later, that was just amazing. And then there's now, like, I'm 52, I'm I made it to 50. I am still here in many ways.

Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I am in one of the most healthy places, if not the healthy. I would actually, I would just feel completely appropriate saying I am in the healthiest that I have been in my in my life and I'm not done.

Ever since I have marathon, there has been something else sitting on that bucket list, and that's a full marathon. If you've been, you know, following me closely, you've seen that I've wanted to do it and I haven't done it. I don't personally know anyone that runs except for, you know, one person and.

Didn't live close to me in running hard. You guys like.

But I've thought about it and thought about it, and it's I've kept that marathon on my bucket list. And so yesterday, while watching that group that came alive again. And so I decided that next September I'm going to work towards completing that at a marathon in Toledo. And actually, if you're a runner, I would really, genuinely love for you to join me.

If you're in, you know, around Toledo, there's a Garmin that's usually ran in September. I would love for you to go and listen. If you're a runner, I would love for you to let me know. I'm going to need to. I'm going to be starting when I get back from Texas on Thursday. Like I need a couch to marathon in one year.

But those people inspired me. Like. It was crazy. Because what I realized that it takes courageTo do something like that. It takes courage to move towards something, but it also takes courage to move away from something. And so I thought about that courage in motion. And guess what? I made it. Another Facebook group called Courage in Motion. Now it is not at all a survivor group. That is kind of where the survivor, the courageous survivor community, is where survivors can go to support each other.

But I want something away from my trauma, cause I am so much more, so much more than my trauma. And so I made this courage in motion. Inspired by that running group. It's anybody can join. It's not a fitness group, it's not a running group. It might have I might have a running group. But Courage in Motion is for people who are ready to move towards something or away from something.

BTW each name of the 3 facebook groups above in the transcript has a live link to each group, so just click and you're there!

Maybe you're going to decide to move towards A5K, a marathon, taking a trip, starting a business, going back to school, improving your health, trying something that absolutely scares you. Doing. Doing something that's been sitting on your bucket list forever. Or maybe it's going to be moving away from something. Sometimes that takes courage and unhealthy habit and addiction. Constantly putting yourself last, something that you're using to cope.

Something that you know is keeping you from becoming who you want to become. I'm doing both, actually. I'm moving towards my marathon, and I'm moving away from my addiction to overworking. I am overworking addiction addict and the other one's going to be I have a tendency to use sugar as an easy way to get those feel good chemicals that I talk about, rather than intentionally using all the things that I have in my toolbox to meet that need.

Look, I'm not going to be the person running the group because I don't have it all figured out. I am not starting Courage in Motion because I've mastered any of this. I'm starting it because I haven't, I? I want a place where people can say, this is what I'm working towards, this is what I'm trying to leave behind.

And I'd really like some people to walk beside me when I do it. Listen. Different goals, different pieces. But moving forward together, choosing something, starting somewhere. Don't do it alone. Sometimes we have to go back and walk beside people like that group did. Monday's will be an opportunity to check in like not. Did you succeed or fail? But like what are you moving towards?

What are you moving from? What step did you take this week? And maybe it's hey, how can we encourage you along the way?

Again, the courageous survivor community is specifically for survivors. Focus on healing, understanding, connection, learning about ourselves, supporting one another through things that other people just don't understand. So that's a very unique group. But courage in motion is for everyone. Goals, growth. Change. Bucket list. Dreams. Healthier choices. Doing the hard things when other people around you don't.

That group inspired me because we both have things in common. We go back for people.

I don't know you guys. It's crazy. I've always been on this part of this road. You know, walking my brain injury, walking like, eating healthy and all this stuff in. I feel very isolated, and I. And I feel very alone with a lot of that. And so sometimes, you know, like, I'm going to be in both groups myself figuring both groups out, that is an admin.

But like, as somebody that's trying to just wake up tomorrow and figure out what do I need to figure out? So come join us. If you're a survivor, come see us at the creative survivor community, and everybody come see us at Courage in Motion. It's going to be fun because there's going to be hopefully a lot of people that like will say, come, come on, I'll walk with you.

