An honest account of living with severe Complex PTSD & PTSD – from the inside.
What Is Mental Monster?
This is not a podcast written by a psychiatrist or psychologist. It is written by me—someone who has lived with severe PTSD and Complex PTSD for most of my life.
It is informed primarily by lived experience: what trauma actually feels like, the suffering that comes with it, and the many ways it can shape a life over decades.
Since my diagnosis, I have spent more than thirteen years in specialised trauma therapy, read extensively about trauma, and studied psychology at undergraduate level. But I still had many questions. Some of what I was being told in therapy, or reading in books, did not fit my experience. At times, I felt that trauma was being reduced to concepts, symptoms and neat explanations that were too narrow to capture the reality of living with it.
I wanted to speak about those gaps. I wanted to question ideas that did not make sense to me, challenge some of the stigma and simplistic assumptions surrounding PTSD, and explore how my own understanding had changed over time.
I did not begin Mental Monster because I believed I had answers for everyone. I began it because I needed to speak about my experience, and because I had once needed to hear someone else speak honestly about theirs.
So I spoke into the void, hoping that someone living with trauma might find a voice—not the voice—that reflected something they had felt but struggled to explain. A voice that might make them feel less alone, or less unseen.
But the podcast is also for people who have not experienced severe trauma themselves. People whose understanding of PTSD may come from simplified descriptions, stereotypes, or assumptions about how trauma should look. I wanted to describe not only the condition, but the suffering beneath it—and the countless ways it can affect a person’s relationships, choices, identity, work and everyday life.
My thinking has continued to evolve over the years. Mental Monster is where I have shared that thinking, in case it helps someone recognise their own experience—or understand another person’s more fully.
- Content note: Mental Monster includes frank discussion of trauma, PTSD, emotional distress and the effects of violence and abuse. It reflects personal experience and is not medical or therapeutic advice.