And.I don't know, like, I think that we miss the opportunity to understand how much we influence people with what we do. Like that group you guys like, they they didn't understand that when they put on their running shirt and they're running pants and they're running shoes, that they were going to completely change my life. That like I wrote about them on my on my pages, I wrote a blog about them.

I'm recording this podcast, but I've made notes about them in my book and they, like, made the foundation for two groups that I'm going to be doing and like, that's it. The power of one, like one person started that group and now look how many they are. Like one person started. They like the person who finished first went back, and then they just gathered more and more.

Going back, we talked so much about influencers today, these people who content creators and all that stuff. But sometimes the most influential persons aren't. People, aren't the ones with millions of followers. They're just simply people doing good things when they don't know anybody's watching. And that's hard because, you know, as I've been doing my speaking in, in talking to people that are trying to help me, you know, reach more people you're told to that likes to matter, shares matter and all that stuff.

And I started to get bothered because I don't have the growth that I probably should as far as what they tell me. And I realized that it doesn't it doesn't matter. It's the seeds that you plant, just like those people didn't know that they did, that they would have never known had I not said anything. And most people won't say anything.

So, you know, I don't know if any of those runners believe. Some may believe in God. Some may not. That's not the point. I believe God used that group to answer a prayer that they didn't even know I had. And that is powerful, because you just never know where when our absolutely ordinary actions become somebody else's answered prayers.

To that running group. And if you're listening, I really say thank you. You thought you were running a race. You didn't know someone was watching. You didn't know you were answering a prayer. You didn't know you were helping shape a survivor community. You didn't know that you were inspiring an entirely new community. You certainly didn't know that some random 1552 year old woman watching was going to decide that.

Now she's going to finally decide to run her 26.2 miles next year, because how much you inspired her? She has just simply showed up for each other. Look how far that traveled, you guys. You all have the capability for that. Maybe there's something that you've been wanting to do. Maybe there's been something that you've been wanting to stop.

Maybe there's something you've been waiting till you're ready. Maybe there's something that you've been wanting. But you're scared. Maybe you've been waiting on someone to do it with you. So consider this year invitation. If you're a survivor, come join the courageous survivor community. If there's something that you're ready to move toward or away from, come join Courage in Motion.And for those of you that are out there that are listening, that maybe a marathon runner, please come find me in. Help me figure out how in approximately a year how I'm going to figure this out. Because I got a feeling that I've gotten myself into something. But it's going to be fun, and I look forward to sharing this training journey on my socials.So guess what? Choose something. Start somewhere. Don't do it alone. And when you find yourself a little farther down the road than somebody else, go back for them because that is having a courageous journey. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And be well.

This latest episode is sharing with you how I think I finally found my voice, why everything is changing, and why it all comes back to one simple truth....

And welcome to the Courageous Journey podcast. This episode is going to be, I think I finally found my voice and why everything is changing and why it all comes back to one simple truth.

Today is going to be a little bit different. I'm not teaching neuroscience. I'm not talking about trauma. I'm not diving into brain injury. Instead, I want to tell you about something that has quietly been happening behind the scenes over the last month or so, especially the last few days. If you visited my website recently, or you've noticed changes to my YouTube channel, or you've seen some of my recent post, you may have noticed that everything is starting to look a little different.

And that's intentional. Not because I've changed what I believe, but because I finally found the words to explain what I believed all along. Sometimes we just know our mission before we know how to say it. You know, you spend years speaking, creating trainings, writing blogs, recording podcasts, teaching professionals, working with survivors. I've always known what I wanted people to walk away with.

I just couldn't put it into one sentence. I couldn't kind of pin it down. I talked about trauma, brain injury, domestic violence, nervous system regulation, healing, hope, faith, resilience, recovery. But none of those things were actually my mission. Those were just pieces of my mission. And I think, no, I know I finally figured out what my mission has been all along.

I've spent years asking, what's wrong with me? Why am I so exhausted? Why can't I remember? Why do crowds in places overwhelm me? Why do I react before I think? Or why do I react out of context? Why can't I just move on?

Eventually someone stopped explaining my diagnosis and started explaining my brain. That one shift changed everything for me. I stopped asking what's wrong with me and started asking what happened inside of me because of what I had to survive.

Healing begins with understanding.

This is the sense that's been living in my heart and my heart. I'll repeat it. Healing begins with understanding.

It begins with understanding what happened. What happened inside of us. Healing begins with understanding our brains. Healing begins with understanding our nervous system. Healing begins with understanding our behaviors. Healing begins with understanding of each other. And I realized that why I speak, that why I write, and that what I teach.

My healing began when I was able to understand what was going on inside of me. And so, like, everything's changing. I've reorganized my website. I've rebuilt my YouTube channel. Have these playlists now. I've organized videos so people can find exactly what they need. And it's just the beginning. I'm going to be going back and putting different videos and in trainings and stuff like that into those playlists.

So keep a watch my podcast. This podcast is becoming more intentional in this office and happening because I want a prettier website, not because I want a better branding, but I want everything to point toward one mission. I've really began to understand that I really serve three people, and I want to talk about those three people. Survivors. You are broken.

Your brain adapted. Your nervous system adapted in healing is possible. I am living proof of that for the families and the loved ones of survivors. You are not crazy for struggling to understand someone that you love. Understanding changes relationships and that's why I want to come alongside you too and help you understand what is going on inside of your loved one.

And for the professionals or those people that are working with survivors, trauma informed changed our systems. Now it's time to become brain aware. When we understand what happened inside someone, we can start responding differently. I honestly feel like I'm standing at this beginning of something new. Two weeks from today, I'll be landing in Texas. I'm going to be speaking as a national conference, the National Cut Hotline conference for domestic violence, and I'm excited about that.

I'm super excited, and to be honest, I'm absolutely terrified. I'm going to be opening up one of my very vulnerable pieces of my life, but I think it's going to be the big shift for me. There's going to be changes on this podcast, my YouTube channel, these future books. Like a lot of people have heard me talk about my books in I've been writing for so long, but it wasn't Mission Focus.

I didn't have what I knew I needed to be. My mission by speaking. And I'm so excited that I'm creating these this courageous survivors community. It's going to be a Facebook group off my professional page. I'm also creating a network for professionals working with survivors, and that's going to be a Facebook group where we can go in and we can talk and we can share trauma informed stuff and different things that we're learning.

Or guess what? I don't have all the answers, but I'm hoping that people that kind of understand that we have to talk about what's happening into them, happening to the survivors, that we can come along and share resources. We can talk about what we know about the whole person, and how we all can come and help each other to better serve survivors.

And again, like, I don't have everything figured out. I'm still learning. Listen, I'm I'm a paramedic. Like podcasting and YouTube, being in technology. Technology is my Kryptonite.

I fail at some things and I have to start over. I have to start my podcast over and in. Sometimes I just realized, like, I thought I didn't. I don't look professional enough. And guess what? That's okay. That is okay. I don't I'm not trying to be this perfect, polished person. I'm trying to be me and what it looks like when you take this crisis healing journey.

Sometimes it's messy. Sometimes it's just showing up with the best version of yourself. And sometimes that's just not what some people consider good enough. But I'm doing my best each day. I'm still growing, but I at least know where I'm finally going. And I want to tell you, I want to leave you with this thought. For years. I believe that healing begins when we work harder.

I just felt like I had to work harder and do more and be more and all these things. And now I believe that even begins much earlier than that. Healing begins the moment something finally makes sense. My healing began the moment someone explained what was going on inside of me. This moment that someone helped me understand my nervous system.

The moment shame began to be replaced with curiosity and learning. The moment I stopped asking myself, what's wrong with me? And I began asking what happened inside of me because of what I've lived through.

This is why everything you're going to see from me moving forward, from this podcast to my YouTube channel, to my website, to my speaking, will all point back to one simple idea. Healing begins with understanding. Understanding what happened, understanding what happened inside of us. Understanding how our brains and bodies adapt to survive. In understanding that because our brains adapt to survive, they can also adapt to heal.

It also helps. Healing begins for others when we understand what is going on inside of them, it gives us this amazing toolbox of things to better survive or better help and come alongside our survivors. It's going to be it's going to be a journey. It's going to be a lot of hard work. But I keep thinking back about finding a woman named Amy.

When I was at rock bottom, when I was getting ready to go out to Minnesota, to a functional neurologist, where I was at rock bottom, and I was gonna I had a plan. I was going to analyze myself if they couldn't help me. I was literally at rock bottom. But I found her through groups, Facebook groups, through a podcast.

In my search, I found a woman named Amy who talked about brain injury, and she had a brain injury from a fall where she hit her head. But my symptoms were much like hers and it led me to start researching. It led me to reach out to her and ask her questions, and then led me to reach out to where she went for healing.

And that that conversation, that visit changed my life. And I've been able to go back to work as a paramedic and been working. So since I have been able to drive, I have been able to go on an amazing healing journey and I feel like I'm in the best spiritual, emotional, physical, mental health places I've ever been. And I can imagine that I can only get better.

I was once told that I probably wouldn't see 50, and to be quite honest, in those last couple of years before I went to functional neurology, I used to think, I really don't even want to see 50. I hadn't hope, I had no hope, I didn't want to live. There was no joy that was taken from me. Why?

Because I didn't have any understanding. I didn't have answers. And that is why. That is my why, why I'm doing this. I want this to be a place that maybe just one the power of one, that maybe one other survivor, one professional, one family member will find hope in healing in what they find on my podcast, my website, my blog, any of my stuff.

Because I think about all the things that I've done since then and what would have happened if I wouldn't have found hope and healing because I started understanding. So that becomes my mission. And I just want to say thank you for being a part of this journey with me. It's been a wild ride so far. I'm excited to be able to put my feet in the ground.

And so whether you've been here for years or you're just finding this community, I am so grateful that you are here. I hope you'll explore the new resources, the new YouTube playlist, and continue walking alongside me as I learn. And you learn and we learn together. And until next time, keep choosing courage. Keep asking questions, and never stop believing that healing is possible.

Because healing begins with understanding. I'll see you in the next podcast.

The Beliefs That Hurt Me More Than the Abuse

For years, I believed the abuse itself was what kept me stuck. Looking back, I see something different.

In this episode, I share one of the biggest breakthroughs in my healing journey: it wasn't just the traumatic events that shaped my life—it was the beliefs and survival patterns my brain developed because of them.

Using a simple story about trimming trees around my property, we explore why healing isn't about erasing our past. It's about understanding how trauma shaped our brains and intentionally rewiring the pathways that no longer serve us.

Together, we'll discuss:

• Why childhood beliefs can shape our identity for decades
• The difference between being trauma-informed and becoming brain-aware
• Why survivors often repeat unhealthy patterns, relationships, and addictions
• How understanding the brain became the missing piece in my own recovery
• Why there is hope for lasting healing through neuroplasticity and intentional rewiring

Whether you're a survivor, someone who loves a survivor, or a professional seeking a deeper understanding of trauma, I hope this conversation encourages you to look beyond behavior and begin asking a different question:

What happened to your brain because of what happened to you?

Because the same brain that learned survival can also learn healing.

About The Courageous Journey The Courageous Journey is a podcast exploring the connection between trauma, brain health, and healing through the lens of lived experience, neuroscience, faith, and hope. Each episode helps survivors and professionals better understand the brain so healing and lasting change become possible. Disclaimer:

The content shared on this podcast and YouTube channel is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I, Paula Walters, am not a licensed medical professional, and the information provided should not be construed as medical advice. I am sharing my personal journey of healing—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—based on my own experiences and the research I have found to be beneficial for me.

Please consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making any decisions regarding your health or treatment options. What works for me may not work for you, and it is important to find a path that is right for your unique needs and circumstances.